The Squalling Baby by Susan Buffum, copyright March 2020
Night after night Diana woke to the shrill cries of an infant. Never having been a mother herself she lacked the ability to discern whether or not the infant’s cried were due to distress caused by a wet or soiled diaper or a gas bubble in its stomach, or was due to hunger, thirst, or even pain, like from a first tooth pushing through a tender pink gum. Or, perhaps it was simply frightened of the dark.
Turning her head she discerned the dark mound of Edward beside her. Apparently he could not hear the squalling baby. Men were uncannily deaf to crying babies unless they were watching sports or trying to talk to their buddies on the phone. Women evidently had ears attuned to even the merest hiccoughing whimper, some sort of internal antenna that directed them to any sort of child in distress or need.
She’d gotten up dozens of times since they’d moved into the former Brickman home. The house dated back to the mid-eighteen hundreds. Benjamin Brickman had been the last of that line. He’d been a rather odd old man. He’d seemed very nervous at the house closing—anxious to receive his check and flee the lawyer’s office. She and Edward had had no idea where he was fleeing to. They’d thought that perhaps it would be to an assisted living community, but they’d since heard that he’d left the area completely. He’d been a rather strange man, if you asked her.
But the house had been nice enough—well kept, in good repair, surprisingly clean for an old bachelor having lived there alone since the death of his mother, Beatrice Brickman fifteen years prior to the house having come onto the market.
The only curious thing they’d found in the house so far was a locked door in the master bedroom. Edward assumed it was to a dressing room which was little more, in his opinion, than a walk-in closet. They had ample closet space in the large dressing room; plenty of space for all their clothes, shoes, and accessories. The en suite was surprisingly large also. Only Diana was bothered by the locked door. None of the keys on the brass ring that had been handed over to them at the closing had fit the lock. Edward’s opinion was that he’d get a locksmith in eventually and the matter would be rectified. For now, they didn’t need whatever space was concealed behind that locked door.
The crying seemed to come from the other side of that locked door. It woke her every night. She lay there tense and anxious listening to that insidious wailing, the choking sobs. It stirred maternal instincts within her that she’d have preferred to be allowed to lie dormant. She and Edward had decided not to bring children into this world.
Eventually, she turned onto her side, folding her pillow over her exposed ear. It muffled the crying enough so that she was finally able to fall asleep, but her dreams were fraught with empty cradles draped in black crepe, women garbed all in unrelenting black, faces obscured behind black veils. It left her feeling dull and dreary when she woke, Edward’s place already abandoned, empty. He had to rise early for the lengthy commute to work.
She found a tarnished brass skeleton key wedged between the baseboard and a floorboard when she heaved the dresser aside to retrieve a necklace that she’d dropped behind it, the pretty gold one with the diamond teardrop pendant. She had to go downstairs to get a screwdriver from the junk drawer in the kitchen so she could lever the key out of its tight position.
After a few attempts it seemed the key simply leapt from its trap, striking her in the abdomen. “Ouch!” she cried, rubbing her belly a few times before picking up the key. It was a good three and a half inches or so in length. “What do you fit?” she asked it as she got up off the floor, laying it down on the dresser before shoving the furniture piece back into its place against the wall.
Again that night the sound of a squalling baby woke her. In frustration and annoyance she flung aside the bedclothes as she sat up, swinging her feet over the side of the bed. Behind her, Edward sort of snorted in his sleep. Irritation and disgust disfigured her face as she stood up and began walking toward the hall door intending to go downstairs to try to sleep on the couch in the room they used as their family room.
As she came around the foot of the bed she stepped on something cold, hard, and unforgiving. “What….?” She moved her foot, bent and felt for the object, readily identifying it by its shape as a skeleton key. “How did this get on the floor?” she muttered. The key had been on the dresser when she’d paused there to rub a little lotion into her face before going to bed.
The baby’s cries were particularly shrill and demanding tonight. “Oh, shut up already!” she said aloud as she made her way to the locked door. It was dark in the room, but by touch she located the lock beneath the doorknob, rotated the key in her other hand and rammed it into the keyhole.
At first the lock resisted her efforts, but then, after a determined twist it relented and released. “Well, that’s that,” she said as behind her Edward shifted his legs, grunted, turned on his side and settled back into a rhythmic pattern of quiet snores. “Of course you don’t hear all this racket,” she grumbled.
Grasping the ornate, embossed brass doorknob she twisted it sharply. It wobbled, feeling a bit loose as she pushed against the door. At first it seemed to be stuck, as if sealed shut from the other side, but then there were crackling and odd sort of sucking sounds as old paint or varnish that had adhered to itself on two compressed surfaces separated and the door creaked open with only mild further protests. The crying was louder now, definitely coming from within the room beyond.
She pushed the door open wider as she took a tentative step inside. There was a single window to her right through which a wash of lambent moonlight spilled, muted by the tattered, gauzy remnants of sheer curtains now hanging like scraps from a crooked curtain rod, one bracket having come loose from the window frame.
In the shadows around the perimeter of the room she discerned random darker forms—what could be a chair, a small chest of drawers, a small rocking horse, its dull eye milky in the moonbeam crossing it. She shivered although it wasn’t a cold or even particularly cool night.
The cries grew sharper, more demanding. Insistent. They drew her further into the room. “Be quiet!” she scolded as she made out the shape of a cradle against the wall to her left. “Shut up!”
As she drew nearer to the cradle she saw the gleam of the infant’s eyes within the darkness of the cradle’s interior, the shiny tracks of its tears faintly phosphorescent like little illuminated trials down it’s cheeks. And the dark cavity of its open mouth from which all that wretched, howling noise was emanating.
Groping within the cradle she felt a little kicking leg tangled in a blanket. She tugged the blanket free, hoping that would quiet the baby, but it continued to wail. ‘I’ll cover it. It’s just cold is all,’ she thought as her hands balled up the blanket instead of shaking it out to straighten it.
Bending over the cradle, she pressed the blanket against the squalling baby’s face, muffling its infernal noise, stifling its cries. She felt its little limbs trash, its wet, cold fists strike her wrists. She bore down more firmly with the blanket. “Hush,” she murmured. “Be quiet. Lie still. Go to sleep now.”
Edward frowned as he shoved his feet into the slippers. A cold draft had chilled the bedroom. He’d turned his head to see whether or not Diana had been woken up by it, but her side of the bed was unoccupied. “Diana?” he said aloud as he stood up. Why was it so cold in the room?
It was as he turned back toward the source of the chilly air that he realized that the formerly locked door stood ajar. “Hey, did you open the door? Where’d you find the key?”
He walked to the doorway, sticking his head into the room. Gray, early morning light allowed him to see that the room was small. The thought ran through his head that this room had been a nursery at one time. Old houses like this often had nurseries off the bedroom for convenience. He’d glimpsed the little rocking horse from the corner of his eye. “Diana?”
Pushing the door open wider, he saw her sitting in the rocker in the corner on the other side of the window. “Hey, are you all right? Why’s it so cold in here?” She had a small bundle held against her breast. “Di?”
“Shh,” she said, her voice oddly flat. “You’ll wake the baby. It’s finally quiet.”
“What baby? What have you got there? A doll?” Slowly, he crossed the room toward her. “Let me see it.”
“Every night, Eddie. Every damn night since we moved in it’s cried and screamed. I found the key. I finally found the key. I had to move the dresser and there it was. I used it last night to unlock the door. It was crying again. I tried to comfort it. It was hungry. That’s all it was. It was hungry.”
“Honey, you haven’t been sleeping well. You’re overtired. You were just hallucinating. There’s no baby here. The stress of the move, of not being able to find a new job, of trying to make new friends in the neighborhood...come on. Why don’t you come back to bed and try to get some rest.”
He reached for her to help her up. She looked pale, drawn, exhausted. “Come on, sweetheart. You just need some sleep.” When he tried to pull the bunched up blanket away she fiercely resisted, alarming him. “Diana…”
“No! Stop it! You’ll wake the baby!” she hissed at him. “It took so long to get it to sleep. Leave me alone!”
“There’s no baby. You’re just over-tired. Let’s just get you back to bed now.” He used a little more force to pull the bundle away and that’s when he saw the blood on her bare breast. “What…!” He looked down at the bundled blanket, at the fierce, shriveled little face with the yellow eyes, the pug nose, and the bloodstained mouth. “Oh, my…” he began to say but it opened its mouth and he saw the sharp little bloodstained teeth. He yelled as he leapt backwards away from it. “Put it down!” he cried. “Put it down, Diana!”
“You woke it, Eddie. You woke it and it’s going to start crying again,” she said, her voice both accusing and bleak. “I can’t bear to hear it cry anymore. It’s hungry, that’s all. It’s just hungry.” Her eyes begged him to understand as she brought the blanket and what it held back to her breast. “It’s the only way to keep it quiet.”
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