Logan Hall

I had finally saved up enough money to put a sizeable down payment on a rundown house in my old neighborhood. It was two streets away from my parents and just a few more from work. I was enjoying my new found freedom from the world in my new house. The first few weeks were a godsend. It was so quiet that I found my inner voice again. My happiness skyrocketed, and my productivity at work increased. I even got my paints out again. But things changed, and then went downhill, fast. Six weeks after I moved in, I started hearing something. It sounded like something wooden was rubbing against something else wooden. I hadn’t heard it at all in the months I had been living there, and I couldn’t figure it out. It mostly happened late at night or very early in the morning. It drove me crazy, but it would stop the moment I was up for the day, and throughout the day I could convince myself I had heard nothing unusual. But every night I would hear the squeaking of wood again. That lasted a few weeks, and I adjusted to the sound as just being another sound my house made. Then the crying started. It sounded like a baby crying somewhere in another room. No matter where I went in my new house, I heard crying. It was creepy. I spent all my free time searching all the nooks and crannies of my house to find the source. Then, in a corner of the attic, I found a birth certificate, pictures, and a journal chronicling the life of a baby. There was one more heart breaking thing in that bundle. A death certificate His name had been Logan Hall. When the crying started again, I called out the name, trying to soothe what had to be the babies ghost, but that only seemed to make the crying worse. The following night, things changed again. There was wood creaking, crying in the next room, and now grunting noises. I couldn’t sleep, so I started reading the journal instead. According to the entries, Logan Hall suffered from colic. He was a happy baby otherwise, but had long hours of inconsolable crying. I learned Logan achieved all of his developmental goals on time, liked applesauce, and was terrified of the cat. Unfortunately, on an exceptionally scorching morning in July, his mother came to wake him up, and he was gone. No one knew why it happened, not even the doctors. Medical professionals had never explained Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Sometimes the body just forgets how to live. Each night I elected to stay up reading the journals, Logan did not disturb me. When it was late and finally time for bed, Logan let me sleep. After the journals were finished, the nightly crying and creaking began again. I tried reasoning with him and even bribery, but nothing stopped the crying. My productivity suffered. When I heard crying even when I was away from home, I knew I was losing my mind. The crying seeped into the day, and the creaking would echo through the house. I tried turning the volume up on everything to drown out the sounds, but they would somehow roar over the music. The crying and creaking moved closer until they were outside my bedroom door. They would echo out of existence when I opened the door, but start again as soon as I closed it. I started seeing things in the dark. I don’t know what, exactly. They were amorphous blobs that coalesced into visions of babies made of wood pacing in the dark. Finally, the noise was absent when I got home from a double. Maybe I was too tired to care. Either way, I took a silent, hot shower and went to bed. The sheets were cool, they way I like them, and sleep found me quickly. In my sleep I found myself in front of a locked door. I kept trying the doorknob, but it wouldn’t turn. I heard grunting from behind the door. Then a baby cried. After that, I had to get through that door. I started trying to kick it in, but nothing moved it. As I caught my breath, the crying turned to laughter, and the door unlocked with a loud click. I placed my hand back on the knob, and it moved freely. The door opened silently, and the dark room erupted in light from a lone bulb hanging above a rocking crib. The creaking echoed through the small room. Then, crying emerged from the crib, and I focused my attention on it. I slowly crept up to the basket, terrified of what awaited me. Lying in the middle of the crib, covered by a dark blue blanket, was a baby. It wasn’t moving, and its lips were blue, but there was a cry escaping from between those blue lips. The crying became deafening, then everything went quiet. The baby’s eyes snapped open, and a giggle escaped his lips. Then I woke up. The door to my room, which I always close, was open. There was light from the hallway, which I always turn off, coming in through the cracked door. And there was something on my chest. I panicked when little cold hands settled on my chin, and a childish giggle rang out.