Page 79 of Cruel Juliet

Sleep barely has time to reach me when I hear it.

A sound. Faint, distant. Crying.

It takes a second to register what it is.

A baby.

The soft, broken wail of a baby echoing somewhere below.

My skin prickles. Every hair on my arms stands on end. There shouldn’t be any sound like that in this house. Not yet.

God, I knew it. It’s haunted. This whole nightmarish Home Depot from Hell is haunted by the ghosts of Victorian children, and I’m finally finding out.

Okay, maybe not. But still.

I sit and wait to hear it again. My eyes flick to the window. Maybe it’s the wind? Between the branches, or in the cracks of this old house, it could easily sound like wailing.

Then I hear it again.

It’s not the wind.

It’s very, very real.

I throw back the blankets and swing my legs out of bed. The floor feels cold under my feet. I press a hand to my stomach instinctively, as if I can somehow shield her from whatever this is.

The crying continues. Low, rhythmic, unmistakable.

Some instinct inside me pushes me to the door. I’d chalk it up to hormones, but the last time I did that, I ignored the prickling feeling at the back of my neck, and that’s how Anatoli cornered me. I’m not making that mistake twice.

I grab my robe and slip it on, my pulse quick and uneven. “Hello?” My voice sounds small, almost swallowed by the dark.

No answer. Just that same haunting sound.

I follow it down the hall. The lights are dim. The walls stretch long and quiet.

“The Bent-Neck Lady isn’t real,” I mutter to myself as my eyes flick to the banister despite my best rational efforts. “The Bent-Neck Lady isn’t real. We’re not even on a hill.”

At the top of the stairs, I stop.

The sound is clearer now. It sounds like it’s rising up from the first floor, just below.

I grip the railing and hesitate. It could still be nothing. The house creaks sometimes. Pipes. Old wood. Maybe it’s in my head.

But then the cry rises again. And there’s a lot of things I can ignore, but a crying baby while I’m nine months pregnant?

Good luck beating biology, brain.

I take one step down. Then another. And that’s when it happens.

Something shoves me from behind—hard.

The world flips. My breath catches in my throat as I lose my footing.

I reach for the banister, miss, and tumble forward into the dark.

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SIMA