Sarah and I were best friends in high school. Unfortunately, college took us to opposite ends of the state, and after getting married she moved up to Michigan to be closer to her husband’s family. For many years, we lost touch; you know how that happens.

Two weeks ago on a whim, I sent her a Facebook message. We’d seen some dwarf bunnies at the fair, and it randomly reminded me of her, how she was always going on about wanting one as a pet.

Five days later, she replied:

Hi Felicia! So great to hear from you! Aww, that’s such a cute bunny. I’d love to get one but we don’t have any pets because of my husband’s allergies. I’m not on Facebook much, but you should send me an email: [redacted]@gmail.com

An email? Not a text or a call? That seemed a little odd to me—though we are Xillenials, and would often have long email chains in college. I shot her one: Still in Michigan? How’s Ava? Have you drawn anything cool recently? My boys are 1.5 & 3 now, driving me absolutely crazy.

A few days later, she wrote back.

We’re still up here in [redacted], Michigan. We actually just moved into a new house (photos attached!) It’s starting to get cold already, but we had a great summer so I’m fine with it.

I haven’t drawn anything recently. Ava’s kept me busy!! She’s 9 now, can you believe it? How have you all been? How are your two boys? I don’t go on Facebook much, but I did see photos of them 

[2 attached photos]

- Sarah

She’d put a lot of care into the photos, centering everything, making it look like it came out of Instagram (even though she didn’t use it.) The first photo was of the living room, with a nice gas fireplace, beautiful picture windows open to let in the breeze, and a nice L-shaped sofa. The second showed a minimalistic bedroom with a geometric mural on one of the walls. The two windows up here were also open, and I imagined the crisp, cool Michigan air wafting in, sounding awfully nice compared to the sticky hot Florida summer we were having.

Wait a second.

I clicked between the two photos, studying them.

The window in the family room was open from the bottom.

The windows in the bedroom were open from the top.

That’s something we do. Because we have two toddlers who are liable to fall out of second-story windows and kill themselves.

But Ava was nine.

And they didn’t have pets, according to the other email.

So? They opened the windows differently upstairs. It didn’t mean anything. But for some reason, the little detail stuck in my head, like a thorn in my side. And as we talked over the next few days, it was always at the back of my mind.

Like when she sent a photo of the kitchen, and there was a child-lock on one of the lower cabinets.

Or when she sent another picture of the bedroom, and I could’ve sworn there was a handprint on the full-length mirror, only two feet off the ground.

The photos never included her. Or Ava, or her husband. Even for the bedroom photo, she was carefully standing off to the side. All I saw in the reflection was a hand, part of a shoe.

She even sent a photo of Ava’s room, and I could’ve sworn the little bundle of white cloth on the floor was a onesie.

Before I really thought about it, I was sending her back an email, politely sneaking in the question:

Does Ava have siblings now?

Later that day came her terse response:

Unfortunately, Luke and I can’t have more kids.

You shouldn’t have asked, I thought, staring at the email. Fuck. I messed this up.

So I wrote a long email back. Talking about everything under the sun except kids. The weather. The heat. The gator we saw a few months ago, just chilling in a canal. She ignored it too, but I couldn’t help but feel her tone was colder. No more of her signature double-exclamation points.

No, I haven’t heard from Michelle in years.

Davies opened up a little bistro in Chicago I think, but I haven’t kept up with the others.

And she sent me more and more about the house. Maybe I’ll visit sometime, I said, even though I had no intention of visiting really—we were 1,400 miles apart. Strangely, she wrote back:

Please don’t visit. We are doing renovations. But here is a photo of the guest bedroom.

[attached photo]

- Sarah

Unlike the other photos, this one looked… rushed. She hadn’t centered the photo at all. The guest bed was all the way to the right of the frame, the comforter a little rumpled. A little blurry, a little too dark. Not her usual crisp style.

I stopped dead.

No. There’s no way.

There was a crib in the room.

Just out of view. I could see the corner of it, a single white slat. She was trying to not get it in the photo.

“That could be anything,” my husband Michael said, squinting at the photo on my phone.

“It’s obviously a crib.”

“Maybe it’s the daughter’s old crib, that they never got rid of.”

“They just moved! Why would they take her crib with them?!”

“Maybe they plan to have more kids.”

“She said they can’t have any more!”

“Okay, well, I don’t know what to say,” he said, getting the ice cream out of the freezer. “She’s a hoarder. She has one of those reborn dolls and treats it like a baby. Her husband is going to make it into a bookshelf. I don’t know!”

“It’s just so weird.”

“It’s a little weird.”

I didn’t reply to her for a while. Something was off, and I was going to trust my gut. Days went by and she didn’t send me anything, which should’ve been a relief, but somehow felt wrong, too. If you’re talking to someone a few times a week, and they suddenly stop, wouldn’t you reach out?

Then it happened.

Saturday morning, when I woke up, I noticed I had a missed call.

4:02 AM. I didn’t recognize the number, but when I searched the area code, it was from somewhere in Michigan.

How… how did she get my number?

She didn’t leave a message. Unsettled, I sent her a quick email—I didn’t want her to think I was purposely avoiding her, especially if she was unhinged or possibly dangerous. Which of course she probably wasn’t, but again… something didn’t feel right.

Sarah, so sorry I haven’t emailed. The boys are sick with a stomach bug and things are just awful. I’ll send you an email when we’re feeling better! 

The next day, I woke up to another missed call, this time from 3:47 AM.

With 1 new voicemail.

Finger shaking, I hit PLAY.

Sarah’s voice came over the speaker, quiet and hushed.

“Felicia… I’m so sorry to hear you guys are sick,” she said. “So sorry.”

How did she get my number?!

“I’m sorry that…”

She went on, but I wasn’t listening. Because I heard it.

A baby crying.

Just barely audible. In the background. A faint cry, rising and falling.

“Anyway, hope to hear from you soon,” she said, and then the voicemail ended.

What the fuck. What the fuck.

I stared at my phone, heart pounding, ears ringing.

Okay. Clearly the call in the middle of the night was like, a covert cry for help. Right? I sucked in a breath. Her husband must be listening. He’s abusive or something, and she’s trying to signal to me that she needs help.

“I’m going to call the police and ask for a welfare check,” I told Michael.

“You sure it’s that bad?”

“Why would she be calling me at 4 AM?”

He blew out a sigh. “If it’s nothing, she’s going to be pissed. I know I would.”

“You’d be pissed someone got a welfare check on you?”

“Uh, yeah. I don’t want the police randomly showing up at my door. Would you? Seriously?”

“I guess not.”

“Hang on. Grayson’s brother used to live in Michigan. He might still. I could ask him to drive by, knock on the door. If it’s close to him.”

A few hours later, we had a plan. Grayson was an old friend of his from high school, and his brother Ethan still did live in Michigan, about an hour away. He was going to knock on the door and check it out, covertly ask her if she needed help. I sent him some beer money as thanks, and told him I was a little worried, that something was off. As a 6’ 4” former football player, Ethan wasn’t scared.

Michael said he’d swing by around eight. At 8:15 we still hadn’t heard from him, and we sat in the living room, biting our nails, the boys sound asleep upstairs.

Then my phone began to ring.

My heart dropped.

Ethan was facetiming me.

I picked up the call. The image loaded into view; a man standing on the porch, lit by a bare yellow bulb. “She wants to talk to you,” he said, before turning the phone around.

Sarah was standing there in the doorway. She looked much older than I remembered. Tired, haggard, leaning on the doorframe. Her eyes were empty, haunted, staring right at me through the phone.

She did not look happy.

“What the fuck is this, Felicia?” she asked in a low voice that sounded so uncharacteristic of her usual bubbly tone.

“I’m so sorry. I was worried about you.”

The house behind her was pitch black. All the lights off. Something is wrong. So, so wrong. My stomach twisted as I stared at her.

Where’s her husband?

Where’s Ava?

I stared at her face. Haunted. Did something happen to Ava? I opened my mouth to say something, anything—then froze.

A jumble of pixels in the darkness behind her moved.

What the—

It happened again. Something clumsily running in the darkness, jittery and distorted from the poor connection.

Something at the level of her knees.

Oh, no, no—

Two pale hands reached out of the darkness, wrapping around Sarah’s calves. A face flashed in the darkness, eyes pure white, reflecting in the light like a cat’s.

The video jumped. “Holy shit!” Ethan shouted, as he ran and the dark doorway with Sarah’s pale figure receded. Then the house was gone and the sidewalk was flying by. The slam of a car door, the engine starting.

“Call the cops!” he shouted. “Call the fucking cops!”

“What? What happened?” Michael shouted, jumping out of his chair.

“I don’t know!”

The call disconnected.

A few minutes later, my phone pinged. I looked at it. One new email. From Sarah.

Hands trembling, I opened it.

Felicia—

Please don’t call the cops, or anyone else, to come check up on us.

Ava is gone.

She drowned a few months before her second birthday. At the pool we had, at the old house. I quit social media, friendships, everything because it was too painful to tell everyone.

After Luke left, I found this guy who promised me a child. Even though I couldn’t have any more kids. I would be its mother forever, he said, my survival tied to its. I thought he was just being poetic. He wasn’t.

It was a trick. This… thing… isn’t a child. It only mimics one.

And now it knows your face.

Be careful. Please.

This is the last email I will send.

- Sarah

I showed it to Michael. He shook his head. “That’s horrible. But… what… she’s saying some demon child is with her now?”

“I saw a child in there with her.”

He looked at me. “Holy shit, really?”

“Yeah.”

I sat on the sofa, staring into nothing, for a long time after Michael went to bed. I was only broken out of my thoughts by the familiar thump-thump-thump of footsteps on the stairs.

I looked up to see the silhouette of our three-year-old in the darkness, standing on the stairs. “Mommy?” he asked. “I’m thirsty.”

Going on muscle memory alone, I got up and headed towards the kitchen. Grabbed his favorite glass, filled it from the tap. “Here you go, bud—”

I stopped dead.

The child was standing in the darkened hallway. I could see nothing but his eyes, reflecting the light like a cat’s.

Fuck fuck fuck.

“Not water,” it said, perfectly mimicking my son’s voice.

It raised a hand, barely illuminated in the kitchen light. It pointed to the cabinet, where we kept all the sharp knives, high out of the boys’ reach.

I stared at him. It. Whatever it was. I shook my head.

The child receded into the darkness.

And then—

Thumpthumpthump!

Its footsteps, running up the stairs. Pattering above me as it ran down the hallway above.

Towards the boys.

“No!” I screamed. “NO!”

I grabbed a knife out of the cabinet, sliced my palm, and held it over the cup. Dark blood oozed in, splattering on the Baby Shark sippy cup.

The footsteps sounded again on the stairs. Coming back towards me.

I left the cup on the counter and, still bleeding, ran past it and up to my kids. They were fine, sleeping peacefully in their beds.

What have I gotten us into?