Clack-Clack

Richard and Martha Stone believed they had it made: a beautiful house in the suburbs, a white picket fence, and two beautiful children they absolutely adored – Howie and Lucy. What they never planned on, however, was adding a third to their brood. Nor did they plan on how, exactly, their third child would come to be a part of their family.

The night it happened was very strange indeed. Richard and Martha had just put the kids to bed, and were settling in themselves. Rain sheeted across their bedroom window, while lightning flashes sporadically lit up the yard outside. The entire house swayed back and forth around them, buffeted by the raging, hurricane-force winds blowing through the neighborhood. Every few minutes, the lights would flicker and crackle, threatening to snap off at any second.

Neither Richard nor Martha had ever seen a storm like this in all their lives. They worried about the damage the storm would cause, spit-balling back and forth about what would or wouldn’t need repairs in the morning, and whether they should move the kids into the basement until the worst of it was over. While they were still debating the issue, another noise suddenly broke through the tumultuous thunder rumbling over the house.

A baby cry.

Both husband and wife ignored the noise at first, thinking it was merely the wind kicking up another shrill, howling gale, or perhaps the neighbor’s little dog throwing a fit. When the noise persisted – and grew louder – Richard threw on his robe and followed it to their front door. The moment he opened it, there at his feet was the source of all that racket: a white wicker basket, with a ruddy-faced baby boy nestled deep under the blankets inside.

Martha immediately insisted they bring the baby in, if only to stop his cries and shelter him from the storm. The moment she took the baby in her arms, his crying ceased… and the power went out for good. It was supposed to be just for one night, but there was something about that baby’s big green eyes that seemed to put a spell on her. She was in love from the first second she saw him, and Richard soon fell under the baby’s spell, too. After checking with the police to make sure that the baby had no legal guardians searching for him, the Stones adopted the foundling. His new birth certificate read “Richard Stone, Jr.,” but it wasn’t long before Junior earned himself a nickname.

Their family doctor estimated Junior to be roughly ten months old when he was adopted by the Stones; not quite talking yet, but able to stand and just starting to take a few stumbling steps. Within a few weeks of living with his new family, however, Junior’s clumsy waddling walk changed drastically. Unlike his older brother and sister who eventually learned to walk comfortably upright, Junior chose to walk bent over with both his feet and hands on the floor. Junior’s funny way of locomotion quickly became a hit at family gatherings, especially when his new parents realized how much noise he made with his palms and bare feet slapping across the floor. It was his grandma who gave him his new nickname – “Clack-Clack” – and that silly little name just stuck.

While Martha and Richard were over the moon with the newest member of their family, their other two children were not as enthusiastic. Howie and Lucy seemed to resent their new baby brother immensely, especially when Clack-Clack found his way into their bedrooms and made a mess of their belongings. A new fight broke out almost on a daily basis, usually involving something that Junior accidentally broke, tore, scribbled on, or flushed. Martha put out as many fires as she could, reminding her children that Clack-Clack was still just a baby who didn’t know any better.

On more than one occasion, though, Howie and Lucy railed against their mother’s claims. They insisted that Clack-Clack was not just an ordinary baby. Through tears and angry screams, they begged their mother to get the infant out of the house, and put him back where they found him as soon as possible. These fights concerned Martha and Richard very deeply, but they turned a deaf ear to their biological son and daughter’s fits. It was normal, they thought, for children to have a hard time adjusting to a new baby in the house. In time, they hoped that Howie and Lucy would adapt, and all would be fine.

As more time went on, though, things were definitely not getting better. In fact, they were getting worse. Much, much worse.

It started right before Clack-Clack turned a year old. Martha noticed dirty little smudges on the walls that looked suspiciously like little fingerprints. No matter how many times she scrubbed her walls clean, new smudges appeared in the old ones' places every day. She accused her older two children right away, reminding them sternly to wash their hands before touching the walls. Howie and Lucy claimed they had nothing to do with those smudges, however, blaming them once again on Clack-Clack. This was absurd to Martha, as there was no possible way their baby brother could have made those marks; they were much too high up on the walls, well out of her one-year-old’s reach.

Things just got more bizarre after that, starting with the electricity in the house. Lights turned themselves on and off at random, as did nearly every appliance the family owned. Again, Richard and Martha thought it was the kids, acting out against their baby brother's presence, and again Howie and Lucy denied every accusation. It only really got bad during family time in the evenings, when the television would turn off or change channels in the middle of a show. It got to be such a problem that Richard took the batteries out of the remote and hid them in another room, thinking that his son and daughter were playing games out of spite.

If the electrical problems weren't bad enough, the Stones also suddenly had a slew of plumbing issues that landed in their laps without warning. Every faucet in the house managed to get left on, especially in the middle of the night. On many occasions, Richard or Martha would wake up in the morning to find the bathtub and bathroom sinks overflowing, flooding the whole room with over an inch of water. Once the sinks and/or tub were full, they refused to drain properly, too. The Stones had a plumber out to the house almost every week, running a snake through the pipes and inspecting the main waterline that ran from the street to the house. Even after hours of searching, however, the baffled plumbers could find no blockages along the line to explain the Stones' problem.

Not long after the plumbing issues came more troubling occurrences. Both Richard and Martha were awakened several times in the wee hours of the morning to what sounded like giggling down the hall. They’d grumble at their children to stop monkeying around and go to bed, but the giggling only got louder. When those giggles were eventually accompanied by soft, persistent slapping noises, and seemed to be growing closer to their bedroom, one of the parents would finally get up to investigate. Nothing was visibly out of the norm, though; both Howie and Lucy were still fast asleep in their beds, and Clack-Clack would be sitting up awake in his crib. Gnawing on the bars with that sweet little grin of his.

Between the mysterious plumbing and electrical issues, the eerie nighttime noises, and the constant fights with their children, Richard and Martha were at their wits' end. After yet another sleepless night, both parents had a long discussion about these strange instances early one morning over coffee. There had to be some explanation for it all. Their house was old, and old houses tended to have bad wiring and pipes. As for the smudges, perhaps Howie and Lucy weren’t as careful as they thought, leaving them without even noticing what they'd done. Maybe it was the new wallpaper, which stained a lot more easily than anticipated. And the strange nocturnal noises could just be the family dog, padding around the house at night out of boredom.

To try and get to the bottom of this, Martha and Richard did everything they could to nip these strange occurrences in the bud. They kept bottles of hand sanitizer and wet wipes in every room. They locked up the dog in the back yard every night before going to bed. They bought new wallpaper that was advertised to be “E-Z clean” and stainproof. They dug into their savings and had every wire and pipe in the house replaced, whether it seemed to need replacing or not.

All of these changes both small and large made little difference, though. The stains still appeared, even on the new wallpaper. Not only that, but they were darker and more stubborn, refusing to be removed fully even after hours of scrubbing. The lights continued to flicker without fail - almost like clockwork - and the sinks, shower, and tub still backed up on a regular basis. Most unsettlingly of all, those eerie giggles and “clack-clack” noises still echoed around the house in the middle of the night.

As a last-ditch, hail Mary maneuver, Richard installed a wireless security camera in the hallway, near the upstairs bathroom. He theorized that if they could see what was going on at night and catch it on film, then they would know exactly what they were dealing with. When they heard the giggling and the soft “clack-clack” echoing down the hall later that night, both parents just laid awake in bed and listened. Just like every night, the noises steadily grew louder, creeping closer to their bedroom with every minute. Before long, those noises were right outside their door.

Martha and Richard were terrified, staring at each other in panicked silence. Their fingers knit together under the blankets as the slapping sounds rattled against the bedroom door, so loud and rapid that they shook the entire room. The giggles that accompanied them changed just as quickly to frustrated, shrieking cries, leaving the parents shaking in their sheets. Richard kicked off the blankets a few moments later, unable to bear the noise any longer. By the time he got to his feet and grabbed a golf club from his side of the closet, though, the noises suddenly stopped. Both he and Martha released the breaths they were holding, sharing in the assumption that it was all over.

But then, their bedroom door slowly creaked open.

Martha stared at Richard, frozen like a statue under the blankets, and he answered her frightened gaze in kind where he stood. Both slowly turned their heads toward the door hanging open on its hinges; terrified, but too curious to look away. Surely it was Howie or Lucy, looking to be comforted from a bad dream. To their astonishment, however, there was nobody on the other side of the threshold. There was nothing there at all, except the camera, in pieces.

Martha slid over to Richard's side of the bed and grabbed onto his pajama sleeve for courage. In a frightened whisper, she theorized that it could have been a draft that pushed the door open. It wasn't locked, and she wasn't entirely sure that she'd shut it all the way to begin with. Richard mused that she could be right, but his comment died in his throat before it was fully voiced. Drowned out by a quiet, "clack-clack" across the ceiling.

Swallowing his fear, Richard was the first to raise his eyes toward the noise. For a moment he just stood there, staring up at the ceiling with his jaw open in shock. A horrified scream lay stuck in his throat, as he refused to believe what he was seeing. Frankly, he wasn't sure his sleep-deprived, terror-stricken brain wasn't playing tricks on him. Martha cast her gaze upwards as well a few seconds later, gasping in fright as she flattened her back to the headboard.

Something was crawling across the ceiling over the bed.

Whatever it was, it was only there for a few seconds. Way too big to be an insect or a rodent, and moving far too fast for either of them to get a good look at. One instant it was scuttling in a circle over the bed, and the next it darted into the corner. Richard hurried to snap on the bedside table lamp, trying to see where the horrible thing went. By the time that warm, yellow light filled the room, it was already long gone. Martha and Richard had no interest at the moment in finding out what the thing was; all they cared about was grabbing up their children and fleeing the house as quickly as they could. And that's exactly what they did.

That same hour, the Stones checked into a motel at the edge of town with their sleepy little brood. Neither parent slept a wink that night, and they were too frightened to return to the house the following day. When they finally gathered up the courage to come home, neither parent could believe the state of the house. All throughout the upstairs hall, the walls and ceiling were covered end to end with sooty smudges. Smudges in the clear shape of tiny hand and footprints.

The Stones had no idea what to think, so they called up their local priest for guidance. Father Brian listened to their worries with a compassionate ear, assuring them that there was nothing to be concerned about. He easily explained away the marks, citing that they might've been made by a raccoon climbing down from the attic. To put their minds at ease, though, he agreed to bless the house all the same.

From the moment Father Brian got to work, Clack-Clack wouldn't stop crying. Martha did all she could to soothe the baby, bouncing and rocking him and peppering his chubby cheeks with kisses. Nothing she did could stop his cries, however, and they only got louder when Father Brian started sprinkling holy water around the house. Quite by accident, a few drops of holy water landed on the baby's arm... and what happened next, the Stones had absolutely no warning nor explanation for.

Clack-Clack shrieked and hissed the instant the water hit him, his adorable ruddy face screwing up into an angry grimace. Before Martha could do anything to stop him, the infant leapt from her arms right at the priest. She and Richard watched - horrified - as the infant bit, clawed, and tore at the kindly old clergyman's face and neck like a wild animal. It took both of them to pry their son off Father Brian, but the chaos was only beginning.

As soon as he was forceably removed from Father Brian's face, Clack-Clack punched and kicked his way out of his parents' arms. The next thing either Martha or Richard knew, Clack-Clack was crawling up the wall. Their sweet, foundling baby boy snarled and growled like a feral cat, his green eyes positively glowing in their sockets. Before their eyes, he sprouted claws and horns, and his ruddy pink skin paled to a sickly green. With one final snapping snarl, he swung his claws at the priest, then scuttled across the living room ceiling to the front door. In the blink of an eye, Clack-Clack was gone. Vanished without a trace.

Father Brian and the Stones never spoke of what happened that day. Nor did they ever mention Clack-Clack again in mixed company. They told Howie and Lucy that their little brother had been sent away to an institution for special needs children to explain his sudden absence. Not that the younger Stones seemed to even care. Although they never saw Clack-Clack again, Martha and Richard still woke up in the middle of the night from time to time... certain that they could hear faint giggling, accompanied by little feet and hands slapping quietly across the ceiling.