She Forgot How to Scream

At midnight, the bell tolled.

Not from a church. Not from any clock. The sound came from inside the house—low and wet, like bones grinding through water. It reverberated through the walls and into her teeth. The windows trembled. The floor moaned.

And then came the song.

A lullaby. Soft. Sweet. Wrong.

It didn’t come from lips. It came from the walls.

The melody leaked through the plaster like syrup, dripping into her ears, humming from the radiator, the closet hinges, the cracks beneath the floorboards. It was a song for someone who wasn’t her—but it found her anyway.

Her breath hitched.

She tried to move, but her muscles were slack. Her body didn’t respond. It felt like sleep paralysis, but colder, deeper. As though something wasn’t just sitting on her chest—but climbing inside it.

Then came the crying.

From beneath the bed.

A child’s sob. Trembling. Raw.

But she lived alone.

No children.

No visitors.

No one had spoken her name in so long she wasn’t sure she remembered it.

She tried to lift her head, but her skull felt stapled to the pillow. Her eyes rolled toward the edge of the bed. A pale, wet hand emerged, dragging fingernails across the wood floor. The crying turned hoarse, like it had splinters in its throat.

The ceiling sagged.

Darkness dripped down from it—a stain made of movement, twisting shadows that clung together, oozing into the shape of something that used to resemble a man.

It had no face. No eyes. Just smooth, pulsing skin.

It hummed.

It slipped down from the ceiling, its limbs bending backward, its fingers dragging behind it like puppet strings tangled in meat. The lullaby came louder now, not from one place, but from inside her own skull, as if her brain were an old music box wound open.

It crawled over her.

The bed dipped under its weight, sagging like wet earth around a coffin. Its breath fogged the air with a stench of mildewed blankets, embalming fluid, and burnt milk. Something old. Something wrong.

She opened her mouth to scream.

Nothing came.

The creature’s fingers—long, skinless things laced with splinters and wire—rested against her chest. Then they pushed in.

Not to pierce.

To reach.

She didn’t feel pain. Not at first.

She felt loss.

The kind of loss that hollowed the soul.

It rummaged inside her like it was fishing through a drawer. And as it pulled, she felt things unravel:

Her mother’s lullabies—gone.

Her father's whistle in the garage—gone.

The warmth of her first kiss. Her dog’s name. Her favorite color. The shape of her own reflection.

Gone. Gone. Gone.

Her tears came in silence. She didn’t know why she was crying anymore.

Her name was a thread, slipping from her mind’s grasp like it had never belonged there.

And still the lullaby played.

But now it was coming from her own mouth.

She sang it—soft and low—as the thing leaned in.

It had no face.

Yet it smiled.

A gaping grin split across its head, jagged like broken glass and lined with tiny, twitching fingers instead of teeth.

And she understood.

The lullaby wasn’t ending.

It was her turn to sing it.

She sat up in bed.

But the room had changed.

The wallpaper peeled like burned flesh. The mirror showed a figure that looked like her, but the eyes were empty, the mouth still moving, still humming that damned song. Dust coated every surface like skin sloughed off a body too long buried.

A new sobbing came.

From under the bed.

Small. Terrified.

She moved toward it without command.

No longer the victim.

Now the instrument.

The lullaby lived in her blood. Her mouth moved on its own, voicing things no human should ever say. Each syllable carried weight—words that dug graves inside the mind. Her thoughts weren’t hers anymore. Only the song remained.

She bent to the floor.

A child stared up at her from beneath the bed—eyes wide, pleading, mouth trembling with a name.

A name she had once known.

A name that no longer existed.

She reached out with brittle fingers that were already cracking from the inside, like porcelain left too long in the cold.

And the cycle began again.

They say houses remember things.

This one remembers names that were never written.

Faces that no longer exist.

And lullabies sung by mouths that forgot they were human.

If you ever hear it—soft, sweet, and terribly wrong—do not listen.

Don’t hum it.

Don’t cry.

Don’t answer.

Because she forgot how to scream.

And soon, so will you.