The Mimic in the Maternity Ward

The first thing they tell you in the hospital is about the "witching hour." That time between 2 and 4 AM when a newborn’s cry seems to echo in a void of exhaustion. They don’t tell you about the other sounds.

Elara was a perfect baby. She slept in four-hour stretches, fed well, and had her father’s eyes. For the first two weeks, we thought we’d won the baby lottery. Then, the noises started.

It began with the monitor. The cheap audio baby monitor we’d bought would sometimes pick up a faint, wet gurgling. We’d rush into the nursery to find Elara sleeping peacefully, her breathing soft and even. We blamed a faulty device.

Then, my wife, Sarah, heard it without the monitor. She was rocking Elara back to sleep at 3 AM when she heard a soft, lisping whisper from the crib.

“Mmmama.”

Her heart soared. Our daughter’s first word! She leaned in, tears in her eyes. “That’s right, sweetheart. Mama.”

The thing in the crib, shrouded in shadow, opened its eyes. They were Elara’s eyes. But the voice that came out was a distorted, wet parody.

“Not… your… mama,” it lisped.

Sarah screamed. I came running. By the time I got there, Elara was wailing, a normal, terrified infant cry. Sarah was hysterical, pointing at the crib. “It talked! It said it wasn’t me!”

I held her, convinced it was a hallucination born of severe sleep deprivation. We chalked it up to a nightmare.

But I started hearing things too. I’d be warming a bottle in the kitchen and hear the pitter-patter of tiny hands and knees crawling swiftly across the floorboards in the living room. I’d look, and nothing would be there. Elara couldn’t crawl yet.

The final straw was the night I saw it. I woke up, my fatherly instincts screaming. The nursery was silent. Too silent. I crept to the door and peered in.

The moonlight streamed through the window, illuminating the crib. Elara was on her back, asleep. And crouched on the railing of the crib, perched like a grotesque bird, was a small, pale creature. It had the general shape of a baby, but its limbs were too long and spindly. Its head was too large, and it was staring down at my daughter, its head cocked at a sharp, unnatural angle.

It was mimicking her. Learning her.

As I watched, frozen in terror, it slowly turned its head towards me. It had no nose, just two slits. And its mouth was a wide, toothless grin that stretched far too wide.

It didn’t make a sound. It just stared, that horrible, knowing smile fixed on its face.

I slammed the door shut and braced it with a chair. Sarah called the pediatrician first thing in the morning. The doctor was kind but dismissive. "New parents often experience auditory and visual hallucinations. It's your brain's way of processing stress and lack of sleep."

We weren't hallucinating.

We moved Elara’s crib into our room. The first night, we slept in shifts. During my watch, I heard a soft scratching at our bedroom door. Then, a tiny, familiar voice.

“Dada… let… me… in.”

It was Elara’s voice. Perfectly replicated.

I looked at the bassinet. Elara was fast asleep, her chest rising and falling rhythmically.

The thing on the other side of the door began to cry. It was her hungry cry, the one that started as a soft whimper and escalated into a frantic wail. It was perfect.

“It’s trying to trick us,” Sarah whispered, her face pale in the darkness.

The crying stopped. A new sound replaced it. A soft, rhythmic thump… thump… thump. The sound of a tiny forehead being gently tapped against the wooden door.

We don’t sleep anymore. We live in a state of constant, heart-pounding vigilance. The pediatrician thinks we have shared psychosis. Our families are concerned. They don’t understand that the horror isn’t in our minds.

It’s in the house with us. It learns every day. It’s getting better at mimicking the sounds of our daughter. Her laugh. Her coos.

Last night, it didn’t scratch or cry. It just stood outside our door in the silence. And then, we heard the soft, unmistakable sound of the doorknob beginning to turn.