Little Children at Night

The night was a dark one, silent and warm.

‘Mummy?’ she whispered.

Taryn stirred in her bed and let out a small moan. ‘Yeah baby?’ she mumbled, slitting open her eyes to see the outline of her daughter standing in front of her, small and blurry.

‘I had a bad dream.’

‘Do you want to sleep with us?’

The room fell quiet.

Her daughter’s silence surprised her, that question usually met with a forceful entry into the bed that pushed Taryn closer to her husband. She willed herself to open her eyes further. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘I think there’s someone in my room.’

‘I’m sure it was just your dream. Come on, come in here.’

‘But I heard a noise.’

Taryn swallowed dryly against her throat. ‘It was probably your brother. He’s restless on hot nights.’

Her daughter squeaked and moved in next to her.

Taryn felt Daisy’s clammy skin rub against hers and thought it an overreaction to the warm night. She placed a hand on Daisy’s head and wondered if her daughter had the beginnings of a virus. Without thinking, she searched for her husband’s foot with her own, wanting to know whether he had been woken by all this, but when she found only a cool sheet, she remembered he was working that night.

Her hand stroked up and down Daisy’s arm for a few minutes before slowly coming to a stop, the two of them back in sleep and the night quiet once more.

***

Taryn woke with a fright but didn’t know why. How long had she been asleep? The night was the same as when she had left it, its stillness and darkness so clear it was almost confronting. She hated being awake at this time. To see the world like this made her feel like she had walked in on someone bathing, like she was seeing things she wasn’t supposed to see, didn’t want to see.

She had opened her bedroom window before going to bed, and the chain of the curtains now tapped against the glass in a small breeze that wasn’t cool. She had done the same in the children’s room, a good thing as now, somehow, it felt hotter than it had in the late evening. Or perhaps she just felt hotter; her heart was beating too fast and her ears were picking up every small sound.

She breathed deeply, gathering herself, and realised she had rolled over to Carlos’s side. With closed eyes, she moved back. She reached for Daisy as she went, but found only the edge of the bed.

‘Uhh,’ she groaned quietly, sitting up and squinting as she looked for her daughter in the dark, but found the bed was empty.

With little thought, Taryn lumped her legs over the edge, enjoying the cool boards underfoot. She guessed her daughter had, for the first time ever, gone back to her own bed, perhaps too warm next to her.

The children’s room was only a few strides down the hall. Taryn stared through the darkness to see the two beds inside, one at each end of the room, both with small mounds on them that were letting out soft exhales, slightly out of rhythm with each other.

She left her sleeping children and returned to her own room, pausing at her doorway, staring at her bed in the dark.

‘What the…?’

Taryn’s body reacted to the sight before her mind had the chance. She felt a gasp escape her while her spine went rigid, fear invading her entire body in only a few seconds. She kept her eyes on the bed and felt her heart gallop away. She peered forward, squinting tightly, unsure whether the night was playing its usual tricks.

Another small mound was laying on her side of the bed.

She took a slow step forward. Had she been mistaken in the children’s room just now? Had Daisy not been there after all?

Taryn moved next to her own bed and looked down. Daisy was sleeping peacefully without a stir. She thought of waking her daughter, asking where she had just been. Perhaps she really didn’t see or hear her in the children’s room? Perhaps her daughter had been in the bathroom and somehow managed to run around her without her noticing? No, the likelihood that her daughter went to the bathroom in the middle of the night without her was next to none.

Taryn reached for her daughter’s forehead, happy to feel her temperature had regulated. What had gone on just now? She couldn’t begin to wonder. Taryn walked back to the children’s room. The moonlight was stronger this time and Junior was clearly there in his bed, his sheets tossed off and both feet dangling at the side. She looked to Daisy’s bed. It was empty. Of course it was. She had just felt her daughter’s head with her own hands; she knew Daisy wasn’t in there.

Taryn went back and climbed into her own bed, embracing Daisy for just a few seconds before rolling to the middle. She felt hotter than she had all night.

***

When Taryn woke next, it was still dark, and she knew that only a short time had passed. She lifted her head to see the clock on Carlos’s side lit with bright green numbers: 02:52am. More than that, she saw that Daisy had somehow moved to Carlos’s side. Wait. No, not Daisy. Not Daisy. This mound was larger than Daisy. Taryn’s heart fluttered as she snapped her eyes over to her side of the bed and saw Daisy was still over there, resting soundly. She looked back. Junior?

She sat up and examined. Indeed, it was Junior, although she swore the dim of night was making him look smaller—skinnier—than he was. And he wasn’t usually one for leaving his own bed at night.

Taryn breathed out and felt her bladder pang, realising that must be why she woke in the first place.

She was groggy and slow-footed as she moved along the hallway to the bathroom at the other end, eventually finding the toilet. She sat there in the dark, slumped with half-closed eyes, listening as her stream hit the bowl and thought of how much she wished this night would be over.

Just as she was wiping, her ears pricked at a sound. Mummy? Was that what she had just heard? Faint and squeaky, with the echo of someone in another room.

‘Daisy?’ she said softly. ‘Honey, is that you?’

She pulled up her underwear, tugged down her nighty, and crept out into the hall.

Neither Daisy nor Junior stood outside. ‘Daisy?’ Taryn said again, feeling as though she was in the presence of someone. Then a noise came from back down the hall. The children’s room.

Taryn's breath was so loud and heavy as she walked that it seemed to be coming from someone else, someone in her ear blowing pressure right into her veins. She got to the children’s room and her face distorted in terror. The door was closed.

Oh God, oh fuck. She wanted to be sick.

Their door was never closed. Not at night, not ever. And it certainly wasn’t closed when she had walked past on her way to the bathroom just now.

She ran to her bedroom and turned on the light. Relief came quickly; her bed still held her children. She left the light on and moved quickly back to their bedroom. The wind could have slammed the door closed, but surely she would have heard that? She reached out for the doorknob, her heart in her mouth.

Her daughter's words from earlier gained the weight of stone: I think there’s someone in my room.

She should have gotten a weapon first but, shit, she was already opening the door. In that split-second she decided that quick movements were her only chance and lunged straight for the lightswitch on the wall.

Everything lit up before her: the play mat at the floor’s centre with the children’s blocks and cars and dolls, their colouring desk below the window, the mirrored wardrobe next to the small chest-of-drawers. And the two beds at either end of the room, each with a sleeping child in them.

Each with a sleeping child in them.

Each with her sleeping children in them.

She wanted to scream. Instead, she felt her stomach clench so strongly she feared it might rip, and her muscles seemed to wither like they were pieces of meat cooking in a pan, shrinking and burning and melting to her bones. She ran back to her bedroom, moving quickly but not her quickest, dread holding her back.

Her bedroom light was still on, giving her a clear view of both children now sitting next to each other on the edge of the bed, wiping sleep from their eyes.

‘Mummy?’ Daisy said.

‘What are you doing?’ Junior mumbled.

‘What…?’ Taryn started, her words raspy. ‘Have…have you been here this whole time?’

Both children nodded small nods, their heads cowering in the light.

‘Then how…’ She turned back down the hall, seeing the light from the children’s room shining out their door. A voice was screaming deep within her.

‘Can we turn the light off?’ Junior said, rubbing his hands over his eyes.

Taryn was slow to respond. ‘Yes,’ she said eventually, turning back around and flicking off the light. ‘But I’m going to put the bedside lamp on until we all go back to sleep.’ In the dark Taryn moved to her bedside and flicked on the shaded bulb. The children turned their faces away from the light and crawled back to their respective sides.

Taryn inspected both of them, noticing Daisy’s skin and hairline was moistened with sweat once more, and she could’ve sworn Junior still looked slightly thinner than normal, although he was growing so much these days that that may in fact have been true.

‘Try to go back to sleep. I’ll be back in a minute.’

The children said nothing, already halfway back to dreamland. Taryn walked out into the hall. The only clear, stupid thought she could receive was that she needed to turn off the children’s bedroom light before going back to bed.

‘Mummy?’

Taryn stopped in her tracks, one step off landing in front of the children’s bedroom. The words were clearly spoken this time and came from in front of her, right at the end of the hallway near the bathroom. She looked up and in the shadows saw Daisy’s silhouette standing in the bathroom’s doorframe.

Taryn let out an audible sigh, a sigh that she often heard herself let out, although usually it was in response to finding crayons in freshly laundered pockets or spoons shoved between lounge cushions. It seemed so out of place here and now.

‘Daisy?’

Without thinking, Taryn ran back to her bedroom; she found Daisy and Junior still asleep. She turned back to face the hall, and in the same shot saw her daughter’s silhouette still standing in the dark by the bathroom.

‘Mummy?’ she heard the voice say again, her pitch ever-so-slightly higher than Daisy’s normally was. Anyone else may have missed it, but Taryn knew that this thing in the hall was not her daughter.

‘What?’ Taryn hissed. She felt like saying, What the fuck do you want?, but it was a child, or at least looked like one, and somehow she couldn’t push it. ‘Who are you?’

‘It’s me, Mummy.’ The voice paused. ‘Don’t you know me?’

Taryn turned back into her bedroom and looked at her sleeping children.

‘No,’ she whispered back down the hall. ‘I don’t. Why don’t you come over here?’ She regretted her words instantly.

‘Mum?’ a new voice said. This one belonged to her son, only it had come from the children’s room. The figure revealed itself, stepping into the hallway, exposed by the light that was coming from inside the room. It was Junior.

Taryn turned back around and looked at her children in her bed one final time. Yes, the children were still asleep. They were right in front of her, dreaming well. She could go up and hug them or wake them up if she wanted. They were right there. So what the fuck is all this?

Taryn’s phone was out in the kitchen, charging. She needed to call Carlos, or perhaps her own mother. She needed to hear a voice of reason. She needed to snap out of whatever this was.

Suddenly the Daisy at the end of the hall came running up and threw herself at Taryn. ‘Mummy!’ she yelled, wrapping her body around Taryn’s left leg, hugging it just how Daisy did when she was excited or frightened. Taryn grimaced at the sensation; the child’s grip was tense and cold and far too strong. It was un-childlike. Almost un-humanlike.

Taryn needed to get to her phone. Then she could call for help. For witnesses.

She closed the door to her bedroom behind her, leaving her children asleep. ‘Come on,’ she managed to say in her most natural whisper. ‘Why don’t I get a snack for the three of us?’

‘Yay!’ they both cheered, but there was something off-putting in their voices; it was as if they were working from a robotic script of what a child might say.

She walked them out the hall and into the kitchen, telling them to sit at the table. She wanted to lunge straight for her phone but felt she shouldn’t make sudden movements.

‘How about fruit toast?’ she asked, opening the pantry door.

‘Mummy! Mummy!’ voices cried from inside the pantry.

Taryn screamed and slammed the door closed.

‘What’s wrong, Mum?’ the Junior sitting at the table asked, his voice just slightly out of keeping with Taryn’s real son’s intonations.

Taryn opened the door again. Three more Daisys were inside, all smiling and waiting patiently for her.

They went running out of the pantry, and as Taryn stood there, staring at five replicas in all, she listened as more distant voices startled to rattle throughout the house.

Holy shit!

Suddenly dozens of Daisys and Juniors began bursting from everywhere, crawling out of everything like cockroaches in a rotting wound. Doors, cupboards, roof vents where they had removed the covers; they were coming from everywhere, and they were all looking at her, all wanting her.

‘Mummy!’ they cried. ‘Mum? Mum! Mummy? Mummy! Mummy? Mummy! MUMMY! MUMMY! MUMMY! MUMMY. MUMMY. MUMMY MUMMY MUMMY MUMMY MUMMY MUMMY.’

Like hypnotised clones, they were chanting at her. Needing her. Ordering her. They all looked just enough like her real children that she had to look twice, three times, to see that their features were off balance and that their movements and noises weren’t quite right.

Another pair came out from the hallway and caught her eye, these two looking the most like her real children, but still were not them. Still slightly off. Her daughter’s skin was too grey and her nose too slim, and her son’s limbs were too long and slender and spider-like. She saw the moonlight dancing off Daisy’s sweaty skin and that’s when she realised these two were the ones she had left sleeping in her bed earlier, only they were more distorted now. She thought back to cuddling with Daisy earlier in the night, and to watching Junior sleep with his legs hanging off his bed. Her skin prickled as disgust overcame her. When had her children stopped being real?

Jesus fucking Christ…where are my children now?

She opened her mouth and screamed, long and loud.

She looked out at all the children in front of her, closely, one at a time. They seemed to be dropping any shred of their humanity by the second, and the harder she looked, the less like her own flesh and blood they became. Foreheads grew, noses lengthened, chins sharpened, and fingers curled. Their expressions were that of foreign animal creatures, creatures that were looking at her, staring at her horrified face. As she screamed on, she saw them turn irritated, and then mad.

Finally, the room fell silent, and in a voice barely above a whisper, Taryn said, ‘You’re not my children. None of you are.’

At once all of them dropped any last shred of humanness from their little faces, their features becoming alien and hardened, their anger now shining through and, like a well-rehearsed choir, they said loudly as one, ‘COME BACK TO BED, MUMMY.’