The Gurgling in the Humidifier

Last year I became a godmother, or faerie godmother, as is my self-appointed title. Last month I was babysitting the godson, or ‘the Child’ as we like to say in an ominous tone. ‘Oh it’s the Child, bring me the child’ and so on. We also call him ‘Boyo’ ’cause it’s funny. He’s a placid baby, no lengthy screaming carry on thank goodness. We don’t have any children by choice and I think some of these odd occurrences have something to do with my godson being present at the time.

This happened on a Saturday night about two months ago. My man had gone out with the Child’s parents for the evening leaving me holding the baby. Not really so, I’ve been little Miss Antisocial lately working on music, it’s the only way to get it done. The Child’s parents have got him into a bit of a sleeping routine, and we’re under strict instruction to keep it that way. The kid comes with equipment, among which is a Peppa Pig DVD. As a faerie godmother, and rational human being, I find Peppa Pig ‘sucking’ in the sense that it’s mind-numbing. So, I put it on for the Child, who was propped up in his bouncy chair, and I retreated to the kitchen with my laptop, hoping to layer some synth lines I’d been wrestling with.

But the DVD wouldn’t play. It kept freezing on a frame of Peppa’s face, her eyes slightly off, her snout distorted. The Child didn’t seem to notice; he just stared at the screen, his gurgles turning into a low, rhythmic hum that matched the hum of the humidifier in the corner. I shrugged, paused the DVD, and turned on some ambient noise from my phone for the Child. He seemed content, so I went back to my music.

Around 9 PM, the Child started getting fussy. I picked him up, rocked him, but he kept squirming, his little fingers pointing at the ceiling. I looked up. There was a dark water stain on the plaster, spreading like a map of a forgotten island. I didn’t remember seeing it before. I put him down in his crib, but he wouldn’t settle. His eyes were wide, fixed on that stain, and he let out a series of gurgles that sounded less like baby talk and more like… a question.

I turned on the ceiling light. The stain was gone. The light flickered, and I chalked it up to old wiring. I gave the Child a bottle, and he finally drifted off. I placed him in the crib, turned on the baby monitor, and went to the living room to tidy up. The Peppa Pig DVD was still paused on that distorted face. I ejected it and noticed the disc was warped, as if melted and reformed. The label was unreadable, but the data side shimmered with an oily iridescence.

I pocketed the disc and went to the kitchen for a glass of water. The humidifier in the corner was still going, its mist curling in a way that seemed to form shapes—a hand, a face, something else. I turned it off, and the silence that followed was thick, punctuated only by the ticking of the clock. Then I heard a gurgling from the baby monitor, not the normal white noise, but a deep, wet sound, like water running through a pipe. I checked the monitor’s screen. The image was static, but the audio was clear: the slow, deliberate gurgle of a throat being cleared.

I ran to the bedroom. The Child was still asleep, his chest rising and falling peacefully, but the humidifier in his room was on, though I’d turned it off in the kitchen. The water tank was empty, yet steam poured out, thicker than before, forming a pillar that twisted toward the ceiling. In the steam, I saw a figure—tall, thin, with limbs too long and a face that was smooth, featureless except for a gaping, gurgling mouth. It was stooped over the crib, its mouth moving as if trying to speak, and the gurgles from the monitor were coming from it.

I screamed, but no sound came out. I grabbed the Child, cradling him, and backed away. The steam figure dissipated, but the humidifier remained, its motor whirring, the water tank now refilled with a dark, oily liquid that smelled of rust and old pennies. I ran out of the house, Child in arms, and called my man in a panic. When he and the parents returned, the house was pristine. The DVD was normal. The humidifier was off. The parents laughed it off as my playing too much music. But the Child kept looking at the corner of the room, where the humidifier stood, and gurgled—not a happy sound, but a mimicry of that deep, wet voice.

I haven’t babysat since. But sometimes, in my own apartment, when the air gets dry and I turn on my humidifier, I hear a gurgling from the vent, and the steam forms a shape that watches me. The Child’s parents recently told me that the humidifier’s filter needed replacing, but beneath it, they found a small, desiccated frog, its mouth open as if mid-gurgle. They threw it away, but I swear, the next time I went over, the new filter already had a dark stain. And the Child, when he saw me, let out a gurgle that was too low, too deliberate, as if it weren’t him at all, but the thing that had nestled inside the machine, waiting for me to come back.