The Hollow Cradle

The first time it happened, I thought I was dreaming. I was in that heavy, half-awake state where the world is soft at the edges, and I could hear a baby crying. Not my baby—I don’t have any—but a wailing, desperate cry that seemed to come from the walls of our new house. I blinked awake, and the sound stopped. I told myself it was the wind or the pipes in this old, creaking building we’d just rented in the highlands of Peru, far from the damp streets of Edinburgh where I’d spent my whole life.

I’ve always been sensitive to the other side. As a child, I saw a woman in a grey dress at the foot of my bed, and I knew things about people that I shouldn’t have known. But for the past five years, as my grandmother’s illness consumed her, the voices and shapes had gone quiet, leaving me with a blessed, empty silence. Then we moved here, to this valley that seemed to swallow sound, and the silence began to shift.

It started with small things: a faint tapping on the window at 3 a.m., the smell of boiled cabbage when there was nothing cooking, a cold spot in the hallway that made my skin prickle. My husband, Marco, dismissed it as altitude sickness or the ancient plumbing. But I knew better. The spirits had found me again.

One night, I woke to find myself standing in the corner of the kitchen, my forehead pressed against the cracked plaster. I had no memory of getting up. In my hand, I clutched a rusty kitchen knife—the one we used to cut bread. I stared at it, horrified, and dropped it as if it were red hot. My chest ached, a deep, bone-chilling ache that made me gasp. I stumbled back to bed, and by morning, the pain was gone, but the memory remained.

A week later, I was working on my laptop in the living room when I heard my mother’s voice, clear as day, calling my name from the bedroom. I hadn’t spoken to her in months; she was back in Scotland, and the phone lines here were unreliable. But the voice was insistent, and I found myself walking toward the bedroom, my legs moving of their own accord. The room was empty, the curtains billowing slightly though the window was shut. I stood there, breathing shallowly, and then I felt a pressure on my chest, as if something were sitting on me, forcing me to the floor. I struggled, but I couldn’t move. I could only see the ceiling, and the shape of a woman’s face emerging from the plaster, her mouth open in a silent scream.

When I came to, I was lying on the cold tile, and Marco was shaking me. He said I had been talking in my sleep, repeating ‘My chest hurts, it hurts,’ over and over. He said my face had looked strange, not mine, with a smile that made his blood run cold. I looked at my chest, expecting a bruise or a wound, but there was nothing. Just the memory of that crushing weight.

The next morning, I went to the village market, hoping to find some local herbs or charms to ward off whatever was haunting me. An old woman with leather skin and eyes like black beads stopped me, grabbing my arm with surprising strength. She spoke in Quechua, and Marco translated: ‘The house you live in, it stands on an old burial ground. They were not buried properly. They are angry.’ She pressed a small cloth pouch into my hand, filled with dried herbs and animal bones. ‘Burn this at midnight,’ she said. ‘It will call them to the surface, and you can speak with them. But be careful—they will speak through you.’

I did what she said, against my better judgment. At midnight, I lit the herbs in a clay bowl, and the smoke curled upward, thick and bitter. I felt a chill, and then a pressure behind my eyes, as if someone were trying to peer out. My mouth opened, and words came out that I didn’t recognize, words in a language I had never heard. Marco was filming me with his phone, his face pale. He showed me the video the next morning. In it, I am sitting cross-legged, my eyes rolled back, and my voice is deep, masculine, and furious. I say, over and over, ‘She lies in the cradle of my bones. She will rot there.’ Then I smile—a wide, unnatural smile that stretches my face too far—and laugh.

I have not slept since. Every time I close my eyes, I see that face in the plaster, and I feel that weight on my chest. Last night, I woke to find myself standing over Marco’s sleeping form, the bread knife in my hand again. I gasped and dropped it, and he woke with a start. I was weeping. He held me, but I could feel the distance between us. He doesn’t trust me anymore. He looks at me like I’m a stranger.

Today, I went to the cemetery behind the old church, where the burial ground once extended. There is a small, crumbling mausoleum, half-taken by the jungle, with a name etched into the stone: ‘Isabela Montoya, 1887-1911.’ I don’t know why, but I felt drawn there. I knelt in the damp earth, and I whispered, ‘Isabela, is it you?’ The air went still. I felt a cold hand on my shoulder, and a voice, barely a whisper, said, ‘No. But she is here.’

I fled back to the house, my heart pounding. I told Marco everything, and he said we should leave, go back to Scotland, but I know it’s too late. The thing that has attached itself to me has made a nest in my chest. It feeds on my fear. It uses my voice to speak. And tonight, as I sit here writing this, I can feel it stirring inside me, ready to speak again. I have locked myself in the bathroom, but. . . I can see my reflection in the mirror, and my face is smiling, and it is not me.

I am afraid that when I open my mouth next, it will not be to tell you this. It will be to say something else. Something terrible. And my chest will hurt, it will hurt, and I won’t be able to stop it.