The Monitor’s Plea

The evening had settled over the Jalil household like a damp shroud, the kind of oppressive stillness that makes even the hum of the refrigerator sound like a threat. Maya had flown in from Pune three weeks prior to finalize a software rollout for a textile firm, and her colleague Amira had offered her a place to stay for the last leg of the project. Amira’s husband, Farid, was away on a business trip to Penang, and her sister-in-law, Siti, was looking after their eleven-month-old son, Danial, in the nursery. The apartment, a modest two-bedroom on the sixth floor of a block in Shah Alam, was cluttered with the tools of their work—laptops, cables, printouts—and the faint, sweet scent of a baby’s powder.

It was nearing eleven that night, the deadline for the project report looming like a guillotine. Maya and Amira had finished a heavy dinner of nasi lemak and were hunched over a low coffee table, their screens casting pale rectangles onto their faces. They typed in bursts, punctuated by desultory conversation and the clink of mugs. From the nursery down the hall, the soft, intermittent sound of sobbing reached them—a thin, plaintive wail that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere. Maya paused, her fingers hovering over the keyboard. ‘You hear that?’ she asked. Amira shrugged, not looking up. ‘Probably the neighbor’s baby. It’s been going on all week.’ But Maya wasn’t so sure. The sound didn’t come from the walls; it seemed to emanate from the small baby monitor sitting on the kitchen counter, its red light blinking in the gloom.

They continued working, the sobs threading through their sentences like a barely audible harmony. At some point, Amira stood and stretched, then walked to the kitchen counter, her footsteps echoing in the tiled space. ‘You want a drink? I have some teh tarik or some orange juice,’ she said, leaning her elbows on the counter. Maya looked up, her mind still wrestling with a section on data migration. She began to list her options half-heartedly, her words trailing off as she noticed the baby monitor. Its speaker crackled—not with static, but with a voice, clear and disturbingly adult, though it was supposed to pick up only the nursery’s audio. ‘Please stop it,’ the voice said, flat and devoid of any emotional inflection, as if reading from a script. Both women froze. They stared at the monitor, then at each other. ‘Did you have that on?’ Maya asked, her voice a whisper. Amira shook her head slowly. ‘It’s been off all day. I turned it off after the battery drained this morning.’

A chill slithered down Maya’s spine. She rose and moved closer to the monitor, her footsteps loud in the sudden silence. The screen of the monitor was dark, showing only a faint green standby light. The sobs had stopped. ‘Maybe it’s interference from another unit,’ Amira said, but her voice lacked conviction. She reached out and tapped the monitor’s side. The voice came again, but this time it was a child’s whisper, barely audible: ‘Stop… please…’ Maya felt her blood run cold. Her mind raced with the mundane explanations—a stray transmission, a neighbor’s device—but every rational thought was drowned by an inexplicable dread.

They decided to check on Danial. The nursery door was ajar, and the room was bathed in the soft glow of a nightlight shaped like a crescent moon. Siti was dozing in a rocking chair, her head lolled to one side, a thin line of drool at the corner of her lips. Danial was in his crib, lying on his back, his tiny hands clenched into fists. He was quiet, his eyes open, staring at the ceiling with an unnerving intensity. As they approached, his gaze shifted slowly, met Maya’s, and he smiled—a wide, knowing smile that seemed far too mature for an infant. Maya felt her skin crawl. She wanted to say something, but the words stuck in her throat. Amira, however, walked to the crib, cooed, and picked up Danial, who nuzzled into her neck. ‘He’s fine,’ she said, but Maya noticed that Amira’s hands were trembling.

They returned to the living room, but the mood had shifted. The sobs had started again, now emanating from the monitor with greater clarity. They tried to ignore it, but the sound seemed to grow louder, more insistent, until it was clear that it was coming from the monitor itself, not from the nursery. Maya felt a cold knot in her stomach. She picked up the monitor and examined it. The brand was ‘BabyComfort 3000,’ a standard model. The antenna was intact, the battery fully charged. She turned it off and on, but the sobs continued, unabated. Then the voice spoke again, but this time it was not a plea. It was a command, spoken in a low, guttural tone: ‘Leave the child.’

Maya and Amira looked at each other in horror. Amira clutched Danial tighter, her face ashen. ‘We need to call someone,’ Maya said, reaching for her phone. But she hesitated. Who would they call? The police would think they were insane. She tried to think of a logical explanation—perhaps a prank, maybe a faulty device that was picking up transmissions from a nearby apartment. But the voice was too clear, too targeted. It knew their baby’s name, though it had not said it aloud. The sobbing continued, now mixing with a faint, rhythmic scratching sound, like nails on a chalkboard, coming from the nursery.

They rushed back to the nursery. Siti was now awake, her face pale with fear. ‘It’s coming from under the crib,’ she whispered. They peered under the crib and saw nothing but dust and a stuffed bear. But the scratching grew louder, and the sobs turned to a muffled, wet sound, as if someone were being smothered. Maya knelt down and felt a draft from the wall vent behind the crib. She pressed her ear to it and heard, faintly, a voice—the same voice—saying, ‘Stop. Please stop.’ It was a woman’s voice, pleading, desperate. Maya recoiled as if burned. ‘There’s someone in the walls,’ she said.

They called the building’s maintenance, but the man who arrived, a wizened old caretaker with rheumy eyes, just shook his head. ‘This building was built on an old orphanage site,’ he said, his voice low. ‘People have heard things before. But it’s just old pipes, pipes and rats.’ He gave them a dismissive smile and left. They didn’t believe him.

That night, they couldn’t sleep. They huddled in the living room, Danial sleeping fitfully in Amira’s arms, the monitor placed on the table in front of them. The sobs had ceased, but a new sound had taken its place: a lullaby, sung in a soft, melancholic voice, the words unintelligible but pitifully sad. It seemed to come from the monitor’s speaker, yet as they listened, they realized it was also coming from the nursery, through the walls. The lullaby grew louder, until it was surrounding them, emanating from every corner of the room. Then, abruptly, it stopped. The silence that followed was deafening.

A click. The monitor’s screen flickered to life. On it, a grainy image of the nursery appeared. The crib was empty. A figure stood beside it, a dark shape, hunched and indistinct. The figure turned, and on the monitor, its face was obscured by shadow. It began to walk slowly toward the camera, and as it approached, the image cracked and distorted, like an old VHS tape. Then the screen went black. The monitor emitted a single, final plea: ‘Please stop it.’

They found no trace of intruders the next morning. The police, summoned by a neighbor, investigated but found nothing. Danial was unharmed, but he would not stop crying for days. Amira moved out of the apartment that week. Maya returned to Pune, but she couldn’t shake the memory of that voice. Sometimes, in her own home, she would hear a soft sobbing from her baby monitor—she didn’t have a child—and a voice would whisper, ‘Please stop it.’ She always unplugged it, but the sound lingered, just at the edge of hearing, a reminder that some pleas are never heard, and some monitors never rest.