The Stiff Creep

I was at my friend’s place, a cramped studio above a laundromat that smelled of soap and mildew. The party was small, and I’d just come from the kitchen with a glass of water, feeling that familiar wave of pregnancy fatigue. I excused myself, saying I needed the bathroom. My friend pointed down the hallway, but I already knew the layout—I lived in the same building, one floor up, identical floor plan. I walked out of the living room, my heels clicking on the linoleum, and shut the door behind me.

But the hallway was not the same. It was longer, darker, the walls closer, and the single bulb that should have lit the bathroom door was out. I felt a dizzying pressure behind my eyes, and then my body gave way. My knees buckled, but instead of hitting the floor, I found myself on all fours, my hands and feet pressed against the grimy tiles. I was aware, terribly aware, but I couldn’t move a muscle.

Then my body started to move on its own. It wasn’t a crawl—it was a horrible, jerky series of spasms, like a puppet with tangled strings. My head lolled to the side, my neck cracking, and I felt my jaw unhinge slightly, my tongue lolling out. I tried to scream, but only a gurgle escaped. My arms and legs moved in a strange, staccato rhythm, propelling me forward, not toward the bathroom door, but down the hallway, past where the bathroom should have been.

I saw, out of the corner of my eye, the numbers on the doors: 2, 4, 6, 8. But my friend’s apartment was number 3. The hallway was impossibly long, stretching into a darkness that swallowed the light. My body began to bend, my spine curving backward like a bow, my head curling between my arms until my face was level with my knees. I was looking at the floor, my neck twisted nearly 180 degrees, and I could see my own hands splayed out like spider legs.

And then I heard it: a whisper, not in my ears but in my mind, a dry, rasping voice that seemed to come from inside my own skull. ‘You’re almost there,’ it said. ‘Just a little further.’ I had no control, but I felt a sickening purpose in my movements. I was being led somewhere.

The hallway ended in a door I’d never seen before, painted black, with a brass knob that was tarnished and cold. My hand reached out, of its own accord, and grasped the knob. As I turned it, I felt a rush of icy air, and the door swung open onto a room that was not my friend’s bathroom. It was a nursery.

The walls were covered in peeling wallpaper with a pattern of faded clowns, their red noses chipped and their eyes scratched out. In the center of the room was a crib, old and rusted, with a mattress stained and thin. My body began to creep toward the crib, still in that horrible, stiff-legged gait. Every step sent a jolt of pain up my spine, and I could hear my joints popping.

I reached the crib and stood, my head twisting to look down at the mattress. There, in the middle of the stained fabric, lay a single, black hair. And then the voice came again, louder now, a chorus of whispers that seemed to come from the walls themselves: ‘You are not carrying a child. You are carrying us.’

A cold chill ran through me as I felt something move inside my belly—not a kick, but a writhing, as if a serpent were coiling. I wanted to scream, but my mouth wouldn’t open. My body began to convulse, and I saw my reflection in the window—I was standing on my hands, my legs flying wildly in the air, my head spinning slowly on my neck. And then, as quickly as it began, I was on my knees on the floor of the bathroom, the fluorescent light buzzing above me.

I looked up, trembling, and saw my face in the mirror. But it wasn’t my face—my eyes were black, and my smile was too wide, too sharp. I blinked, and it was gone. I ran out of the bathroom, down the familiar hallway, and into the living room. My friend looked up, concerned. ‘Are you okay?’ she asked. I opened my mouth to speak, but the words that came out were not mine. ‘Yes,’ I said, in a voice that sounded like mine but was pitched too high. ‘The bathroom is just as I remembered.’

I left soon after, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something had followed me home. That night, as I lay in bed, I felt the baby move. But it wasn’t a kick. It was the same jerking, stiff motion I had felt in that hallway. And in my mind, I could hear the whispers again, growing louder, until they became a single, clear command: ‘Come back.’

And I knew, with a certainty that chilled me to the bone, that I would.