The Ticking Cricket

The first sign that something was wrong was the cricket. It wasn’t a real cricket, of course—it was a small, plastic toy that my daughter, Lily, had won at the county fair three weeks ago. It was bright green, with a little wind-up key on its side, and it chirped when you turned it. But the thing was, you had to wind it. You had to physically turn the key. And yet, on the Sunday after Friday the 13th, it started chirping on its own.

Lily was fourteen, not fifteen, and she was sleeping in her room, which was at the end of the hallway on the second floor of our old farmhouse. The toy was on her dresser, a good ten feet from her bed. She said it just started chirping, a sharp, mechanical sound that cut through the stillness of the night. She woke up, confused, and when she saw the toy, it was shaking slightly, as if someone were holding it. She screamed, grabbed it, and threw it out into the hallway, slamming her door shut.

In the morning, I found it in the living room, sitting on the coffee table as if it had been placed there. I asked Lily about it, and she told me what had happened with wide, terrified eyes. My husband, Mark, laughed and said it was probably just a loose spring, but I saw the fear in Lily’s face, and I felt a cold knot in my stomach.

That afternoon, after school, I was in the kitchen making dinner. Mark was in the den watching TV, and Lily was upstairs doing homework. The toy was on the kitchen counter, right next to the fruit bowl, where I had left it after picking it up from the living room. I was chopping vegetables when I heard it—a faint chirp, then another. I turned, and the toy was still. I shrugged it off, but then it chirped again, louder, and the key on its side turned slowly, as if an invisible hand were winding it. I grabbed it, my heart pounding, and threw it into the trash can. It landed with a clatter and was silent.

For the next few days, nothing happened. The toy sat in the trash, and I tried to convince myself that it was just a malfunction, some kind of static discharge or temperature change. But I couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched.

Then, the following Friday, my two-year-old nephew, Tommy, came to stay for the weekend. My sister, Rachel, had to go out of town for a family emergency, and we agreed to watch Tommy. We set up a little bed for him in the living room, with a sleeping bag and some pillows, and he was so excited to have a ‘slumber party’ with Lily.

That night, we put Tommy to bed at eight, and Lily offered to sit with him until he fell asleep. She turned on a nightlight and read him a story. By nine, both of them were asleep on the floor, tangled in the sleeping bag. Mark and I went to bed around eleven, and I remember thinking how peaceful the house felt.

At two in the morning, I was jolted awake by a piercing scream. It was Lily. I ran downstairs, Mark right behind me. The living room was bathed in the eerie glow of the nightlight, and I could see Lily sitting up, pointing at the corner of the room. Tommy was crying, and I saw why. The green cricket toy was on the floor next to him, its eyes—two black beads—glowing in the dim light. And it was chirping. Not the soft, mechanical chirp from before, but a frantic, angry chirping, as if it were enraged.

I rushed to Tommy and scooped him up. He was shaking, his little face red from crying. Lily was screaming, ‘It moved! It crawled! It moved!’ I didn’t know what to believe, but I knew I had to get that toy out of the house. I grabbed a fireplace poker and, with shaking hands, I smashed the toy into pieces. The chirping stopped abruptly, and the pieces lay scattered on the carpet. I gathered them up, wrapped them in a plastic bag, and threw them in the outside trash can.

I thought that was the end of it. But the next morning, when I went to take out the trash, the bag was gone. The trash can was empty, and there was no sign of the broken pieces. I asked Mark if he had disposed of it, but he said no. I asked Lily, but she had been too scared to touch it.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking about the toy, about the way it had moved. I finally got up and went to the kitchen to get a glass of water. As I passed the living room, I heard a faint chirping. It was coming from the fireplace. I walked over, my heart racing, and looked inside. There, on the hearth, was the cricket toy, perfectly intact, as if it had never been broken. Its tiny key was turning, winding itself, and its eyes—those black beads—were fixed on me.

I took a step back, and it hopped. It actually hopped, like a real cricket, right at my feet. I screamed and ran to the stairs, but as I reached the bottom step, I heard a chorus of chirping coming from every corner of the house. I turned, and in the darkness, I could see dozens of green toys, all identical to the one I had smashed, crawling out from under furniture, from behind curtains, from the shadows. They were everywhere, their tiny legs clicking on the hardwood floor, their eyes glowing in the night.

I ran upstairs, locking myself in my bedroom. I could hear them scratching at the door, and I knew they were waiting. When Mark came home the next morning, he found me huddled in the corner, trembling. The house was silent, and there was no sign of the toys. But I knew they were still there, hiding, waiting for the next time I let my guard down.

We moved out of that house a week later. But even now, in our new home, I sometimes hear a faint chirping in the walls. And last night, I found a small, green cricket toy on Tommy’s pillow. It was brand new, with a little tag that said ‘From the Fair.’ Tommy said a nice man gave it to him. I don’t know how he found us. But I know it’s not over.