The Wren’s Lullaby

The old house on Maple Street had been a bargain, and for the first few months, it felt like a steal. Laura, her husband Tom, their son Jake, and Jake’s girlfriend with their infant daughter, Mia, had moved in just after the leaves turned. The place was drafty, but it had character, with a turret that offered a view of the lake and a wraparound porch that creaked pleasantly. The only oddity was the previous owner’s collection of taxidermy birds, which they had left behind, asking if the new family would mind keeping them until they could collect them. Their lawyer said it was a condition of the sale, so the birds stayed, perched on shelves and mantles, their glassy eyes watching the new residents.

Laura was the first to notice the strangeness, but she dismissed it. It was a house settling, she told herself, or the wind. But the new baby monitor, a sleek device with a pulsing blue light and a grainy night vision screen, began to pick up things that had no natural source.

One afternoon, while Tom and Jake were at work, and Jake’s girlfriend had taken Mia out for a walk, Laura was home alone. She had just put Mia down for a nap in the nursery, a room that had once been a sewing room, now filled with a crib and a mobile of paper cranes. She took the monitor into the kitchen, which adjoined the living room, to start dinner. The sound of Mia’s gentle breathing was a comfort.

As she chopped vegetables, the breathing became shallow, then stopped. Laura froze, her knife mid-air. The silence was heavy. She was about to rush upstairs when a soft sound came through the monitor: a lullaby, sung in a high, sweet voice, but the melody was unfamiliar, with a dissonant note that made her skin prickle. The words were indistinguishable, but it was clearly a woman’s voice. Laura’s blood ran cold. She was alone in the house. She dropped the knife and sprinted up the stairs, her heart pounding.

She burst into the nursery. Mia was asleep, her chest rising and falling peacefully. The monitor, on the dresser, displayed the room from above, and Laura saw herself enter, a blurry figure in the night-vision green. But there was something else, a shimmer near the window, a distortion that she couldn’t explain. She grabbed the baby and didn’t let go until the others came home.

She told her family, expecting ridicule. Tom was a skeptic, Jake was noncommittal, and his girlfriend, a practical woman named Sarah, looked at her with sympathy. But that night, as they all gathered in the living room, the television flickered, and the lights dimmed for a moment. The birds seemed to shift on their perches, their beady eyes catching the lamplight. Sarah, who had been quiet, spoke up. ‘I heard it too,’ she admitted. ‘Last night, when I went to check on Mia, I heard a humming from the closet. But I thought it was a pipe.’

Over the next few weeks, the occurrences escalated. The baby monitor would sometimes show Mia’s crib unoccupied, but when they ran to check, she was there, seemingly undisturbed. Once, the monitor’s screen displayed a static-filled image of an elderly woman in a rocking chair, humming the same twisted lullaby. The next day, a new bird appeared on the living room mantel: a wren, its feathers dusty with age, its eyes slightly askew. Tom, trying to rationalize, said, ‘It must have been there all along. We just didn’t notice.’ But Laura knew better. The wren was not there before.

One evening, Sarah was home alone with Mia, who had a fever. She was in the nursery, sitting in the rocking chair, humming a lullaby herself to soothe the baby. The monitor was on, and she saw herself on the screen. A shadow moved behind her. She turned, but nothing was there. When she looked back at the screen, the shadow was gone, but the wren was perched on the windowsill, its head tilted, as if listening. Sarah felt a chill, but she brushed it off, and she and Mia fell asleep in the chair.

She woke to a cold draft. The room was dark, the baby monitor dead. She looked at the windowsill; the wren was gone. In its place was a small leather-bound book, old and worn. She picked it up, her hands trembling. The cover bore a title: ‘Wren’s Lullaby.’ She opened it, and the first page had a handwritten entry, dated 1912, from a woman named Ethel Merriweather, who had lived in this very house. The entry read: ‘My daughter, Cora, has been sick since the winter. I fear she will not see the spring.’ Sarah turned the page. The next entry, a month later: ‘Cora passed in the night. I heard her singing from the nursery, but when I reached her, she was still. I cannot bear to part with her. I shall keep her here, in my heart.’

The book was filled with entries over the years, documenting the presence of a spirit that they called the Wren. It spoke of how the Wren would sing to the children, a song that was meant to lure them to sleep, but sometimes, it would lure them to the spirit world. The last entry, dated 1987, was written by a woman who lived there with her family: ‘We must move. The Wren wants our baby boy. It sang to me while I held him, and I saw its face in the mirror. It was the face of a woman, but her mouth was opened too wide, like a bird’s. We are leaving tomorrow.’

Sarah closed the book, her blood turned to ice. She looked at the nursery door. It was ajar. She had closed it. She placed the sleeping Mia in her crib, and as she turned to leave, she heard the humming again, coming from the baby monitor, which had turned on by itself. She looked at the screen. The night-vision showed the crib, and next to it, a woman was standing, her face obscured by shadow. She was humming the lullaby, and as Sarah watched, the woman began to lean over the crib. Sarah screamed, and the screen went to static.

When the others came home, they found Sarah in the corner of the nursery, sobbing, clutching the book. Mia was fine, sleeping peacefully. But Sarah was not fine. She would not let Mia out of her sight. They attempted to sell the house, but the realtor, a nervous woman, confided that the house had a reputation. ‘The Wren,’ she said, ‘is not a bird. It’s a curse.’ They moved out the next week, renting a small apartment in the city, but they couldn’t escape entirely. The wren followed them, appearing on balconies, on fence posts, outside windows, always watching, always humming.

Years later, Mia is a young girl, and she has a baby monitor for her doll. One night, Laura hears a faint lullaby coming from Mia’s room. She goes in, and Mia is sitting up in bed, humming a melody that Laura doesn’t recognize. ‘That’s a pretty song,’ Laura says, trying to keep her voice steady. Mia smiles and says, ‘The lady with the bird taught it to me. She says she’s my great-great-grandmother.’ Laura’s blood runs cold. She realizes that the Wren is not just a spectral presence; it is a heritage, a matriarch of the house, and it will never let its family go.

The End.