Chapter 3: The Marks
The baby’s back was a map of pain.
There were welts. Small, angry, purple welts scattered across his shoulder blades and down his spine. But they weren’t rashes. They weren’t allergic reactions.
They were indentations.
Naomi leaned closer, her eyes widening in horror.
They were bite marks.
Small. Semi-circular. Human.
Someone had bitten this child. Repeatedly.
Naomi felt the room spin. She gripped the edge of the changing table to keep from falling. A bite? On a three-week-old? Who?
It couldn’t be a rat. The skin wasn’t broken in that way; it was bruised, crushed. These were teeth marks from a person.
Evelyn.
The thought came unbidden, terrifying and impossible. Evelyn was cold, yes. Selfish, yes. But a monster? To bite her own infant son?
And then the smell hit her again. The perfume. Midnight Rose.
It wasn’t just in the air. It was emanating from the crib.
Naomi looked back at the gold-painted crib. It stood in the shadows, looking less like a bed and more like a cage.
Why did the crib smell so strongly?
Naomi buttoned Theo’s onesie up, wrapped him tightly in a blanket, and held him against her shoulder. He was whimpering now, exhausted by the pain.
She walked back to the crib.
She reached out with her free hand and touched the mattress. It was a high-end, organic mattress.
She ran her hand over the sheet. It was damp in one corner.
She sniffed her fingers.
Perfume. Pure, concentrated perfume.
It had been poured there.
Why would someone pour perfume on a baby’s mattress?
To hide a smell.
Naomi’s grandmother had been a nurse. She used to say, “People only use that much scent when they’re trying to cover the scent of rot or sin.”
Naomi put Theo down in the rocking chair, securing him with pillows so he wouldn’t roll. “Stay there, baby. Stay safe.”
She went back to the crib.
She gripped the edge of the mattress.
Her instincts were screaming at her to run, to leave, to pack her bags. But she couldn’t. Not with the baby in danger.
She lifted the mattress.
And then she froze.
Chapter 4: The Horror Under the Mattress
It wasn’t a monster. It wasn’t a rat.
Nestled between the mattress slats and the mattress itself was a collection of items that made no sense—until they made perfect, horrifying sense.
There was a silver flask. Empty. It smelled of cheap, high-proof vodka. There was a small, frantic-looking journal with the leather cover scratched up. And there was a photo. A framed photo of Evelyn and her husband, Richard, from before the baby was born. But the glass was shattered, and the baby’s side of the future—the space between them—had been stabbed repeatedly with something sharp.
And next to the flask lay a teething ring. But it wasn’t soft rubber. It was hard plastic, and upon closer inspection, it had been filed down. Sharpened.
Naomi picked up the flask. The smell of alcohol was pungent, mixing with the sickening sweetness of the spilled perfume that had dripped down from the mattress.
The puzzle pieces slammed together in Naomi’s mind.
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