THE NOISES ARE back. Naked branches scratch against the windows. Aged floorboards settle above and below me. And far in the distance, rain has begun to fall, the steady drizzle of an oncoming autumn storm. Beneath it all, a persistent rhythm echoes somewhere inside the house. Tap. Tap. Tap. For all I know, these sounds have been present since the day we moved here, and it’s only my awareness of them that’s new. I used to sleep better, before.

The first few times the noises woke me, I stretched across the bed to nudge him awake, a half-conscious question on my lips: Had he locked the door? But over and over, my fingers found cold, empty sheets, and my whispered words echoed across the cavernous room. And eventually, the habit died.

I rouse myself and slip my icy feet into his well-worn sheepskin slippers. He’d had them long before I ever met him, and he’d given the ratty old things to me when my feet swelled in the final months of pregnancy.

“They look better on you anyway.”

Now, they threaten to slide off with each step, their thick rubber soles catching on the carpet as I shuffle up the narrow hallway, past the nursery with its door always closed. I stop short of the bathroom, where windbeaten trees claw desperately at the windowpane, and make my way into the kitchen. I leave the light off.

More than once, I’ve imagined the scratching might be him, somehow returned, and if I would only open the door and turn on the light, there he would be. Sometimes, I imagine he’d look as he did before—auburn hair, falling in waves around his face and shoulders; warm, honey-colored eyes with the barest hint of laugh lines around the corners; and strong, soft hands reaching—grasping—to caress me once more.

More often, my mind betrays me. The face I see then is the way he looked after. His hair, darkened and matted with blood. His skin, gray and bruised and split along the prominent bones of his cheeks, brows, and jawline. And his beautiful eyes, open, but forever vacant.

He was the first man I ever loved.

Thunder growls outside, quiet and slow, like boulders tumbling down a distant hillside. I fill a glass with tepid water from the kitchen sink and gulp it down, resenting the metallic tang of it. I’ve never quite grown used to the sensation of living in such an old house. With the ancient pipes, arteries clogged with decades of rust and muck; the creak of every wooden plank and board slowly rotting all around; and the smells, sometimes indescribable—it could drive anyone mad, or screaming out of the place. Anyone sensible anyway. Or anyone with anywhere else to go.

It was a blessing when some distant aunt of his left the house to us in her will, and though, like his family, something about the place always seemed to reject my presence, I’ve never been one to question a gift, especially not one so desperately needed and so perfectly timed. The first few years of our marriage were not kind to us. With our combined debt and the lousy job market, we were inches from eviction when this ramshackle mansion was dropped into our laps, no strings attached. True, the conditions were somewhere between dubious and downright unlivable, but one can overlook almost anything under such circumstances. It even came furnished.

When I finish, I set the cold, empty glass on the very edge of the counter. My hand lingers on the crystal rim, and I nearly give in to the urge to send it crashing to the floor.

The night he died, I fell. I’d been trying to scramble my unsteady, distended body out of the bathtub, having convinced myself that if I could just get to him, it would all be okay. But even then, I felt my reality splinter, leaving an agonizing rift between Before and After.

I’d ignored the shredding pain in my abdomen until I couldn’t anymore, until my sobs turned to screams, and hospital staff escorted me to another wing, away from him, alone. It was time, the doctor had said; everyone was so sorry for my loss, but it was time, and the baby was coming. There was no one to hold my hand, no one in the world to care. He was gone, and I was alone.

And in those agonizing final moments, as my soulmate left the world and our child entered it, I’d wished for a way to trade that small life for his. I asked myself, as I had only once before, whether I’d ever really wanted this baby. I didn’t allow myself to answer. The time of second-guessing was long gone. But it didn’t stop the aching as love and terror warred in my chest. I knew the answer. Of course I did.

The idea of something growing inside me, a parasite feeding off my tired and imperfect body, had always repulsed me. And the thought of birthing a child and becoming a mother—that loaded word with its antiquated ties to the idea of womanhood—brought on a dizzying sense of dysphoria I could never quite articulate, especially to him. For all the ways we understood each other, some things must be lived to be known.

How could I have ever made him understand the sense of wrongness that fell over me like a shroud every twenty-eight days, or the fingernail scratching inside my skull every time someone called me “girl” or “lady” and I didn’t have the energy or courage to correct them? And more importantly, why would I? None of it was his fault; he had no control over it. All he did was love me, exactly as I was, and completely. We hadn’t planned on being parents—each for our own reasons—so why did it matter?

He would have supported whatever I wanted when that test came back positive. I think he might even have been surprised when I said I didn’t want an abortion. That had always been our plan, should the odds topple out of our favor. We had the money. But something inside me snapped, or sparked, and all at once, I couldn’t imagine not seeing this through. I was never going to be a mother, and then suddenly, I was. We dove into it headfirst, and we were happy.

But none of it mattered, in the end. The baby hadn’t lived either. I lost them both.

I didn’t drain the tub that night, or any night since, as far as I can recall. I must have, I suppose, but I can’t remember actually doing it. I leave the curtain drawn, always, and when I imagine the bathtub, it’s full and hot, waiting for me to sink into its depths and forget. He could be in there now, trailing his fingers through the steaming water, his smile soft and inviting.

Or it could be the other him. The wrong one. The one I killed.

And because it’s impossible to know which it might be, I never look. Instead, I move through the house night after night as if I am a ghost. Often, I wonder if I might be. I never leave, never speak. Who would I talk to? No one calls; no one comes. Not that anyone would. He was my only family, and I was his.

The clock on the wall reads 9:13. So many hours before sunrise, before sleep might finally welcome me. I haven’t slept a single night since I came home from the hospital. The nights are too loud, and too quiet. Every sound in my head and in the house meld and crescendo into one unbearable cacophony, no more soothing than submerging oneself in cold water. The white noise of daytime—life and normalcy that’s not wholly unfamiliar to me—has become a welcome refuge from all that noise.

A bolt of perfect white lightning illuminates the kitchen as I turn to leave, and for that instant, it’s changed. A thick coat of grime blankets every counter; cobwebs hang from the walls and ceilings in clumped, dusty tendrils. And the fruit, plump and ripe moments ago, is nothing but a shapeless mound of greenish-black mold. The scent of rot curls into my nose and sits on the back of my tongue. I shrink back, gagging. But before the strangled noises leave my lips, the frightful scene has already vanished. The kitchen is tidy, cold, and empty. I scan the room one final time and push that nightmare from my mind as I move back to my bedroom.

But as I lie down again, a new sound interrupts the others—a single, quiet whimper.

A sharp gasp slices through my lungs as I jerk upright. I can hardly catch my breath as I sweep my gaze back and forth, into and between the shadows of my empty bedroom, then slowly, as I bite back terror and heartache, I land on the nursery.

The door is closed, of course, but some inexplicable and dangerous thing takes root in the center of my chest—foolish, unwelcome hope. It pulls me like a marionette out of bed and into the hall outside the nursery door. My heart hammers as I reach out with one sweat-slick hand, twist the knob, and give the gentlest push.

Inside, it’s quiet as a tomb. Whatever sound drew me to this forbidden place has ceased. But the second I make the decision to enter, the room is illuminated with the soft golden glow of the star-shaped night-light he placed lovingly on the dresser months ago. Tiny rays dimmed by weeks of dust caress every surface, banishing the shadows that live here.

And as the room comes to life, the sound echoes across the nursery once again.

I run to the cradle, arms outstretched. How could I have forgotten, even for a second? It doesn’t matter, I think as I retrieve the infant and kiss its cool forehead, all that matters is that my baby is here, and safe, and we’re together. I’ve heard of mothers falling into a deep depression after giving birth or going mad and doing terrible things. A temporary lapse in memory is nothing. A long, horrible, lonely nightmare. That’s all this is. And it’s over now.

With the baby in my arms, I lower myself carefully into the rocking chair my husband built for us. Closing my eyes and smiling, I picture his face when he finished the chair, the way he hummed as he hung the folded heirloom blanket over the back and turned the whole thing to face the window.

“So you’ll both have a view.”

Rain runs down the windowpane in thick sheets, and the thunder rumbles ever closer. I don’t need to open my eyes to know there is no view, not on a night like this when thick black clouds blot out every star above and dense, low fog obscures the world below. I do anyway, to gaze at the sleeping child. The shadows cast from the rain on the window give the appearance that we are underwater, suspended peacefully just beneath the surface, like a dream. I rock us both, humming a lullaby my mother used to sing to me. The words have been lost with time, but the melody, both mournful and lovely, is etched in my soul.

When I wake again, my chin rests on my chest, and it’s dark. Whether it’s still dark or dark again, I can’t tell. The window is a waterfall, warping the outside world. Inside the nursery, the air is cold and still. I stir, and a familiar and terrifying feeling overcomes me. Emptiness. My arms are empty.

In a panic, I spring from the chair, squinting into the darkness. My hands shake as I peer over the side of the empty cradle. Clutching the side rail until I think it may break, I am only dimly aware of myself. My cold, numb hands. My face, damp with sweat. My breaths, shallow and labored, as if some great beast resides in my chest and squeezes, squeezes, squeezes the life from me.

Something terrible has happened. I know it. I know.

Do I?

No. No. No.

The room spins around me. The wood floor heaves and rocks, the boards whining as if they might explode into splinters beneath my feet.

An earsplitting thunderclap jerks me into action. Lightning flashes, turning the nursery into another nightmare room. More cobwebs spread thick over the walls and across the top of the crib in a ghoulish canopy. The floor glitters with broken glass. The smell of mildew and neglect snakes its way into my nostrils. But once again, it all disappears with the lightning.

Uttering a strangled moan, I shove myself away from the baby’s empty bed and begin a frenzied, aimless search. Panting and grunting, more animal than human, I drag the furniture away from the walls to better see behind and beneath, then flip the toy chest and rifle through every small, precious stuffed thing inside. My panic reaches a dizzying peak as I pull clothes from the closets, pillows from the couch, and blankets from the bed. Floor by floor, I tear my home apart. I hardly know what I’m doing, but I can’t stop. How can I, when the more I search, the more this house becomes a place I do not recognize, and my baby—my sweet infant child—is nowhere to be found? I rip through the bedroom and the nursery twice more, and each time, I come away empty-handed.

Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

In the middle of the upstairs hallway, I stop and sink to the floor, covering my face with my hands. This is my fault. Mine. Just like him. Everything I love, gone.

That night comes screaming into my mind. I’d grown increasingly morose, at times volatile, as the final trimester of pregnancy took its toll. He’d drawn a warm bath to placate my cloudy mood and offered to run to the corner store and get me ice cream. A phone call from the emergency room woke me, cold in the tub. I’d fallen asleep. Had to get there right away, they said. A distracted driver, an unnoticed stop sign, and one single mistake had stolen my life away.

He was dead before I got there. The last time I saw him, he was smiling and putting on his coat. He kissed me on the forehead and said he’d be back in a flash. And then he was dead, cold and gray and broken, and gone.

A familiar noise snaps me back into the present. The dripping of the bath faucet. Water landing on water. I lift my tear-soaked face and listen. Something about that sound…

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Did I check the bathroom?

I race up the hallway but trip on one of his—my—slippers and crash to the floor. I bark in pain as the weight of my whole body comes down on one knee, but I leave the slipper where it is and rise, my hand shaking as I reach for the bathroom door. The noise grows louder, drowning out the storm.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

The brass handle cools my palm. I twist, push, and…

I wake in my bed, breathless and confused, my legs tangled in the sheet. Rain pounds the roof and windows, an endless pattering. The clock on the bedside table glows green, the only light in the room. It’s 9:13.

My heart hammers as I try to gain control of my breathing. But the emptiness in my arms, and the feeling that something—someone—should occupy that space, chills my skin. It’s all wrong.

I sit forward, still my breath, and listen.

The storm crashes and heaves outside. Underneath it, through it, comes a wailing moan that could be mistaken for wind but for the hitching irregularity of it. I stare out the bedroom doorway and down the pitch-black hall.

As soon as my toes touch the floor, yellow light spills across the hall from the nursery. The soft, sweet whimpering inside makes my cold skin flush with warmth. My fear vanishes as I shuffle, barefoot, into the baby’s room. But my sigh of relief fractures into a sharp cry just as it passes my lips; something on the floor bites into the sole of my foot. I glance down, using the lamplight to investigate, but there’s nothing.

When the baby cries again, instinct beckons me to the cradle. I pull the child into my arms, sink onto the rocking chair, and release the top three buttons of my nightgown. The motion is automatic; though I can’t remember doing it before now, I must have, and the little cries are replaced by satisfied silence and deep breathing. I allow my mind to wander. Outside, the rain has not slowed. The turbulence of the storm strangely calms me; my tempestuous mind made external.

I wish he were here. Every single thing in this place is a bitter reminder of his existence, and his absence. The hollow howling in my chest aches with it. But for the first time since he left, I find myself in a place of welcome nothingness. A brief void. Meditating on the pounding staccato of the rain and the thunder that sounds as though it’s directly overhead, I discover in my mind a small, quiet corner in which to rest, finally.

A sudden sharp pain shatters my temporary peace. I glance down in confusion just as it happens again.

I cry out, yanking the little culprit away from myself. Where the infant was feeding, three droplets of blood bead up and roll down my breast. I hiss in pain as I pull my nightgown closed, ignoring the thing’s small cries of frustration. Dark blood blooms across the thin white fabric, saturating the cotton threads.

Another flash fills the room with white light, and with it, the baby’s face changes. It’s as if I’m seeing through a veil and gazing at what lies beyond it. The eyes become hazy and unfocused. The skin, a dull grayish-white, glistens and puckers. The fine brown hairs on that tiny white scalp start to wave as if in a breeze I cannot feel. I barely stop the shriek from escaping my mouth and arrest my arms before they can flex and extend to throw the horrible changeling across the room. This is not my baby. And if this isn’t my baby, then…

But as the white light leaves the room so, too, does the vision. The baby is human again, or so it appears. I touch the plump pink cheek with the tip of my index finger—it’s warm—and watch the child squirm and whine in my arms. Its distress provides an odd sense of assurance that this is reality. I shake myself, willing the image back to wherever it came from. Obviously, I’m half delirious with fatigue and grief. That’s all. I hum and rock, and soon, the infant grows silent once more.

The dripping in the bathroom returns, seeming to slow, timing itself with my breathing as my consciousness drifts. The baby falls asleep and is still as death in my arms. My humming fades into quiet sighs.

I force my eyes open, refusing to fall asleep. I can’t bear another nightmare. The chair creaks beneath me as my rocking becomes insistent. I hum the lullaby again, louder, trying to ignore the incessant dripping and the scratching and the storm and the itch in the back of my skull that says something isn’t right. But a question forms in my mind that makes my body still and my skin cold.

Who am I humming to?

My arms are empty, and the room is chilly and neglected. Something glitters on the floor. Glass. I broke a glass on the nursery floor. I recall the tinkling crash as it fell from my hand. It was neither an accident, nor intentional. My hand simply released it, and it shattered.

No, that’s not how it happened.

My baby was in one arm, asleep, and I had the glass in the other hand. I watched the water, housed in its perfect prison, and had the sudden urge to free it, to destroy the pretty thing and send the liquid splashing across the wooden floor. And then I did.

No. That can’t be right. The baby died in the hospital. They both died the same night.

Didn’t they?

No. We fell asleep together in the rocking chair, just minutes ago.

But if that’s true, where is the baby now?

Panic seizes in my chest, constricting my lungs until I grow dizzy. I stumble out of the chair and down the hall, and the noises grow louder. No, not louder. Closer. I grind my teeth as I limp down the hallway, my knee throbbing, my hair growing damp with the sweat of the nightmare and the panic. My hands are cold and stiff by the time I reach the bathroom door. As I clutch it, my lost baby begins to cry in the nursery, a desperate, howling wail. For a moment, my only thought is turning back and gathering the child into my arms. We can ride out the storm together. Just us. But the sounds are too clear, too near—the ceaseless dripping and the low, primal moan building in my chest.

But why? It’s the same sound I made standing over my husband’s broken body. The same sound I made when…

I throw the bathroom door open, ignoring the screaming instinct to go back, to flee from this place, take the baby and accept the lie. Because now, I can’t deny that all of this has been a lie. My lie. My fault. Isn’t that right?

No. No. No.

The bathroom is still and quiet, except for the dripping and the scratching. The scratching is nothing to fear, just branches on the glass. The shower curtain is closed. The room stinks of mildew and stagnant air.

My hands tremble as another memory seeps into my mind, slowly, like ice dissolving in tepid water. I shake my head, wishing it away, but it makes no difference. Not now that I am here.

Every detail comes rushing back, demolishing whatever barriers I’d built in self-preservation, and I shake with the weight of it.

The tub, deep and white. The water, cold by the time my consciousness returned to my body. My hair, matted and stuck to the sides of my face. The gooseflesh on my arms and back as I shivered so hard that it hurt. Even then, I couldn’t remember how long I’d been sitting in that frigid water. I could hardly comprehend what was before me as I slowly came back to myself: The tiny body, suspended just beneath the surface. The eyes, half closed and unfocused. The skin, so much paler than it ought to have been. Ripples from the dripping faucet, casting repetitive shadows across the small, lifeless face. The actuality and impossibility blurred my vision and made my head throb in time with the hypnotic drip-drip-drip.

What finally snapped me into focus was a new sound: a low, guttural moan, clawing its way up my throat as my body reacted before my mind could catch up. I knew before I realized. But then, I saw—really saw—and I understood.

Didn’t I?

No.

Yes.

“Oh,” I whisper, and a black hole opens up in my chest.

The only thing I can’t remember—the thing eating away at my insides—is perhaps the least important part. Or the most. Was it an accident? Did my sorrow take hold of my body and kill my child? Did I kill us both? Is this purgatory?

Does it matter?

And though I know what I will find, I must see.

In the nursery, the infant coos, high and jubilant. The only happy sound this house has heard in so long. The walls expand with it, drinking it in.

My heart pounds as I creep up the hallway and into the dark nursery. No golden light chases the shadows away, not anymore. The thunder becomes my pulse, hammering in my ears as I peer over the side of the cradle. The thing that lies there is no longer a baby, if it ever was. The changeling is back; its cruel disguise has dropped away for good, revealing bloated gray flesh and milky, unseeing eyes. And the hair. The fine brown hair waves gently in that same invisible breeze. Not a breeze. It waves as if it were underwater.

The thing in the crib—both mine and not mine—smiles an eerily knowing grin; tiny purple lips stretched around blackish-blue gums.

It reaches for me; I stumble backward and run. The high, unnatural laughter rings out behind me, taunting me. Terrifying me. Thunder crashes, and the house shakes. I barely keep my balance, bracing myself against the wall as my vision begins to blur. Tears flood my eyes when I stop again, just outside the bathroom door.

I set my flat hand a hair’s breadth from the cheery yellow-painted wood, push the door open, and step inside one final time.

The thing in the nursery falls silent, and the sounds of the storm and the scratching and the never-ending drip-drip-drip fall away, leaving me alone with the sound of my own thundering heartbeat and the intermittent flashes of lightning. I close my eyes and clutch the edge of the shower curtain in my left hand.

With a sharp breath, I wrench the curtain aside. A single plastic ring snaps off the rod and clatters to the floor beside me. I kneel beside the tub as if in prayer. My knuckles turn white as I grip the side, digging my fingernails into the hard white porcelain until my hands ache.

No moan leaves my lips this time. No scream of terror either. The tub is empty. There’s nothing to see. Nothing to fear.

But then the power flickers off, and the only light in the room comes from a streak of lightning, and I see the other house again. The house just beneath this one, or beyond it. Cold room, smell of mildew, and something…else. And the body in the water. The body that wasn’t there, that never should have been there, or here in this house at all. The body that never came home.

The power comes back, and the yellowish light from the bathroom ceiling reflects on the water’s surface. The tub is empty again. I reach over to drain the basin. Maybe I ran a bath and forgot about it. My memory has been unreliable at best, lately. But I stop myself, my arm hovering in midair. If I put my hand into that water, if I break the surface, I can’t be sure what I might find. Will it be this house, this tub? Or will it be the other?

I sit back on my heels, fold my hands in my lap, and stare at the shadows in the water.

After moments or hours, the storm begins to quiet, and the laughter turns to pitiful cries. With a sigh of relief, I stand and leave the bathroom without draining the tub. I step over the slippers in the hall, and the minefield of shattered glass in the nursery, biting back the wave of panic that washes over me when I peer into the cradle.

The baby is whole, and perfect, except when the lightning flashes. And I don’t mind. As I settle into the rocking chair and gaze out the window at the starless sky, an understanding washes over me. I can never leave this place, can never abandon this child, not for a single minute. It’s my punishment, or perhaps my salvation. A remedy to my grief and loneliness, whether I want it or not. But I think…

I think I really do.

I swaddle the infant in its blanket and begin to rock, cringing only the slightest bit when the storm reveals its other face. I wonder how long this might last, and whether I, too, have another face. Pushing the thought aside because it doesn’t really matter, I hum a lullaby and allow myself to rest, at last.

Outside, thunder crashes and the whole house seems to shake. I wake with a quiet gasp, alone in my bed. Something stirs inside my mind, cold and viscous, just out of reach. And beneath it, around it, through it, a steady rhythm.

The noises are back.