The Kiss

399 Words | Horror

The Kiss

The baby’s cry wakes me in the night.

Not the I’m hungry, feed me, feed me, wails. These are different— high-pitched, almost frantic, and edged with something that might have been fear.

Skrrrtch. Skkkkreeee. Skkkrrrr.

(What’s that noise?)

Heart pounding, mouth dry, bare feet slapping bare wood, I race down the hall to the nursery. The door’s cracked open, and I can see the light from the carousel lamp spinning crazily at a drunken angle.

The baby cries again.

(Is that pain, don’t let it be pain, don’t let it be pain, what could have happened?)

My right palm and the pads of the first three fingers touch the door’s edge. A blue-white spark jumps from wood to flesh, burning me. I gasp and curse, clutching wounded skin. The door creaks open, and light and twisting shadow spill out into the hall.

Krrrch, chrrrkk, scriiiiiiikch.

Is it just a wind-tossed branch against the nursery window? Do we even have a tree in front of the nursery window? Pain-addled, my brain doesn’t know. A sudden blast of frigid wind skirls through the doorway, slamming the door into the wall behind.

(What’s happening, what the fuck, how’s the wind getting in, why does the air hurt my skin?)

The baby’s shrieking now, in pain and fear, and there’s something hot and wet and coppery in the air, mixed with the tang of rimed frost. I shoulder through the doorway, but I’m too late.

It’s there one moment and gone the next, a half-glimpsed skelkin, its ratty, too-thin hide stretched taut over widdershins bones of stone and broken sticks. Snapping jaws, jagged teeth of shattered bone and green metal, lunge for me. My foot catches on the rug, sending me to the floor.

The skelkin clutches something to its chest, a bundle, red-smeared and writhing, and it’s crying like my baby.

(And–)

And then it’s gone, the skelkin and its horrid burden, the shutters slamming against the house in the wind.

The baby’s quiet now, but I grab him from his crib. He’s cold, but it’s cold here with the wind shrieking through the room, so, yes, yes, it’s okay, he’s okay. He’s moving, sluggish, but nuzzling, questing for my neck, but he’s quiet now, and I breathe a sigh of relief as I feel the baby’s teeth

(when did he grow teeth, why so cold, so sharp?)

graze my neck in a kiss.