Sunday 4:52am

His eyes crack open. It’s dark; the luminescent numbers on the alarm clock show that it’s some ungodly hour of the morning. He hears it again and winces, clutching tighter to the pillow. The baby is crying again. It’s woken him every night this week with its incessant wails coming from the other side of the room. He shivers and turns over, facing away from the noise and away from his obliviously sleeping wife. He doesn’t get up but lies stiffly, barely breathing, waiting for it to stop. He knows that he can’t stop the crying. After all, he doesn’t have a baby.

Monday 6pm

“Are you all right, David? You look rather pale.” Angeline gently pressed her palm against her husband’s forehead, trying to detect a fever. David pushed her away, equally as gently.

“Don’t worry; I’m fine. I’m just a little tired. I haven’t been sleeping too well for these last few days,” he reassured her, smiling weakly.

“Well I hope that’s all it is. Try to have an early night tonight,” Angeline replied. “I’m making coffee, want a cup?” David nodded and she turned and headed out into the kitchen. As soon as her back was facing him, David’s gaze flickered upwards towards the ceiling and his face grew even paler.

Tuesday 5:22am

He lies beneath the covers, hands pressed tightly against his ears.

Tuesday 11:08am

Maryanne yawned and leaned against the wall, watching as David refilled his mug with steaming coffee for the third time that morning. She looked lazily amused and winked at him in a knowing way.

“The missus been keeping you up again, eh, David?” she grinned cheekily. She laughed in delight as he almost choked on a mouthful of the hot drink and blushed a vibrant shade of red.

“N-no,” he stuttered, but was interrupted by a young blonde woman calling his name and beckoning him over to the door. With a hasty goodbye, he made his escape from the still giggling Maryanne and tried to compose himself.

“There’s a student here to speak to you,” the blonde woman informed him pleasantly, indicating a nervous looking boy in the hall who shifted uneasily from one foot to the other. David thanked her, realising that he had forgotten her name. She was new, a temporary replacement for the music teacher who’d taken maternity leave. Turning to the student, David smiled, hoping to put the child at ease.

“Is there something you wanted, Seamus?”

“Well, um, you know that homework? The one you set in class?” The boy wouldn’t make eye contact and he fidgeted with the hem of his shirt.

“Ah yes. Are you having trouble with it? Why don’t we go down to the classroom and I’ll help you out.”

Seamus looked up, relieved that he hadn’t had to confess what he saw as ignorance and David merely saw as a minor setback for an intelligent pupil. He followed gratefully as his teacher led the way towards the stairs.

Tuesday 6:32pm

Angeline beamed as David eagerly eyed the meal she was setting out for them. No matter how many times he complimented her cooking, she never felt as though he was merely being polite. There was an almost childlike innocence behind his words that couldn’t possibly be anything but genuine gratitude towards her. She sat opposite him and asked him about his day over the clinking of cutlery.

“Oh, it’s great. I love this time of year. The kids love it too; it’s nearly sports day, you know. I think that they can already smell the freedom of summer.” He paused and smiled rather sheepishly at his enthusiasm. “Sorry, it’s a bit strange to actually enjoy working, I suppose.” Angeline laughed.

“Not at all,” she replied.

“I just like to watch them grow. It’s kind of like –“ he stopped abruptly and waved away the rest of the sentence with his fork. “Never mind.”

“No, go on,” his wife encouraged him. “Tell me why they make you so happy.”

David looked her in the eye, but then broke away and stared down at the table looking wistful. “Sometimes I feel like they’re my own children,” he confessed. He paused, and then glanced up. Angeline was very still, her face crumpled into a dull pain. “You would have made a wonderful mother,” David said quietly. Angeline rose from the table and exited the room in silence, leaving her half finished meal behind.

When David rose and crept, ghostlike, to the door of the smaller, unused bedroom, he saw her kneeling in the centre of the floor. She wasn’t facing him, but he thought that he heard a small, choked sob just once, and then she was silent.

Tuesday 11:49pm

He sits against the headboard and reaches out to trace his hand across her cheek, carefully so that he doesn’t wake her. She’s so beautiful. He leans down to kiss her, but stops abruptly. He can feel their eyes on him. Soon he will hear them crying like a far off echo, although he knows that they are here in the room with him. He lifts his head, ever so slowly, until his eyes come to rest on their makeshift cradle. Suddenly, he can’t stand it. He rises and walks with a robotic stiffness to the door. He has to sleep, but that’s impossible here.

Even as he leaves, he feels their small, small shadows following him, crawling and calling him back with wordless screams. At the bottom of the stairs he stumbles and sinks down to sit on the last stair: puts his head in his hands, hands on his knees.

He stays like this until morning.

Wednesday 7:00am

Angeline wasn’t surprised when she woke to find that David had already gotten up. He often woke before the alarm and left her to lie in for a few minutes extra sleep as he roused himself. However, when she found him in the kitchen, still dressed in only his pyjamas, she frowned. This was unusual.

“Are you all right, honey?” she asked with mild concern.

David turned, and for a moment Angeline held her breath. His eyes were unnaturally wide and seemed almost fearful, as if they could see some night-horror behind her that mortal eyes could not. Then she blinked and the haunted expression was gone. She rubbed her eyes, putting it down to her imagination.

“Fine,” David mumbled, “just tired.”

Compelled by the exhausted tone of his voice, Angeline closed the gap between them and held him in her arms for a long moment, stroking her fingers in tender circles on his back.

“Actually, I might be coming down with something. I don’t feel a hundred percent,” he murmured into her hair.

“Poor baby,” soothed Angeline. “Stay at home today. Sleep it off.” She leaned back a little and cupped his check in her hand. “I hate to see you unwell.”

David smiled, but it looked strained. He kissed her before shambling sluggishly into the hall. She heard him climb the stairs as if he were scaling a mountain, and only when she heard the bedroom door click shut did she sigh and attend to her breakfast.

Wednesday 3:01pm

He wakes feeling more rested than he has done for days. It had felt as though he had been awake for years, cursed to feel the pea under his mattress no matter how much he tossed and turned. He’s so at peace in the warm, safe blankets that at first he doesn’t even hear the babies’ cries. When they eventually break through into his soft, comfortable world it’s like a bucket full of ice has been tipped into the bed. The spell is broken.

At first he tries to ignore it, to drown it out. But he can’t; it’s too much. With an abrupt show of violence, he throws back the covers and stands in one fluid, angry movement. His gaze is directed over the bed to where he instinctively knows that the babies sleep. The object he is so deeply focused on is a tall, wooden wardrobe, painted white with golden handles. Angeline had owned it before they were married and couldn’t bear to leave it in her old home or throw it away. David had sometimes joked that she loved the wardrobe more than she loved him. She had laughed, kissed him, and told him that she could never love anyone or anything more than she loved him.

Now, he navigates the bed and eyes the wardrobe like a child would on a dark night when the shadows fall in just the wrong way and the door is ajar and it looks almost as though there’s something skulking inside and beckoning with a long crooked finger…

He grasps the handles firmly with bloodless knuckles. The crying stops with a surprised hiccup because he’s never looked for them before, never tried to quiet them. He flings the doors wide open. The metal hangers tinkle. He feels his heartbeat slow and stretch in a timeless moment; there are waves of soundless terror crashing over his head and he’s drowning, it feels like he’s drowning…

From each of the hangers, instead of the coats and the clothes and the dresses, a baby hangs with a belt around its throat as a crude, makeshift noose. Their faces are blue and purple, the eyes bulging. Some of their mouths are hanging open in silent screams. His first thought, when he breaks through the shock enough to think coherent thoughts, is that they must be hungry, locked away like this. He bets that they haven’t eaten in days, poor things, no wonder they were crying.

Shakily, he closes the wardrobe doors and leans his forehead against them for a moment. Then he leaves the room, descends the stairs and switches on the television.

Wednesday 5:45pm

David felt himself awaking as if from a trance when he heard Angeline’s car pull into the drive. There was an odd ringing noise in his ears and he shook his head to try and dislodge it. He suddenly realised that there was a damp feeling on his cheeks and lifted a hand to them in surprise. He hadn’t realised that he was crying. Numbly, he headed to the bathroom and splashed water onto his face while Angeline cheerily called “I’m home!”

Wednesday 5:47pm

To her relief, Angeline found David emerging from the bathroom, smiling weakly. He still looked a little worse for wear, but seemed steadier on his feet.

“You look much better,” she told him as she pecked him on the cheek.

“Yes,” he agreed, but there was something still off about his voice, “I feel much better too.”

Wednesday 6:02pm

The radio hummed softly in the background and the rain pattered on the window, creating a cosy feeling in the kitchen as Angeline chopped the vegetables for their evening meal. She sang along absentmindedly for a couple of lines then lapsed into a contented silence. Glancing up, she saw David’s reflection in the window. He was standing in the doorway, watching her with a blank expression. For some reason, Angeline shivered a little.

“Come in, honey,” she said, looking back down at the food she was preparing. “You can help me if you’re bored of marking homework.”

He didn’t reply, but she heard him approach with soft, catlike footsteps. She smiled to herself, but there was a strange feeling in the pit of her stomach that something wasn’t right. She felt David standing close behind her and his arm reached past her, his fingers wrapping smoothly around the handle of one of the knives in the block. He drew it out with a long, slow, sliding noise. Angeline looked at it in confusion.

“I don’t think you need –“ she started when he wrapped his other arm around her in a tender yet firm embrace. He leaned close to her ear and whispered a sentence that made her, for the first time, feel frightened.

“You’ll make a wonderful mother,” he breathed. She saw his face reflected in the window. He was smiling at her with such love, such warmth…but his eyes were empty. And that terrified her. She opened her mouth to scream and heard a dull, wet thuk instead.

He kissed her softly on the neck.

Friday 2:26pm

Officer Sarah Jackson thumped on the door again and sighed.

“This is the police,” she called. “Please open the door!” There was nothing but silence to answer her. Shrugging, she stepped back and nodded at the two male uniforms behind her. They were holding a police issue battering ram between them and at her command they commenced to break down the door, the glass panels shattering and the wood splintering until it burst open abruptly and bounced against the wall.

Officer Jackson led the way inside, glass crunching under her feet. They’d been sent here after the family of the couple who lived here hadn’t been able to get in contact with them and neither of them had turned up at their workplaces or called in sick for several days. Any calls to the house had been unanswered and people were beginning to grow worried for their well-being. Both of the cars were parked on the drive and the neighbours hadn’t seen them leave the house since Wednesday evening. Personally, Sarah didn’t think that there was anything to worry about, but it was worth a check.

This opinion changed, however, as she stepped further into the house and let out a cry of alarm. “Harry, go check out that room,” she ordered, pointing out the door from which a dried trail of red fluid emerged. While he obeyed, she knelt down and touched the substance. It had made the carpet hard and it flaked onto the fingers.

“Officer Jackson!” an alarmed shout came from her colleague.

As soon as Sarah entered, she understood. The kitchen was awash with blood. The walls were streaked with it and the floor was a crimson sea. On the doorframe were marks that looked suspiciously as though fingers had tried to grab hold of it to stop their owner from being dragged out of the room. The second of the policemen had already left the house to radio for backup from the patrol car. It looked as though a homicide had taken place, but there was no time to wait for support. There was a slim chance that the victim might still be alive.

Sarah climbed the stairs carefully, following the trail of blood. She was about to follow it into one of the bedrooms when something caught her eye. She turned and saw a man exiting the second bedroom. He leaned against the doorframe and smiled at her in a vague sort of way. Sarah was instantly alert. He was as covered in blood as the kitchen had been, but didn’t appear to be injured.

“Are you David Halliday?” she asked in a professionally neutral tone. He nodded once in confirmation. “I’m Officer Jackson and this is Officer Granger,” she continued in the same voice, as though she didn’t even notice the blood splashed across his shirt. “Is your wife Angeline around?”

The man’s light coloured eyes lit up at the mention of his wife. “Oh yes, she’s in the bedroom,” he replied, gesturing to the room where the trail of blood ended. He had a dreamy, far away look on his face. “She’s been looking after the children. She’s so good with them. Now, when they cry, she sings them a lullaby and they fall asleep just like that.” Sarah frowned. She had been told that the Halliday couple were childless.

Instructing Officer Granger to stay with David, who seemed content to sigh and slide down the wall until he was sitting in the doorway, Sarah cautiously entered the master bedroom. The trail of blood led to a beautiful wardrobe on the left hand side of the room. The doors were shut. Knowing what she’d find, but having to look anyway, Sarah opened the doors with a cold, empty feeling in her stomach. Angeline’s pale, blood streaked arm slipped softly from her lap and hung unmoving in the afternoon light. Her body had been folded into a sitting position at the bottom of the wardrobe. Her throat was a gaping wound and her body was so drenched in blood that Sarah guessed with a cold certainty that she had been stabbed multiple times during some kind of violent frenzy. A soft rush of air left her lips as she raised her eyes from the morbid sight to a row of empty metal hangers hooked on the rail at the top of the wardrobe.