The Voice in the Monitor

The Hales told me their daughter had finally agreed to sleep at her grandmother's for the first time, and I remember being relieved. Overnight jobs are easier when the house is empty. You are only listening for pipes, wind, and the old settling noises every expensive home seems to make after midnight.

Mrs. Hale still left the baby monitor on the kitchen island by force of habit. She laughed when she handed it to me. "If it crackles, ignore it. We never figured out how to switch the parent unit all the way off."

At 1:13 a.m., while I was wiping tea from the counter, the monitor hissed and a child's voice said, "She is looking for her room."

I carried it upstairs thinking the battery was dying and picking up interference from some neighbor's nursery. The pink room at the end of the hall was exactly as they had left it: stuffed rabbit on the pillow, moon night-light, closet cracked an inch. The crib sheets were smooth and cold.

"Hello?" I said, because fear makes idiots of people who know better.

The monitor answered in the same little voice, clearer this time. "Not my room. Her room."

I checked every bedroom, then the security app on my phone. Front door closed. Back patio locked. No movement in the downstairs cameras except me passing room to room with the monitor clutched against my chest like I could smother the sound.

At 2:02 a.m., the monitor switched on again. A woman was singing now, very low and badly, pausing every few seconds as if listening for instructions. The melody drifted from the speaker and from somewhere behind the nursery wall at the same time.

The wall backed onto the attic stairs. I opened the narrow door, pointed my flashlight up, and caught the shine of two eyes between the rafters. I thought, for one clean second, that I was looking at a raccoon. Then the face leaned forward into the beam and I saw lipstick smeared far outside a human mouth.

I slammed the door, shoved a chair under the knob, and called Mrs. Hale. She answered on the third ring, breathless, road noise loud behind her.

"You need to leave," she said before I spoke. "Do not go outside if the singing is already inside the house."

"What are you talking about?" I asked.

Her voice broke. "We didn't send Lucy to her grandmother's. Lucy died in that room last winter. We hired you because the last sitter heard her talking back."

The monitor clicked again. Very close to my ear, Lucy whispered, "She found my room. Now she wants yours."