A Lost Child Cries In The Night
This story begins back in 1998. At that time I had moved into a small two bedroom flat on the downstairs part of a larger apartment complex. To say some of my neighbours were, shall we say 'interesting' would be an understatement. Within the first week of my living there an upstairs meth lab blew up, sending shock waves through the building powerful enough to rattle the walls, and send a hard thump straight through my chest. And then of course there were the never ending rounds of domestics and police attendances for yet another neighbourhood dispute that apparently could only be fixed by the use of fists and a constant stream of curse words.
It wasn't ideal, but it was clean, and it was cheap and it had been available for immediate occupancy.
Apart from exploding meth labs, and neighbourhood fisticuffs, one of the first thing I noticed, that seemed out of the ordinary, was the reaction of my cat when it came to the apartment's second bedroom. He was quite literally terrified. At one point, thinking perhaps the previous tenants had also owned a cat, and perhaps there was a lingering scent he was picking up on, I carried him into the room and tried to cuddle and comfort him to show there was nothing be to worried about, this was part of his territory now. Needless to say I never forced him to enter that room again, not with the frantic and desperate struggling he had displayed trying to get away from it. The fear extended to the point that I had to make sure the door to the room, now converted into more a junk storage area, was kept shut at all times. Even then my cat would still approach the door with caution, or make a quick run for it as he passed by the room on his way to a safer part of our abode.
I too felt something whenever I entered that particular room; a sense of heavy, cloying sadness, like the full weight of sorrow bearing down on my shoulders. Even I became reluctant to open the door, let alone step across the threshold.
The one night I was lying on the lounge in the living room watching TV, when I heard the distinct sound of a baby crying. I turned the TV off and pricked my ears to the source; as far as I knew nobody in the building had a newborn, nor was I aware of any new tenants who had moved in. The sound was unusual to me, perhaps someone was baby sitting? I got up and went outside, walking the perimeter of both apartment blocks several times to no avail.
Okay, so the sound wasn't coming from one of the flats. My next stop was to walk the full length of the street the apartment block was situated on; up and down both sides, listening carefully for any whisper of a sound that may have been carried on the night air. Again I heard nothing.
I returned to my flat somewhat puzzled, and frustrated as to where this sound was emanating from, especially because I could still hear it, plain as day. I knew it wasn't someone with their TV on too loud, I had checked for that; I knew no one in the apartment block had a baby crying; I had checked for that too. There seemed to be no logical explanation for what I was experiencing - and then I realised the sound was coming from the second bedroom. With my heart pounding against the wall of my chest I did my best to start rationalising the situation, "I took a lot of a drugs at the time, perhaps this was like a flashback of some sort", "Maybe I smoked one too many cones earlier in the night", "Auditory and visual disturbances weren't entirely unknown to me, even without the additional help of certain substances, so maybe that was it?" By the time I was done I had almost managed to convinced myself that such theorising was all true; yet I still went to bed with a heaviness weighing on my chest, and a lump of fear in my throat.
Two weeks later the child's cries had all but been forgotten. I chalked it up to just "one of those things", too much partying combined with an over active imagination. Then one day, ladened with bags of groceries that were far too heavy to carry, I decided to hail a taxi at the local shopping centre rather than walk the albeit short distance home. The driver was polite enough, friendly even; when we pulled into the driveway of the apartment block he asked me which number flat I lived in. I told him, and pointed in it's general direction, "Number 2B, just over on that side of the building there." That's when he said something that sent a shiver down my spine.
"Yeah, it's a real shame about the family who lived their before. I used to pick them up and drop them off from the shopping centre all the time, until they moved out. Such a a sad situation, they had a 6 month old daughter who died of SIDS in the second bedroom."
"Oh wow, that must have been so difficult for them, I can't even imagine," I replied as steadily as I could, before taking my leave.
To this day I have been unable to find any reasonable, or logical explanation for what I experienced, but I know what I heard, and somewhere out there I'm sure a lost child still cries in the night.