The Baby Crying at Midnight

Everyone in the town agreed on one rule: If you hear the baby crying at night,

do not open your door. It didn’t matter if you lived alone. It didn’t matter

if you didn’t have a baby. And it especially didn’t matter if the crying sounded

familiar. The crying always started after midnight. Soft at first. Then louder.

Desperate. Right outside your door. New people never listened.

One night, a family moved into the old house at the end of the street. No one warned them

in time. At 12:43 a.m., the crying began. The mother sat up in bed,

heart racing. “Do you hear that?” she whispered. Her husband nodded. “Someone left a