This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/keanojeano on 2024-09-10 23:06:12+00:00.
It’s been two weeks since what happened.
The cold moonlight glistening off my wife’s gleaming smile and glistening off her black orbs of eyes.
It cradled in her arms.
Its eyes, vacuous yet infinite, hosting some primordial presence, its origin not of this world. I had taken a glance into the void of the eyes, and something looked back at me.
The night replays in my head every waking moment since then in such intense detail. I had considered the possibility I was just going plain insane. I had a loving wife and child, and my mom lied to me. There was never any miscarriage - there was no Daryl-to-be a year ago, just Daryl from four months ago. That night must have been some horrible, hyper-realistic dream.
Of course, I was bullshitting myself. It was all too real. All too vivid.
As I maintained my facade around Clara and the entity, my mind would race with questions, but one question raised itself higher among others: What the fuck happened between the miscarriage a year ago, and four months ago?
Any attempt at remembering resulted in the same mundane memories resurfacing: working; watching movies with Clara at home; generally just living life as normal. When asked, Clara would say the same. Yet there was some cloudiness - a murkiness - above it all. A film that hung over it, blurring the image of my memory. The mundane had blended together in such a nondescript way, and no single event stood out from its fog. I found it hard to believe absolutely nothing of note took place in that time. And then poof, suddenly we have a child.
I then got the idea that whatever this thing is, if it could brainwash my wife, who’s to say it can’t alter memory too?
I had checked my phone gallery between that time. I figured this would be a decent way to find anything, as I’m not the sort to go through old pictures in my gallery often. All the pictures were that of the mundane I described before: pretty clouds, good food, me and Clara doing what husband and wife do. But Clara looked off. Her smiles looked sad. Forced. Some deep sadness had burrowed itself into her eyes. The kind of sadness that transcends expression. I could feel it when I looked at her, even through the screen. This wasn’t definitive, though. That sadness was likely spawned from the miscarriage, but I was still operating on assumption.
There had to be something in the house to prove the miscarriage - a doctor’s report, pictures, anything. I was hoping for anything real and substantial to pierce the fog in my head. I checked older medical documents from last year’s 8th of May, which would have been Daryl’s original date of birth. No records indicative of a miscarriage or complications whatsoever. Did it make Clara destroy the documents? It wasn’t out of the question, seeing as how much of a grip it had over her already.
And then I found it.
A Polaroid picture stashed away in a drawer in the bedroom.
It was that of a starry night sky, a brilliant white moon in its centre. Silhouettes of pine trees bordered the frame of the picture, faintly illuminated by a warm orange glow, likely from a campfire.
It was at that moment that the fog cleared. The veil obscuring my memory had been torn apart, and all it took was a single Polaroid picture.
That night, me and Clara went camping in the woods. It was one of her favourite activities before the miscarriage. She was so stricken with grief after the miscarriage that she had relegated herself to two places: her office, and her home. I hoped this trip would bring some life back in her eyes. She always loved the beauty of the natural world.
We hiked the trail until we reached where we planned to make camp. A cozy clearing, surrounded by magnificent pine trees. We set up our tent and put together a modest campfire beside it along with a convenient log nearby which would serve as seating. We threw in some loose dead wood to serve as kindling. As the sun began to set, me and Clara sat on the log, her head on my shoulder, my head against hers, bundled in the same blanket that we would bundle “Daryl” in. We watched the fire dance as it crackled and snapped. Clara let out a relieved, relaxed sigh, as if everything would be alright in the end as she burrowed her head into me. We would stay there, just sitting, for a while. I remember thinking how I wouldn’t mind just staying like that, forever.
“You wanna talk about what’s on your mind?” I said, stroking her hair.
“Just hoping that one day I’ll be able to go back to normal. That I’ll be able to feel like something wasn’t ripped straight out of my chest. That this empty pit will ever be filled again. I… I just wanted to right by Daryl so, so bad… And now, I may never be able to have a child. Ever.”
“Clara, I-”
“But I still have you.”
She looked up at me. Her eyes, full of that light again. And a smile. A genuine, warm smile that could melt a glacier. She leaned in to give me a peck on the lips, and continued to rest against me. We looked to the sky that was now a tapestry of black speckled with white. And in the middle of it all, the moon, hanging proud and regal over us. That was when I took the picture that made me remember all this.
Before we dozed off by the fire, as cozy as we were, we figured it would be best to sleep in the tent. We dragged ourselves, half-asleep, from the campfire into the tent and laid ourselves to bed for the night.
It was a peaceful night’s sleep.
Until it wasn’t.
A loud crash from what sounded like just outside our tent woke me and Clara up. I was still stunned, laying down in my sleeping bag as Clara jolted up and went to investigate. By the time I made my way out of the tent, Clara was standing right beside it.
An impact crater right where our campfire was. A pale, perfectly spherical object no bigger than a beach ball lay embedded into the earth at its centre. Clara stood over it, staring at it. Unmoving.
“Clara, what is that?!”
“He’s… beautiful…”
She began to walk towards the object, arms outstretched.
“Clara, don’t! Get away from it!”
I ran towards her, grabbed her by the shoulders and turned her away and towards me.
Her eyes were black pearls. She wore that same content smile she had that night.
“Why would I run away… from our child?”
I don’t know if the sheer shock weakened my grip, or if in that moment Clara had gained some otherworldly strength, but she effortlessly ripped herself away from my grip, and continued into the crater, arms still outstretched as she made her way down its slopes.
The orb began to hover in response to Clara’s approach, levitating at most 5 feet off the ground.
It began to reshape itself, twisting, contorting, and folding over itself in ways non-euclidean. In ways that defied logic and physics. Its texture shifting from a glossy metallic to that more akin to human skin. It’s like it had just changed itself on a wholly molecular level. As it continued to morph into its perfect, final shape, I could feel a strange ache in the back of my head as I continued to look at it. As if something was probing my mind, digging around. Searching for something. Even remembering it now, I feel that similar ache in the back of my head. A magnetism stopped me from looking away, and the ache got worse. The object took the shape of a newborn baby, of “Daryl”, small and frail, still hovering above the ground. Clara pulled off the blanket that was still wrapped around her, and gently swaddled “Daryl” in it.
She turned slowly to face me. It was just like that night. Her face, bathed in moonlight. Her black, abyssal eyes. “Daryl”, staring straight into me, with those eyes that contained something unfeeling yet sinister deep within.
It took all I had to look away, to go against this force pulling my gaze towards “Daryl”. I could feel my psyche breaking, who I was, and all common sense, being overwritten by some other power. Visions of cataclysm seeped in through my mind. A world in flames. A pale orb resembling the moon above it all.
Every synapse fired off, every nerve shot with pain, as I ripped my gaze away from the entity. The shock made me pass out, and collapse onto the floor, unconscious.
That was it. The moment my memory broke. Damage done from interrupting the entity’s attempt at controlling me.
It was also the moment I had become a father.
The next day, I woke up to Clara and “Daryl” seated at the table, ready for breakfast. I assumed that this was my life, after all, why would I question it? I always wanted a loving wife, and a beautiful baby boy. Even if I had no memory of the night before, and even if the past 9 months were a blur. This was happiness.
And now, 4 months later, I wish I could have maintained that ignorance. My wife was having her deepest desires exploited by some eldritch being.
And I have no idea what the fuck to do.