The Voice in the Night

The sounds entered my consciousness slowly, vaguely. A child was crying somewhere in the house. Blearily hauling myself out of bed, I stumbled down the hall. The cries seemed fainter now.

I checked Baby E's room. She stirred softly in her sleep, her breathing briefly quickening, then becoming regular again. No sobbing there.

I pulled the door silently behind me, leaving it open a crack to avoid a sound. I couldn't hear the crying now, but went to check on the older girls anyway.

They, too, were sound asleep, sprawled across their beds like abandoned marionettes. I tucked the covers over their splayed limbs, brushed a strand of hair from MM's eyes, and took a book out of AJ's sleeping hands. They didn't even stir.

Back in my own bed, I wondered what I had heard. Maybe I had dreamed the sobs. Then I heard Baby E fussing. My nocturnal wanderings had awakened her. Was it possible that my motherly instincts had thought I heard her crying because she was about to wake up? Or had I heard something else?

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The next day, while the girls were having quiet time, I heard the murmur of a child's voice nearby. But when I checked they were both quietly reading books in their beds. Baby E was asleep.

Another time it was a woman's voice, softly singing a lullaby. I thought maybe the CD player had gotten turned on downstairs, but when I looked for the source of the music it disappeared.

The sounds were faint and elusive. I heard them only when the house was quiet. Sometimes I would hear them downstairs, but more frequently in the bedroom. I shrugged them off as sounds from outside, from the television, from someone playing a radio in the street, or from the girls playing. But a nagging feeling told me that my explanations didn't really explain the sounds I heard.

Most frequently, it was the sobbing at night. I would be awakened by the sound of a child crying and go to check on the girls, but they would all be sleeping peacefully. Nothing explained that. Nothing that made sense, anyway.

Was I dreaming it? I was the only one who seemed to hear it. But it seemed so real. Was I imagining things? Or was there really some unknown thing weeping in the dark?

Then one night it was DH who nudged me awake. "Baby E is crying," he said, "Should I go get her?"

"I'll go," I said. Prying myself from between the sheets, I sat up. The green light on the clock dimly lit the room. 5:00 a.m. Baby E had slept much longer than usual, I thought, as I listened to her crying and stirring in her crib.

Then I realized that the voice was not quite right, the articulation too discrete.

The little voice wailed, "Ma-ma, ma-ma, ma-ma. Da-da. Da-da."

Baby E doesn't say Ma-ma like that.

But it was definitely a baby's voice. The crying escalated, more intense but still quiet and clear in the night: "Ma-ma-ma-ma-ma!"

I went to check. As I expected, all three girls were asleep.

What, then, was crying?

Then I identified the source of the sound.

The baby monitor.

Suddenly I thought I recognized the voice. It sounded like the 1-year-old girl who lives across the cul-de-sac.

Our receiver must have been picking up the frequency from a neighbor's baby monitor. There must be at least 4 or 5 monitors in use within a block or so of our home.

Sure enough, when I called the next day, the neighbors across the street verified that their baby girl had awakened at 5 a.m. that morning. They had recently changed the frequency on their monitor to avoid interference with the telephone.

We've changed the frequency on our monitor now. The eerie sobbing no longer haunts our nights.

But I can't help but wonder if another neighbor's home has gained a ghost.