So the reason I’m telling you about all this is because one evening my friend Doug and I were heading home via this semi-secret passageway and while we were crossing behind the Smith’s house we heard this freaky weird squeal come from inside their back bedroom. It sounded like a cross between a scared pig and a pissed off cat. It was so strange a quick chill went down my spine. We both stopped and looked at each other, but neither of us wanted to say anything. Curious as to what it was, I found a small knothole in the fence and looked through it into the Smith’s back yard.

The back of their house was only about six feet from the fence and since it was early spring and somewhat warm, their bedroom window was open. I could see part of the room through the hole in the fence and after a few seconds I saw Mrs. Smith move by the window. She was carrying something wrapped up in a blanket and kind of bouncing it up and down, gentle-like. Then we heard that weird squeal again and I jumped ‘cause it seemed to come from inside the blanket Mrs. Smith was holding. I quickly backed away from the knothole and Doug took a peek, too.

He must have seen the same thing I did, ‘cause he turned to me and then we whispered to each other, almost at the same time. “Her baby ain’t dead.”

Then the baby—or whatever it was—started that hideous squealing again and Doug and I took off as fast as we could climb over the fences. When we finally came up behind my house we stopped and sat down in the dirt. Both of us were out of breath and… yeah, I’ll admit it, we were both scared, ‘cause we didn’t really understand what we had seen or heard. When we stopped panting and our hearts had slowed their panicked thumping, we looked at each other.

“Think we should tell anyone what we saw?” Doug asked.

“Are you crazy?” I said. “If our parents find out we were in someone else’s trash area, not to mention that we were spying on the Smith’s, we’ll both be grounded for the whole summer.”

Doug nodded. “Yeah, I guess,” he said and wiped sweat from his forehead. “So, what do you think made that weird noise?”

I personally thought it was Mrs. Smith’s suddenly undead baby which made that spooky wail. “I don’t know,” I told Doug. “Let’s just forget about it, okay. And don’t tell anyone, all right?”

“Yeah,” he said and stood up. “Don’t think anyone would believe me, anyway.” We went through the small gate from the trash area into my backyard and I walked with him over to the driveway gate.

“See ya tomorrow,” I said.

“Okay,” Doug said and moved slowly down the driveway toward the street.

I watched him for a few seconds, closed the big gate and went inside. It was hard for me to sit still at the dinner table and even harder to eat anything that night. After excusing myself I went to my room and curled up in bed. I couldn’t get that kid’s bone-chilling shriek out of my mind. And why did the Smith’s lie about their baby being dead? Then I remembered my parents talking about how older women’s babies were sometimes born with bad birth defects. Maybe the Smith kid had some really awful deformity that they were ashamed of and wanted to hide it from everyone. ‘Gripes,’ I thought, ‘what could be that bad?’ So naturally I had to find out.

I didn’t tell Doug about what I was going to do ‘cause he would have either wanted to come with me or he would have told someone. It was no big deal, really, but what I planned to do might get me into trouble and I didn’t want to risk Doug getting busted, too. So, every evening I could slip away for an hour or two, I climbed over the fences until I came to the Smith’s back yard and stayed there as long as I thought was safe, watching that bedroom window.

Sometimes the lights were off in the room or the window and curtains were closed. Every once in a while, though, the window was open and I could see Mrs. Smith and her ‘baby,’ although the kid was usually all wrapped up in a blanket, so I never got a good look at it. I couldn’t see the entire room through the knothole, so eventually I moved one of their metal trash cans over to the fence and quietly climbed on top of it. I was just able to look over the fence while on the can and thus had a good view of almost the entire room. It wasn’t the Smith’s bedroom, but was apparently a nursery, judging by a large crib in one corner. But the crib not only had bars on both sides but also across the top like a door that could be opened so they could get at the baby. It looked like a big cage on wheels.