I woke up later than I expected, the sun shining on my face through the only bedroom window not covered by a blind. Had Herbie not cried since…when? I sat up slowly and picked up the baby monitor. It was on, and I could see the black and white image of his crib, his small form still beneath the blue blanket my mother had given him. I began to feel uneasy as I thought back to the night before.
I…I remembered putting him down at eleven and then checking on him at midnight before heading to bed, but usually he would wake me up between three and four and again between six and eight. I looked at my phone. It was ten fifteen. Had he really slept through the night for once, or had I slept through him crying?
Or was something wrong?
Pulling back the sheets, I jumped up, my heart pounding in time with my steps as I ran down the hall to his room. The house was so silent, and when I went into the nursery, the instinct that something was wrong just grew stronger. The room felt empty and cold.
Looking over into the crib, I was reaching out to pull back the blanket when I stopped myself. I could already see the rise and fall of his chest, and his face was unblemished by discomfort or bad dreams. He was sleeping well and peacefully, and here I was about to wake him up instead of being grateful for a few hours peace.
I was about to ease back out and go make some coffee when I heard a funny little snoring sound. Herbie had never snored before, though I guessed there was a first time for everything, especially with a three-month old baby. Still, I felt a new twist of worry. What if he was getting sick, and that wasn’t a snore, it was a wheeze? Wincing at the idea of disturbing him, I gently pulled back the blanket and picked him up.
He didn’t stir, his expression not changing from the placid mask of someone lost deep in slumber. This worried me more, as he normally woke up as soon as I touched him, but I held my fear in check as I eased him to my shoulder and put my ear to his face.
It didn’t sound like a wheeze, but it wasn’t a snore either, exactly. It was a thinner, more rhythmic sound that grew quiet and then louder, but was always there. Still thinking about congestion, I lifted Herbie up a bit and put my ear to his chest. The sound was clearer here, a whirring thrum that seemed to vibrate from somewhere in his core. That wasn’t right at all. I needed to call the doctor and carry…
That’s when I felt the hard place on his back.
My fingers had just brushed it, but the wrongness of it was immediately obvious. Under his onesie, right in the middle of his back, was a long, flat hardness that was cool to the touch. What was that? Laying him back down on his stomach, I pulled the onesie down as my breath caught in my throat.
It was a coin slot.
A metal coin slot, like you might find on an old-fashioned machine at one of those antique arcades or fairs. I reached out and touched the edges of it, thinking somehow it had gotten stuck to him, but no. It was flush against the flesh of the baby’s back, hard brass grown seamlessly into soft, pink skin. My mind was reeling, torn between confusion and fear and the growing realization that Herbie still hadn’t woken up.
That’s when I noticed the small gray envelope jutting out from the tangle of blanket nearby. Plucking it out, I felt the weight of something small and hard inside, and when I opened it, a thin silver coin tumbled out into my palm. Still in shock, I turned it over in my hand, studying it. One side was embossed with the face of a smiling woman crowned with a corona of sunlight. The other side showed the same woman, her thin face hard and sinister as she glared up at the moon. My eyes went back to Herbie and then to the envelope, where I could see a thin line of cramped writing on the inside of the upper flap.
This is better. It’s coin-operated.
I started to shudder, the envelope fluttering from my hand as I picked Herbie up again and began to rub his face and his arms, his legs and his feet, desperately crooning for him to wake up, to get up now. It was time to wake up and quit playing this joke. He just lay limply in my arms, purring that strange rusty-sounding snore without stirring at all.
I put him back down, tears blurring my vision as I tried to decide what to do. I should call 911. He must be sick, or I was crazy, and either way, we needed help. But…what if this was real? And what if using the coin fixed things somehow?
I hadn’t remembered dropping the coin, but after a moment of panic I found it on top of the blanket, gleaming dully as I held it in my hand. This was all insane, like some kind of nightmare. But maybe if I played by the rules, I’d wake up and everything would be okay.
So I turned Herbie back over and tugged down his onesie again. The coin slot was still there, cool to the touch and solidly real. Holding my breath, I put the coin up to the opening and dropped it in.
There was a muffled clink! and then the whirring snore grew louder for a moment before turning into a yawning sigh. Herbie turned his head and tried to push himself over as he began to wake. I let out a gasp and picked him up, looking into his face and finding his eyes. He was looking back at me, his expression drowsy but interested as he gave me what might have been a slight smile.
He was okay. He was okay and I was just messed up or…but no. The coin slot was still back there. And I could still hear a low-frequency whirring coming from inside him somewhere. Not the wet beating of a heart, but the dry orbits of an intricate clockwork.
My skin went cold as I eased the thing back down into the crib. It tried to hold on to me, but I gently pushed its grasping hands away. I…I didn’t know what this thing was, but it wasn’t my baby. Turning, I started out of the room. I’d get my phone and call Mom and then I’d go looking for Herbie. Maybe he was still in the house, but I had a feeling he was gone. Someone had taken him and left that envelope, left that thing in…
“Mommy?”
I froze, turning around slowly as Herbie’s face peered at me over the edge of the crib. How was that possible? It would have had to jump several inches and pull itself up to the edge, and Herbie was a long time from that or being able to form words.
“Mommy?” The tone was harder now, almost accusing, and my baby’s face was drawing down into a pouting frown.
I felt anger mixing with my fear as I took a step forward. “I’m not your mommy. Whatever you are, you aren’t mine.” The thing froze for a moment, and I had the thought that maybe it had broken or wound down. But then its cheek jumped as it began to pull itself over the edge. “I am. I’m your baby.” Grunting, it tugged its belly over the railing and flopped down onto the ground. Despite myself, I felt a moment of horrified panic that it had hurt itself. A moment later, the panic turned to terror as its limbs rotated with a whir and it flipped itself over and began to crab-walk toward me. “Come hold me, Mommy.”
I was back-peddling now, trying to close the door before it reached me, but it was too fast, leaping forward through the closing crack and landing on my chest. It squealed in my face with a sound like grinding gears as sparks glowed from somewhere down in its throat. Screaming, I grabbed it and slammed it into the wall and then the floor before kicking it away from me.
The meat of it was ruined now, the fleshy covering ripped and torn in a dozen places to reveal bits of gleaming metal and coiled wire, gears and axles flailing disconsolately as their places in the orderly whole were disrupted and destroyed. It was dying now, but even still it called to me, crawling to me as it clicked together pink gums made of thin strips of beaten tin.
“Mo…my. I’m your…bab…nowww…”
I was terrified to approach it, but my revulsion and rage was growing again, and I needed to make sure it was dead and stayed that way. Darting forward, I stomped on it, once, twice, and then a final third time, and that’s when the silver coin popped free from the mechanical ruin, rolling down the hall a few feet before spiraling and falling down, the evil face of the moonlight queen glaring up into the sky or perhaps toward me.
I was half-crazy as I searched the nursery and then the house for Herbie. When I saw no sign of him, I called Mom, screaming and crying into the phone before hanging up. I’d upset her, but it couldn’t be helped. She sounded as confused as I was, but I felt sure she’d call the police like I asked. I had other things to do.
I’d had the thought that I could go back and look at the recorded footage from the baby monitor. See what had happened to Herbie and when. My hands were shaking as I picked it up from beside the bed and tapped on the screen. It always kept the last 24 hours, so I jumped back ten hours and then started fast-forwarding through the footage. I found what I was looking for at 3:15.
A pair of small figures appeared from the shadows in the far corner of the room. There was no door or window there, so I wasn’t sure where they’d really come from, but I was more concerned with what they were doing. Helping each other up, they pulled themselves over into the crib. One of them scooped up Herbie even as the other was opening a dark sack and pulling his replacement out onto the bed. Weeping, I watched as Herbie began to wake and struggle, a tiny, furred hand covering his mouth before he could let out a frightened wail. The other had placed the blanket over the fake and was now opening up the sack again even as the one holding my baby stuffed Herbie inside. In a moment, they were back over the side of the crib and gone into the dark.
I dropped the monitor onto the bed and ran back into the nursery to check it. Maybe there was a hole in the wall or a secret door. Something I could use to follow wherever they had taken my baby. I just needed to check every inch of the…
Nursery.
Except it wasn’t a nursery anymore. The room was bare—no crib, no toys or changing table, no stacks of books or rocking chair. Even the walls were the stark grey they’d been when I first moved in two years before. How was any of this happening?
Stumbling back into the hall, I saw that the ruined baby-thing was gone too. There was no sign of its broken bits or torn disguise. There was no sign of anything, not even…
The coin.
My heart leapt as I saw it still dully gleaming from its resting place on the carpet, the woman’s face still harsh and displeased in the silver moonlight of some distant night. But that didn’t matter. What mattered was that it was proof. Proof of what had happened. Proof that someone had taken my Herbie.
I let out a small scream as the doorbell rang. The police! They were here and I could show them the coin and the video and they’d help me get my baby back.
When I opened the door, I saw it was Mom instead, her face drawn and pale as she looked at me. “I…Brenda…are you all right?”
I stared at her, incredulous. “Of course not! They took him! They took him and we have to get him back! Did you call the cops?”
Her face drew down further into a frown. “No…No, honey. I didn’t. You weren’t making any sense. You were talking about a baby? What baby?”
Stepping back, I felt a chill run up my spine. “My baby. Herbie. They took him.”
She followed me inside, shaking her head slightly. “Baby, I don’t know what you’re talking about. You don’t have a baby. You never have.”
I could barely breathe. “That…That’s not true. I have a baby. Little Herbie. What’s wrong with you?” I started to cry again. “They…they took him, and tried to trick me or trade with me. They gave me a little mechanical baby that looked like him, but it wasn’t him, and then it attacked me, and then I saw them take him, and the room was a nursery, but now its not, and I need you to know this. I need you to remember and help me find him.”
My mother stepped forward and swept me up in a hug, stroking my hair as I wept against her shoulder. “There, there. I think you’re sick, honey. We need to get you some help. It’ll be okay.” I’d wrapped my arms around her neck, but now I started to recoil. How could she not remember him? I was still pulling away when my fingertips brushed against something in the back of her neck.
It was a coin slot.
I froze, staring at her as she smiled at me, her eyes jumping slightly to the left and right as she watched me, holding me tighter with the softly ratcheting ticks of some internal metronome. “This is better. Just accept it.”
She was too strong for me to push away, so I dug into my pocket instead. Found the coin that rested there, caressing the queen’s cheek as I pulled it free and reached around its neck to the coin slot imbedded into whatever it called a spine. I saw its eyes widen as I dropped the coin in.
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