The Childbirth of 1785

It was the summer of 1785, and the air in the small farmhouse outside Boston hung thick with heat and fear. Inside, Mary Whitlock, barely twenty years old, lay trembling on a narrow bed as waves of pain tore through her body.

She had been in labor for nearly twenty hours. The midwife, an older woman with tired eyes and hands that trembled from exhaustion, whispered prayers between each contraction. Outside, the world was quiet—only the faint chirp of crickets and the creak of the farmhouse boards broke the silence.

Mary’s husband, Thomas, paced the hall like a ghost. He had been sent outside several times, but he couldn’t stay away. Every scream, every muffled cry from behind the door drew him back like a magnet.

“Please,” he begged through the wood. “Tell me she’s alright.”

The midwife didn’t answer.

Hours passed. Candles melted into puddles of wax. The room stank of sweat and blood.

Then, just before dawn, a final, desperate cry echoed through the house. It was followed by a sound so soft it almost didn’t seem real—a baby’s first breath.

The midwife exhaled in relief. “It’s a girl,” she whispered.

But as she lifted the child, her face drained of color.

Thomas burst into the room, ignoring the protests. “Let me see her!”

The midwife hesitated, clutching the small, slippery body to her chest. “Thomas… maybe it’s best you don’t.”

“What do you mean?”

The old woman didn’t answer. She turned slightly, revealing the infant’s face—and Thomas stumbled backward. The child’s skin was pale as wax, her eyes already open, unfocused, and black as pitch.

Mary stirred weakly. “Let me hold her,” she whispered.

The midwife obeyed. But the moment the baby touched her mother’s chest, the candles flickered. Every flame in the room shrank to a dull ember.

“Thomas,” Mary gasped, her voice cracking. “She’s… cold.”

The midwife reached out instinctively—and froze. The baby wasn’t breathing.

No sound came from her mouth, no movement from her chest. Only those black eyes stared upward, wide and unblinking.

Thomas took a step closer, then stopped. The air in the room had turned icy. His breath misted in front of him.

“Dear God,” he whispered.

Then, suddenly—a sound. Not from the child, but from the walls. A low groaning, like wood twisting under enormous weight. The midwife dropped her lantern. The light went out.

Mary screamed.

When Thomas relit the candle, his wife lay still. The baby was gone.

They searched for hours—under the bed, behind the dresser, even outside in the freezing dawn—but there was no sign of the infant. Only a single wet handprint, impossibly small, smeared on the windowpane from the inside.

Days later, the townsfolk came to bury Mary Whitlock. They said she had died of exhaustion, her child stillborn. Thomas said nothing to correct them.

But that night, when he returned to the empty farmhouse, he heard it again—the faint sound of a baby crying from somewhere upstairs.

When he climbed the stairs, the noise stopped.

He entered the bedroom, heart pounding. The cradle by the window rocked gently on its own.

And lying inside, swaddled in bloodstained cloth, was the baby.

Her eyes were still open.

And she was smiling.