Hey everyone, I never thought I’d be one of those people typing away in the dead of night, looking for help in the uncanny corners of the internet, but here I am. A desperate man. My wife - let’s call her Emily - has been acting, well, strange. More than strange. Frightening, in a way. But let me backtrack a little.
When Emily was a child, she went missing in the woods near our hometown. She was gone for two days before they found her, seemingly unscathed. She never spoke much of it. I always thought it was trauma, you know? She was safe now, with me, and that was all that mattered. We’ve been together for five years, living a content - if somewhat unconventional - life.
Emily has always had peculiar rules. Rules I accepted as part of loving her. I always have to knock before entering a room she’s in - even if it’s just our bedroom. We’ve never taken a bath or shower together, something that always struck me as odd for a married couple. And she insists on sleeping with the lights off, so the room is as dark as a moonless night. I’ve asked her about these quirks, but she brushes me off, always with a hint of fear in her eyes. She is also deeply afraid of lightning- whenever there is a thunderstorm she hides in the cellar, whimpering and crying while holding onto me like a scared child.
Here’s where things take a turn for the unsettling. A few months back, local authorities discovered a child’s skeleton in the same woods where Emily had gone missing all those years ago. It was a gruesome sight, the bones gnawed at as if by animals. The news seemed to hit Emily hard. It was as though the colour drained from her face when she heard it.
Since then, she’s been different. Lost in her thoughts, quiet, almost ghost-like. I’ve tried to talk to her about it, but she just looks at me with these distant, glassy eyes and changes the subject. She’s been spending more time in the rooms alone, the ones I need to knock to enter.
The thing is, we’ve been trying to have a baby for the longest time. Fertility issues, they said. But soon after the skeleton was found, Emily told me she was pregnant. It should have been a joyous moment, but there was something off in her expression when she told me. It wasn’t excitement or joy. It was fear.
And it’s starting to scare me. The way she caresses her belly with a vacant stare in her eyes, how she flinches when I touch her as if something inside her is stirring uncomfortably. Her peculiar rules seem more rigid now, almost frantic. And it’s driving me mad.
I don’t know what’s going on. I love Emily, and I want to support her, but I can’t shake the feeling that something is terribly wrong. I’m worried for her, for our unborn child, and, honestly, for myself too.
A couple of months ago we visited a therapist - a kindly older woman who promised to help us navigate whatever was going on. I was hopeful, even a little relieved. But Emily? Emily was as quiet as ever.
She answered the therapist’s questions with monosyllabic responses. No, she wasn’t feeling different. Yes, everything was fine. She didn’t seem to understand that everything wasn’t fine, not by a long shot. Or maybe she was hiding something? I don’t know. All I know is that my once vibrant wife has been replaced by this silent, hollowed-out version.
After the therapy session, we drove home in uncomfortable silence. The radio was our only distraction, and that’s when the news broke - the skeleton found in the woods was about twenty years old, the same time Emily went missing. A shiver went down my spine as I glanced at Emily. She stared blankly at the road ahead, her face pale under the harsh street lights.
What does it mean? The timing is so uncanny it can’t be a mere coincidence, can it? Who was this child? And why does its discovery affect Emily so profoundly?
Later that week, we went for our first ultrasound appointment. A milestone that should’ve brought joy and excitement, yet the atmosphere was thick with anxiety.
The ultrasound tech was a cheerful woman, oblivious to our underlying tension. She applied the cold gel to Emily’s belly and the screen flickered to life. But what it showed…it wasn’t what I was expecting.
The baby - our baby - looked odd. Almost distorted. But before I could get a good look, the tech quickly reassured us that it was likely a technical glitch. She laughed it off, saying these old machines tend to act up sometimes.
But I saw it. I saw Emily’s reaction before the screen was turned away. It wasn’t surprise. It wasn’t confusion. It was recognition, followed swiftly by dread.
I can’t shake the image of our distorted baby from my mind. I can’t stop thinking about the 20-year-old skeleton. It feels like we’re being drawn into something dark and sinister, something that ties Emily’s past to our present.
Every day, the situation is escalating, and Emily’s behavior becomes more peculiar, more concerning. As much as I wish this was just my imagination running wild, it’s not. The oddities are real, and they’re happening right in front of me.
Emily has stopped going outside during the day. No morning walks, no grocery trips, no visits to her parents - nothing. It’s like she has developed a sudden aversion to sunlight. She spends her days holed up in our house, working from a makeshift office in our cellar. Emily has always been a workaholic, but her obsession with her work seems to have become a tool for her to avoid the sunlight, to hide in the shadows.
Every window in our house is now covered with heavy, thick curtains. A seemingly overnight change. Emily claims it’s to protect the baby from the harmful sunlight. I’ve tried explaining that a little sun won’t harm the baby, but she insists, with a fervor in her eyes that I’ve never seen before.
And then there are the nightly walks. As soon as the sun sets, Emily becomes restless, almost agitated. She heads out, irrespective of the weather, for hour-long walks. On those long, unsettling strolls, I accompany her - out of love, out of worry, out of a husband’s duty. The heavy rain pelting us, the eerie silence of the night, the unspoken fears hanging between us… it’s all incredibly surreal. The only thing that will keep her inside is thunder, which she seems to have grown even more afraid of than before.
Her food cravings are another story altogether. They’re beyond what any pregnancy guide ever warned me about. Raw fish, of all things, seems to be her favourite. She devours them like a starved animal. The smell fills the house, making my stomach churn. And it’s not just fish; raw vegetables, rare steaks, almost anything she can eat in its most uncooked form.
I don’t know how to help her. I don’t know what’s causing this. All I have are endless questions and growing fears.
The threads connecting Emily’s past, her present, the child’s skeleton, our odd-looking baby in the ultrasound - they’re all still loose, making no sense. I feel like I’m trapped in a puzzle, a horror story that’s slowly unfolding, and I’m right at its center.
My attempts to make sense of the situation seem to be futile. Emily’s peculiarities keep escalating, her condition worsening. Migraines, an inexplicable hatred for cutlery, a loathing for the sound of church bells. It’s all spiralling out of control.
Emily has been suffering from intense migraines. They’re brutal, leaving her incapacitated, huddled in a corner of our darkened home. It’s heart-wrenching to see her in such pain.
Strangely, she claims the sound of the church bells exacerbates her headaches. The church, located a couple of blocks away, has never been an issue before. But now, every toll seems to send a wave of pain through her. She writhes, clutching her head, begging for the sound to stop.
One day, I made the mistake of leaving a pair of scissors on the table. Emily’s reaction was… inexplicable. She shrieked - a blood-curdling sound - and refused to use the table until I had discarded the scissors. In her throes of fear, she demanded that I get rid of most of our cutlery. Her reasoning? We could use plastic instead.
Yet, even with the plastic cutlery, she prefers to use her hands, tearing into her meals with a feral intensity. The sight of Emily, my once poised and elegant wife, reduced to such primal eating habits is both alarming and heartbreaking.
Our unborn child continues to grow within her, but Emily adamantly refuses further check-ups. Her refusal only fuels my worry about the strange ultrasound image we saw. The picture of our distorted baby still haunts me, and her refusal to follow up only deepens my fears.
In my desperation, I suggested psychiatric help, thinking maybe this is some extreme form of prenatal depression or anxiety. But the mere mention of a psychiatrist triggered a terrifying reaction in her. She became livid, shrieking with such ferocity that I truly felt scared of her for the first time.
I’m at my wits’ end. I’m losing my wife to this unknown horror. I’m stuck in a nightmarish limbo, unable to understand, unable to help, and unable to escape. Please, if anyone has experienced anything remotely similar or has any insight into what might be happening, I beg you, reach out. I fear for Emily’s safety, the wellbeing of our unborn child, and, in my darker moments, my own.
I need help. I need answers. Please.
UPDATE
Well, I suppose I should begin by stating that I’m grateful for all of your input. It really warms my heart to know that there are kind- hearted people out there, beyond the confines of my present nightmare, who cares and wants to help.
I dont know what to believe anymore. I pride myself on being a rational person but at this point I’m starting to question whether I’m really being rational or just obstinate in my refusal to entertain some of the more… fanciful theories you have proposed.
I contacted the psychiatrist again and basically harassed him until he agreed to come check on her. A few hours later a blue Volvo pulled up in the driveway and a shortish rotund man with thick spectacles emerged. He was visibly disturbed by the state of the house, though Emily refused to let him enter the cellar. Other than that she seemed a lot more calm and collected while he was here and he ended up attributing her behaviour to “pre- partum depression”. He wrote a prescription for sertraline and said a nurse would call about a check- up in a week or so.
As he left Emily stared at me as if I had tried to kill her but did not comment on the visit. She wrote a list of groceries for me to purchase and while I feel awful about leaving her alone I must confess it feels liberating to get away from her, away from the dark and stinking house, and away from the labyrinth of the macabre my life seems to have become.
The supermarket felt… normal. Fluorescent lights, bored shoppers and a cardboard cutout of a smiling chicken promising affordable prices for free- range eggs; for a while it was as if my present situation was just a bad dream, and that I would soon get home and find my wonderful, if a bit quirky, wife back to her normal self. However the shopping list she had written served as a grim reminder of the futility of such daydreams. Meat, fish and poultry was apparently on the menu, in large quantities and with little else besides.
As I pulled up on our driveway the sun had set and I felt my blood go ice cold as I noticed two green spots where my cars headlights were reflected in a pair of eyes. My wife was standing on the small staircase leading up to the door, putting up what first appeared to be a windchime.
A closer inspection made it obvious it was made out of hollow bones. She smiled as she saw me, and though I embraced her as she moved in for a hug I could not let go of my trepidations. She whispered something to me, and I replied.
Human eyes do not reflect light, not in the way hers just had. I least I dont think they do. I suppose it may have been a trick if the light, or a figment of my overworked brain. Maybe there is nothing strange going on. But I dont believe that anymore. She looks different but I dont know of that is just the lack of light, the pregnancy, her strange diet or some combination.
As she tore into a raw chicken I had bought with almost animalistic zeal, I tried to call her parents albeit without a reply. I’ve tried calling them a few times without getting a response during the last few days. I hope they are alright, though I wonder if their refusal to answer has something to do with the skeleton of the 8 year old girl.
She is in the cellar now, doing Who- Knows- What. I think I have made a decision. I am going to go talk to Emily, and I’m not going to knock before I enter. I dont know what I will see, but I have to do it.
I need to convince myself my wife is not a monster.