Trauma doesn't arrive like a storm.
It arrives like echoes.
Small. Quiet. Constant.
Repeating the same sound until it becomes a rhythm you cannot escape.
For Jenny, the days after the Silent Birth felt unreal—like she was walking inside someone else's body, watching someone else's life, responding to someone else's pain. Everyone in the Boundary House moved around her in hushed tones, speaking as if a single loud breath might shatter her into dust.
But the truth was simpler.
She was already shattered.
And they didn't know it.
The Boundary House—once strange, then familiar, then imprisoning—now felt like a place built from her own nightmares. The hallways were too quiet. Doors seemed to watch her as she passed. Even the wallpaper patterns looked warped, twisting into faces when her eyes weren't focused.
Every morning, the strange family whispered to each other in fleeting glances:
"She isn't eating again."
"She didn't sleep last night."
"Should we… tell him?"
Him.
They never said the name.
No one dared.
When they looked at her stomach, flattened again, healing, they forced smiles that crumbled at the edges. Their eyes always held the same question:
How is she still alive?
Why did the child cry without lungs?
Who was that figure in the corner of the room?
Jenny felt their fear. Their confusion. Their distance.
Trauma had made her radioactive.
No one wanted to stand too close.
She would wake up—gasping, sweating, shaking—convinced she still heard the infant crying.
The sound was wrong, folded strangely, echoing from the walls instead of the air.
Sometimes she felt soft kicks against her ribs even though the baby was gone.
Sometimes she felt a warm hand pressing her belly from inside.
Sometimes she saw him by the door.
Not the Groom.
Not the Creeping Man from the woods.
No—someone worse.
Something older.
A tall silhouette with a long, uneven shape, like his bones were arranged carelessly under his skin. He didn't move. He just watched. Always watching.
Whenever the shape appeared, she froze—paralyzed, breath locked, fingers tingling. Her body remembered terror faster than her mind could process it.
She told no one about him.
Because even she didn't believe it fully.
But he kept returning.
Every night.
Every dream.
Every shadow.
They tried to help.
In their own strange way.
The old woman brewed tea that smelled like flowers soaked in cold rain. The father figure brought heavy wool blankets, draping them over her shoulders like armor. The older daughter braided Jenny's hair silently, her hands shaking each time they brushed against her neck.
The youngest boy wrote notes in childish handwriting:
"U ok?"
"Do u need air?"
"I can sit outside ur room if u want???"
Jenny appreciated them.
She wanted to respond.
She wanted to speak.
But her voice had collapsed somewhere inside her chest—locked in the moment she pushed out a baby without hearing a heartbeat, only to hear a scream instead.
A scream not meant for the living.
So whenever they asked questions, she just nodded. Or shook her head. Or sat in silence until they left.
Trauma had rooted itself in her throat.
Her words couldn't get past it.
There was a new ritual in the house.
No one walked near the dark hallway on the left side after sundown.
The room she had given birth in stayed locked—three locks, then a chair pushed against the door, then a strip of salt poured across the threshold.
Every night, they whispered:
"It's still cold in there."
"The floorboards still move."
"I heard breathing."
And every night, Jenny felt a pulling sensation in her ribs, as if a thread stretched from her chest to that locked room, tugging softly, reminding her:
You left something behind.
Something that still wants you.
She hadn't seen the Groom since the night of the birth.
But he had not vanished.
He had simply changed shapes.
Now he came to her only in dreams:
Standing behind her.
Standing beside her.
Standing inside the mirror.
His voice was faint, distorted, as if speaking through water.
"Jenny… you were supposed to give him to me."
"You broke the promise."
"You kept something that wasn't yours."
Each dream ended the same way:
He reached for her stomach.
And she woke up screaming.
Her bones ached.
Her joints felt hollow.
Her vision blurred when she stood.
The family thought it was grief.
But it wasn't grief.
Something was wrong inside her.
Sometimes she felt crawling under her skin—tiny movements slipping beneath the muscle as if something small, cold, and determined was exploring her insides.
One evening, she lifted her shirt and saw a thin line across her stomach pulse.
Like a heartbeat.
Her own heartbeat.
Or not.
She pressed her hand to it—
And something pressed back.
She fell to the floor, shaking violently, but no one heard her from the hallway.
Trauma, she thought.
Just trauma.
But the truth slid coldly up her spine:
This isn't trauma.
This is something else.
Something still inside me.
On the fourth night, she finally spoke.
Barely.
Slowly.
While sitting by the window, watching the Boundary Land fade into evening fog, she whispered to the older daughter:
"He's coming."
The girl froze.
"Who?"
Jenny swallowed hard, feeling her throat burn.
"The Groom? The Man in the trees?"
Jenny shook her head.
"No."
Her voice trembled.
"It's… the child."
The girl's face drained of color.
"You mean… the one who didn't—"
Jenny didn't let her finish.
"I hear him. He's not gone."
Her breath became shaky.
"He wants me."
The girl backed away, terrified, unsure whether Jenny was grieving, hallucinating, or telling the truth—or worse, all three.
"Jenny… don't say that. Please. Don't say that."
But Jenny only stared at her own reflection in the window.
And for the first time since the Silent Birth…
Her reflection smiled back at her.
But she didn't.
---
Later that night, everyone woke to the sound.
Soft.
Wet.
Dragging.
Like something crawling down the hallway floor.
The family panicked.
Lights flickered.
Doors slammed shut.
Someone screamed Jenny's name.
She didn't move.
She didn't hide.
She simply sat at the edge of her bed, hands in her lap, breathing slowly.
Because she recognized that sound.
It had followed her since the day of the birth.
Through the house.
Through her dreams.
Through her own chest.
It reached her door.
Stopped.
Everything went silent.
Then—
A small knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
A child's knock.
Jenny's heartbeat stopped.
Another knock.
Then a voice.
A voice she had never heard but had always known.
"Mama… open the door."
Her entire world shattered.
Trauma had a new shape now.
And it was standing outside her room.
---