 |
| Free Story Friday: The Mimic |
A new original tale every week—twisted, terrifying, and inspired by the darkest legends you thought you knew.
The rental house on Maple Grove Road was everything Jen and Sam Hollis needed: affordable, close to Sam's construction site, and quiet enough for their six-month-old son Luke to sleep through the night. The previous tenants had left in a hurry—something about a job transfer—but the landlord had been eager to fill it quickly, knocking two hundred off the monthly rent without negotiation. Sunlight streamed through clean windows, illuminating hardwood floors that creaked pleasantly underfoot. "It's perfect," Jen said, bouncing Luke on her hip. "We can actually afford to save a little." Sam wrapped his arm around her waist, exhausted but smiling. "Just for a year or two. Once I make foreman, we'll find something better."
For the first three weeks, life felt stable in a way it hadn't since Luke was born. Sam left before dawn for the demolition site, where his crew was tearing down an old property to make way for new development. Jen established routines with the baby—morning walks, afternoon naps, evening bottles on the back porch while watching the sunset paint the tree line behind their yard.
The woods stretched deep and dark beyond their property, but Jen found them peaceful rather than threatening. Sometimes she'd hear birds calling to each other, or the rustle of deer moving through the underbrush. Normal sounds. Safe sounds.
Everything changed the day Sam came home with mud on his boots.
"You should've seen it," Sam said, scraping dried earth from his work boots on the front porch. "Foundation must've been there since the 1800s. Locals keep telling us stories about the place—voices in the woods, people hearing their names called. Typical small-town folklore."
Jen watched him knock the dirt loose, dark soil scattering across the welcome mat. He'd already tracked some of it inside before noticing—faint footprints leading from the door to the kitchen that Jen wouldn't see until morning. "Maybe you shouldn't be disturbing it then."
Sam laughed. "It's just old superstition. Besides, we're building something new there. Progress, right?"
That night, they sat on the back porch after putting Luke down, enjoying the rare moment of peace. The baby monitor crackled softly between them, transmitting Luke's gentle breathing.
Then they both heard it.
A baby crying.
Not from the monitor. Not from inside the house. The sound came from deep within the tree line, thin and desperate, like an infant left alone in the dark.
Jen's hand flew to Sam's arm. "Do you hear that?"
"It's just a cat," Sam said, but his voice carried uncertainty. "They sound like babies sometimes."
The crying continued for another thirty seconds, then stopped abruptly.
They went inside and locked the door.
Neither mentioned it again that night, but Jen lay awake long after Sam's breathing deepened into sleep, listening to the house settle around them and wondering why a cat would cry exactly like a human baby.
The signs started small.
Jen would wake at 2 AM to Luke giggling through the monitor—odd for a baby who usually slept soundly through the night. When she'd check on him, he'd be fast asleep, peaceful as an angel.
The baby monitor began picking up interference—bursts of static that resolved briefly into what sounded like humming. The melody was familiar: the lullaby Jen sang every night at bedtime. But she was always in bed with Sam when it played, the monitor transmitting sounds from an empty nursery.
“Old houses mess with electronics,” Sam said when she mentioned it. “Probably interference from something else.”
But their nearest neighbors were half a mile away.
The front door was open three mornings in a row. Not wide open—just cracked, as if someone had stepped outside briefly and forgotten to close it behind them. Jen knew she'd locked it each night. She always checked twice, a habit from living in the city.
"Maybe I'm sleepwalking," she told Sam, though she'd never had that problem before.
The fourth night, she installed a rubber doorstop. The next morning, the doorstop was on the porch outside, and the door stood open again.
Then came the voices.
Jen heard Sam whisper her name at midnight—"Jen... Jen..."—soft and urgent from somewhere downstairs. She reached over to shake him awake, to ask what he needed, but found him beside her, snoring softly, deeply asleep.
The whisper came again, patient: "Jen..."
She pulled the covers over her head and didn't sleep for the rest of the night.
When she told Sam the next morning, he looked at her with concern that felt too much like pity. "You're exhausted, babe. Taking care of Luke all day, not sleeping well... Maybe you should see a doctor. Could be postpartum anxiety."
Jen wanted to argue, but the words died in her throat. Maybe he was right. Maybe sleep deprivation was making her hear things that weren't there.
But that evening, she found barefoot prints on the back porch—small, human-shaped, and muddy—leading from the tree line to their back door.
And when she checked the baby monitor footage from that afternoon, she saw it: for less than a second, a blurred silhouette stood beside Luke's crib before the image snapped back to normal—an empty nursery, a sleeping baby.
Something was in their house.
The escalation happened quickly after that.
Jen woke to her own voice singing in the nursery—her exact tone, her exact inflection—while she lay frozen in bed. When she rushed to Luke's room, the singing stopped. Luke was awake but quiet, staring at the closet door with wide, fascinated eyes.
She heard Sam talking in the kitchen at 3 AM, having a full conversation with someone. When she got up to check, Sam was asleep beside her, and the kitchen was empty. But she could still hear his voice, faint now, coming from somewhere outside.
Sam started sleepwalking. She'd wake to find his side of the bed empty, then discover him standing at the back door, hand on the knob, staring toward the dark tree line. When she led him back to bed, he had no memory of getting up.
"Something's wrong with this house," Jen told him over breakfast, but her voice sounded hollow even to her own ears. "We need to leave."
"We just signed a year lease," Sam said, though he looked worried now. "And I can't afford to lose the deposit. Just... let's give it another week. If things don't improve, we'll figure something out."
But they didn't have another week.
It happened on a Tuesday night.
Jen got up around 2 AM to check on Luke. Sam stirred but didn't wake—he'd been pulling double shifts at the demolition site, trying to finish the job early. She left him sleeping and padded down the hall to the nursery.
Luke was awake, babbling softly to himself in that way babies do when they're content. The nightlight cast soft shadows across his crib. Everything seemed normal.
Jen was turning to leave when she noticed the closet door was open. Just a crack, but she always kept it closed. Always.
Through the baby monitor on the dresser, she heard breathing. Deep, slow breaths that definitely weren't coming from Luke.
"Sam?" she called softly.
No answer.
She backed toward the door, keeping her eyes on the closet, and almost made it to the hallway before she heard her own voice respond from somewhere behind her:
"It's okay, sweetie. Mommy's here."
Jen ran.
Sam woke to the baby monitor crackling with static. He reached for Jen, but her side of the bed was ice cold. The clock read 2:47 AM.
"Jen?" he called, but the house swallowed his voice.
He found Luke awake in his crib, perfectly calm, tracking something in the dark corner with his eyes. The closet door stood wide open. And from the monitor came that slow, steady breathing.
"Jen!" Sam shouted.
Her voice answered from down the hall, flat and emotionless: "Sam? I'm right here... come look."
He knew immediately it wasn't her. Something in the cadence was wrong—too perfect, like a recording. He grabbed Luke from the crib and turned to run.
That's when he saw her.
Jen stood in the bedroom doorway, facing the wall, completely motionless. When he called her name, her head turned slowly—too slowly—and her eyes caught light that wasn't there, glowing faintly in the darkness.
"Sam..."
The voice came from behind him now, from the nursery. Terrified. Real.
"Sam, that's not me!"
For one heart-stopping moment, Sam didn't know which one was real.
The thing wearing Jen's shape flickered like a shadow struggling to hold form, its outline wavering between human and something else entirely. As Sam lunged toward the real Jen's voice, it collapsed into darkness with a sound like fabric tearing.
He found Jen outside, barefoot in the backyard, trembling and confused, like she'd been sleepwalking. She didn't remember leaving the house.
Sam carried Luke while Jen leaned against him, and they got in the car without bothering to pack. They didn't stop driving until they reached Sam's mother's house thirty miles away.
They never went back for their things.
The landlord kept their deposit but didn't fight them on the lease. "Others have left too," he admitted over the phone. "I should've told you. I just... I need the rent."
Sam learned later that the demolition site he'd been working was built on the foundation of an old homestead where a woman had drowned her children in a well before hanging herself in 1874. Local legend said something had lived in those woods long before that—something that learned voices and used them to lure people into the darkness.
They moved across town to a small home with neighbors on both sides and streetlights that kept the dark at bay. Jen saw a therapist who diagnosed her with postpartum anxiety and prescribed medication she didn't take. Luke slept peacefully through the night.
Weeks passed. Then a month. Then two.
They started to feel safe again.
It was a Thursday when Jen woke to Luke babbling in his nursery. She smiled, relieved at the normal sound—her baby being a baby, nothing supernatural about it.
But as she approached the nursery door, she heard a whisper:
"Shhh... Mommy's here."
Her own voice. Her exact tone.
Jen's hand froze on the doorknob.
The whisper came again, softer now, almost affectionate. Luke cooed happily in response.
She opened the door. The nightlight illuminated Luke in his crib, smiling at something in the far corner.
The corner was dark. Too dark.
And as Jen's eyes adjusted, she realized the shadows there were wrong—too thick, too solid, gathering themselves into a shape that was almost human.
Something in the darkness shifted, and Jen heard her own voice one more time, barely a whisper:
"We found you."
The nightlight flickered.
Luke laughed.
And in the corner, the shadows smiled back.
© 2025 Karen Cody. All rights reserved.
This original story was written exclusively for the Urban Legends, Mystery, and Myth blog.
Do not copy, repost, or reproduce without permission.
This tale may appear in a future special collection.
Love creepy folklore and twisted tales? Follow the blog for a new story every week—where legends get darker and the truth is never what it seems.
UrbanLegendsMysteryandMyth.com
Other Stories You Might Enjoy
• Free Story Friday: The Man Who Sold Yesterday
• Free Story Friday: The Ones Who Watch
• Free Story Friday: Haint Blue
• Free Story Friday: The Screen Mirror Ritual
• Free Story Friday: The Curse of the 100 Steps
Post a Comment