It had been a long, exhausting night for Olivia and Mark. Their little baby, Ethan, just wouldn’t stop crying. No matter how many times they tried to soothe him, he wailed as if something was terribly wrong. They rocked him gently, offered him his bottle, changed his diaper, and even played his favorite lullabies—but nothing worked. As the hours passed, exhaustion began to set in, and frustration slowly replaced their patience.
Olivia paced back and forth in the living room, cradling Ethan in her arms. She whispered soothing words, but his cries grew louder, more frantic. Mark, equally worn out, sat on the couch, his head in his hands. He had tried everything he could think of—holding Ethan, bouncing him, even walking around the room—but nothing seemed to calm the baby.
“Maybe he’s teething,” Olivia said, her voice tinged with worry. “Or maybe he’s just colicky. That could explain why he’s so upset.”
“Maybe,” Mark replied, rubbing his eyes. “But I just… I don’t know, Liv. This isn’t normal. It’s like he’s in pain, but I don’t know how to help him.”
Finally, in a moment of desperation, Olivia suggested, “What if we check the crib again? Maybe something’s wrong with his bedding or his blanket. He might have gotten tangled up.”
Mark nodded, the idea of checking something as simple as the crib giving him a glimmer of hope. They had already done the usual checks, but perhaps they had missed something in their exhaustion.
They carefully placed Ethan back in his crib, and for the first time that night, his cries quieted, if only slightly. Olivia leaned over the crib, her hand trembling as she touched the soft, plush blanket Ethan was wrapped in. She lifted it gently, and what she saw made her blood run cold.
Underneath the blanket, right beside Ethan, was a small, dark object. At first, it looked like a shadow, but as Olivia squinted, she realized it wasn’t a shadow at all. It was a tiny, smooth stone—dark as night, its surface gleaming strangely under the dim light of the nursery.
“Mark,” Olivia whispered, her voice quivering. “Look at this.”
Mark rushed to her side, and his eyes widened when he saw the stone in the crib. He reached down to remove it, his fingers brushing it carefully. The stone felt warm, almost unnaturally so, and as soon as he lifted it out of the crib, Ethan’s crying stopped completely.
Both Olivia and Mark stood there in stunned silence, staring at the stone. It was a perfect, polished black stone, but it didn’t seem like something that belonged in a baby’s crib.
“I don’t understand,” Mark said, his voice shaky. “Where did this come from? We haven’t seen anything like it before.”
“Maybe it’s something… something from the house?” Olivia suggested, her voice barely above a whisper. “But we’ve checked every inch of his crib. How could it have gotten in there?”
They glanced around the room, their thoughts racing, but no logical explanation came to mind. The house was new, their baby was always kept safe, and there was no reason a strange stone should be in the crib.
For the next few weeks, the strange incident remained a mystery. Ethan’s crying never returned in the same way, and he slept soundly through the night. But every now and then, when Olivia and Mark would walk past the crib, their eyes would flicker toward the corner of the room, where the stone now sat on a shelf, a reminder of that terrifying night.
Had it been an innocent mistake, or was there something more to the mysterious stone? Neither parent could explain it fully, but one thing was for certain: the night Ethan cried endlessly had changed something in both of them. It was a reminder that, sometimes, the most unexpected things could leave a lasting mark on their lives, no matter how strange or unexplainable they might be.