Lullaby for the Damned: A Nightmarish Bedtime Story
When the Lullaby Calls, the Shadows Answer — A Nightmare You’ll Never Forget
Have you ever heard a song so eerie that it chilled your bones? Now, imagine a lullaby, not for sleep but to summon darkness instead. This is a story that took place in a small, faraway village where shadows crept into dreams and children feared the night.
It was a place where nobody dared to sing at bedtime, for there was a legend about an ancient melody — a lullaby only the damned could hear.
No one knew for certain where this tale or legend of the cursed bedtime song started. Some folk say that it originated back hundreds of years ago with a detached mother, her heart heavy with grief after the result of her lost child.
They’ll say it was her frustration that turned her mind until she sang to the dark winds each night, still hoping that her baby indeed would return. But after many relentless nights, it wasn’t her child that came house. It was something far different. Something foul-hearted.
The village remained quiet at twilight. Windows shut tight, curtains drawn, lanterns flickering only enough to beat the dark back. None dared to make a sound once dusk had fallen.
Children would whisper stories about “The Lullaby of the Damned,” yet none would ever repeat its words. Not out loud, anyway. No one wanted the melody to escape into the wind, lest something terrible might happen.
One family, the Martins, moved into the village, oblivious to the local superstition. Mr. and Mrs. Martin, with their two young boys, Charlie and Ben, thought it was just another sleepy countryside-peaceful.
It was nothing like the city, where the noise never stopped, and their new home, a large old house at the edge of the village, felt like paradise compared to their cramped apartment back in town.
One night, as it rained and stormed, Mrs. Martin put the boys to bed while the rumble of thunder boomed outside the house. Little Charlie wasn’t sleepy. He was afraid of storms. Mrs. Martin did what she always did to comfort him. She began to sing. Her soft, sweet voice floated through the room.
The tune wasn’t known to her yet somehow seemed to come all right. It was as though the melody flowed out of her lips without thinking. Charlie smiled, placated by his mother’s lullaby, but his brother Ben stared wide-eyed with alarm.
The song was in some weird rhythm. Too slow, yet captivating. Almost as if the air went down with it. Ben shivered. “Mom,” he whispered, “what’s that song?” But Mrs. Martin didn’t seem to hear him. She kept on singing, her voice now lower. Slower. The air in the room was heavier.
Ben looked over at Charlie, who was already fast asleep. But it wasn’t normal. His breathing was too shallow. His chest barely rose and fell. The storm raged on outside, but there was a coldness that seeped into Ben, not of the weather variety. There was something wrong, something very, very wrong.
Their door creaked open, but nobody was there. Shadows, thick and slithering, crawled along the floor, creeping closer, inching toward the bed. He could hear the beating of his heart in his ears.
He wanted to scream for help, but some kind of fear had hold of his throat, clenched in a vice. He felt his eyes grow heavier, fighting that strange, dreadful pull of sleep. He couldn’t look away from the darkness inching closer to him.
Abruptly, the melody ceased. Mrs. Martin, who had been standing beside the bed, went on blinking, as one waking from a trance. She looked down at her boys, with a momentary confusion in her thoughts, as if she could not remember when she had begun to sing.
“Sleep tight,” she whispered, and all but closed the door to darkness behind her.
Unconsciously she had done just that.
Hours passed, and the house grew silent. But something was watching. Deep in the night, Charlie started to stir. His eyes flickered open, but they weren’t his eyes anymore; they were hollow, black pits. His mouth twitched into a strange grin, something dark crawling behind it.
Half asleep, Ben felt a chill run down his spine. His brother wasn’t breathing normally. And that lullaby, it played again, softly, but not from his mother’s voice.
It was coming from Charlie.
Ben rolled out of bed, his heart thumping. The darkness seemed alive in the room, it moved and breathed. He heard his brother humming that macabre melody.
In a cloak of shadows swirling around Charlie, he had wrapped himself in something sinister. Ben extended an arm to touch his brother, but his brother jerked backward, moving in ways the human body shouldn’t have.
“Charlie?” Ben said in a whisper.
Charlie’s head turned, too slow, his grin wider than ever.
“It’s time,” he muttered in a voice not his own.
The shadows laughed. Whispers echoed through the room.
“Time for what?” Ben stammered, stepping backward toward the door.
“Time to sleep forever,” Charlie now whispered ice-cold.
The door slammed shut. Thick, heavy air suffocated the place. Ben gasped for breath as the darkness swallowed the room. The lullaby, now louder, filled his ears with their screeching melody and sent him dizzy. He tried to escape; each of his steps was like wading through thick mud.
He heard a voice, no many voices, speaking all in unison with the same cadence as “Sing with us; sing the lullaby”.
A cold terror seized him. He knew that if he remained there, he would not last the night. The shadows were dragging him closer, wrapping around his legs, pulling him toward Charlie.
In desperation, Ben clawed at the walls, searching for something-anything-to fight back with. But there was no escape. Suddenly, a knock on the door echoed across it. The door opened. And there stood Mrs. Martin, her face ashy-white with horror.
She burst into the house shrieking, “What has happened?” and darting toward her boys.
The horror had already begun its journey and was pulling the dear souls under with dark infinite lullaby notes now that it was just upon the boys.
The shadows recoiled in a hissing, screaming retreat seared by light as she made contact with Ben’s hand. Charlie, though was lost. His body lay inert, an empty shell, while his essence was pulled through the darkness.
Nothing more was ever said about that night in the village. The Martins left and never returned to this place. Nobody dared to speak about the cursed lullaby, but rumors began to spread like wildfire within the village.
Tales of the damned and the shadows that come when the lullaby is sung. Children would tell one another this bedtime story, promising never to repeat the melody, not even in jest. And so, the lullaby lingers: out there, in the dark, waiting.
If you ever hear it, no matter how soft or sweet, cover your ears. Do not sing along. Because once you do, the shadows will come. And they will never let you go. Now, sleep tight.
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