1. The Changeling Baby


    Date: 1/1/2016, Categories: Supernatural, Author: TamLin, Rating: 3, Source: LushStories

    "another one,” as if she had to remind herself she had one son already. It was not that his parents didn’t love him. But it was the kind of love you might feel for a for a distant relative with whom you occasionally corresponded. Not long after the new baby was due William would leave for college, and he imagined it would be like he’d never been there at all. He just wanted to keep things together until then, to make his last weeks at home semi-pleasant and semi-normal for everyone. So, no telling his parents about the hallucination (if that’s what it was), and certainly no telling the Menskrs. He’d keep it to himself, like everything else. It was better that way. It was getting darker. He thought he should go home, but the dread of explaining to his parents why he'd run off made his feet drag. The creaking of the swing set's chains seemed louder now, so he stopped moving. Maybe I can just stay here, he thought. Just never move from this spot and become part of the landscape. He'd always liked the park. He imagined sitting at the feet of one of the concourse statues and, over days and weeks, slowly petrifying into a bronze just like it. Or maybe he could just wander off the path into one of those thick glens of trees with the spidery limbs and keep walking and walking in it until it swallowed him up and he disappeared forever. It was not a pleasant thought, but it was not unpleasant either. It just was. He was just about to leave when he saw something moving. At the mouth of ...
    the underpass, the one that burrowed straight through the hill and connected this playground and walking path to the concourse plaza beyond, someone was lurking. William started a little, alarmed, but he did not become truly scared or think to run until the stranger came into view. It was a big man. No, a HUGE man, at least eight feet tall. The stranger’s head was the size of a safe, and his jaw protruded underneath a bulbous, cartoonish nose. Two great, pointed teeth stuck out from the creature's rubbery bottom lip. It was a shaggy thing, covered in hair except for its face and hands. It wore clothes made from animal hides, but no shoes. Its hands looked big enough to close over William's entire head. But its eyes were small, out of proportion with the rest of it, just little flecks of green set beneath an ape-like brow, eyes so bright that they showed up even in the dark. This can’t be happening, William thought: It’s a monster. It’s a real monster, and it’s looking right at me. And then, just when he thought that this day could grow no more bizarre, the monster said his name: "William." For the second time, William ran. He got only a few steps before he saw that someone else was here. It's Nissa, he realized. He tried to shout a warning about the monster but his throat seemed to have closed up. He dared a look back, expecting the monster to be right behind him, but instead he saw— Nothing. The creature was gone. William gaped and squinted against the dark, trying to see if ...
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