“Momma?”

Claire looked down at the source of the tiny voice. She smiled and stroked her daughter's hair. Tessie stared up at her, unblinking and expressionless.

“What is it sweetie?” Claire asked. She had never seen her daughter have such a blank look before.

“What's a voice box?” Tessie responded , voice quiet.

Follow up:

The question struck Claire as odd, to say the least. Tessie stared at her as Claire chuckled nervously. Mother and daughter just stayed quiet as Claire stammered slightly.

“A voice box is what you talk with.” Claire finally gestured to her throat. She ran her fingers up and down as an example of where her voice box was. She finally set her finger on the center. “If you put your finger here, you can feel yourself talk.”

Tessie calmly nodded. She was about to go back to her room when Claire grabbed her arm.

“Why do you ask, sweetie?” was the concerned mother's question.

“Because.” Tessie's sweet voice sounded darker than usual. She just blinked quickly. “I was curious.”

After receiving a pat on her head, Tessie went off to go and play again. Normality in the Walker household was resumed when Claire could hear the occasional bit of lullaby to a baby doll, or Barbies chattering to each other about gibberish in child speak that didn't make any sense coming from Tessie's room. Claire just shrugged her shoulders, knowing that the question was innocuous enough, and figured that she had probably heard it on the television.

When Claire's husband Alex came home, Tessie greeted him with the usual squeal as she wrapped herself around his legs. As she was picked up she set her hands on her father's throat and she turned her head to the side, face concentrated.

“What're you doing, Tess?” Alex asked. He touched her hand and smiled as he pulled it away.

“Testing your voice box,” replied the little girl.

Claire started. This again. She wasn't sure why, but there was something about the voice box thing that frightened her. Maybe it was just the way she said it and her facial expression. Or lack of expression, really. All was normal and went on without a hitch after that. Dinner was fine, Tessie and Alex played around a little and they finally relaxed on the sofa for a few shows before going to bed. Tessie didn't beg to stay up five more minutes, four more minutes or three more minutes and she was the perfect child as she crawled into her pajamas and under the covers.

It was midnight when things started to go peculiar again.

There was no thunder storm, but Claire jerked awake like she had been woken up by a loud noise. She looked around but saw nothing and was getting ready to go back to sleep when she heard Tessie.

“I don't want to play tonight!” Tessie loudly whispered. “If I do, I'll get in trouble. It's too late!”

Claire crept out of bed and down the hall before waiting in front of Tessie's bedroom. She heard a noise from the mattress, like Tessie had kicked it and had kicked the covers away, and she also heard a rasping noise. She figured it was the wind.

“No!” Tessie hissed. “Shoo!”

“Tessie, honey?” Claire said, rapping on the door. “Are you awake?”

Silence. She was probably pretending to be asleep. Claire smiled and went back to bed. She just had an imaginary friend was all. Nothing to worry about. As she cuddled next to Alex, Claire pondered on asking Tessie about her friend who wanted to play so late at night.

After that, it was a few weeks before the voice box issue came up again. Tessie walked up to her mother and tugged on her pant leg, grinning.

“Momma?” she asked sweetly. She wanted something.

“M-hm?” Claire's eyes didn't leave the meat she was preparing.

“Can I have your voice box?”

The knife Claire was using slashed through her thumb and fell into the sink with a loud gunshot like clatter. Tessie jumped when the knife fell and backed away a little. Claire looked down at her daughter, ignoring the throbbing pain in her thumb, and felt her heart clench.

“Why would you ask something like that?!” Claire's voice rose in tone and pitch. She was starting to shake a little.

“The tall man in my room asked me for it.” Tessie explained with wide, fearful eyes. “He needs it to speak. He writes things...”

“Is that who you talk with at night?” Claire asked. She was starting to deal with her thumb now. “Let me see what he's been writing.”

Tessie just shook her head, quiet. She muttered something about him being in her room and tugged on Claire's hand to guide her. Tessie's room was empty. It was colder than usual, but it was empty. Claire looked around and set her hands on her hips.

“I don't know who you are, but I want you to leave Tessie alone.” she said loudly.

The closet door slammed open and Claire turned. As she turned, she felt a cold weight against her chest and she fell stumbling back into the wall. She had kicked over a box during the fall, and a large amount of papers flew out of it. She looked down at the papers and her eyes grew wide. Tessie had been drawing up a storm. Pictures of scenes, of her parents, herself and finally, as Claire got to what had been the bottom of the box, a strange man. He was pale, bald, skinny, tall and wore a suit. A drawing of his face revealed he had black (or no) eyes and a wide, gaping mouth full of sharp teeth.

Claire picked up the drawings of the man and pushed them numbly at Tessie. The little girl backed away from them, still wide-eyed and crying from her mother's attack, acting as if Claire was trying to hand her a large and poisonous snake. Tessie whimpered softly as the closet door closed again.

“Is this who you were talking about?” Claire was almost whispering. She felt afraid that if she spoke louder, someone or something would hear her.

Tessie just nodded. She pointed to another pile of paper from the box and turned her gaze to the floor. Claire turned and looked through them. They had been written on, in Tessie's Crayons, but it wasn't quite Tessie's handwriting.

“I want to speak.”

“Give mother's voicebox.”

“sound”

Claire tossed the rest to the floor. It was Tessie's handwriting. It had to be. She'd talk with Alex and they'd get her to a therapist.

When night fell, Claire was a little uneasy about falling asleep. She didn't hear Tessie on the old baby monitor Alex and her had hidden in Tessie's room. She heard gentle breathing only. Claire finally fell asleep with her husband curled next to her.

When she felt Alex's warm body move away from her, she shuddered and her eyes opened. It was about one in the morning and she wanted her free heat back, dammit. She rolled over to cuddle with him again and felt nothing but a warm spot on the bed. Alex was a very clumsy man, had been since the day they had met, and he couldn't get in and out of the bed without waking Claire up. She didn't think that much of it in her groggy state and went back to sleep, curled under the covers.

Something woke her up again, a weight on her chest. Claire grunted at the feeling and opened her eyes. She wanted to scream but there was something stopping her.

There was a man crouched on her chest, knife in hand. She could hardly make out his features in the dark, but he was familiar enough. He was long and lean with black, sunken eyes and no hair. Her eyes darted to the corner of the room and she finally whimpered. There was Alex, his throat slit almost to the point of decapitation, blood slowly soaking into the carpet and walls. The man on her chest smiled at her. He had shark teeth, large and sharp and layered.

His mouth opened to speak, but only a soft gurgling came out of him. Claire finally screamed shrill and long. He just smiled.

“Mommy?” Tessie's voice came from the other side of the baby monitor and Claire's heart clenched.

This strange man, this freakish creature, finally gurgled at her some more before making a swift movement. Claire felt a stabbing pain in between her breasts and everything around her went soft and calm, eyes focusing on Alex's corpse.

“Tessie?”

Tessie's eyes popped open at the sound of her mother's voice. She smiled shakily in terror and sat up. When she saw who it was, her mouth fell open.

“I can talk now, Tessie.”

She backed against her headboard with eyes as wide as saucers. Please, she prayed, I want to wake up with Mommy and Daddy.

“We're going to have fun now. Right? Right, Tessie?

The little girl's eyes fell to the bloody knife in his hand. In a flash, that familiar quickness she hated, the knife was against her throat.

“Can I talk in your voice too, Tessie?”

Tessie squealed shrilly and her call ended in a gasp as the knife ran across her throat.