The baby was born on a rainy night. A normal baby, in most respects. Tiny hands, tiny feet, a soft cry. But his eyes—his eyes held something else. Something dark. The doctors noticed it first when he screamed, a screech that scraped the air like nails on a chalkboard. Not a baby's scream. A man's scream. Deep. Full of years.
His mother, Sara, dismissed it. Exhausted and overwhelmed by her firstborn, she didn't think much of it. She had heard about babies with strange looks, odd noises, but dismissed it as one of those things parents would talk about.
She would say to herself that he was fine. That he was just like every other child. She told herself that he was fine when he started looking at her like he was older than her. It happened on the third day, when she changed his diaper and caught him staring up at her, eyes wide, calculating. Not a baby's stare. Not at all.
His smile, though small and quiet, was different. It didn't belong to a child. The curve of his lips didn't show innocence. There was something empty there. It never felt right. He didn't react like a child should. When she fed him, he'd look away, eyes turning toward the window like he was already planning something. What kind of baby does that?
By the time he was six months old, the terror had already set in. Sara would come into his room to find him staring at the wall, unblinking. She tried to talk to him, but he never responded. He would laugh, though. A sound that had no place coming from a baby's mouth.
One day, she found a note under his crib. Just a scrap of paper. It read, I'm going to make them suffer. Sara dropped it, her heart hammering in her chest. How? How could a baby write that?
The neighbors noticed things too. Little things. He would sit in his stroller outside, while the others talked. He wouldn't cry. He wouldn't scream. Instead, he'd just watch them. That smile again. That same, too-older-than-his-years look. No one thought to check on him after that. They should have.
One evening, when Sara went to his room to give him his bottle, she found him standing. No, not standing. Staring at the mirror. He was only a year old, but there he was, holding himself up against the glass, his hand flat against the cool surface. The reflection staring back was... not his own. It was something far older. Dark eyes. A hunger that reached beyond what a child could understand.
Sara's blood ran cold. She stepped closer, but he heard her. His head snapped toward her, and his smile stretched unnaturally wide. "You should leave. Before they all know."
"Know what?" she whispered.
He didn't answer. His little hands curled into fists, and something flickered behind his eyes—something vile. He looked down at the bottle in her hand, then back at her. "You think I'll wait for you?"
Sara backed out of the room. She never came back inside.
The next morning, Sara was found in her kitchen. Her throat was sliced open, her body drained of any warmth. And her son? He was standing by the door, a finger pressed to his lips. A small laugh bubbled from his mouth, but it wasn't human. Not anymore.
The police came, but they never found the child. They never found him, because he never left. He wasn't a baby anymore. He wasn't even a person. He was a thing. And by the time they realized, it was too late. He'd done it. And when the world burned, they would know who set the fire.
In the end, no one remembered the small child who seemed so innocent. They only remembered the eyes. The eyes that had watched everything. Waiting.