Day 286

Her family didn't know she was pregnant when she died.
She was barely a month into it, not even the mortician noticed.

The coffin was only built for one.
But the baby wasn't done growing yet.

It continued to feed on every part of her body.
Draining it dry from the inside out.

Eight months later, mourners reported hearing a baby crying in the graveyard.
People began to scour the place, convinced someone had abandoned an infant there.

It was found by her tombstone, cold and hungry and unnerving somehow.
Nobody could quite place their finger on what it was about the child that seemed off.

As the child grew it left sickness in its wake.
Everyone who came into contact with it developed the same symptoms.

Coughing, anaemia and severe tremors of the head and arms.
The news reported it as a disease outbreak.

People began to drop dead on the streets - autopsies revealed their heart muscles were tissue thin.
Doctors had no idea where this new illness was coming from or why is was only in that town.

Nobody suspected the child, well... nobody suspected the child and lived.
It made sure of that.

Everybody was too busy taking care of loved ones or being taken care of to pay much attention to it.
So it roamed the graveyard, its home, and fed on the bodies left there.

The older it grew, the worse the disease got and yet it didn't spread.
By this point the voluntary medical staff had noticed the child's apparent immunity.

When they asked for a blood sample it grew violent, killed four of them just by touching their skin.
After a brutal fight it was killed by nine bullets to the torso and head.

Blood tests revealed what some had suspected all along.

The child was never alive.

Whatever it had been, it had been dead for around seven years and eight months.