Scary Stories

My Sons Voice Doesnt Echo

It's true. His voice doesn't have an echo. He was around four years old when we noticed it.
We had been at the park playing. On our way home, we passed through a tunnel. I've always found echo's very funny, so i shouted "yabba dabba doo!" really loud. It bounced back right away. It made my son giggle. He shouted something, but it didn't bounce back. It was all flat. I looked at my wife, she didn't seem to notice.

"Come on, buddy. Try again, louder" I said to him. So he did, but it made no difference. His voice didn't echo.
I found it quite odd, but we didn't talk more about it.
That night, my wife locked herself in the bathroom for hours. I could hear her sobbing in there, but she wouldn't let me in.

The years passed. My wife decided to homeschool our son. Since she was a teacher, I didn't ague with her on that. "Other kids can be cruel", she'd said when we discussed different educational options. "I know what's best for him".

Our son didn't have any friends. My wife was sort of overprotective of him. He only spent time with us.

He was an only child. Me and my wife had a difficult time conceiving, leading us in on IVF treatments. After some excruciating months, we finally found out she was pregnant. Nine months later, he was born.

It wasn't just that his voice didn't echo that made him different. One night, when we'd practiced his reading skills, I started making shadow figures on the wall. I made various animals . My son thought it was hilarious. He wanted to try it aswell. I helped form his grip into a moose figure, and placed his hands in front of the lamp. I gasped. Nothing. My son didn't have a shadow. This couldn't be real.

I knocked on the bathroom door, to tell my wife my latest discovery. She was in there again. She had been crying a while ago, just like every other night the past years. Now all I heard was silence.
I called her, asking if everything was okay. No answer. I got up and grabbed the screwdriver. After minutes of struggle, I finally managed to get the door open.

I found my wife, lying in our bathtub. The water was dyed red from her cuts. Beside her, laid a little note.
It said:

" To my husband, forgive me. I can't continue living this lie. Our son is dead. He died of cancer when he was two. Your doctors told me it was your way of coping with the loss of him, and that it would go away. But it never did. You still believe that he exists. It breaks my heart to pretend that he's with us every day. I can't live with it anymore. I'm sorry."