We were buried in the usual moving mayhem—half-packed boxes everywhere, tape guns going missing mid-strip, shoes disappearing, and tiny plastic beads showing up in places they definitely shouldn’t. My daughter, Nova, was in the thick of it, plopped on the carpet, angrily yelling at her foot like it had done something unforgivable.
“No foot. NO FOOT!”
We laughed, took a quick picture, and brushed it off as one of those adorable toddler outbursts.
Then she pointed at the stack of orange Home Depot boxes near the kitchen and, completely serious, said:
“Don’t let the boxes go. They wake up there.”
We figured she meant we shouldn’t open them right away. I asked, “You mean don’t unpack at the new house?”
She shook her head firmly. “No. Don’t take them. Not the stuff. Just the people stuff. The box ones stay here.”
She wasn’t joking. Her voice got calm, unnervingly calm. Her eyes didn’t blink for a solid minute. Then she casually picked up a Peppa Pig book and added, “She knows. She told me at naptime.”
We tried to laugh it off—“Okayyy, maybe we’re cutting cartoons for a bit.”
But that night, neither Lani nor I could sleep. Her tossing, my overthinking—Nova’s words kept bouncing around in the dark. They wake up there.
By morning, I convinced myself it was just toddler imagination, a side effect of routine chaos. We had four days left in the house. We decided to keep moving forward.
But Nova’s strange comments didn’t stop.
At breakfast, she wouldn’t sit near the boxes. “They’re talking now,” she said. “They’re asking who we’re taking.”
Lani tried lightening the mood with pancakes, but Nova pushed her plate away and whispered, “They don’t want syrup. They want to come.”
We exchanged that silent parenting look—the one that asks is this just her imagination… or something else?
We agreed not to bring up the boxes anymore, hoping she’d let it go.
That afternoon, Lani stepped out for errands, and I stayed behind while Nova napped on the couch. I used the quiet time to finish packing the bathroom. Everything felt… still. Too still.
I was in the middle of wrapping a toothbrush holder when I heard her giggle in the living room.
But she hadn’t woken up.
I checked—she was sound asleep, breathing slowly. But she was softly laughing, like someone was playing with her in a dream.
The hairs on my neck stood up.
When she finally opened her eyes, she looked straight at me and said, “They don’t like the red cup. It reminds them.”
“Reminds them of what?” I asked, instantly regretting it.
She shrugged and pointed to the box closest to the kitchen. “That one knows.”
That night, I didn’t sleep at all.
And the next day…