A policewoman and her team go in search of a little girl who calls 911 and says her “mum won’t wake up”. Circumstances take a terrifying turn when the officer breaks into her house in the evening.
The police station was more crowded than usual that day as a gruesome murder was being investigated. All the emergency telephones were busy, with calls coming in to various emergency services from all over the city. And then a strange call came in from a little girl.
“9-1-1, what’s your emergency?” the dispatcher answered as there was an anxious silence, followed by a loud wheezing sound in the receiver.
“I’m hungry… Mummy hasn’t woken up all day,” the little girl muttered, choking back tears.
“Where are you?”
“I don’t know… my mum told me to call 911 if I got in trouble,” the little girl replied, seemingly scared of something…
Then the dispatcher asked the girl to tell more about her whereabouts.
“Calm down, and what’s your name?”.
“Magi”.
“Magi, can you tell me your address?”.
After a long silence, Magi told the dispatcher the address where she used to live, but she didn’t know where she was now.
“Magi, can you tell me about your current location? Can you describe it?”
Although the girl did not know the address, she was able to give the officer visual clues as to her current location.
“I can see big grey houses outside… there is a big angry dog barking outside… there are trees and ruined gates outside.”
“All right, Magi, stay where you are. We’re sending help immediately.”
The details were then relayed to 34-year-old Officer Nancy and her team. They immediately went in search of the girl and arrived at the first address she gave.
The police went to the address and inspected the house looking for details that matched the girl’s description, but saw that it was completely different.
“Anybody here?” Nancy knocked on the door but no one answered. She peeked through the window and saw that it was dark and dusty inside. It seemed as if the house hadn’t been lived in for a very long time.
Then Nancy approached the neighbours and found out that a family of three used to live there – a man, his wife and a little girl called Magi.
“Do you know where they are now?”
“No, Officer,” the man told Nancy. “After Mr. Jakes died in an accident six months ago, his wife and daughter became very poor. The landlord kicked them out because they couldn’t pay the rent. I don’t know their address, but I heard from a friend who saw them in a poor neighborhood twelve miles away.”
Nancy took advantage of the information she received and went to the place. It was getting darker, and worse, there was no electricity in the area.
“Hush! Just a second,” Nancy said to her colleague as she heard the faint barking of a dog somewhere quite far away from their location. She remembered that Magi had mentioned a dog that was constantly barking not far from where she was.
“That must be it… let’s go that way,” Nancy ordered her team to follow her and approached a small ramshackle house.
Nancy switched on the torch on her phone to see better, and noticed a silhouette near the window. Looking closer, she saw a little girl crying for help.
There was a stray dog barking incessantly outside, which darted towards the police officers. Nancy quickly picked up a pebble and threw it at the dog, scaring it away. Then she kicked the door open and entered the house, unaware of what else was inside.
“Hey, it’s OK… It’s all right… don’t cry,” consoled Nancy Magi, who came running to her in tears. The girl looked confused.
“I’m hungry… Mama hasn’t woken up all day… she’s asleep,” she kept repeating.
Nancy carried Magi outside and put her in the car. “Please give her some biscuits. I’ll be right back,” she told her team and went back inside to check on Magi’s mother.
She looked for the woman in every corner of the house, but could not find her. As she continued to search, Nancy discovered the door to the cellar. She entered and saw Magi’s mother lying unconscious on the floor.
Nancy rushed to her and touched the woman to wake her up, but felt only a cold body. Magi’s mother was dead. “Officers! Hurry up here!” – Nancy was frightened and immediately alerted the medics and social services.
Moments later an ambulance arrived and took the woman’s body away for an autopsy. Nancy didn’t know how to break the news to Magi because she thought her mother was asleep. “How am I going to tell her that her mother is dead?” perplexed Nancy.
“Mummy! Where are they taking my Mummy? MUMMY! Wait!” Magi ran after the ambulance. Nancy stopped, hugged her tightly and tried to comfort her.
“Honey, Mommy’s going to be okay. Be a good girl and listen to what I say.”
“No, I want Mummy. Leave me alone.”
” Sweetheart, Mommy will be back soon. You’ll stay with me until then, okay?”.
Magi began to cry, cradling her little teddy bear tightly in her arms. When social services arrived a few minutes later, they told Nancy that the girl would be sent to a foster home. For some reason, the cop didn’t like the idea, and it hurt her even more to think about how it would affect five-year-old Magi when she found out that her mother had died.
“No, I’ll take the child home tonight. She needs to bathe, eat and calm down. I’ll bring her to the shelter tomorrow.” After weighing the pros and cons, Nancy took Magi home.
“My God, darling, who is it?” Jacob, Nancy’s husband, was stunned when he opened the door and saw Nancy holding the sleeping baby in her arms.
“I’ll tell you everything, darling, but not now. I’m tired. Shall we eat first?”
***
“…And I found her mother’s body in the basement,” Nancy told Jacob everything. “We have yet to find out how she died.”
“Does the girl know about this?”
“No, I don’t know how to tell her. She still thinks her mother is fine in hospital. Her heart will be broken when she finds out the truth.”
“Poor thing… but how long are we going to keep her with us?” asked Jacob, when a strange idea struck Nancy.
That night, after Magee fell asleep…
“Darling, I was thinking… why don’t we adopt Magi?” Nancy asked Jacob. “We’ve been trying to have a baby for a very long time. I really don’t know what’s wrong with my body. The tests are fine, there are no complications, but I don’t know why I can’t conceive.”
As it turns out, Nancy and Jacob have been unable to conceive for several years. They had tried every way to have children, but with no success.
At one point Nancy even gave up the idea of becoming a mother and concentrated entirely on her career. She was exhausted and constantly in a bad mood, believing that she would never be able to have a baby. Being around Magi healed her grieving heart, even if it was only for a few hours.
” Darling, look at her. She’s a little angel who needs parental love and support. She will be put up for adoption and some random couple will adopt her. Why don’t we take her in? She’s such a beautiful little miracle. What do you think of that?”
Jacob pondered Nancy’s words as he looked at Magi, who was sleeping soundly between them. He felt her purity and presence dissolve the emptiness in their lives, and realized that this was the joy he had craved all his life. It did not matter to him that Magi was not his biological child. According to him, family was about love and affection, not genetics.
Jacob agreed to the adoption, but then there was the problem of how Magi would react to her mother’s funeral.
The next day…
Nancy left Magi at the foster home, promising to come for her soon, and took her to her mother’s funeral two days later. Anxiety kicked in as Nancy led Magi to her mother’s coffin. She didn’t know how to tell the little one that her mother had died of a heart attack, as revealed in the autopsy report.
“Honey, stay right here. This place is so quiet, isn’t it?” she tried distracting Magi.
“Yes… full of butterflies and flowers. And candles. And what are these crosses for? And what’s in that black box?”
Poor Magi didn’t know that it was a coffin that held her mother’s lifeless body.
Nancy’s heart was torn apart as she could not explain anything to the naïve Magi. Tears flowed endlessly down her cheeks as she hugged the girl tightly and realised it was time to make the next most important decision of her life.
A few months later, Jacob and Nancy adopted Magi and threw a lavish party for friends and family to celebrate their joy. Jacob raised a toast as laughter filled the party hall.
“I thought the happiest day of my life was when I met Nancy,” he began.
“But I was wrong. I was the happiest when I saw my wife holding a little miracle, fast asleep in her arms. And when she asked me, ‘honey, can we be her parents?’ I couldn’t deny the pleasure of becoming a dad. Cheers to my happy little family of three!!”
“No—No—No, honey, wait… not three,” Nancy interrupted Jacob, who was shocked.
“We are going to be a happy little family of FOUR!!” she revealed, handing him an envelope with a positive pregnancy test. Jacob could not believe his eyes and was indeed the happiest man on earth. Nancy’s prayers were answered most beautifully at the right time.
“Happy little family of four, everyone!!” Jacob raised a toast as tears of joy gushed from his eyes.
