Thoughts Left in a Box Under the Bed

Ghosted Re:Re:Rewrite

My earliest memory is my most painful one. I remember being in the mall with my mother. I don't know how old I was, just that I was small enough to need to reach all the way up with my little arm in order to hold her hand. She looked back and smiled warmly down at me. Under her gaze I was safe. I was at peace. She looked like she was about to say something when she caught sight of something behind her. Her smile died and turned to panic as she scooped me up in her arms and began to run. She pressed me hard into her shoulder and I fought through her long white hair to try and see what it was we were running from. I looked around briefly before catching sight of something indescribably terrifying and letting out a weak scream. I say it was indescribable because I don't remember what it was, just the fear. I began crying as I hid my face in her shoulder. 

She ran around a few corners trying to lose our pursuer before finding a utility room and set me down inside. She bent down to talk to me, but I don't hear her as my crying is echoed by the cries and screams of others in the mall. Many of the screams I heard were cut ominously short which only frightened me more. I reach up to be picked up again, but instead she just shuts the door and leaves me. After that, blood began to pool into the room from under the door. I try to scoot away from it, but there's no where to move to and I end up covered in it. I look at my hands after pulling them from the warm viscous fluid and begin to cry loudly. I never saw her again.

My grandma says that it never happened though. She says it must have been a dream because my mother disappeared before I could even walk, but it feels so real. I was told that, when I was one, she disappeared investigating a bad case of necromancy gone wrong a few towns over, but it just doesn't feel right. She always gets snappy when I ask questions or bring up this memory so I've just stopped asking and the memory has become the basis for several of my nightmares...

...including this one.

Instead of my memory ending there, the door opens and my mother is there leaning against the door. When the door moves, she falls limply to the floor in front of me with a sick, wet thud. Her throat is slit and her lips are blue and she looks at me without seeing. I don't want to see this. I don't want to touch her still warm skin. I push against the wall in an effort to get more distance between myself and the corpse at my feet. She twitches and grabs my ankle, pulling me to her. Her gaping hungry maw bears down on me and I woke up screaming. 

I pant with my eyes darting around the room as I try to get my bearings. I swallowed hard on a dry throat and tried to control my breathing. It feels too quiet and I can hear my heart pounding. I just want out but I'm afraid that if I leave, that hand from my nightmare will grab my ankle from under the bed. You laugh, but one time there really was something under my bed. I shake my head against the memory and clasp my hand to my shirt to focus once again on my breathing. Just when I think I'm okay a loud rapping on my window makes me jump and curse. I whip my head towards the source of the noise to find that it is just the branch of the ancient tree outside my window. "Not funny. We're trimming you back ASAP!" I think to myself as I angrily tear my blankets off and flinch as my feet touch the cold floor. I glare at my slippers at the end of the bed and groan as I walk to put them on and leave out the door for something to drink.

Even though I know every inch of this old Victorian house by heart, I still find myself using the flashlight on my phone to luminate my path for comfort. You never know what might be lurking in the shadows. With all the wards and blessing on this place preventing even high level demons from entering the premise alive, I still felt paranoid. In the process of turning it on, I see the time and it's about 4:30. Now I'm even more upset, mostly at myself, but I feel like it's also the tree's fault. I don't think I can realistically go back to sleep after this with the time I have left to my first alarm. I was up now and I hated everything about it.