R/Nosleep (Get Spooked)

Next Time You See Her, Make Sure You Hug Your Mom Extra Tight

By: u/Nickbotic

I never met my mom.

Not...really, anyway.

She didn't abandon us, she didn't die giving birth, I wasn't put up for adoption, nothing like that.

We lived in the same house for 12 years, our paths just never crossed, which, I guess, is because she didn't really have a path.

She stayed in one room my entire life. The third door on the left of the hallway in our three bedroom ranch-style home, a room I wasn't allowed in. The door to mom's room was different from the rest of the doors in our house. It looked heavier, sturdier. And there were a series of locks on it, the keys to which my dad always kept on his person.

My dad did an admirable job of balancing her situation and my knowing that she loved me. He would come out of mom's room and tell me that she'd asked about me, and he would deliver messages from me to her. At least that's what he told me, I suppose I don't have any real way of knowing if she actually asked about me or if he'd told her what I'd said, but I guess it doesn't matter.

As a child I was equal parts terrified and curious of what my mom did behind that door.

There was a constant odor that permeated the house that originated from that room, one so bad it meant we couldn't have company. I had a variety of excuses for why my friends couldn't come over, none of which were "my house smells like something crawled up something that crawled up something's ass and died, and died, because my mom is a recluse." In fact, I was under strict instruction by my dad to tell anyone who asked that my mom was dead.

She might as well have been, the house probably would've smelled better.

In the morning when I would get up to get ready for school, I would sometimes see my dad mopping the hallway around the door. He always had some excuse, like he'd spilled something or the ceiling was leaking, but I knew better. Something was coming out of my mom's room.

Some nights, I would sneak out of bed and peek my head out into the hallway. There was always, day and night, a light emitting from under the door. When I would watch from my room, I would see pauses in that light, interruptions, as though someone was moving around within. I always assumed it was my dad, as he spent most nights behind that thick wooden door.

But it was the sounds that would send my mind wandering with images of all manner of violence and horror.

Every now and again a scream would erupt from down the hall. It was guttural, intentional, the scream of a woman in fear for her life. There would be bangs, crashes, the sounds of things breaking. And my dad would emerge from my mom's room, breathing heavily and wiping himself down with a towel, covered in either sweat or water or both or neither, something that made his silhouette glisten in the darkness. Then he would get the mop.

When playing outside, if I could find the opportunity, sometimes I would try to look through the window, which had been covered with a thick comforter. One day, however, the comforter had been moved ever so slightly, allowing a sliver of visibility into the room. I peered through that thing space, my vision obstructed even further by the condensation that had accumulated from within.

I could just barely make out the shape of a head resting on a pillow inside the room, seemingly sleeping. I stood there, my 7-year-old brain trying to fill in the black left by my limited view. I stared at the head on the pillow, shifting to my left in a futile effort to see more of the body to my which that head belonged. I could make out the vague shapes of a body under a blanket, but my main focus was the only visible part of her - her head.

As I turned back to my first position, a twig snapped under my foot, and inside the room, the head on that pillow turned toward me, and I could feel that person, I could feel my mom, looking into my eyes. We each held our gaze for what felt like an eternity, and it was, above all else, a serene moment, the very first one shared between a mother and her son. I remember a warm breeze gently blowing past me, the sounds of leaves rustling and crickets dancing. There was a peace in that moment that I haven't experienced before and haven't since.