Horror stories to tell at midnight

My mother's notebook

Years ago, after the death of my mother, I found myself tasked with the unenviable task of finally sorting through her possessions. Most of them would no doubt end up trashed, my mother had been something of a pack rat. I suppose you would call her a hoarder, though she wasn't bad as those you see on TV. Mom collected books. Old books. Many of them ended up being valuable, and such were sold to help pay for her funeral. In the end, it took me some three months to go through everything. By the time it was all over, I'd gotten sick of digging through the things. Between the dust, and the occasional spider that was none to happy with my disturbing its home, I'd become numbed to what I might find.

To be honest, you'd be rather surprised just what you can turn up in a load of old books. More so when you're dealing with a person not entirely in their right mind as they're collecting those books. Everything from ancient encyclopedia sets, to cookbooks with numerous scribbles in the margins, to sex help manuals from the 1800's. I even turned up a handful of old grocery lists where, no doubt much to his chagrin, my father had failed to pick up the milk. This left me to wonder just why my mom had kept those things, but then again, like I said she wasn't really all there.

It was in the bottom of the last box that I came across the notebook. It was your typical old school notebook, nothing too special now that I think about it. Yet, far back as I could remember, my mom seemed to always have that book with her. She wrote in it from time to time, though I had never bothered to try to read it. I was, if anything, an honest kid; and I'd always figured it was her personal diary. As I sat there, looking at the book one last time, I found my curiosity growing. I needed to know what was in the book. Maybe it'd give me some insight into why my mom always acted as she did. At the very least, it'd solve one mystery from my childhood.

Opening to the first page, I saw a simple script that read "This is the life of" with my name filled in. Each page held some milestone in my life, dated from the day I was born. I read about my humorous birth, with details about how my first act upon reaching this world was to urinate on the doctor. The next few entries detailed more mundane, if gross, things like my first solid bowel movement, first bite of solid food, and first word.

Mom had never told me that my first word was "Damnit" and according to the log, it seemed that this had come about after one of my favorite toys had gone missing. This brought something of a chuckle to me, as I didn't remember the incident, but I could picture my father's face upon hearing that.

Each page I turned, the log continued on. It swiftly moved into kindergarten, noting in one log how I was already reading books far above my age group, and making note of a few accidents I suffered for wont of a small bladder. I didn't recall my mother being there for those particular incidents, but then again I didn't really have much memory that far back to begin with. So, I assumed the teacher told her.

First grade was much like kindergarten, and each subsequent grade the same. Fifth was the hardest for me to read. It detailed the problems I had with my teacher, going into detail about the paddlings I had suffered at this evil woman's hands, and the rather extensive lengths I had gone to in order to hide that from my mom. Yet, it seemed she had known all along. I wondered then why she never said anything, and yet something told me that it was probably best she hadn't. At least not then.

Things started to move pretty quickly from that point. Sixth grade passed with only a few notes on it, with Seventh being the same. My first eighth grade year was a disaster, taking up no less than six pages, with numerous accounts detailing the problems that would lead up to me repeating the grade. The second time through eighth only had two minor notes on it, and my high school years covered only two pages.

That's where things started to turn weird.

I expected that to have been the end of the journal, and yet it wasn't. There before me were each subsequent year. I flipped through a few, my eyes dancing over the records. On one I saw an account of when I lost my virginity. On another, the day I broke up with my long time girlfriend. Still another noted that the girlfriend had gotten pregnant, and at my urging had an abortion. The details in the logs were starting to scare me. Not just because I had told no one about them, but because my mother wasn't anywhere near me when they happened. I had moved out of state to go to college, and kinda lost touch with the family. Sure, my girlfriend could have told, but I didn't see that happening. Mel really didn't...well I suppose the best way to put it is, she didn't like my mother. They had only met once, and it had gone quite badly, so the issue was never pressed further.

After the entries on my college years, I found myself flipping through and finding entries right up to this year. That's when I started to get afraid. As if the previous revelations weren't bad enough, the fact was that my mother died in 2010. Yet, here I was reading entries from five years after her death. Things she had written about well prior to that. Things she had no way of knowing about. Such as my stint with being homeless, and my moving across the country to take a new job. The growing love between myself and a girl I had only met through online contact, well that was an ever present log in the notebook. Yet, that had all happened long after my mother was dead and gone.

This brings me to the last entry. The date on it is August 10, 2015. It was my mom's final entry, with all the pages after that being blank. Of all the entries, it's the one that haunts me the most. It's also a date I doubt I'll ever forget. On that day, while walking to work, I was nearly run down in a crosswalk by a distracted driver. The guy hadn't noticed the light changing, and it was dark. So it was no surprise that when he finally looked up from his cell phone, he was rather shocked to see someone mere feet from his car. The car very nearly hit me, missing by inches as I jumped forward. I can still feel the tug on my back from where his mirror struck my backpack. I can even still see the look of horror in his face.

The entry details all of that, and yet it differs in one very specific way. On Aug 10, 2015, I narrowly escaped death.

The entry says otherwise.

(1240 words)