Lights Out

A Mother's Love

We had to get out of here.

My arms encircled my tiny son, malnourished and weak from what he's been subjected to, and run for the bedroom. The cabinets in the kitchen shutter and slam in a never-ending echo of destruction, glass and ceramic dishes falling to the floor and shattering helplessly. Ray shrieked, his hands bunched into tight fists against his ears.

The entire house rumbled on its foundation, a paranormal earthquake that held no escape. I told him over and over that something felt wrong in the house and that if the dog wouldn't even go inside, then neither should we. But he never listened to me, not after my long relapse into postpartum depression after Ray was born. He thought the pills weren't working properly, but he wouldn't listen. I buried my feelings about the house and in the process, caused my husband's murder and the slow death of my son.

Last week, before this nightmare really started, I went to the town archives. A woman was murdered in the kitchen by her father. She was seeing a man her father despised and during their argument, he sliced her head open with the meat cleaver on the counter. She had been twenty years old. The realtor told me that no one stayed in the house longer than a month or two, and now I know why. She's terrorizing people.

I throw open the door to the closet and shove Ray inside. He clings to my sleeves, pulling until it begins to rip, and he's toppled backwards from the force. I quickly close the door and set the bookcase in front of it, sobbing when he begins to cry and scream for his mommy. I swipe my hand across my face, and then make my way to the kitchen.

Her pale apparition is smothered in a red light, the blood from her death seeming to crawl over her body. I choke back my disgust and take a knife from the wooden block, tapping the blade to get her attention. She turns to me, her mouth twisting into an evil smile, crooked fangs poking from her lips. She holds a hand out as if beckoning me and then my throat begins to close.

Her skin moved as if thousands of insects lived inside, marching in lazy patterns. Her hair flew in the nonexistent breeze as she shuffled closer, her face sad but her eyes vengeful. She would kill me, even if it took everything she has. She was filled so completely with pain and anger over her missed life that she couldn't rest, and so any child that comes into her domain is hers. She wanted Ray, just like she wanted the previous couple's unborn child and the children before them. She wanted what she never got to have.

I ignore the painful pressure on my throat, struggling to get closer to her. A loud bang behind me lost me some of my progress, but the tiny whimper that came after allowed her to fling me into the cabinets. Ray had gotten out of the closet; the ghost girl must have opened it for him. Her attention was now on my son but I couldn't move at all. So, I did the one thing that no one would do for her.

I slice the knife through my wrists, feeling the clunk of metal on bone, and use all of my willpower to get in front of Ray. He sat, scared and shaking, before the evil in the house, waiting for me to save him. I managed to scoot along the cabinet and grab his overall straps, tugging him into my body.

"If you want a death, then you can have me. You took my husband, I will not let you harm my son."

She stared, confusion silencing the horror of what she was. She almost looked like a normal girl, again. I was giving myself so that my son could grow up and live a full life, something her father took from her and the one thing she had wanted all those years ago. She wanted children to replace the one taken from her, and she killed the parents to get revenge on the father she couldn't kill. But I sacrificed myself, and now things were going differently.

As soon as I realized I could move again, I shot forward to take Ray in my arms and ran for the hall closet. My trip to the archives wasn't founded on curiosity alone. I was gardening and found a show box, worm eaten and rotting, and inside was the key to my mission. I kept the box in the closet, some part of me knowing I would need it. 

Ray was coated in my blood as I set him down to grab the box, shrieks of anger following from the kitchen. Papers flew in front of my face and tables and couches upended seemingly of their own volition. I stood with the box and opened it, making my way to the swirling mass of angry ghost in my house. She laid eyes on the box and saw the bones of her child inside. The father must have buried her child in the box so no one would know, and now after all this time of searching the girl has her child back.

The ghost stopped her havoc on my house, taking the box from my weak hands. I dropped to my knees, ready to succumb to the blood loss, but I couldn't help but think the girl was beautiful when she was alive. And that her son shared her raven black hair. She gave me a smile as she took her son's hand and disappeared, leaving me in the wake of her fury and her peace. Paramedics found us soon after from a call the neighbors made about a noise disturbance. As they loaded me into the ambulance and set my son in my lap, I cried. I cried for my husband and I cried for the life of the girl who was taken so cruelly. But Ray was safe now, and I felt gratitude in that. A mother's job never ends.