My Mother And I Moved To A House In Georgia And That’s When Things Got Out Of Control

When I woke up Friday morning, the sky was dark with large clouds. They moved quickly across the sky. No sunshine was visible through the thickness of grey. The clouds lingered like the lost spirits that tormented me.

My mother had passed me in the hall.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“Just roaming around,” I said.

“Okay, I’m going to take a nap for a couple of hours, then I have to go back to work a double.”

“Wow. Really?”

“Yeah, and then I thought maybe we could watch a movie when I get home?”

“Okay, that sounds great!” A smile crept across my face. I could not remember the last time my mother actually wanted to do something, just the two of us.

I hadn’t spent much time roaming the house, so I figured I would while she was sleeping. There was the old, decrepit shed. If it fell on me, it would do no real physical damage. The wood was so dry-rotted that it would burst into dust when it touched me. I hadn’t been in the root cellar outside the house or in the attic. Maybe my grandfather had left something, unaware that he would never return to reclaim it. Perhaps he didn’t even know it was there.

I heard the lock on my mother’s bedroom door click, indicating she was settling in to nap. I went outside and stood by the cellar. I looked at the dilapidated shed adjacent to the pond and decided to err on the side of caution. I didn’t want to go in there unless I absolutely had to. I opened the cellar door and descended the worn wooden steps. It was dark in the cellar, so dark that I could not see ahead of me, even with my thick glasses. I knew exactly where I was headed, although I could not explain how. An unseen force was pulling me. For a moment, I swear, it felt as though my feet never touched the dirt-covered floor!

I knelt in the darkest corner of the cellar, and without second guessing, pulled a loose brick from its place in the wall. I did not know how I knew where it was, but I knew. In there was a blueprint of the house. There was a circle on the map. It was in my room.

As I walked past my mother’s room, I checked her door knob. It was still locked. I went into my room, and the force that pulled me to the loose brick in the cellar was still pulling at me, guiding me. I went into my closet and tossed aside some clothes in a corner. There was a small door that I hadn’t noticed when we first moved in. I opened it and squeezed inside, wishing I had brought a flashlight and wishing that I was just a little smaller. The tunnel was not deep, maybe 10 feet, and I ran into a dead end. Just as I began feeling around, my hand brushed a hard wooden box. I grabbed it and crawled backwards as quickly as I could.

When I broke out of the darkness and was back in my room I opened the small wooden chest. Inside was another map. It looked like a plot of the property, and it was marked with another faded circle. I decided to find it. If I could free the spirits from their damnation, perhaps I could be released of mine, too.

It was hard to follow the map. Since it had been drawn, the landscape had changed considerably. New trees had grown, and old ones had fallen. Once I located the creek, though, it was easy to get my bearings. I was not entirely sure that I had found it, but my gut and the unknown force that seemed to be leading me told me, this was the spot on the map.

Before me was a small graveyard, like a family plot but not well cared for. The tombstones were made of rock that had been carved. There were only about 20 plots. The names were hard to read, nearly impossible. As I made my way around to the back of the plot, I could feel the earth sinking in beneath my feet. My mind said to jump away, but my body didn’t respond. I was frozen in shock. Paralysis filled my body as the earth caved in and began to swallow me whole.

I fell maybe four or five feet. My head poked out the top of the hole and my fear faded. I was overcome by a feeling of relief. Then the fear shot through me like a racing bullet hitting its target. I stood atop hundreds of bones, bones that were too large to be anything but human. I stood with eyes as large as silver dollars sparkling in the sun, with a mixture of fright and curiosity. I saw fragments of a brown cloak and a white dress I recognized instantly. This was a mass grave, and the man and woman I had seen were two of the many who were buried here.

I climbed out of the hole in the earth and ran. I ran faster and faster with each springing step I took. I wanted so badly to scream, but I was already out of breath from running. I reached the house and realized all the lights were off. My mother had already left for work.

I ran up to my room and locked the door behind me. I bolted to the window with what I imagined to be inhuman speed and swiftness. I leaped piles of clothing and stuff I’d left on the floor throughout the past week. I tugged on the blinds so hard I feared they might rip, but my fright was really of who or what may be watching from the wood’s edge. I turned to the door. There was one corner of my room that no light ever reached but rather cast an arching shadow. The shadow moved. I called my mother to tell her I was ill, and that she needed to come home. I didn’t dare tell her what I had found, or that I was scared out of my mind, let alone tell her about the moving shadow in the dark corner of my room.

When my mother came home, I was lying in bed, not remotely tired. I was reading my Ghosts of America book, when I heard slithering and scraping on the floor. I pulled off the covers slowly and looked over the edge of my bed. The floor was covered in bodies, all headless, all moving slowly, one swarming over the other as they came toward me.

I heard something in the ceiling, just as a drop of blood dripped on my hand. I looked up and saw the heads of the bodies all gazing at me. Their mouths and eyes were wide open. It seemed as though each face was speaking to me.

I jumped back and hit the back of my head so hard on the headboard I passed out. My mother came in and woke me when she heard the thud.

As I awoke, she asked, “Honey, are you okay?” I could tell that she was worried, even though I could hardly open my eyes.

“They’re there… the floor… they’re… coming…”

“I’m taking you to the hospital, right now.”

The doctor gave me some sleeping pills. They told my mother that the “hallucination” was probably due to lack of sleep. I felt a little offended by this remark because I had slept a lot the last couple of nights. Neither my mother nor my doctor believed what I had to say about the decapitated, burnt corpses (but then corpses don’t crawl toward people) or the mass grave that I’d fallen into. My mother assured me that there was no grave on the land. So I simply muttered, “I must have hit my head hard.” I was fighting a losing battle.

The pills were powerful, and I was actually glad for the escape that they offered. I slept through the entire night and felt the best I had since my father died. On top of that, I had no bloodcurdling experiences in the night.

I rode my bike down to the market. It was almost noon when I got there. I found the newest Spiderman comic and I read the whole thing in ten minutes while standing in the store. I usually did this because I couldn’t afford to buy them and my mother wouldn’t buy them for me, especially not after the previous night’s episode.

I didn’t want to go home because I wouldn’t be able to take my pills. I needed to stay awake. I didn’t want to risk anything. The only time I felt normal or safe was when I was asleep, and that was no longer a problem.

I got home just as the sun began to set to find my mother on the couch reading a romance novel. I walked over to her, and she gave me a glass of water that was on the table. “Do you want any Advil? I’m sure your head is killing you.”

“I’m fine,” I assured her.

“Can you make us some popcorn? Maybe we can watch a movie.”

“What about work?”

“I took the night off to make sure that you are okay.”

“Okay.”

I brought the popcorn and a Coke for each of us.

She put her arm around me then pulled me in close and kissed my forehead. I was surprised at how nice my mother was being. I liked it, so I didn’t complain. For the first time in a long while, it seemed like she thought I was normal.

After the movie I took my pills and went to bed. I woke up in the middle of the night, knowing something was wrong.

I heard a scratching on my window. I looked out and saw the woman from the hallway hanging from the tree outside. Blood dripped from a hole in the center of her head, a bullet hole I hadn’t noticed before. Her skin was badly burned, melting from her skin like wax from a blazing candle.

My scream was so loud that my mother came running into my room. From her reaction I knew she’d seen what I did.

“Oh my God! Who is that?”

“The woman I’ve been seeing!”

“Let’s get the hell out of here!”

My mother grabbed me, we ran toward the door. The door slammed hard in front of us. A heavily framed picture fell from my wall as a terrifying laugh rang through the room.

My mother turned to the window only to see a new female entity there. The woman in the flowing white gown was clawing for the glass, scraping away as her nails made marks on the once crystal clear glass.

“Shit! Shit! Shit!”

“Mom!”

“It’s okay, baby.”

She pushed me to the side a little. I grabbed the handle of my Louisville Slugger baseball bat that leaned against the door and started beating it violently causing it to slowly open.

“Mom!”

“What, Chris?!” She looked to the ground, bearing witness to the same bodies strewn across the floor that I saw the night before. I kicked the door the rest of the way open, she grabbed me, and we ran.

When we reached the stairs, the ceiling began to shake. Blood leaked through the walls, and a metallic stench of blood and foul odor of death permeated the air. My mother shrieked and led us down the stairs.

“What’s happening?”

“I told you, Mom!” I squeezed her hand tightly to make sure that her human flesh was truly human. “They want me!”

She said nothing.

The front door slammed repeatedly. I wasn’t sure if she could see them or not, but I sure could. At the foot of the stairs and all around the first floor landing were the spirits. They were not full-bodied, just shadowy silhouettes of men, women, and children.

They watched as my mother began to cry and as I just stood there unable to comprehend what was happening.

“Let’s go for it.” My mother was nervous. I could hear her voice shaking.

“Do you see them?”

“See who?” she asked, impatiently.

Cracks traveled down the walls. My mother grabbed my hand, and we ran to the front door. She tripped on the last stair, but my momentum pushed me through the door as it closed one last time with my mother still inside. I looked through the window just to the right of the door. I knew she saw the shadows now since she cowered as they approached her. She stood and ran for the live-in area, where the windows slammed like the door.

“Mom, break the window!” I yelled.

“Chris!” Her voice seemed so far, yet she was just inches away.

I ran to a window that was opening and slamming, as loud as if someone were banging a hammer on thick oak frame.

My mother was crying, something I had not seen her do in two years. I looked around for something hard, something that could break the window. “Mom, hold on!”

“I can’t!”

“Yes, you can!” She could see the look in my eyes before I even spoke. “Mom!”

She ducked just as an ashtray flew across the room, thrown by something neither of us could see.

I grabbed a rock from the porch railing, I hit the glass twice, as hard as I could. A sinister laugh echoed from the house’s walls, and on the third strike, the laughter became a dreadful cry of pain as the glass shattered.

I reached into the shattered window and took my mother’s hand. A shadowy figure came from behind her and grabbed her, tugging in the opposite direction as I was. “Let my mother go!” I yelled. “Let her go!”

Without warning, the figure let go. My mother was propelled through the window on top of me, shaking and crying. Her body was covered in scrapes from the shattered glass. Thankfully, none were too deep. She jumped up, grabbed my hand, and we ran. We ran from the house, the woods, and from the shadowy figures watching from the shattered window.

We stopped once as we reached the end of the drive. Flames overtook our old home, reaching toward the skies, but the house was not burning. It was like watching an old film, it looked real but we knew it wasn’t.