5 Minute Horror: Mother’s Ghost

The house is quieter now. I sit in your rocking chair and recall the sound of your voice echoing through the halls, down the stairs, to my bedroom. The way you hummed while washing the dishes in the sink. I think about your smile as you stirred a pot of spaghetti, telling me how you saw a chef on the TV do something you too wanted to try. This house is empty, but the creak of the rocking chair against the wooden floor staves off the silence. It’s a numbing kind of comfort, focusing on the back and forth, back and forth.

Your room is frozen in time. I folded the laundry you were doing on the day you passed, but it sits in a stack on your bed, already collecting dust despite your end not being that long ago. There are pictures on the wall honoring those you missed, and I think to myself how I may add your smiling face to the collection, but I dislike sitting here, surrounded by the things that once belonged to someone special.

I look to the red glow of your ancient alarm clock—the one almost as old as you were—realizing that the hour is already late. Rising from the chair, I stretch my arms above my head then start to exit your room. I pass the full length mirror with a crack in it to shut off the reading lamp. In the corner of my eye, I see a shock of white in the reflection, one that doesn’t match my drab garments of black and gray. I glance to the mirror and cast off my initial alarm as a glint from the light. No one but me stares back. So I turn off the lamp and continue down the hallway to the stairs.

I do not look into that room, the one where I found you.

I feel the dread creep into the back of my throat at the thought of finding you again.

My chest tightens but I close my eyes for the briefest of moments to descend the steps to the kitchen, where Dad is washing his hands.

“Getting ready for bed?” I ask.

He looks at me with glassy eyes and the weary smile of a person who’s lost too much. “Yeah. If I go without sleep any longer, you might be burying me next.”

Suddenly, our customary morbid humor no longer makes sense. We both stare at one another like we both witnessed a brutal car crash. Raking his hand through his salt-and-pepper hair, Dad sighs and goes to the medicine cabinet.

“How about you?” He riffles through the half-filled bottles of painkillers, looking for his special brand of numb. “You haven’t stopped since…well, did you plan on going back home?”

“I told you I’m not leaving you alone until the funeral stuff is done. Abel can take care of things for a few days.”

Dad knocks back the pills then sips some water. “All right. I’ll see you in the morning, kiddo. Sleep well.”

We give each other the kind of hug that says too little and too much all at once. I feel his chest tighten as he realizes he’s going upstairs, into the room where you were found lifeless.

“Sleep well,” I call after his retreating form.

That leaves me to turn off the downstairs lights one by one. As I cross the living room in the dark, I see a flash of white across the blank TV screen. There’s nothing that could have made that flicker, so I stop and stare. When it doesn’t happen again, I go the kitchen to get a drink of water. As I’m filling the cup, I hear the floor creak behind me. My heart does a little flip inside my chest, and I look over my shoulder.

Nothing.

Just the sad bones of a hundred year old house shifting, I tell myself. Or maybe it’s the weight of something else.

I drink my water quickly. The darkness seems to throb as I pass from the kitchen to the hall and then to the bathroom by what used to be my childhood bedroom. I think about the grand plans you had for the room when you converted it into a guest space and office. What remains of the endeavor is mismatched furnishings, unopened buckets of paint, and my old bed covered in your favorite quilt. I get changed into pajamas as the weight of fatigue starts to sap at my energy. My eyelids are heavy, and the bed looks as comfortable as ever.

Once I’ve brushed my teeth, I lay down with a sigh and shut off the light. Only to immediately regret it.

At the foot of the bed is a soft white—almost a glow—in the shape of your face, in a place where no white had been before. Again, my heart does a somersault in my ribcage. I stare at the face with its two dark circles, unable to speak. I try closing my eyes, but the anxiety is too strong. Fumbling for the little lamp on the nightstand, I manage to knock off only one trinket before bathing the room in light once more. The face is gone, and I’m left gazing at the dark wood of the secretary desk you coveted.

It’s just sleep deprivation, I decide. The light goes off after five minutes, only for that white shape to appear once again. And this time, it’s smiling at me.

Ducking beneath the blankets, I try not to utter a word. That’s when the edge of the bed starts to dip as something heavy climbs on. A brush of cool air passes over my head. The blanket rustles but doesn’t move off me. Then the weight is gone, and there’s silence.

*

I don’t know when it happened, but I must have fallen asleep, because it’s suddenly morning, and there’s sunlight filtering through the woven quilt. I blink, feeling like my eyeballs had been placed in an air fryer. Last night comes back in a rush. The face. The weight. The flicker of white. I scrub my face with my hands then roll out of bed. Out in the kitchen, Dad’s already making a cup of instant coffee for himself, looking as haggard as I feel.

“Hey,” I say groggily.

He grumbles something back.

“How’d you sleep last night?”

“I don’t know if I did.” Dad pauses in the middle of pouring milk into his coffee and stares into the contents. “Thought I heard something.”

Suppressing a shudder, I glance at him. “Like what?”

“You…”

My eyes widen. I know he doesn’t mean me. He must mean…

I turn, taking in the white face, the blank blue eyes, and I mutter, “Mom.”

—

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