Thriller: Horror: Spirit Doll (Mystery Suspense Thrillers) (Haunted Paranormal Short Story)

by Stephen Kingston

  Swallowing away the sadness, or trying to, I went in to the kitchen to prepare a jug of tea. Mom’s favorite drink was unsweetened ice tea. I had bought a new box, just for her, of the brand she preferred. Sitting down as the water boiled I looked around the large country kitchen and hoped Mom’s health remained good and that her memory would not start to falter too quickly. And I prayed the behavioral changes would not take place. Not the ones I had read about anyway.

  I love my mother but my daughters would have to come first in that situation. Sighing I reminded myself that my mother needed my help. It was alright to worry but I had to remember she was my mother and I owed her far more than I could ever repay. Pushing my shoulder length curls out of my face I pulled my slightly plump body out of the chair and poured the hot water over the tea bags. We’d just have to wait and see how it all went, that is all we could do. And approach the day positively. Starting out on a negative approach was going to make the whole thing fail.

  Putting a smile on my face I left the tea to brew and started a cake for my family. Lindy and Twilla, my twins, loved German Chocolate Cake and their Mom was the only one out of all of their friends’ mothers that even knew how to make the frosting. It was simply down to country living and being raised by a single mother. I had a different upbringing and learned how to make do, it did not mean I was better, it just meant I had learned a lot of things others had not, I told the girls. The cake was also my favorite. I needed to brighten my own day a little, too.

  I thought about my mother as I mixed the ingredients for the cake. I had never had a father, not that I knew of, and even my birth certificate listed the man as unknown. As a child I had tried to ask her about my father but she would always turn pale and a sad, haunted look would come over her. She would not speak to me for the rest of the day and I quickly learned to stop asking about the man that had helped to create me.

  I had also learned to avoid questions about it. There was not such a stigma about it now, not like there’d been so many generations ago, but people liked to know that you were normal. And even now children who do not know who their parents are, are looked down on as pitiful waifs, or somehow unfortunate. I had made the man a hero in dozens of different ways until my teens, and then I had figured out that something was off.

  My mother and I shared a close relationship. She never went on dates or spent time out with friends; she preferred being at home with her daughter. We did everything together, trips, crafts, holidays, cooking, everything. If my mother was not telling me the one truly important thing about who my father was, she had a good reason and I likely did not want to know what that reason was.

  I stopped my imaginings about the great war hero or the time-travelling man from the future that had come back to make sure I was born so I could save the human race and focused instead on studying and boys. Then I met Wes in a Latin American history class and my world changed. My Mom had been pleased for me when I started at the university but it had taken some time to get her to warm up to Wes.

  We’d lived in Charlotte even then and I had gone to a local school for my university education because I just could not do without my best friend, my mother. If Wes and I hadn’t hit it off so well from the beginning I would probably still be living at home with Mom, we were just that close. She had given me away on our wedding day, gladly placing my hand into Wes’s much larger one before walking away, happy tears filling her eyes.

  And now she was coming to my home. Wiping at a tear that had escaped my eyelids I washed my hands so I could begin cooking the frosting of the cake. She had worked so that I could go to school and saved throughout my childhood. I came out of school without debt and started my married life on the right foot. She had been there when the girls were born, coming to stay until we could all cope, and now we were all going to look after her.

  Pouring the frosting on the cake after it cooled for a little while I went into the bathroom to get properly dressed and put on a little makeup. I was not normally one for primping, Wes liked to be able to touch my hair and my face without a bunch of goop in the way but I felt as though I needed it today. I needed that painted mask to hide the sadness from Mom, from Wes, from the girls, and from myself.

  I looked in the mirror after putting on a pale pink summery dress and noted that my skin had darkened from my time in the garden and my waist was a little smaller than it had been last year. The dress was not as tight as it had been then and my hair was shorter than it was last year, too. My green eyes still sparkled though and my round face still had very few lines. I was aging well, at least, even if I did like to eat more than one piece of cake a day and did not think of exercising as a religion.

  I chewed at my thumbnail, messing up the manicure I had got yesterday. No, maybe jeans and a t-shirt would be better today. It would be less formal and would put Mom at ease. Changing swiftly I ran downstairs as I heard Wes’s SUV pulling up. My girls came running in the house, screaming for their Grams but she was not here yet.

  “Girls, go in and wash up and put on some clean clothes. Grams will be here soon enough.” I smiled as the girls ran back to the bathroom and began to giggle as they washed up.

  “How are you babe?” Wes asked, sitting down beside me on the beige couch in our living room. It was long enough for him to stretch out on, one of the main reasons we’d bought it.

  “I am alright, handling it so far. I am just worried. So many things could go wrong.” My words tapered off as I began to list possibilities in my mind.

  “I will be here to help Clara. You can count on me. And it may be a long time before she starts to go downhill more than she has. Just do not forget I am here for you, alright?” Wes kissed my hand, his eyes telling me he spoke from the heart.

  Wes was referring to one of my bad habits. I would sometimes forget I did not have to solve all of the world’s problems alone and would take on far too much myself. The habit sometimes led to an argument when I started to feel overwhelmed but it was something we were both aware of and worked on together.

  “I promise to talk to you, Wes. I think they’re here.” I said my voice suddenly nervous and my heart racing.

  I do not know why I was nervous, it was not as though I was going into a job interview but that is what it felt like. Clenching Wes’s hand I stood up and went out to the porch as Stella’s car pulled into the circular driveway. I waved my right hand and stepped down as the car came to a stop.

  My Mom’s friend Stella stepped out of the car in her normal flamboyant way with a flourish of her hand, a yoo-hoo at the top of her voice, and a circle to show off her flamingo pink square dancing dress. An odd choice but Stella was an odd person.

  “Yoo-hoo, Clara, we are here!” As if I did not know that already. “Your poor Momma! She had such a hard time saying goodbye to her old home but I told her we’d go back to visit if she wanted to.”

  The older woman ran around to the other side of the car just as I stepped to open the door. Stella opened the door and Mom got out of the car blinking as the sun beat down into her eyes.

  “Clara? Oh good, I had forgotten where we were going for a moment. Honey get Momma’s bags and let’s go in. I hear the beach calling my name.”

  And so it began. Clara smiled sadly as her mother walked into the house, the other woman apparently thinking they were on vacation down in Myrtle Beach. Clara wondered how old she was today, in her mother’s mind, and pulled the boxes out of the car that Stella had carefully stacked. Wes grabbed some as well and they all headed into the house.

  “She is not too bad today, Clara, truly she is not. It took me fifteen minutes to convince her she knew me this morning. Then another hour to convince her she had been planning this move for a month. You have your work cut out for you but it is not too bad today. You just have to wait it out most of the time.” Stella plastered a smile onto her face as they approached the house, her words cutting off so Clara’s mother would not hear them.

  “Momma.” I called out, taking Stella’s
words to heart. “Where are you honey?”

  “I am in the living room with Wes, Clara. I swear girl, when are you going to marry this boy? He sure does need fattening up!”

  I blew air out from between my teeth as I sat the boxes down. Wes had gone ahead of me into the living room.

  “Momma, Wes is fine as he is. The man already has more muscles than a body builder. You stop picking on him.” Just act like things are normal I told myself. Maybe they will be if you keep pretending.

  Chapter Two

  I shifted in the bed as I woke up. Something had stirred me from my dreams but I was not sure what. I waited, listening for the sound of one of the girls calling out for me. It had been a long day of keeping Mom in the house once Stella left and trying to keep the girls from pestering her to death.

  They could not understand what was wrong with Grams, though I had tried to explain it in terms a child could understand. When it was time to put them to put Wes and I had both had to answer more questions and wipe away a few tears. Their feelings were hurt because they thought Grams did not care about them but it was not that at all.

  The sound of their sobs had kept me awake for a long time and now I could see I had only been asleep for a few hours from the red numbers of the clock on my nightstand. What had woken me up? I listened for a few more minutes then put my head back down, dismissing the whole thing as a dream.

  Slowly I settled back in, repositioning my head before flipping the pillow to the cool side. Suddenly I became aware that something was wrong in the room. Something was blocking the red light of the clock numbers. The light was not penetrating my eyelids. Something was in the way of the light.

  Which meant something was standing beside me. My still body froze and suddenly I was too afraid to even breathe. Who was blocking the light? An irrational fear took over, despite knowing it was probably one of the girls. But why did the child not speak? Wes was beside of me, Mom was in bed. That left an unknown person.

  I was about to sit up and turn on the light, overcoming my fear as I reminded myself of my children, when a cold delicate hand reached out to touch my arm.

  “He knows where I am.” The words were spoken as the hand touched me and I jumped from the bed, flicking the lamp on beside of the bed.

  “Mom! Oh my God, you scared me Mom! What are you doing?” My voice sounded angry but I was more relieved than anything.

  My mother was standing there, not speaking and her eyes blank.

  “He knows where I am.”

  She then turned around and left the room, heading off in the direction of the stairs. If she was sleep-walking she could fall!

  Wes stirred behind me and I soothed him before heading out to steer Mom back to her bed, guiding her down the stairs. Yeah, I was going to need a nap tomorrow because it was going to not only take me some time to get her settled but to calm myself down from that scare.

  I settled Mom back into her double bed, pulling her quilt up to protect her from the chill of the air conditioner, and watched as she fell back to sleep. What had woken her up? She had had a sleeping pill. I knew because I had gone through her pill box to see what she was taking. I smoothed Mom’s white hair down as she closed her eyes, and her breathing evened out. She was asleep again.

  I was just about to turn the light off when Mom’s eyes popped back open and she spoke once more.

  “He knows where I am.”

  Mom’s eyes then closed and she started to snore once more. I was officially creeped out but dismissed it as the pill or her ailment talking. Tomorrow I would call the doctor and ask him about sleep-walking as a side effect of the medicine. That had to be the problem. She was on so many pills now I was going to go through them all to check for contraindications and duplicates of the same type of medicines.

  I considered going in to the living room to watch television before heading back to bed but decided against it. I had to get the girls up for school so it was back to bed for me. I settled back into the bed, Wes pulling me close as I pulled the cover back up. I snuggled close, loving how warm he felt and wondered if I could wake him for some late-night grown up fun. Then the words my Mom had spoken came back to me.

  Who was the man she spoke of and why was it important that he knew where she was? I was still pondering the question when I finally fell back to sleep, the worry forgotten as exhaustion took over and the day disappeared once more. I would ask her tomorrow, it was better than worrying about it.

  “Clara, have you seen my blue shirt? I wanted to wear it for that meeting today.” I heard Wes’s voice call out from the closet. I was in our en suite bathroom, trying to get the girls’ unruly curly hair tamed into something that did not look as though a sheep exploded on their heads.

  With Twilla’s hair gathered in my hand, a comb between my teeth, and Lindy busy pulling the hair-tie out of her hair my patience was a bit thin when I replied.

  “For goodness sake, Wes, it is hanging on the hanger in front of you!” I called out after spitting out the comb into the sink while I finished tying Twilla’s hair up. “Lindy, leave your hair alone.”

  “But it is too tight Mommy, it hurts!” Lindy’s bottom lip protruded and I gave in by pulling on the tie until Lindy’s hair loosened up a little. Her hair did look a little tight.

  “Right, is that better?” I paused for a response. “Good. Now, what do we want for breakfast?”

  “French toast, Mommy!” Twilla cried out.

  “I want gravy and biscuits. With snausage.” Lindy said contrarily, giving her sister a dark look that only sisters could share.

  “It is sausage my darling, and how about a compromise? Cinnamon biscuits and sausage, that way you both have something you wanted?” I had learned to compromise a long time ago. My girls might be twins but sometimes they had their own ideas that did not match at all. Compromise usually kept them happy.

  The girls agreed and we all headed down to the kitchen. I stopped by Mom’s room as we went, seeing that she was still asleep. I herded the girls into the kitchen to begin cooking. Wes would drop them off at school and my first whole day with Mom would begin.

  The girls were waiting for the biscuits to finish cooling when Wes came down the stairs, dressed in a grey suit that matched his eyes well. I held my face up for his kiss and caressed his face as he headed for his cup of coffee and sat down. I put two of the icing covered biscuits on his plate along with some sausage and then prepared the girls' plates.

  “Hi Daddy.” The girls sang in unison. They loved their father dearly.

  “Hello my darlings, how are you this morning?” Wes asked, looking at them with a smile.

  “We are good, Daddy. Who was that man outside of our room last night?” Twilla asked. It was hard for most people to tell the girls apart but Wes and I did not have such difficulties, we knew our babies.

  “What man?” I asked, a bolt of fear surging down my spine.

  “The black man, Mommy. He was all black and he had a funny hat on. He just stood there for hours. Every time I woke up he was there.” Twilla answered.

  “He is Gram’s friend.” Lindy told her sister with a cross look as if Twilla had told a secret.

  “What are you talking about Lindy?” Wes demanded from the girl, his tone cautious but I could tell there was more to that question than was being said. He felt spooked too.

  “The Shadow Man. He came to see us last night.” Lindy said, not looking at Wes as she spoke. She picked at her biscuit, not meeting his gaze as she spoke.

  “Oh, a friend of Gram’s! I understand now!” I said as realization dawned. The girls had an imaginary friend!

  I gave Wes a look over the heads of the girls, waving my hand to let him know it was all fine. I saw him relax once more and go back to his breakfast.

  “Did he say anything to you?” I asked, curious what the girls had obviously cooked up in their heads last night.

  I would almost guarantee one had started a story and the other had added to it, both feeding off of each oth
er until the Shadow Man was born.

  “No, but he wants us to play games with him. I do not like his games so I am not going to play!” Twilla said, as though she were actually talking to him. She was the more stubborn of the girls, Lindy usually being more compliant and submissive than Twilla.

  “What kind of games does he want to play?” I asked out of curiosity.

  “I think it is grownup stuff like looking for things and writing stuff down. I do not want to do stuff like that. It is so boring!” Twilla told me as she finished her sausage patty.

  “Well, you do not have to play games you do not want to play girls so tell him to buzz away! Finish up girls, your father has a meeting this morning.” I hurried the girls as I washed up the dishes I had used to cook breakfast.

  The girls finished at the same time as Wes and they all went to wash their hands, my little ducks all in a row. I smiled as I hugged and kissed them all goodbye.

  Wes and I would talk about the girls’ new friend later and I waved to them as the car pulled away from the yard. Taking a deep breath I went into Mom’s room, wanting to keep her on a schedule. I wanted to see how she was today before I made any further plans for the day.

  “You are up!” I cried out as I looked into the room to see Mom up and dressed.

  “Of course I am dear. How are you this morning?” My mother asked, coming over to give me a hug.

  I was a few inches taller than my mother so I bent down to kiss her cheek and hug her back. I smiled down at her as I examined her face for any signs of the confusion from the early morning hours. Her eyes were clear and her face showed a well-rested woman ready for the day. Alzheimer’s disease was generally categorized into three stages, mild, moderate, and severe. Mom was in the mild to moderate range but I knew over time it would get worse.

  She had not wandered off on her own and become lost yet but she would forget where she was going when she was driving and had called me in tears more than once. She often forgot what day it was and sometimes, in the evenings, she would forget who the girls were and mistake them for someone else, even me as a child. This was a symptom often called sun-downing, the confusion and agitation that accompanied Alzheimer’s would become progressively worse as the sun went down and the body became tired. What may have been a lucid cogent individual in the morning could rapidly become a confused and angry person by the time it went dark.