It Likes to Look Like Family

It Likes to Look Like Family

           I never believed the stories when I was little. Grandmother would always tell me how the women in our family were plagued by a horrifying demon. An angry demon. She told us that once the woman it was attached too died, it moved on to the next female of the next generation. I asked her why the demon was so angry. Grandmother didn’t know, her best guess was that a female ancestor must have communed with the demon in some way. Perhaps she made a deal to trade the torment of her descendants for wealth, beauty, or power. Or maybe the demon was betrayed by the woman and sought revenge with a wrath strong enough to burn through the generations. There were many stories as too the origin of the demon. It had even become a family tradition to see who could come up with the best story of the mysterious ancestor that had supposedly started this curse. It was all good scary fun, but I never believed a word.

           Grandmother was in hospice care, and my mother, father, and I were visiting after the doctors contacted us to inform us that grandmother could pass away at any moment. She looked frail and had a faraway look in her eyes as she lay in her bed during her final minutes. She looked at my mother and said, “Come here my darling Ellie.” My mother kneeled beside her. “It’s going to go to you now. Ignore it if you can and NEVER listen to it.”

           “Sure mom, don’t worry, I’ll be okay,” my mother had said.

           I could not believe that of all the things to have on her mind during her final moments, the demon was the focus of her last words. Less than five minutes later, grandmother’s lungs emptied her breath one last time, after eighty-one years of reliably circulating oxygen. I thought I would break down in tears. To my surprise I instead stood stoically as if frozen in time. I had no thoughts at that moment. No emotions, and a strange suspicion as to whether I even existed. Shock, I suppose.

           Later that evening, my mom and I were in the kitchen washing dishes in silence. I could feel her eyes as she gazed over at me, “how are you doing sweetheart? You haven’t said much since we were with your grandma.”

           I didn’t have much to say in truth, at least not about the loss of my grandmother. The grief had yet to really sink in. So, I replied, “I guess I just don’t really know what I should be thinking or feeling. Still processing I guess.”

           “That’s perfectly normal sweetie, you don’t have to say anything. If you do though, I’m here.”

           “Don’t you think it was kind of strange, that the demon story nonsense was what she talked about at the end? I mean…I guess I’d expected something more…family related or profound.”

           My mother gave the expression she always has when she enters focused contemplation. As if her response to my inquiry could have some sort of critical consequences. “Well, she was very old, and sick. Sometimes the brain gets jumbled and confused when people get to that kind of state.”

           “Yeah, I supposed that’s true,” I said.

           “Okay, how about we try and see if we can get some sleep?” My mother turned to leave. Suddenly, she shrieked and jolted backward enough to bump into me. I dropped the glass that I had been holding, glass shattered and scattered across the tile floors. “Oh dammit, I’m sorry sweetie.” She bent down and began gathering up the larger shards of glass.

           “It’s okay, what happened?” I asked

           “Huh? Oh nothing, my emotions are just a little all over the place. Guess I got a little easily startled and wasn’t expecting to see Dax behind me when I turned (Dax was our family bulldog).

           After cleaning up the glass, we all went to bed. I had trouble sleeping. The grief over the loss of my grandmother had finally caught up with me, right in the middle of the night. I had learned that night that I was going to be one of those people who have the tendency to defer difficult feelings to the quiet, dark, lonely night. Ironically, my lonely private time to be in grief ended when a high-pitched scream rattled its way through the halls of our house. It was my mother. I jolted from my bed and hurried down the hall to my parents’ room. My dad had his arm wrapped comfortingly around my mother’s shoulders.

           An eerie sense of dread filled my heart. Something wasn’t right with my mother. “Mom…what’s going on?” Although, I wondered if I really wanted to know.

           “It’s been a difficult day, I think the grief is just hitting your mother hard,” my father replied reassuringly.

           My mother was shaking her head back and forth in short bursts. She held her hand up to the side of her face as if shielding her eyes. She was muttering, “It’s here, it’s here, it looks like her, but it isn’t.”

           “Shhh, it’s okay,” my dad whispered, trying to calm her down. “Sweetheart, go back to bed, it’s okay.”

           “Wait what was that she – “

           “Go to bed, please, everything is okay. Just let me take care your mom right now, okay?”

           “Sure, fine, whatever,” I reluctantly returned to my room. I knew that grief could show up in a lot of different and unexpected ways. But I also knew my mother, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something other than grief happening to her. I never would have imagined, however, that the conversation I had with my mother in the kitchen would be the last conversation I’d have before she entered a complete and total psychosis.

           After losing my grandmother, followed by my mother’s mental breakdown, I went about my days almost completely in a state of apathy. After a month or so I began to appreciate being in that emotional state of non-emotion. Sure, the colors of the earth seemed a bit more faded, but all the pressures of things that used to seem so important now barely even entered my radar.

           It had been seven months since my mother’s mental condition escalated to the point where my father had no choice but to seek the help of psychological professionals. This required my mother to be institutionalized. I fought with my dad about this decision. I didn’t think an institution was the best place for her. My dad had given up arguing and made the decision to have her sent away. We hadn’t spoken since.

           I went to visit my mother at the mental hospital on chilly Wednesday afternoon. The orderly I met at the front desk had me follow her into what appeared to be a cafeteria area, judging by the tables that ran across each side of the room. My mother was sitting at one of these tables. When I joined her, I had to fight the urge to cry. I didn’t want my mother to see me in distress while she needed to focus on her own healing.

           “Hi mom, how you are feeling?” I asked. Her eyes were a little bloodshot and her hair was wild and frizzy. She stared blankly down at the table. “Not saying anything today?” My mother remained silent. “When we spoke last in the kitchen, you told me that if I wanted to talk, you’d be here…is that still true?”

           At this my mother’s eyes looked up at me. She still hadn’t spoken but just by looking at me I felt a rush of cautious optimism that I maybe could get her to speak.

           “I wanted to ask you something. It could be important; do you think you can try to help me?” My mother nodded her head rapidly and leaned in closer. “Yes, yes, okay mom that’s good. I wanted to ask you, that night after we talked, and I came into your room when I heard you scream.” My throat was tight, and I could feel my heart pounding hard in my chest. I feared the answer to the question I was about to ask, but I knew that it was a question that needed to be asked. “You were muttering something about she or her being here, something like that, were you talking about Grandma?”

           “Mmmmm—mmhmm,” my mother moaned. “No! No! Not Grandma. Just looking like grandma.”

           I was confused, her words didn’t seem to make sense. “What do you mean? Did you or didn’t you see grandma? Please mom, I know it’s hard but please try.”

           Taking a sudden deep breath my mother straightened up in her seat. “It likes to look like family.”

           I didn’t want to accept what I suspected my mother was referring too, “I don’t understand.”

           Mother smiled wide, eerily, “You will…soon.” This was the end of our conversation. Although I would not find out until later, my mother would end her own life that night. She had broken a glass and before the orderlies could respond she used one of the shards to cut her own throat. This news would not reach me until the morning of the next day. I would also learn another haunting piece of information.

           Around the time that my mother had passed away in the mental hospital, I was in my room, sitting at my desk, and writing in my diary. It was around 2 o’clock in the morning. The house was old and had hard wood floors. I heard the sudden creak of the floorboards down the hall from my room, where the stairs were that led into the foyer. My dad had been away for the last couple of days for business. I wasn’t expecting him to be home for another day, but I thought perhaps he had gotten back ahead of schedule.

           So, I called out, “Dad? Are you home?” There was no answer. I sat looking at my open doorway for a moment. I felt a chill, and the familiar pounding of my heart as fear started creeping through me. I never minded being home alone before, but something inside me sensed that the house now had darkness looming over it. I wished to myself that my dad or mom or a friend, anyone was there with me.

           Another, louder creak of the floors echoed from down the hall. “Hey this isn’t funny dad!” That was last moment in which I had hope that my dad was going to enter my room laughing at his little scare.

That hoped died when I saw it.

           First came an outstretched foot. Sticking out from the side of my doorframe. It was pale and dirty. Suddenly it landed on the floor with a crooked step. The other leg swooped around and with it the rest of what had been making those creaking sounds on the floorboards. I felt paralyzed. Never had I ever even fathomed that fear could so powerfully consume me. My mouth didn’t listen to my commands to shout. My heart didn’t listen to my commands to slow down. Nor did my legs, arms, or any other muscle in my body listen to what my mind wanted.

           My eyes were fixated in horror at the sight of my mother in the doorway of my room. Only I knew it wasn’t really my mother. It stood like her, but it didn’t walk naturally. It staggered unsettlingly as if it were learning to walk. One arm appeared to be twisted around backward. The most disturbing thing about it was its neck, which was broken horizontally. So far that the bone protruded from the skin and its head, with the face of my mother, looked at me sideways. With her jaw opened wide enough that it should not have been attached at the hinges. It had empty black sockets where its eyes should have been. Yet I felt its gaze piercing through to my bones. My soul had never been so close to the presence of real evil.

Then it spoke with an inhuman voice, which seemed to speak right from within my own head rather than from where it stood in my door.

“IT’S GONNA BE JUST YOU AND ME NOW!”