Page 20 of Missing Moon

Grandma’s Not All There

Nowthat’sa crazy as hell thought.

Heh. Mom being a vampire.

I don’t know too much about auras, but I do know that immortals don’t have them. Unless Mom recently became a vampire, I sincerely doubt this is the case; after all, she looks old... and vampires don’t age. That means if she’d been turned into a vampire, she had to have undergone the change somewhat recently, within a few years.

I think about Bill at the gas station and his warning about people being found dead out here. Could Mom be some sort of supernatural agent of carnage? The notion of it is hilarious... at least on the surface. Then I start remembering how she could go from vacant to lucid on a whim, and sometimes it really felt like a completely different person talking to me. Not like her accent or anything changed. She didn’t start speaking other languages. Just her mannerisms would be erratic and inconsistent.

Being a blood vampire is out since Mom spends all day sitting in the greenhouse without bursting into flames. Maybe anenergy vamp? Doubtful. Hmm. Could Mom have been bitten by a werewolf?

Could she have gone to the Monarch for dinner and ended up eating Mack instead of his food? That sounds so crazy. Dusk has only been here for two days now, so it’s not like he can say one way or the other if she has a habit of running off into the night once a month to shift and feast on the unwary.

Dad’s been here up until last week, so… that kinda rules out the werewolf idea. Very few of them have enough control over themselves to avoid hurting people they care about. Especially in a situation like Mom, where she appears to be suffering from some sort of advanced mental deterioration. Like an Alzheimer’s patient, she might not even remember who Dad is, especially while in the middle of a werewolf feeding frenzy.

The fact that my father lived long enough to collapse on the floor of the local supermarket is fairly convincing evidence that Mom isnota werewolf.

So, what the hell is going on here?

I quietly excuse myself from the table, leaving the kids and Dusk to talk. He’s entertaining them with stories about his years spent wandering Europe. Apparently, he’s an artist and kept himself alive by painting and selling his work.

Once again, I approach the greenhouse at the end of the hall.

I can’t help but think about one time I really wanted to spend time with Mom when I was about ten. Whatever upset me initially, I don’t remember. I walked in here much like this and tried to talk to her, get some reaction out of her. I wanted to do something that normal daughters did with their mothers. Didn’t care exactly what we did, justsomethingwe could do together. She just sat there, distant and oblivious to my existence. I remember going back to my room and crying for hours. Was that the moment in my life where I ‘mourned’ my mother and started essentially considering her dead?

When I was ten, I gave up on her.

I’m not going to give up now. Something is going on.

Mom’s still sitting in the same position she was an hour ago. It’s dark outside now. Her stare remains fixated on the string bean plants the way Mary Lou’s husband Rick stares at the TV when a football game is on. Okay, bad comparison. Mom isn’t screaming and calling the beans clumsy idiots.

I grab the second beat up old stool and drag it over to sit beside her.

“Hey, Mom.”

She doesn’t react.

So, I start just talking like we’re having a normal conversation. For some reason, I end up blathering about the kids like I’m trying to get her caught up on our lives. Of course, I don’t mention any of the crazy stuff. Just, you know, like ‘Tammy’s graduated high school now’ or Paxton’s going to be in high school next year… that sort of thing.

Looking at her, she seems reasonably healthy for someone in their seventies. Maybe a bit too thin. I don’t remember her smoking cigarettes much, but she did indulge in pot. There are some stories in my very distant memory that our parents experimented with LSD, too. Anything they experienced while on LSD was probably far more believable than the craziness of my own life. Diving down the throat of a massive demonic dragon in an alternate dimension definitely sounds like the product of some serious recreational drugs… only it wasn’t.

All three of my brothers went through pothead phases. Clayton did the most. River gave it up first. Mary Lou preferred pot brownies. She never could tolerate smoking anything without coughing so hard we thought her liver would come flying out of her mouth. She needed something to help her deal with the stress of being a schoolgirl as well as a stand-in mother for her siblings. She doesn’t indulge in that anymore. I tried it a few times, but never really cared for the experience.Didn’t do much to me for some reason. I used to think that Clayton and Dusk overacted being high.

“It’s weird,” whispers a voice from the doorway behind me.

I don’t usually jump scare, but I’d been so focused on Mom I didn’t notice anyone else there. So, yeah, I jump a little.

Paxton’s poking her head into the greenhouse.

“Everyone’s saying things are weird.” I smile at her. “What do you mean?”

“Your mom doesn’t have any emotions… like none at all.”

I shift my attention back to Mom. She’s just sitting there. “Maybe she doesn’t have a mood because she’s not feeling much? Wonder if she really does have dementia.”

“Umm.” Paxton creeps over and stands beside me. “I’ve never met anyone before who didn’t haveanyemotion at all.”

“What about sociopaths?”