Page 30 of Missing Moon
I was born in ’79, so I missed most of the Eighties. I don’t really remember much that happened before age six, which would’ve been ’85. Thankfully, my teenage years did not line up with the whole big hair and legwarmers craze.
This woman looks like she stepped out of 1984. I’m being kinda silly here. It’s impossible to tell what year just by her hairspray do.
All of a sudden, my whimsical opinion of her fashion sense gets crushed under the dread of an all-too-familiar presence: Elizabeth.
No, she isn’t anywhere in sight. I don’t hear her whispering in my head, nor do I see anything obvious that indicates she’s back from beyond. She is absolutely dead, destroyed, one withthe Creation Engine or whatever you want to call it. This can’t be her. It’s my psychic feelers telling me Elizabeth had something to do with whatever I’m witnessing. Her stink is all over it. Even though it’s residual, the feeling of her makes my skin crawl.
The spirit pauses and looks back in my general direction, though she’s not lookingatme. And… whoa! That’s Mom. Yeah, she looks late thirties, which would be younger than when I last saw her. But…thisversion of Mom is a lot closer to my memory than the seventy-year-old woman who sits in the greenhouse all day.
Ghost Mom seems lost, more annoyed than scared. Like she pulled over on the side of the road for an emergency pee break in the forest and can’t figure out how to get back to the car. She’s walking around like she expects to find the right path back to the road and her car at any minute.
Son of a…
Did Elizabeth do something to my mother?
Argh. Of course, it makes sense. Elizabeth did not simply come into being one day and decide to mess with Samantha Moon. She’s like 500 years old or something. That bitch has been chasing my family bloodline for centuries. I’d be stupid and a little arrogant to think that I’m the only one she’s ever attacked. It only makes logical sense that she’d have been trying again and again. Me, my sister, Mom, Grandma. Great Grandma, and on backward through generations. If anything, I’m the unlucky one where Elizabeth finally figured out the correct way to do what she wanted.
Or, I’m the unlucky one who didn’t know anything about magic, so I couldn’t defend myself.
As I float here staring at my mother’s ghost, it occurs to me that Mom couldn’t teach me anything about magic because she was a basket case.
The forest blurs and spins.
I’m in the woods again, but now it’s more familiar. Still the eerie woodland, the trees monochrome and somewhat transparent. I recognize this place. It’s behind the house, effectively our massive backyard. Mom’s crouching near the ground, not far from me. She’s not a ghost anymore. Looks normal; she’s the only item of color in an otherwise black and white vision. A bamboo basket in her left hand contains a collection of plant matter. She appears to be harvesting something growing near the base of a glowing tree with a door embedded in it. Fairy magic?
Mom snaps her head up like a deer sensing danger.
A man in a long black trench coat comes flying out of the forest at her, literally flying… as if he’d been shot out of a giant crossbow. I get only a brief look at him before he crashes into Mom and they both disappear. He had fangs, yellow eyes, and pale skin.
I close my eyes, trying to preserve that image for as long as possible. He’s pale but notgraylike the one that exploded into dust. White guy, too. Short hair. Goatee. Two rings on his left hand, and some sort of black amulet hanging from his neck. I can’t make out what it is in the half second he’s visible.
When I look again, Mom’s ghost is still there, walking around like she’s trying to find her way back to the glowing tree with the open door.
I reach out toward her and try to call, “Mom?”
But no voice comes out of me.
The instant I try to speak, a harsh force yanks me backward. Helpless to stop myself, I careen head-first through the forest at such speed the trees blur together into a ghostly gray haze. A speck of white appears in the distance, growing rapidly into a rectangular shape... a wall of some type.
Just when I think I’m about to crash into the white wall, my motion abruptly stops.
I’m lying in bed, staring up at the ceiling again.
Oof. What a ride.
Though my physical body appears to have never moved from this spot, my heart is racing and my sense of balance is spinning. My brain can’t make sense of such an instantaneous stop, even if it didn’t really happen. It was only a dream/vision.
Dammit, Elizabeth.
The most frustrating part of this is that she’s quite dead and gone. I can’t kill her again. And I definitely want her to stay dead and gone. The world is better for it. She did this catatonic fugue thing to Mom, though. I’m sure of it. That bitch tried to do to Mom what she eventually did to me. But it didn’t work—it didn’t take.
But why not?
As I lay there stewing in those thoughts, I find myself becoming increasingly angry.
My mother has been a shell of a person for most of my life. That forced Mary Lou to sacrifice her childhood to become our stand-in mother. I can’t help but wonder how my life might’ve turned out if Mom hadn’t been attacked.
Just when I think Elizabeth couldn’t have ruined my life any worse than she already has, I find out that yes, in fact, she did.