Some people swore that house was haunted and I agreed having been a child that once lived in there. I promised myself to never return to this retched town. I was walking back into my tattered broken down childhood home with 10 inch holes on the roof when I saw my mother through the dust covered front window. She waved to me the same way she did in my childhood when I was on my way to school. Suddenly my vision blurred and the image of mother vanished. I couldd hear the wood rapidly snapping as I collapsed down the porch steps in disbelief. My eyes refocused on the front window but there was no one there. My crazy mother has been dead for 4 well deserved years; so how was I seeing her?

I gently placed my shaking hands on the rotten, thin wood and pushed myself up to stand. My shaking hands embraced the cold door knob, and then I opened the door. Dust and particles rushed upward into my eyes forcing me to close them. When I reopened my eyes, I saw the figure of my mother again. She was transparent and was wearing her favorite purple ankle length dress that I’m guessing she died in. My mother’s ghost walked towards the living room, so I obediently followed her. Her image disappeared again. Abruptly a loud repetitive thumping sound came from the old dusty, overfilled bookshelf. Just as I found the source of which the noise was coming from, a large book flew to the floor and a burst of dusty smoke coated the living room. My heart rate increased and my hands became really moist. I reluctantly walked over and picked up the book with the reoccurring thought that at any moment my mother couldd drop another book from the bookshelf except this time on my small, thick haired head. Yes, my mom is a type of person that would that.

The book was a deep dark green with the title “100 Bedtime stories” written boldly in gold italicised print. After I reread the title aloud, I instantly remembered that was the book my mother read to me when I was about 3 or 4 years old. I gently placed my small sweating palm on the cover and opened the book. An old piece of folded up paper slid out the book and plopped to the dust filled living room carpet. I unfolded the fragile paper and begin to read the letter that started with Dear Anna in dull blue ink. My mother wrote about how she was sorry for starving me and that she tried to be the best mother she could. I wasn’t buying what I was reading but for some reason my eyes filled with tears anyway. My mother explained how my father left her after I was born and how she coulddn’t stand how much I resembled him. So that’s why she locked me away in the closet. She continued to explain that I turned out to be just like my father because I left her too. Unable to hold in the tears any longer I allowed them to come rolling down my face and ruin my makeup. The last sentence of the letter said “Even though you ran away at age 14 and never once visited me, I love you anyway. Love mom.” I threw the note across the carpet in shock, and pure anger. How couldd she expect me to visit after the way she treated me? I gathered the last of my mother things in that miserable excuse of a home .I also took the bedtime story book full of fairytales my mother lead me to believe occurred in real life. As I walked out I turned back to look at the house knowing for sure that I would never return to this place and whispered bye. Nothing was ever the same again after that.