That night, she came for me; My Aunt had travel to see her boyfriend but left Vivian in charge to watch me two days earlier.
Vivian dragged me into her old panic cellar — the one the WhiteHorse house had used during tornado season. It smelled like dust, bleach, and old wine.
She locked us both in.
"Your mother is alive," she said. No ceremony. No denial. "And she's going to finish what she started."
I asked why no one else believed that.
She laughed. Bitter. Wiped blood from her hairline I hadn't noticed was there.
"Because this town needs saints and sinners. And your mom was easier to canonize than confront."
That was when the lights went out.
And we heard her voice.
"Let him go, Vivian."
The door blew open with a force no human should've had.
She was standing there.
Not ghostly. Not monstrous. Just… her. My mother. In a black coat. Blood on her hands. Mud in her hair. And eyes that looked like they'd stopped belonging to anything human long ago.
Vivian screamed. Charged, i tried to stop her.
My mother struck her with something heavy — iron or stone — and Vivian crumpled, gasping, choking on her own breath and said I will kill you last Vivian.
I moved to run. She grabbed me.
"You were supposed to understand," she whispered. "I did it for you. Every last one. They would've hurt you like he did. I made it stop. I made them stop."
I told her to let go, she didn't, she reached into her coat.
A knife!
Not a hunting blade. A kitchen one. The same one she used to peel apples when I was little.
She handed it to me, "You want to be safe, don't you?"
I took it, and I don't remember what happened next.
I just remember her blood, how warm it was, how quiet she became.
And how I cried for hours after they found me.
They found Vivian alive. Barely. Skull fractured. Ribs broken. But she lived.
She never told them what really happened.
Just said she found me covered in blood and curled beside my mother's body.
They ruled it trauma.
Said my mom went off the deep end. Blamed it all on grief.
Ten bodies. Two survivors and a town that never spoke of it again, my aunt never came back.
The social worker had a voice like static. She kept asking if I wanted to keep the ribbon.
I told her no, she folded it into a Ziploc bag and put it in my file.
I never saw WhiteHorse again.
But every time I close my eyes, I'm back in that cellar, back in that silence.
Back in the moment where love turned into survival.
They told me I was lucky, that I'd made it out alive, that I had a future.
But nobody ever asked what I left behind.
Or what followed me out of WhiteHorse.
The foster home smelled like lemon disinfectant and old wallpaper glue.
It wasn't a house—it was a place where things were put, like me.
There were six of us kids, but none of them spoke to me.
Not after the first night, not after they heard me screaming in my sleep.
I saw her every time I closed my eyes.
Her hair falling across her face like roots.
Her mouth full of dirt.
Her voice gentle and rotting all at once.
"Wake up, Mclainvic, the garden misses you."
Mrs. Hale was patient, she tried.
She said things like: "You're safe now." and, "You're not alone.
And, "You're going to be okay." but I could see it in her face.
She didn't believe any of that, not really.
She looked at me like I was a locked door, and she didn't want the key.
They gave me a room with pale green walls and a wooden dresser that creaked when you opened it.
There was a poster above the bed of a cat hanging from a tree branch.
Hang in there, it said, I stared at that cat for hours.
Hanging, waiting to fall, the nightmares didn't stop, they just got stranger.
Sometimes it was the red ribbon.
Sometimes it was Reen Green's eyes opening underwater.
Sometimes it was my father's blood in a cereal bowl.
But always, always, it ended with the same voice behind me:
"Are you proud of me, son?"
I'd turn around, but the face was never hers.
It kept changing—Reen, my dad, the twins, even my reflection.
Every time I woke up, I was soaked in sweat; heart galloping like it was still trying to outrun something.
Sometimes I woke up standing, once, I woke up in the closet.
And one night…
I woke up with dirt under my fingernails.
Mrs. Hale asked if I wanted to talk to someone, i asked her if she meant a therapist or God.
She laughed too hard, like she was scared of the question.
There was a boy named Marcus in the room next to mine.
He was older. Maybe thirteen.
He walked around like the house belonged to him, once he said, "What's your deal, creep?"
I didn't answer, He didn't ask again.
The house was too quiet at night.
So I started listening to the floorboards creak, i made maps in my mind of who was walking where.
Who was sleeping, who was dreaming, the walls in foster homes are made of secrets.
And I was already full of them, one night, I heard humming.
Not from a room, from the vent, it was faint. Soft.
But I knew the tune.
The humming stopped, then a whisper: "I know where you sleep."
I told Mrs. Hale.
She checked the vents, said it was probably just the wind.
But the wind never sounds like your name being whispered by a dead woman.
Weeks passed.
I didn't speak unless I had to; I didn't eat unless I had to.
I didn't sleep unless my body forced me, because every time I did, she was there.
Mom! Bleeding from the stomach.
Crawling across the floor.
"Why did you leave me, Mclainvic?"
"You were supposed to finish the garden." "You are the garden.
Sometimes, I wonder if I did die that night in the cellar.
And this is just hell in slow motion, a foster home for ghosts.
One night, I finally asked Mrs. Hale something.
Just one thing.
Small, Innocent. "Did you ever lose someone?"
She paused, put her hand on my shoulder.
And said: "We all lose someone. But we don't have to lose ourselves."
I wanted to tell her—I already did.