CH 20

“…” Her hands that restrained me like ropes loosened their grip. I immediately scampered away, but I couldn’t go very far. I had no idea where to go since my mom was “there.” Eventually, I went to the boundary between the living room and my room and sobbed. She simply sat on the living room floor and watched me cry.

My body, drenched in sweat and spit, reeked of an unpleasant, fishy smell and another sweet scent.

It had been a while since I last wept this loudly at night. I could feel the things gather around me; my sobbing was as sweet to them as my singing voice. However, those things also avoided her. Ghosts that had no differentiable form molested me, begging me to sing more. My neck and lips were stroked by their fingers and licked with their tongues.

I don’t know how I withstood those awful sensations. But one thing I was certain of was that the woman before me was crueler to me than those things. She stared at me then walked toward the kitchen. She pulled out a knife from the cabinet under the sink. I held my breath and trembled.

“Am I scary? Did I bully you?” she asked me and smiled broadly. “Then, if I remove myself, will you be happy?”

Those were the last words she said before she stabbed herself in the neck.

The blood that spurted out of her neck splattered on the sink, the kitchen ceiling, and the floor right in front of me. The spinning ceiling mobiles, the toy train, the colorful alphabet foam mats, and the animal-shaped whistle—the children’s toys were all stained red with my mom’s blood.

My mom’s body dropped weakly on the floor. Even as she died, the smile never left her face—because I was within her line of sight. When the life had drained from her eyes as she smiled like a clown, I ended up fainting where I stood.

My eldest uncle was the one who discovered me.

It seemed like my mom’s strange behavior bothered him, so he called our house a few days after his visit. No matter how many times he called, nobody picked up, so my uncle headed to our house right after he got off work. He caught a whiff of an ominous smell from between the cracks of the locked door. He thought that he could be overreacting, but he thought it was safer to check inside, so he called the police.

After they opened the door, all the people there were unable to move for a moment when they saw the scene before their eyes: a red room. My uncle said that it evoked a scene from a novel he read, called “The Red Room,” specifically, the description of the titular haunted room that was covered with a red glow on all four walls and the ceiling.

My mother’s cause of death was revealed by the footage of the surveillance cameras that she installed to watch me. I was placed in the care of my grandmother once again. My grandmother who lost her daughter clutched my hand tightly, and tears rolled down her cheeks as she looked at my mom’s photo.

“She wasn’t such a weak child. She was never one to have such thoughts. She was strong even when she divorced your father after he cheated on her, saying that she was fine. I didn’t raise her to be this weak…” She didn’t say this reproachfully, but it drove a nail in my heart, hurting me deeply. I felt like I killed my mom.

I could see my mom’s spirit occasionally at my grandmother’s house.

When my grandmother was cooking or watching TV, my mom would stand behind my grandmother and stare at her. My mom’s neck was the same as when she died. The gleaming knife stuck in her twisted neck looked so painful that every time she appeared, I became depressed and holed myself up in my room. My mom watched my grandmother for one year before completely disappearing.

I avoided my mom whenever she appeared, so I couldn’t check if that spirit was truly my mom. I wondered what exactly those black eyes were about and where my mom went. I had no way of knowing anything.

Unlike the time when I sang at night, I couldn’t depend on my grandmother. If I wanted to ask about my mom, I would have to tell her that it was my fault that my mom changed. I was afraid that my grandmother would grow to fear and hate me. I was worried that my grandmother would also change like my mom.

That was how my mom’s death ended, buried in my grandmother’s heart and engraved in my head and under my ribs.

Time passed. I was in middle school when I came across the black-eyed being again. This time, the black eyes were on a classmate, one who thoroughly enjoyed bullying me.

“What about you? Haven’t you experienced things like that? Honestly, I think you would have experienced things like this the most.”

Yes, the classmate who said that to me.