My life as a child was filled with horror, with death, with sorrow. Let me take you back; let me tell you the story of those days.

The year was 1839. My name was Destiny Sullivan, I was 14 and I had everything that a girl my age could ever hope for and more. My family was rich, thus meaning that I got everything that I wanted. I had 7 horses, a bike, and I lived in a 10,570 sq. foot mansion. I was the luckiest person in all of Montreal.

My mother, Nancy Sullivan, had been very sick. For over a month she had fought to keep herself alive, fought with a mysterious illness that nobody could identify, until one day, she miraculously healed of all health issues she had been suffering from. People from all over town came by once they heard the good news. Had a witch visited her in the night, given her good health once more? Nobody could find the answer. Nancy was healthy for a year, still weak, but mostly healthy besides that one minor setback, but then all turned bad again. She fell terribly ill, almost on the verge of death. With one last breath, she looked up at me, whispered my name and closed her eyes. Her body fell limp, her eyes rolled back. Her chest stopped moving. She had died.

I cried all night. I couldn’t sleep because I kept thinking about her, about my mother. I needed to see her one last time, one last glance before the funeral people could come and have the arrangements made. I knew that the sight would not be a good one, but I needed to look.

I walked quietly into the room of which her body was laid, under one of our best white sheets. I slowly lifted the sheet back, not expecting to see anything but her cold, hard, dead, white body. I took a deep breath and tugged off the blanket. As I’d imagined, her body was pale and white, expected of any dead body. I cringed knowing the agony she had gone through, happy that she could once more be happy, but upset that this was the way that it would be. I didn’t have a mother now.

I laid my hand on her chest, right where her heart lay, never to beat again. It was a cold night, and the temperature of her skin just made it all worse. All so much colder. Emotion boiled inside me. I was just about to start crying again. Then, everything happened at once.

Color raced back into her face, and her eyes rolled back into place, not green, but red. Bright, bright red. Blood red. Whatever you want to say about the color it was not right or normal. I was so scared that I could not move. My hand was still touching her chest. I couldn’t move it. My heart was racing; it felt as though somebody had set it on fire. I screamed from the burn and cried out at the same time from the shock.

She turned to me, as I looked at her in fear, and pried my hand off of her chest. I could only stare as her frozen skin made contact with mine.

She climbed from the bed of which she had been laid on, and walked to the door. She turned once more, and smiled maniacally. Then she was gone.
I ran to find her once my heart rate had slowed, but I couldn’t hear anything, her breath, her footsteps, nothing. That was something, because all of the sounds echoed off of the walls in this house.

I heard whispering finally, and followed the sound into the ballroom. Floating 15 feet above the ground in a chair was my mother. She wasn’t alone. There were two people staring, looking up at her. She whispered unintelligible words to them, as I hid behind one of the wood pillars stationed randomly around her. I tried to decipher the words she was saying but I couldn’t.
I gasped as three words I understood rang loud and clear from her mouth.

“Kill my daughter.”

I jumped out from behind the pillar, staring at Nancy. She, my own mother, wanted me to be dead?

‘Who are you?” I screamed. I was searching through my head, looking for a fault of mine. “But I haven’t done a thing wrong! Mom, why are you trying to have me killed? Are you even my mother?” My voice shook as I talked. I was afraid to know the answer.

“Destiny, don’t you understand? You are mine, and you always will be. In order for me no die, to go to heaven and be happy; as I want to be, I have to take you with me. Can’t you understand that? Can’t you?”

“No mom, I don’t. I want you to go to heaven, but I want to live, I want to live like a normal child, a normal life. I don’t want to be killed. I don’t want to go. God would not want you to kill me, and I haven’t done anything to force that burden upon you. I know one thing, and that is, you are not my mother.”

“Destiny, yes I am. I am not possessed, I am only a spirit trapped in this world, longing to be free. Help me. Please help me. Please.”
“No,” I replied with as much force and anger as I could push into my voice at once. I turned and started running, but where could I go? I couldn’t stay here, here where I was so vulnerable to death. I ran throughout the building, looking for a place to be safe, and I ran out into the fields behind the house. I heard the door behind me close and then swing open as she followed me. Running, running as fast as my legs would carry me I tried to get away from her, but she was too fast. She caught up to me, and pushed me onto the ground, leaving me scared and weak. I knew that this was it though, and that no matter how much I fought, she had me.
She grabbed me by my shirt collar and took me. I could not escape her grasp. I could feel the fire burning again, somebody had released it again, but I was too weak to cry out again. If I did, it would not have mattered anyway. It would be only a matter of seconds before the pain went away either way. Then the adrenaline kicked in.

With one last try I rolled out of her grasp. I gasped for air and stood again, but quickly loosing my balance, I collapsed onto the prickly dead lawn of my neighbor. I cried and looked up, up at this woman who pretended to be my mother. I was prepared to go, knowing that it was inevitable now that she was so close to me. She leaned over me one last time and…stopped? It was as if an invisible barrier kept her confined to that land. I had an idea. I ran in a circle around the property that I knew was mine. She followed me, never crossing that boundary, but constantly trying. Her spirit had died on my property, died where she would have to stay until she killed me. I knew from then that I was safe. I turned and walked away.


So that brings us full circle. I am now 53, and I am still fearful of that house. Every time I close my eyes, thinking of my mother, I see her piercing red eyes. This was the last image that I had of her.

My mother’s body was found later that night at the edge of the property, nobody knowing how it got there, nobody but me.

I know not to enter that house again, for if I do, I know that fate that awaits me. When it is time for me to die, when I know that it is my time, then I will go back. It will be my choice, my death. I want my mom to go to heaven, and though it could have been sooner, I am happy that we get to go together. That will allow the both of us an afterlife because I am afraid that if my mother does not kill me, then I cannot go either. I don’t want either of us stuck on earth, just dead and decaying corpses.

I know that my mother still resides in that house because since my father died back in 1860, it has lain abandoned, but still the occasional passerby hears eerie noises, nobody knowing that horror that lies within.