WARNING: This chapter contains some graphic, violent imagery.

Chapter 5

My father left early the next morning and left behind money for my mother and I to take care of ourselves until he returned. The house felt cold, almost deathly when I was getting ready midday to take my mother to the doctor. There was awkwardness between us that had never been there before. I felt as though I was talking to a complete different person. Her skin was ice cold and she didn't react to much. I brushed her hair as she sat at her dresser in the master bedroom. She stared absently at herself with blank eyes then pulled a pot that used to have a flower in it closer to her. I started to pin her hair up.

I struggled with the last pin but managed to pull it together into a neat bun. I took a step back but was pulled forward by her gentle hand. She kissed the inside of it then cuddled into the potted dirt sitting on the table in front of her. I let my hand fall to her shoulder.

It took some time to convince my mother to leave her place and come to the car with me. She fought with me weekly. Her actions were all slow as if she were old. She wearily took each step one at a time down our patio and needed help bending down into the passenger seat. She had insisted on bringing the potted plant with us. I agreed as long as it would get her in the car.

I already had called over to the office to let them know we would be late, upon hearing her actions they were understanding of my circumstances.

I pulled out of the driveway slowly in my moms car. It had been some time since I had driven. After I left college, my parents had sold the car for swimming lessons for my brother. As soon as the car took off, rain came sprinkling onto the windshield. My mother snapped her hand onto mine when she heard the first raindrop fall onto the windshield. I nearly yelped but held it in but had jerked the car to a sudden stop.

"It's time," she whispered nearly to herself staring at the raindrops.

"Yeah, we're going now," I continued the car so that we could get her to the doctor as soon as possible. We passed by the pumpkin patch that was right across the street from my old elementary school.

"After it's over, go home. Stay there," she said not looking at me, only straight ahead at the road in front of us. I bit my bottom lip and nodded but knew that I would have to head back to school soon. We passed by another farm this time filled with corn.

"I love you Kore," she spoke he estranged name again just before I heard the pop of her buckle and the alarm that my passenger door had opened. Before I could grab her she had jumped out of the moving car. I screeched to a stop and the person behind me slammed into my bumper. My head collided with the steering wheel.

I felt as if the few seconds of me bringing my head up were an eternity. I couldn't hear much besides a drawn out ringing in my ears and I tried to focus on seeing something, anything. My vision was so blurry I could only see a blurred outline of my mother running in between the stalks of corn.

"What the hell was that," the man who had slammed into me was screaming at me through my window. I slowly and painfully popped my buckle and came out of the car. The man was still yelling with a thick italion-new-yorker accent.

"You have some looney jumping out of the car so you slam on ya breaks. Ya coulda killed 'er. Pssht, ya coulda killed me," he continued rambling on but I was focused on getting around my car and into the corn field to get to my mother who surely was hurt. I wiped some blood off my forehead with my grey cardigan and stepped in between the corn stalks.

I could hear my mother rustling in between the cornstalks somewhere up ahead of me so I tried to follow her I could feel a huge gust of wind pick up and practically knock me over into the muddy ground. I kept running on. Soon thunder started to rumble the ground around me.

"Mom," I screamed out, my voice drowning out in the pouring rain and crashing of the thunder. I couldn't hear her footsteps and more and panic rose up in me. I started to become disoriented and couldn't remember which way was towards the road or which way I had heard her footsteps last. I started running around knocking the corn stalks down looking for her.

I kept running and screaming out for my mom; a cornstalk that I had pushed to the side snapped back and whacked me in the face. I flinched back and groaned a bit from the pain of the corn hitting me in the same spot I smashed my head on in the car. When I opened my eyes, I was looking right into the eyes of the man I had dreamt of those few nights before. My skin flushed as we held the stare. Goosebumps rose on my skin. I was completely frozen.

The man turned his face away from me and walked to his left in a cool and calm manner despite the rain and lightning. I waited a moment to unfreeze my shocked mind then ran after him. Instead of finding him I found a small opening in the middle of the corn. I was standing behind a tall scarecrow. I looked around and had no sight of either my mother or that man. I screamed out my mothers name one more time.

"Kore," I heard in a whisper from right behind me. I looked over my shoulder and found no one. I walked around the scarecrow and screamed out into the corn again, hoping that she would call my name out again.

"Kore," she whispered again from behind me. I whipped around and was so shocked by what I found that I fell to my knees.

"Mom," my voice quivered and I fought the urge to vomit.

In place of the scarecrow, my mother was hung up to the post. Her body looked pale and stiff. Her eyes were still open. Rope was tied around her neck and strung around to her arms to hold her up in a position you would find a scarecrow in a field. Her head was lulled to the side and limp. There was blood streaming down her body with the help of the rain from where barbwire was laced with rope around her body. A screeching owl, hauntingly similar to the one from the previous night swooped down to land right on top of the post. With a screech his eyes almost dared me to move.

I couldn't move, or cry, or gain the bodily control to do anything for a few moments. I could only look in horror. I took no notice of the darkly stirring clouds up above.

I finally gained the strength to stand up and placed weight on my right foot to start to push myself up onto the ground despite the daring looks from the dark owl. Before I could though, I was thrust backward and deafened for a moment from a crash of lightning.

I was running through a field, my body was a bit younger. I was wearing a soft pink dress held together by gold thread. The people chasing after me weren't people at all. The lower half of their bodies resembled a horses. I was not as quick and the girls quickly caught up to me with their long quick strides. I darted the other way however laughing out in joy. I headed toward the woods where the girls often feared to enter.

"No Kore," the one girl yelled out her white hair whipping in the wind. I giggled and continued to run.

"You're not getting the honey-doo until you catch me," I teased as I ran ahead. I ran for some time until I became slightly thirsty and stopped by a small creek.

I took a quick breath and looked down into the water at my reflection. My cheeks looked slightly pink showing how I was warmed from the exercise. I brought the water up to my lips and drank thankfully. I was about to take another drink of water when I heard a twig snap from behind me. Presuming that it was one of the girls that I was playing with I turned around with a large smile and a giggle.

"I don't believe that you two actually…" I stopped talking when I realized that the source of the sound was not from the two girls but from a man. His black eyes were intense and didn't catch the light since he chose to stay in the shadow of the trees. Half of his body was behind a tree as if he were trying to hide from my gaze, yet not for reasons of fear. I stayed silent since a disturbed feeling arose in my gut. The man stepped out from the tree.

"Are your friends afraid of the shadows," he asked with a low sensual voice after some time. I took a deep breath.

"Yes, I suppose." His eyes narrowed in an almost dangerous way.

"And you are not?"

I felt fear rise up within me but fought through it. I swallowed and thought for a moment.

"No, I do not fear what's in the dark for it is only an illusion to make things appear more threatening than they are," I looked around and noticed that the forest looked as if the darkness was growing. I looked back at the man who now had a sparkle in the corner of his pupil. I was again fixated on the black orbs.

"Interesting," he drawled then turned to his left and walked in a particularly dark shadow and disappeared.

"Kore," I could hear my two friends calling. After a moment to gather my thoughts, I ran out to give them the honey-doo they had asked for.

When I opened my eyes I thought I was staring up into the light of the lightning but I soon realized that it was actually the brightly lit ceiling of a room.

"Mom," I groggily called out, confused beyond belief. I closed my eyes and groaned from how bright everything was. I could hear beeping coming from a little farther away. I sat up and found that I was laying on a soft bed. I swung my feet over the side and slowly opened my eyes again. This time I spent a while on letting my eyes adjust. I was staring out a window at the evening sky. I was in a hospital. My breath picked up, out of the corner of my eye I could see the heart monitor picking up my increased heart rate.

I jumped off the bed feeling good as new, and took the heart monitor off my finger. Bad decision. The alarm sounded in the room signaling that there was no heart rate to detect. I fumbled around trying to find the 'off' switch but only found a break from the awful sound when a nurse ran into the room and shut the device off herself.

"Ma'am, I'm going to need you to lay back down on the bed."

"How did I end up here?" I slid myself to sit on the bed as she backed me up towards it.

"Just lay back, the inspector will be in shortly." She pushed on my shoulder until it hit the back of the bed and then slid the heart monitor back on.

"Inspector? Where's my mom," I could feel tears prickling in my eyes, the memories finally starting to catch up with me. "Oh my god." I started to sob, the nurse was quiet for a moment and just held onto my shoulder.

"She's awake," I heard a man's voice question. I was trying to suppress the shaking that my body was experiencing but I had no control over either my mind or my body. All I could see and think of was my mother hanging on the post in such a way.

"I think she needs a few moments inspector," the nurse was now taking my hand.

"We don't have time for that right now. I will have to ask you to leave the room now," the inspector was standing strong in the door with an intimidating stance. The nurse seemed to think for a few moments before handing me a tissue and leaving. She knocked into his shoulder with purpose while walking past him to leave the room. He closed the door behind her then sat next to me. I could feel my heart crashing against my chest as if it were trying to outrun my lungs that were having a hard time keeping up with it.

"Mrs. Augustus, I am an investigator for the Federal Bureau of Investigation and I'm going to need your complete cooperation." The man pulled out a badge and returned it into a pocket on the inside of his jacket. I stared confused at him. "I need you to tell me everything that you can remember before you woke up here." He pulled out a pad of paper and a pen and sat down in the chair next to me staring intently at me. I opened and closed my mouth several times trying to find words but couldn't.

"I don't really know right now… I'm very confused-"

"Just say whatever you can remember." He eyes seemed forceful to me by the way he kept the perfectly still on my face.

"Well," I sniffed in and cluched the sheet of the bed, "I was going to drive my mom to the doctors and on our way she jumped out of the car and ran into a field. I couldn't find her for a while and," I stopped not believing that I would be able to spit the words out. He looked down at his notepad from finishing what he was writing.

"Continue," he demanded.

"I found her," my voice cracked, "she was hung up like a scarecrow with rope around her neck." My body was shaking and my eyes were filled blurring my vision. "She was dead."

"Then what happened." I took a few moments to calm myself and catch my breath.

"I don't know, I felt air or an explosion… I flew back." I shook my head confused about the last part.

"I am going to give you some photos and I need you to describe what you see." He pulled a manila folder out of a briefcase he was carrying with him and placed it on the table that slid over the bed. I dried my eyes and slowly opened the folder.

The first photo was of my car, which was completely shriveled up in the back, the rear window was smashed out and the bumper was hanging on by a thread. The next was of the steering wheel where blood was sticking from where my head smashed. I cringed remembering the pain and brought my hands up to my forehead expecting to find an abrasion or bump. Instead there was nothing, I frowned and looked up at the inspector.

"How long have I been unconscious," I asked fearing that I had gone into a comma or had been passed out for too long.

"Five hours, continue looking," he acknowledged his head toward the photos. I furrowed my eyebrows then brought my attention back to the folder.

The next photo shocked me. It looked like the circle I had been in when I found my mother except in place of my mother hanging like a scarecrow, there was the pot of dirt she had been carrying around with her with poppy seed plants sprouting from it and ripe harvests surrounding the pot in a pattern mimicking some sort of circular insignia. I stared at it for a few minutes confused before turning to the next picture.

The next was of me with what looked like paramedics getting ready to move my body. The blood was still down the side of my face from my forehead from where I had smashed it on the steering wheel and it looked like I had a large gash. There were also several bruises around my shoulders from where the seatbelt had pressed against me. There was another final picture of me inside the ambulance that nearly made me drop the pictures.

The paramedics had paddles in their hands as if they had just finished giving me an electric shock, but their eyes were wide viewing the ambulance around them. Vines with flowers of varying colors were strung every which way and butterflies could be seen stuck in their movement through the air. My head could be seen in between the two paramedics, there was no bruising, no gashes, no blood, only flowers and a vision of health.

"What happened to my mother," I asked dropping a tear onto the last picture I was looking at. The man walked up to me and pulled the photos away.

"That is a mystery that I need your help to solve." He tossed me a pair of clothes onto my lap then started to walk out the door sliding the photos back into his briefcase.

"We will be leaving the hospital in ten minutes. Be ready."

A/N: Hope you enjoyed, I'm sorry if anyone was upset by the description of the mother's death or if the sudden change to the flashback was a little to confusing, but I figured that when you suddenly pass out/die a little, it's a little confusing as well haha.