Every full moon, I have the same dream. I’m running through the woods, low to the ground, ducking beneath branches that scrape my arms. My heart pounds. Something is making me run, but I never know if I am dreaming or if this feeling is real. It feels like I am stuck in a cloud. Even when I’m awake, the feelings linger and the full moon brings an overwhelming urge to run. From what or to what, I have no idea. I’ve always blamed stress, imagination, or the season getting under my skin. They say the moon can affect your mood. It certainly seems to have a hold on me. But recently, something from my childhood began creeping into my thoughts.
A basement door. My mother crying. And a warning, repeated over and over.
“If the dreams start, do not answer the howl.”
Was it a memory? Or just another dream?
I decided to visit Mom. Perhaps she’d have an explanation, and being home might make me feel better. I arrived just before sunset, but she wasn’t there. I went upstairs to my old bedroom, curled up with a book, and waited. Moonlight spilled across my bed. Before long, I drifted off to sleep.
A cool breeze woke me the following morning. Sunlight streamed through the curtains, but I felt strangely exhausted. The dream again. The running. The branches. Something propelling me to exhaustion. I sat up. Mud streaked across the wooden floorboards beneath my open window. Leaves were tangled in my sheets, and three of my fingernails were broken and packed with dirt. There were scratches on my arms.
What had I done?
Downstairs, I heard the familiar clinking of Mom’s teacup. Panic swept over me. I scrubbed my hands, wiped up the mud, stripped the bed, and hurried into the shower. I didn’t know what I was hiding, only that I didn’t want Mom to see it. When I finally entered the kitchen, there she sat in her favorite blue robe, her silver hair neatly brushed. Beautiful, composed, and looking every bit the gentle woman I’d known all my life.
“Good morning, sweetheart.”
“Morning, Mom.” I tried to smile. “Where were you last night?”
Her spoon stopped moving.
“Did you have another dream?”
I froze. I’d never told her about the dreams. Then I noticed something caught in her silver hair. A small, dark leaf. The same kind I’d found in my bed. She followed my gaze. For the first time in my life, I saw fear in my mother’s eyes. “Tell me something, darling.” Her voice trembled.
“Did you open the window?”
“Mom, what are you talking about?” She set down her teacup. “Oh, sweetheart. I’ve wondered how long it would be before we had this conversation.”
“What conversation?”
“Those dreams. The running. That terrible need to chase something you cannot see.”
My stomach tightened.
“How do you know?”
“Because, darling, they’re not entirely your dreams.” She reached for my hand. “When the moon burns bright, something happens to me. And those we love most sometimes carry what we cannot bear ourselves.”
I stared at her. Her eyes filled with tears. “That’s me, sweetheart.” I pulled my hand away. “No. That doesn’t make sense.” She looked toward the staircase. “You opened the window last night, didn’t you?”
And suddenly, I remembered.
Three scratches against the glass. I had opened my eyes to find someone clinging to the outside of my second-story window. It was Mom. Or at least, I thought it was. Her silver hair hung in muddy tangles. Wet leaves clung to her and her face was twisted into something almost unrecognizable. How could my seventy-year-old mother possibly have climbed that high?
“Mom! What’s happening?”
I reached for her, grabbing her arms, struggling to pull her inside. My fingernails cracked against the wooden windowsill. For one terrible moment, I looked into her eyes. They were my mother’s eyes. But the face surrounding them was not.
She touched my forehead. In a deep voice she tried to speak “Shhh, sweetheart. You didn’t see anything. It’s only a dream. Go back to sleep.”
And somehow, I did.
I was back in the kitchen, staring at the small woman across from me. “Mom… it was you.” She nodded. “Last night. And all those years ago.”
“Yes, darling.”
“But it really wasn’t you was it?” She took my trembling hand.
“I’m still your mother. Always your mother. But when the moon is full, I become something I cannot control.”
I looked at her delicate hands, her beautiful silver hair, the gentle face I’d loved all my life. “So… it’s not me?”
“No, sweetheart. It never was. I thought if I could make you forget, you’d be safe.”
All those years, trapped between a memory and a nightmare, never knowing which was real.
I didn’t mean to keep the secret, but it kept me.
Mom held my hand a little tighter. “There’s something I need you to promise me.”
“What is it?”
“The next time you hear scratching at your window, don’t open it.”
I stared at her.
“But Mom… last night you were calling my name.”
“I know, darling.”
Her eyes filled with tears.
“Last night, I still remembered it.”
This Halloween special was inspired by:
Missy’s MAD Challenge # 100
This story was fun and it all came about by this sentence… I didn’t mean to keep the secret, but it kept me. Thank you Missy for the Challenge – Happy Halloween!
