CHAPTER 7

Tom dug in. There was a ragged doll that had lost an eye, a chocolate wrapper, a pink bow tie, a photo of the little girl and her mother, and a little plastic piggy bank. The girl crouched next to Tom and pointed at the piggy bank. 

Tom pulled it out. The purple piggy bank was semi-transparent and Suzanne could see that there were some dollar notes and coins in them. 

You want to give this to your mommy?” she asked.

The little ghost girl nodded in excitement. Suzanne's heart broke. She recalled begging for her own mother to stay, in exchange for all the money in her piggy bank.  

Oh, God. She came back here just to give her mother her savings.

The little girl had travelled all the way to Suzanne's apartment just so she could give her mother her savings. 

The ghost pointed to the photo too. In it, the little girl was still a baby and the woman was seen holding the child with a genuine smile on her face. It was probably taken during a happier time.

“It’s a beautiful picture,” Suzanne smiled at the little girl. Suzanne stood up and gently took the piggy bank from Tom’s hands. 

“Let’s go little one,” she stepped out of the room and the little girl followed behind with a skip, happy to be able to gift her mother a present.

The woman was sober by now and was puffing yet another cigarette while she popped open a can of beer. 

“Found what you were looking for?” she asked before taking a big gulp of the Heineken.

The little girl walked up to her mother and tried to hug her. But something about her touch made the woman drop her beer. She jerked up from her seat, surprising herself.

Tom came out of the room and saw the woman cursing at her wet robe. The beer had spilt onto it. 

“Your daughter wanted to give you this,” Suzanne held out the piggy bank for the woman to see.

The woman’s eyes widened, recognizing the piggy bank. Her mouth went agape and the cigarette dropped onto the floor. She crushed it with her bare leg and grabbed the piggy bank from Suzanne.

“How…?” she could not finish her sentence. 

“It doesn’t matter how we know. What matters is, your daughter loved you very much. And I believe she would have wanted a better life for you. I think you get my drift,” Suzanne said in a serious tone. 

Tom was amazed at how well Suzanne was handling all of this. If he had been in her shoes, he probably would have torn the woman apart for being such a horrible mother.  He thought of all those years of growing up without a motherly figure and how lonely it felt. And here this woman had the chance to love her baby girl but gave it all up for the sake of booze and men. He shook his head in disgust. The little girl sat at her mother’s feet while the woman stood there motionless.

“Here’s a photo of the two of you that she kept in her drawer,” Suzanne  pressed the photo into the palm of the woman’s hand.

“We’ll take our leave now,” Suzanne motioned for the little girl to follow her. The ghost girl stood up, straightened her backpack, and tried to hug her mother. The woman blinked and looked down, but alas, she saw nothing. 

Tom, Suzanne, and the little girl then turned to leave, but not before the little girl blew her mother a kiss.

And as they walked out of the house, Tom asked Suzanne, “Why didn’t you let her see her daughter?”

Suzanne looked down at the little girl, “The mother wouldn’t have been able to let her go.”

“Come, it’s time to send this little one-off. “

And with that, they brought the little girl with red shoes back to Suzanne’s apartment.

***

The woman slumped to her knees the moment Suzanne and Tom left, clutching the piggy bank and photo to her chest. Tears spilt onto the floor as she heaved between sobs. Memories of her little girl dancing around the house, drawing on the wall and playing with her beer cans came flooding back as she cradled the piggy bank, wailing and hitting her chest. Her only child was gone. And she would never get to see her grow up. There would be no walking her little girl down the aisle or seeing her have her own family. There was only a void in her life now. And no amount of booze or men would be able to fill the gaping hole in her heart.

As she cried, a dark mist started to take form at the pond behind her house.

***

It was almost dusk by the time the woman got up from the floor. She wiped away the tears from her eyes, swollen from all the crying. The weird duo who came to her house was right. She would make her daughter proud. She had a plan. She would clean up her act, and start life anew. One that would honour her daughter’s memories.

But just as she was about to head switch on the table lamp, the black mist seeped in through the window from her daughter’s room, slithered it way in and engulfed her. It forced open her mouth and pushed its way into her body as the woman’s eyes widened in horror, confusion, and pain. She grabbed her throat, gagging and choking at the same time, bumping into the coffee table next to her and knocking over the table lamp. The whites of her eyes turned black and her body started to wither like a mummy’s. The woman slumped onto the floor, gasping for breath, her body twitching wildly before she finally laid still. 

The mist emerged from her very pores before taking a more solid shape and slithering away from the woman. It went away, looking for yet another victim. It needed more life force before it go to Suzanne Summers. 

Horny Mike would come back the next day to find a dried-up corpse on the floor the very next morning.