Every time we visited my grandmother's house, my daughter would hide under the table and whisper, “Grandma isn't breathing.” When she was hospitalized, I searched the room she always kept locked. Inside were… photos, files, and a death certificate bearing her name. What happened afterward was something no one could have predicted…
My mother's house was nestled deep in the pine forest on the outskirts of Portland, an old Victorian building with peeling paint and the characteristic musty smell of the persistent Oregon rains.
I, Sarah, reluctantly took my five-year-old daughter, Lily, to visit her grandmother every weekend. My mother, Eleanor, was a stern, taciturn woman who always exuded a cold, unapproachable aura.
“Mommy, I don't want to go in,” Lily clung to my coat as the car pulled up in front of the yard.
“Come on, Lily, Grandma loves you. She's just… a little strange,” I reassured her, though I myself felt a chill whenever I saw my mother's thin figure behind the second-floor window curtain.
Lunch was served in stifling silence. My mother sat at the head of the table, chewing slowly, her gray eyes staring into space.
As always, Lily refused to sit down. The little girl crawled under the tablecloth-covered dining table, clutching her old doll.
I bent down and lifted the tablecloth. “Lily, come eat.”
Lily looked up at me with wide, frightened eyes, her tiny finger on her lips signaling silence.
“Shhh,” she whispered, her voice trembling. “Grandma isn't breathing.”
“What nonsense are you talking about?” I frowned.
“I heard it,” Lily insisted, her face pale. “Up there, her feet are ice cold. And she's not breathing. Not a single breath.”
I shuddered, looking up at my mother. She was still sitting there, motionless like a wax statue. Her chest didn't seem to rise or fall. But then, she blinked, turned to look at me, and smiled—a crooked smile.
“What's wrong, Sarah? Is she acting up again?” Her voice was hoarse, like the sound of crushed dry leaves.
“It's nothing, Mom,” I quickly pulled Lily away.
I always thought it was just a child's vivid imagination. Until yesterday.
My mother collapsed in the kitchen while making tea. A heart attack.
When the ambulance arrived, the paramedics were baffled.
“Her pulse…it's so strange,” one paramedic whispered to another. “Her heart rate is incredibly slow, only about 30 beats a minute. And her body temperature is as low as someone who's been dead for hours.”
They took her away. I had to stay behind to find her health insurance card and identification.
The large house was now empty and frightening. I rummaged through the drawers on the first floor but found nothing. Only one place remained: my mother's bedroom.
It was “off-limits.” Since my father died 20 years ago, my mother had always locked the door to her room, the key always around her neck. She absolutely forbade me from entering it.
But now it was an emergency.
I found the spare key hidden under a withered cactus on the balcony – the same spot where I used to see my mother rummaging around when I was a child.
Click.
The heavy oak door swung open.
The smell of camphor and old paper filled the air. The room was pitch black, the curtains drawn. I turned on my phone's flashlight.
The room didn't look like a bedroom. It looked like a storage room.
Towers of old newspapers piled high. Cardboard boxes covered the walls. No family photos, no mementos of my father.
I approached the old desk in the corner. The drawer was locked, but the wood was rotten; a quick tug was all it took to open it.
Inside was a thick stack of files wrapped in moisture-proof plastic.
I opened it. And my world crumbled.
The first thing that fell out was a yellowed piece of paper with a bright red Ohio state seal.
DEATH CERTIFICATE.
Name of the deceased: Eleanor Vance.
Date of death: November 14, 1985.
Cause: Died in a fire.
I dropped my flashlight. Eleanor Vance was my mother's name. 1985… that was when I was three years old. If my mother died in 1985, then who was the woman who had just been taken to the emergency room, the woman who had raised me for the past 30 years?
I tremblingly flipped through the papers below.
A series of birth certificates, driver's licenses, Social Security numbers (SSNs) bearing different names: Mary Smith, Linda Gries, Susan Black…
And photographs.
Black and white photos, of different women. But there was one thing in common: They all bore a striking resemblance, and beneath each photograph was a handwritten note in red ink, recording the date and… the burial location.
Finally, there was a photograph of me at age 3. I was sitting on the lap of a beautiful young woman, smiling brightly. That was my real mother – Eleanor.
Next to that photograph was a clipped article from The Cleveland Plain Dealer from 1985:
“SPECIAL WANTED: ‘BLACK WIDOW' JUDITH MOSS. SUSPECT OF MURDERING 5 WOMEN FOR PROPERTY AND IDENTITY. EXTREMELY DANGEROUS, MASTER OF DISGUISE.”
I looked at Judith Moss's wanted poster.
That face… though 30 years younger, those cold, ash-gray eyes were the eyes of the woman I called “Mother.”
Judith Moss wasn't my mother. She was the one who killed my mother, burned down the house to cover up the crime, and then… usurped my mother's identity, and usurped me as a cover for her new life.
And Lily's words: “She wasn't breathing.”
In Judith Moss's old medical record, tucked inside a stack of papers, was a note: “Patient with congenital bradycardia and the ability to control breathing to feign death (Catalepsy state).”
“She once escaped from prison by faking her death.”
My daughter wasn't imagining things. She sensed the biological truth about this monster. She really was a zombie, a cold-blooded predator lurking beneath the skin of a grandmother.
Chapter 3: The Call from the Hospital
My phone rang in the silent room, making me scream.
It was Portland Memorial Hospital.
“Hello, is this Sarah?” The nurse's voice was frantic. “We need you immediately. There's a problem.”
“She… she's dead?” I asked, my hand gripping the file, cold sweat dripping down my face.
“No, ma'am. She… she's gone.”
“What?”
“The doctor was preparing to intubate her when she suddenly opened her eyes. She attacked a nurse with a scalpel, knocked out a security guard, and escaped through the emergency exit.” The security camera footage showed her moving very quickly, not at all like an elderly person having a heart attack.
I put down the phone.
She knew.
She knew I was at her house. She knew I would find this Pandora's box. The heart attack might have been real, but the survival instinct of a wild animal had awakened her.
My phone vibrated again. A new message.
From “Mom's” number.
I trembled as I opened it.
“Dear Sarah. I taught you never to rummage through other people's things. You broke the rule. Now I have to go find a new name. Too bad, I really enjoyed being a grandmother.”
I rushed out of the house, locked my car, and sped home. I needed to pick up Lily. I needed to call the police.
But when I got home, the front door was wide open.
“Lily!” “Mark!” I yelled, calling for my husband and daughter.
There was no answer.
In the living room, the TV was still on, showing cartoons. On the dining table was a sticky note attached to Lily's doll.
“Thanks for lunch. Lily was very good. We're going out for a bit. Don't look for her, or she'll ‘stop breathing' like Eleanor.”
I collapsed to the floor.
Judith Moss hadn't run away alone. She needed a new cover. A hostage for her safety.
And she'd taken my daughter with her.
Two weeks later.
The police found Judith's car abandoned near the Canadian border. But there was no trace of her or Lily.
I sat in the police station, staring at the newly released wanted poster. My “Mother's” face was now aged, but the cruelty remained undiminished.
The inspector placed his hand on my shoulder. “We'll find them, Sarah.” “She's old, she can't run forever.”
I shook my head.
“You don't understand,” I whispered, recalling the chilling feeling of her embrace when I was a child. “She's not old. She's a chameleon. She could be anyone. A nun, a homeless person, or an old schoolteacher.”
I looked out the window. Somewhere out there, my daughter was with a monster. A monster that knew how to hold its breath to deceive death.
And I knew this chase wouldn't end until one of us took its last breath – this time for real.