The Inn at Laurel Creek by Carolyn Ridder Aspenson Page B

than my Pit Bull, Greyhound mix Gracie, and me, it was empty. Gracie sensed my ever so slight movement, and laid her head back down. I saw my breath, which wouldn’t have been a big deal except it was May, in Georgia. I closed my eyes again.
    “I know you can hear me, Angela. Don’t you ignore me.”
      I opened my eyes again. “Ma?”
    Floating next to the bed, in the same blue nightgown she had on when she died, was my mother, or more likely, some grief induced image of her.
    “Ma?" I laughed out loud. “What am I saying? It’s not you. You’re dead.’
    The grief induced image spoke. “Of course I’m dead, Angela, but I told you if I could, I’d come back. And I can so, tada, here I am.”
    The image floated up in the air, twirled around in a few circles and floated back down.
      I closed my eyes and shook my head, trying to right my brain or maybe shake loose the crazy, but it was pointless because when I opened my eyes again, the talking image of my mother was still there.
    “Oh good grief, stop it. It’s not your head messing with you, Angela. It’s me, your Ma. Now sit up and listen to me. This is important.”
     As children we’re conditioned to respond to our parents when they speak to us. We forget it as teenagers, but somewhere between twenty and the birth of our first child, we start acknowledging them again, maybe even believing some of what they tell us. Apparently it was no different when you imagined their ghost speaking to you, too. Crazy maybe, but no different.
     I rubbed my eyes. “This is a dream, so I might as well go with it."
     I sat up, straightened my back, plastered a big ol’ smile on my face, because it was a dream and I could be happy the day my mom died, in a dream and said, “Hi Ma, how are you?” 
      “You ate my damn Hershey bars."
     “Hershey bars? I dream about my dead mother and she talks about Hershey bars. What is that?”
     “Don’t you act like you don’t know what I’m talking about, Angela."
    “But I don’t know what you’re talking about, Ma.” I shook my head again and thought for sure I was bonkers, talking to an imaginary Ma.
    “Oh for the love of God, Angela, my Hershey bars. The ones I hid in the back of my closet.”
    Oh. Those Hershey bars, from like, twenty years ago, at least. The ones I did eat.
    “How do you know it was me that ate your Hershey bars? That was over twenty years ago.”
    The apparition smirked. “I don’t know how I know, actually. I just do. I know about all of the stuff you did, and your brothers too. It’s all in here now.” She pointed to her, slightly transparent head and smirked.
    She floated up to the ceiling, spun in a circle, and slowly floated back down. “And look, I’m floating. Bet you wish you could do that, don’t you, Angela? You know, I’d sit but I tried that before and fell right through to the damn basement. And let me tell you, that was not fun. It was creepy, and it scared the crap outta me. And oh, Madone, the dust between your two floors! Good Lord, it was nasty. You need to clean that. No wonder Emily’s always got a snotty nose. She’s allergic.”
    “Emily does not always have a snotty nose.” She actually did but I wasn't going to let Ma have that one.
    The apparition started to say something, then scrutinized at the bed. “Ah, Madone, that mattress. That was the most uncomfortable thing I ever slept on, but don’t get me started on that. That’s a conversation for another time.”
    Another time?
    “And I hated that chair.” She pointed to the one next to the bed. “You should have brought my chair up here instead. I was dying and you wanted me to sit in that chair? What with that uncomfortable bed and ugly chair, my back was killing me.” She smiled at her own joke, but I sat there stunned, and watched the apparition’s lips move, my own mouth gaping, as I tried to get my mind and my eyes to agree on what floated in front of me. 
    “Ah, Madone. Stop looking at me