It all started on a dark and stormy evening, but, then, doesn't it always? My mother had been missing for weeks, and my father and I were sitting by our phones waiting for news. Half the neighborhood was out looking for her, and the other half was resting. It had been an excruciating time for us all.

At first there were "sightings" from all over the country. Her face and story were plastered all over the news. CNN and Fox News had even been to our house several times and interviewed my father and myself. I know most of the people who called in meant well, but many just wanted the attention. I wanted answers.

Eventually, people began to suggest that she had run away, but I knew that wasn't true. She never would have left her box of treasures behind--a collection of life memories she kept under her bed. She certainly never would have left her cellphone, and, dammit, she never would have left me.

I decided to go for a walk in the rain and let the cold October weather purge my worried soul. I grabbed her box of treasures just in case. In case of what, I didn't really know...

The more I walked, the further from home I strayed. I seemed to be following an unmarked path in the woods behind my home. In my imagination, it became the way my own mother had walked. Why not, it was Halloween night? Isn't that when the veil between worlds was lifted? If my mother was, indeed, deceased, maybe she would come to me.

The evening grew into night as I plunged deeper into the woods. But for the flashlight app on my cellphone, I would have been lost in the dank darkness under the dense trees. For a while, my troubled soul drove my walk, and I trudged on tirelessly.

"Plunk, plunk", went my feet in the saturated forest carpet.

"Thump, thump", went my injured heart.

"Rustle, rustle", went a sound to my side.

My breath caught in my throat as I halted my progress and listened. There was silence, and so I walked on.

"Rustle, rustle, scrape, scrape."

"Okay, what's going on?" I screamed out, half in fear, half in annoyance.

An eerie silence followed my outburst, almost as though the forest itself leaned in to listen. I took a tentative step forward. The rustle returned. With more impulse than forethought, I dropped the treasure box, jumped at the area the rustle originated from, and fell on my face in a pile of rotting leaves. I lay there for a moment listening. I heard rustling again, but from the direction I just left. I listened a little longer.

Finally I stood up and brushed the debris from my clothes. That's when I saw a torn strip of gauze hanging from a branch. I picked it up and felt it. It was soft and emanated a familiar scent. I held it to my nose and breathed in deeply. I would know the smell of my mother anywhere.

"Mom!" I cried out. "Mom, where are you?"

There was no answer, so I ran back to retrieve the box of treasures. It wasn't there, but another piece of bandage was. On it was a hastily scribbled message. I recognized the writing and the ink. It was from a fountain pen mom kept in the box.

"Let me go, Pickle. You can't help me now. You won't like what I have become."

Tears ran down my face and joined the rain droplets. She had used my childhood nickname so I would know it was her. She wanted me to abandon my quest, but I just couldn't. Somewhere deep inside, I knew I should do what she asked and go back, but I never had minded well.

I had been a difficult child and an even worse adolescent, but my mother had loved me anyway. She had loved me through getting kicked out of school, through my stint in Juvenile Detention, and she had loved me through drug rehab. No matter what she was now, I would accept her for who she had become. It was only fair.

Like a hound on a scent, I followed the fresh footprints in the mud. I could smell her as easily as I could see the prints, and I knew I was drawing close. Finally, I burst into a clearing and was sickened by what I saw. There in the center of a ring of eerie people, was my mother dancing with demonic abandon. She was covered in loose bandages that barely covered rotting flesh.

"Mom!" I screamed with childish abandon.

She barely looked my way as she cavorted about the center of the ring, but she pointed a bandaged finger for me to go. I went.

Running for what seemed like hours I finally, fell to the wet soil and sobbed into the mud. My heart was broken. What would I tell the others when I got back home? What was there to say? My mommy was a mummy, and a bad one at that? I decided to keep my secret. After-all, my mother had kept many of mine.

I finally rose to my feet, bruised, muddy and disheartened. My cellphone was shattered from the fall, but I still had the full moon overhead to light my mournful way.

"Plunk, plunk", went my feet in the damp soil.

"Thump, thump", went my broken heart.

I listened for the rustle that might mean a reunion with my mom, but it never came. At last, I reached the house and my waiting father. He rushed out and gave me a forlorn hug.

"I thought I lost you, too. Where have you been, son?"

"Looking for my mummy," I replied.

I couldn't help the small, but irreverent, inside joke. I would have to live with the horrible image of my mother dancing before monsters, probably the very monsters who had made her what she was, but I could find a bit of humor in the situation. I had to--it reduced the horror.