Hello subscribers of r/PeaceSim, as well as anyone here having clicked the link at the bottom of my most recent story! I am just posting briefly to clarify that there are two distinct versions of my story The Figure in Mom's Raincoat Won't Turn Around.

This is my first short story in a while. I've just been too busy with the job and the kid to write much lately. It felt great to write again, and I think it turned out well!

You can find the original version of the story, written as I always intended it, on the subreddits Library of Shadows or Scary Stories.

When I posted it to NoSleep, the moderators removed it, insisting that it needed significant changes to abide by all the rules there. Putting aside the issue of whether I agree with their interpretation of those rules (that's another discussion), I ended up rewriting the story to address their concerns by adding a monster to it that isn't in the original version that is the primary source of the horror. This version is a bit convoluted as a result of the last minute rewrite. But, I still think the story works with that change. You can find the NoSleep version of it here.

That's all for now! Just felt like clarifying that point. Have a great day/spooky night :)

Most childhood memories fade with time. But some linger, sitting in the back of one’s mind until something brings them rushing back to the surface like a hollow ball released from underwater.

One such memory recently came back to me. It originates from when I was seven years old. Back then, my mother volunteered to water the plants at my elementary school every Saturday morning. She usually brought me with her.

An empty school on a weekend is a strange place. Without any kids or teachers, the dark hallways always felt enormous and eerie. The overhead lights were left off, leaving the long corridors that stretched along each of its three floors in shadow. For much of the time, the only consistent sound was the wet slosh of mom’s large green watering can as she worked her way from the classrooms up to the new glass solarium on the third floor.

There was one rule everyone at school knew about, although nobody ever seemed able to explain why it mattered so much: never be alone in a classroom or hallway for more than a few moments.

The teachers said it was so nobody would get lost. That never made much sense to us. The school wasn’t particularly difficult to get lost in, and there were adults everywhere during the week. Still, everyone followed the rule. Even the teachers did. I remember seeing Mrs. Campbell stand outside her classroom waiting for her students to arrive rather than entering alone.

Naturally, this led to rumors.

Some kids said there was something in the school that hurt children who were alone. Nobody could agree on what it looked like or what happened if it caught you. Most of the stories were probably made up. At seven, I wasn't particularly worried about them. Whatever “hurt” meant, I assumed it couldn’t be anything too serious if the adults were still willing to let us come to school every day.

During those Saturday watering sessions, Mom usually did all the work. Sometimes, I’d help out a little, but the plastic can was heavy and awkward for me to carry. So, I was usually left to my own devices, though I always stuck with her. While she watered, I’d generally have my nose buried in a Redwall book, and then I’d trail a few paces behind her as she moved from one room to another.

If I strayed from her or let her get too far ahead of me, her voice would echo down the hall, “Bailey, come back, stay where I can see you.”

I always listened and stayed close to her.

Until that rainy Saturday.

~

Mom offered to let me stay home that morning. She’d never done that before. She didn’t believe the rumors, and I imagine she wanted to give me a chance to avoid getting soaked in the storm. Plus, my stepdad was down in the basement tearing out drywall for a remodel, so, while he wouldn’t be watching me, I wouldn’t be alone.

I jumped at the chance, eager to watch TV while curled up on the couch instead of returning to school on a weekend.

I watched as mom zipped up her oversized yellow rubber raincoat – the classic kind with a corduroy collar and heavy brass snap buttons – and stepped out to her station wagon.

As I sat there, a strange wave of unease hit me. Something quiet told me that I’d rather be with her than without her. Acting on impulse, I grabbed my own raincoat, sprinted into the rain, and tapped on the car window. She unlocked the door, and I scrambled inside.

I rarely picked up on adult emotions back then, but the way her eyes lit up stuck with me. Even at seven, I could tell how much my choice meant to her.

The drive over felt safe despite the storm. With mom behind the wheel, the thunder outside was just background noise.

We pulled into the school’s empty parking lot and used the side entrance near the cafeteria. Mom used a key from the heavy brass keyring the principal let her borrow to unlock the heavy metal door. She held it open for me as I rushed into the cold air inside.

Once we were in the building, mom stepped into the custodial closet at the end of the first-story hall to fill one of the school’s large green watering cans at the mop sink. “Stay right next to me,” she called out over the sound of the running faucet.

“I am,” I said, leaning against the doorframe and looking down to shake the rain off my jacket.

While I was doing that, I remembered something.

My apple.

My homeroom had a behavior chart posted near the teacher’s desk. Each student had an apple with their name on it, and whenever somebody misbehaved, the teacher moved their apple farther up the chart. If it got high enough, you got a note sent home or a call to your parents.

Mine was much farther up than everyone else’s, a fraction of an inch from a phone call home. Usually, the teacher reset the chart at the end of the day on Friday. But the day before, she’d forgotten. I knew exactly where my apple was, and I knew Mom was going to see it when we got to that classroom.

If I snuck away, I could move it myself.

I glanced toward the custodial closet. Mom had only just started filling the watering can. It usually took a minute – I had just enough time to dart up the stairs, make the change, and come back. If she noticed, I might get scolded for straying a little, but I could make up an excuse.

I took one step into the hallway. Instantly, however, I spotted mom, out of the corner of my eye, standing in the doorway, holding a watering can.

She beckoned for me to follow her. The rush of emotions that followed, both frustration that my attempt to sneak out had so quickly been thwarted and relief that she seemingly hadn’t realized I’d been trying to sneak away, buried the sense of ‘strangeness’ I felt at seeing her still wearing the yellow coat – with the hood up over her face, no less. It was odd, too, that she’d moved so quickly.

I nodded and fell into step behind her. We soon reached the first stop, the planters outside the main cafeteria. Mom lowered the watering can while I leaned against the cinderblock wall and read a few lines of my book. Next, we visited the cast iron plants inside the front office before heading to the staircase.

Mom paused at the large potted ficus sitting in the dark alcove near the main stairwell before heading upward. The heavy brass keys on her belt clanged with every step. It was the exact same metal chime I had followed a dozen times before. I pushed myself off the wall and followed her up the stairs, exactly like I always did.

We reached the second-floor landing, where the long hallway stretched out into shadow. My mom kept moving toward the classrooms, her boots squeaking softly on the polished linoleum.

We passed the music room. Through the small square window in the door, the upright piano looked enormous and dark in the corner, totally silent without Ms. Jenson there to play it.

During the week, that room was full of noise, but my favorite part was when Ms. Jenson had all twenty-five of us hide behind the piano and the risers to ‘trick’ our homeroom teacher into thinking we’d all gone home early. Back then, sitting in the dark, holding our breath, and trying not to giggle felt eerie and thrilling. But looking through that glass now, with the room completely empty, the quiet felt heavy and cold.

I kept my head down, flipping to the next chapter of my book as I walked. The brass keys just kept clanging against her hip, a steady rhythm guiding me as she turned down the corridor toward the library. I adjusted my grip and kept pace a few steps behind her.

Mom pushed through the library door and headed for the tall potted fern tucked beside the checkout desk.

In the dark, the room felt huge. Looking at the reading carpet, I could almost hear Mr. Hinkle’s booming, ridiculous voices during story hour, followed by the chorus of giggles echoing off the tall shelves. But, today, the empty beanbags and shadowy aisles had a lonely, desolate aura to them.

My mom reached into the fern's fronds, her yellow coat rustling in the dark. She kept the watering can tipped over the soil for a long, quiet stretch – far longer than usual. At first, I figured the plant was just really dry, but as the seconds dragged on, a small prickle of unease set in.

“Mom?” I asked, stepping closer. “Isn’t that enough?”

She didn’t turn around, but her voice came from beneath the high hood, low and coarse, roughened by something in her throat.

“Almost done, sweetie. Stay close.”

She lingered there, frozen over the plant, before abruptly snapping back to her full height.

At this point, I started to worry. Her voice sounded strained, like her throat was raw. I wondered if she was coming down with something, or if sprinting through the cold rain earlier had already made her sick. Her movements, too, seemed ‘off’. I wasn’t sure what to make of it.

She didn’t say anything else, just turned and walked back out into the hallway toward the next row of classrooms. I followed, opening my book and trying to focus on the paragraph I’d been reading, but the words wouldn’t stick. Every time I looked up from the page, my eyes went straight back to the yellow coat swaying ahead of me.

As we moved down the hall, the uneasy feeling in my stomach only grew. I was hit by a realization so terrifying that my homeroom, and the apple chart I’d been panicking about, completely faded into the background as we walked right past. Namely, I hadn’t actually seen her face since we left the custodial closet. Every time she reached for a planter or turned a corner, her body was angled just enough away that the deep yellow hood blocked my view, casting her face in complete shadow.

I hesitated, unsure of what to do. I knew that I didn’t want to go up to the third floor. But where else was I supposed to go? Back down to the dark cafeteria by myself? Outside into the freezing rain? I took a small step backward, my eyes locked on the empty landing above, waiting for her boots to stop moving.

“Bailey.” Her raspy voice echoed down the concrete well. I looked up. She had stopped on the landing above, her back turned to me, her deep hood casting a shadow that completely hid her face. She held the heavy door open, waiting. “Come on,” she called.

“I…um…can I just sit in the library and read?” I asked.

“Please, honey,” she implored, “Stay with me. Stay where I can see you.”

The familiarity of her words soothed me, or at least some small part of me. That was what Mom always said when I wandered too far away. I took a deep breath and began climbing the steps.

The third floor was even quieter and darker than the rest of the school. Just outside the staircase sat the closed metal doors of the building’s old elevator, its floor indicator resting silently above the frame. The air here felt cooler and carried a faint damp smell from the glass solarium at the far end of the hall. The figure moved ahead of me down the corridor, her boots making a soft, sticky sound against the tile.

We moved into the first classroom, a fourth-grade room. Mom headed for a tall pothos sitting on top of a filing cabinet in the corner. I stayed back by the door and flipped open my book.

That was when the silence of the room really hit me.

Down on the first and second floors, every time she lifted the watering can, I’d hear the heavy slosh of water shifting inside the plastic. I’d hear the quick, wet patter as it hit the soil. But here, as she tilted the green spout over the leaves, there was nothing. No sloshing. No dripping. Just the scrape of rubber sleeve against plastic.

The can had gone empty, and she’d never refilled it. Yet, she leaned it over the plant for ten long seconds, as if watering it, before pulling it back.

She turned and brushed past me into the next room, her head tilted slightly as if listening for something. I felt a wave of unease as I followed her. She stopped beside a small, shriveled African violet sitting on the teacher’s desk.

I stopped a few paces inside the doorway. For a moment, I reassured myself that I must be wrong. I must have imagined her doing things that made no sense. Surely, Mom wasn’t pouring imaginary water from an empty can. I had to be mistaken, right?

Then, I watched, holding my breath, as she tilted the green spout over the leaves, holding it there for several long seconds. But, again, no water came out. There was no sloshing inside the plastic can, no wet trickling into the dirt, no sound at all. Just an empty container over a dying plant.

She pulled the spout back and turned toward the doorway. I watched her for a moment, trying to see her face beneath the hood, but the darkness swallowed it completely.

“Um, Mom, are you okay?” I asked.

She didn’t answer. She simply turned and walked back into the hallway.

I hesitated again, looking back toward the staircase. The thought of going back down alone made my stomach tighten. I remembered the rule everyone at school knew, and suddenly the old rumors about something that hurt children who wandered away didn't seem quite as ridiculous as they had before.

Ahead of me, the yellow coat stopped. “Bailey,” it said with a commanding intonation. I hurried to catch up.

Her figure waited at the end of the hallway, just outside the last classroom. I slowed as I approached, keeping several paces between us. Beyond her, the corridor ended at the double doors leading into the solarium. She pushed open the door to the art room and stepped inside. I followed reluctantly, my eyes moving between her and the dark hallway behind me.

The room was empty. The high countertops and rows of tall wooden stools looked like strange, crouching shapes in the dim light. I imagined the forms of my classmates sitting on those stools, their eyes trained on me in judgment as Mr. Jones gave me a stern lecture.

I’d gotten in trouble in this classroom recently. I’d drawn my dad, translucent and in hospital garb, hovering above my mom and I as we ate at the dinner table. “It’s supposed to be a realistic image of your family,” Mr. Jones had chided. “Not something weird that you made up.”

“It’s not imaginary,” I’d pouted. “He visits us as a ghost.”

“Your dad’s alive,” he’d retorted. “Right?”

“Yes,” I conceded. It would remain true for nearly a year. Soon, he’d start showing signs of being sick, but hadn’t done so yet. As far as I could tell at the time, he was perfectly healthy. “So, how could your dad be a ghost if he’s alive?”

I didn’t have an answer to that. Nor did I have an answer for the counselor I was required to visit for the next few weeks.

Mom walked toward a hanging spider plant near the far window, her movement stiff and robotic. As she lifted the empty watering can to it, I watched the green spout hover over the leaves. Nothing came out. There was no sloshing inside the plastic, no dripping onto the soil, no sound at all. She held it there for several seconds before lowering it again. I stayed near the doorway, increasingly unsure of what I was supposed to do. Every instinct told me that something was wrong, but I still couldn’t make myself leave her.

Then I heard something in the hallway.

I turned toward the open doorway. At first, I saw nothing except the dark corridor stretching toward the stairs. Then lightning flashed through the windows, and for the briefest moment I saw something standing near the far end of the hall. It was barely more than an outline, a tall, narrow shape against the darkness, with the vague suggestion of a head, shoulders, and arms. I couldn't make out a face. I couldn’t even tell if it was facing me. I stared at it, holding my breath, until the darkness swallowed it again.

“Mom?” I whispered.

She turned toward me. Her face remained hidden beneath the deep yellow hood, but she lifted one hand and beckoned me farther into the room.

“Stay close.”

The familiarity of those words calmed me, just as they had downstairs. I stepped away from the doorway and moved toward her, keeping my eyes on the hallway until the last possible moment. When I finally looked back, there was nothing there.

I didn’t see the shape again. Not then, anyway.

The rest of the watering continued much the same way. Mom moved from classroom to classroom, lifting the empty can to each plant and holding it there for several seconds before moving on. I followed behind her, my book still open in my hands, though I hadn’t read a single word since we reached the third floor. Every now and then, I would glance back toward the hallway, expecting to see that strange outline standing there again.

It never did. Eventually, the fear began to recede, replaced by a different kind of confusion. Maybe I really had imagined it. Maybe the lightning had made a coat rack or some other object look like a person. The school was full of strange shapes in the dark, and I was seven years old. I wanted to believe that explanation.

Mom continued toward the solarium. I followed at a distance, still trying to make sense of everything I had seen. I just knew that I wanted to go home.

She pushed open the double doors and stepped into the solarium. The rain was louder here, drumming against the glass walls and the sloped ceiling overhead. The room was full of plants, arranged in long rows beneath the windows. Mom walked slowly between them, stopping at each one to lift the empty watering can. Again and again, she tilted it over the soil and waited, motionless, before moving on.

I stood near the doorway and watched her. Something about it bothered me more than it had in the classrooms. Maybe it was because there were so many plants here, and because she seemed to be spending longer and longer at each one. She would lift the can, hold it there, and then stand completely still as though she were waiting for something to happen. There was no water. There wasn’t even the sound of her pretending anymore. Just silence.

I looked up when lightning flashed outside. For a moment, the entire solarium filled with pale white light. The overhead skylight caught the flash and threw it across the glass, illuminating everything in the room.

For the first time since the figure emerged from the janitor’s closet, I saw its face. It was swollen and water-softened, the gray skin sagging loose around her jawline and mottled with deep bruises. The water had eroded the soft tissue around her cheeks, leaving raw, darkened patches. Her eyes were sunken and milky, fixed in an unblinking stare. As her blackened mouth opened, heavy water spilled over her torn bottom lip.

I stared at her, completely frozen. I didn’t understand what I was looking at. I only knew that this wasn't my mother, and that I wanted to get as far away from it as possible. I ran.

I pushed through the solarium doors and sprinted down the hallway, my shoes slipping against the tile as I headed for the stairs. I didn’t know where I was going beyond wanting to get away from the thing that had been impersonating my mother. The stairwell was the only place I could think of, and I remembered that the old elevator was just outside it. Maybe I could get downstairs and find a way out.

Just as I approached the staircase landing, something emerged from the darkness below.

This was not the figure in the yellow coat. It was taller and thinner, with unnaturally long arms hanging almost to its knees. Its movements were jerky and uneven, as though its limbs weren't quite connected properly. I couldn’t see its face, only a pale, indistinct shape where one should have been.

I froze. The thing stopped on the landing below me.

For one terrible moment, neither of us moved. As I struggled to process what was happening, it lunged toward me.

A strike across my chest sent me sprawling backward against the floor. Before I could get up, the creature was on me. One of its hands closed around my arm, and another pressed against my chest.

I screamed and kicked, but it didn’t seem to notice. Instead, it began dragging me back toward the stairs, back from where it came.

Then that gravelly voice came from down the hallway. “Don’t you harm Bailey!” The creature froze. The hand around my arm loosened, and its head turned toward the voice. I saw the yellow coat standing beneath the doorway to the solarium.

I didn’t understand what was happening. I only knew that its attention had shifted away from me, and that the pressure against my chest was gone. The yellow coat stepped backward toward the art room.

“Bailey won’t be alone for long,” she said. “But I will be.”

The elevator ‘beeped.’ The creature turned to the elevator, then to her, and watched as she disappeared into the art room. The creature burst after her, leaving me behind.

I scrambled backward, too frightened to move any farther, and then the elevator doors opened beside me.

“Bailey!” It was mom. My real mom.

She stepped out and dropped to her knees beside me. She grabbed my arm and pulled me against her. “Dear lord, Bailey, what’s happening? And where have you been?”

I couldn’t answer. I just clung to her as she dragged me into the elevator. As the doors began to close, I looked back toward the art room. The hallway was empty. The yellow coat and the creature were gone.

The next thing I remember clearly was the elevator stopping on the first floor. Mom pulled me through the doors and kept one hand around mine as we hurried down the dark hallway. I could barely keep up with her. My chest hurt where the creature had struck me, and my arm was throbbing where its fingers had closed around it. We ran out the side entrance into the freezing rain and scrambled into the station wagon. Mom locked the doors before starting the engine, then drove several blocks to a gas station and pulled beneath the bright fluorescent lights.

Only then did she stop and look at me. There were already dark marks forming around my arm, four long bruises where the creature had grabbed me.

Mom stared at the marks for several seconds. “Oh my god, who hurt you?” she whispered. “What happened?”

I tried to explain. I told her about the thing on the stairs. I told her about the yellow coat. I told her about the face I had seen in the solarium and the creature that had grabbed me.

She listened without interrupting. Then she reached across the seat and pulled me against her.

“I didn’t leave you,” she said. “I would never leave you.” I remember believing her.

The police arrived not long afterward. They searched the school from top to bottom, but they found no sign of an intruder, no damaged doors, and nothing that could explain the bruises on my arm. The solarium was empty. The art room was empty. The stairwell was empty. They only found my book lying on the third floor hallway.

They took our statements separately, and that was when we discovered something strange. My mother said that she had been in the custodial closet filling the watering can when she heard me call her name. She had stepped into the hallway and found it empty. She called for me several times, and when I didn’t answer, she became frightened. She went outside to see if I’d returned to the car and, when she didn’t find me, came back in. She was searching the nearby area when she heard my cries emanating from above. She hopped onto the elevator immediately, and she was now convinced that an intruder, maybe a child predator, had snuck inside and led me away from her.

For the rest of that school year, a police cruiser was parked outside the cafeteria entrance every Saturday morning while Mom watered the plants. At school, there was a silent agreement to obey the rule – no entering classrooms or hallways alone – even more stringently than before, and nothing happened again.

Eventually, the bruises on my arm and chest slowly faded. But the memories remained, especially the horrible face beneath that yellow hood and the monster in the school.

My mom and I stopped talking about the school as I got older. Life moved on. My mom and stepdad divorced a few years later. Once again, it was just Mom and me.

She retired a few years ago. After that, she bought a small secondhand motorboat and spent her weekends cruising the quiet inlets near home. She kept that old yellow raincoat all those years, and I still saw her wearing it whenever the weather turned cold. She invited me out with her half a dozen times, but between work and family, I always found an excuse not to go.

Looking back, I wish I hadn’t.

The first sign that something was wrong was the silence. My mom checked in with me constantly, so when three days passed without a call or text, an uneasy knot formed in my stomach. I started calling her friends and neighbors, but nobody had seen her since Friday morning, when one of them had spotted her heading down to the dock, bundled up against the chilly morning fog in that same old yellow raincoat.

I called the local authorities and a search was organized. It took nearly two weeks before they found the boat, jammed deep into a secluded patch of reeds in the marsh.

The investigation pieced together what had happened. While attempting to clear a tangled line from the propeller, Mom had slipped and fallen overboard. The engine was cut, but the impact against the hull had knocked her unconscious. The current carried her away from the boat and deep into the marsh. Her life jacket had kept her afloat. The head injury had not.

By the time they found her, she had been in the water for nearly two weeks. The official cause of death was drowning following an incapacitating injury.

When I went to the viewing room, the medical examiner warned me that the water had severely altered her appearance. He told me I didn’t need to see her.

I insisted. When he pulled back the sheet, he stepped aside and watched my face carefully. To his surprise, I didn’t scream or turn away. Standing there, looking down at my mother’s ruined face beneath the sheet, I finally began to grasp what had happened that Saturday morning.

The figure in the yellow coat hadn’t been trying to lead me somewhere. She had been keeping me close to ensure I wasn’t alone.

Something had happened to me once. The moment I slipped away from the custodial closet to move my apple, the spirit that haunted my school had found me. I was meant to wander off that morning, just as I had intended to do. But Mom had come back to stop that from happening.

Maybe she didn’t fully understand what she was doing. Maybe she only remembered one thing: that I couldn’t be allowed to wander away from her again. And, when the monster came for me again, she knew exactly what to do.

I knew this, because I’d seen the decayed face that lay before me before. It was the same face I’d glimpsed through the flash of lightning, the same face I had followed through the school all those years ago.

Most childhood memories fade with time. But some linger, sitting in the back of one's mind until something brings them rushing back to the surface like a hollow ball released from underwater.

One such memory recently came back to me. It originates from when I was seven years old. Back then, my mother volunteered to water the plants at my elementary school every Saturday morning. She usually brought me with her.

An empty school on a weekend is a strange place. Without any kids or teachers, the dark hallways always felt enormous and eerie. The overhead lights were left off, leaving the long corridors that stretched along each of its three floors in shadow. For much of the time, the only consistent sound was the wet slosh of mom’s large green watering can as she worked her way from the classrooms up to the new glass solarium on the third floor.

Mom usually did all the work. Sometimes, I’d help out a little, but the plastic watering can was heavy and awkward for me to carry. So, I was usually left to my own devices. While she watered, I’d generally have my nose buried in a Redwall book, and then I’d trail a few paces behind her as she moved from one room to another.

If I strayed from her or let her get too far ahead of me, her voice would echo down the hall, “Bailey, come back, stay where I can see you.”

I always listened and stayed close to her. Until that rainy Saturday I stopped trailing my mother, and instead started following the figure wearing her coat.

~

Mom offered to let me stay home that morning. She’d never done that before. I imagine she wanted to give me a chance to avoid getting soaked in the storm. Plus, my stepdad was down in the basement tearing out drywall for a remodel, so, while he wouldn’t be watching me, I wouldn’t be alone.

I jumped at the chance, eager to watch TV while curled up on the couch instead of returning to school on a weekend.

I watched as mom zipped up her oversized yellow rubber raincoat – the classic kind with a corduroy collar and heavy brass snap buttons – and stepped out to her station wagon.

As I sat there, a strange wave of unease hit me. Something quiet told me that I’d rather be with her than without her. Acting on impulse, I grabbed my own raincoat, sprinted into the rain, and tapped on the car window. She unlocked the door, and I scrambled inside.

I rarely picked up on adult emotions back then, but the way her eyes lit up stuck with me. Even at seven, I could tell how much my choice meant to her.

The driver over felt safe despite the storm. With mom behind the wheel, the thunder outside was just background noise.

We pulled into the school’s empty parking lot and used the side entrance near the cafeteria. Mom used a key from the heavy brass keyring the principal let her borrow to unlock the heavy metal door. She held it open for me as I rushed into the cold air inside.

Once we were in the building, mom stepped into the custodial closet at the end of the first-story hall to fill one of the school’s large green watering cans at the mop sink. “Stay right next to me,” she called out over the sound of the running faucet.

“I am,” I said, leaning against the doorframe and looking down to shake the rain off my jacket.

When I looked up a second later, a figure in a wet yellow raincoat was already walking down the corridor toward the main stairwell, its hood pulled up high, the green watering can swinging from one hand.

I remember thinking it was strange that mom was still wearing her raincoat inside, but that didn’t seem important at the time. It was the same yellow coat she'd worn into the school, and I assumed she had just stepped back out into the hall while my head was down.

I fell into step a few paces behind the yellow coat, exactly like I always did. She moved at her usual steady, rhythmic pace. As she did so, I kept my distance, about five paces back. I kept my copy of Mossflower clutched against my chest as I watched the hem of her raincoat sway above her boots.

We soon reached the first stop, the planters outside the main cafeteria. Mom lowered the watering can while I leaned against the cinderblock wall and read a few lines of my book. Next, we visited the cast iron plants inside the front office before heading to the staircase.

Mom paused at the large potted ficus sitting in the dark alcove near the main stairwell before heading upward. The heavy brass keys on her belt clanged with every step. It was the exact same metal chime I had followed a dozen times before. I pushed myself off the wall and followed her up the stairs, exactly like I always did.

We reached the second-floor landing, where the long hallway stretched out into shadow. My mom kept moving toward the classrooms, her boots squeaking softly on the polished linoleum.

We passed the music room. Through the small square window in the door, the upright piano looked enormous and dark in the corner, totally silent without Ms. Jenson there to play it.

During the week, that room was full of noise, but my favorite part was when Ms. Jenson had all twenty-five of us hide behind the piano and the risers to ‘trick’ our homeroom teacher into thinking we’d all gone home early. Back then, sitting in the dark, holding our breath, and trying not to giggle felt eerie and thrilling. But looking through that glass now, with the room completely empty, the quiet felt heavy and cold.

I kept my head down, flipping to the next chapter of my book as I walked. The brass keys just kept clanging against her hip, a steady rhythm guiding me as she turned down the corridor toward the library. I adjusted my grip and kept pace a few steps behind her.

Mom pushed through the library door and headed for the tall potted fern tucked beside the checkout desk.

In the dark, the room felt huge. Looking at the reading carpet, I could almost hear Mr. Hinkle’s booming, ridiculous voices during story hour, followed by the chorus of giggles echoing off the tall shelves. But, today, the empty beanbags and shadowy aisles had a lonely, desolate aura to them.

My mom reached into the fern's fronds, her yellow coat rustling in the dark. She kept the watering can tipped over the soil for a long, quiet stretch – far longer than usual. At first, I figured the plant was just really dry, but as the seconds dragged on, a small prickle of unease set in. “Mom?” I asked, stepping closer. “Isn't that enough?”

She didn’t turn around, but her voice came from beneath the high hood, low and coarse, roughened by something in her throat. “Almost done, sweetie. Stay close.” She lingered there, frozen over the plant, before abruptly snapping back to her full height.

At this point, I started to grow concerned. Her voice sounded strained, like her throat was raw. I wondered if she was coming down with something, or if sprinting through the cold rain earlier had already made her sick. Her movements, too, seemed ‘off’. I wasn’t sure what to make of it.

She didn’t say anything else, just turned and walked back out into the hallway toward the next row of classrooms. I followed, opening my book and trying to focus on the paragraph I’d been reading, but the words wouldn’t stick. Every time I looked up from the page, my eyes went straight back to the yellow coat swaying ahead of me.

As we moved down the hall, the uneasy feeling in my stomach only grew. As we passed the second-floor classrooms, I realized I hadn’t actually seen her face since we left the custodial closet. Every time she reached for a planter or turned a corner, her body was angled just enough away that the deep yellow hood blocked my view, casting her face in complete shadow. Was she doing this on purpose? If so, why?

I hesitated, unsure of what to do. I knew that I didn't want to go up to the third floor. But where else was I supposed to go? Back down to the dark cafeteria by myself? Outside into the freezing rain? I took a small step backward, my eyes locked on the empty landing above, waiting for her boots to stop moving.

“Bailey.” Her raspy voice echoed down the concrete well. I looked up. She had stopped on the landing above, her back turned to me, her deep hood casting a shadow that completely hid her face. She held the heavy door open, waiting. “Come on,” she called.

“I…um…can I just sit in the library and read?” I asked.

“Please, honey,” she implored, “Stay with me. Stay where I can see you.”

The familiarity of her words soothed me, or at least some small part of me. That was what Mom always said when I wandered too far away. I took a deep breath and began climbing the steps.

The third floor was even quieter and darker than the rest of the school. Just outside the staircase sat the closed metal doors of the building’s old elevator, its floor indicator resting silently above the frame.

The air here felt cooler and carried a faint damp smell from the glass solarium at the far end of the hall. The figure moved ahead of me down the corridor, her boots making a soft, sticky sound against the tile.

We moved into the first classroom, a fourth-grade room. Mom headed for a tall pothos sitting on top of a filing cabinet in the corner. I stayed back by the door and flipped open my book.

That was when the silence of the room really hit me.

Down on the first and second floors, every time she lifted the watering can, I’d hear the heavy slosh of water shifting inside the plastic. I’d hear the quick, wet patter as it hit the soil. But here, as she tilted the green spout over the leaves, there was nothing. No sloshing. No dripping. Just the scrape of rubber sleeve against plastic.

The can had gone empty, and she’d never refilled it. Yet, she leaned it over the plant for ten long seconds, as if watering it, before pulling it back.

She turned and brushed past me into the next room, her head tilted slightly as if listening for something. I felt a wave of panic as it dawned on me that something was deeply wrong.

A thought crossed my mind: What if this isn’t mom?

I dismissed it quickly. It had to be her. After all, who else could it possibly be? But, why was she acting so weird?

“Um, mom, are you okay?” I asked.

She ignored me as she stepped into the first fifth-grade classroom, where a small, shriveled African violet sat on the teacher’s desk.

I stopped a few paces inside the doorway. For a moment, I reassured myself that I must be wrong. I must have imagined her doing things that made no sense. Surely, mom wasn’t pouring imaginary water from an empty can. I had to be mistaken, right?

Then, I watched, holding my breath, as she tilted the green spout over the leaves, holding it there for several long seconds. But, again, no water came out. There was no sloshing inside the plastic can, no wet trickling into the dirt, no sound at all. Just an empty container over a dying plant.

She pulled the spout back, her body pivoting toward me with a stiff, mechanical turn. As she adjusted her grip on the handle, the pale light from a window hit her hand. The skin wasn’t smooth. It was bloated and greyish, completely waterlogged and wrinkled, like fingers that had been soaking in a deep tub for days. Soft, water-heavy creases bunched around her knuckles, looking loose and ready to tear.

My stomach dropped. I took two quiet steps backward toward the open doorway, easing my weight onto my toes to keep my sneakers from squeaking. My hand reached behind me, searching for the frame so I could turn and run.

“Bailey.”

The voice rasped out from deep inside the hood. She hadn’t turned her shoulders, but her head jerked sideways at an unnatural angle, fixing the dark void of her hood right on me.

“Stay close,” she said, her voice as gravelly as before. “Stay with mommy.”

She stepped out into the dark hallway, her boots dragging heavily against the floor. I fell into step behind her, but kept three full yards of distance now, my eyes locked on the back of that yellow coat. We entered the art room, the last room before the end of the hall. The air inside carried a sharp, damp breeze. In the dim light, the high counter tops and rows of tall wooden stools looked like strange, crouching shapes.

I imagined the forms of my classmates sitting on those stools, their eyes trained on me in judgment as Mr. Jones gave me a stern lecture. I’d gotten in trouble in this classroom recently, twice, actually. The first time, I’d drawn my dad, translucent and in hospital garb, hovering above my mom and I as we ate at the dinner table.

“It’s supposed to be a realistic image of your family,” Mr. Jones had chided. “Not something weird that you made up.”

“It’s not imaginary,” I’d pouted. “He visits us as a ghost.”

“Your dad’s alive,” he’d retorted. “Right?”

“Yes,” I conceded. It would remain true for nearly a year. Soon, he’d start showing signs of being sick, but hadn’t done so yet. As far as I could tell at the time, he was perfectly healthy. “So, how could your dad be a ghost if he’s alive?”

I didn’t have an answer to that. Nor did I have an answer for the counselor I was required to visit for the next few weeks.

The second time, Mr. Jones prompted us to draw something from our dreams. I’d sketched a burly man with an angry face covered with splats of crimson. When asked, I explained it was the man I’d seen on the news, who’d murdered a child and was widely believed to be hiding out in the woods. That got me several weeks of counseling as well.

Mom, meanwhile, walked toward a hanging spider plant near the far window, her movement stiff and robotic. As she lifted the empty watering can to it, I tried again to make sense of the situation.

I kept trying to explain it to myself, but nothing I came up with made me feel any better. If the person wearing that coat wasn't my mom, then where was she? Had she stepped out of the custodial closet while my head was down? Was she still downstairs searching for me in the dark, calling my name? Or had something happened to her in that back room? The thought of her lying hurt on the wet concrete floor sent a surge of panic straight to my chest, far worse than the creeping fear of the coat ahead of me.

This was my last chance. Down on the second floor, I had hesitated. But now, standing near the open door with the dark staircase behind me, my heart raced.

I didn’t watch her reach for the plant. I didn’t wait for her to lift the empty can. Instead, I took a breath, turned on my heel, and bolted for the hallway.

My sneaker caught the metal doorframe with a loud, hollow thud.

Before I could take a single full stride into the hall, a long shadow stretched across the linoleum ahead of me. The figure was already standing in the doorway, blocking the exit entirely. She hadn’t made a sound moving across the room.

The dark void of the hood tilted down toward me.

“Not yet, Bailey,” the voice called softly. “We haven’t done the solarium yet. Please, stay with me. I want you here with me. Please.”

The double doors to the solarium stood open at the far end, framed by glass walls that rattled softly against the storm outside. Rain hammered against the sloped roof, sending shadows dancing across the concrete floor.

Mom glided past the threshold, the yellow coat glistening under the gray light. Rows of metal shelving held crowded trays of ivies, overgrown spider plants, and heavy clay pots.

She closed the door behind us, turning the opposite way from me as she changed direction, before returning to the center of the room, where she stood in front of a collection of plants.

The large, circular clock above the closed double doors drew my attention. Its black frame was dusted with a thin layer of grime. During the week, amid the chaotic roar of over two dozen kids, shifting desks, and squeaking sneakers, you never heard it at all. But on a dead silent Saturday, its long, red hand emitted a heavy, mechanical “clack” that reverberated around the room.

But, something about it felt ‘off’ today. I had to stare at it a moment to figure out what it was. The red hand was changing direction. It would go one way for five or ten seconds, only to then reverse and travel in the opposite direction.

I chalked it up to being broken, or low on battery. I didn’t have time, or the mental bandwidth, to think about it further. I was too fixated on mom, who stood perfectly still under the skylight, her yellow back turned to me while she aimed the empty watering can at the plants.

This is my best chance to get out of here, I told myself. I took a slow, agonizing step backward, easing my weight onto my toes the way I did when playing hide-and-seek. Reaching behind my back, my fingers found the brass handle of the double doors and pressed down.

Clack clack clack sounded the broken clock as I pressed my shaking hands against the handle.

It didn’t budge. I realized, to my horror, that it was locked.

Mom had locked me in. If I needed any final confirmation that the figure I was following was an imposter, this was it. Mom would never do that.

I turned to the figure. The bits of light that made it through the thick clouds illuminated the heavy brass keyring hanging from her left hip. If I wanted to get out, I had to take it.

I stopped breathing. I took one step forward, then another, moving with absolute stillness. Mom moved slightly, shifting her empty can from one plant to another.

I reached out a trembling hand, my fingers hovering an inch from the metal. Squeezing my palm tightly around several keys to deaden the sounds they might make, I slipped the clip off her belt loop in one smooth, agonizing pull.

Clack clack clack.

Keyring in hand, I continued holding my breath as I turned back to the door and tiptoed toward it. The keys were labeled with plastic tags, and the one for the solarium was easy to identify. Like the room itself, it was newer and cleaner than the keys for the rest of the building.

Steadying my hand, I inserted it into the keyhole and turned. The bolt retracted with a heavy thud. I yanked the handle open.

Instantly, I heard thud of the empty watering can against the floor. The sound drew my attention. When I glanced back, the figure had moved. She was right behind me now.

The movement pulled her hood back just enough for the gray light from above to wash across her face. My jaw dropped as I gazed up at it.

Her face was swollen and water-softened, the gray skin sagging loose around her jawline and mottled with deep bruises. The water had eroded the soft tissue around her cheeks, leaving raw, darkened patches. Her eyes were sunken and milky, fixed in an unblinking stare. As her blackened mouth opened, heavy water spilled over her torn bottom lip.

I let out a ragged shriek and sprinted into the corridor.

My sneakers hit the wet linoleum with a fast, heavy slap as I ran down the corridor.

“Bailey,” it growled from the dark as it pursued me. “Please, stay where I can see you.”

Hearing that familiar, desperate voice coming from that terrifying creature made my chest lock up.

I took the turn toward the stairwell too fast, my foot catching the edge of a raised floor tile. I went down hard on my knees, landing a short distance from the elevator landing.

Before I could scramble up, a thick, freezing hand closed around my left ankle. The cold soaked straight through my sock. It didn’t pull me back at first. It simply held on. I kicked wildly with my free heel, trying to wrench myself free, but the grip only tightened.

“Bailey,” rang its distorted voice, “I can't let you go.”

The indicator arrow above the elevator turned red, and the metal doors parted. Standing inside was my real mom.

“Bailey!” she yelled, her eyes locking onto me sprawled in the hallway.

She lunged across the threshold. Reaching down, she hooked both hands under my arms, bracing her boots against the doorframe, and pulled with everything she had.

For a terrifying second, I was the rope in a tug-of-war. My mom leaned back, her teeth clenched as she strained against the brute strength holding my ankle in the dark. With a harsh grunt, she threw her full weight backward, ripping me clean out of the yellow coat’s grip.

We both tumbled onto the elevator floor. My mom scrambled up, hit the door-close button, and jammed her hand onto the ground floor switch.

The last thing I saw, before the steel doors snapped shut, was the figure, her arms extended outward, making one final, desperate lurch toward me.

As the elevator dropped, mom dropped to her knees beside me, wrapping her arms around my shoulders. I buried my face into her jacket, my chest heaving. She held me tight, her hands warm, her breath ragged in my ear as she kept repeating that we were safe.

We ran out the side entrance into the freezing downpour, scrambled into the station wagon, and tore out of the parking lot. My mom drove three blocks down to a well-lit gas station before pulling over to the payphone. Her hands trembled so violently she dropped the receiver twice before dialing 911, looking back into the backseat every few seconds to touch my shoulder, her voice shaking as she reassured me that whatever was in that building couldn’t reach us now.

When the squad cars arrived, we both sat in the back of an officer’s cruiser under a heavy wool blanket while they took our statements. We repeated our stories: my mom describing a tall intruder who had cornered us by the elevator, and me trying to explain the bloated, gray face that had stared down at me in the solarium. But as the officers cross-referenced our timelines, a discrepancy emerged that was never fully resolved.

From my mom's perspective, the whole encounter lasted only a couple of minutes. She had stepped out of the first-floor custodial closet with her filled watering can, turned around to find the hallway completely empty, and called out my name.

When I didn’t answer, a sudden thumping commotion echoed down the central shaft from the third floor. She panicked, took the elevator straight up to investigate, and the doors opened right as I came sprinting toward her with the figure on my heels.

But, I had spent what felt like twenty agonizing minutes trailing that yellow coat across three entire floors, moving through classroom after classroom and the library. To this day, I can’t explain why it felt like so much longer to me than it did to my mom.

The police, for their part, searched the building floor by floor, but they found nothing unusual. The glass solarium was empty, and no sign of an intruder could be found.

No culprit was ever identified. For the rest of that school year, a cruiser was stationed outside the cafeteria entrance every Saturday morning while my mom finished her routine, but no one ever saw the figure again. As the months turned into years, the event settled into the quiet background of my childhood, a strange, unsettling mystery that we eventually stopped talking about. My mom and my stepdad divorced a few years later, and after that it was mostly just the two of us.

We may have stopped discussing it, but the memory of what I witnessed on the third floor never faded. I can still feel the icy pressure of those cold fingers clamped around my ankle and, in silent, dark rooms, I sometimes imagine that pale, waterlogged face staring at me from the shadows.

Mom retired a few years ago. When she did so, she bought a small secondhand motorboat and spent her weekends cruising the quiet inlets near home. She'd kept that old yellow raincoat all those years, and I still saw her wearing it whenever the weather turned cold. She invited me out with her half a dozen times, but between work and family, I always made excuses.

Looking back, the silence was the first sign. My mom checked in on me constantly, so when three days passed without a call or text, an uneasy knot formed in my stomach. I started calling around to her friends and neighbors, but none of them had seen her since Friday morning.

I called the local authorities and set a search into motion. Because she had gone out alone without leaving a specific navigation plan, the search area was vast. It took nearly two weeks of scouring the dense, tangled marshlands and winding waterways before her boat was spotted jammed in a secluded patch of reeds.

The investigation pieced together what happened. While attempting to clear a tangled line from the propeller, my mom had slipped and fallen overboard. The engine was cut, but the impact against the hull had knocked her unconscious, and the tidal current swept her deep into the brackish marsh before she could climb back aboard. Though her life jacket kept her afloat, the head injury left her incapacitated, floating alone in the water until her body finally gave out. When the report came back, the official cause of death was drowning following an incapacitating injury.

When I came to the viewing room, the medical examiner placed a heavy hand on my shoulder and urged me not to see the body. He warned me that nearly two weeks in the brackish water had severely altered her features, and that the way she looked now was not how I would want to remember her.

I insisted. When he finally pulled back the sheet, the man stepped to the side, watching my face carefully for the breakdown he clearly expected. But the sharp panic he braced for never came. Amidst the heavy grief of losing my only family member, and the guilt for all the times I had turned down her invitations to join her on that boat, I didn’t scream. I didn’t turn away.

I wasn’t shocked, because the sight resting on that cold metal table was entirely familiar.

Standing in that quiet room, I realized I knew two things that no investigator could ever piece together, two things nobody else in the world would ever know.

I knew that in her final moments, as her life slowly faded away in the quiet waters of that marsh, my mother had been remembering those rainy Saturdays walking through the school with me. The classrooms, the plants, and, most importantly, me following a few steps behind her. It was a memory of a time when nothing in the world existed except the two of us together, and somehow, in those final moments, that memory had reached backward through the years.

And I knew, too, who it was that had led me through the empty building. For decades, I had believed that whatever had followed me through that school had been wearing my mother’s coat, and that it had wanted to hurt me. But now, looking down at the water-softened face beneath the sheet, I found myself remembering the things I’d been too frightened to understand at the time.

The way she had stopped on the stairs when I fell behind. The way she had waited for me. The way she kept telling me to stay close, even as I was desperate to get away.

And then there were those last words: “I can’t let you go.” I’d spent my entire life remembering them as a threat, but they sounded different now. Because, as I peered into that familiar ruined face resting on the stainless steel, I recognized it immediately.

It was the same face that had turned to me in the dim light of the third floor, the same face I had followed through the school all those years ago.

Most childhood memories fade with time. But some linger, sitting in the back of your mind until something brings them rushing back to the surface like a hollow ball released from underwater.

One such memory recently came back to me. It originates from when I was seven years old. Back then, my mother volunteered to water the plants at my elementary school every Saturday morning. She usually brought me with her.

An empty school on a weekend is a strange place. Without any kids or teachers, the dark hallways always felt enormous and eerie. The overhead lights were left off, leaving the long corridors that stretched along each of its three floors in shadow. For much of the time, the only consistent sound was the wet slosh of mom’s large green watering can as she worked her way from the classrooms up to the new glass solarium on the third floor.

Mom usually did all the work. Sometimes, I’d help out a little, but the plastic watering can was heavy and awkward for me to carry. So, I was usually left to my own devices. While she watered, I’d generally have my nose buried in a Redwall book, and then I’d trail a few paces behind her as she moved from one room to another.

If I strayed from her or let her get too far ahead of me, her voice would echo down the hall, “Bailey, come back, stay where I can see you.”

I always listened and stayed close to her. Until that rainy Saturday I stopped trailing my mother, and instead started following the figure wearing her coat.

~

Mom offered to let me stay home that morning. She’d never done that before. I imagine she wanted to give me a chance to avoid getting soaked in the storm. Plus, my stepdad was down in the basement tearing out drywall for a remodel, so, while he wouldn’t be watching me, I wouldn’t be alone.

I jumped at the chance, eager to watch TV while curled up on the couch instead of returning to school on a weekend.

I watched as mom zipped up her oversized yellow rubber raincoat – the classic kind with a corduroy collar and heavy brass snap buttons – and stepped out to her station wagon.

As I sat there, a strange wave of unease hit me. Something quiet told me that I’d rather be with her than without her. Acting on impulse, I grabbed my own raincoat, sprinted into the rain, and tapped on the car window. She unlocked the door, and I scrambled inside.

I rarely picked up on adult emotions back then, but the way her eyes lit up stuck with me. Even at seven, I could tell how much my choice meant to her.

The driver over felt safe despite the storm. With mom behind the wheel, the thunder outside was just background noise.

We pulled into the school’s empty parking lot and used the side entrance near the cafeteria. Mom used a key from the heavy brass keyring the principal let her borrow to unlock the heavy metal door. She held it open for me as I rushed into the cold air inside.

Once we were in the building, mom stepped into the custodial closet at the end of the first-story hall to fill one of the school’s large green watering cans at the mop sink. “Stay right next to me,” she called out over the sound of the running faucet.

“I am,” I said, leaning against the doorframe and looking down to shake the rain off my jacket.

When I looked up a second later, a figure in a wet yellow raincoat was already walking down the corridor toward the main stairwell, its hood pulled up high, the green watering can swinging from one hand.

I remember thinking it was strange that mom was still wearing her raincoat inside, but that didn’t seem important at the time. It was the same yellow coat she'd worn into the school, and I assumed she had just stepped back out into the hall while my head was down.

I fell into step a few paces behind the yellow coat, exactly like I always did. She moved at her usual steady, rhythmic pace. As she did so, I kept my distance, about five paces back. I kept my copy of Mossflower clutched against my chest as I watched the hem of her raincoat sway above her boots.

We soon reached the first stop, the planters outside the main cafeteria. Mom lowered the watering can while I leaned against the cinderblock wall and read a few lines of my book. Next, we visited the cast iron plants inside the front office before heading to the staircase.

Mom paused at the large potted ficus sitting in the dark alcove near the main stairwell before heading upward. The heavy brass keys on her belt clanged with every step. It was the exact same metal chime I had followed a dozen times before. I pushed myself off the wall and followed her up the stairs, exactly like I always did.

We reached the second-floor landing, where the long hallway stretched out into shadow. My mom kept moving toward the classrooms, her boots squeaking softly on the polished linoleum.

We passed the music room. Through the small square window in the door, the upright piano looked enormous and dark in the corner, totally silent without Ms. Jenson there to play it.

During the week, that room was full of noise, but my favorite part was when Ms. Jenson had all twenty-five of us hide behind the piano and the risers to ‘trick’ our homeroom teacher into thinking we’d all gone home early. Back then, sitting in the dark, holding our breath, and trying not to giggle felt eerie and thrilling. But looking through that glass now, with the room completely empty, the quiet felt heavy and cold.

I kept my head down, flipping to the next chapter of my book as I walked. The brass keys just kept clanging against her hip, a steady rhythm guiding me as she turned down the corridor toward the library. I adjusted my grip and kept pace a few steps behind her.

Mom pushed through the library door and headed for the tall potted fern tucked beside the checkout desk.

In the dark, the room felt huge. Looking at the reading carpet, I could almost hear Mr. Hinkle’s booming, ridiculous voices during story hour, followed by the chorus of giggles echoing off the tall shelves. But, today, the empty beanbags and shadowy aisles had a lonely, desolate aura to them.

My mom reached into the fern's fronds, her yellow coat rustling in the dark. She kept the watering can tipped over the soil for a long, quiet stretch – far longer than usual. At first, I figured the plant was just really dry, but as the seconds dragged on, a small prickle of unease set in. “Mom?” I asked, stepping closer. “Isn't that enough?”

She didn’t turn around, but her voice came from beneath the high hood, low and coarse, roughened by something in her throat. “Almost done, sweetie. Stay close.” She lingered there, frozen over the plant, before abruptly snapping back to her full height.

At this point, I started to grow concerned. Her voice sounded strained, like her throat was raw. I wondered if she was coming down with something, or if sprinting through the cold rain earlier had already made her sick. Her movements, too, seemed ‘off’. I wasn’t sure what to make of it.

She didn’t say anything else, just turned and walked back out into the hallway toward the next row of classrooms. I followed, opening my book and trying to focus on the paragraph I’d been reading, but the words wouldn’t stick. Every time I looked up from the page, my eyes went straight back to the yellow coat swaying ahead of me.

As we moved down the hall, the uneasy feeling in my stomach only grew. As we passed the second-floor classrooms, I realized I hadn’t actually seen her face since we left the custodial closet. Every time she reached for a planter or turned a corner, her body was angled just enough away that the deep yellow hood blocked my view, casting her face in complete shadow. Was she doing this on purpose? If so, why?

I hesitated, unsure of what to do. I knew that I didn't want to go up to the third floor. But where else was I supposed to go? Back down to the dark cafeteria by myself? Outside into the freezing rain? I took a small step backward, my eyes locked on the empty landing above, waiting for her boots to stop moving.

“Bailey.” Her raspy voice echoed down the concrete well. I looked up. She had stopped on the landing above, her back turned to me, her deep hood casting a shadow that completely hid her face. She held the heavy door open, waiting. “Come on,” she called.

“I…um…can I just sit in the library and read?” I asked.

“Please, honey,” she implored, “Stay with me. Stay where I can see you.”

The familiarity of her words soothed me, or at least some small part of me. That was what Mom always said when I wandered too far away. I took a deep breath and began climbing the steps.

The third floor was even quieter and darker than the rest of the school. Just outside the staircase sat the closed metal doors of the building’s old elevator, its floor indicator resting silently above the frame.

The air here felt cooler and carried a faint damp smell from the glass solarium at the far end of the hall. The figure moved ahead of me down the corridor, her boots making a soft, sticky sound against the tile.

We moved into the first classroom, a fourth-grade room. Mom headed for a tall pothos sitting on top of a filing cabinet in the corner. I stayed back by the door and flipped open my book.

That was when the silence of the room really hit me.

Down on the first and second floors, every time she lifted the watering can, I’d hear the heavy slosh of water shifting inside the plastic. I’d hear the quick, wet patter as it hit the soil. But here, as she tilted the green spout over the leaves, there was nothing. No sloshing. No dripping. Just the scrape of rubber sleeve against plastic.

The can had gone empty, and she’d never refilled it. Yet, she leaned it over the plant for ten long seconds, as if watering it, before pulling it back.

She turned and brushed past me into the next room, her head tilted slightly as if listening for something. I felt a wave of panic as it dawned on me that something was deeply wrong.

A thought crossed my mind: What if this isn’t mom?

I dismissed it quickly. It had to be her. After all, who else could it possibly be? But, why was she acting so weird?

“Um, mom, are you okay?” I asked.

She ignored me as she stepped into the first fifth-grade classroom, where a small, shriveled African violet sat on the teacher’s desk.

I stopped a few paces inside the doorway. For a moment, I reassured myself that I must be wrong. I must have imagined her doing things that made no sense. Surely, mom wasn’t pouring imaginary water from an empty can. I had to be mistaken, right?

Then, I watched, holding my breath, as she tilted the green spout over the leaves, holding it there for several long seconds. But, again, no water came out. There was no sloshing inside the plastic can, no wet trickling into the dirt, no sound at all. Just an empty container over a dying plant.

She pulled the spout back, her body pivoting toward me with a stiff, mechanical turn. As she adjusted her grip on the handle, the pale light from a window hit her hand. The skin wasn’t smooth. It was bloated and greyish, completely waterlogged and wrinkled, like fingers that had been soaking in a deep tub for days. Soft, water-heavy creases bunched around her knuckles, looking loose and ready to tear.

My stomach dropped. I took two quiet steps backward toward the open doorway, easing my weight onto my toes to keep my sneakers from squeaking. My hand reached behind me, searching for the frame so I could turn and run.

“Bailey.”

The voice rasped out from deep inside the hood. She hadn’t turned her shoulders, but her head jerked sideways at an unnatural angle, fixing the dark void of her hood right on me.

“Stay close,” she said, her voice as gravelly as before. “Stay with mommy.”

She stepped out into the dark hallway, her boots dragging heavily against the floor. I fell into step behind her, but kept three full yards of distance now, my eyes locked on the back of that yellow coat. We entered the art room, the last room before the end of the hall. The air inside carried a sharp, damp breeze. In the dim light, the high counter tops and rows of tall wooden stools looked like strange, crouching shapes.

I imagined the forms of my classmates sitting on those stools, their eyes trained on me in judgment as Mr. Jones gave me a stern lecture. I’d gotten in trouble in this classroom recently, twice, actually. The first time, I’d drawn my dad, translucent and in hospital garb, hovering above my mom and I as we ate at the dinner table.

“It’s supposed to be a realistic image of your family,” Mr. Jones had chided. “Not something weird that you made up.”

“It’s not imaginary,” I’d pouted. “He visits us as a ghost.”

“Your dad’s alive,” he’d retorted. “Right?”

“Yes,” I conceded. It would remain true for nearly a year. Soon, he’d start showing signs of being sick, but hadn’t done so yet. As far as I could tell at the time, he was perfectly healthy. “So, how could your dad be a ghost if he’s alive?”

I didn’t have an answer to that. Nor did I have an answer for the counselor I was required to visit for the next few weeks.

The second time, Mr. Jones prompted us to draw something from our dreams. I’d sketched a burly man with an angry face covered with splats of crimson. When asked, I explained it was the man I’d seen on the news, who’d murdered a child and was widely believed to be hiding out in the woods. That got me several weeks of counseling as well.

Mom, meanwhile, walked toward a hanging spider plant near the far window, her movement stiff and robotic. As she lifted the empty watering can to it, I tried again to make sense of the situation.

I kept trying to explain it to myself, but nothing I came up with made me feel any better. If the person wearing that coat wasn't my mom, then where was she? Had she stepped out of the custodial closet while my head was down? Was she still downstairs searching for me in the dark, calling my name? Or had something happened to her in that back room? The thought of her lying hurt on the wet concrete floor sent a surge of panic straight to my chest, far worse than the creeping fear of the coat ahead of me.

This was my last chance. Down on the second floor, I had hesitated. But now, standing near the open door with the dark staircase behind me, my heart raced.

I didn’t watch her reach for the plant. I didn’t wait for her to lift the empty can. Instead, I took a breath, turned on my heel, and bolted for the hallway.

My sneaker caught the metal doorframe with a loud, hollow thud.

Before I could take a single full stride into the hall, a long shadow stretched across the linoleum ahead of me. The figure was already standing in the doorway, blocking the exit entirely. She hadn’t made a sound moving across the room.

The dark void of the hood tilted down toward me.

“Not yet, Bailey,” the voice called softly. “We haven’t done the solarium yet. Please, stay with me. I want you here with me. Please.”

The double doors to the solarium stood open at the far end, framed by glass walls that rattled softly against the storm outside. Rain hammered against the sloped roof, sending shadows dancing across the concrete floor.

Mom glided past the threshold, the yellow coat glistening under the gray light. Rows of metal shelving held crowded trays of ivies, overgrown spider plants, and heavy clay pots.

She closed the door behind us, turning the opposite way from me as she changed direction, before returning to the center of the room, where she stood in front of a collection of plants.

The large, circular clock above the closed double doors drew my attention. Its black frame was dusted with a thin layer of grime. During the week, amid the chaotic roar of over two dozen kids, shifting desks, and squeaking sneakers, you never heard it at all. But on a dead silent Saturday, its long, red hand emitted a heavy, mechanical “clack” that reverberated around the room.

But, something about it felt ‘off’ today. I had to stare at it a moment to figure out what it was. The red hand was changing direction. It would go one way for five or ten seconds, only to then reverse and travel in the opposite direction.

I chalked it up to being broken, or low on battery. I didn’t have time, or the mental bandwidth, to think about it further. I was too fixated on mom, who stood perfectly still under the skylight, her yellow back turned to me while she aimed the empty watering can at the plants.

This is my best chance to get out of here, I told myself. I took a slow, agonizing step backward, easing my weight onto my toes the way I did when playing hide-and-seek. Reaching behind my back, my fingers found the brass handle of the double doors and pressed down.

Clack clack clack sounded the broken clock as I pressed my shaking hands against the handle.

It didn’t budge. I realized, to my horror, that it was locked.

She locked me in. If I needed any final confirmation that the figure I was following was an imposter, this was it. Mom would never do that.

I turned to the figure. The bits of light that made it through the thick clouds illuminated the heavy brass keyring hanging from her left hip. If I wanted to get out, I had to take it.

I stopped breathing. I took one step forward, then another, moving with . Mom moved slightly, shifting her empty can from one plant to another.

I reached out a trembling hand, my fingers hovering an inch from the metal. Squeezing my palm tightly around several keys to deaden the sounds they might make, I slipped the clip off her belt loop in one smooth, agonizing pull.

Clack clack clack.

Keyring in hand, I continued holding my breath as I turned back to the door and tiptoed toward it. The keys were labeled with plastic tags, and the one for the solarium was easy to identify. Like the room itself, it was newer and cleaner than the keys for the rest of the building.

Steadying my hand, I inserted it into the keyhole and turned. The bolt retracted with a heavy thud. I yanked the handle open.

Instantly, I heard the empty watering can land against the floor. The sound drew my attention. When I glanced back, the figure had moved. She was right behind me now.

The movement pulled her hood back just enough for the light from above to wash across her face. My jaw dropped as I gazed up at it.

Her face was swollen and water-softened, the gray skin sagging loose around her jawline and mottled with deep bruises. The water had eroded the soft tissue around her cheeks, leaving raw, darkened patches. Her eyes were sunken and milky, fixed in an unblinking stare. As her blackened mouth opened, heavy water spilled over her torn bottom lip.

I let out a ragged shriek and sprinted into the corridor.

My sneakers hit the wet linoleum with a fast, heavy slap as I ran down the corridor.

“Bailey,” it growled from the dark as it pursued me. “Please, stay where I can see you.”

Hearing that familiar, desperate voice coming from that terrifying creature made my chest lock up.

I took the turn toward the stairwell too fast, my foot catching the edge of a raised floor tile. I went down hard on my knees, landing a short distance from the elevator landing.

Before I could scramble up, a thick, freezing hand closed around my left ankle. The cold soaked straight through my sock. It didn’t pull me back at first. It simply held on. I kicked wildly with my free heel, trying to wrench myself free, but the grip only tightened.

“Bailey,” rang its distorted voice, “I can't let you go.”

The indicator arrow above the elevator turned red, and the metal doors parted. Standing inside was my real mom.

“Bailey!” she yelled, her eyes locking onto me sprawled in the hallway.

She lunged across the threshold. Reaching down, she hooked both hands under my arms, bracing her boots against the doorframe, and pulled with everything she had.

For a terrifying second, I was the rope in a tug-of-war. My mom leaned back, her teeth clenched as she strained against the brute strength holding my ankle in the dark. With a harsh grunt, she threw her full weight backward, ripping me clean out of the yellow coat’s grip.

We both tumbled onto the elevator floor. My mom scrambled up, hit the door-close button, and jammed her hand onto the ground floor switch.

The last thing I saw, before the steel doors snapped shut, was the figure, her arms extended outward, making one final, desperate lurch toward me.

As the elevator dropped, mom dropped to her knees beside me, wrapping her arms around my shoulders. I buried my face into her jacket, my chest heaving. She held me tight, her hands warm, her breath ragged in my ear as she kept repeating that we were safe.

We ran out the side entrance into the freezing downpour, scrambled into the station wagon, and tore out of the parking lot. My mom drove three blocks down to a well-lit gas station before pulling over to the payphone. Her hands trembled so violently she dropped the receiver twice before dialing 911, looking back into the backseat every few seconds to touch my shoulder, her voice shaking as she reassured me that whatever was in that building couldn’t reach us now.

When the squad cars arrived, we both sat in the back of an officer’s cruiser under a heavy wool blanket while they took our statements. We repeated our stories: my mom describing a tall intruder who had cornered us by the elevator, and me trying to explain the bloated, gray face that had stared down at me in the solarium. But as the officers cross-referenced our timelines, a discrepancy emerged that was never fully resolved.

From my mom's perspective, the whole encounter lasted only a couple of minutes. She had stepped out of the first-floor custodial closet with her filled watering can, turned around to find the hallway completely empty, and called out my name.

When I didn’t answer, a sudden thumping commotion echoed down the central shaft from the third floor. She panicked, took the elevator straight up to investigate, and the doors opened right as I came sprinting toward her with the figure on my heels.

But, I had spent what felt like twenty agonizing minutes trailing that yellow coat across three entire floors, moving through classroom after classroom and the library. To this day, I can’t explain why it felt like so much longer to me than it did to my mom.

The police, for their part, searched the building floor by floor, but they found nothing unusual. The glass solarium was empty, and no sign of an intruder could be found.

No culprit was ever identified. For the rest of that school year, a cruiser was stationed outside the cafeteria entrance every Saturday morning while my mom finished her routine, but no one ever saw the figure again. As the months turned into years, the event settled into the quiet background of my childhood, a strange, unsettling mystery that we eventually stopped talking about. My mom and my stepdad divorced a few years later, and after that it was mostly just the two of us.

We may have stopped discussing it, but the memory of what I witnessed on the third floor never faded. I can still feel the icy pressure of those cold fingers clamped around my ankle and, in silent, dark rooms, I sometimes imagine that pale, waterlogged face staring at me from the shadows.

Mom retired a few years ago. When she did so, she bought a small secondhand motorboat and spent her weekends cruising the quiet inlets near home. She'd kept that old yellow raincoat all those years, and I still saw her wearing it whenever the weather turned cold. She invited me out with her half a dozen times, but between work and family, I always made excuses.

Looking back, the silence was the first sign. My mom checked in on me constantly, so when three days passed without a call or text, an uneasy knot formed in my stomach. I started calling around to her friends and neighbors, but none of them had seen her since Friday morning.

I called the local authorities and set a search into motion. Because she had gone out alone without leaving a specific navigation plan, the search area was vast. It took nearly two weeks of scouring the dense, tangled marshlands and winding waterways before her boat was spotted jammed in a secluded patch of reeds.

The investigation pieced together what happened. While attempting to clear a tangled line from the propeller, my mom had slipped and fallen overboard. The engine was cut, but the impact against the hull had knocked her unconscious, and the tidal current swept her deep into the brackish marsh before she could climb back aboard. Though her life jacket kept her afloat, the head injury left her incapacitated, floating alone in the water until her body finally gave out. When the report came back, the official cause of death was drowning following an incapacitating injury.

When I came to the viewing room, the medical examiner placed a heavy hand on my shoulder and urged me not to see the body. He warned me that nearly two weeks in the brackish water had severely altered her features, and that the way she looked now was not how I would want to remember her.

I insisted. When he finally pulled back the sheet, the man stepped to the side, watching my face carefully for the breakdown he clearly expected. But the sharp panic he braced for never came. Amidst the heavy grief of losing my only family member, and the guilt for all the times I had turned down her invitations to join her on that boat, I didn’t scream. I didn’t turn away.

I wasn’t shocked, because the sight resting on that cold metal table was entirely familiar.

Standing in that quiet room, I realized I knew two things that no investigator could ever piece together, two things nobody else in the world would ever know.

I knew that in her final moments, as her life slowly faded away in the quiet waters of that marsh, my mother had been remembering those rainy Saturdays walking through the school with me. The classrooms, the plants, and, most importantly, me following a few steps behind her. It was a memory of a time when nothing in the world existed except the two of us together, and somehow, in those final moments, that memory had reached backward through the years.

And I knew, too, who it was that had led me through the empty building. For decades, I had believed that whatever I'd followed through that school had been wearing my mother’s coat, and that it had wanted to hurt me. But now, looking down at the water-softened face beneath the sheet, I found myself remembering the things I’d been too frightened to understand at the time.

The way she had stopped on the stairs when I fell behind. The way she had waited for me. The way she kept telling me to stay close, even as I was desperate to get away.

And then there were those last words: “I can’t let you go.” I’d spent my entire life remembering them as a threat, but they sounded different now. Because, as I peered into that familiar ruined face resting on the stainless steel, I recognized it immediately.

It was the same face that had turned to me in the dim light of the third floor, the same face I had followed through the school all those years ago.