I Couldn't Tell You Who It Was

I had to continue singing while being surrounded by the ghosts that touched and bit me, while my mother was suspected of child abuse by the neighbors and the doctor. There was nothing more difficult than fighting against immaterial and invisible things. As I entered elementary school, my mom started to actually mistreat me.

I was the bad child who troubled my mom, the wicked child who troubled the neighbors by singing every night, and the despicable child who lied. She had a lot of reasons.

She said that I had changed after the accident and even asked me who I was. I was such a good kid before the accident. I was an angel. I was so precious to her. She started to believe that, on that day, her child died, and some changeling crawled in, pretending to be her son.

If the cane broke while she was striking me, she would continue by using her hands to slap my face. She would give me a stack of plates and other dishes on purpose, and when I tripped and broke a few, she would whack my forehead with a spoon. The injuries that the ghosts left on me disappeared as they were gradually covered by the injuries given by my mom.

Because I had to sing all night, I frequently suffered from laryngitis. Before, when my voice became hoarse even slightly, my mom would get upset, tell me not to sing, and take me to the hospital. But after, she just smirked.

“Again? Freaking again? You’re doing this on purpose, aren’t you?” she said.

I thought that my gentle mother changed like this because of the evil things rampant around me. Well, I was partly right. Among the things that liked my voice, undoubtedly there were a few that were wicked in nature. Since bad things like that squatted in my house for a while, it would be hard even for a normal and healthy person to last very long.

I wasn’t sure because she never told me, but I suspected that she saw some of the things that sat around in my house. She often screamed very suddenly in the middle of the night in her darkened room, as if she was always having a nightmare. She also destroyed objects for no reason.

Fortunately, this situation didn’t last very long. My maternal grandmother couldn’t stand to watch any longer and said that she would take care of me. My uncles all thought that my mother became strange due to stress. They sent her far into the countryside to recover. I grew up under my grandmother’s care for two years.

My grandmother also considered my nightly mumbling to be bizarre, but she didn’t scold me for no reason. She asked me why I did that, and I told her that if I didn’t sing, scary things would harass her.

After that, my grandmother visited the shaman house that she frequented. When she came back home, my grandmother had a voice recorder, sketchbook, and a paper talisman in her hands. After she recorded my voice at night, she threw my recording to the dilapidated house at the foot of the mountain. After she gave me the talisman, she went around the house yelling, “There is nothing here! It’s not here! Go, go to the back of the mountain, you scoundrels!”

Then, she gave me the sketchbook and told me that we should spend the night without making a sound from now on. She told me to write it down if I wanted to say something. I did as my grandmother told me and spent my time after sunset like a mute person.

It was then that I heard the story about the man with the lumps on his neck from my grandmother. My grandmother told me that the things that harassed me and my mom were wicked goblins. She then told me to always carry the talisman on my body.

The conclusion, however, was that the talisman didn’t work. I could still see strange things, and they sat near me and my grandma like snakes waiting to ambush. However, compared to when I was living with my mom, the numbers decreased, and the remaining few didn’t look very strong. Among those, a few listened to me chatter in the middle of the day before vanishing.

A relatively peaceful two years passed by and my mom came to pick me up.

My uncles said that my mom’s condition improved considerably and that she missed me very much. I also missed my mom. When I thought back to the time I spent with my mom, I had more memories of being hit, yet I still longed for the time when things were still okay. I was better and my mother was too, so I thought that we would quickly return to the days when we were happier.

I counted down the days until my mom came to pick me up. On the day of, I sat on the porch in front of the house and watched the cars go by. I was excitedly guessing which car my mom would come in, so I wasn’t bored even though I sat there for a very long time.

Finally, a car parked in front of the house. It was a black car, my uncles’ car that I had seen a few times before. I stood up from where I was sitting and ran in place a little bit. I wanted to run straight to my mom, but I was scared that she would frown again when she saw me.