Welcome to the story I Am The Luckiest Mother In The World.
The beginning and end focuses on Andrea's relationship with her mother while the middle mainly focuses on Andrea's relationship with Meg.
This is a prompt from Movies And TV Shows AU.
Disclaimer: I do not own the TV show Haunting Hour or its characters. The character Andrea was an idea given to me by Movies And TV Shows AU.
Justine Waters had only been sixteen when she gave birth to her only child, and it hadn't even been a week before her boyfriend and Andrea's father was out the door, moving across the country, forgetting to pay child support, and never taking the time to call his daughter.
Justine had been a wreck when her boyfriend left her. She was too prideful to ask her parents for help after she'd told them she could do it all on her own to get out of having an abortion. No boyfriend. No help from her parents. No support.
But then her sister Nina stepped in. Her sister was in college at the time and wouldn't be able to help out much with Andrea, but she certainly helped in a different way.
She got Justine out of her slump. By the time Nina got to Justine after her boyfriend left, Andrea was sick, had a diaper rash, starving, and didn't look like she'd been bathed since she was brought home from the hospital. The poor baby was sleeping in a cardboard box with a few blankets, and Justine didn't look like she'd showered or eaten since Andrea's father left.
Nina told Justine that while she may be a single parent now, that was no excuse to neglect her daughter. Andrea was relying on her to take care of her, and Justine had to pick herself up before social services showed up and had her arrested for child neglect.
That got Justine moving. She got a job and started caring for her baby girl in a way she'd never cared for anyone else.
Years passed. Andrea grew. Thirteen birthdays later, she looked like a younger version of her mother with a smile that lit up a room and was the kindest girl Justine knew.
Andrea was a thirteen year old girl with long blonde hair curling over her shoulders and ending just above her rib cage. She had blue eyes that twinkled and sparkled, and she had a freckle on her cheek that most people would label as a beauty mark. She was a lot like other kids her age; she liked reading, playing on her phone, music, certain sports, but there were a few things that made her very different from other kids her age. For one, she didn't spend twenty four hours on a device and actually spent some time with her mother and friends instead of just texting them or ignoring them when they walk into a room. Two, she enjoyed Pine Mountain Summer Camp. Most kids hated it; they thought it was a boring, and a waste of their summer, but Andrea loved going to her summer camp. And that's only two things, but there is a third one that makes her drastically different from most kids her age.
The main reason Andrea Waters was not like most teenage girls is that she was incapable of being rude while most teenagers were occassionally (or in some cases, most of the time) moody. Andrea only had one behavior: good behavior, and she never yelled at anyone, even the meanest kids (unless she was defending someone else from a bully). She was very well mannered, never disrespectful, and didn't have a rude bone in her body, and Justine often found herself marveling over how lucky she was to have a well behaved daughter who actually made single parenting easy on Justine.
"You go ahead and get on the bus with the other girls," Justine told her thirteen year old daughter.
"Yes, Mom," Andrea said, politely, before tossing her duffle bag onto the pile of bags in the parking lot and climbing onto the bus.
"Hey, Meg!" she exclaimed as she sat beside the girl.
Meg smiled. "Hey, Andrea. What's up?"
Andrea had become friends with Meg and Amelia during their first summer at camp, and although Amelia and Meg had grown apart, Meg and Andrea stuck together like glue. That meant Meg was actually much kinder and less bitter than she'd started to become when Amelia dropped her to become friends with someone else and almost entirely forgot about Meg. Meg knew if she became rude and sour, she'd lose Andrea as a friend, too, and after Amelia stopped hanging out with her, it would be awful if she lost Andrea, as well, because she couldn't bring herself to be nice.
"Nothing much," Andrea replied. "You excited to be back at camp?"
Meg shrugged. "It's nice to see you again, but you know the whole camp thing isn't my scene."
Andrea nodded. "I know. I was almost born in this camp, but you were born to be an indoor person."
(When Andrea says she was almost born in this camp, she's not exaggerating. Her mother went into labor while she was at camp that year and had to be taken to the hospital.)
Meg nodded. "Agreed."
Meg's eyes drifted over to something behind Andrea, and Andrea turned her head to see Amelia talking with a new camper, laughing and getting to know her.
Andrea sighed. "Meg, Amelia did apologize. Ten times."
Meg pursed her lips. "She dropped me like a hot potato, Andrea, and didn't speak to me for months. Would you forgive her that easily?"
Andrea didn't respond, which was basically an unspoken answer.
Meg nodded. "I thought so."
Andrea was always in her mother's cabin, and while most kids would be embarrassed about that, Andrea loved sharing a cabin with her mother and usually her friends (Justine tried to pull a few strings to get Meg and Amelia in Cricket Cabin every summer).
"Pick a bunk! Any bunk!" Justine told the campers, and Andrea immediately claimed the bunk above her mom's.
She turned to see which bunk Meg had chosen, and she found Meg leaning against the bunk below a brown haired girl's, the one Amelia had been talking to.
"Meg," Andrea said, appearing at her side. "Be nice."
Meg rolled her eyes but more in a playful way than in a rude way. "I will," she said before turning back to the girl. "I'm glad we're bunk mates. This oughta be a scream."
"On the first day of camp, we make… these," Justine declared, presenting a ring with strings filling the middle, criss crossing each other; a small bead was tied into the center.
"They kind of look like spider webs!" Amelia's friend (who Andrea had discovered was named Lisa) exclaimed.
"They're dream catchers," Amelia told the new camper.
"Yes," Justine confirmed. "They're called dream catchers because they catch all of your bad dreams, so when you wake up in the morning, all of your bad dreams have disappeared," Justine explained in a voice that was meant to make this less-than-interesting activity seem more exciting.
Andrea, having been coming to camp for five years and having the councilor as her mother, had already started.
"After you've woven the string around, you're going the add the bead," Justine instructed. "The bead is, of course, the spider."
"This is so lame," Meg muttered.
Andrea raised an eyebrow at her friend. "Give it a chance, Meg."
Meg sighed. "Fine."
Justine smiled at her daughter, loving how Andrea was such a good influence on people even Justine had given up on.
"Get started!" she told her crickets.
Andrea finished her's within thirty seconds after five years of practice before turning to Meg to help her. Andrea couldn't help but laugh when she saw what a tangled mess Meg had gotten her fingers into before she reached over to help Meg free her hands from the messy ball of string she was trapped in.
"Girls, look at Lisa's!" Justine exclaimed, holding up Lisa's Dream Catcher. "It's perfect. Lisa, why don't you help the other girls? You're a natural."
"You're a natural," Meg mocked under her breath.
Andrea raised her eyebrows.
Meg pursed her lips. "Sorry. Habit."
Andrea smiled and nodded before continuing to help Meg with her Dream Catcher.
Night had fallen, and most of the girls in the cabin had long since drifted off, but Andrea lay awake, unable to sleep for some reason. She thought she was the only one awake until she heard Meg speak.
"Hey, New Girl, are you scared being away from home?" Meg asked in a mocking tone.
"No," Lisa replied.
"You know, there's a camp legend about the Dream Catchers."
Lisa frowned. "What is it?"
"Meg, don't tell her that story," Andrea whispered as she climbed down from her bunk. "Even my mom refused to tell me that story until last year, and even then, she was scared it would give me nightmares."
"Come on, Andrea!" Meg murmured, standing up from her bunk. "I love that story! Besides, aren't scary stories part of camp tradition?"
"Not when you're telling her to be mean," Andrea responded.
Meg sighed. "Can't I just tell her this one spooky story?"
Andrea pursed her lips beside turning to Lisa. "Lisa, if you don't want to hear the story, I won't let her tell you."
Lisa swallowed, and having the feeling she would regret it, she asked, "What's the story?"
Meg smiled before beginning, adapting a spooky tone.
"Twenty years ago, there was a tragedy here at Pine Mountain. One of the campers… died."
Lisa's eyes widened.
"In her sleep," Meg clarified.
"Did she… sleep walk into the lake or something?" Lisa asked, assuming the death was an accident.
Oh, how very wrong she was.
Meg slowly shook her head.
"The story goes… she had nightmares. Like wake up sweaty, screaming kind of nightmares. She said she saw some kind of boogeyman that she called the… Dream Catcher. She said he took away all her good dreams, and every time she closed her eyes, he was there, waiting to grab her.
"She kept saying he was real, but of course, no one believed her. Until it happened."
"What?" Lisa gulped.
"She stopped sleeping altogether," Meg replied, "but that makes you go crazy. She walked around like a zombie, and she started seeing things that were just so… awful."
"Like the boogeyman?" Lisa murmured.
Meg nodded. "She just couldn't stay up any longer, and she fell into a deep, deep, deep sleep. The next morning, they found her. Just lying in her bunk, all glass eyed, staring straight up at nothing, with a look of absolute terror on her face. Dead."
A pause occurred, and silence reigned for almost five full seconds.
"Ahh!" Meg shouted, startling Lisa and making the girl scream twice as loud.
Andrea jumped. "Meg!" she hissed. "Unnecessary!"
Meg shrugged. "It wasn't necessary, but it was kind of funny."
The other campers sat up, and Justine rolled out of bed.
"Don't fall asleep, or the Dream Catcher might get you," Meg laughed.
"Meg, why would you tell her that story?" Justine snapped.
"Justine, is that story true?" Lisa choked out.
"What do you think?" Justine sighed. "You don't believe in the boogeyman, do you?"
"Justine, are you saying that a camper didn't die here?" Meg asked.
"Look," Justine told them, "that was a really long time ago. Way before any of us were even born. Besides, you girls have your Dream Catchers, right?"
The four girls (Amelia had been awakened by Meg's shout) nodded.
"Good. Go to sleep, okay? Goodnight," the councilor said before heading to her own bunk.
"Night, Justine," Lisa called.
"Goodnight, mom," Andrea said as she crawled into her own bunk above her mother's.
"Sweet dreams," Meg mocked before laying back in her bunk and drifting off to sleep.
Andrea sat up in her bunk, and she frowned as she found the entire cabin empty except for herself.
"Mom?" she called, swinging her legs off of her bed. "Meg?"
Andrea wandered outside until she reached the main building at the camp, and she opened the door.
"Mom?" she repeated, and then, she saw her mother as Justine turned around to face her child.
Justine looked like a corpse with skin pulled tight over her cheeks and sunken in eyes and ghostly pale skin. Andrea was so startled, she stumbled backwards.
"Andrea, what's wrong?" the woman asked, as though she had no clue that she looked like some kind of zombie.
Andrea didn't respond as she sprinted out of the building and into the woods. She felt branches scrape her face and heard a swooshing sound from behind her, growing closer, gaining on her.
Then, he appeared. A gigantic figure with the body of a spider and a face straight out of your worst nightmare with shockingly white skin, stringy black hair, razor sharp teeth, and eyes with a grayish film over them, as though he-it- were blind, but Andrea knew he/it could see just fine.
Andrea screamed as she raised a hand over her face, and she felt its claws scratch across her wrist...
Andrea woke up with a gasp.
She was sweaty and her clothes stuck to her, due to the perspiration that lathered her entire body. Her heart was beating faster than a cheetah can run.
It all felt so real…
"Bad dream?" Her mother asked.
Andrea nodded, and her mother patted her knee.
"It's okay. You're awake now," her mother said. "We may need to get you a more effective Dream Catcher, though."
Andrea laughed as her mother walked away, and she felt her heart rate slowing down.
Andrea laid back down, trying to catch her breath…
Only to sit up again in panic.
Four diagonal cuts sliced across the top of her wrist; they were deep and still oozing blood, slightly.
Oh, gosh.
"I didn't sleep good at all last night," Andrea admitted as she walked beside Meg on their hike "I had the creepiest dream."
"Me, too. I had the worst nightmare," Meg agreed.
"You had bad dreams, too?" Lisa asked as her and Amelia appeared at their side.
Andrea nodded. "I guess we made a bad batch of Dream Catchers."
"Yeah, that must be it," Lisa said.
The girls took another few steps before Amelia suddenly stopped in her tracks.
"What's wrong, Amelia?" Lisa asked.
No response.
"Amelia?" Andrea asked.
Amelia took a shaky breath. "This place was in my nightmare."
Andrea glanced around, and she finally realized why this place was so familiar.
"It was in mine, too," Andrea whispered before pointing to their left. "I was over there, running through the woods."
Meg frowned. "My nightmare took place in the mess hall."
"My nightmare was in the cabin," Lisa told them.
Amelia slowly turned around and gazed at a nearby cave in apprehension.
"I was in that cave," she murmured. "I couldn't move. I felt something brush against my face, so I looked up. He was hideous. His breath was foul, and he moved like a giant spider."
Amelia finally broke out of her trance and shifted her gaze to Lisa.
"That happened in my nightmare, too," Lisa told her.
"No way," Meg whispered. "Mine, too."
"The same thing happened in all of our nightmares?" Andrea asked. "That's not normal."
No one knew what to say after that.
Later that night, Meg came into the cabin after brushing her teeth and sat on her bunk.
Amelia and Lisa were sitting cross legged on Amelia's bunk, holding their Dream Catchers.
"Maybe it's just a coincidence," Lisa whispered.
"What's wrong with the lame webs?" Meg asked.
"They're broken," Amelia answered.
"What happened?" Meg asked.
"The bead's gone," Lisa explained.
Meg raised an eyebrow.
"You cut them!" Lisa said as Andrea appeared in the cabin.
"You cut their Dream Catchers?" Andrea asked.
Meg shrugged. "It was just a prank."
"What happened to yours?" Andrea asked, not seeing Meg's Dream Catcher anywhere.
Meg said, "I threw it out. Dream Catchers are lame."
"Not when you're actually having nightmares!" Andrea pointed out. "Did you do anything to mine?"
Meg shook her head. "No. I wouldn't do that to you."
Andrea walked over to her Dream Catcher and found broken threads and a missing bead.
"Well, then who did?" she asked.
Meg shrugged. "You were tossing and turning last night. Maybe your fingers got caught in it, and you ripped it on accident. The bead's probably around here somewhere."
All four of them with broken or no Dream Catchers having frighteningly similar nightmares about an evil spider guy?
Anyone would be freaked out by that…
LATER THAT NIGHT…
Lisa tossed and turned, checking her watch from time to time, and trying to will herself to sleep.
Nothing worked. Fear gave her adrenaline; exhaustion was a distant concept.
Finally, she mumbled, "Amelia?"
"You're awake, too," her friend whispered, turning over to face Lisa.
"I'm too afraid to sleep," Lisa confessed.
"Me, too," Amelia agreed.
"Good to know I'm not the only one," Andrea said, sitting up in her bunk.
Lisa crawled out of her bunk, and Andrea followed, sitting beside the two girls on Amelia's bunk.
"My mom never let's me stay up all night," Lisa said.
Andrea smiled. "Neither does mine. Meg?"
A moment of silence passed before Meg sat up.
"Why not?" the girl agreed before joining them.
The sun filtered through the window, shining upon an exhausted Amelia and a yawning Lisa.
"You don't look so good," Amelia laughed.
"You, either," Lisa chuckled.
"Face it: we're all a wreck," Andrea laughed.
"We can't not sleep forever," Meg pointed out.
Andrea shrugged. "We'll figure something out. I'll talk to my mom tomorrow. Maybe if she sees how exhausted we are after two days without sleep, she'll call my aunt and your parents to take us home."
That night, all of the cabins sat around the camp fire, singing camp fire sings and having a good time, but Lisa, Meg, Andrea, and Amelia felt ready to pass out or get sick. Or both.
"Just one more?" a girl with brown hair in pigtails begged as Justine finished the camp fire song.
"Yeah, Justine!" another camper called, and Meg groaned as she leaned her head on Andrea's shoulder. "Just one more."
Justine smiled. "I know."
She strummed a cord on the guitar.
There was an old lady who swallowed a spider!
"Come on, guys," she interrupted herself. "You have to sing!"
There was an old lady who swallowed a spider
That wiggled and wiggled and tickled inside her
Suddenly, everyone was standing up and walking closer to Meg, who shrank away in fear as the blurry shapes of her camp mates approached.
Swallowed a spider to catch the fly
I don't know why she swallowed a fly
Meg looked up and froze as the gray eyes of him gazed back at her. His hands with their razor sharp claws closed down on her.
"Perhaps she'll die," he shouted.
"Meg! Wake up!" Justine yelled as she shook Meg's shoulders. "Go get help," she told another girl.
Meg mumbled as she opened her eyes, and she frowned as she felt something strange in her mouth. She raised her fingers to her lips and tugged on the object.
"Is that a spider web?" Andrea asked as Meg pulled out a silky strand.
"How did she get it in her mouth?" another camper muttered.
"Meg, you fell asleep sitting up," Justine explained.
"He was in my nightmare," Meg murmured.
"Enough. There is no such thing as the boogeyman," Justine stated, firmly. "That's it; no more scary stories. Everyone, go to bed. Get your stuff."
The crowd dispersed, and Andrea gave Meg a one sided hug.
"It's okay," her friend said.
"Andrea, he was in my nightmare. Things from the nightmare are actually happening," Meg stammered, fear coloring her voice, as she ripped down her sleeve to display a bruise on her upper arm.
Lisa pulled up her own sleeve to display a long scratch on her forearm, and Amelia showed them a bruise on her wrist while Andrea showed them the cuts on her wrist.
"We can't go to sleep!" Meg exclaimed.
"I packed the soda," Lisa murmured, careful not to wake the others.
"I packed the chocolate," Amelia added.
Amelia took a sip of her soda and nearly did a spit take.
"Just chug it, okay?" Lisa suggested before the two girls downed as much soda as they could before coughing and laughing.
Meg chugged her own soda, being much quieter than usual, while Andrea took a bite of her chocolate bar.
"I've never pulled two all nighters in a row," Andrea said. "Can we do it?"
"I set an alarm just in case," Lisa said.
Andrea nodded. "Good thinking."
Amelia and Lisa both had their knees pulled to their chests, rocking back and forth with wild eyes.
"I feel like my hair's standing on end," Amelia murmured.
"Me, too," Lisa whispered. "And I have to go to the bathroom."
"I'll be right here when you get back," Amelia pointed out.
"So will we," Andrea said.
Lisa hesitated. "All right."
She stood and watched as Amelia scampered back against the wall, watching the entire room for any sign of a threat.
Lisa grabbed her flashlight and switched it on; she made it to the door before turning back to Amelia.
"Don't go to sleep, okay?" Lisa told her.
"I'm way too wired to even think about sleeping," Amelia scoffed.
Lisa nodded and stumbled around in the darkness, looking over her shoulder and searching every corner, as she approached the bathroom.
She pushed open the door to the ladies room and watched as the light flickered to life, turning on and off several times before finally staying on.
Amelia was the first to drift off, and Andrea crossed the room in a hurry to wake her up, but half way there, Andrea collapsed, falling to the floor. Exhaustion has dragged her down into slumber before she even made it to Amelia's bed.
"Andrea!" Meg cried, shaking the girl, but she didn't wake. "Andrea!
The Dream Catcher appeared out of no where, and Meg was so startled by the terrifying face appearing in front of her that she stumbled away from the girls.
He knelt over her Amelia and Andrea, and he chuckled, cruelly, as he approached Meg, but Meg knew she couldn't let him capture her, so she bolted outside and didn't look back.
"Meg! Meg, help me!"
She spun around, trying to see through the darkness of night that was suffocating her.
"Meg!"
It was Andrea's voice, fuzzy and both near and far away, but it was definitely her's.
"Meg!"
Meg traced the voice to the cave, the one that had been in Amelia's nightmare.
Oh, no.
The truth was obvious to Meg:
The Dream Catcher had her best friend, and Meg had to get her back.
Met sat bolt up right in her bed, almost knocking heads with Lisa.
Her entire body was drenched in sweat, and her heart was beating faster than she thought was possible. Her hands were shaking, and her stomach rolled with nausea.
"You're keeping everyone awake with all your yelling," Lisa said.
"The Dream Catcher has Amelia and Andrea," Meg informed the other camper, standing up from the bunk she'd appeared in. "You woke me up before I could save Andrea. She's trapped inside the dream!"
"Well, we have to go save them! Come on!" Lisa rushed to say.
The two girls crept through the woods, the leaves and twigs crackling under their feet. Their flashlights cast shallow beams across the forest floor.
"Lisa! Meg!"
"Amelia," Lisa whispered.
"MEG!"
"Andrea," Meg added.
Lisa hurried to follow the voices with Meg at her heels, and they followed the cry for help to the cave that had been in Amelia's nightmare.
"The cave," Meg mumbled. "From Amelia's dream."
Meg was usually a calm person, but she was starting to freak out right about now.
"Okay… let's go," Lisa said, nervously.
The two girls trekked across the cave floor, their feet balancing on the uneven, rock surface.
"LISA! MEG!" Amelia's voice shouted, much louder, clearer, and closer than before.
"Amelia?" Lisa called.
"Andrea!" Meg yelled.
"Meg!" Andrea cried from somewhere deeper in the cave, and the girls began to follow the voices further into the cave.
Spider webs stretched across the walls and floor, twisting and overlapping to form several pathways of spider webs. It was a maze, and when Meg tested the spider webs, she found them to be, not only strong, but also sticky.
"Be careful," she advised Lisa. "Don't get stuck."
Lisa nodded, shining the flashlight ahead of them, making sure to test the spider web before putting her entire weight on it. If the Dream Catcher was the spider, then the girls were the flies, and they could not afford to get stuck in a spider's trap.
"Amelia!" Lisa called.
"Lisa!" Meg hissed. "Don't you watch any horror movies? You never call out. We don't know if he's here or not."
"Lisa!" Amelia called from nearby.
"Meg!" Andrea shouted.
The two girls climbed over the spider webs and tripped through the passages.
A soft hiss-almost inaudible- sounded, and Meg jumped.
"Amelia!" Lisa gasped. "Andrea!"
"Lisa! Meg!" Amelia cried.
She was curled into a ball on the floor, and Andrea was sitting beside her. The spider webs seemed to close around them, and the small space only made the sight more pitiful.
"Come on. Let's get out of here," Meg ordered.
The hissing was getting louder.
Amelia and Andrea stumbled to their feet, but when they tried to take a step, they couldn't.
"I'm stuck!" she exclaimed, panic lacing her voice.
"We both are!" Andrea added.
Lisa tugged on Amelia's boots and Meg pulled on Andrea's tennis shoes, but they wouldn't budge.
Suddenly, Lisa couldn't move her feet either, and when she tried, she became unbalanced and fell to the spider web, bumping into Andrea and knocking her down as well. Lisa tried to get up, but her entire body was now glued to the web.
Amelia and Meg kneeled over to try and help them, but Amelia stumbled and fell, accidentally taking Meg with her, and the four girls lay on the spider web, fear coursing through their veins.
The hissing was now becoming a screech, and Andrea watched as It lumbered around the corner.
It was huge with a white face and sunken in eyes. The eyes were gray, as though It were blind, and Its mouth was filled with pointy teeth that could easily rip a person to shreds.
The girls screamed as It came closer.
It chuckled, but It abruptly stopped laughing when a series of beeps sounded through the room.
"The alarm!" Lisa shouted.
It cursed.
Lisa and Amelia sat bolt up right, the alarm still beeping and their hearts beating even louder than the beeps. Andrea coughed as she sat up on the floor, and Meg's breathing grew heavy as she tried to slow her heart rate.
"Is everyone okay?" Lisa asked.
"I think so," Andrea said.
"What is going on?" Justine demanded.
"Mom," Andrea cried, diving into her mother's arms. "The Dream Catcher… he's real."
Andrea told her mother the entire story while Justine held her trembling daughter in her arms, and Andrea half expected her mother to call her a liar. If Andrea hadn't lived the story, she wouldn't even believe it.
But Justine knew Andrea like the back of her hand. Andrea wasn't a liar, and after seeing the scrapes on her wrist and the fear written across her face, Justine knew that Andrea was telling the absolute truth.
"I'll call your parents," she said to Meg, Lisa, and Amelia, before turning back to Andrea and continuing, "and I can get Courtney to step in for me as councilor of this cabin. We're going home," Justine told her daughter.
Andrea cried with relief, and Justine held her daughter close to her body, listening to Andrea's breathing and her heart beat.
She'd almost lost her baby girl today. She didn't know what she would do without her sweet, loving daughter in her life. In that moment, if she had lost her daughter that night, she thought she might have died.
Justine brushed aside Andrea's hair and smiled at her little girl.
"I am the luckiest mother in the world because I have you as my daughter," she murmured.
Andrea shrugged. "I guess we're even. Because I am the luckiest girl in the world because I have you as my mother.'
The mother and daughter embraced, and they didn't let go of each other for a very long time.
That's the story. I hope you enjoyed it.
I love feedback (but keep it kind or constructive criticism because any flames will be ignored and reported if necessary), so please tell me what you thought in the form of a review or a PM!
Thank you all for reading! Goodbye, everyone!