I froze where I was in front of my dresser. I heard it, echoing deep in the dark corridors of my mind – her voice. My mother's voice. How many years had it been since I'd heard it? I gazed into the gloomy hallway outside my bedroom door. My finger tapped the light switch, but it was a stormy night. The power had gone out even before I went to bed. I grabbed my phone off of my nightstand and turned the brightness up, allowing the glow of the screen to become my flashlight. I stepped gingerly down the hall towards my late mother's voice.

'Hush little baby, don't say a word… mama's gonna buy you a mockingbird…'

I swallowed hard and my throat tightened as an all too familiar pain in my heart stirred once again. Regret, sorrow, desperation. Knowing that, if I had just asked her to stay for another minute, she might still be here today.

But… was she?

That voice… it was hers. I knew it. Was I dreaming? If I was, I didn't want to wake up. I found myself at the door of the guest bedroom of our house that stood just down the hall from the door to my own room. The voice was coming from inside. The door was cracked open, but I couldn't see anything through it. As I put my hand up to it to push it open, it swung swiftly and silently back on its hinges.

There she was. My mother. She was wearing the long black dress she had been buried in, her blond hair shimmering white in the moonlight. She had a heavy black coat about her shoulders, and in her hand a golden cage.

'If you ask me to, momma's gonna buy you a mockingbird. I will give you the world. I will buy a diamond ring for you, and I will sing for you, I will do anything for you to see you smile.'

I watched as she held up the cage and opened a tiny door, allowing a silky black mess of feathers to crawl out to her hand and up her arm until it rested comfortably on her shoulder. She pet it gently, a finger tracing softly over its head and down its smooth back.

"But if that mockingbird won't sing and that ring won't shine I will break that birdie's neck."

All of a sudden, my mother grabbed the little bird by its neck and crushed it in her palm. At the same moment, her own neck snapped, and her head rolled off to one side.

A sickening, horrible laughter sizzled through the air, and my mother bent over backwards, her back arching abnormally over to see me. My blood ran cold in my veins. Her eyes were all white and rolled around in her head as she moved, her cheeks were sunken in and her lips were smeared blackish red with blood.

"Hush, hush, little baby." She cackled and straightened up, twisting around so that her torso was backwards on her legs. I heard her bones breaking and her body began to collapse. I was about to scream when a sudden pair of thin arms wrapped about my shoulders, and I suddenly found myself muted. My voice was gone.

"This mockingbird will never sing again." I heard my mother say.

I looked up. I don't remember anything, but a black, shadowing figure and golden lines dancing on the back of my eyelids. Then, everything was gone.