Stuff that scares me...A continuing series

My middle child scares the crap out of me. It's not just that he makes these faces all the time, though that would totally be reason enough. He scares me because I think there's more to him than meets the eye.

When he was a baby, he regularly watched, played with and conversed with a ghost in our house. Stop rolling your eyes at me; I don't believe in ghosts, either. But what I saw, what his godmother saw, it's undeniable. I can't explain it, and that is the creepiest part of all.

My father claims to have had encountered lots of ghosts. We lived in a part of the country that has a good, solid history in the haunting department, and his stories were definitely consistent enough with the historical facts we had on hand as children to achieve their desired affect*, which was either to make believers of us or keep us out of that gross, abandoned house on the corner already.

But this is not about my father, is it? It's about my son. Every Halloween, we play Ouija. Because I like to tempt fate, that's why. We only do it on Halloween. The three of us play together, and the damn thing never works. This year, however, 2of3 and I played alone. And, I kid you not, that thing went nuts. I wasn't pushing it, and 2of3 can't spell all that well just yet; and so, again, I can't explain it, and that is the creepiest part of all.

He is a Pisces, and this sort of thing comes with the territory. It also runs freakishly wild in our family. Both of my grandmothers were into divination to some degree, my dad, well, we covered that, his auntie and godmother are both practicing witches, and I regularly have dreams that come true. But, none of us are like this kid. And my dad is a story-teller, my grandmothers were bat-shit crazy, and the jury's still out on me.

I tell you all of this to tell you this:

I am not a checker-iner on my kids when they sleep. I don't have baby monitors and only once or twice have I ever licked a finger and stuck it by sleeping baby nostrils to check for breathing. I am, however, a tucker-iner. Anyone who falls asleep on my watch gets a blanket on them. Period. Every night, before I go to bed, I stick my head in my kids' rooms to make sure they haven't kicked their blankets off.

This one night, eons ago, I checked on the boys, and they were both covered. I paused by 2of3, because he's the most beautiful thing in the world when he sleeps, and I knelt down by his bed to stare at him for a minute. I didn't touch him, I didn't make a sound. I just sat there, and I thought to myself, "Oh, I love you, kid."

Right then, he rolled over on his side, shot both eyes wide open, and said, "Oh, I love you too, mom." And back to sleep he went.

This could quite possibly be the sweetest story in the history of stories, except that it was the single creepiest thing I have ever seen. He answered my thought exactly the way I thought it. I can't explain it, and that is the creepiest part of all.

(And this whole post is in response to LatteMommy's post the other day, because, sometimes, I'm just not smart enough to figure out how to leave comments. Blonde.)

*SHIT! Is it affect or effect? Affect is the verb, effect is the noun, right? Grammar police, HELP!