The Warning

Note: I'm not the authour of this story. I've translated it from original Japanese into English. Please do NOT copy and paste it somewhere else on the web without my permission. Thank you very much.

Just after I started high school, mother went missing.
Father told me that mother had been having an affair for sometime.
"She's abandoned both of us and left," said father.
Looking at his sad face made me determined that I would remain being a faithful and loving daugther for him.
But since mother's disappearance, strange things started happening in the house.
The whole house seemed to be enveloped in a chilly atmosphere.
A door would suddenly open without anyone touching it, and things on the shelves would fall of their own accord.
That made me think, "maybe mother is already dead after all?"

I examined mother's shoes left in the entryway, and my suspicion turned to certainity.
If she had left, one pair of shoes should have gone missing.
But all of her shoes were still there. Then father must have killed mother in the house.

Why? What for? I felt a gnawing urge to ask him but I couldn't.
If mother is dead and then father gets arrested, I will be all on my own.
Father truly loved mother. If mother was the one who betrayed, she was to be blamed for what happened to her.
I'm just going to pretend nothing has happened. I decided.

But the strange occurrences did not stop.
One day I was lying in bed half awake and half asleep, when I heard the sound of footsteps walking around in the house.
Pitter-patter pitter-patter...
It was not father.
The sound was getting closer.
 Pitter-patter pitter-patter...
"Go away. Please go away!"
Even as I prayed, the foot steps reached my room and came in.
I felt lukewarm breath on my cheeks
I opened my eyes a crack and saw mother's face leaning over me, looking all vicious and menacing.
Then she said into my ears:
"Ge...eeet  O...oo...oouut."

I can't stay in this house any longer. I thought, but I could not think up of any excuses that might persuade father to move house. Strangely, it seemed I was the only one who was able to feel the ghost's presence. Father felt nothing at all.
Ever since mother disappeared, father changed his job and started working from home so that he could look after me better. He did most of the house chores too. After seeing his love and devotion to me, I could not bring myself to ask him,"'you killed mother, didn't you?"

So, I passed many more days pretending nothing was happening.
One evening I was sitting at a coffee table when I felt something bit into my toe. It was excruciatingly painful.
I looked down to see what it was that caused the pain, and I saw mother there.
Mother was lying underneath the table.

Father, who was cooking in the kitchen, sensed something was wrong and said, "are you alright, Mami (my name)?" But I just answered to him, "nothing. I just remembered I had some homework to do."
"The dinner is nearly ready. Why don't you come over here and do it on the kitchen table?"
I responded obediently to his words and opened my school bag.
And for the first time I noticed a note, folded in four, lying at the bottom of the bag.
I opened the note and saw some words scribbled in mother's handwriting:
"Mami, hurry and run away, your father is insane."

Mother had been trying to warn me all along.