After two years away, I returned to my hometown to visit my father’s grave, seeking closure. Instead, I found something chilling—a tombstone just feet away with my name and photo on it. Shocked, I called my mother.

Her voice was unsettlingly calm. “After your father died and you stopped coming home,” she said, “it felt like I lost both of you. I needed something to grieve. So I made that headstone.”

Her explanation was eerie enough, but something didn’t sit right. Memories began to surface—of her giving me strange, unprescribed pills, of my foggy mind during visits, of things that never quite added up.

The grave wasn’t just a symbol of grief. It felt like a warning—or a truth I hadn’t fully understood until now.