BOBBY didn't want to come back, mommy!
All you telehorror film fans out there, you may recognize this plot. It is so creepy and scary that I have seen it duplicated on three horror television shows. The BOBBY story appeared on DEAD OF NIGHT (1977) and TRILOGY OF TERROR II.
SPOILER ALERT!
The plot goes like this. An attractive early middle-age woman is grieving for her young son, Bobby, who drowned very recently. On a dark and stormy night (what else could it be?) Bobby shows up at the front door, soaking wet and disoriented, but alive. The mother is overjoyed at the return of her dead son and doesn't ask any questions. By the way, there is a father but he is never shown in any of the three films. Things start to go awry shortly thereafter. It seems Bobby isn't the same person he was before he came back from the dead. He becomes mischievous and withdrawn. He starts playing pranks on his bewildered then exasperated mother. Finally the mother is becoming terrified of him. In all three versions, the mother telephones her husband and in a frightened whisper, appeals for help. The father keeps repeating what she says. Annoyed, she demands to know why he keeps repeating her. And in a shocking moment, the boy's voice comes on the phone, "Fooled you, mommy!".
To make a long story short, it's another dark and stormy night and the electricity is out. The frightened mother trips and falls down the long, winding dark stairs. In the darkness, you see the shadowed outline of Bobby slowly descending the long, curving stairway, one step at a time. He begins speaking as if inside an reverb or echo chamber. In a mocking tone of voice he tells his mother, who is lying injured but conscious at the bottom of the stairway, that Bobby had indeed drowned and died. He adds that 'Bobby' didn't want to come back. "So Bobby sent me..." and with those final words, the boy's darkened shape emerges into the moonlight to reveal a demon-vampiric like face with black rings around the eyes, pale skin, and sharpened teeth. His hands are raised in a clawing fashion and I believe he may have had sharp long nails. It never was Bobby but a demon sent by Bobby to wreak revenge on a bad mother. Why she was a bad mother is never explained but is implicitly revealed in all three versions almost at the end.