by Gregory Ashe
Chapter 18, Saturday 27 August
The next morning, Mr. Wood called to tell me that his sister was in a coma, that the doctors didn’t think she would wake up. They didn’t know what was wrong with her. He wouldn’t be opening the store until Monday or Tuesday. He sounded broken up.
I went to the cemetery, waved to Olivia’s dad as he passed me on a riding mower. The grass around the grower’s tree was yellow and brittle. The tree itself seemed listless, its branches drooping, dead leaves falling to clutter like an early autumn.
Every night for a week I went to the cemetery. No sprawls. No quickener. And the tree’s branches drooped lower every day.
I had done it. I had no quickening, no allies, but I had done it. I had killed the grower. Or close enough.
Journal Entry, per Doctor Lumley’s Request, Thursday 8 September
Will another of these journal entries satisfy you? I hope you get everything you want out of this. Something you can go home to dream about.
The last few weeks have been alright, I guess. Work picked back up again quickly enough, once Mr. Wood had worked out a schedule that would let him help with his sister’s kids. I couldn’t help but feel kind of bad about that. I know what you’re thinking, right now, as you read this—why would I feel bad? I didn’t cause her to get sick, fall into a coma. That’s right. Of course not. Unless she’s a grower.
See, here’s the thing—I don’t really care what you think anymore. I’ll write it all down, and you can read it, and you can do whatever you want. It’s my fault that she’s in a coma, and I don’t regret it. She’s a grower; that’s all there is to the matter. Case closed.
So I felt bad, but it was kind of a good thing for me. Mr. Wood left the store almost entirely in my hands. Melanie’s kids would go to school in the morning, and by the time I was at work, Mr. Wood would go home and watch them. Not only did I get some new, unwanted responsibility, but I also got to spend less time with Mr. Wood. That in itself was better than a pay raise.
Days were school and work. Nights were Olivia. As many nights as I could manage, or all the nights she could spare. That’s when I was safe, near her, in that over-large cottage of a house with its wraparound porch. Everything else was distant. Or forgotten. Either way, I could feel at peace, and so I spent my time with her.
You want to know what we did, don’t you? Every single touch, the way her skin felt under my hand? This is why I hate shrinks.
And I bet you have a label for that.
As good as the nights were with Olivia, the time after, between night and day, was worse. When I would go home, and reality would come crashing in on me. My parents so far apart I could have sailed an aircraft carrier between them. And me, the third point of a triangle, cut off from both of them, with nothing but dried-out blood to keep us together. You’ll tell them that, won’t you? Word for word. Tell them everything I’m telling you, because I know you do it anyway. I can see it in their eyes, after they come out of your office. Patient confidentiality my ass.
Waiting for me, upstairs, in my bedroom in the dark, are memories. Every night, when I come home after seeing Olivia, they’re there. Isaac, who gave up everything to save me, and I betrayed him. Who should be living right now, happy in his first year at college, but who is instead under several feet of packed soil, a thin layer of wood and padding, and he is rotting. Because I thought I knew better than Grandfather. Because I thought I was different.
But worse is Christopher, whom I betrayed and killed, and whom I betray every day, again and again, when I go to Olivia’s, when I move slightly closer to her on the couch as we watch TV, when my arm slips around her shoulders, and I can feel my pulse in my fingertips, because even being close to her is enough to excite me. They wait for me, in the dark, twice as bitter because minutes and hours before, I was happy, and I had forgotten who I was. But they always remind me.
So yes, to answer your question, there are still days I lie in bed, staring up at the ceiling, listening to the air conditioner click on and off. Trying to hide in that place behind my heart. And some days I can get up, and things get better, and I see Olivia. And other days I don’t.
I’m saving money these days. To get a car. Or maybe for college. I don’t know yet. Just think—if I had a car, I could come visit you every day, Dr. Lumley. I wouldn’t have to wait for Mom or Dad to drive me out to Arcadia once a week.
Wouldn’t that be grand?