And, you know, things were fine before I started writing in you. I mean, they were miserable and hellish and depressing but otherwise totally fine.
Things weren’t scary or insane or potentially dangerous at least.
But I also feel like, if I stop writing in you now, something bad is gonna happen. Like now that’s I’ve started I can’t stop. And I don’t like that I can’t stop now. I don’t know.
Who are you?
Who ARE you?
WHO are you?
Who are YOU?
There’s a fly down here. And it keeps landing on my head. Right on the sore spot. And it stings. And I remember reading once that when a fly lands it pukes and shits and then eats it but I’m sure that can’t be true. Probably just something someone made up to gross me out. 35
Dead Spot. Another potential title?
But I don’t like that it’s buzzing around my head. Because flies buzz around dead things. Am I killing my head? Is it dead in that spot now? That one dead spot has passed on into some other dimension, another dimension in which Sammy is mostly dead and cold stiff fingers can touch me and I can hear and understand the whispering in the basement.
This spot on my scalp is pretty fucking zombie-bite gross.
Like ground meat left out, warm but not cooked. Hot soft. Hot soft. Hot soft. That’s kind of making me nauseous the more that I write it.
Hot soft hot soft hot soft.
I need to stop picking.
Hot soft hot soft hot soft.
“Alf!” I called up from downstairs. “Do we have a flyswatter?”
“Yeah,” he called down, “it’s in the closet, kind of high up though. I’ll grab it.”
I heard him get up, his steps above causing dust to trickle from the ceiling. I swatted the fly away a few more times. Tried to kill it with my hand but missed. Then I ran up the stairs and slammed the door shut behind me, thinking maybe I could trap it down there. But it’d followed me up, buzzing around my head relentlessly so I had to keep swatting and spinning around.
Alf laughed.
“Maybe you should shower more,” he said and handed over the lime green swatter.
“Maybe you should … shower more.”
“Good comeback. I’ll have to remember that one.”
And Alf turned on the computer to play a game of Solitaire while I flailed around like a fool trying to kill the fly until it was time for us to go to bed.
I’m up in my room now, writing in you, and the fly has followed me up here too. The buzzing is so goddamn irritating, landing on my head, getting so close to my ear, making the sore spot itch so I scratch it and it bleeds everywhere. Stupid fucking fly. I wonder what my head meat looks like in his kaleidoscope eyes.
Maybe I should switch rooms.
But that’s crazy. Switching rooms because of a fly. This has been my room all summer. It’s right next to Alf’s. He’d wonder why I want to move.
Olivia used to sleep in here. This was the room that Wink walked into, sat on her bed, and started eating her. Her NIGHTMARE.
I got a towel from the bathroom and wrapped my head up like a turban. There, nothing to attract the fly. And it seems to work. The fly disappeared. Or at least, it’s stopped pestering me. But that was too easy. Way too easy. Maybe there was no fly at all. Maybe Alf thought he saw the fly too because I was spinning around and swatting like there was a fly there, but really there wasn’t.
I took off the towel. The fly came back. So I put it back on.
Okay, time to go to bed. I’m glad I’m not sleeping with the buzzer tonight.
Thanks Alf. You’re nice.
33. “Ollie’s” is a local grocery store run by a man named Oliver Scrum. In his interview he claimed to know Noelle fairly well, saying that for years, at least four times a week, she was in there buying a roast chicken for her father. He said it had petered off as she got older and “likely began refusing,” was how he put it. He said she complained about her father a lot. “I felt bad for the kid,” he said. He’d had first-hand experience dealing with Noelle’s father as well, as he’d often call and try to pressure Oliver into delivering a chicken.
34. A homeopathic treatment thought to restore energy to muscles when certain types of harmful blood bacteria are present.
35. While not technically true, flies often regurgitate digestive enzymes when they land on what they believe to be food. Flies defecate often, but not every time they land. That flies were possibly landing on Noelle’s head is evidence of a potential infection; certain infections of the blood have been known to alter behavior. Blood samples, and samples of Noelle’s flesh, are currently being analyzed.
Twelfth Entry
Food water food water food water food water food water food water food water food water. Alive alive alive alive alive alive alive alive alive alive.
If Sammy dies then I die.
Because we’re the same.
Food water food water food water food water food water food water food water food water food water food water food water food water food water food water food water food water food water food water food water food water food water food water food water for Sammy.
What if Margaret is able to summon the son she gave up? He breaks out of some loony bin when she calls for him to come and kill off whoever she wants.
She watches from the corner and whispers and whispers and tells me that she’s my friend and she loves me but if I kill Sammy then they’ve gotta do something bad. Something very very bad. Very very very very very very bad. She won’t want to but she’ll have to because Margaret opened her up and Margaret is her cruelest master.
And I’d deserve it. I’d deserve whatever Margaret does to me because little lives are precious apparently, even when that life is wheezing hacking suffering smeared and bored. Which is the worst of all. So so so bored. Always bored, always in pain, always sad. Because we’re the same. My only joys are when he’s sticking one in my ear and rubbing around and cleaning it out or I’m inducing a coma on a bedspread.
Sammy’s hidden away downstairs. I’m hidden away too.
His fur feels so soft under my fingers, his little heart beating beating beating, fast as a bird. He’s not losing a lot of blood. It’s all stopped up and making his face swell and stink. His tongue is purple. His eye is all black now. But that little heart beats. That little miracle keeping this miracle alive. MIRACLE. Miracle. Miracle. Miracle.
Birth and death are always sure, each, in fact, as sure as the other. So how is birth a miracle? Miracles are supposed to be rare, extraordinary. Not something that happens every day.
And if birth is such a miracle, why is death a tragedy?
I said that out loud. I could tell I said it out loud because she’s shaking her head and saying SHHHHHHHH …
So I stop thinking about it and just stroke little Sammy till his beating heart slows a bit. He isn’t scared because he’s with me now. He isn’t all alone anymore.
“Patterned space” is what makes Noelle special: the ability to travel to other ghostly dimensions. That’s why she’s the only one equipped to solve some Margaret-related mystery we’ll come up with later.
And she starts crawling towards me. I can see from the corner of my eye and I can feel her cold next to me and she puts her lips right up to my ear and asks me about the boy upstairs. Asks me if he deserves the patterned space we put Sammy in.
“Is he a good boy?” she whispers, and her voice feels injected into my ears, now lurching heavy through my veins like a disease.
“Yes,” I say. “He’s a very good boy.”
“We wanna keep him?”
“Oh yes.”
And she nods and whispers more and more and more and more and more. 36
36 This section is in the same wide scrawl as the last italicized section. Large a
nd frantic and not quite like Noelle’s regular handwriting. This section is nine pages long in the diary.
Thirteenth Entry
The next morning I woke up in bed. My bare feet were dark and dusty. Like the basement floor. I read and re-read what I wrote last night. Who is she, diary? You know her. You do. Margaret. She said that Margaret killed her. That Margaret “opened her up.”
Alf stopped me as soon as I opened my bedroom door.
“Um, HI,” he said, in a way like I was supposed to say something, or know exactly why he was saying UM HI like that.
“Um, hi,” I said back, and moved past him to walk down the stairs.
“Aren’t you going to say anything?” he asked.
“What?”
“Do you not remember anything from last night?” He seemed shocked.
“Alf, jesus christ, just tell me what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, I don’t know, you scaring the ever-loving shit out of me?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“You set the buzzer off last night, you asshole, over and over again.”
“No I didn’t!”
“You did too! I came downstairs and you were laughing your head off, opening and closing the door. You know that’s fucked up, Noelle. I’d never do that to you on buzzer night. And I did you a favor. Last night was supposed to be your night, but I took the buzzer for you.”
“Are you serious?”
“You really don’t remember.”
“I really don’t.”
“I don’t know if that makes me feel a lot better or a lot worse.”
“What do you mean?”
“You were a goddamn maniac last night. Your eyes were really wide and kind of empty and creepy looking. And when I came down, you tore up the stairs and into your room and you were saying NO NO NO NO and you wouldn’t open the door when I was knocking. I thought you were fucking possessed.”
“Yeah, oh my god, you know what? I was probably sleepwalking.”
“What?”
“Mmhmm, yeah, it runs in the family. My dad sleepwalks. Or, he used to when he walked more. Now he just talks in his sleep a lot.” That was a lie. Pretty obviously a lie. But Alf didn’t seem to catch on.
“Well, maybe you should have told me that before. You know, being as we’re working nights in a haunted goddamn inn.”
“Haha, I’m sorry, Alf! Jeez, okay, now you know.”
“Well, how often does this happen?”
“I don’t know. It happens when it happens.”
And he gave me a weird look. Kind of asking me with his face to tell him what the hell was wrong with me. But I didn’t wanna tell him. Diary, I can tell you’re judging me for not telling Alf the truth. I can tell. But I can’t. I don’t want him to think I’m crazy. I don’t want him to know I hurt the cat. Alf thinks I’m great. I don’t wanna ruin that. Even if I don’t wanna date him, I don’t want him to stop thinking I’m great.
I left him upstairs kind of flabbergasted I guess. And I started walking in the opposite direction of home, towards Ollie’s, where I bought Herman his goddamn chicken and had to make small talk with Ollie himself, who thought that because he supplied me with chickens, he could also supply me with unsolicited advice. Like that I shouldn’t take a nightshift anywhere, especially not at the inn, because summers were for sunshine and fresh air, not for scaring yourself half to death.
Herman’s face lit up when I dropped the chicken in his lap. Chicken at nine in the morning. I watched him eat it like a brutal bastard in the sickly white glow of the TV. His face illuminated as though by a snowstorm through a windowpane. He likes those courtroom shows the best. Judge Judy and The People’s Court. He loves to weigh in on bitter family squabbles, petty theft, family members all feeling entitled to one sad reproduction painting that no one had ever really liked anyway.
Today I finally got up the courage to examine the spot on my scalp, close up in the mirror. It’s gruesome. All dug out like my fingers were miniature excavators. It looks like a bit of pizza with the toppings pulled off. I wet a rag and daubed at it, but it was so sore. It made me wonder if there really was something to find under there. Something to excavate. Like how zits in commercials are apparently whole ecosystems when you finally get down under the skin.
Because it really was a bit softer, a bit tender, since that first time with poor Tucker. I couldn’t resist squeezing at it a bit more even though it hurt. The pain felt good the way the sore spot could sometimes feel good. Savory pain, my favorite kind. A little blood burst spattered a line across the mirror. It startled me. I wiped it off.
Red and purple and blue salsa. My skull felt so close to the surface. I wondered if it would be sensitive to the cold, like teeth can be.
Then I knew I had to leave it alone for a while. So I went downstairs.
“Do you want any of this?” Herman asked without taking his eyes off the TV.
He was talking about the chicken.
“No thanks,” I exhaled, plopping down into the chair next to his.
“Honestly, Noelle, this is the most delicious one yet.”
“I’m glad.”
“Really, they’ve never been this good before.”
“That’s because I poisoned it.”
“You’d probably be better off, you know. You should poison the next one.” And then he frowned at me for a minute before continuing.
“Can you believe this joker?” and he pointed to one of his courtroom shows on TV. “He’s trying to sue this doctor here, this chiropractor, because his back didn’t get fixed! I mean, come on, some people are just so entitled. That’s what this is. I mean, chiropractors, they’re not miracle workers. It’s treatment, you know? That’s what my doctor always says. It’s a treatment, not a cure.”
I nodded.
“Actually, honey, I made an appointment for you. Dr. Schiller says he hasn’t seen you in two years. That’s not good.”
“When?”
“It’s in a couple days. I put it in the calendar.”
“Dad, I’m fine. I don’t need to go to a doctor.”
“Would you just please go? Look at me. It’s not like you come from the best stock in the world.”
“Fine.”
“I wrote it in the calendar.”
“You said that already.”
And then I pulled my diary, you, out of my hoodie pocket. And wrote all this down just now while he kept on talking.
I don’t understand why they had a kid at all. Why stupid Herman and stupid Roberta would ever do this to someone.
Roberta had been made mean early on, by an ugly skin disorder from age nine to seventeen. During that time, at some point, she’d met Herman. Funny Herman. Herman who could love anything with all his heart, really all of it, more than a regular person could be capable of, and he knew it, and it scared him. But in the hands of a spotted girl, skin as rough and angry as an orange peel, he felt safe. “No one would take her away from me,” he thought. “She wouldn’t even take herself away.” So he let go and loved her hard, the way that only he could.
And she was very realistic about everything. She thought, “I don’t want to be alone and no one else will ever love me, so I will be with Herman, funny Herman, and make him do whatever I want.” Because don’t forget, she’d been made mean.
And then one day she was cured. A miracle balm from Japan. So as soon as she could she cheated on poor Herman. Over and over and over again. Poor Herman, who thought he was safe and so had finally let loose, unloaded like explosive diarrhea his massive amounts of LOVE. It could never be recovered. He was broken. Unfixable. A water balloon burst.
He insisted she’d made him sick. Somehow in breaking him she’d caused his blood disease. She’d brought filth into the house. His colon spazzed. And she asked for a divorce.
And had me.
I’m a parting gift, given out of guilt. The only reason I’m alive at all.
She knew. She knew on some level that leaving me with him would be torture. Torture that was rightfully supposed to be HERS.
I would be punished instead.
I existed because he wished for me.
It’s not fair. Nathanial Holcomb should have cut me out of her, killed me then tortured her, locked her up in a little room for even thinking about forcing me to come to life.
I never should have been born, goddammit.
One day I’ll show him. I’ll show him what a MISTAKE it was to have wished for me. To not have killed me when he had the chance, like a good person should have. Killed me. Or never wished for me in the first place.
Roberta.
I know that I have her eyes. Big and brown and set kind of far apart, but not too far. And I have her build: short but not fat. Long limbed and curvy at once. A good build. I’m glad I got it. I have her dark hair, too, and Herman says we have the same smile. I’m glad I never got her skin disease, what made her mean and spotted, what made her marry Herman.
It’s a strange thought that you’re probably as likely to have your mother’s vagina as you are to have her eyes or any other genetic feature on her body. I wonder if I’ve got Roberta’s.
And I wonder if it was her mother’s vagina before it was hers before it was mine.
The only person who might actually know would be Herman.
Fourteenth Entry
Olivia noticed the cats almost right away, as I suspected she would. She came in from outside and then went down to the basement, which she rarely did. She said she was too crispy to risk a fall down the stairs.
But she was looking for the cats. She was worried about them, so worried it was worth the risk.
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