Because everything deserves the miracle.
The miracle of life.
I say, “But if I were him I’d want to die.”
“Tsk tsk tsk tsk tsk tsk tsk tsk tsk tsk tsk tsk tsk tsk,” a thousand tongues clucking at once, then they laugh at me, and I feel ashamed.
And I think again that I want to kill this little baby, little Sammy, but they’re pulling my hands off of him, all inside with me now, whispering to me that a baby’s life life life life life life is precious.
Seriously, we need this guy. We could have the best slasher franchise of all time on our hands. We can make it worth his while. Tell him that.
Margaret says it’s so. Margaret says it’s so. She saved her baby once. Lucky boy. He got to be the living, breathing son of murderers.
FAMOUS!
But it doesn’t sound that nice. To be the living, breathing son of murderers.
It doesn’t feel nice to be the living, breathing daughter of Herman and Roberta.
And I move my hands again to Sammy’s throat.
And suddenly there is something in front of my flashlight. Something big and breathing heavy. Pudgy feet, red toenails, Margaret digs a fat finger TOO DEEP TOO DEEP TOO DEEP into my sore scalp and I scream and scream and scream. 39
39. In Noelle’s large, fugue-state scrawl, this section of the diary takes up twenty-six pages.
Sixteenth Entry
I woke up at the foot of the basement steps this morning. Obviously a terrible sign.
I almost went down the hall to check, to see if Sammy was lying there dead. I really almost did but then my stomach flipped so hard I couldn’t move so I just ran up the stairs instead.
The day shifter was just settling in behind the front desk. This old lady named Jessica,40 a friend of Olivia’s. I think she might work here just for something to do. She sits at her desk and crochets all day and leaves all the shitty work for Alf and me. She’ll list it out for us, too, out loud instead of just writing the jobs down, which is really annoying.
Examples:
“Somethin’ got into the garbage back there, somethin’ big. You’re gonna wanna wear gloves. It’s everywhere.”
“The woman in Room 301, her dog just puked all over the rug, can one of yous help her out?”
“That homeless guy took a dump in the azaleas again, kids.”
She took off her jacket and hung it next to the door and hadn’t yet noticed that I was standing next to her.
“Jesus, Noelle!” She leapt when she finally noticed me. “You’re gonna give an old lady a heart attack for crying out loud.”
“Sorry, Jessica.”
“Christ, what are you doing up already?”
“Couldn’t sleep. I don’t feel so well. I think I need to go home.”
“Pardon my French, dear, but you look like dogshit.”
“I’ll also pardon the insult, Jessica, don’t worry.”
“Honey, I mean it. You should go to a doctor. There’s blood on your head, for cristsakes. Why the hell is there blood on your head?”
I reached up and touched my face where blood had dripped from my sore spot. It was dry now, crusty, and flakes of it came off on my fingers.
“Oh god, yeah. I hit my head.”
“I’m taking you to the hospital.” She grabbed her purse and stood up. “Come on.”
“No, no, Jessica, please. I’ll go. Don’t worry. In fact I’ve got an appointment tomorrow.”
“Yeah, right. I’m calling your father.”
“Jessica, come on, man! I’ll go! Just trust me.”
Then she looked at me for a while, and I didn’t know what I’d do if she didn’t just sit down and shut up about it.
“Fine,” she finally said. “But if I find out you just went home and went to bed without talking to your dad or calling a doctor, there’ll be trouble.”
Jessica’s nice. She really cares about Alf and me. But if she calls my dad I’ll have to kill her.
“Okay, okay,” I said. And I made my way towards the back door but ducked into the closet first. I needed a quiet place to write all this down, collect my thoughts before I have to go home and see Herman.
Jessica wouldn’t come looking for me in here, and I could just leave quietly out the back door once she started nodding off at the desk over her crocheting. She literally wouldn’t move the whole time she was here. She didn’t drink tea or coffee or water because of her kidneys so she never even had to pee. She refused to tend to any guests beyond providing idle chit-chat while they waited for cabs in the lobby, or letting them know their needs would be met in a few hours when the nightshift crew came in.
I pulled the chain on the light bulb and it washed everything in the lantern’s red glow and it sort of felt like patterned space so I could think properly without lying down.
I have to kill Sammy. I have to. It doesn’t matter what they do to me. I can’t let him live like that, all crushed and bleeding and hurt. If I let him live I’m no better than Herman, letting me live just so he doesn’t have to be alone in hell.
And then suddenly the lantern over the bulb started spinning, slowly, so its dark red moved across the walls and my hands and your white pages.
Slowly slowly slowly. My heart beating so hard I could feel my ears projecting the sound like loudspeakers. My cheeks filled with piping hot blood, pumped too hard and fast. My fingers went stiff and I dropped my pen.
And the lantern kept moving, as though carefully controlled by a pair of hands as opposed to flicked once and allowed to ride its own momentum to a halt. To its death. And I imagined a pair of hands on me, moving me deliberately, stopping me, bringing me to a halt, to a bloody grinding end.
Hands leading me downstairs. Hands over my hands bashing Sammy’s brains in. Hands over my hands grabbing that pickaxe and impaling my head on it. Hands over my hands making me open and close the door so Alf’s buzzer would go off. Then I suddenly realized that maybe they wanted me to hurt Alf. I don’t know why, but it felt that way. As though the hands made me buzz the buzzer to lure him downstairs. Would I have smashed his head with a paint can too? Kept him alive in patterned space?
Goddammit, diary, what the fuck is happening to me? Have I always been like this? Have I always done stuff like this in my sleep, in patterned space, but just never knew about it because I never had a diary to write it all down in?
And then the lantern stopped. Or the hands stopped moving it.
And after a long, frightening moment, the same deliberate slowness made the
doorknob twitch, causing my eyes to spread so wide open they felt as though the corners might tear. I stared at the door and pushed myself back hard into the wall, almost toppling off the stool. The doorknob had been grabbed, held, and now it began to spin, so slowly. The taste of blood in my mouth. I’d been biting my lip.
It spun slow slow slow slow until I heard the click of the latch all the way tucked in.
I thought if the door starts opening, if it really does, then I’m going to faint, then it won’t be my fault, I wouldn’t have been able to fight or escape what was on the other side anyway so I wouldn’t have to feel bad or mad at myself for it. I’d just faint and let whatever was going to happen, happen. If the floured girl wants to kill me or whatever, just, I’m okay with it. If Margaret is mad at me for trying to kill Sammy, okay I deserve it. I’ll stay here forever as a ghost. And hey, maybe I’ll kill Alf after all, so we can hang out forever. He wants that anyway, to work at the inn forever.
But nothing happened. The door didn’t open. It just stayed like that, latch tucked all the way in, for what felt like forever.
So I just waited.
And waited.
And finally, in the exact second my eyelids began to relax, the chain on the light bulb ripped and I was in complete darkness.
I screamed a
t the top of my lungs and tore out of the closet, then through the inn’s groaning back door, and I’m sure I fucking scared Jessica halfway to death.
Hopefully she didn’t recognize my screaming. I barely recognized it.
I ran all the way home. Literally all the way. Like the little pig does. And when I got there I didn’t want to go inside yet, so I sat on the front porch and I read and re-read and re-read those last weird pages of the diary. Again and again and again.
Something was in the closet with me, spinning my lantern.
And I knew, because I’d seen them all when I was asleep or not asleep and walking at night with the floured woman. People are everywhere at the inn. Ghosts. Are everywhere. Doing whatever they want. What do they want with me?
The woman’s name, the floured woman, jesus christ it gave me a chill to write that. Her name is Sybil Groundwick. She was the last victim of Margaret Grimley and Wink. Her throat sliced open by Margaret; her blood “hot sticky syrup.”
Wink. Wink died up in the suite too. Wink who probably did pull Olivia’s flesh off in chunks and ATE IT. Wink whose last name no one knew. He said in his diaries that people would never ever find out his last name because the devil 41 had taught him to be invisible.
And no one ever did find it out. 42 No one would ever learn a thing about him except for what he left in his journals. So he got to be exactly who he wanted to be after he died to everyone. He got to write it all out just so.
Alf once said that people with no last names are superhuman. And they kind of are. Without a last name you get to just float through life, tethered to nothing and no one. I wish the devil had taught me to be invisible. I wish I was just Noelle. Instead of Noelle Dixon. The Dixon part tethering me to gross Herman and mean Roberta. Maybe if I didn’t have a last name I wouldn’t feel guilty either, about hating Herman or about maybe hurting Sammy.
I wish Nathanial Holcomb’s son would put a spell on me too.
Teach me everything he knows about being invisible.
All of Wink and Margaret’s victims were kind of lonely hearts ugly like Sybil.
Sybil was thirty-three when she died. She’d been corresponding with Wink and Margaret for a few weeks before she finally worked up the courage to come over. She’d said to her sister, “The only thing I’ve got to hold over the heads of married people is the opportunity to be wild.” So she took it. Which, also according to her sister, was very unlike her.
I remember reading that quote. It made me like Sybil Groundwick very much. I liked people who rubbed things in other people’s faces. No matter what they were rubbing in.
I liked her so I photocopied the picture of her from the newspaper. The best picture her family could find, I’m sure, so that people could think “she was so pretty, so young, she had her whole life ahead of her.” And she wasn’t pretty, but people don’t ever say that dead girls aren’t pretty. In fact, being dead is probably the best kind of makeover a girl can get.
That’s probably why I’m dreaming about her. Because I liked her when I read about her, I really did.
But why am I fucking sleepwalking like a fucking psycho and then writing about it? Why can’t I look down those halls, just see once and for all if I’m really doing the things I’m apparently writing about? Why is this happening now?
Noelle, you’re not doing that. You know you’re not. You love cats, that’s crazy. You’re just tired. You’re not happy right now. Your dad is a lazy pathetic asshole who is ruining your life. That’s all.
You’re right, you’re right. I didn’t hurt any cats. I didn’t. And you know what? If I did, it’s not my fault. If I did it’s because Herman Dixon let me be born. And he shouldn’t have. Every bad thing I do is his fault, not mine. Because he should have known better than to wish me to life.
Monsters making monsters.
Herman was already wide awake and watching TV when I walked through the door.
He said, “Noelle! I just got off the phone with Jessica from the inn.”
Goddamn you, Jessica.
“She says that you hit your head, sweetie, and that you don’t look well. Come in here.”
At least she didn’t mention my screaming wildly out the door. 43
He muted the TV. For him that demonstrated SERIOUS CONCERN.
“Hi,” I said, stepping into the living room.
“Christ, Noelle, you look like a sheet!”
“I didn’t get very much sleep last night.”
“Let me look at your head.”
“No.”
“Noelle, I can see you’re bleeding, now would you show me your head?”
“No!”
“Why?”
“It’s nothing, I’m embarrassed.”
“Well, if it’s nothing, then show me.”
“Okay, it’s not NOTHING. I had a giant zit on my head, I picked it, it leaked all down my face while I was sleeping. I told Jessica I hit my head because I was embarrassed about my weird giant zit.”
“Why do you look so pale, then?”
“Because I didn’t sleep!”
“Why didn’t you sleep?”
“The rats in the basement. Those noises. I think they’re crawling through the walls.”
His face looked very WORRIED. I glanced at the television. He’d been watching one of those freak shows. Like, those shows that pretend to be uplifting, about people dealing with and sometimes overcoming a deformity or some kind of weird rare disease, but really the show is just for gawking. Like, you know, Siamese twins or really tiny people.
“Noelle. I want you to tell me if something’s wrong.”
“I’m fine.”
“Honey, can you sit down at least? It hurts my neck to look up at you like this.”
This freak show special was about a little girl born with her legs fused together. The narrator kept calling her a mermaid. 44 I sat down and he started talking. While he talked I pushed my legs together and imagined they were fused.
“Look, Noelle, I know why you wouldn’t wanna tell me. You don’t wanna add to my stress. I get it. It’s sweet. But listen, honey, it’s not your job to protect your daddy. It’s your daddy’s job to protect you. I’m here for you, okay? I know it doesn’t always seem that way. I know I haven’t been a great dad. I know that. But goddammit I’ve done my best. You don’t know what it’s been like for me, sick the way that I am, having to watch you do everything for your old dad, walking to Ollie’s all the time to get my chicken, helping me keep clean. I love you so much, Noelle. You know that. I love you so much it hurts. And I’ve had to watch as I ruin your life. Do you know how that feels? I’m ruining your life and I can’t stop!”
And his voice shook so hard. He wanted so badly to seem so sad and pathetic that I would have to love him.
And jesus christ can’t he say ANYTHING else at all, EVER? Is this really all he has to say to me right now? That he’s pathetic and sad and guilty about ruining MY life? I’m pale and bleeding and pretty obviously NOT OKAY.
“Yeah, I get it,” I said. “I get it, Dad. But just, really, there’s nothing wrong with me. I feel fine. Don’t listen to Jessica. She’s just a bored old woman with nothing better to do than fret about people who don’t even like her.”
“I like Jessica.”
“You would,” and we both kind of laughed. I like Jessica too.
I went into the kitchen and got a glass of water. The mermaid show was over. Now a show about a boy born without a face was starting. We’d watched this one before. The boy had just a mash-up of sore-looking folds and three holes in his head where a face should be. He ate through a feeding tube. He couldn’t speak or see or taste anything. He was at risk of dying from a thousand infections a day. But his brain was fine. He realized how disgusting he would be forever. But he was a miracle too, according to his parents; monsters who didn’t know they were
monsters. We’re all miracles. A beating heart is a miracle no matter what kind of flesh it animates, no matter what kind of life that animated flesh is living, no matter if it’s ground into a basement floor or slave to a terrible Herman. I felt like puking. To stop the puke I chugged back the glass of water. And then another one.
Herman yelled from the living room: “Dr. Schiller called to confirm your appointment. You better tell him about your zit.”
“What time is that appointment anyway?”
“4:45. Before you go to work.”
“Ugh, Dad. I don’t want to go.”
“Noelle, would you please just do this for me?”
And I stomped up the stairs. Loud so that Herman knew I was mad and every stomp was like a stomp on his face.
Just do this for me. Just do this for me. THIS ONE LITTLE THING FOR ME. THIS IS ALL I ASK OF YOU, NOELLE, JUST TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF FOR YOUR OLD DAD WHO TAKES CARE OF YOU.
I’m fucking exhausted and confused and I needed to feel what was going on in that spot because it felt bad. Really bad. And there was really an awful lot of blood on my face. And my hair was all dried too stiff and straight. And I suppose I should feel thankful that they care, Jessica and Herman, but I know they’ll just tell me to stop digging at my head. Stop digging. And I can’t stop.
How bad does it look, diary?
Ha, that was weird. I just held you up to look at my head even though you don’t have any eyes. Jesus, I’m tired. I’m tired and hating Herman makes me even more tired.
What an asshole. Somehow he just managed to get mad at me for being mad at him for ruining my life.
He’s broken me. He’s broken me because he couldn’t break her for breaking him.
The Boy Meets Girl Massacre (Annotated) Page 10