We sat back in the eating area when we finished. We talked for a while.
‘You know we have a test in Spanish on Monday and I’m not prepared and I’m gonna be too tired to study tomorrow—‘
‘Quiet, Rose,’ I told her, ‘you need to relax for a day or a week. One test doesn’t decide your whole future.’
I think that helped her. She sighed and then told me a joke and we laughed and I was happy. Burning the dreamcatcher was the best thing to happen to me in months.
I got home, showered, wrote this. It is 15 minutes to midnight. I’m sitting on my bed. My covers feel gorgeous beneath my cold legs. My pillow is calling me.
Goodnight.”
From Valerie Hart’s diary
“I think the nightmares are behind me. I don’t know what triggered them. Last night was a happy dream. I was on a sunny beach. A place much, much better than Carpenter. I wonder if I’ll ever leave. Rose wants to leave, too. She hopes for Hollywood.
I don’t know what I hope for.
Every time I try and think of it… of my future… I get nervous. I always had this feeling that high school lasts forever. Living here at home would last forever. Eli’s Creamery each week would last forever. No job ever, just getting my money from Mom and Dad.
But I’m realizing it isn’t true. None of it. Soon I’ll be done with high school.
Fuck me, I shouldn’t be stressed as hell on a Saturday. I need to focus on the good. Like my dream about the beach. I need to visit a beach soon.
I remember the last time did. I think I wrote about it here. Down in Florida three years ago. I can’t swim that well, but I can swim a little. It grosses me out that every creature in the ocean turds in it. That’s why I prefer pools.
I just never feel more alive than when the sun beats down on me and I’m feeling the sand between my toes. I would be a fish if I could be.”
“I just finished studying at the library. I went to the graphic novel section and read The Long Halloween. It gave me chills.
I need to do something new. Something. Anything. Diaz Arcade was a nice change. I’m just bored of doing the same routine every day.
Maybe I’ll go to the movies.”
“I didn’t go to the movies. My mom has a gym membership where she can bring a guest, so I went with. It was fun. I don’t always spend time with her. Maybe you can tell that from my entries. It was a damn good thing to do when stressed.
Maybe I’ll work out more.’
From Valerie Hart’s diary
“They’re back.
The nightmares are back. I wasn’t running. I was sinking.
I dreamt I was sitting on my bed as I am now. And I began to fall in. My head bobbed beneath the covers like bobbing below a wave. My legs were stuck to the inside of sheets, which was weird because I never sleep under them. y feet kicked and I struggled. Something had a hold on me, and my pillow seemed like a distant island. My covers rippled. I gasped for breath.
My head pounded. I shut my eyes. I shut my mouth and my covers brushed against it. Next thing I knew, I was deep inside the mattress.
I needed air.
I was dizzy. My muscles were tense and my stomach hurt. It is almost indescribable how hopeless I felt. Or maybe it is. I’m not much of a writer.
My feet touched the floor beneath my mattress. It felt like touching the ocean floor.
Then when I woke up I was paralyzed for a minute, and still holding my breath. Something is wrong. Every dream feels more and more real.
What the fuck am I becoming? I thought this was past me. I’m a scared little shit. I want to go back to the arcade. Back to laughing with Rose.
I can’t tell her about this. She’d freak.
I’m scared to fucking swim over a fucking dream. I think I’d cringe just looking at a photo of the ocean.
Stop being such a dingy broad, Valerie Hart.”
“I’ve calmed down. Maybe I’m doing it to my fucking self. I’m going to set this book down now. I’m gonna take a nice long shower. I’m gonna turn the water so high it’s boiling. Then I’m gonna get ready for school tomorrow.
God, maybe I haven’t calmed down…
Fuck.”
Chapter Eight
From Rose Hawthorn’s diary
“When I was four, and I held a helium balloon at my birthday party, my dad told me, ‘Valerie, be careful,” and pointed to one that some had let go of and was floating away. Then he said, “Or you’ll fly away with it.”
I think that’s how my fear of flights and heights started. I remember this pretty well. The next day I hid under my parents’ bed, and Mom found me. She asked why I was under there. I remember telling her, “So I don’t fly away with the balloons.”
She laughs about it every time.
I didn’t think about it for years. No reason to. But I remembered. And I remember once when we visited Whistler County, Chicago. Then went to downtown Chicago. The buildings horrified me. Every time I looked up… I felt I would fall into the sky.
I was dizzy passing by the buildings. I put my hoodie over my head as far as it could go. If I couldn’t see the buildings, I wouldn’t be scared.
One time—holy hell his is embarrassing—I went to church camp. Church camp. This is another time I got the ‘falling into the goddamn sky’ feeling. There was an open field between where the guy preached and the camp. So, I was walking back with these broads, and I looked at the sky, and I saw the moon even in the daytime. And I got dizzy and sweaty. My neck twitched and my shoulders raised. One of them looked back at me, confused as hell. She asked why I was looking at the sky. I shrugged and kept walking.
Amelia Earhart. Leaning about her in history bothered me. I remembered the balloon again. I still feel the little panic attack I had that day, thinking of the airplane crashing. I wonder how someone just disappears. Will I disappear? I always thought people never get away with that stuff. But she did. Poof.
Maybe she’s in the land of all the lost things. I’ve heard there’s a place where all lost things go. Socks, toys, pen caps, whatever.
It’s usually not my kind of music—I’d rather drink cat piss—the Buddy Holly plane crash from the 50s. Richie Valens lost half of his head. Those guys got it so damn bad. Part of me wonders if they went to hell.
I can’t fathom the terror of dying like that. The plane slowly going out of control, then speeding downwards and twirling in the air, the sudden realization that that was it, not having the chance to tell anyone goodbye, only screams and panic and then…
Shit.
The balloon thing followed me around in times where I didn’t even realize it did.
I can picture it: the second floor of Sears when I was a girl, I had a big jacket on and a scarf. My parents wanted to go down the escalator and I was frightened. It was a long way down. I pushed them away and cried. I was seven or eight. They took me to the elevator and I was fine when we got down. I still remember the obnoxious smirk the wetback in the elevator gave me. Laughing at me. I wanted to punch her. I made fun of her in the whole ride home.
That wouldn’t be the only time I couldn’t go down an escalator. Once there was a store that had no elevator. And I didn’t know. I was twelve then. I was shaking the whole way down.
Then there was the time I was little and at the park with Rose and Orion (the park was the best thing in the world to a botched abortion—kidding—like me). Orion pushed me high one time on the swing and I yelled for him to stop. When he stopped me I cried. I remembered the balloon.
My biggest fear (besides bugs) all comes from a damn balloon.”
From Valerie Hart’s diary
“I can see the moon again. The sky is a shade of dark gray. Thin rain spills across Carpenter. I like the rain. Water brings me back to another memory, one before the balloon. Mom told me, ‘Stop spilling stuff on the floor, honey, it’ll make bugs come.’
Being three, I took her seriously. She was in the bathroom later. I sat behind the door. To my right was the
locked bathroom door, to my left was the door to my room (at the time). I had a pink cup of water in my hand and spilled some of it and watched. I didn’t understand her words very well. I looked closely, my eyes never leaving the water.
‘Valerie?’ she said. ‘What’re you doing?’
And I said, ‘Shhh, Mom, I’m making bugs.’
I thought the water would turn into bugs.
I don’t remember what happened next. When Mom tells the story, it always ends there. She probably laughed and picked me up and hugged me. I imagine she got paper towels and cleaned it up. Maybe then we played and had cookies or something. Oh, to be three again…”
“I tried the tea Rose’s mom makes. Violet aspen. Violet aspen grows everywhere in Carpenter but not many other places. Most people haven’t heard of it. It’s made from the leaves. Some fucking old hippie thing about baking them first and adding just a dash of sugar. Or is it a pinch of sugar?
Damn hippies know how to make tea though. It was so good (and so hot) and I burned my tongue. I screamed ‘fuck’ and mom made me put ten dollars in the swear jar.
I can only imagine Rose’s mom in her hippie days. She and Mr. Hawthorn lived on the street. The hobo bitch probably gave him the clap.
My mom grew up in a nicer town. Gem City. Dad is from Radley. They met at a Christmas party. Mutual friends.
Dad’s big into history, collects World War II memorabilia. His parents passed on a lot of money to him. Mom’s not into much. She’s just mom. A housewife.
She was almost kidnapped in 1968, when she was six.
A man came to a town where no one feared. He butchered a schoolteacher named Mary Gardner. It was a Sunday. A week later a college girl was found strangled in the park. She was raped with a branch. The sick fucker.
Thing is, it was always a Sunday. Weekends were never safe. Cops were everywhere after a few weeks. They tried to make it safe again, and it didn’t work. Not yet.
The third Sunday, Lila Siegel was found with her head in her lap, a smile carved into her face. Her brother Joel shared a room with her, said he thought it was a dream. He was nine. My mom knew him and still keeps in touch. Joel said he thought he heard someone walking in their hallway and thought it was his parents. Then, he thought he was asleep when he saw the shadow of a man in his room. He thought it was all part of his dream. He said he woke up screaming, and Lila was gone.
The Sunday Slasher strangled a twenty-five-year-old nursery worker, Riley something or other, to death with her own ponytail. She had a thing for wigs and dolls and they all looked like her. Dozens of dolls (I saw the photos) all looked like her. All had long hair down to their backs. Just like Riley.
The Sunday after that there was a woman named Reagan that they found in the dumpster behind a hardware store. It was winter, and she was naked. There were no marks on her body. She was not raped (she died a virgin, from what I hear). No stabs, nothing. She froze in that dumpster. Makes you wonder… why didn’t she just leave? It wasn’t locked. There was snow on top of it that hadn’t been disturbed. She appeared to be perfectly normal in that dumpster, no signs of a fight or assault.
Then Rachel Moore died. Newspapers stuffed all down her throat. This guy was one twisted son of a bitch.
But Mom, you see, Mom almost met him. She knew him. They all did. He was the man who did window repairs for a living. He was in town for almost a year before he started to kill…
And my mom one day, she was six, was running around outside with her older sister, and the guy’s truck pulls up in front of them.
‘Hey, girls,’ he said. At least that’s what she remembers he said.
They walked close, and my aunt said hello.
He smiled at them with a sinister grin (mom says it was only a grin, but I see him in my mind with that ugly mustache looking like pubes across his lip, and his intentions to kill my mom and aunt… and to me, it’s sinister). He mumbled something they couldn’t hear. My mom and aunt went closer, and he said, ‘You girls look lovely today. You remind me of my little nieces. My sister Cheryl has a couple o’ girls who’re about your ages.’
Then grandma saw them and called from the window. She didn’t like him. She died when I was two. I think she was like me. Just what I hear. I probably get my mouth from her.
A week or two after that is when they got him.
Mom didn’t tell me that until a few years ago. I was nervous when she told me. I felt he’d reach under the bed and grab my feet. I felt him waiting in the closet. I felt he might have even waited outside the front or back door, with his grimy hands about to choke me at any moment
After she calmed me down, she told me the whole point was that soon I’d be going out with friends, and without her giving me rides. At the time, she said, ‘And you’ll have a permit then a license in no time.’ And after she went on about that for a while, she begged me (this is when it got weird) not to trust anybody unless she did.
Just like grandma. Like her mom.
The Sunday Slasher, he had lunch with my grandpa once, when the slasher first came to town. Grandpa was nice to him. Grandma never liked the look of him.
Then when she got past the bullshit, it got weirder. It was a HUGE truckload of bullshit. She said: ‘Your grandma saved me from a killer, and I feel I have a debt to pay in return, like I owe her, Valerie. Mom’s dead now. And I feel that one day I might have to repay it by saving you, and I’m scared for you, my angel. I never want anything to hurt you.’
Mom went through a religious phase in her teens and I don’t think she ever truly stopped. I think she’s terrified of sinning and going to hell. I think she’s terrified that God might punish her for her kids not being perfect little Sunday School angels.
One day, Mom dropped the whole act. She stopped being religious… and never told me why. I think something happened to her. I think somebody did something to her. But I’ve heard of the nights after from Aunt Pattie.
I feel like an asshole writing it here.
Aunt Pattie told me Mom started to get wild after she dropped the church thing. Wanted to play catch-up for all the time she lost. She went drinking every night. Apparently she started to sleep around. I didn’t inherit her sluttiness, thank God. This was the early 80s. Mom got a back-alley abortion. She came home crying and hugged Aunt Pattie and cried some more.
Then she cried about it for two years until she was over it.
Mom murdered my older sibling before he or she had a chance at the world. That makes me mad at the bimbo.
She probably thinks God’ll strike her down with lightning for it. Mom wasn’t an angel, but Dad damn near was. Near perfect grades and whatever the fuck else. I don’t know how they even got together. They must’ve been terrible for each other.
They stuck through it and here I am.”
Chapter Nine
From Rose Hawthorn’s diary
“I had another dream.
Her name was Athena Hendrasen. I never met her before the dream. We sat on a dark beach, the moon giving us a hint of light, and the water looking like black glass. The ocean didn’t move. Thin color rose in her cheeks.
‘I’m Athena,’ she said from a few feet away. We never got any closer.
I sat down in the sand and my fingers buried themselves in the strangely warm shore. I sighed and looked up. The sky looked like the big black eyes of a dragon, with the way the clouds formed into two tiny circles. I imagined a lot had happened on the beach. I pictured candy wrappers and barbeques. I thought of young children swimming for the first time, with forty floaties on and still clinging to their parents.
And I replied to Athena, ‘I think I know you. Do I?’
‘You did. Once.’ Athena sat down too.
And I asked what she meant. She told me there was a long line of us.
Us?
Then it smelled of rotting wood. I looked at the ocean now as she talked. It started to move in ungodly motions. It moved like a marionette of glass. Sickly cold came over me. I felt gross.<
br />
‘But maybe you’ll be different this time,’ Athena said. ‘Somebody must be. Somebody among us must be.’
‘Us?’ I asked her. ‘You keep fucking saying that. What is us?’
‘You’re sick,’ Athena said.
I clenched my stomach and leaned on my side. I was sick. I felt it in my stomach suddenly then threw up. My eyes then moved from the green mess back to the ocean. Millions of red dots looked back to me from beneath the waves (which had stopped moving).
When I woke up, the irrational childhood fear came back to me as my foot was out from under the cover and hanging off the bed. I pulled it back quickly. Nothing could get me if I were under the covers. Not the balloon, not the bugs, not an airplane, not the Sunday Slasher, not Athena Hendrasen, not anyone.
I tried to sleep again. Sleep did not come.
I watched videos on my phone all night. That’s all there was to do.
It’s Tuesday.
School was fine besides when I walked in on two dykes kissing. Gross.”
From Valerie Hart’s diary
“I need to write about good things. Maybe that’s my damn problem. Maybe that’s why I get the fucking nightmares. I need to look at the good. And of course I sound like a pretentious douchebag in saying that. I sound like some beach blondie twig who goes on and on about ‘it’s all in your head’ don’t I?
But dammit I want to feel good. Here it goes.
I have a crush like you wouldn’t believe. I talked to him today, his name is Avery Mitchell.
He’s handsome but that’s just the start. The fucker can paint. And he makes me laugh. But I haven’t talked to him outside of school.
But the good part is we talked today.
‘Hey, Avery,’ I said. I sat next to him, and he was drawing something in his notebook. ‘I like your drawing.’
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