Or you could just donate $295 to the Bowery mission. What a fucking extravagant waste.
By the Seashore
Well, its been a few days since I’ve written anything. So here’s a thousand or so words. I’m up to 36,000 total so far. Which, in theory, means I’m only 14,000 words away from finishing this story. We’ll see though. Of course, finishing the story is really only the first baby step. I know I have a lot of rewrites to do, not to mention entire scenes I still need to write. Pictures to add. Little stories to tell. More mysteries to solve. Characters to round out (ie. Quinn the Cardboard statue, Generic Mom) But I guess that’s the fun part. Anyways, you’ll all have to wait quite a while for that as I’m not going to be posting those things. You get the first draft. You want the real deal, you’re going to have to wait until (if) I get it published. I think I can, I think I can, I think I can.
#ramble
—-
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“For what?” Duncan asks.
“About Alane.”
“Its not your fault,” Duncan says.
“And I’m sorry to bother you with all this. I’m sure I’m not your favourite person right now. But do you remember anything about the person that delivered the parcel?”
“Why would you say that?” Duncan asks.
Maria butts in: “I answered the door. He was…” Maria trails off. She frowns and looks up and to the left, looking for a picture of the man in her head I guess. “I don’t really remember. She says. I know he was tall. But…its strange, I’m usually so good with faces.”
Tall. That’s a start. I think back to the morning when I got the not-shell. I try to picture the man who delivered it. Tall, yes. But I search for a face or for any other detail. A rough age. A hair colour, smell. Anything. But as soon as I try to focus on what the man looked like, my mind wanders. The harder I try to think about him, the harder it is to focus.
“I think it was the same guy who delivered something to me and my friend Tuesday.” I quickly explain about the not-shell, the View Master, the stone, the bag and the notes. I tell Duncan and Maria that we think there’s something more to the things we’ve found.
“Or it could be some creep just messing with you guys,” Maria says.
“But why?” I ask.
Maria shrugs. “Who knows. People are strange.”
“No. There’s more to this,” I tell Maria. She’s starting to seem irritated now and I’m getting the feeling I’ve overstayed my welcome here.
I know I should go, but I feel this need to make Maria believe the things I’ve told to her and Duncan.
“Is there a sink nearby?” I ask.
She points across the other side of the room and asks “Why?”
“Watch.”
So we walk over to the sink and I open the lid of the jar. Instantly, the smell of salt and motor oil seeps into the air. I slowly tip the jar over the sink and a stream of dark blue liquid pours out, splashes into the sink and swirls down the drain. I keep pouring for close to a minute and when I stop and show her the jar it is still exactly half full.
“Can I see that?” she asks and I hand her the jar. She looks inside and dips her finger in. She swirls it around to make sure there’s actually liquid inside. Then she turns it completely upside down over the sink. When she rights it and holds it up the jar is empty and for a moment she has a self-satisfied smile that says she somehow figured out my trick. Personally, I’m feeling kind of shocked too. Then, blue-black liquid bubbles up from the bottom of the jar and it slowly fills itself halfway up.
“You need to go,” she tells me. Her tone is so forceful that I’m immediately compelled to leave. I screw the lid back on the jar and as I walk out of the room I hear Duncan call
“See you soon, Noah,” he says.
I leave the hospital feeling angry and frustrated. What the hell did I just accomplish? I really thought I would have some answers by now. But I have nothing. I think Maria was right. This is just some creep messing with us. Maybe we are all secretly being filmed for some kind of reality TV show and in a few years Tuesday and I will look back on this and laugh at how stupid we were. How couldn’t we see the signs? The special effects? How stupid we looked believing in whatever this is (magic).
“You win!” I scream at the side of my car. “I’m fucking done with this.”
I get in and sit in the driver’s seat and text Tuesday:
Visited Duncan. He got jar in mail just like us. I’m done. I’m fucking done with this game.
Don’t. Come on we are so close. We have to be missing something. Come over Here tonight.
No. This is so fucking stupid. This game is ruining my life. I can’t focus at work. I gapped out last shift for 15 minutes.
Noah. Please. Quinn and I have been looking at notes. We just need to put it in the right order or something.
No. I need to forget about all this. Sorry.
She text me back something, but I ignore it. I open the window and throw the jar as hard as I can against the ground. Instead of smashing it bounces up like a rubber ball and off somewhere into the ditch. I drive home forcing myself not to look back.
Both Jacob and his sister had hoped that getting rid of the magic bag would stop the nightmares. It didn’t. They got worse. Until it began to feel like they were living a whole other life inside their dreams. When one of them awoke in the middle of the night from a dream they would tiptoe to the other’s room and shut the door. Inevitably the other would be awake. They would sit on the floor and compare dreams. Though after a few days comparing became pointless. Their dreams were the same. Their perspectives were different but the events were identical. It became obvious that whatever magic they were suffering it was shared.
“Is everything all right?” Mom asked them one evening at dinner.
“Yeah,” Jacob said. But he wondered if Mom could hear them talking at night.
“Olivia?” she asked.
“Yeah.” Olivia responded and stuffed her mouth with hamburger.
“Olivia?” Mom asked again and fixed the girl with that horrible mom stare that destroyed Olivia’s already meagre ability to lie.
“I can’t sleep,” she said.
“What’s the matter, honey?”
Olivia looked over at her brother for guidance, but his head was drooping and his eyes flickering closed.
“I keep having nightmares.”
“Well why don’t you come wake me up?”
“Don’t want to.”
Mom looked over at Jacob and saw him about to fall asleep in his dinner.
“Jake, are you having trouble sleeping too?”
Jacob nodded.
“Well, talk to me guys, what’s bugging you?”
The kids were silent by mutual agreement never to tell mom about the magic bag.
“Is it. Because of dad?” She asked.
The kids shook their heads, neither one of them wanting to talk about Dad.
“Can I move into Jacob’s room?” Olivia asked.
“Kiddo, you don’t want to bug your brother do you?”
But Jacob’s response surprised both Mom and Olivia. “Can she? Please.”
That night, they moved Olivia’s bed into Jacob’s room down the hall. Mom said she could put up some of her posters on her side of the room so it felt more like hers. But Olivia shrugged. She just wanted to sleep in the same room as her brother.
In their dream that night. Olivia and her brother were on a raft which washed ashore on a sandy beach somewhere strange. For now, they knew they were safe from the Shadow Men. But there was someone here they needed to find. An ancient witch who would tell them the secret to getting the Shadow Men to stop chasing them. Where she was though, that remained a mystery and neither one of them got the sense that they had much time to find this witch.
Olivia woke up first this time. It was still dark out and her heart was pounding and it took her a few seconds to figure out where she was in the black house.
“Jacob? Are you there?” she asked.
“I’m still here,” he whispered.
“Okay,” Olivia said and went back to sleep.
Balcony, iced tea, writing. Perfect.
