I said, YOU’RE WELCOME.
Now you were born exactly the same way I was. You’re indebted to me always because I wished you to life. YOU HAVE THIS MIRACULOUS GIFT OF LIFE BECAUSE OF MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE. So massage my weak sphincter with this four-way massager so I can take a solid poop. KIDDING. Ha ha. Except it’s not funny at all.
I don’t really know what difference it’ll make to you to be alive now. Except that maybe I won’t bring you into the bathroom anymore. Because that’s kinda cruel now that you can breathe.
Wished to life like me. So I love you now and you’ve gotta love me. Because I’m your mother and your father. You’re mine. And you’ll be whatever I want you to be.
12. Nathanial Holcomb, a doctor and abolitionist, originally built the estate in 1847.
13. Holcomb did indeed have a son. He wrote an essay on the subject of sensory depravation, discipline, and punishment using his son as a test subject. It seems from this section that Noelle was aware of the experiment and likely the subsequent essay. Sensory depravation punishment, also known as “white torture,” is said to cause the loss of a sense of self and personal identity. After Holcomb died, the essay was found and published as more of a horror story than a scientific document.
14. Many attempts have been made to contact Noelle Dixon’s mother, Roberta Eldridge. She currently lives with her second husband, Richard Eldridge, and their two daughters in Swift Current, Saskatchewan. All we really know at this point is she divorced Herman Dixon quickly and quietly, handing over custody of Noelle immediately after she was born and with apparent ease, judging from their lawyers’ records. She disappeared completely from their lives after that. Both of Roberta’s parents had already died before Noelle was born; however, they too had lived in King City and were considered friendly, though private, members of the community. Herman’s parents are also dead.
Fifth Entry
Diary, I don’t know how I went the first month 15 of the summer without you. I guess that’s my boredom threshold. One month. And after that I start going insane. Insane enough to start writing in a diary.
So far no other scary thing has happened in my room. Just that light on and that door closing. Which really, when I think back on it, wasn’t even that scary. It was definitely weird but I didn’t feel like, you know, anything was going to pop out and hurt me or whatever.
Maybe it’s kind of nice to know that you never have to leave a place if you don’t want to. That I could just kill myself here, right now, and haunt the inn forever, kill myself and be away from Herman instead of actually running away, which, really, would be a lot of work. And maybe it’s great to be dead here, better than heaven, for so many souls to want to stay.
Become a BUMP IN THE NIGHT.
Diary, you might be what’s keeping me safe from the BUMPS IN THE NIGHT. I’m not alone anymore, with you next to me in bed. Maybe if I didn’t have you, whatever closed the bathroom door would have snuck out in the middle of the night and sliced open my throat, so fast I’d never know what hit me.
But it’s the least you can do, you know, being as I gave you LIFE. Geez.
15. We know Noelle’s start date at the inn was June 1st, so this sentence indicates that the first entry in the diary, as well as the incident that took place in her bedroom, occurred in early July.
Sixth Entry
So diary, now that you’re alive and you’ll be working at the inn here with me, I’ll explain how it works: Alfred and I can sleep at night if we want to, but at least one of us has to be “on-call,” which means that we keep this light-up buzzer thing in our room that connects to the front door and goes off if someone walks into the foyer. Oh, and the on-call person also has to redirect calls from the front desk to the phone next to their bed in case one of the guests needs something.
Alf and I were no strangers to the stories about the inn, obviously, 16 so for the first
little while neither of us could sleep. And when the buzzer was in my room I could only stare at it, shallow breaths, just on the edge of screaming, waiting waiting for it to light up and for me to have to go downstairs and find a corpse slouching in the foyer, staring at me with cold dead eyes.
It happened once. Not the corpse with the cold dead eyes, thank god. But once the buzzer buzzed in the middle of the night and I clutched my chest and kicked my legs and screamed at the top of my lungs, blankets flying, and Alf came barging into my room screaming too, “What’s wrong what’s wrong what’s wrong?!” and I pointed at the buzzer and he immediately understood because he felt the same way when it was in his room at night, worried and terrified and just WAITING for it to light up.
So we went downstairs together and found a very old, very thin man in the front foyer who claimed to be speaking at a conference the next day about the effects of a reduced calorie diet on life expectancy. He smelled of wet, wadded towels and when you looked at him straight-on, as we had to from behind the front desk, his hunched shoulders made it look as though his head were a hunting trophy, mounted onto his chest. After we checked him in, we carried his luggage up the stairs and he handed us both pamphlets instead of tips. For the record, the secret to a longer life is not better than money.
Anyway, neither of us could fall asleep again for the rest of the night.
He can’t be our slasher either. No ghosts. Our slasher has to be flesh and blood so he can kill anywhere, not just the inn. Important for sequels.
A lot of people say they’ve seen HIM here. Nathanial Holcomb himself 17 still creeping around THE HAUNTED INN. Previous guests claimed to have seen him standing over their beds at night, slamming their windows shut, passing through their walls, wheezing some cryptic message into their ears right before sleep overcomes them
Most of our very few guests are here for the novelty. People who have heard the stories and want to see ghosts or experience PARANORMAL PHENOMENA; 18 people who live far enough away from King City to not take it seriously. Because the people in town take it very seriously. Locals always cross the street when they get too near. Apparently the mailman even insisted on having a separate box built at the end of the block so he wouldn’t have to set foot on the porch. Olivia 19 hates the mailman now. She calls him a superstitious fool and won’t even say hi to him when she sees him in town.
You can imagine what she thinks of our novelty guests.
But anyway, I think a lot of people lie. About seeing stuff here. Not that stuff doesn’t happen, obviously it does, but I don’t think so many guests are seeing it.
Or maybe they’re not lying but they want so bad to have actually seen something that they make themselves see something.
Because to me it actually feels like the house is at its MOST quiet on those nights when we have novelty visitors staying. Conspicuously quiet. As though whatever or whoever makes “bumps in the night” is spiteful and funny and doesn’t want to give anyone the satisfaction. At least that’s what I tell myself when I’ve been really scared of seeing something. That like, wanting to see something, or even just pretending you do, means you probably won’t.
We’ve got a lot of stupid rules like that. Stuff we’ve made up to protect ourselves because we’re scared and can never really know what the hell is going on here. For example, Alf and I flick the basement light on and off five times before we leave it on, so that the ghosts know that they can’t pop out if they wanna be seen. Because that’s just rude. Because we’ve warned them, told them we’re coming, given them plenty of time to set themselves up in a non-terrifying way if they really want to be seen.
We’ve even gone as far as to write these things down and tack them up behind the desk where guests can’t see. 20
We add to the rules as we go.
“Bumps in the night.” That’s how Olivia always puts it. “There are bumps in the night here and don’t you go looking for them.”
Olivia told us that sh
e used to work the nightshift all alone.
Most of her life she’d been on one nightshift or another. Gas stations and grocery stores, one of those sharp older cashier ladies who’ve seen it all, but not in the way that she’s always trying to give you advice or butt into your business, because she’s seen it all so she knows how annoying that is. She was just a regular person who’d conditioned herself to an alternative circadian clock. But now she couldn’t work nightshifts anymore. She wouldn’t stay at the inn after dark. She’d had a nightmare, she said. And the doctor told her she should be home at night from now on.
We were scared and everything but both Alf and I, on some level, really want to see something.
Alf because of his sister. He said that instead of being scared it would make him happy to know that she hadn’t just disappeared into nothing after she flailed to death.
And me, I don’t know why. I guess just because it would be exciting.
And Olivia’s “nightmare” wasn’t really a “nightmare.” That’s just what she started calling it after the doctor got involved and told her IT MUST HAVE BEEN A NIGHTMARE.
She told us that before the doctor came and pulled her off the nightshift, she was positive that the nightmare was real. That Wink 21 was stripping off long ribbons of her flesh and sucking them up like spaghetti. And the pain was real and his cold hands were real and she could hear it, her skin stretched to snapping, the grip of her flesh on her bones coming loose.
Not that either Alf or I want something like that to happen to us. But something, yeah. Like, something more than what happened to me in my bedroom. That was creepy and everything, but now when I think back on it I’m not even sure it really happened, because maybe I was tired and maybe it was a dream. And if I hadn’t written it all down in you, diary, maybe I would have forgotten it completely by now.
But Alf hasn’t seen anything yet, or maybe he has but he’s forgotten because he isn’t writing anything down in his JOURNAL.
Alf is a little bit older than me. So, like a diary has implied authority, Alf has implied authority. Which is really annoying.
We’re at the front desk now. It’s long and wide and made of wood, with lots of cupboards underneath, some locked and some open, filled with printer paper and a pathetic lost-and-found box. We each have our own rolling chair and we take turns standing when Olivia’s around and needs one too.
The desk looks out over the lobby: a piano with a long bench, six strange armless chairs, a tall fireplace surrounded by antique pokers and brushes, all of it collecting dust that Alf and I are supposed to clean off daily but don’t. The main floor is totally carpeted so footsteps are fresh-snow quiet. It’s orange and brown and I’d love to drift into its patterned space but I don’t wanna put my face on the floor.
The lighting is sort of weird here, a stretch of too-bright bulbs running above our desk so that everything else looks too dark by comparison.
Alf and I are both sitting in our chairs here. We have one guest upstairs. A woman who wore a long black coat and carried her few belongings in a cloaked birdcage. When Alf reached for it to carry it up for her she pulled it away from him, startled, and said, “I can do it myself, young man,” and eyed him up and down like he was a criminal. Poor Alf. She was in the city to attend her great-grandniece’s baptism. She seemed like the kind of relative who was only invited to the really boring stuff.
Anyway, we’re both sitting in our chairs at the front desk and I’m writing in here and Alf is playing Solitaire and he just said, “Noelle, did you ever notice that there are two ‘I’s in solitaire? Isn’t that weird? Like, it seems kind of deliberate, doesn’t it? Considering what the word means?”
“Geez, Alf, I think you’re really onto something.”
“Well, it is kinda weird, isn’t it? It doesn’t take two ‘I’s to play Solitaire. Get it?”
“Oh, I get it alright. You better watch your back, man. Information like that has a way of placing people in shallow graves.”
“Goddamit, Noelle, I’m just making an observation.”
“Tell me, what are you observing right now, in my face?”
“You think what I just said is the most insightful thing you’ve ever heard.”
And I rolled my eyes and Alfred told me I rolled my eyes like a sixteen-year-old and I called him a pervert. He really doesn’t like when I call him a pervert lately. I think because he feels like kind of a pervert for having a crush on me, even though he’s only a year older than me and I’m not a virgin and he is.
That’s actually a good example of why Alf having a crush on me is annoying. Suddenly I can’t call him a pervert anymore. I used to do this impression of him before, Alfred the Virgin Pervert, where he’s this sicko who’s got these really foul perversions but they never get far because he blows his load too soon, being a virgin and all. So like, I do this voice all low and breathy and pervy and say something like, “Then I show the child the candy and the child reaches for it and uuuuuugh god, oh yes oh yes yes yes!” and Alf the Virgin Pervert ejaculates everywhere. And we used to laugh really hard. But now all of a sudden, Alf doesn’t wanna be made fun of for being a virgin. Or a pervert.
I wonder what his expectations are for when he finally has sex.
Actually I think I know. He wants it to feel like when you hug someone so hard, so hard you just want them to burst because only that bursting will show them how much you love them, and that’s what Alf thinks sex will be like, actually making that person you love burst, really showing them how you feel, bursting together even, so that every new surface area of every burst bit can touch, touching like never ever before.
That’s what Alf wants.
That’s how Alf started acting when he got the crush. It’s how I knew. Like he wanted to make me burst. Which maybe means he loves me? I don’t know. I just wish he’d stop. It stresses me out to think that this, our being friends, could be ruined somehow.
I’ve been picking at my scalp all morning. I just can’t seem to stop now that I’ve started. I promise myself that each little hunk I dig out will be the last. Then it’s not. Then I’m bleeding and it looks terrible and I’ve gotta hide it under my hair with a ponytail.
This is the first time in my life I’m happy I’ve got brown hair.
Olivia is outside smoking right now. She’s wearing a short-sleeved shirt today. I know this sounds terrible, but I really wish she wouldn’t expose us to her body. Her arms look like overcooked chicken wings, a thin, dry membrane connecting her forearm to her biceps. When something as fucked-up-looking as Olivia’s arms peek out from beneath clothes it’s hard not to imagine what her fucked-up naked body must look like.
Then it’s really hard to stop.
I see braided ligaments beneath tinted saran wrap.
Alf said it probably looks like someone stuck a vacuum hose up her butt and sucked everything soft out.
I never want to get old. You can’t even wear a ponytail when you get old. Olivia wears one and it makes her look strange and creepy before you get to know her and realize that she’s not.
I said that out loud once, that I never want to get old, and Alf said, “I think you’ll be a good-looking old lady.”
See, if he were just my friend he’d never say anything like that. If he were just my friend he’d call me a hag. That’s another good example of why Alf’s crush is annoying.
Anyway. Olivia. Poor old Olivia. Slowly thawing to daytime life. Almost like a mitten lost in autumn, snowed on and frozen stiff through winter, revealed soaking wet and twisted up in summer.
The only parts of Olivia that simply refuse to thaw are the first two fingers of her left hand; she keeps them clawed and erect and applies pressure to an imaginary cigarette that becomes real on the front porch every fifteen minutes. You can almost see a meter above her head, like a thermometer but not for temperature, getting higher and higher and her getting
bitchier and bitchier the longer she spends inside with an empty claw and at 15 minutes the meter spews from the top and she’ll power-walk to the porch to reset.
You should see the way she smokes.
Deep drags. Much deeper than her regular wheezy breathing. It’s funny how a smoker like Olivia can only take deep breaths when it’s cigarette smoke they’re inhaling, regular air being too thin and boring. Regular air makes her cough and spit and wretch. She can’t laugh in regular air.
On windless nights she’ll release big smoky mouthfuls, then gobble them back up again fast. Almost teasing them: You’ll never escape, you must pleasure my lungs again and again until you’re NOTHING!
“Double the value,” she once said of her unique smoking method.
And then she tried to laugh regular air and coughed. Or maybe she didn’t actually cough but it just seemed like she should have. Let’s just say she coughed, because it’s better that way.
It’s hard to imagine that Olivia was ever someone’s daughter. A fresh little baby all soft and new and warm.
There are five cats that come and go as they please around here, in and out through a basement window Olivia insists we keep open all the time, even when it’s raining outside. Olivia says that they keep the rat problem in check but really she just loves them and wants them around. Sometimes when she sits outside in her chair on the porch she’ll take her shoes off and let them lick and nibble at the dried skin peeling off her feet. Her tissue face twisted: tickled, delighted.
Other times she lays her head over the back of the chair, skin fallen in slow globs, pooling under, away from her skull, so you can see up close just how near the elderly really are to death.
Pinched shut eyes and that vacant mouth. Olivia’s mouth so dark inside and crisp around the edges it looks burned into her tissue face with one of her cigarettes.
The Boy Meets Girl Massacre (Annotated) Page 4
