by A. R. Wise
“She’s tall, for a girl, and thin. She’s got black hair that used to be long, but she just got it cut…”
“Do you know how she died?” Oliver leaned forward as he asked and his elbow pushed against his computer’s keyboard.
“She’s not dead, you asshole,” said Paul. “She’s downstairs in a coma because of whatever you…”
Oliver interrupted him, “You have no recollection of her dying in the lake?”
“No, because that never happened.”
“Damn it,” said Oliver, confused and disgruntled. “I believe you about Alma, but I was certain she was dead. I thought maybe a psychic that I worked with several years ago might’ve tried to trick me by implanting memories into that notebook.”
“This? How?” asked Paul as he turned the simple notebook over.
“She had psychometric abilities. That’s where a person can pull memories out of inanimate objects.”
“No kidding?” asked Paul.
Oliver nodded and continued as he reclined in his seat and stared at the blank screen of his computer. “Some people with her ability can imprint memories into objects, but she never told us she could do it. Seeing Alma downstairs made me question whether or not this girl had imprinted a false memory into that notebook.”
Paul dropped the pad onto the table and it opened to a drawing of the city council office of Amelia Reven. The picture depicted a woman lying dead on the floor, her face turned to the side and a pen sticking halfway out of her mouth.
“Three or four days ago I would’ve called you crazy for believing in something like that, but now I don’t know what to believe,” said Paul.
Oliver leaned forward and picked up the notebook. “Yeah, me neither.”
He flipped through the pages. There were various pictures, all of them well drawn, depicting the scenes in the homes and businesses throughout Widowsfield as Nia had described them. Then he got back to the very first drawing, a simple line that Nia had drawn to represent her theory about how the time lines in Widowsfield had fractured.
Oliver recalled something that Nia had said when they were in the high school library just after the girl had been brought to the town.
“I think I can explain it better with a drawing. I’ve always been better at drawing the things I can remember instead of explaining them.”
Oliver flipped through the notebook again, and reviewed the various pictures. Before that day, all of the notes in the little blue book were by hand, but afterwards it was filled with pictures. Oliver recognized occasional sentences here and there that he’d scrawled in the notebook, but the vast majority of the pages were pictures depicting the scenes in Widowsfield leading up to the event on March 14th, 1996.
The very last picture was of a broken guard rail overlooking the Jackson Reservoir.
Oliver set the notebook down and started to curse as he rifled through the contents of his desk drawer. He yelled at Paul to stay back as he searched for a USB drive, and then shouted in triumph when he found it before sticking it into his desktop.
“What’s going on?” asked Paul.
“I’m not sure,” said Oliver as he turned on his monitor and then opened the USB’s file. He stopped before clicking on the recording that had been taken inside of the cabin when Nia had recounted the scene for Lee to sketch in the notebook. “If I’m not crazy, then this video will show me in the cabin five years ago, with a colleague of mine and a young black girl. She was the one with the psychometric ability, and we used her to help us recreate the town to look like it did in ’96. I haven’t watched this video in a long time, because it’s easier to just use Lee’s notes.”
A pinwheel appeared on the screen as the video loaded.
“Come on, come on,” said Oliver as Paul walked closer to get a better view of the screen.
The video began with Oliver’s younger, beardless face staring out at them. He had just set up the camera on the far side of the den, and when he walked away they saw Terry’s cabin as it had looked five years ago, before being reconstructed. The hidden camera that had captured Amanda Harper’s ritual had been taken out a month earlier because Lee wanted it posted in a different part of town. When they returned to the house with Nia, they brought a new camera along.
The video showed Oliver as he walked over to the door of the house, opened it, and then called out for Nia. A moment later, the young black girl came in. She had a pencil tucked behind her ear.
“Do you have the notebook?” asked Oliver of Nia as the girl entered.
Nia pulled the blue notebook out of her windbreaker and smiled before flipping it open to start drawing what she could remember.
Oliver bolted up, sending his chair to the wall behind him.
“You all right?” asked Paul.
Oliver blinked rapidly and shook his head. His skin turned paler than it already was and when he looked at Paul he appeared terrified. He spoke in a whisper, “My assistant.”
“What?” asked Paul.
“My assistant, Lee.”
“What about him?”
Oliver looked back at the screen to watch as Nia sketched the scene in her notebook.
“Lee never existed.”
Lost in Widowsfield
“Someone tell me what the hell’s going on,” said Rachel as she looked at the children walking along the side of the road. She was in the passenger seat now, after convincing her husband that he should be the one sitting beside Aubrey. Outside of Rachel’s window there was a line of young girls, all elementary age children, walking in the same direction that Alma was driving.
“They’re going to the reservoir,” said Alma.
“What for?” asked Stephen.
“I don’t know,” said Alma as she tried to recall pieces of several memories that swirled in her head. “Some of the children in town would talk about a witch. The Skeleton Man called her a liar, but I think he just wanted me to stay away from her.” Alma pointed over the steering wheel at a parking lot on the right side of the road ahead. “There’s the spot.
A crowd of little girls had gathered.
“Oh my God!” Rachel screamed and covered her mouth.
“What?” asked Jacker as he leaned between the seats to see what was going on.
“One of the little girls just jumped off. Holy shit. Stop the van!”
Alma stopped in the middle of the road, unable to pull to the side because of the line of young girls that were walking to join the crowd. Alma hadn’t seen the girl fall off the edge like Rachel had, but was still unnerved by what was happening here.
Rachel’s door was open before the van had come to a complete stop. She leapt out as soon as she could while the others struggled to follow behind. Alma put the van in park, but by the time she got out Rachel was screaming at the children.
“Get away from the edge! What the hell is going on here? Step back!”
“Hello, Alma,” said a young, thin child from within the crowd. The other girls parted as the speaker stepped forward. It was the same girl that Alma had seen at the cabin; the one that had gotten in Amanda Harper’s car. “I’m happy you came.”
She was in a simple white dress that was soaking wet and clung to her body. Her black hair was stuck to her forehead, and streams of water ran down them and over her cheeks. Above, birds crowded in the trees, but stayed silent except for the rustle of their wings.
More birds were flying toward them. They rose up from the side of the cliff, and were moving slower than seemed natural. Then Alma noticed that the other children and her friends were all moving at a crawl, as if they were trapped in a different time stream while Alma spoke with the girl that The Skeleton Man called a witch and a liar.
“Who are you?”
“I’m you,” said the child. “Or at least I tried to be.”
“I don’t understand,” said Alma.
“I know. I tried to keep you away from here, but I guess there are some things that are pointless to fight against.” She took Alma’s
hand and pulled her gently so that they both walked through the crowd of parted children to the cliff’s edge. They walked past the paved area and into a short expanse of grass before reaching the metal guard rail. The little girl placed her hand on the curved metal and it broke in half. The severed edges bent outward until there was a wide gap. Nothing prevented them from walking forward to the edge, and the girl sat down. She draped her legs over the cliff and invited Alma to do the same.
“I’m not a big fan of heights,” said Alma.
“Don’t worry, death is but a doorway. But you can’t fall unless you want to.”
Alma glanced back at her friends and saw that they were no longer moving. The birds above were frozen in place, some even stuck in midair like a fly in syrup, caught in flight.
Alma sat beside the girl who smiled up at her before pointing out to the lake. “Do you see the ship?”
Alma looked, but saw nothing on the lake. “No.”
“I know it must be hard for you to be here and think of anything other than Amanda,” said the child.
Alma nodded as she looked back at the broken guard rail. She knew this place well. This was where her mother had committed suicide by driving herself off the edge of the cliff. It had been a week after she’d visited the cabin with Alma, and her spiraling depression had overwhelmed her. She drove Alma back to Chicago, and dropped her off at a family member’s home before going back to Widowsfield. Amanda Harper wrote a letter of apology to her parents, and to her children, and left it under a rock beside the guard rail before driving off the edge.
Alma saw the paper stuck under the rock, just five feet or less to her right.
“It’s not a bad thing to remember our worst days,” said the little girl as she held Alma’s hand. “But it’s important that we learn to move on.”
“I’ve had a lot of bad days,” said Alma.
The little girl set the side of her head against Alma’s arm and said, “I know you have. But you can’t let those bad days ruin the ones you’ve got left to live.”
“What happened here?” asked Alma. “Why are we stuck in this town, reliving these same awful memories?”
“I wish I could tell you,” said the girl, “but that’s up to you to find out. I wasn’t able to figure it all out before I had to leave. But I keep coming back to give it a try, once every year.”
“I don’t understand,” said Alma. “When did you leave? I thought you were part of me.”
The girl shook her head. “No, I’m a lie. I was put here by a woman with a rare gift; a woman that was trying her best to protect you. Her name was Rosemary Arborton, and her gift let her see the things that happened here in the past. She used her gift to change what the town could remember, and she tried to keep you from returning.”
“Why?”
“Because one of the creatures stuck here wanted to use you to get out.”
“You’re talking about Ben,” said Alma. “They call him The Skeleton Man here.”
“Oh, Alma, The Skeleton Man isn’t your brother.”
“What?”
“Your brother’s here, just like everyone else. He’s part of the memory of Widowsfield. The Skeleton Man is a wicked creature, born of hate and anger. He was comprised of all the worst parts of the memories of this place.”
“No, you’re wrong,” said Alma. “He was my brother, but grown up.”
“Alma,” the little girl looked at her as if in condolence. “No one grows up in a memory.”
“But I traded places with him. He made me be the one to bring the water in, and he stayed back with the butcher knife. We switched roles, and then I saw him driving away in my father’s car when every other time it had been me. What does that mean?”
The girl took her hand away and stood up. She paced and grinded her thumb into her other palm as she thought about what Alma had revealed. “He must’ve used you to create a lie.”
“What does that mean?” asked Alma as she stood up.
“Everything here is a lie; a manipulation of sorts. The Watcher in the Walls has been here for as far back as I was ever able to remember, just hiding and watching, always watching. He knows what’s true and what’s a lie, or at least he thinks he does. That’s how I’ve been able to hide from him, and that’s probably what The Skeleton Man took advantage of.”
“How?” asked Alma.
“When you returned to Widowsfield with your mother, you used some sort of magic to remember the past, right?”
“My mother used it. She practiced something called Chaos Magick. That’s where you focus on a symbol to help you achieve a desire. She was obsessed with the number 314, and made me focus on the symbol for pi. She used to write that damn number and symbol over everything.”
“Well, whatever she did, it worked,” said the little girl. “The Watcher in the Walls stole Ben’s memories of you, because he wanted to own the boy’s sadness. He used that fear and hatred to create the terror that has haunted Widowsfield, and he wanted Ben to feel a total sense of loss and betrayal. Having a memory of you would give him something to cling to in his darkest moments. When you came back, and remembered Ben, it was a shock to Widowsfield, and The Skeleton Man recognized a lie.”
“Recognized a lie?” Alma was confounded by what the girl was trying to explain.
“The Watcher in the Walls is the one that guides the others, but once The Skeleton Man discovered something that the Watcher had forgotten, he was able to manipulate it. While the Watcher toyed with the people of Widowsfield, The Skeleton Man was planning how he could use you to pull himself away from here. Rosemary discovered this when she spent time at Terry’s house, and that’s why she tried to trick the people that were rebuilding the town. That’s why she put me here, as a lie. She convinced them that you had died here, so that the people that caused the fracture wouldn’t come looking for you.”
“What’s a fracture?”
The girl looked apologetic as she shrugged. “It’s still a mystery. We know that an event occurred right out there, in the middle of the lake, that brought the Watcher out of the walls, but we don’t know what it was.”
Alma looked out at the water and saw a faint image of a massive battleship. It seemed out of place, far too large for such a small lake, and there was white smoke billowing from the mast.
“I see the ship,” said Alma. “At least I think I do. It’s fading in and out. It’s not stuck in time the way the rest of this is. Why is that? How did you do this?”
“I didn’t,” said the girl. “You did.”
“How?”
“Perhaps with that,” said the girl as she pointed at the teddy bear keychain in Alma’s palm.
“I didn’t even realize I was holding this. I’m not sure why, but I know that the person who gave it to me is important, but I can’t remember where I got it from. His name is Paul, does that mean anything to you?”
“No, but it must be important to you. Paul must be someone that the Watcher tried to steal from you, just like you were stolen from Ben. Or maybe,” said the little girl as she paused to contemplate something. “Maybe it wasn’t the Watcher.” She looked out at the lake and nodded. “That would explain why the ship is here.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Maybe The Skeleton Man tried to do to you what the Watcher had done to him. Have you noticed how the town is calm right now? How the fog hasn’t swallowed us up as it did all the times before?”
“Yes,” said Alma. “Every other time it seemed like the fog took over the town in just a few minutes.”
“Right, and the ship never returns,” said the girl as she looked out over the water. “I bet the Watcher knows he was lied to, and is starting over. He’s resetting his own story, starting with the ship.”
“Was that here in 1996?” asked Alma.
“Yes. I don’t know what caused the fracture, but I do know it started there. Something happened inside that ship that sent out the fog. That’s when the Watcher escaped, and he’s been r
eplaying the following twenty minutes over and over again, twisting it to his will, little by little, until the horror in Terry’s cabin spread out and overwhelmed everything in the town. All the nightmares that Ben conceived were brought to life.”
“Then why did Ben, or The Skeleton Man, change places with me?”
“He found a way out of the watchful eye,” said the little girl. “He dwelled in a lie, and made his escape.”
“So what about us? How can we get out?”
“That’s the good news,” said the girl. “The Watcher lost us. As soon as I knew he was struggling to put everything back together, I called the children here. The boys were caught up with The Skeleton Man’s plan, but I was able to get the girls to come. Now they’re leaving. They’re following my lie.” She pointed at the edge of the cliff. “They’re finally dying.”
“Dying? But there must be some other way. We have to save them.”
“They are being saved, Alma. Death is their salvation.”
“They’re willing to kill themselves?” asked Alma.
“These are the ones that can remember, just like you. The Skeleton Man lost his focus, and let some of the souls in the town slip through. He was supposed to stick to the Watcher’s plan, but when he began to change things, some of the people here remembered what the truth was. They remembered being tortured a thousand times, and would rather die than go through it again.”
“But do they really have to die to escape?”
“No, but it’s their choice. Death is just a passage to a different reality, Alma. You’d do well to accept that. Over that cliff is your best chance of escape as well.”
“I don’t want to die,” said Alma.
“And you don’t have to. In fact, I don’t want you to. If you’re right, and The Skeleton Man has escaped, then you’re the one that has to go find him. Something like him doesn’t belong in the real world. There’s no telling what horrors a thing like him could release if he gets out. You’re part of his lie, so hopefully his powers won’t work on you.”
“What powers?” asked Alma as she followed the girl back through the crowd.
“I don’t know, and I don’t think he knows either. But you’ve seen what he could do here. Without the Watcher pulling his strings, he’s free to do anything. You have to get out of here, and you have to stop him.”
