by David Beers
Scott reached under his seat and grabbed the small, leather bag. He reached in and pulled out Lori’s journal.
Someone sat on either side of Scott, but he didn’t notice them at all—didn’t even consider what they might think if they glanced over at Lori’s notebook. His attention focused only on his hands and what they were doing.
He flipped past the first few pages, already finished.
He had a five hour flight. He figured he could finish it by the time he landed.
27
Excerpts from a Dead Woman's Journal
England.
John’s in England now and I’m absolutely horrified. I don’t know how I ever thought this was a good idea. Here, I can watch over him, but there? What the hell can I do?
Vondi’s here. But so fucking what? I could have had John stop seeing him, could have gotten a restraining order if necessary. We could have moved. Instead I sent my only son across the ocean just as he’s becoming a man, and I haven’t prepared him for what’s to come.
That’s what scares me the most.
I have done nothing to show him what is about to happen, and I’m the only one that knows. I’ve never told anyone, not Vondi, not other therapists, none of them. Perhaps I’ve been too scared to face it … but I could have helped. I know more than I’ve told Vondi.
Facing it, though? That means I have to face the fact that she was human. Because in my mind … she’s inhuman, a monster. I’ve wanted to keep her in that box for so long and talking about anything other than the horrid things she did … goddamn it. I just don’t know if I even want to think about it. Even now.
John.
That’s what I have to remember.
It’s not about me anymore. It’s not about my life. John is the one about to live through this, what my mother already did.
My mother.
Not Clara, but the person who gave me life; the person who gave John life as well.
She spoke to me sometimes. That’s what I haven’t told Vondi. I’ve told him some of the dark times, but there were other times too. Perhaps not joyous or happy, never those, but … not horrible? Yes.
She told me she knew the day that it happened, the very day she started changing from normal to what she became. I still remember the words.
“I can’t help what I am, Lori. I know you don’t believe that and I don’t expect you to, but it’s the truth. Something changed in me when I was a teenager.”
She didn’t look at me. We sat on our porch, both of us in a rocking chair like the Cleavers or something. My father was dead almost four years at that point. I had a year left before I could legally leave. She was sick by then, even though she didn’t know it. One of the guys she brought home had a surprise for her, too, though it took a lot longer. AIDS takes the normal and the abnormal, I suppose.
But all that came later. That day, she was sick—thinking she had a cold, and so her mania was tempered.
“My dad used to beat me. Did I ever tell you that?”
“No,” I said, but I don’t think she heard me. I don’t think she was really talking to me at all. Maybe she knew she was dying, subconsciously, and that’s why she spoke.
“I think the beating started before I even had the ability to form memories. The fucking, he didn’t start doing that until I could remember, though. It all jumped off from there, I suppose. When you’re that young and Daddy is sticking his dick in you, the brain is going to naturally do some things differently. I don’t know much about the science, but I know by the time I was ten that I didn’t care about anyone. I didn’t care about my mom or my dad. They both could have burned alive or been made the President of the United States. All the same to me.”
She paused for a long time and I was too scared to move. She had never spoken like this, and if I’m being honest, a part of me craved it. Fear and desire are strange emotions if you try combining them.
“Not caring, though, and what I am; they’re worlds away from each other. That came later. I was seventeen when the flip happened, and at prom. Actually at the damn prom. I remember that movie, Carrie; a girl has her period and somehow gets super powers. That didn’t exactly happen, but something close to it.
“I let the boy get on top of me; we snuck out of the gym and into Mrs. Greer’s history classroom. I didn’t care one way or another whether he fucked me—my dad just stopped doing it the past year when I threatened to kill him and he knew I meant it.
“He was getting real hot, about to cum, and something inside me just clicked. It felt like ….”
And she looked over at me then, the only time she even gave notice that I was there. She looked me dead in the eye.
“It felt like home.”
She turned back to the lawn.
“I won’t go into details about what I did, but he didn’t hump anyone else for a while. Before that, I didn’t care. After that, I enjoyed hating … It’s weird, when I think about it, how quickly the change happened. There wasn’t any going back, though.”
There’s more to it. She told me a lot more, but … I think John’s at that point. Somehow. I think his time of tipping over is about to happen, and Christ, I sent him away. I haven’t told him.
ALL I FUCKING SAID WAS TO BE CAREFUL.
I didn’t even give him the knowledge my mother gave me.
* * *
Vondi knows. He hasn’t said it, not completely, but he knows. And he’s going to do something.
I don’t know what, but it won’t be good for John.
John is back now and he was careful in England, at least I thought so. Vondi, though? Why? Why does he care so goddamn much? And whose fault is this, really? Mine. I’m the one that sent John there in the first place. And now look at the whole mess.
John doesn’t know about Vondi yet.
I’m scared to tell him.
Because I know what will happen to Vondi if I do. He’ll die.
I didn’t ask John what he did over there, but Vondi seems to know. He kept tabs the whole time. The bastard was researching, and all the while he kept seeing me, kept asking me questions, kept working with me.
Ha!
Once he met John, this had nothing to do with me anymore. John captivated him, and I don’t know if it has something to do with being able to catch an actual psychopath—maybe the bastard is thinking about some kind of book deal, movie rights, and a lot of zeros on a check.
“I’d like to start seeing him again, I think. I have some questions that I want to ask him.”
“Some things happened in Europe that you might not be aware of, Lori.”
That’s what Vondi said.
He didn’t smile, but looked at me with all the seriousness of the dead.
I moved away from the conversation. I had to. What could I say? How do you know what John was doing? What do you think he did? The rabbit trail would have gone on a long way and ended somewhere I’m not ready to go.
I have to find out from John what happened. I have to ask. And then I have to find out what Vondi knows.
I’ve done too much for him to end us. I won’t let it happen.
28
Present Day
The plane landed and Scott exited in a daze.
He didn't finished the journal. He couldn’t. Then again, he didn’t need to.
He had learned everything he needed, or at least everything Lori thought. She couldn’t be right. It was impossible that Scott lived his whole life with a serial killer. Absolutely impossible. John couldn't help but to go around killing people?
And the things Lori said about her mother? She hadn’t mentioned a word, not one single breath during their whole marriage, and yet Scott was supposed to believe Clara was a sick sadist who killed Lori’s father, and then, somehow transferred it in the bloodline?
No.
Fuck no.
But weren’t there signs? a part of him asked, something that had lain dormant for decades.
No. There weren’t any goddamn signs.
&
nbsp; The only thing that made any sense at all—the only possible way the puzzle pieces fit—was that Lori’s mother was insane, and some of that insanity transferred to Lori, making her think these ridiculous things. Making her write them out for years and years.
Or perhaps you saw that insanity in a different way, one you didn’t want to think about?
He shoved the voice down, refusing to listen to it.
She had to have written all of those entries due to some kind of mental issue. Hell, the England thing? Scott did the research on that; John went for school and look at what it did for him: two Ivy League degrees. He didn’t go to escape some curious psychiatrist’s obsession. Scott would have known.
He picked his bag up from the luggage carousel. He walked out, barely stopping for traffic and got into his car.
Scott pulled his cellphone out and turned it on, the first time in two days. Voicemails popped up across the screen, four from Alicia. He closed his eyes tightly, crow’s feet appearing at the corners, and realized all at once the situation's gravity.
Perhaps during the plane flight and the walk to his car, nothing actually sank into his brain’s deep wiring, remaining only on the surface. Or perhaps he had just ignored it on a subconscious level.
Scott’s body slumped forward, leaning his head on the steering wheel. Tears flooded his eyes.
“Jesus, Jesus, Jesus,” he said, talking to himself as much as any God. He wasn’t a religious man by any means but had he ever felt so lost in his entire life? The world so completely out of control?
What was he to do?
Who could he tell?
Scott looked at the phone sitting on his leg—salty water dripping down his wrinkled cheeks—and pressed the first voicemail.
“Dad, I don’t know where you are. I’ve called you at least a hundred times. Look, we need to talk and I don’t want to say it all on here. Call me immediately.”
The message ended.
Scott kept going through them until he got to the fourth.
“Dad, I’m not calling anymore. No one knows where you are but we need you. I need you. I didn’t want to say this over the phone but I don’t know how else to tell you. John ran off to Mexico. The police are asking questions about a murder. He’s a suspect, though they haven’t put a warrant out for him. Diane has a lawyer but no one can find John. Please call me. Please. I love you.”
Scott stared at the phone, his eyes so wide he felt they might fall from his face.
He’s a suspect.
John’s a suspect.
And he’s in Mexico.
Simple, declarative thoughts, but carrying a force like The Big Bang.
It’s true, he thought. It’s all true.
And then his wife’s words came back to him. They pushed out everything else, his own concerns, even Alicia’s. Everything.
“You’ve got to stop him,” she said. “You have to protect the children. Diane. You have to. There’s no one else and I could never do it.”
She knew what she was saying. Lori wasn’t delusional and she told him something she had known her whole life—something Scott was oblivious to.
But you shouldn’t have been, should you? the voice asked. Just because you shoved all that past away didn’t mean it wouldn’t come back.
Protect the children. Diane.
Scott leaned back in his seat and stared straight ahead.
There’s no one else.
* * *
The fever was on him.
John didn’t think he had ever felt it so strong. Indeed, he lay in his room, sweating, despite being completely nude and the shitty air conditioner turned on high.
Harry sat on the other side of the room, refusing to leave, but blessedly not talking. He had a new book, though John didn't know the name. Somehow the bastard had gotten a Kindle, ditching the paperbacks.
Harry seemed pretty interested, but John knew that was a facade. The only thing on Harry’s mind was on John's as well, and this little respite was only a ruse.
Building up the anticipation.
Until John didn’t have a choice.
“FUCK!” he shouted across the room. “FUCK YOU!”
“Thou doth protest too much,” Harry said, not looking up.
“You won’t stop will you? Not ever. No matter where I go? I could travel to hell and you’d still have me knifing people down there, wouldn’t you? The Devil himself if it tickled your motherfucking fancy.”
“There is no Devil, John. No God either. Or don’t you realize that yet?”
John dropped his head back on the pillow, trying to refuse the blaspheme. There was a God.
“Then he’s forsaken you,” Harry said.
Maybe so. Probably so.
John knew the one Harry wanted. They’d both seen her a hundred times in the past two days—or at least thought about her that many.
“Fuck you and fuck it,” John said.
He stood from the bed and started dressing, pulling clothes over his sweaty skin. He was dressed in a matter of minutes. He went into the desk drawer and grabbed a small knife. The blade was only about three inches long, but it would do the job. No doubt about it.
* * *
Harry looked up from his book.
A smile crept across his fat face.
Yes, he thought. Yes, yes, yes.
More, he thought.
Because there was never enough. No matter how many times, no matter how many places, no matter anything.
Harry stood up and followed John out of the room. He started whistling, though it was hard to do.
Because he couldn’t stop smiling.
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Afterword
Addiction isn’t all or nothing. Not at first, at least from my experience. It certainly does turn into all or nothing, and in a very ferocious way.
This book, for me, was John’s change. Where an addict begins taking steps that put his addiction at the forefront of his mind, more important than anything else.
There isn’t a singular moment one could point to and say, “There, that’s where I became an addict.” No, it’s a process with hundreds of tiny moments which rewire the brain until the addict can honestly no longer say ‘no’.
For the longest time, I didn’t think addiction was a ‘disease’. I thought, like a lot of people, that it had something to do with willpower and weakness. I did a lot of research and spoke to quite a few doctors before I came to understand addiction’s essence.
Dis·ease
dəˈzēz/
noun
noun: disease; plural noun: diseases; noun: dis-ease; plural noun: dis-eases
1a disorder of structure or function in a human, animal, or plant, especially one that produces specific signs or symptoms or that affects a specific location and is not simply a direct result of physical injury.
The addicts brain literally changes—rewiring itself in abnormal patterns (a disorder of structure). If you were to compare an addict and a non-addict’s brain, you would see large differences both in reaction to stimuli and (from what I understand) composition.
I don’t say this to excuse anyone from the damage they cause to those around them. I only say it to perhaps help give some understanding to those whose lives have been hurt. We never meant to do it; indeed, the pain we cause rips us up insid
e.
It’s our addict, our Harry, that pushes us forward. And we listen to them in large part because we’re trying to fill some infinite hole inside ourselves. It doesn’t matter how much we use, though—the hole only deepens.
Addicts take, and John isn’t done taking yet.
See you in Book Three: Hurricane.
All the best,
David
7/19/2016
