by Chris Raven
My thoughts are at such a speed that I feel dizzy. My head hurts as if I had too many ideas inside. I feels like it will explode. I’m getting more and more nervous. I notice my hands shaking as they cling to the steering wheel and I’m starting to hyperventilate. I keep driving until I get to a straight line with good visibility, I park in the gutter and open the door. I pull the legs out of the car and duck my head to put it between my knees, while I try to concentrate on controlling my breathing. Inhale. One, two, three… Exhale. One, two, three... Inhale...
Little by little the air begins to enter my lungs and my heart is starting to beat more slowly. I feel like crying. I can’t accept the crazy idea that Anne needs my help to find justice. I’m not a hero or an avenger. I’m just a scared kid struggling to keep his madness at bay. I’m sure there’s no one in the world that’s less suited to solving those crimes than I am.
I go out and look around me. There is no car on the road, which seems to extend on an infinite line. The heat is still so strong that it makes the landscape tremble as if it had been infected with my fear. For a few seconds, I feel like I’m the last man on Earth, as if everyone else has disappeared. Oddly enough, that feeling reassures me. There is no pressure, and no one will expect anything from me, I no longer have to worry about what others think...
Unfortunately, the illusion doesn’t last long. A huge all-terrain vehicle appears a few minutes later. The windows are open and a rock and roll song at full volume is being played. When it passes by my side, the co-pilot throws a can of beer through the window. It hits the trunk of my car. I stand up in a shitty mood and scream furious, but they are too far away to even hear me. I look at the trunk searching for damages, but the can has only made a small scratch that my mother will not notice.
I get back in the car and I start the engine. The sense of peace I experienced a few seconds ago has vanished completely. I feel small and helpless again, a poor loser in a world too big and complex. If I’m not able to handle the normal problems of life, like a stranger throwing a can of beer into my car and making me feel miserable, how am I going to face spirits and murderers?
In the next few miles, I promise myself that I’ll forget everything. I’ll pretend none of this has happened. I have never found that book written by Anne, I have never read about the crimes of Swanton, I have never come to the psychiatric of Montpelier, I have never heard the story of Joan... I know that, if I try hard enough, I will be able to bury all these facts in the depths of my mind, to blur them until they seem like distant memories, fuzzy patches of old nightmares. I’ve done it before. I can do it again.
VI
That same night the dreams begin. I’m in a huge, white-walled room. There are no doors, only some windows located at a very high point which strain the sun’s rays. The light is so bright it bounces off the walls and hurts my eyes.
The room has no more furniture than a white desk in the center. I’m sitting on it. In front of me, there is an open book. It’s The Lake Crimes book. I’m looking at the last pages, those that are full of horizontal lines. Next to the book is a pen, but I dare not take it.
Nothing else happens in the dream. I’m still petrified staring at those blank pages. The sunlilght is becoming weaker and fainter. I know I have to leave. I must not remain in the room when the darkness appears, but there is no way out. The only things I have at my disposal are that book and that pen, but I don’t want to touch them.
I wake every night drenched in sweat, with a gasp smothered in my throat. I don’t know why I’m so afraid of that dream, or why it repeats night after night. Every day that passes I am more exhausted, more nervous, more irritable... I spend the day trying not to remember the dream and, as the hours go by and the night comes, I feel a fear that overwhelms me and makes my stomach shrinks. I don’t want to go to bed, I don’t want to sit in that room, I don’t want to take that pen, and, above all, I don’t want the dark night to come and find me trapped in there.
Even though I try to ignore it, I know what the dream has been trying to tell me since the first night I had it. I have to take that pen, I have to write the end of the story. That’s why it was so important to Joan that the book came into my hands. I’m destined to continue that story, to find out what happened.
I’ve been trying to deny it to myself for days, believing that I’ll forget about it, that all of this has nothing to do with me. However, I know it’s not true. Even if the murderer didn’t kill me, I was his victim too. If he hadn’t crossed my path, Anne would be still my first love. We might have lasted only fifteen days, as first romances usually do, but perhaps it would have worked out, perhaps all our dreams had been fulfilled. He stole from us the chance to grow together, to kiss for the first time, to learn how to drive and take Route 66 to sunny California, to buy a hut in the woods and adopt a lot of dogs, for Anne to try to make a living out of writing novels and for me to enjoy reading them... He stole from me the possibility of loving her and he only left me a memory that continues to be an open wound.
He snatched my adolescence. It was with Jim, Jake and Dave with whom I should have smoked my first cigarette in secret, with whom I should have caught my first binge, with whom I should have peeked my first porn magazine with a nervous laughter... The murderer forced me to leave all of that behind and start a new life in Burlington, where I never found my place or at least new friends, where I became Eric, “the Nutcase”...
If I’m not willing to do it for them, I should do it for myself. Nothing will happen to me by going to Swanton and doing some research, asking a few questions and seeing if I can understand what happened. If I don’t find out anything, I’ll come back home and try to forget about it, but I can’t spend the rest of my life thinking that Anne’s ghost asked for justice for all of us and I was so cowardly that I couldn’t do anything.
I have to go back to Swanton.
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