Sarah Philger? Yeah, I remember her. Scrawny little thing with a mouth that ran a mile a minute. She showed up in town a few months back, went to school, never really talked to anyone. She was living on her Grandmother's farm on the outside of town, or so I heard. A couple of weeks ago she had just disappeared from school, some kids said that she was going back to live with her mom in California. I guess I didn't really pay attention to what happened, I just didn't care enough to bother. A lot of people think I don't care about anything, but that really isn't true, I just find it's easier to act indifferent. It's just one of the many things I do to deal with all those massive curve-ball's life seems to toss at me, one after another.
Who am I? Well I guess you can call me Ezekiel if you wish ,or Zeke. I don't care. What point is there in names anyway? I'm not the reason you're reading this nor do I play any important role in the evil that was actually inside that wicked house. I'm just one of several helpless victims of that night, or maybe I'm a victim of my own insanity? Here I sit, broken inside. The scars on my arms pale in comparison to the scars on my subconscious. I actually thought I had problems before that night, what a joke. December 28th is the night my life ended. It ended for a lot of us that night, and yet here we are. Still breathing, still talking, still following that usual everyday routine.... but inside we're trapped. Trapped in our own thoughts and memories. Sometimes I wonder if the only things holding us to this world are our memories and each other. The doctors even tried to take those, they wanted to separate us, they wanted to make everything fade away. But no, I wouldn't allow that, we need each other. What would happen to Noelle and Cindy if left alone in some cold white hospital room? The blackness would seep right back in, through the cracks. It would take them, without a doubt, it would slither in through the cracks in the floorboards and kidnap what's left.
Sometimes at night, things grab me in the dark and try to do the most horrible things. I can't even describe the beasts, but I just know that it will take every ounce of moral cunning I have to survive, to keep what remains of my sanity. Then I wake up, and I'm still stuck here. Some kids want to live out their dreams, but I simply want to live out my nightmares. Just to face them, to fight, and to inevitably lose once and for all. Grown-ups have told me I'm insane before, but what do they know? Is there some sort of test? All I know is I'm a lot better off than the other kids who went into that house. At least there are a few of us who have better things to do than sit around chewing our own tongues, babbling inanely for hours on end. The lost ones just sit there in their beds, staring at the walls with the only sign of life being their calm breathing and the mutterings. Occasionally their parents or friends might pay them a visit, sitting on those awful chairs, bringing flowers, and pretending to talk to the lost. They will never respond. I am a strong believer that the lost are simply empty shells that are left behind for eternity when the darkness snatches your soul.
Of course Noelle would tell me that saying such things is blasphemy, that the darkness is simply a servant of the devil but there is always hope for the light to break through and reclaim what was lost. I really can't fault the kid for her beliefs, I used to dismiss her as a useless follower because of them, but now... I've seen things. The kid has something special about her, I can't deny that, there's someone looking out for her. For someone so helpless and small, she certainly is strong in spirit. Perhaps that's what has kept her from being lost for so long? I really don't know. Anyway, time for my daily appointment with Dr. Barley. I wonder what his latest crazed theory about our “visions” might be. I can only hope that someday soon they will realize that what we went through was real. It wasn't some figment of our imagination, it was as real as the corpse of Sarah was.
Editors note: On the left is a rough sketch of Noelle, at roughly age 6, by Leah Rosengarten.
No comments:
Post a Comment