Listen, now. Yes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
6.17.18
I wonder if this is what it’s like for all of them, or just me.
I suppose it’s gotten to a point where it doesn’t really matter.
I can’t keep going like this forever. I didn’t ask for this. I don’t care what they say, I didn’t ask for this.
Those goddamn, low-down, rotten sons of bitches. It’s never enough.

 
12.26.87
Mrs. Carmichael says I should start a journal. I told her that diaries are for girls but she said I could keep a journal. She said that a lot of great writers keep journals and that’s how they learn to write so good. I’m gonna be a great writer. Mrs. Carmichael says that Virginia Woolf kept a journal. We read one of her stories in class. I didn’t like it that much. She said in class that Virginia Woolf is one of the most important writers of the 20th century. I asked if she was rich because of her writing because I want to sell books and be rich. She told me that wasn’t as important as writing to feel happy. I asked if Virginia Woolf was happy from her writing. She didn’t want to answer me. Then she told me C S Lewis kept a journal too. I read Chronicles of Narnia this year and really liked it. So I thought maybe I should keep a journal. Then I asked if Stephen King keeps a journal because I like his writing best. I snuck mom’s copy of The Shining earlier this year and read some of it and it was really scary. I didn’t finish it yet but I will. She told me that I shouldn’t read stuff like that but I like it. I want to write scary stories and scare people like he does. She said maybe he does keep a journal so I’m gonna keep a journal. I told mom I wanted a journal before Christmas break and she got me one for Christmas. It’s red on the outside. Red is my favorite color.

5.2.89
I made a new friend today. His name is Billy. We met outside of the cafeteria during lunch time. We had on the same red Chuck Taylor sneakers so we started talking. He has a really cool CD Walkman and he let me listen to it for a little. He was listening to 2 Live Crew and I think they’re pretty cool. He’s pretty cool. I’m pretty sure he smokes cigarettes so I don’t know if I’ll ever invite him over because mom can smell it and she won’t like that.

We also talked about horror movies before the bell rang and we had to go back in. Billy’s favorites are Dawn of the Dead and The Exorcist so he has good taste. Those are two of my favorites too. I didn’t have time to ask if he likes riding bikes. Maybe I can have him come over and see my Schwinn. As long as he doesn’t smoke around mom.

6.18.18
There was a time when I knew better, you know. It’s funny how you sometimes know better as a kid.

I’m grown now. God knows that’s true. I’m only forty-two but sometimes I wake up in the morning with a bitch of a hangover, whole body aching like I rolled down fucking Bear Mountain in my sleep, and I could swear I’m at least a hundred years old.

I’ve learned a lot of shit during this wonderful journey that’s been my life. I learned how to open a pop-top without waking the sleeping woman just a few feet away. Learned how to wake up halfway through the night to pop a few aspirin to get in front of the headache and sore muscles that are going to come due in the morning.

Learned how to score the best coke. Bill told me that the way to get the most out of the primo shit is to dose one nostril at a time, in alternating sequence, using long, thin lines; re-dose every half hour. Learned how to hide the jitters from the wife. How to keep the kids in the dark about their dad’s raging addiction issues. How to put on the happy face for the cameras, the late-night talk shows, the interviews with the pretty young face of the week.

I learned how to cry quietly. In the bathroom, with the vent on, head wrapped in my arms, tucked between my knees as I lay in the bathtub.

None of that was enough to save my marriage. It worked for a while, though.

Kids got older. They’re not as stupid as you think. The Mrs. pulled my empty baggies and rattling cans and bottles from the trash. Told me that I would be dead within three years if I didn’t stop.

I didn’t stop.

Five years later I’m still kicking though. Yippee ki-fucking-yay.

I’ve learned a lot. But somehow that sixteen-year-old kid was miles ahead of me, smarter than I could ever hope to be. If only I could talk to him now.

10.6.92
Today was a pretty good day. After school I went over to Billy’s place for a while to ride on his dad’s quads. They own a pretty good piece of property up toward Lake Carmel and he said he wanted to celebrate me turning sixteen. We tore ass through the woods next to their house for a few hours. I was kind of nervous at first, because the trails were small and there were thin, dead looking trees scattered all over the place, but he led the way and after a while it became sort of second nature.

I like the way it feels when you’re on one of those ATVs. The roar when you pull back on the throttle. The way the crisp autumn air whips past your ears, turning the exposed parts of your skin a comfortable numb.

We went back toward his house when the sun started to go down and it became hard to see on the trails. It smelled like old leaves and cold wind in there and we were both ready to get back to the house. He grabbed two beers from the fridge in their garage and we toasted to my birthday. I wasn’t worried that mom or dad would notice; I’ve had a few beers before and I’m pretty good at hiding it. We listened to Nirvana while we drank. The garage door was open and it was kind of cold in there; the air from outside kept creeping in and trying to tighten its grip on me, but I had my West Point hoodie on and it was ok. I remember the way the sun looked as it went down behind the tree line at the back of his property, like it wanted to stay and party with us, but was being called home. It made me feel kind of sad. But I finished my beer and felt better.

When I got home mom and dad took me to Four Brothers, this bitchin Italian place on Lake Mahopac. Dad wouldn’t let me have any of his wine even though it was my birthday, but I wasn’t mad because I still had half a dime bag waiting in the shoebox in my closet when I got home. Mom made a toast and said she was proud of me for how hard I was working toward my dreams. I felt a little bad about sneaking the beer while she talked; I could see how happy she was for me and felt that she’d be pretty damn upset if she knew that her boy was drinking behind her back. She has a lot of alcoholics in her family, so she hates the shit. But I’m not like them. I just like the way it feels sometimes.

All of that was pretty cool, but the best part was the letter I got in the mail. It was another rejection slip from Fangoria. Normally rejection slips get me pretty fuckin pissed, but this one had a hand-written note from the editor. He told me my story was good, but that it went on too long. Told me that I needed to make some cuts. He said that he can tell I’m a good writer, but I could use an editor. “Second draft should be shorter, leaner.”

It’s the first time I’ve gotten a note with a rejection slip. Progress, man. That’s what Billy would say. I already have my next story in mind. It’s about this kid who’s riding his bike home from school when his chain pops off. He has to walk the bike home. It happens when he’s in the cemetery. All of a sudden he hears this weird groaning from the darkness off to his right. He’s gonna get chased by a zombie. Just when he thinks he’s home free, a whole bunch of those motherfuckers are gonna jump out and grab him. The story ends with him getting torn apart by these zombies, watching as they pull his greasy, ropy guts from his stomach. He’ll still be alive as they start eating him. I like dark endings.

The idea came to me in a dream the other night.

3.27.93
This might be my last entry for a while. Maybe for good. It’s hard to imagine stopping now, but I might not have a choice.

I’m not sure if journaling counts, but I want to be safe.

The worst part is going to be explaining it to everyone. I can’t tell them the truth, they’ll think I’m crazy. Or just telling another story. So that means I have to lie. Which is only going to make it hurt that much more.

Mom is going to be heartbroken. I know she’s worried, I can see it. She can smell the weed smoke that lingers in my bedroom. I know she’s smelled the beer on my breath when I’ve come home a few nights. She ignores it—for both our sake—but I can see it in the way she won’t lock eyes with me.

I think she believes, or tries to make herself, that I’m just going through teenage shit. That I’ll grow out of it. She thinks that if I can just make it, if I can just be successful, I won’t need any of that shit. That’s why she’s always encouraging me, always trying to talk to me about my stories, to take a vested interest in my life. How do I tell her I’m not going to write anymore? We both know it’s all I have.

Ashley will probably dump me. It’s easy to see that without writing I’m going nowhere fast. She loves to tell people about my three published stories—three!—she always says while tugging gleefully on my elbow. I’m no genius but I know it’s not a coincidence that she started smiling at me in the hallways after they ran my little feature article in the LHS school paper. She thinks I’m hot shit now. Most kids couldn’t care less, they think writing is: gay, lame, retarded, or all of the above. But to a certain group I guess it is pretty cool. No one else at Lakeland is published. Even Billy loves to mention it and I’m pretty sure he can barely read.

So what do I say when they all ask when my next story is going to be done? What do I say to mom when she buys me another journal, always the same red, faux-leather book with the pen loop and elastic loop closure that she got me when I was eleven? How do I tell her that I don’t need it? No more daily entries, no more hopeful submissions to horror mags, no more opening the mail at the kitchen table, fingers crossed, hoping for good news.

I can’t tell them about the voices, and what they’re telling me. That’s not an option. I won’t even consider it.

I think I’d be ok if I limited my writing to just these journal entries and stopped with the stories, but I can’t be sure. And I’m not risking it. I’m just too tired. I never sleep anymore. They don’t let me.

So I’ll tell them I lost interest. They’ll be surprised, or mad, or sad, but it’s not their decision to make. And it’ll kill me to lie, because God knows writing is the only thing that makes me feel happy and is probably the only thing I’ll ever be any good at, but I’ll do it. Because it might actually kill me not to.

So goodbye, for now.

9.11.01
Hello. It’s been a while. I’m not sure I remember how to do this anymore.

I guess I should start with a quick update? I do remember that I used to sit down and just write about my day. Well, there’s been a lot of days, so here’s a quick state of the union.

Life is pretty shit.

I’m turning twenty-five in less than a month and I can honestly say that if I died right now, today, well, that might not be so bad.

I’m single, so at least no one would miss me. Oh, and mom’s dead. Her funeral last year was the last time I saw dad, or even talked to him. He might be worse off than me, actually. I’m pretty sure he was drunk at the funeral. But I definitely was, so maybe don’t put too much weight in my recollection.

Okay. I’m drunk right now, too. But I did a few lines, so I’m all evened out.

As I was saying, I’m about to turn twenty-five, I’m single, I still live in Westchester, and it’s just starting to get cold again. So, not too surprising that it’s time to say hi to my old friend depression. But, strangely, I woke up today with the gnawing need to speak with another lost friend. My best friend. This red, fake leather journal.

It’s a goddamn trip that if I go backward one page I can see my own ugly handwriting from almost  ten years ago. I’m no longer in a sprawling Victorian home, but instead in a beaten down one bedroom apartment in Peekskill. There’s no family in this home, just me and my thoughts.

The kid who wrote the last entry was coming to grips with the fact that he was becoming me. A harsh truth, I know, but props to him for sticking it out. I don’t have that kind of resolve.

That kid wanted to go to Columbia and get a degree in creative writing. He could have. His grades weren’t the hottest, but if he would have never stopped writing he would have had a long enough resume for Columbia to fucking beg him to enroll. But that kid had some issues. He thought voices were calling to him in his dreams, forcing him to write their stories. So he quit on his dreams. I bet some hack psychiatrist out there would probably have a term for what he did, probably something about “self-fulfilling prophecies,” but the way I see it, he was scared of failing so he chose failure instead. This way he could at least be in control of the trainwreck. Is that a beautiful paradox or what? This writing thing is already coming back, like riding a bike.

That kid went to Westchester Community College instead and leveraged his Associate’s degree to get a job as a store manager at Target. And here I am. I have no fulfillment, in life. No satisfaction. No sense of completion. I try to drown that with an 18-pack and an eight ball a weekend. My heart is going to stop one of these days, I can already feel it trying to quit on me. Good. Save me the trouble of ending it myself.

The coke gets me too up so I take a few Ambien to go to sleep most nights. This isn’t life.

So today I’m making a decision. Today I’m choosing to try the one thing I was ever good at, the only thing that ever felt life in my right. Right in my life. Shit.

I’m gonna be a writer. I was a damn good one as a teenager, and my brain may have taken a few licks since then, but I’m pretty sure I still got some firepower left up there. I have ideas, at least. Even in my darkest blackout sleeps I dream, and those dreams are better than anything they’re putting up on the movie screens. I’ll write a few of them down and see what happens. See if I can find the magic again. If the nightmares start to get worse like they did when I was a kid, I’m sure I’ll be able to handle it better. I may be fucked up, but I’ve seen some shit. I’m not scared anymore. 

And if I’m wrong, who cares? I’m dead anyway at this rate.

2.14.02
There’s nothing quite like the sight of a blank white page.

My entries as of late have been fairly terse; part of that is I’ve been focusing on my fiction, the other is I was scared of filling in the last journal mom bought me. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to find another just like it; I never asked her where she bought them. They just kept appearing on my desk—that old, stained mahogany monstrosity that took up half of my little room in our house in Yorktown—one after the other, courtesy of momma. Oh, the things we take for granted.

I managed to find one, and today I write on the first blank page in the first red journal I’ve ever purchased with my own money. I did leave one page in the old one. I didn’t have anything to say that felt worthy of occupying that space.

Work has been promising. Not my shitty job at Target, that’s still as shitty and dead-end as it ever was. But I don’t see that as work anymore. No, that’s just something I do to keep the lights on. I’m a writer. A writer with a day job maybe, but not for long. I’m going to break onto the scene any day now. I can feel it.

Since I’ve picked the pen back up I’ve managed to publish nine short stories and one novella. Rip roaring pace, I know, but once I got going I really got going. It was like the floodgates were opened. I don’t know where the ideas went when I quit writing all those years ago, but apparently they didn’t go far. All I had to do was write those first few words on that first blank page, and—BOOM! Like a dam splitting down the middle.

The novella they put at the front of a short story collection: Hello from the Darkside. It was a nice little collection. Most of the other stories were the bland, lifeless horror you expect these days: a creature feature here, a story of demonic possession there, throw in a few reanimated corpses and talking dolls and hey! you got yourself a collection! My story was about a kid with borderline personality disorder who starts keeping a dream journal. This little exercise awakens something in him, and well, let’s just say that things don’t go too well from there.

One of my shorts was in Cemetery Dance; that one was about a private eye who bites off a little more than he can chew on an anonymous assignment. Think Lovecraftian cosmic horror without the dreadfully thick prose and mountains of racism. Another one was published in a small mag called Nightmare. That was my first, actually. A local publication that only passes around the dark corners of the northeast. I wrote the first idea that came to me that horrible day back in September—I probably wrote it as the Towers were falling—and it was good. Damn good. First person narrative, a young woman tells the story of the weird, disjointed relationship she’s always had with her foreign grandmother. The good stuff comes at the end when we find out why the grandmother has always hated her. Feared her, actually. I wrote that one in a fever pitch, ten thousand words in one sitting.

I’m working on my first novel right now. It’s good. Third person, strong narrative prose. About a kid who comes from an abusive family. He has an imaginary friend. He gets older and has a kid of his own. The pattern of abuse continues, as it so often does. His son has an imaginary friend too. That friend starts turning evil. He starts to remember his own imaginary friend and how fucked up his was. The kicker of the story is that these imaginary friends feed off the energy of the kids who create them; if the kid comes from a fucked up home, the imaginary friend turns into a monster. It’ll have all that emotional resonance that these editors want to see. A happy ending too. I’m not sure I know how to write a happy ending, all of my shit is dark, but you can’t write a three- to four-hundred-page novel and have the ending suck. People don’t like that. So I’ll do it. I really think this will be my big break. No more working at Target, barely scraping enough cash to keep the landlord off my ass. People are gonna know me.

It turns out I wasn’t crazy, back then. As a kid. The voices are back. I tried to convince myself it was a symptom of writing and nothing more, just a consequence of living in this bizarre head space. But I know now that that’s not true. I hear them, at night. When I sleep. They talk to me. I wake up with all of these ideas and…well, they’re great. Honestly, they’re fucking great. Every one I write gets published immediately with minor edits.

I have no idea who they are or where they come from or why they want to talk to me, but it seems the more I write, the more I open myself up to them. It used to be one night a week. Now I get maybe one good night’s sleep in a week. They tell me the worst things. And they’re getting louder. More demanding.

I thought about quitting again, but what, go back to Target? Back to blowing lines with Billy every weekend until I have a heart attack at thirty? Not me. I’m going to be somebody. I don’t care what it takes.

Maybe they’ll leave me alone after I tell all their stories. By then I’ll be too rich to care either way. All I know is I’m not dying alone in this God-awful apartment. I’m going to be a rich man. People will know me. My stories will keep them up at night, the way they keep me up at night. Even if it means listening to that horrible whispering in my dreams.

Hear me? I’m listening.

6.6.02
Boogeymen published. Penguin bought the rights this week. First print-run of 35,000 copies.

I’ll make over half a million dollars, and that’s if no one wants to buy the movie rights.

I told Bill to buy all the nose candy in the tri-state area and bring as many chicks as he can to my place. Drinks on me. Everything on me. I made it.

6.19.18
No sleep again last night. The loud one is back. Something about a discorporate voice calling out from the drain that only the protagonist can hear.

The worst part is I had half the story figured out before I got out of bed. Third person narrative, main character is a retired cop from Queens. Named Chris, I guess. The whole thing is a metaphor for depression. Sad ending, too.

I can’t keep doing this. I’m tired.

7.25.05
Today I finished the second draft of It Watches and sent it back to Richie. I think it’ll go to press the way it is, no more edits. Goddamn is this one dark, but it’ll sell. They haven’t been wrong yet.

I asked Brittany to marry me on Thursday. She said yes, obviously. The ring was 20 fucking carats, she better say yes. She wants a summer wedding, somewhere tropical. We’ll do it next year in Hawaii or Tahiti or fuckin Florida, for all I care.

I sound bitter. I feel bitter, I guess, but I do love her. I’m just tired. I thought I would take a break after this one—my third novel in as many years—but two nights ago, just as I was putting the finishing touches on It Watches, I had this horrible nightmare about a grizzled old man who lives in a dark house at the end of a narrow forest road. This house, it was awful. I can’t describe the revulsion and disgust I felt as I slowly crept toward it, against my own volition, as if I was riding on the wings of a crow. The house is a portal to somewhere else. Somewhere bad. The old man stands guard and keeps the things that try to cross over, into our world, at bay. It’ll make a hell of an anthology, telling the stories one by one, describing all of the horrible things that have tried to break through.

Where do they come from? Why is this house so special? I’m sure they’ll tell me soon. I already have the framing narrative down, but the individual stories could use some definition. I’d like to take a break, take a vacation, but I can feel it building up again. They get particularly volatile when they want me to begin a new story. I told myself I’d fight back next time, ask some questions of my own, but when I found myself in that dream, being pushed forward by some terrible slick voice behind my ear, I pussied out. I couldn’t get myself to turn around and look at them.

I guess I’ll keep working for now. It’s not all bad. I own a beautiful five thousand square foot home in White Plains. I finally bought my dream drum set, the seven-piece Gretsch Catalina Maple that I’ve been staring at in catalogues since I was a kid. Deep Cherry Burst finish. She shines, baby. A complete set of Zildjian cymbals surround it. My car is an all-black Bentley with the sickest sound system you’ve ever heard, and I’m marrying a woman who could be a centerfold in Playboy if she had a little less modesty. I even managed to get Bill out of the old hood and bought him a condo in Sleepy Hollow. I’m doing the late-night talk show circuit with every new book—Letterman, Leno, all of those fake sons of bitches—and they’ve adapted just about everything I’ve written into some Hollywood heap of garbage, but hey, it pays the bills.

One of these days I’ll tell them no. Or at least find out why they’re so focused on me. Aren’t there any other authors they can bother? What the fuck are they even?

Time will tell, I suppose.

11.03.06
I’m a father. Bethany Ann. Seven pounds, three ounces, born at four-fifteen this morning. She’s beautiful, I never knew anything could be so beautiful.

They want to hold Brittany another day or two before she comes home. She told me to come back here and get some rest.

I want to sleep, but I need to write. I haven’t written in four days and I can hear them even when I’m awake now. One more than the others. He—It?—is so loud. And mean. His voice is all staticky, like angry white noise coming from the back of my head.

I’m getting started on a new novel tonight. It’s about a man who loses touch with reality after moving into a new home. Something like a haunted house but not as trite. I’m not sure about that part yet. Either way he goes nuts and chops his family up with a machete. The neighbors find him crying in the kitchen rubbing their blood all over his clothes. Then he gouges his own eyes out with wooden skewers. I’ll call it Seeing Beyond.

Are they ever going to stop?

12.25.07
Writing is a chore. I would like to stop.

8.8.08
Ryan is learning how to crawl. Bethany loves to hold him, she’s such a good big sister. I wish I could spend more time with them. Or even just be there when I’m there.

I think Brittany is starting to realize I have a problem. I take most of the cans to the outside recycling while she’s asleep, but the ones that I throw out in the kitchen are enough to raise a few red flags. And she found the bottle of Listerine in the bottom drawer of my desk while she was looking for my latest manuscript. She didn’t say anything, but it was out of place. She won’t, either, not until she has to. She doesn’t want to piss me off. I wish I had better control of my temper.

I love my kids. I do.

My nose wouldn’t stop bleeding the other night and I got big red splotches all over the pages of Where They Are. I’ll have to print new ones and throw those ones in the outside trash can. She knows I still do coke on occasion. She doesn’t know I do it every night, by myself (am I by myself am I ever by myself?) in my office while I write my newest fucked up story. I don’t even enjoy it anymore. It’s just work. I wish I would have never started all those years ago. I was right, as a kid. This isn’t life.

Beer to get my buzz going. Can’t write without it. Takes the edge off, numbs the sharp parts of my brain. Helps me forget. Tooo many of those and I get drowsy. That’s where the coke comes in. Helps keep me focused. And the euphoria. Jeez. Can’t sleep after railing lines until three a.m. Ambien. Valium. Two bottles of Nyquil if I’m dry.

Why won’t I just fucking die already?

I’ve made up my mind to talk to them next time. No more of their bullshit. Fuck their ideas. I don’t care how many books I sell. They’re going to answer to me. I need answers. Why the fuck did they pick me?

Maybe it’s the blow talking but I feel invincible. I’m getting some answers goddamnit. Fuck with me. This ends now.

10.19.08
Dark places. They come from dark places.
Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places. Dark places.

04.14.09
Dr. Evert says I’m doing much better now. He thinks it’s ok if I start a journal again.

I was delusional. That’s all. There weren’t voices. Just the paranoid delusions of a drug addict. I’m better now though. Sober for over six months. He thinks it’s ok to write a journal, but probably no more stories. At least for now.

The sight of this red journal really makes me want a beer.

That couldn’t have been real. Places like that don’t exist. All that dark, spiraling madness. All those voices. I shouldn’t have asked them to show me where they’re from. I don’t need answers.

I need to focus on my kids. They need me. Brittany needs me. Rehab helped me. It helped me.

I have a really good idea for a story but I won’t write it. Not now, at least. Maybe one day I’ll feel good enough to write it but not now.

I really want a beer. I could probably drink one and be ok but I won’t. Total sobriety. I can’t want to see my family.

7.12.09
Bill is dead. Overdosed last night on heroin. Or, what he thought was heroin. It was probably cut with fent, but we won’t know that until we have the coroner’s report.

Goddamn it. I wish he would have just asked me instead of going to one of his seedy dealers back in the old neighborhood. I’m sure that’s what he did and one of those scumbags sold him some laced H. I could have gotten him the real stuff, he knows that. Knew that. I have to get used to writing about him in the past tense.

He also knew that I’m sober and trying to stay that way. He didn’t want to rope me back into that life. I would have scolded him, but I would have helped. He always helped me, always, ever since we first bumped into each other in the back of Copper Beech.

He was my only friend. I don’t know how I’m supposed to get past this.

6.20.18
Started The Echo today. Knocked out six thousand words in three hours. I had to force myself to stop and take a piss. Once I’m away from the screen it’s easy to think again, but when I’m going….man, it’s like nothing else. Everything else fades away, my office, my desk—shit I don’t even remember once seeing my hands moving beneath me—it’s all gone. Just a white page with black letters popping up, seemingly of their own volition. That’s the worst part. When I’m writing, I love it.

It’s just everything else, all the other time. I’m miserable. I have nothing. A great big beautiful empty house. My wife left me. I see my kids a few times a year. They don’t even like me. I still see Bill sometimes, in my dreams. Other than that I’m alone. It’s just me and them. It’s too quiet in here. Too goddamn quiet in this place, always.

After I finished my session today I took a walk through my seven-acre lot. There’s a nice little trail that cuts through the red pines and white spruces, all in their full green summer glory. I like to walk back there to clear my mind from time to time. It’s hard to think in that big empty coffin.

I think I’ve figured out how to stop them. It’s high-risk, high-reward, but that’s me, baby. Always has been. If it works I’ll stop writing, for good this time. I’ll see my kids again. Brittany will be hesitant, but once she sees I’ve changed I think she’ll let me back into their lives. Slowly, sure; she’s cautious and I’d never blame her for it, but I really do believe she’ll let me back in.

If it doesn’t work, well…at least they won’t have me anymore. I can’t continue to be a slave to them. I won’t let them win.

I think this time I know where I’m going. I’ve been there before. I’ve forgotten most of that night, it’s all hazy now like a shadow dancing in the mist, but it’s there. I’ll be ready.

When I got back from my walk I went into the attic and rooted around through some old boxes. It took a while, but I finally dug up mom’s last journal. What a sight it was. My journals still look mostly the same, but I haven’t been able to find that exact model in almost ten years. Holding it in my hands felt good. I felt like I could see that kid again, that lanky, maudlin teenager in Yorktown who handwrote most of the entries on those pages. He felt close to me again, for the first time in ages. I tried to channel him. He knew better. He made the decision to stop before things got out of control. I’m going to need his strength again.

I’ve finally thought of something to write in that last page that I left blank.

1.13.10
I’m making really good progress on Into the Black. It feels nice to be working again. It feels really nice to be drunk again (but hey, don’t tell my wife?).

Yeah, I’m off the wagon. Sue me. I threw my bronze six-month chip into the pond out back last week before it froze up. And good riddance. Never made it to that shiny gold one-year chip. Once I realized there was no point I hopped back up on this pony real quick.

No more beer for me, the evidence is too hard to conceal. Liquor only. I’m a gin man, baby. It’s easy to hide a flask, and portable, too. I finished up my handle of Tanqueray No. Ten in one pour this morning, and once I realized I was a good couple ounces short of my daily need, I broke out the pocket-sized bottle of Bombay Sapphire that I keep in my office safe (for emergencies) and emptied that sucker into the flask, too. Call it Jack’s Morning Delight. This shit has me breathing fire.

Brittany will leave me if she catches me. This she has promised and, folks, this time I believe her. Something about the way her eyes narrowed and held my gaze when she said it, daring me to challenge her. No sir, not me. I’m a man of God. Honest. He’s a God you might not recognize, though. I keep these Mentos in my pocket because of my bad breath, honey.

Sobriety was cool, don’t get me wrong. I slept better. Didn’t wake up with a headache that stretched from just below my ears up to my temples every morning. I had more patience with the kids. My heart didn’t pound like The Liberty Bell when I threw myself off the side of the bed to leak a liter of  urine from my bladder at five a.m.

But how does one cope, exactly, when they’re eight months sober, full of all the happy, motivational, self-help bullshit that could possibly be crammed down their throat, and they start to hear voices again? Worse, actually. How was I supposed to continue being high on life, happy-go-lucky, Mr. do-unto-others-as-you-would-have-blah-blah-blah when I literally came face to fucking face with my demons? Saw them, as they are, where they live. I’ll tell you how: with liters upon fucking liters of high-grade, ninety-proof gin.

They won’t let me be, you see. They’ve marked me. And they don’t forget. I was never crazy. I was an alcoholic junkie piece of shit—yeah man, right on the money—but I was never crazy. Never. They’re here, all right.

A few months after I got home—it was October, I think—I decided to sit back down at my old word processor and get back to work. I have no education, no other way of earning money. Plus, I felt an aching hole in my heart where writing used to reside. I needed this. It gave me a reason to wake up every day. I started working on a novel that I’ve had in my head for years, decades even. This idea has been brewing in my mind since my late teens, back when I wasn’t even writing anymore. I never forgot it.

Nothing came. I sat there, typing the opening lines over and over again, only to erase them and start anew. I don’t know how many false starts I had. Nothing worked, it was trash. Pure garbage. I had never experienced anything close to writer’s block in my life, not even when I was young, but still I knew that this was worse, this was a complete shutdown of the mental freeway, all lanes closed, sorry, you’re not moving tonight.

My head was in my hands, my eyes were closed, trying to invite the blackness, to blank out my mind and see like I used to. I pulled my hair out, literally—I was tugging on my beard and running my hand over my head pulling out small handfuls of coarse hairs. I pinched my eyes shut harder and tried to drudge up the words, but no matter what I did, it was all nonsense. Elementary writing at best. Like something you’d read out loud after an impromptu fifteen-minute session in a creative writing workshop.

I pulled my hood up over my head and rested my face in my hands and just breathed, feeling my own warm, desperate breath pool tightly against my face. And I listened. I sat and listened like I used to. It wasn’t long before I heard them again.

Listen now, yes. Listen.

As soon as I heard them—him, specifically, the one who was always louder than the rest—I ripped my hood off and stared into my empty office.

“No.” I couldn’t believe it. Here again? Here again? I can’t be. I’m sober. No.

Yes.

“I don’t want to. Not like this.”

Yes.

The voice, so slick and insidious, coming from directly behind my right ear, deep inside my head. It was a perverse sensation; like a lover gently threatening my existence in a soft, staticky voice. The familiarity, God, that was the worst part. The hair on the back of my neck stood up, my arm was pebbled with goosebumps.

“I’ll stop then. I don’t need to write this.”

But what of your family?

“They have enough, we have enough. This was never about them. This was about me. I needed this, not them. I’ll stop, right here, right now. No more.”

I can bring your career back.

“I don’t want it.”

Yes you do.

“No, I don’t.”

We can be on the top, Jack. Where we belong.

“I don’t need you.”

Look closer.

“What?”

Remember.

“No. I don’t need you. I didn’t ask for this.”

Your desk.

Sitting in the top left corner of my wide, oak desk was a first edition of Boogeymen, my first novel. I had brought it out when I realized I was going to try writing again. I read through some of the old pages, remembered those words, those moments. Inside the front cover were a few words marked in the handwriting of my old, dead friend. I remember when Bill wrote me that stupid dedication, a dedication to me in my own novel. Reading it again brought tears, but also a fresh desire to recapture some of that magic. I turned it face down and put it on the corner of my desk before I tried to begin my new story. Staring back at me was my own dumb face. The picture that I hated so much at the time and would have never sent to the publisher if it weren’t for Bill’s encouragement. There I stood, in black and white, leaning coolly against an old pine tree that was behind my complex, wearing my beaten leather jacket, my black hair hanging haphazardly over my face, a barely contained smile trying to poke through my stone-face expression.

“Please just leave me alone. I hate you,” I sobbed.

I love you.

“Go away.”

Look closer.

“I said I don’t need you.”

But Jack…isn’t that us on that cover?

The next time I sat down to write Into the Black I found the words came much quicker. No more false starts. No more pulling my hair out. Just the smooth, soothing sound of keys clacking and that  comfortably numb dissolved feeling.

2.18.12
Haven’t slept in three days. I can’t stop writing. I’m working on a short story collection. I’ve already finished seven stories. Seven straight. And I’m not done.

They have all these ideas, so many ideas, I can’t stop them they won’t stop won’t let me stop.

It’s not just the voices anymore, I see images now. Storyboards. I let them get in too deep and they’re getting stronger, expanding, taking over, they won’t stop.

A man, standing in a small empty parking lot. I’m high up, looking down at him from an apartment window in some city I don’t know with lots of trees. It’s dark, he stands in the only light, a small white circle cast down from a streetlamp. He’s holding a baby’s severed head. Then I turn to my left and he’s at my door, coming in, he’s smiling, he’s not human, his face is all black and runny and he’s covered head to toe in black and all I can see are his hands and they’re grotesquely pink and swollen and his nails are jagged like broken teeth and then he’s killing me, cutting my throat with those nails, lifting my head from my neck and I can feel my skin stretching and pulling where he didn’t cut all the way through and the last few tendons that are holding on are snapping and I can feel them snapping I can FEEL it I can FEEL it now I never used to see it or feel it but I feel it now so I write it and then it’s done. But then there’s another one a new story they want and I see that one too and I feel it and I’m underwater, the pressure is like pounds and pounds of wet, black madness pushing my down on my back, squishing my chest and there’s water in my lungs and I’m at the bottom of the ocean where the sun doesn’t reach and I can’t see and can’t breathe and there’s something big swimming near me, I can feel the water moving around me I can FEEL it and then the ground beneath me opens and it pulls me down beneath the Earth beneath the ocean and I write it and I’m free but then they have more for me and I’m in a castle and it’s wet and musty and dank and I can smell the years around me so I walk through chambers that are poorly lit and I don’t know where I’m going or who I am or how I got here but then he’s here, he’s following me, and he’s old and pallid and waxy and his teeth they’re so sharp and he’s smiling his eyes are red and then he’s on top of me and he’s biting and my blood is leaving my body and I can feel myself growing weak I can FEEL it and I’m dying and I don’t want to FEEL it so I write it and then it’s over but then they have more because I’m somewhere I’ve been once and it’s dark and I think I’m with them, really with them I can FEEL them and they’re pressing in on me from all around me and they’re whispering and telling me what to write and their voices are like sharp static stabbing me in my head and in my brain and they have so many ideas where do they get all these ideas what are they and how did they bring me to where they are I want to sleep and they’re so loud and it’s so DARK it’s DARK and these places they take me are so DARK and then they’re showing me something else, something more horrible than the last and there’s a man at the end of the hallway or maybe he’s a scarecrow not a man and I can smell him and I just want to see light again but I write and then there’s another

9.17.13
Brittany left today. She found my cocaine. And my Percocet. My Valium. My Xanax. The half-drank bottle of Listerine I keep in the bottom drawer. The bloody tissues that I stuff in my nose when I’m on a real rager, writing like a demon in the late hours by myself, that I meant to throw out. She sat it all on my desk and told me she was done. It’s over. No more second chances.

She didn’t even let me say bye to Ryan and Bethany. They were already gone when I got home, and she had her bags by the front door, fully packed. She took everything that was hers and loaded it up. The closets are empty, the kids’ rooms are empty. It’s all gone. I have nothing.

She said that at this rate I’ll be dead in three years. Hopefully she’s wrong. I’d much prefer to be dead before New Year’s.

I wish I could talk to Bill.

I have nothing. Nothing besides my writing. I do have a great idea for a new story that materialized late the other night when I got up to use the bathroom. I needed a glass of water, so I went downstairs and filled one up, totally in the dark, not risking the blinding, piercing light that would have drilled holes behind my eyes. I was walking back to the stairs and I thought (heard), wouldn’t it be creepy if I looked up to the banister and saw myself standing there? An exact copy of me? And then he turned and went into my bedroom before me?

I’ll call it Intruder. The main character will be a paranoid type. Third person narrative. Good opportunity to show a split mind, a nervous kind of guy, and that will be symbolic for the doppelganger. Lots of internal monologue. I’ll probably sell it to one of those shitty horror websites that Richie is always pushing me toward. He says they’ll gladly pay for anything with my name on it.

Hooray.

1.2.14
I’m thinking about death. Dismemberment.

I see corpses. Hundreds of them, standing in rows in an empty field. Side-by-side, cheek-to-cheek. They’re dark ashen gray. They’re dancing together.

It makes me want to cry.

Everything is decay. Slow, indefatigable erosion.

I think I might cut a chunk out of one of my legs and draw a finger painting in my own blood. I’ll mail it, and the chunk of my leg, to Simon & Schuster, or maybe Penguin, and see if they want to publish it. A Piece from the Author. Maybe I’ll get a Nobel prize for it.

I’m crying now.

6.21.18

Brittany,

If you are reading this then I’m afraid I’ve failed. As soon as I’m done here I plan to incinerate this journal, and all the others just like it. If you are the one to find this—and it will be you, for there is no one left in this world to love me—then I kindly ask that you do the same. Burn this. Burn them all. Do not trouble yourself with reading them. It will only create more questions and prolong the process of you and the kids forgetting about me and getting on with your lives.

You know my demons. You’ve known them well for the past fourteen years. The kids don’t need to know them. Let them think I was nothing more than an alcoholic with no self-control if that’s what it takes. I don’t want them seeing into this world.

I only ask that please, dear God, if either of them shows any interest in writing, do not let them. Stop them. They might hate you for it and you might think you’re an awful parent for it, but please, if you can give me one thing, after all I’ve done to you, give me this. To do anything less will be to write their damnation. They’re too close to it all. Too close.

If you think I’ve gone mad, consider Virginia Woolf. She’s not the only writer who suffered. Shirley Jackson, Edgar Allen Poe, Lovecraft. I think I know now that it is not all of us. Just some. Is it worth the risk?

I need you to know how sorry I am. I fought this when I could, but I was never strong enough to win. As a teenager I came close, but fate had other plans for me. Maybe there’s a reason for all this. Maybe it will make sense one day. Or maybe life is a cruel joke where the winners and losers are decided before the starting whistle is blown. You don’t need to lose with me. I’m sorry I brought you into this and infected you with my poisoned spirit.

Just know that you’re the only woman I’ve ever loved aside from my mother. The both of you were always too good for me. I’d give anything to have those years back and make different choices.

I pray that it’s not too late, and that you’ll never read this, and I can instead say these words to you in person, face to face, the way I never got to with Bill. Along with you and mom he’s the only person to ever care for me in this life.

If not, if you do have to read these words from a page, then maybe he and I are together again, somewhere. Maybe we’re kids again, back when things were simple, before everything became so real.

Wherever we may be, just know that I’m waiting there for you, too.

–Jack

 

 

 

 

 

 

From AP News
June 26, 2018
Jack Stetson Hospitalized Following Suicide Attempt
By Tonya Martinez, AP

 

AP is confirming reports that prolific author John “Jack” Stetson is currently being held in St. Vincent’s Hospital in Harrison, New York after an apparent suicide attempt. He was found in his White Plains home on Monday, June 25th, and has since been transferred to St. Vincent’s for further evaluation of his mental health.

An ICU nurse from White Plains Hospital who spoke under conditions of anonymity said that Stetson had, “two perforated eardrums, severe lacerations to his right ear,” and was “completely incoherent.”

Stetson was brought into White Plains Hospital on Monday, June 25th after being discovered in his home by his long-time agent, Richie Hartfield. The two were supposed to have lunch on Sunday, and Hartfield became alarmed when Stetson no-showed him and would not respond to calls or texts.

“Jack is the strongest person I know,” his friend and long-time agent said Monday. “He’s been through a heck of a lot and if anyone can beat this, it’s Jack. His family is with him and they appreciate the concern that is pouring in from across the world from Jack’s fans. Right now, we ask to anyone that has been impacted by his prodigious body of work that they please keep Jack and his family in their thoughts and prayers.”

When asked if he could confirm reports that Stetson had drawn dark curtains or hung heavy blankets across all the windows in his home before the attempt, Hartfield had no comment.

“Right now, we’re focused on Jack and this road of healing that he has before him, thank you,” Hartfield said.

An unnamed staff member of the ER at White Plains Hospital reported that Stetson arrived at the hospital in a semi-lucid state, shouting about voices. “At first he was screaming, like, screeching like an animal,” he said.

“It was terrifying. He was completely out of his mind. After we sedated him he began muttering to himself about voices he was hearing. He had a drumstick jammed five inches into his left ear, they wouldn’t remove it in the ambulance for fear of hemorrhaging. His right ear he had taken a knife to and was barely hanging on by a thread. It had to be amputated.”

St. Vincent’s has no official statement as of now, but did confirm that Mr. Stetson is being held at their facility. An unnamed representative who spoke to AP anonymously confirmed that Stetson is in a similar state as when he arrived. “We have him heavily sedated now. Every time he comes to he starts shrieking and begging to be killed. When patients are in this state we keep them restrained to avoid them hurting themselves even further.”

Jack Stetson is a prolific author whose works have been printed in twenty-three languages globally. He has published over twenty-five novels as well as seventy short stories, and twenty of his properties have been adapted as feature length films. His works are primarily in the horror genre, with some of his lesser known works venturing into sci-fi or strange fiction. He is most well-known for his breakthrough novel Boogeymen, as well as subsequent novels Seeing Beyond and It Watches.

 

Hartfield has confirmed reports that Stetson left a suicide note, but its contents are being kept private by the family.

The news of Stetson’s suicide attempt has been met with profound sadness and shock. Twitter was flooded by tweets from his many followers on Tuesday afternoon when the story broke.

Within the past few years, suicide rates have been sharply rising in the United States. Studies show that the risk of suicide declines sharply when people reach out to the national suicide hotline. If you or someone you know is thinking about self-harm, please reach out to 1-800-273-TALK. These lines are staffed by paid professionals as well as volunteers coached in crisis and suicide intervention. Help is always closer than you think. You are not alone.