Something I Can Never Have (3 page)

Perhaps we will both need counseling before this is all over. Then again, I’m afraid for her to hear about those awful things I used to believe were true. The nights when I would feel like I was being raped repeatedly, only to go to school to see proof of the visions by bruises and cuts. I know the doctor told me they were self-inflicted, but I still believe that they were real in some way. Maybe the bloody knife was “self-inflicted” as well—maybe it’s just a big act to freak myself out—but it doesn’t seem like that.

The words out of my mouth at church feel like lies. The prayers and the sermons. At least I’m speaking to teens who usually want less rather than more. They don’t always hear or care what I’m saying, and that’s fine. I make sure it sounds authentic. But deep down, God seems a long way away. Just like Solitary.

Those nightmares, however … they don’t seem far away at all. They seem like someone standing outside my bedroom window waiting to come in. Just tapping and grinning and undoing the lock and slipping inside ready to crawl into my bed and slip inside me.

And that’s when I feel trapped and know I need to claw my way out and strike back and burn before it’s all over.

I can feel my heart racing just writing these words. I just can’t have Heidi be a part of all that. She can’t know about the past or about this present. These nightmares and these visions.

If she knew, I think it would be over. And I know one thing. I can’t lose her. Not the way I lost Mom and Dad. I can’t lose someone else, and I would do anything and give everything I have to keep her.

Heidi doesn’t even know my last name isn’t really Marsh. There’s no need to tell her. No need to get into any of that. You have been good to me by replacing my past with somebody else’s. I owe that to you and to the town and I thank you. That is why I don’t want to let you down.

I will talk to you very soon with another update.

Sincerely,
Jeremiah

Dear Dr. Barlow:

My hands are shaking as I write this, thinking and remembering what I saw this afternoon. It was a revelation, as if God himself spoke out loud and told me to see what I needed to see. I feel empty now. I’ve been crying, feeling like a teenager again, feeling lost and lonely and abandoned. There’s nothing left to do, really. Not anymore.

Today I could see them through the window where they met. Heidi and Cliff. Good old Cliff
.
Some broad-chested boy-man who needs to be buried under ten feet of sand or concrete or excrement. Whatever works and whatever I can get my hands on my hands those sweet, slender hands that used to hold her and soothe her and now only want to smother to smash to squeeze.

I have to stop—my hand hurts writing this.

I am back now, feeling better. I threw up, but that’s always been the case with my nerves. I will share what I saw. I’d rather do it in a letter than tell you on the phone, only to hear that silence of yours. I have to admit I hate that. Sometimes I will tell you something else to fill the space with more words, even if they’re empty and meaningless and meandering.

Today I saw Heidi and Cliff talking, and I could see it in Heidi’s eyes.

It was a reminder—a snapshot—of yesterday. When I first met her and it was just the two of us. When everything in Solitary was far away, and we were falling in love.

She gave Cliff that look.

The look of … not just love and adoration. That’s too simple.

She gave him something that I’m afraid I’ll never see again.

Her full attention … yes, sure, that’s one piece of it, but I always have Heidi’s full attention because lately she seems like she’s been more scared of me with each passing hour. I don’t know why. But I have her attention.

It was a pleasant, hopeful, lovable glance. A look that said
I want to be here and I don’t want to leave.

It was innocent and free and beautiful.

I saw this from my car, and I knew just like that it was over between us. It was a look I once had from a soul I believed would be mine forever. But it’s no longer mine, and I don’t think it will ever be mine again. And all I want to do now is paint the world black and blue and see the face of every single soul I see ugly and red.

I will confront her soon. But there are other things I need to do. I know that you didn’t object when I mentioned what I might do to Cliff, but I also know how careful I need to be. I will be careful. Nobody will know, and Heidi will be afraid to tell everyone. I think she’s started to see the boy who used to live in Solitary and not the man she married. I’m afraid that she’s starting to see the Turner instead of the Marsh.

I really believed that boy died after the darkness and the deaths. I thought he was gone for good.

But he’s been hiding and waiting and wondering when the time will come when he can reach out and hurt and destroy like a festering, breathing, living virus of death.

I must go. It’s late and I’m lost and tired.

Sincerely,

Jeremiah

Dear Dr. Barlow:

The nightmares are back. The kind I scream inside of. The kind I remember vividly when I get out of. They’re black and gray and red and swirling like a tornado and I’m there in the middle right in the middle with my mouth laughing opened wide.

I have tried to avoid everything and just focus on my job. But my job reinforces the dreams inside. The light I see on others’ faces and in their spirits only reminds me what a phony fraud I’ve been my whole life. You know, don’t you? Only I know you wouldn’t call it that. You would say I’m coping, that I have been coping since I’ve had to, that I’ve been using this as a defense to keep living and breathing. But sometimes I don’t want to live and I don’t want to breathe.

Then again, sometimes I never want to die. Sometimes I see how badly people want someone to follow, how badly they
need
something in their lives. Not something that’s real and fearful, like the God of the Old or New Testament. They want more than an aspirin, but less than a God. They want their vices and their Oprahs and their heroes and their gossip. They can want someone like me, too.

But all I want is to see them burst ablaze and go away.

I don’t see us being here much longer, because I feel I’m on my own. Heidi is only becoming more and more withdrawn. Sometimes I can see the fear in her eyes when she looks at me. I’ve apologized and told her that I’ll be getting better, but each day is a little worse.

I just can’t stop spying on her and can’t keep thinking of Cliff. The more I do, the worse it becomes. But frogs have souls, don’t they don’t the bluebirds sing in the night as big and as bad as the owls and the piggies. The piggies that I need to gut and skin and fry up.

I don’t know. It doesn’t make me feel much better, but I try to keep my mind off them.

There are thoughts I have that don’t seem to even be mine. It’s not like it used to be when I’d black out and then come back around. Sometimes I feel myself sinking lower and lower under the surface of something dark and wet and cold. It’s like I’m sleeping, but I’m wide awake with some hideous, faceless, colorless creature keeping my eyelids opened with fingerlike claws. I sink and can no longer breathe. I sink further and can no longer see. I’m still awake and I’m still functioning, but suddenly I just want to make everything out there burn. I want to rip it out of the ground and torch everything and everyone.

You say it’s time you came up here to see me, but I’m not sure. I’m not sure I can dive back into the history and counseling thing. The meds work on and off, but it seems like I’m growing used to them. I take them like an alcoholic needing another drink. But that drink never quite fixes the hole inside.

It’s late now, and Heidi isn’t here. I’m writing to get my mind off her, but I can’t. When we started dating she was the one thing in my life that seemed to be like a doorway to a better life. A normal life. A life where a man works and eats and sleeps and pays bills and makes love and produces children and leaves something behind. Not a life where a blanket of cold death covers him and makes him want to suffocate everyone he comes in contact with. I lie to those students every time I get up and talk. Because if they really were to ask me, I’d say that Heidi was the way, the truth, and the life. I’d get run out of the church for saying that, but she is. Or at least she was when she was mine.

But she’s not mine anymore.

And that’s why she’s either going to stop this madness or end up in a ditch with her body ripped apart as though she was attacked by an animal in the wilderness. Because I’ve been in the wilderness way too long and I’m hungry and I need something to destroy.

I’m heading out to drive around. To try and find something to fill this thing inside.

Don’t come up here. Please don’t.

Jeremiah

Dear Dr. Barlow:

Things are better. I apologize for the last few conversations and letters I’ve sent. They were from a sick man. That is why I got into this path, to try and help with my sickness. I thought that learning about God and the Bible would help. I felt like it could even out some of my imbalance. I’ve only learned now that I have a long way to go.

Sometimes it seems like I blink, and then another person overcomes me. A fury like a wildfire just spreads and causes the rest of me to grow black.

But I’ve got control again. It’s fine. And I will tell you why things are better. It started out when I bought Heidi a diamond necklace. Something that I knew she would love.

But I guess I should back up.

It really started when I went out of town to a conference. At least that’s what I told Heidi. But did I really? Of course not. I stayed to watch. I stayed to discover the truth.

The truth will set you free. That’s the cliché.

And in a strange way, the truth did set me free.

It proved once and for all that Heidi was not mine and never will be mine. It proved that Cliff wasn’t just a nice little friend.

And it proved what I’m capable of.

He stayed two nights with her. I didn’t have to watch them to know they were together. I didn’t have to be in the house to know what was going on. She had the audacity to bring him into our home and probably into our bed.

That was her decision.

It was my decision to end things between them.

Did I cover my tracks? Did I leave a trail behind? I don’t know.

Perhaps these letters are the proof that will eventually incarcerate me. I hope not.

I simply followed Cliff to a bar after he got off work one evening. I sat down and told him who I was, but of course he already knew. The smug guy acted like he wanted to actually have a talk with me. Like he actually wanted to
help
me. Can you believe that?

We drank. I don’t drink, but I obliged him.

I acted more drunk than he was, and that allowed me to persuade him to let me drive him home.

And that’s when I did it.

I won’t get into the gory details. I know that this admission will be enough to have you or someone working with you send for me. Which is good, because I do need help covering my tracks. They’re bloody and bruised. But they’re worth it.

The next day when I could still see blood under my fingernails (I do not lie), I bought Heidi that wonderful necklace. I wrapped it up in a nice little box where I put one of the only remnants of Cliff left. His license. I kept it for proof.

Then I gave Heidi her gift.

I told her that he might have her heart, but I owned her soul. That I would forever own her soul.

I put the pretty little necklace on her and then warned her that if she ever left me or
ever
found someone else or tried to tell anybody else, I’d kill her the same way I killed her boyfriend. I described in detail what I did to him and how you can be very creative when you know you’re going to burn the body afterwards. I think I was laughing, because Heidi couldn’t stop shaking and crying and fighting me off.

Things have been better since. Heidi’s on that medication you prescribed. But I know—if you must come, that is fine. We won’t be staying around here much longer. They will be searching for Cliff soon, so I need to do my part and just calm down. I need to act sane and play the part of the nice pastor like always. My hands are clean, but I need to make sure they remain clean.

It’s funny—as I write this, I hear sirens outside my window. Yet I don’t worry about them coming to get me. I don’t worry about someone knocking on my door asking where Cliff Floyd might be.

That’s the power I’ve discovered. The power inside of me that’s not coming from me. It feels good and it makes me want more. Lots more.

Jeremiah

Dear Dr. Barlow:

The only person who has come around was the doctor I’d never met. Some fancy doctor with a fancy name and fancy glasses that I actually kind of liked. I just want the truth: did you send him?

The cops haven’t been around. Nobody has. Nobody seems to know I had anything to do with Cliff’s disappearance. Heidi remains terrified of me. And now this. This doctor. This shrink who wants to ask me questions.

I’m not losing my mind.

I just want to know—was it you or was it Heidi who sent him?

I’m planning on coming back to Solitary and bringing Heidi with me. I don’t care if she doesn’t want to go. She’s coming.

I’ve started to plan things. I’ve started to write them down, the thoughts and feelings and dreams I’ve been having.

I want to know about the terrible flames. Were they real? They just seem to be something I’ve made up over the years. But the other night I had this dream and saw myself standing outside a burning house and watching it and laughing with tears running down my cheeks. Not tears of pain, but tears of joy and amusement.

Am I making that up, or did it really happen?

We began to meet shortly after that, right?

It’s time for those old rumors to start again. I remember hearing about them. The urban myths of Solitary.

I know now the power of hate and fear. I have tasted a little of them, and I have to say, I want more.