The Places Alec Forgot

Chapter Nine

It's just me and Mother. Sleep did not come easy to me last night. Thoughts of that man chased me through the night. I couldn't stop thinking about his face, about the crooked nose - like mine - and the black hair - like mine - and the silver eyes - still like mine.

I dreamt that he was me, or, really, that I was him. I was chasing someone down the road. It was some little girl, no older than eight. She was screaming, wailing, but she was not, too. It wasn't raining in my dream. There were street lights lining the road, all turned on. It was dusk.

I think I was screaming, too. No, I was howling. Like a wolf I was snarling, spit flying from my lips. My body isn't right, limbs too long, neck too high. My skin is boiling, dripping and popping off of my body. There is blood flying from the popped boils and sores. It hurts, and maybe that's why I'm growling.

I got caught up again and again in my dream as I got up in the morning, and I'm doing it now, too. I've barely gotten out of the shower, and it's coming back to me again. The water dripping down my skin is warm, but it makes me think of the blood from my dream.

When I look at the image of my body in the new bathroom mirror, a chill runs down my spine. Something about it feels unusual, but apparently, everything feels unusual to me now. It feels like an eternity ago that we had the storm that broke our mirrors.

I touch the steamy surface, rubbing away a circle of clarity in order to see myself. It's my face, not the face of that thing. I'm grateful for that, as odd as it sounds.

Leaving the bathroom, I manage to avoid Mother. The girls are gone; I heard them leave this morning when I woke up. Mother's car is still in the driveway, though I can barely see it from my window. She's likely in her bedroom, reading or speaking to spirits.

It makes my skin crawl when she sits me down to talk about what the spirits said. I've never been in her bedroom that I can remember, but she's brought out her cards - tarot cards I think - and showed them to me. She's shown me the candles she lights. The talking board was bad, yet it seems that she opens communication for these "spirits" often on her own.

Do as I say, not as I do, right?

Getting dressed isn't easy. The soreness still throbs in my legs, and I just want to crawl back into bed. I took the bandages off my arm that morning to reveal scabbed over cuts from where the trees sliced me skin open. I can't imagine that the branches were so sharp as to do that, though; they look too clean, too straight and simple. I didn't rebandage them.

I'm sitting down on the foot of my bed, looking down at my hands. I stretch my fingers, curl them, snap. I look down at my toes, covered by socks, and I curl them, stretch them. This is my body, not some grotesque, inhuman shape.

Footsteps in the hall. I've learned to differentiate between Mother's footsteps and the girls' footsteps. They tip-toe and walk fast; Mother walks slow and louder, like she wants you to know where she is and when she's coming.

I stand up now. It's easier than it was yesterday. I've gotten stronger, and the only pain I feel is dull, just an ache.

Mother's footsteps stop at my doorway. I have questions for her, and I want to demand answers, but I already know what will happen if I start to throw around firm requests. Continuously, I repeat the questions over and over again in my head. Beyond my nightmare, they had kept me awake, too.

What happened when I was younger?

Where is Dad?

Who is he?

Those last two came out of the blue last night. Heart pounding, thoughts racing, the blurry memories from Stanley Avenue brought these questions to me. It seemed unlikely that she was yelling at anyone else in our house back then other than whoever my father was.