6th April
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t last - I’ve got something to start this journal with! Something so small and yet so marvellous! Completely unplanned!
I was sitting reading in the garden under the jacaranda tree. I’ve been reading poetry several hours a day, ever since the start of the holiday, trying to get into the mood. But it was warm and sunny, and I drifted into a kind of haze.
Then I heard this fast furious liquid noise. I knew it must come from the creek at the bottom of the garden, so I went to look. I saw it immediately - like a live thing, a struggling thing in the smooth flowing water. It was where a branch had got jammed in the stones and muddy bed of the stream, so that one end reached up just as far as the surface. The water bulged up and over the end of the branch in a sudden fast bulb of liquid - like a gelatinous muscle on the top of the water. So strangely spasmodic it was - terrifyingly furious - always about to break loose, about to plunge down under the surface or race off downstream - but always somehow remaining the same. There was even a definite shape to it, a long bulging oval like an eye, rapidly, continuously winking.
I don’t know if there’s a poem in this. I started thinking about a poem while I stood watching. But I’m not going to push it - as Stephen says, look after the perceptions and the poems will look after themselves. I’m on the way now!
* * * *
Went up to town today. It’s amazing - a year ago, all I wanted to do was get away - to university, to Melbourne. Culgoa seemed boring and oppressive and narrow-minded. Yet today I found myself almost falling in love with the place. Everything so incredibly familiar, so unchanged! And the people too, so unchanged! I talked to Mr Jurd in the fish shop, and Mrs Lilley, and a dozen more.
The same feeling continued when I came back home. This plain old house with its stuffy middle-class furniture - but all exactly as it ought to be! And my mother in the kitchen, my father coming back for lunch - I could’ve hugged them! I don’t get to feel like that too often.
* * * *
Last night, an extraordinary dream. I woke up straight after and forced myself to scribble some notes about it. I had a pen and pad of paper ready on the chair beside my bed. Stephen says you should train yourself to record your dreams - he says that dreams are the poet’s inner poet. But I’ve hardly ever remembered interesting dreams - until this one.
It started with dancing. We were in a ballroom, all white and gold decoration, ornate glass chandeliers. A band on the platform played delicate tinkling music. The dancers were my whole family, uncles and aunts and cousins and grandparents on both sides. I was there writing in a book exactly like this journal. I think I was some kind of historian recording distinctive family characteristics.
Then the dance started to become very strange, as though everyone was stumbling and recovering in an irregular swooping, swaying motion. This way and that, a sickening stop-go, like the hovering and darting of a fly. And yet it was all part of the dance. The tinkling music swooped and swayed along with the dancers.
It occurred to me that we were on a ship and the ship was sinking. Perhaps I’d been on a ship in some earlier part of the dream. The dancers were swaying and stumbling because the ballroom floor was tilting from side to side as the ship sank. It was a kind of dream logic deduction - we couldn’t feel the tilting ourselves because we were moving with the ship, but the change in the dance was the clue to what was happening.
I went across to the band to tell them to stop their music. But the members of the band were now dressed in ragtime stripes and blue-and-white top hats, and they were capering about and rolling their eyes so that the whites showed. They seemed completely lunatic. I noticed there were ropes rigged up round the platform, penning them in.
The next thing I remember was that the ship had already sunk and I was in the water. I was terrified of drowning, but someone supported me from behind - someone with strong powerful arms, swimming and towing me along. I tried to turn my head but I couldn’t manage to see who it was.
Instead I seemed to be looking down, down through endless depths of black water. And there, far below, descending to the bottom of the sea, was the ship itself like a tiny toy. I could see its rows of glittering lights, I could even hear the dance music tinkling on. The sight made me incredibly giddy, as though standing looking down from the top of a cliff.
That was when I woke up and scribbled my notes.
* * * *
At last I’ve found my journal again. When I came back home yesterday I searched for it everywhere - I wanted to record my experience on the embankment. And now today it turns up on top of the kitchen crockery cabinet. I can’t imagine why I put it there.
This was experience. I was walking beside the railway track when I saw a large round stone that had split in two. Only I didn’t think about what it was at first - that’s what I’ve been doing, allowing the special perceptions to grow and flower, without categorizing or limiting them. So what I saw was the inside of the stone like a mirror, a sheer blue-black flinty colour, as though dark light had been trapped in a crystal. There was so much difference, whole worlds of difference, between this pure inward thing and its outward appearance, its ordinary dull brown dusty covering.
And then I saw how many other dull brown dusty stones there were on the embankment - and I thought: so they’re all like this inside! It was like a revelation. Everywhere the secret inward intensity, the hidden power! And it’s the poet’s job to uncover it!
* * * *
I wrote to Stephen today. He’s staying in Melbourne over the holiday. I described my new experiences, but only in a general way. Somehow I don’t want to tell anyone the contents of my journal - not even Stephen. I’m beginning to think this journal will be my true poem, much more than any separate poems that might come out of it.
I can’t help feeling that something great, something wonderful is happening to me. I’m following Stephen’s theories - about training oneself to hold on to the most subliminal perceptions - but I’m really living what he only theorizes! Maybe I’m getting over-confident, but I believe - no, I won’t put it into words - but I have such immense hopes for myself!
* * * *
12th April
I haven’t been reading so much lately - I take in a few lines of a poem and immediately my thoughts start to drift. It’s as though the mere idea of poetry is enough to put me in the mood.
In fact, I haven’t done much of anything today - not since slicing my hand this morning. It was incredibly stupid. I was going to cut myself a hunk of bread and I ran the blade of the big kitchen knife lightly across the palm of my hand. Testing for sharpness, I suppose - only I must’ve got that movement confused with the movement of actually cutting into the loaf, because instead of pressing lightly, I pressed very heavily.
I could hardly believe the deep slit I made in my palm. There was blood everywhere. It was very difficult to tighten a bandage in a way that would stop the flow. Luckily it wasn’t my writing hand.
* * * *
13th April
Another strange and vivid dream last night. It started out with the poetry workshop, our Tuesday night workshop in Stephen’s room. Stephen, Kerry, Justin, Denise and all the regulars were there, plus a few others. I remember one man with a red tie who seemed familiar in the dream, though totally unfamiliar when I re-picture him now.
We were talking about an amazingly good poem that Justin had photocopied and handed around for discussion. It was anonymous - that’s how the workshop operates, unless the author wants to own up at the end. But this time even Justin didn’t seem to know who the author was.
It was a poem about a fire breaking out in a house - which turned out to be my house, this house. And as the dream went on, the poem became a story about me. I was a small child again, playing in our front room, and there was sunlight coming in through the front window. Then somehow the sunlight caught fire and changed into flames. I stopped playing and watched the flames, but I couldn’t move. Even in the dream I thought, ‘I’m too young to move.’
Then a great splintering crash made the door shake. I knew that it was the firemen come to rescue me. And soon enough, there was an axe-head appearing through the wood. But still they were chopping too slow, they weren’t going to get to me in time.
Suddenly I was in a state of panic - and out of the panic came an impossible switch. All at once, I was no longer the child waiting to be rescued but the fireman on the other side of the door. I was the one wielding the axe, I was strong and powerful, chopping and chopping. But now the chopping seemed strangely pointless, merely going through the motions.
That was the end of the dream. It was as though it had run out of anything more to happen, as though it had stuck in a rut.
* * * *
Went for a long walk today - but the special perception didn’t happen outside, strangely enough. It happened when I came home, when I was in the kitchen.
It was a very simple thing. There’s a carpet in the kitchen patterned in an intricate Turkish design of red and green. What I saw first of all was a distortion of the pattern in one small area of the carpet - a kind of greasy blur, a filminess. As I moved my head, the distorted lines and colours kept sliding and running together in a repulsive kind of way.
I backed off the carpet and stood staring at it. It took me a very long time to realize what it was - a circular glass ashtray lying upside down on the carpet. I was seeing the pattern through the glass. That was all it was! When I bent down to
* * * *
What the hell happened then? I was writing a sentence about the ashtray and suddenly my mind blanked out! I couldn’t remember the word I was going to use - then I couldn’t remember the idea I was trying to express - or what the idea connected to - or what I was doing - or why - where - anything at all! I was casting around in my mind for some solid memory, and I couldn’t find anything at all! The more I panicked, the more the emptiness kept opening out, wider and wider!
Maybe it only lasted a fraction of a minute, but it was scary, very scary. I don’t want to get like that again. I’ll continue this journal some other time.
* * * *
I blame that ashtray thing. It must’ve been still in my thoughts when I went to bed, and it came through again in a frightening dream.
The dream began when I was walking along a track, like some of the tracks around Culgoa, except that the surface of the ground was covered with white sand. White sand with green banks on either side, and yellow wheatfields spreading all around - it was a dream in colour, and the colours were wonderfully intense.
Then I became aware of something transparent and shapeless on the sand, almost under my feet. It was a jellyfish - and at the same time it was the distorted filmy illusion produced by the glass ashtray. But I thought of it as a jellyfish in the dream.
I stepped around it - but then there was another, and another and another. For some reason I couldn’t slow down, I had to keep walking faster and faster, desperately twisting and turning to stop from putting my feet into the transparent blurry shapes.
I knew in my mind that I was being forced off the path - off the path, up the bank, to walk across the wheatfield. But it was very important not to have to walk across the wheatfield!
Then another fear started up - completely arbitrary, not connected to anything, coming into the dream out of nowhere at all. So stupid and irrational, in a way that even dreams ought not to be irrational. It was as though I was waiting for it to happen.
It was a fear of someone standing behind me. Someone standing very close behind me, even as I was walking faster and faster. But now I was no longer exactly walking, I was gliding, gliding - hardly conscious of moving at all.
I was almost expecting it when the cuff of a jacket appeared over my shoulder. Then my arms were held in, locked against my sides. And then the hands.
I can’t begin to describe the horrible intimacy of those hands. Strong powerful hands that clamped over my face and blocked off my breathing! I knew that my nostrils were being gently squeezed between someone’s thumb and forefinger. And at the same time, impossibly, a pressure against my neck, like a tight band. I couldn’t struggle! I could feel the strength in those hands increasing, while my own strength ebbed away ...
I woke up with my head pounding, ears ringing, gasping for breath - as though it had all really happened. I still seemed to feel the imprint of those hands like a physical sensation on my face.
* * * *
Four days since I last wrote in this journal. There’s been nothing much to write. In a way I’m glad. I’m still nervous about what I’ve been calling my ‘special perceptions’. I don’t want them leading on to other things - like that experience of total blank-out, like that bad dream. I haven’t remembered any dreams for the past few nights.
The house has been in turmoil with my parents preparing for their fortnight on Magnetic Island. They leave in three days time. I feel somehow cut off and distant from them, as though we’re moving on separate planets. Perhaps it’s because those bad experiences keep preying on my mind.
This evening, I got to the state where I had to do something about it - I had to take another look at that illusion of filminess on the kitchen carpet. I found the same glass ashtray and put it down on the carpet in exactly the same position. But I couldn’t recapture the illusion. The more I looked at it, the more I couldn’t believe I’d ever seen anything other than a glass ashtray.
Suddenly I realized my father was watching me from the doorway. Watching me staring at an upturned ashtray! What must he have thought? How long had he been watching?
But all he said was ‘What’s that ashtray doing on the floor? Did you knock it down, Chris?’
Then he went across and picked it up. He made some comment about how clumsy I’d been getting lately. As though that had anything to do with it!
* * * *
I have to check up on everything now. I can’t help it - it’s the only way to stop from worrying.
Like half an hour ago. I took a spoon from the cutlery drawer and sat down at the table for breakfast. But then I just stayed sitting - as if I was waiting for something. Then I realized what it was. The fingers and palm of my right hand were wet.
My first thought was blood - it was only yesterday I took the bandage off my hand. But it wasn’t blood, only water. But where from? I couldn’t remember touching anything wet.
In the end I worked it out. It must have been the handle of the cutlery drawer - the last person to open it must have had wet hands. Still I had to go and check up. I can’t explain the feeling of relief when I discovered I was right.
* * * *
What’s wrong with me? I thought I was getting back to normal - and then last night I had another vivid dream. But this time it wasn’t what happened in the dream itself that was disturbing.
I dreamed I was in a long corridor-like room, with iron beds lined up parallel to the walls. It was like some kind of institution, but old-fashioned, with a sense that this was all taking place a long time in the past.
I was one of the people milling around - we were protesting about something, perhaps the fact that there weren’t enough beds for us all. Some of the other faces were familiar, though maybe from other dreams rather than real life. I remember the man with the red tie, who was in one of my dreams a week or so ago. His smart red tie didn’t seem to match his other clothes, of loose grey sack-like material.
Then someone came walking down the corridor and speaking in a firm voice. It was the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge - I knew that the way you know things in dreams - and he was uttering phrases like ‘Your protests are useless’ and ‘The situation is inevitable’. And when I heard those phrases, a great sense of fate and doom washed over me.
At that point I woke up and switched on the light. I wasn’t worried about the dream itself. But then I noticed a ball of paper on the chair beside my bed - a sheet of paper rolled up into a very tight round ball. Rolled up when? How? By whom?
I picked it up and smoothed it out. It was a sheet from the pad I’d left out for recording my dreams. There was nothing written on it, no message. And yet it was like a message nonetheless. I must have done it myself - fast asleep - in the middle of the night!
I tried repeating the operation with another sheet of paper. I had to roll the paper round and round between my hands to create a ball so very small and tight. How could I have performed such a tricky operation without waking up? Is this some version of sleepwalking?
I can’t help thinking that I did it while I was having the dream.
* * * *
My parents left on their holiday today. The taxi arrived at 11.00 and I helped load their cases and waved them off. I had the impression they were worried about me - and more than just the worry over me looking after myself in the house for two weeks. But I acted positive and cheery - I felt positive and cheery. I was thinking how I could order my own life at last, without having someone always watching over my shoulder.
And then, right in the middle of the positive cheery feeling, it happened. As the taxi disappeared, I went to go back in through the front gate - and I couldn’t open the latch! I was doing something else at the same time!
I don’t know how to explain it. It was something to do with my arm, as though my arm was caught between two different movements. I was blocked, immobilized, bent over the gate in a strange unnatural way.
At least it seemed strange and unnatural to me. Mrs Silveri from next door was standing around - she’d been seeing my parents off too - and I don’t think she noticed anything. But I couldn’t try again, not with her there, I couldn’t risk it happening again in front of her. There was a hollow sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.
So I turned away and walked off down the street, pretending I had something to do before going back in. I took a five minutes walk to nowhere and when I returned - the problem had vanished. My arm behaved completely normally, my hand opened the latch first time.
It’s 7.00 p.m. as I’m writing this. I’m going to go out later tonight, to practise opening and closing the latch when there’s no-one around. Just to be sure, just to see if that strangeness happens again.
* * * *
I’ve had another dream. I’m afraid of what it might mean. It’s the recurrence that frightens me.
I dreamed that I was going up town. I didn’t want to meet anyone, and I deliberately crossed to the other side of the street when anyone approached.
For some reason it was especially Mrs Lilley I didn’t want to meet. But as I went along Hamilton Street I began to think I saw her features in every face. To escape, I took a turn into Cox Street.
The next thing, I had followed Cox Street right out of town and turned off along the path by the river. But there was still someone coming towards me from the opposite direction. I left the path and walked away from the river, across the wheatfields.
The other person went on past along the path. But when I veered to head back towards the river, I saw that she’d also left the path. She was circling around behind me through the wheat.
The thought passed through my mind - Mrs Lilley has been drinking! Perhaps the thought came from the fact that my mother once told a story about seeing Mrs Lilley drunk.
I was determined not to let her get behind me. I started circling around her as she circled around me. Round and round we went, about twenty metres apart, neither of us looking straight at the other. It was somehow important not to recognize her, not to admit that she was there.
So we performed a kind of ritualistic circle, waist deep in the golden wheat. The circle swirled all across the field - at one time on top of the hill, another time almost back at the bridge. But always exactly the same distance apart.
It was no longer Mrs Lilley, though. I no longer thought of the person as Mrs Lilley, not her at all. It was the man with the red tie. That was who I was afraid of.
Still I didn’t look straight at him and he didn’t look straight at me. But now I could glimpse the tie around his neck - a strange unpleasant red colour. I couldn’t tell what his face was like. Somehow the tie dominated everything else about him.
That was all there was to the dream. We kept on circling around each other like the opposite ends of a rotor. Circling and circling, until I finally woke up. I was covered in sweat.
* * * *
Three whole days, and nothing’s happened. Maybe it’ll come all right after all. I’ve got into the habit of knocking myself out with three glasses of whiskey every night. I’ve got a store of four bottles, so I won’t run dry in a hurry.
Another thing I’ve done is move out of my own bedroom. I’ve made up a bed for myself on the lounge in the front room. It seems to be working. No dreams - and no sleepwalking, or whatever it was I did that night.
I’ve hardly been out at all, except to buy my bottles of whiskey. I went up to the Culgoa Tavern, and it was like that dream - I didn’t want to meet anyone. I didn’t cross to the other side of the street, but I kept my head down and pretended not to see people. I dreaded having to make polite conversation. I’d been planning to buy bread and tins and vegetables, but in the end I just went to the bottle shop and came straight home.
Home seems very strange now that I’m sleeping on the lounge. Everything so familiar, hardly changed since I was a child - yet I’m living in it like a total outsider. My shirts and trousers hang over the piano and piano-stool, my dirty clothes are piled under the table, there’s a towel lying on top the bookcase. It’s as though I’m camping out in someone else’s house. I can’t be bothered tidying up.
* * * *
A letter from Stephen arrived today. Full of names - Rilke, Hoffmanstahl, Bachmann, Vallejo, Alberti - all the poets he thinks I ought to read. So pretentious! To help me ‘open my mind to the potential and equivocal’, he says. What does he know about it? I only wish I could close my mind down.
* * * *
Still nothing happened. Maybe I’ve beaten it. I try not to think about anything much, a sort of minimalist existence, letting things happen. Life has become a floating cloud of random impulses.
My strongest impulse is the impulse to go to the kitchen for something to eat. Dozens of times a day I find myself wandering through the kitchen door. But when I get there, I know there’s nothing I really want to eat. Maybe it’s because I’ve already run out of most of my favourite foods - the shelves are getting very bare, ever since I failed to stock up at the supermarket the other day.
That must be the explanation for this recurring whim. There’s a hankering in my taste buds, but nothing to satisfy the hankering. It’s very stupid. I have to keep reminding myself not to go into the kitchen. If I stop reminding myself, then sooner or later I’m drifting back through the door again.
* * * *
It’s him! Of course! I’ve been trying to avoid admitting it! But it’s been him all along! The man in the red tie!
He came to me in a dream - in a hundred dreams, on and on through the night. Again and again I dreamed I was waking up, but it was always only another level of dream. And on every level, in every scene - he kept finding me, coming after me, trying to work his way around behind me.
I remember only the most vivid scenes clearly. One scene was in a theatre with rich plush seats and carpets and incredibly ornate gilt decoration. Another scene was a green paddock - unreal technicolour green - and there was a red rusted wreck of a car in the middle of the grass. Another scene was on the beach at Coffs Harbour - a perfect memory of when we used to go there for holidays - and I was wading out towards my special rock, my island.
Scene after scene after scene ... but always he discovered a way of getting into them. He was the swimmer further along the beach, he was someone sitting five rows back in the audience, he was circling around behind me through the paddock. Even a patch of shadow could start turning into him!
Scene after scene after scene ... and I had to keep running, climbing, scrambling away from him. It was impossible to find a safe place to hide. I could always escape - but I could never escape for good.
In the end it was almost mechanical. Even some of the same scenes repeated themselves. A terrible sense of inevitability came over me. Whenever I glanced round behind - there he was, lolling his head and rolling his eyes.
That’s what he was doing - lolling his head and rolling his eyes. His head rocked as though there were no bones in his neck, his eyeballs swivelled as though loose in their sockets. Horrible sickening motion, white round globes of his eyes!
Until finally I awoke for real. I was exhausted - exhausted by terror, if that makes sense. But at least he’d never managed to catch me up, I thought, at least he’d never managed to come up close behind.
Then I felt a wetness on my wrist. I turned on the light - and saw small lines of red over the sheet. There was a scratch mark on my wrist, not deep but oozing blood. And another on the back of my hand - another on my other hand - still more on my chest! Dozens of tiny marks, most of them not even bleeding. Some were fresh but some were old - maybe days old - only I’d never noticed before!
I jumped up and rushed to the bathroom, to the mirror in the bathroom. I counted thirty separate scratches. It was like discovering some terrible secret crime that had been committed.
And then I discovered who was responsible. There was blood under my fingernails - under two fingernails that were slightly longer than the rest.
I felt like throwing up. I took the nail scissors and cut my fingernails - all of them - back to the quick. But what’s the use?
I can’t believe it’s just a coincidence - the dream and the scratch marks. I daren’t go back to sleep, I don’t trust the whiskey to work any more.
I’m sitting writing this on the front room table. I daren’t go back to sleep.
* * * *
I’ve been thinking about it. I know what it is about him. The man with the red tie is a lunatic. That’s why he rolls his eyes and lolls his head. He’s completely irrecoverably insane.
But how has he got into my dreams? And into my life too? What is he - some sort of psychic entity? Trying to take possession of me? A goddamn ghost?
I’d like to believe it, I want to believe it. But why would there be a ghost in this house? There’s never been anything strange before, and I’ve lived here since I was a child. And even before then, I’ve never heard of any weird or violent events connected with this house. You couldn’t keep weird or violent events secret in a place like Culgoa.
* * * *
I went to the window just now and looked out through the curtains. Day is dawning, there’s a light creeping up across the sky. I have to make plans, I have to do something.
Okay, no panic. No surrender. I can work it out calmly. If there’s some kind of psychic entity involved, if that’s what he is, then okay, where does he come from? How did he get released?
When I try to think back, everything that’s happened recently seems totally confused in my mind. I can’t remember what came first and what came second. But I don’t have to rely on memory - I’ve got this journal to give me dates and events. I’m going to re-read every entry, very carefully. There must be clues.
* * * *
I think I’ve got it! The carpet in the kitchen! It can’t be an accident that so many of these strangenesses tie in with the kitchen. And the crucial moment - I believe the crucial moment was when I saw that filmy shape on the carpet, when the pattern was distorted by the glass ashtray. Is that where he comes from? Something that was locked into the pattern?
I’m certain I’m right, I hope I’m right. I went and studied that very same spot on the carpet. There’s only one thing to do - destroy it. I’m going to rip out the whole strip of carpet and burn it.
This is my plan. I’m writing it down to make sure it won’t be forgotten, not even if I suffer one of my lapses, my losses of contact.
So - I wait until the middle of the night, until one o’clock. I can’t do it during the day, it would be too hard to explain if anyone saw. I’ve set one o’clock as my starting time.
First I rip out the strip of carpet, roll it up and carry it to the bonfire patch in the back garden. I don’t think the rest of the carpet matters, only the spot where I saw the filmy shape. At least that’s what I’ll try first.
Next I get the can of lawn mower petrol from the garage and sprinkle it over the roll. Then I set a light and burn it completely to ashes.
As I was writing that down, I had the sudden thought - how am I going to explain the missing strip of carpet to my parents? Suddenly I remembered they’re going to be back in less than a week. So soon! It seems like a million years away. I can’t be bothered worrying about it now, I’ll make something up when the time comes. If the time comes.
* * * *
8.00 P.M.
I had to put a chair in front of the kitchen door. Twice today I found myself with my hand on the handle, about to wander through into the kitchen. The chair will block my way, remind me not to go in when there’s no reason. I don’t want to go in when there’s no reason!
Still five hours to go. When I looked out through the curtains, the darkness was starting to come down, the garden was filling up with shadows. Out in the street the streetlights are already on.
I mustn’t fall asleep. Not that above all! And yet I’m afraid I might just do it, in some accidental moment when I’m not paying attention, when I’m not keeping a watch on myself.
I’ll go for a walk - that’s the best answer. A long long walk until one o’clock. I hate the thought of going outside - not just because of meeting people - I hate the thought of going anywhere near those places where I had my ‘special perceptions’. My stupid bloody ‘special perceptions’! But I’ll find ways to walk that don’t remind me ...
* * * *
2.30, middle of the night
I did it, I burned the whole strip of carpet. Nothing special happened when that particular spot went up in flames - I don’t know what I expected, but I expected something. Will it work? Please please please let it work!
But I don’t feel very confident now. I daren’t go to sleep - I still daren’t go to sleep. What made me believe it was the carpet? But if it wasn’t the carpet, if that wasn’t where he came from - then what happens next?
I keep thinking there’s something pressing against my shoulders from behind. I keep moving my shoulders, reaching with my hand, trying to brush something away.
Maybe I’m only imagining it because it’s what I’m most afraid of. I know how the idea arises, I know what it would mean if it was true. But maybe it isn’t true.
But I’m afraid. Very afraid.
* * * *
This is my final entry. I hope someone reads it and understands. I hope someone can make sense of what’s happened to me.
How could I ever have believed he came from the carpet? Sheer desperation. Now I know it all - the truth is so much simpler. He told me about it himself.
Now he’s behind me even as I write. I can close my eyes and see him with his red tie around his neck, I can feel the lolling movements of his lunatic lolling head. I don’t need to dream.
But he won’t do anything for a while. Not now that I’ve come through into the kitchen. I’ve brought my journal in here and I’m sitting writing at the kitchen table. He doesn’t need to push any more. He knows he’s won.
He told me about it in gestures and words, horrible bubbling words coming out of his mouth. Or maybe they weren’t proper words at all, only slobbery sounds - but I still understood the meaning. How could I fail to understand? He’s me - Christopher Caulder - he comes from me!
It was so obvious. I knew he was somehow familiar, even though I never got a good look at him, even though his face was always stretched and distorted in crazy mad expressions. The last face I ever thought of - the one face you never see in ordinary dreams - my own face!
But not me as I am. Me as I’m going to become. The potential me, the me that will be. I’ve opened him up in myself.
I’ve haunted myself with my own future. With my own oncoming insanity.
He’s letting me write this, but he’s starting to come up closer behind. And not only behind, but through me, closing in over me. Immensely strong and powerful. Isn’t that what they always say about madmen?
Not long now. I won’t be in control much longer. I’m sitting writing this at the kitchen table, with the big kitchen knife in front of me. I laid it out on the table next to my journal. But now it’s time to close the journal.
* * * *
Very soon I shall pick up the knife and make myself a bright red tie
Richard Harland’s fourteen published novels cover all areas of speculative fiction, from fantasy (the Ferren trilogy) to SF (the ‘Eddon and Vail’ series), from cult gothic horror (The Vicar of Morbing Vyle, The Black Crusade) to fantasy for younger readers.
He has won an Aurealis Award for Best Horror Novel, a Golden Aurealis for Best Novel in any Speculative Genre, and has twice taken out the Aurealis for Best Fantasy Short Story.
His next novel will be the Dickensian fantasy World-Shaker, published by Allen & Unwin in May, 2009.
His website is at www.richardharland.net