Whisper to Me by Nick Lake
For Hannah, who probably deserves a cowriter credit as much as a dedication, but is only getting a dedication. Sorry.
inde latet silvis nulloque in monte videtur, omnibus auditur: sonus est, qui vivit in illa.
She stays hidden in the woods.
No one sees her in the mountains, But everyone hears her; it is sound that lives in her.
—Ovid, Metamorphoses
Monsters are real, and ghosts are real, too.
They live inside us, and sometimes they win.
—Stephen King, from the 2001 introduction to The Shining
??
Babes With BOOBS
These are the things that you need to know: 1. I hear voices.
2. I miss you.
3. I wish I could take back what I did to you.
4. What they said in the news, what they said I did. It’s not true. You don’t have to worry about that.
5. I’m going to write it all down, all about Paris and why I broke your heart, and then I’m going to e-mail it to you. It will take you, I don’t know, a couple of days to read. So I will be waiting for you at 5:00 p.m. Friday by the windmill hole of Pirate Golf on Pier One, where we played that one time.
If you forgive me, when you’re done reading this, come and get me. Okay? Think of this as the most screwed-up love letter ever.
I hope you come. That isn’t a thing you need to know, it’s just true. I hope you do. I hope that when you’ve read this, you’ll understand why I did what I did.
One of the things on the previous page was not true.
I don’t, precisely, hear voices.
I hear only one voice.
But please know:
1. It’s the same thing, whether you hear one voice or several. I mean, “hearing voices” is just what people say, isn’t it? It’s the common terminology. It doesn’t matter how many voices there are.
2. Please don’t worry. I’m not doing this to lie to you. In fact just the opposite. I’m going to tell you the truth, right from the beginning. All the things I left out, all the things I deceived you about, everything that happened after you left. My side of the story, not what you saw on the news. I’m setting it all down in front of you, once and for all.
3. Like my heart.
4. Like all that I am.
Yeah, okay, that was gross and hyperbolic; I can just see Paris miming putting her fingers in her throat and barfing. Sorry. I get carried away.
And I don’t know. Maybe the Ovid quote right at the beginning was too much. But you do love the classics, and Ovid in particular. You said to me once, “Ovid knew more about body horror than any B-movie director”; it was when we were standing between mountains of plush toys, SpongeBobs and Tweety Birds looming over us.
And I wanted to kick this off with something you love, because I figure at this point you don’t like me very much anymore.
Maybe I can change that.
I don’t know.
??
Babes With BOOBS - BWB
1.
THE PART BEFORE
You know what this place—
I was—
Okay. Okay.
Okay, so it’s not like you need me to introduce you to Oakwood, New Jersey, or to the boardwalk or the amusement park. I mean, you weren’t born here like me, but you know every street in this town.
The day it all began was a Sunday. I spent most of the day in my room, reading. Me and my dad never used to hang out or anything, even on the days when he wasn’t at the restaurant.
You’ve never been in my room. It’s not very interesting: there’s a bed, clothes on the floor, old posters on the wall from when I used to be into horses. I’ve never taken them down. All along two walls are bookshelves my dad built for me. There are piles of books on the floor too.
Late afternoon, I felt like getting out of the house. When I came down, Dad was in his den at the back, next to the kitchen—I could hear him moving around in there, feeding his pets, or something.
“Where are you going?”
That was Dad, calling to me as I passed.
I leaned in the door. “Beach, maybe,” I said. I had my sketch pad, and I felt like finding something to draw down there.
In Dad’s room, glass tanks ran along the wall, glowing with yellow and blue light. Twigs and branches in them, moss. And if you got too close—which I didn’t like to do—you could see creepy things. A praying mantis. Centipedes.
Dad was in the corner, at his computer, peering at the screen. Hunched over, his muscled shoulders tight. He’s spreading a bit in the middle now, but he’s still strong, still tough. Once I saw him pick up a full trash can—one of the big wheeled ones—and move it, without thinking, so that he could mow a patch of our yard. I don’t think it even occurred to him to roll it.
“Don’t be late,” he said. “Not with that guy around.”
“What guy?”
“The guy. The Houdini Killer.”
“Dad,” I said. “It’s still light out.”
He shrugged. “Don’t be late.”
“What are you doing anyway?” I asked.