Just After Sunset(79)

He said, "This doesn't have any personal concern for you, Johnny, does it?"

Keen. Perceptive. Always was. And has lots of info about yours truly!

"No," I said. "I've just gotten interested in the subject. In fact, it's become something of a compulsion."

We ended the conversation laughing and then I went to the coffee table and counted the books there. Six. That's good. Six is a fix. (N.'s little rhyme.) I checked my desk to make sure the key was there and of course it is, where else would it be? One key. Is one good or bad? "The cheese stands alone," you know. Probably not germane, but something to think about!

I started out of the room, then remembered there were magazines on the coffee table as well as books and counted those, as well. Seven! I took the People with Brad Pitt on the cover and threw it in the trash.

Look, if it makes me feel better, what harm? And it was only Brad Pitt!

And if this gets worse, I will come clean with J. This is a promise I make to myself.

I think a Neurontin scrip might help. Although it's an anti-seizure medication, strictly speaking, in cases like mine it's been known to help. Of course...

August 3, 2007

Who am I kidding? There are no cases like this, and Neurontin doesn't help. Tits on a bull.

But counting helps. Strangely soothing. And something else. The key was on the wrong side of the drawer I put it in! That was intuition but intuition is not to be SNEEZED AT. I moved it. Better. Then put another key (safe-deposit box) on the other side. Seems to balance it. Six is a fix but two is true (joke). Good sleep last night.

Well, no. Nightmares. The Androscoggin at sunset. A red wound. A birth canal. But dead.

August 10, 2007

Something is wrong out there. The eighth stone is weakening. There is no sense telling myself this isn't so, because every nerve in my body-every cell in my skin!!-proclaims it's true. Counting books (and shoes, yes, that's true, N.'s intuition and not to be "sneezed at") helps, but does not fix THE BASIC PROBLEM. Not even Placing Diagonals helps too much, although it certainly...

Toast crumbs on the kitchen counter, for instance. You line them up with the blade of a knife. Line of sugar on the table, HA! But who knows how many crumbs? How many grains of sugar? Too many to count!!

This must end. I'm going out there.

I will take a camera.

August 11, 2007

The darkness. Dear Christ. It was almost complete. And something else.

The darkness had an eye.

August 12

Did I see anything? Actually?

I don't know. I think I did, but I don't know.

There are 23 words in this entry.

26 is better.

August 19

I picked up the phone to call J., tell him what's going on with me, then put it down. What would I tell him? Besides: 1-207-555-1863=11. A bad number.

Valium helps more than Neurontin. I think. As long as I don't overdue it

Sept 16

Back from Motown. Covered with sweat. Shaking. But eight again. I fixed it. I! Fixed it! IT! Thank God. But...

But!

I cannot live my life this way.

No, but-I WAS JUST IN TIME. IT WAS ON THE VERGE OF GETTING OUT. The protections only hold so long and then a house-call is necessary! (My little joke.)

I saw the 3-lobed eye N. spoke of. It belongs to nothing from this world or this universe.

It is trying to eat its way thru.

Except I don't accept this. I let N.'s obsession get a finger in my psyche (it's playing stinkyfinger with me if you get my little joke) and it has continued to widen the gap, slipping in a second finger, a third, a whole pulling hand. Opening me up. Opening up my

But!

I saw with my own eyes. There is a world behind this world, filled with monsters

Gods

HATEFUL GODS!

One thing. If I kill myself, what? If it's not real, the torment still ends. If it is real, the eighth stone out there solidifies again. At least until someone else-the next "CARETAKER"-goes heedlessly prospecting up that road and sees...

Makes suicide almost look good!

October 9, 2007

Better lately. My ideas seem more my own. And when I last went out to Ackerman's Field (2 days ago), my worries were all for naught. There were 8 stones there. I looked at them-solid as houses-and saw a crow in the sky. It swerved to avoid the airspace over the stones, "ziss is true," (joke) but it was there. And as I stood at the end of the road with my camera hung over my neck (nix pix in Motton stix, those stones don't photograph, N. was right about that much, anyway; possibly radon??), I wondered how I ever could have thought there were only 7. I admit that I counted my steps back to my car (and then paced around a little when an odd number brought me to the driver's door), but these things do not let go all at once. They are CRAMPS in the MIND! Yet maybe...

Do I dare hope I'm getting better?

October 10, 2007

Of course there is another possibility, loath as I am to admit it: that N. was right about the solstices. We are moving away from one and toward the other now. Summer gone; winter ahead. Which, if true, is good news only in the short term. If I should have to deal with such wracking mental spasms next spring...and the spring after that...

I couldn't, that's all.

How that eye haunts me. Floating in the gathering darkness.

Other things behind it

CTHUN!

November 16, 2007