Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre(2)
Some readers may also question my decision to omit certain geographical details regarding the exact location of Greenloop. This was done to discourage tourists and looters from contaminating what is still an active crime scene. With the exception of these details, and the necessary spelling and grammatical corrections, the journal of Kate Holland remains intact. My only regret is not being able to interview Kate’s psychotherapist (who encouraged her to begin writing this diary) on the grounds of patient confidentiality. And yet this psychotherapist’s silence seems, at least to me, like an admission of hope. After all, why would a doctor worry about the confidentiality of her patient if she didn’t believe that patient was still alive?
At the time of this writing, Kate has been missing for thirteen months. If nothing changes, this book’s publication date may see her disappearance lasting several years.
At present, I have no physical evidence to validate the story you are about to read. Maybe I’ve been duped by Frank McCray, or maybe we’ve both been duped by Josephine Schell. I will let you, the reader, judge for yourself if the following pages seem reasonably plausible, and like me, if they reawaken a terror long buried under the bed of youth.
Go into the woods to lose sight and memory of the crimes of your contemporaries.
—JEAN—JACQUES ROUSSEAU
JOURNAL ENTRY #1
September 22
We’re here! Two days of driving, with one night in Medford, and we’re finally here. And it’s perfect. The houses really are arranged in a circle. Okay, duh, but you told me to not stop, not edit, not erase and go back. Which is why you encouraged paper and pen. No backspace key. “Just keep writing.” Okay. Whatever. We’re here.
I wish Frank could have been here. I can’t wait to call him tonight. I’m sure he’ll apologize again for being stuck at that conference in Guangzhou and I’ll tell him, again, that it doesn’t matter. He’s done so much for us already! Getting the house ready, all the FaceTime video tours. He’s right about them not doing this place justice. Especially the hiking trail. I wish he could have been there for that first walk I took today. It was magical.
Dan wouldn’t go. No surprise. He said he’d stay behind to help with the unpacking. He always says he’ll help. I told him I wanted, needed, to stretch my legs. Two days in the car! Worst drive ever! I shouldn’t have listened to the news the whole time. I know, “ration my current events, learn the facts but don’t obsess.” You’re right. I shouldn’t have. Venezuela again, the troop surge. Refugees. Another boat overturned in the Caribbean. So many boats. Hurricane season. At least it was the radio. If I hadn’t been driving, I’d have probably tried to watch on my phone.
I know. I know.
We should have at least taken the coastal road, like when Dan and I first got married. I should have pushed for that. But Dan thought the 5 was faster.
Ugh.
All that horrible industrial farming. All those poor cows crammed up against each other in the hot sun. The smell. You know I’m sensitive to odors. I felt like it was still in my clothes, my hair, up in my nostrils by the time we got here. I had to walk, feel the fresh air, work out the muscles in my neck.
I left Dan to do whatever and headed up the marked hiking trail behind our house. It’s really easy, a gradual incline with terraced, woodblock steps every hundred yards or so. It passes next to our neighbor’s house, and I saw her. The old lady. Sorry, older. Her hair was clearly gray. Short, I guess. I couldn’t tell from the kitchen window. She was doing something in front of the sink. She looked up and saw me. She smiled and waved. I smiled and waved back, but didn’t stop. Is that rude? I just figured, like unpacking, there’d be time to meet people. Okay, so maybe I didn’t actually think that. I didn’t really think. I just wanted to keep going. I felt a little guilty, but not for too long.
What I saw…
Okay, so remember how you thought sketching the layout of this place might help channel my need to organize my surroundings? I think that’s a good idea and if it’s halfway decent, I might text you the scanned picture. But there’s no way any drawing, or even photograph, can capture what I saw on that first hike.
The colors. Everything in L.A. is gray and brown. That gray, hazy bright sky that always hurt my eyes. The brown hills of dead grass that made me sneeze and made my head ache. It’s really green here, like back east. No. Better. So many shades. Frank told me there’d been a drought here and I thought I saw a little blond grass along the freeway, but way out here it’s like a rainbow of green—bright gold to dark blue. The bushes, the trees.
The trees.
I remember the first time I went hiking in Temescal Canyon back in L.A. Those short, gray twisted oaks with their small spiky leaves and thin, bullet-shaped acorns. They looked so hostile. It sounds super dramatic, but that’s how I felt. Like they were angry at having to live in that hot, hard, dusty dead clay.
These trees are happy. Yes, I said it. Why wouldn’t they be, in this rich, soft, rain-washed soil. A few with light, speckled bark and golden, falling leaves. They mix in among the tall, powerful pines. Some with their silver-bottom needles or the flatter, softer kind that brushed gently against me as I walked by. Comforting columns that hold up the sky, taller than anything in L.A., including those skinny wavy palms that hurt my neck to look up at.