

##

##

##

## The Blackwater Journal

By Robert Trainor

Copyright 2014

By Robert Trainor

Smashwords Edition

Thank you for downloading this ebook. This book remains the copyrighted property of the author and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes.

## PREFACE

Within the depths of the darkest mind

Lies a victim of the human kind

And she may be beautiful and she may be divine

But death is her fate to be forever mine

What follows is the journal of Alanda Streets, which was discovered by the police in her mother and father's bedroom on April 25th, 1989.

## FIRST ENTRY: I BEGIN MY JOURNAL

Yesterday, my brother told me, "Alanda, someday, you're going to be a movie star." He only says things like that because I have long blond hair, and Ethan only dates women who have blond hair. Actually, it's very immature of him to think that way because it can be hurtful to others. I can still remember the day when he broke up with Allison Jennings because he found out she had dyed her hair blond. Allison and I were best friends then, and I had spent months telling her what a great guy my brother was. Boy, was Allison mad at me when Ethan told her that he didn't want to go out with her anymore.

"I thought you told me that Ethan was the smartest guy you've ever met," said Allison to me after school that day. Tears were streaming down her face, and I had no idea what to say to her. I think that was when I began to realize that men aren't always as smart as they think they are. Ethan had shown his lack of smarts by dumping Allison, and then, right around the same time, my father, who I'd always worshipped, started saying all this grown-up stuff to me, which isn't the way to impress a sixteen-year-old.

My father is a very successful man, but some of his ideas aren't fit for teenagers. Like, for instance, he suddenly received this brainstorm that I should become a nurse. Wouldn't that be a boatload of fun? Let's go to the hospital, play nurse, and spend the rest of our lives there. Are you kidding? I think he got this idea because the year before, my mother's mother died of cancer and was in the hospital for the last month of her life. Along with my father and mother, my brother and I had been forced to go to the hospital almost every day, and believe me, if you're thinking of whether you might want to become a nurse, an experience like the one I had with Granny Holmes will make you opt for a career change in about two seconds flat. I don't want this journal to be a collection of horrible things that have happened to me, so I won't go into too many details, but it was a very unpleasant experience for me, like some kind of weird torture by a sadistic foreign emperor. The four of us would sit around with Granny and try to think of something cheery to say. Right! "You're looking better today, Granny. How are you feeling?" Looking better? I still have nightmares about the awful stares that would pass over her face—not to mention the fact that she was shriveling up before our eyes and looked like a scarecrow that had been neglected for about five years.

And then, of course, there were the days when no one told Granny that she was looking better because it would have been just too laughable, in a sort of grotesque way. Here I was, so young and with all my life ahead of me, and I was expected to come to terms with something like death. Basically, death has always seemed really strange to me—like something that only happens to very unlucky people who have been struck down by some mysterious evil force. And the looks that Granny Holmes would give me! Maybe it was only my imagination, but it seemed to me that the long, hard, dismal stares were accusatory. Granny was seventy-eight, and she was probably remembering the wild things that she had done when she was my age—the drinking, the partying, the boys—and now I was sitting beside her and she could probably tell that all I was thinking about was my next date with my boyfriend.

Every time I was in Granny's room, I would find an excuse to leave—it was just too much for me to handle. What a ghastly scene! Towards the end, during the last week, I developed a serious case of diarrhea, which allowed me to race out of the room at will. There was nothing wrong with me, of course, but it was a fantastic excuse because no one is going to prevent a person with diarrhea from reaching the bathroom. And, lucky for me, when Granny took her last gasp, which my brother graciously referred to as a croak, I was off in the bathroom staring at myself in the mirror and wondering whether I was the most beautiful teenager in the whole wide world.

So that was the end of my nursing career—someone else, someone like a modern-day Joan of Arc would have to do the end-of-life mopping-up chores. My over-conscientious Dad, who only feels safe if everything is planned out to the last detail, was quite concerned about my future employment and sat me down for a few serious discussions about what I was going to do with my life when I became older. It was because of these conversations that I began to write him off as a relic from the Dark Ages. I mean, who was he to talk? My father was not the type of person who liked to talk about his past, but I had found out from my mother that he had been one of those hippie types—the ones who had long hair, shaggy beards, and lived out in the middle of nowhere in huts that didn't have any electricity. My Dad had been a guitar player and singer, and supposedly, he could imitate almost any group from the sixties except Jimi Hendrix, but that wasn't surprising since my father's complexion is as white as a ghost's.

I've decided to keep a journal because so many things are going on in my life that I think it would be a good idea to keep a record of them that I can refer back to later, but I don't want this to be like a diary where I have to sit down every day and try to figure out something to say. I tried that once, and it was very boring, but with a journal, I can just jot down any random thoughts or inspirations that occur to me. I have a lot of thoughts and inspirations, but that's probably because, like most teenagers, I'm very impressionable and prone to flights of exaggeration. My rational and orderly father doesn't approve of anything that isn't solidly grounded in reality, but I've made up my mind not to be too worried about him because it's obvious that he's just jealous of my boyfriend. Allison's Dad was like that, so I think it's just something that I'll have to get used to until Dad grows up a little bit.

Actually, I'd like my journal to be more like a history of my thoughts and feelings during my junior year in high school, and I want to write it as if I'm not going to remember all these things when I read it. That way, when I'm seventy or something, I can go back and find out what I was thinking and doing during this year of my life. Who knows? It might be interesting reading.

## ENTRY TWO: MARISSA AND KATHRYN

About three months after Granny Holmes died on Christmas Eve in 1988, I snuck up into the attic of our house. It had long been a forbidden place, so naturally, I wanted to know what was up there. "It's nothing, really," said my mother when I had asked her about it earlier, "just a lot of old photographs of your father."

"Can I look at them?"

"Look at them?"

What else was I going to do with them? "Yes, I've always wanted to see pictures of Dad when he was my age. How come there aren't any of them around?"

"No reason, but I don't think you should go up there."

"Why not?"

"Alanda, I don't want you prowling through his things."

"They're just pictures, aren't they?"

"I have no idea what's up there, but those things belong to your father, and that's all I'm going to say about it."

I had to wait another week before I was alone in the house, but as soon as I had the opportunity, I climbed up on a chair, pushed open a wooden panel, and hauled myself into a musty, hot space that was much smaller than I had expected it to be. I turned on an overhead light and saw that there were about a dozen cardboard boxes scattered around. Feeling a little nervous because I knew I would get yelled at if I were caught, I sat down by the box that was nearest to me and began to look through it. Books and old newspapers, mostly. But as I looked through the newspapers, I began to see that they were all from around the same time—September of 1966. I wondered what was so special about that month, but I didn't bother to go through the newspapers because my mother would be coming back from the store shortly, so I just briefly looked into each cardboard box until I found some pictures of my father when he was in his early twenties. I hate to say it, but it's true—he was a pathetic sight to behold in those days. To think that I came from him! To tell you the truth, I was appalled. In fact, the only way I knew that the man in the photos was my father was because most of them had the first names of the people in the photo, along with the month when it was taken, written on the back.

Back then, my father had long stringy hair that came down well past his shoulders--and then there was that beard! It must have been about eight inches long and looked all tangled and snarled—just like his hair. The only word I could think of to describe my father as I sat staring at the pictures was ragamuffin. His jeans were ripped at the knees, and it was obvious that all his clothes were just second-hand things. There was another photo where he was sitting with some other guy and smoking something that didn't look at all like a cigarette. Nice! And here I'd gotten all these lectures from him about the evil weed and what it would do to my brain if any of the smoke got up there through my lungs. There was a big cloud of smoke around my father and his friend, and I could see a bottle of liquor on the table. I have to be honest--I didn't find the photos of my father to be anything that I would want to look at again. No wonder my mother had tried to keep me out of the attic.

Then there were a whole batch of photos—like fifty—that showed him with some woman that I had never seen before. According to the inscriptions on the back of the photos, her name was Marissa. A couple of the photos were dated May of 1966, which meant that my father would have just turned twenty-two. Marissa looked about the same age as my father and was fairly attractive—she was usually dressed in long flowing skirts that fell almost to the ground. I was on about my fifth picture when my eyes practically bulged out of their sockets and popped onto the floor.

My father and Marissa were standing by a car, and there was a small child who was holding each of their hands. Her name was Kathryn.

I thought about the picture for days. Maybe the child, who was about three years old, wasn't my father's child, but I didn't really believe it—not with the way the three of them were standing in the photo. Who was this mysterious woman, and who was this child? Could it be that my father had run away from his past and abandoned the child? There had never been any mention of Kathryn that I could remember. How was I going to investigate it? I couldn't talk to my mother because that would only clue her in to the fact that I had nosed around in the attic, and I thought it very unlikely that my brother would know anything because I could tell from my mother's attitude that the things up in the attic were secrets that had been kept from us. That meant my best hope was to revisit the attic.

Before I did that, I brought the subject up at the dinner table. "Dad," I said in my most innocent tone, "what did you do when you were younger?"

Nowadays, my father bore almost no resemblance to the person I had seen in the photos. He was a distinguished-looking man who had black hair that now had a touch of grey, and he always dressed impeccably. When he spoke, even at the dinner table, he spoke in a formal way.

"I was employed at many different places, Alanda. Before I began working as an industrial engineer, I earned money by doing odd jobs—mostly carpentry, and for a while, I worked at a cement company."

"A cement company?" said Ethan.

"Just for a little while."

"I thought you told me that you went to college," I said.

Long pause—a long, suspicious pause. "Yes," said my father, "but I didn't graduate."

"You didn't graduate?" I'm not sure whether my tone of voice was shocked or triumphant. My father had always given me the impression that he had graduated from some elite school in the northeast, and after all the lectures I had received from him about the necessity of graduating from college, it was definitely annoying to discover that he had not practiced what he was now preaching.

"I would have," said my father, "but my family couldn't afford the tuition—that's why I'm hoping that both you and Ethan will receive scholarships."

I figured my father was covering up something--I'd seen that cloud of smoke and the bottle of booze on the table. Maybe, at best, he'd gone to college for a year or two before he fell in love with drugs and his guitar. It's amazing how older people are always trying to cover up their past.

"Dad," I said, "I know this is a crazy question, but were you ever married before?"

"Married? No, I was never married—not until I met your mother."

"But you must have had girlfriends," I said.

My father has a very stale sense of humor, and he took this opportunity to issue one of his supposed hilarious jokes. "No, Alanda, your mother was my first girlfriend."

When people say stuff like that, I feel like gagging.

"Come on!" said Ethan. "I'm only seventeen, and I'm on my fourth girlfriend."

"Ethan," said my mother, "I think it's time for you to learn to be more respectful to the young women that you associate with."

My mother had probably picked up her awkward choice of words from my father. Before Ethan could find something to say to her, I said, "You haven't really answered my question, Dad."

"About the girlfriends? Yes, there were a couple, but because my parents never had much money, I had to work sixty hours a week and didn't have much time for dating."

"Didn't you become a hippie or something?" I said.

"Dad—a hippie?" said Ethan, in a shocked tone of voice.

My father cleared his throat and said, "I did like the Rolling Stones, but that was about the extent of my involvement in that type of thing."

This time, because of what my mother had told me about his past, I knew he was lying, but all I said was, "How come? From what I've heard, just about everyone in America was walking around high on something during the sixties."

My father laughed. "Not true, Alanda. That's just an exaggeration. It's the same as it is now—the people who make all the noise are the ones who get all the headlines."

I knew there was no point in asking him any more questions—I was being stonewalled, and if I wanted answers, I was going to have to find them out on my own.

## ENTRY THREE: THE HAUNTED CASTLE

##

Being sixteen, I had a lot more things going on in my life than what I had discovered in an attic. Since I was now a junior in high school, there were a lot of important activities on my plate. The most obvious thing was my schoolwork, but I should take this opportunity to confess that I've never been very enthusiastic about my studies. Maybe someday! Unfortunately, homework and tests have always reminded me of when I was seven and my parents kept stuffing all sorts of weird vegetables onto my plate--like beets, cabbage, and broccoli. Thanks a lot! Do you think it would be beyond yourself to give me something that tastes at least halfway good? Nowadays, I know all about nutrition because we spent a week on it in school last year, but what everyone always forgets to mention is that if something tastes so bad that it practically makes you want to throw up, then it can't be very nutritious. Is there anyone in the house who is going to argue with that?

Schoolwork was my least favorite vegetable—beets. Maybe I'll develop a taste for them when I'm older, but right now, when I so much as hear someone say the word beet, I feel nauseous. I'm making a real attempt lately not to dwell on the negative, so the only thing I'll write down here is that when my mother is glaring at me and saying, "Eat your beets," I'll put one of the oily red monsters into my mouth, politely excuse myself from the table, and go into my established retreat for unpleasant events—the bathroom. Here, I'll disgorge the beet into the toilet bowl and flush it away to where it belongs.

My parents are really hoping that I'll go to college, and I have to admit that on this point, I'm inclined to agree with them. One of my older friends in high school, Jill Martens, is a freshman at the state university, and whenever she comes back to town, Allison and I will get together with her and be entertained by all these glorious tales of rampant debauchery. Listening to Jill, it seemed to me that she was living in a gigantic playpen where the toys were bottles of alcohol. In fact, by the time she had been there for three months, she had been placed on disciplinary probation for stealing five bottles of expensive liquor from a janitor's refrigerator.

So as much as I hated to do it, I applied myself to my homework. Not obsessively by any means but enough to get my marks up to scholarship level. It really helped that I was so smart and could blast through my assignments quickly. Unlike Allison, I didn't find algebra to be that difficult, and I was continually helped by the fact that in almost all my classes, I was the teacher's pet. The men teachers just adored me because I was young and beautiful and had a really cute smile. Another thing that really helped me was that I had worked on developing a kind of slangy accent that everyone except my parents was attracted to. I had spent a lot of time during my freshman year developing the accent, which I had rehearsed on an old tape recorder that belonged to my father. The accent was just one of those flings that a thirteen-year-old can really become obsessed with—mostly, I suppose, it was because I didn't have anything better to do. Anyways, what I came up with was an original southern accent that had a pleasant lilt to it. I'm sorry I can't describe it better on paper, but that's the way it's going to have to be.

The combination of my looks and my accent made me a knockout. Every morning, I spent a lot of time in front of the mirror making sure that my face was entirely ready for the day. I've already mentioned that the bathroom was my sanctuary, and I should probably, just for future reference, mention something else: I wasn't one of those teenagers who looked into the mirror and would almost collapse because of how ugly I thought I looked. I never had a problem with blemishes, and my skin was as smooth as silk. If I hadn't thought being Prom Queen was a big waste of time, I know I would have won that prize hands down because the person they picked out was just plain homely when you compared her to me.

Plus, and it was a big plus, I had a good figure. The guys at school were always ogling me and trying to come up to me and start a conversation. Some of their attempts were really embarrassing and ended up coming off like some joke scene on a TV comedy. "Alanda, would you like...do you think maybe...I know it's kind of sudden, but what I was wondering was whether you...probably you have a boyfriend, but if you don't, then maybe we could...it wouldn't be like a date or anything—we could just go out somewhere."

Mostly, I was pretty cool to the offers that were presented to me. I was certainly interested in guys, but at the same time, I was suspicious because it was pretty obvious that they were into one thing, and it wasn't anything but you know what. Word gets around like wildfire in our high school, and there were a number of terrible rumors floating around about a couple of seniors who had let things get out of hand with their boyfriends. Maybe the birth control pills hadn't worked, or maybe they had forgotten to take them, or maybe they had read an article that convinced them that nothing bad was going to happen on such-and-such a date.

And then, lo and behold, look who's beginning to swell up around the midsection and look like an aspiring hippopotamus. For a seventeen-year-old, that was the ultimate nightmare. The incredibly awkward talk with the parents where all the previous promises about being careful and not going too far were now exposed as either pathetic lies or evidence that the pregnant person was the most naïve fool in the world. Lectures! Lectures! Lectures! Meanwhile, behind your back, everyone will be smirking or feeling sorry for you, and finally, after being allowed to sweat bullets as big as basketballs for a couple of weeks, there would be the trip to the abortion doctor, who would take care of the problem.

It wasn't happening to me. But then I met Trevor, and I began to understand how it could happen. Since this journal is, at times, a bit of a confessional, I will admit that by the spring of my junior year, I was beginning to contemplate the fact that I might not be Daddy's innocent girl much longer. Such an interesting contemplation!

I'll always remember the first month that Trevor and I began to go out together. Trevor had been born in England, and he and his parents had only been living in the states for about five years. They say the English are well-mannered, and you won't get any argument from me about that because Trevor is a perfect gentleman. He's just so smooth—and not in a phony or obnoxious way. I know when people say someone is smooth, they don't usually mean that as a compliment, but of all the guys I've met so far in my life, Trevor is my favorite.

So Trevor was definitely on my plate, but I'm not sure I would call him the main course because towards the end of my sophomore year, I began to work on a novel. It was called _The_ _Haunted Castle_ —I know that isn't a very original title, but I couldn't think of a better one, and besides, books about haunted castles have been selling thousands of copies since people began writing, back in whatever year it was.

It's an exciting thing to be a writer when the words are just pouring out of you, and every night when my parents sent me up to do my homework, I would type page after page before I turned my attention to my boring school assignments. It wasn't that I thought I was writing a masterpiece or anything. I mean, it was a masterpiece to me, but I knew that my English teacher would scoff at the _Castle_ because my writing isn't all formal like Shakespeare or Tolstoy, but I wasn't attempting to imitate them so that didn't bother me.

I never did have a very clear idea of where the plot was going—it was almost like I was watching a movie that was written by someone else. What a cliffhanger! Would the heroine emerge from the snares that her evil husband had placed around her? I know everyone wants the heroine to survive, but I wasn't so sure it was going to happen. There were many nights when it looked very grim for her, and sometimes, I was actually in tears when I began to see which way the plot appeared to be going.

Why, I wondered, had my imagination taken me down such a dark path? I had, of course, a large mirror in my room, and while I was writing the _Castle,_ I would sometimes get up from my chair and take a look at myself. Such beauty! Even my heroine didn't look this beautiful--maybe that's why things were going so badly for her. Meanwhile, what was I going to do with all this beauty that I was staring at? Go to college and study something practical? I'd spent a lot of time thinking about my future over the Christmas holidays and had come to the conclusion that my best option was to find a fabulously rich man. I mean, why not? Not all rich people are nasty slumlords, and not all poor people are saints, so I figured my best option was to keep my eyes open and hope that I found a guy with lots of money. I realize that sounds very materialistic, but I'm only sixteen, and so I'm often plagued by feelings of insecurity, especially when it comes to money. Without it, I knew I could end up becoming homeless, and I really don't think it's likely that I'm going to be able to make much money on my own after I leave school. I'm not interested in a career—BORING—and so I'm hoping that I can just live in some rich man's castle. The hope is that it won't be a haunted castle.

This is where Trevor, sad to say, is a little lacking. He isn't destitute by any means, and in fact, he dresses very smartly—almost as if he comes from money, but I know from trips to his house that his parents are just scraping by. Very depressing. It created a real conflict inside me—was it really worth it to become romantically involved with a guy who had to catch about a thousand lucky breaks before there were one-hundred-dollar bills falling out of his pocket? Why not find an already-rich Trevor?

It embarrasses me to commit these tacky thoughts about money and romance to a journal that I might read when I become older, but there's not much point in writing about myself if it's going to be filled with things that aren't true. So I'll admit it--I had, for practical purposes, decided to sell myself to the highest bidder because I just didn't have the will or the stamina to embark on some heroic hand-to-mouth existence. Even so, as my junior year progressed, I allowed Trevor to take more and more liberties with me. Liberties! That's the word my mother always uses: "Alanda, I hope you're not allowing Trevor to take any liberties with you."

Well, yes, I was allowing him some liberties, but I was still being careful, and I hadn't permitted him the biggest liberty that God has thus far bestowed on man or woman. I could go into further detail on the liberties I'm permitting Trevor to take, but I don't think it's wise to commit everything to paper because one never knows when someone might come snooping around!

## ENTRY FOUR: THE FATE OF MARISSA AND KATHRYN

At the beginning of April, I ran into writer's block, and also, it was beginning to bother me when I read over what I had written in the past month because it seemed a little trite and contrived to me. There would, for instance, be five straight chapters where some mean man with jet-black hair was chasing the heroine, whose name was Antoinette, around the castle with a knife or a pistol. Didn't they have anything better to do in those days? The story was set in 1852, and I know there weren't any malls in those days, which must have made things very dull, especially in winter, but I began to realize that my tale was becoming repetitive. So far, Antoinette had been threatened with a gun, held at knifepoint, tied up in a closet, locked in a room, and beaten almost senseless with a large broom. The broom part was just for comic relief. But I had to change the way the book was going, and I couldn't figure out what was going to come next. That's when I suddenly remembered the boxes in the attic, and when my mother and father announced that they were going to visit my Aunt Mary on the following Saturday, I knew I would be able to spend some time in the attic. It worked out even better than I expected because on Friday, my parents told Ethan and I that they wanted us to go with them, but I was able to beg my way out of it with a clever lie about an upcoming paper I had to research. Plus, of course, I was having another bout of diarrhea. "You poor thing," said my mother sympathetically. "You've been having a lot of troubles lately, haven't you?"

On Saturday, I waited until everyone had been gone for a half hour before I went up to the attic and went through all the old photographs again. There must have been twenty that had Marrissa, Kathryn, and Edward written on the back—Edward was my father's name. It was really weird the way he was about his name—no one, including my mother, was ever allowed to call him Ed or Eddie—and from the looks of things, that was the way it had been back in 1966. All of the photos had been taken when Kathryn was quite small—at most three years old. They seemed to have been shot in the same general area—often I could see a wooden cabin in the photos, and the pictures that were taken indoors were clearly from inside a cabin.

I stared at the photos for a long time—I don't know why, but they didn't give me a good feeling. Finally, I put them down and went over to the box that contained the newspapers dated from September of 1966. It wasn't like the newspapers had been used to wrap things—they were all stacked in an orderly pile with the first date, September 4th, on top and the last date, September 14th, on the bottom.

I picked up the September 4th paper and began to browse through it—the only pages saved had been from the local section of the Danton Tennessee Ledger. I was scanning down page three when my eyes stopped in their tracks. Under a headline that said WOMAN AND CHILD MISSING, I read:

Marissa Harris and her daughter Kathryn have been reported missing by her live-in boyfriend, Edward Abrams. Mr. Abrams told authorities that Marissa and Kathryn had left the cabin they all lived in about nine o'clock in the morning to visit a mutual friend of theirs who lives less than a mile away. When evening came and he hadn't heard from them, he went to the house of his friend and learned that neither of them had arrived there. Anyone who has any information as to the whereabouts of Ms. Harris or her daughter is urged to call the police.

Edward Abrams? I looked at the photos again to make sure that the man in them was really my father. Most of them had been shot from a distance, but there were a couple of close-ups, and after studying them carefully, I was certain that they were photos of my father. This meant he had changed his last name from Abrams to Streets—that was odd.

The next paper in the pile was from September 6th, and Marissa and Kathryn's disappearance had now become the lead story in the local section. The article read:

The live-in boyfriend of Marissa Harris, Edward Abrams, is being questioned in the disappearance of his girlfriend and daughter. A source who is close to the police investigation has told us that Mr. Abrams has been unable to provide a satisfactory alibi for the time when Marissa and Kathryn went missing. However, police have found no evidence of a struggle at the cabin where the three of them lived, and the people who know them say that Ms. Harris and Mr. Abrams appeared to be a happy couple.

There was more to the article, including a picture of my father, but I only skimmed over it because it was just a long digression as to whether the local inhabitants were at risk. September 8th's paper had the following headline: BODIES OF MISSING WOMAN AND DAUGHTER DISCOVERED. To say that my eyes were glued to the page was a bit of an understatement. This is what I read:

The bodies of Marissa Harris and her child Kathryn were discovered by a hunter in a remote rural area about five miles from Danton. According to a statement issued by the police, both Marissa and Kathryn had been strangled to death with a makeshift garrote. Police in the area have advised everyone to be vigilant until the perpetrator of this crime has been apprehended.

On September 10th, the story moved to the front page of the paper where the lead headline proclaimed, LIVE-IN BOYFRIEND ARRESTED FOR DOUBLE MURDER.

By now, I was nearly in a state of shock. My father, the man I used to worship, had, in 1966, been arrested for murdering two people. But since he had married my mother in 1970, he couldn't have been convicted of the murders.

On September 12th, the headline read: MAN ACCUSED OF MURDER COMMITTED TO STATE MENTAL INSTITUTION FOR EVALUATION.

And finally, on September 14th, I came to the end of my father's newspaper collection and read: DOUBLE MURDERER ESCAPES FROM STATE MENTAL INSTITUTION.

## ENTRY FIVE: I SEND AN ANONYMOUS LETTER

##

Wasn't that a fine how-do-you-do? Not only had my father escaped from a mental institution, but it also appeared likely that he had murdered his girlfriend and daughter. Now what was I going to do? Sit on my hands and pretend that I had never peered into some old boxes in the attic? Sometimes, you're definitely better off not knowing—isn't it true that curiosity killed the cat? Suppose my father found out that I had discovered all these dark secrets in his past? In that case, I might be playing the role of the cat. Granted, I was probably taking the whole thing too seriously, but I think a lot of people would have a hard time coping with the news that their father was probably a murderer. And not only that, he had gotten away with it; and not only that, you were living under the same roof with him.

I went downstairs and retreated to my room where I moped around for a while as I tried to come to terms with the new situation in my life. My parents and brother hadn't returned yet, so I had plenty of time to think it over. What, I wondered, were my options? Option number one was to forget about everything I had discovered up in the attic. That, of course, was impossible. There was no way I could ignore the fact that my father had been arrested for murder and sent to a mental institution. But what could I do about it?

Option number two was to talk to my mother. That idea was dead on arrival because if I told my mother about Marissa and Kathryn, she'd go running to my father about two seconds after I left the room. And then, within days, when I least suspected it, I'd be the one having the garrote slipped around my neck. I know that's an awful thing to say about my father, but I couldn't help thinking that it was a real possibility.

Option number three was to talk to Ethan about it, but I didn't think that would be wise because he would probably assume I was joking or exaggerating, and then, just to make fun of me at the dinner table, he'd blurt out, "Dad, did you ever murder anyone? Alanda's pretty sure that you did." Perhaps, if I could persuade Ethan to come with me to the attic, he'd see how serious the situation was, but my instinct was to leave him out of it.

Option number four would be to go to the police station and tell them about my father's past. That might work if I brought the newspaper clippings with me, but then what? My father's life could be ruined, and there was a part of me that wanted to go easy on him because he had never been unkind to me or done anything that would cause me to dislike him. Did I really want to bring his whole life down? And what if I was overreacting and he hadn't murdered Marissa and Kathryn? How was I going to feel if my father was hauled down to the police station because I had accused him of something that he hadn't done? So the more I thought about it, the more it seemed that it would be better to keep this "in house," at least until I had more information to go on.

And then there was the possibility that even if my father had committed the murders, the police might not arrest him. Or what if he was released on bail? Then I could end up becoming my father's next victim. I suppose a person reading this might think that my imagination was running away with me, but when you're facing the very real possibility that your father has murdered another daughter of his, weird things begin to go through your mind.

The thought that kept coming back into my mind was that I might be living with a murderer. And if so, who knew what had set him off in 1966? And who knew what might set him off now? It gave me a real creepy feeling to know that he had been arrested for strangling two people to death, and I couldn't get past the image of Marissa fighting for her life as the garrote put an end to it. So horrible. And to know it was happening to you, to be fighting for air as the rope tightened mercilessly around your neck. With your hands pulling desperately on the rope, with your heart pounding from terror and a lack of oxygen, with your vision growing black, with...I just couldn't get it all out of my mind. Every time I tried to think of something else, the garrote was being placed around my neck. Every time.

"Alanda," I said to myself in a serious tone, "you're really in hot water this time." My sweet little life of being a teacher's pet and twisting boys around my finger had suddenly come to an abrupt halt. There just had to be a way out of this predicament, so I continued to search for an acceptable option. Option number five was to hope that I was overreacting and that my father had never murdered anyone. Maybe the guy in the photographs wasn't my father—maybe it was just some guy named Edward who looked a lot like my father. I didn't think that was very likely, but it was worth a hope.

It was raining outdoors, and I stared out the window at a dismal spring scene. A cold rain was falling in sheets as a strong southerly wind blew outside my window. Yesterday, it had been sunny and warm; yesterday, my life had been a lark; yesterday, I had not a care in the world. And now this; now, ever so slowly, I could feel the deadly hands of my father as he slipped the garrote around my neck. "I'm so sorry, Alanda--it's just the way that it has to be. If only you had listened to your mother and not gone snooping around in the attic."

"Dad—"

"It's too late now, Alanda." And then the rope would tighten as my despairing hands tried in vain to yank the rope away from my neck. And then I would breathe no more.

_I couldn't tell anyone about what I had found in the attic—it was too dangerous._ I had to do something but talking to anyone else about what I had discovered didn't seem like a safe option. I couldn't get around the fact that if my father really had murdered Marissa and Kathryn and I told anyone about it, then the next present from my father to me could be the garrote. "Come on," I said to myself, "think!"

My life might very well depend on what I did next, but I couldn't come up with a solution. Unless...

I knew what I was considering was dangerous and could backfire, but it might work. I put on my calfskin gloves so that I wouldn't leave any fingerprints, picked up a blank piece of paper, and wrote the following anonymous letter to my father:

Dear Mr. Streets,

Or is it Mr. Abrams? Even though I have a college education, I'm confused on this point. Presently, I'm working for the state of Tennessee, and just because you live in North Carolina, I wouldn't get your hopes up. A high-ranking official, who works for the Tennessee State Police, has shown me some interesting documents that pertain to a time in 1966 when you lived in Danton, Tennessee.

I'm sure you remember your time there, especially since it ended so tragically. There was a woman named Marissa and a child named Kathryn. Remember them? They're long gone now, murdered by an unknown hand. Or was it an unknown hand?

We know where you live now, Mr. Abrams, and we're closing in, but we wanted to give you this opportunity to turn yourself in peacefully. Why cause a big scene in front of your family? You probably don't realize it, but you're being followed by two detectives, one of whom is me, and the only thing standing between you and a jail cell is that the judge who was supposed to sign your arrest warrant died of a heart attack yesterday, so the case has had to be re-filed with another judge.

I am quite familiar with the details of Marissa Harris's murder, including the use of the garrote to strangle her, and I would think that you would be grateful for being given a way out of this that does not involve something unfortunate happening to yourself. I don't mean to alarm you, Mr. Streets, but sometimes, people do have serious "accidents" when they're being arrested.

Therefore, for the sake of everyone, including yourself, you should hasten to Dantan and turn yourself into the authorities. They have personally assured me that if you were to do that, you would be treated with respect. But time is of the essence, Mr. Streets! The dead bodies of Marissa Harris and her small child are literally screaming for justice, and there are many who are ready to take the law into their own hands. Act now, Mr. Abrams—before it's too late!

The idea behind this letter was to smoke out my father without bringing any attention to myself. It was true that the letter might lead to the destruction of my family, but I thought that my personal concerns about my own welfare should not prevent me from seeking justice--Marissa and Kathryn deserved that much. However, if what I hoped was true and my father was innocent of harming them, this letter might give him an opportunity to explain himself. Perhaps he would open the letter and say something like "This is the most absurd thing I've ever read—someone is accusing me of murdering two people twenty years ago. The one who actually committed the murders, whose name is Edward Abrams, has already confessed—it's true that I knew Abrams, so I think what's happening is that he's hoping to shorten his life sentence by trying to place the blame onto me. I'll admit that Abrams and I did look like each other back then, but I certainly never murdered anyone."

I would have given everything I owned to have my father say that, and although I would then have felt embarrassment and shame for sending him the letter, that was nothing compared to the alternative. I read the letter over a few times and wondered whether I should send it. The big question in my mind was whether my father would be able to discover, or guess, the author of the letter. I had, of course, thoroughly disguised my handwriting, but was there anything in it that pointed to me? I couldn't find anything—I had gone out of my way to put a really bizarre spin on the letter, and while I knew that it didn't sound like it had been written by a detective, neither did it sound at all like me.

The next morning, on my way to school, I mailed the letter.

## ENTRY SIX: MY FATHER ACCUSES THE WRONG PERSON

Two days later, I was a nervous wreck. The mail had arrived by the time I had come home from school, and I could see that my letter had arrived. I had to take two showers that afternoon because I was sweating like it was ninety degrees out. What if my father figured out the letter had come from me? Curtains! I could just see him calling me into the little study that he had off our dining room.

"Close the door, Alanda."

"What is it?" I said, in a trembling voice. "Is it something to do with my grades?"

"No, Alanda, it's much more serious than that. I received a threatening letter today, and I'm beginning to think that it came from you. Have you sent me a letter recently?"

His mouth would be smiling, or maybe it was actually a grimace, but those eyes! So dark, so menacing. And then, ever so casually, he would pick up a piece of rope from off the top of his desk and begin to twist it back and forth in his hands.

"Dad, I don't know what you're talking about. What letter?"

"I think you know very well what letter I'm talking about. You'd better come with me—there's something I need to show you in the basement."

"In the basement?" I said. My voice was no better than a panicked croak.

"Yes," he said, as he approached me with the piece of rope, "or maybe it would be better to do it here, and I could carry you down the back stairs afterwards."

And then, just as I started to scream, everything was cut short as the rope was twirled around my neck and twisted tight.

"Pull yourself together, Alanda," I said to myself as I climbed out of the shower. "No one is going to think that you wrote the letter, but if you're sitting there perspiring like a water fountain, people might start to wonder." As I was putting on my makeup, I suddenly fell to pieces and started crying uncontrollably. Up to now it had been such a nice life, and suddenly, I had to face the fact that I might not be around much longer. With the tears streaming down my face, I placed my hands around my neck and began to squeeze and squeeze and squeeze. Looking at my face in the mirror—such a pretty face—it began to turn all sorts of shades of red. Meanwhile, I was reaching the point where I was running out of oxygen, so I took my hands away from my neck and stood there gasping and panting as I breathed in and out like someone who has just finished a race. What a horrible feeling—and the hands around my neck had been my own. What if they had been the hands of someone cruel, someone who wasn't going to let up until I stopped breathing?

I rubbed my hand across my neck—it felt so vulnerable, so prone to being the site of a disaster. But what could I do? It was getting late—maybe my father had already come home, read the letter, and was now coming up the stairs with his garrote. Most likely, it wouldn't happen that quickly because even though my father had been sent to a mental institution in 1966, he seemed relatively normal now, at least as far as I could tell. Also, he had his reputation to uphold, and since he definitely wasn't the type of person who would want to spend the rest of his life in a jail cell, he'd probably be stealthy about it. He'd wait until I had my guard down—for some reason, I kept imaging that "it" would take place in the basement. In my own mind, "it" had become the pseudonym for my upcoming strangulation. I know it sounds as if I'm being overly dramatic—just a silly sixteen-year-old girl who was going off the deep end because of some photographs and newspaper articles that she had found. Granted, it's very rare for a father to strangle his daughter, but then again, my father had strangled two people already, and one of them had been his daughter.

If only it was just some gigantic mix-up. Maybe it was only false optimism, but I was beginning to hope that my interpretation of the newspaper clippings was wrong. Otherwise, why would my father keep such incriminating things around the house? Edward Abrams must be somebody he had known, and because of that, my father had followed the case and saved all those articles. The poor guy! And now I had gone and sent him a crazy crank letter that looked like something a mental patient might write when they were having a very bad day on the funny farm.

Yes, that must be it. My father had a strange side, but he wasn't a homicidal maniac. At least that was the hope as I waited for my tears to dry. Finally, when I was able to apply my makeup and not have it run down my face in horrible purple rivulets, I left the bathroom and went downstairs.

As luck would have it, my father had just arrived home. This was one of the days when my mother was in a good mood (that happened about once every two weeks), and I heard her say to my father, "How is the king of the castle tonight?"

"Not bad—they just gave me another five-hundred-dollar bonus at work today."

"Isn't that wonderful! Now we can buy that dishwasher I've always wanted."

My father let out a small non-committal grunt, which meant that he was probably nixing my mother's request. After hanging up his coat, he walked over to the table where we always placed the mail—there were two letters for him. The top one was a credit card bill (I had checked all this out earlier when no one was around), and the second one was the one from me. I was half inclined to run over and grab it out of his hand, but what explanation could I give for grabbing a letter addressed to him out of his hands? He'd demand to see it, of course, and then what could I do? Rush up to the bathroom and flush it down the toilet? But if I didn't make it that far, and he was able to take the letter back from me, then he would know for certain that I had been the one who wrote it.

However, it was too late to do anything now because my father had opened the letter and was reading it. As he was doing that, I casually walked across the room and sat in a chair where I could observe him. My father never moved while he read the letter—it was like he was a statue, and then, finally, after he had read the letter a second time, he placed it into his pants pocket and went directly into his study. To me, that didn't seem like the reaction of an innocent man.

An hour later, we all sat down for dinner. Naturally, I kept looking out of the corner of my eye at my father. Was it my imagination or did there seem to be a dark cloud hanging over his face? My mother was going on and on about her latest trip to the hairdresser, and I think everyone at the table would have been delighted if she had stopped talking, but she didn't have much conversational competition because both my father and I were far away as we pondered the meaning of a certain little letter that had arrived that afternoon.

As for Ethan, he rarely said anything at the dinner table because his primary goal was to get away as quickly as he could, so he would always wolf down his food, wait a minute for the sake of politeness, and then ask to be excused from the table.

"Do you mind if I go up to my room?" he said to my mother.

"I think not," said my father.

We all looked at my Dad—I couldn't ever remember him refusing this request of Ethan's.

Ethan looked at my father with a puzzled expression and said, "Dad, I have an algebra exam tomorrow."

"Is that so?" said my father, who was glaring at Ethan. "I'm tired of being lied to, so you can just sit right where you are while I do the talking. At least if you don't say anything, that will be an improvement on some of the things you've been doing lately."

My father was invariably calm and not given to irrational outbursts, so I'm sure my mother and brother were shocked by his attitude.

"Lied to?" said Ethan, in a baffled tone.

"What's the matter, Edward?" said my mother. "Are you feeling alright?"

My father went over to the liquor cabinet, took out a glass and a bottle of whisky, and brought them back to the table. Just as he was about to pour the whiskey, he slammed the palm of his hand down on the table so hard that my mother's water glass toppled over.

"Edward!" she said. "What's troubling you?"

"Why is it," said my father, "that every time I go to the liquor cabinet, I forget to fill my glass with ice? It's just so infuriating."

My mother was mopping up her spilled water with a napkin and said, "I don't know, dear." She dropped her napkin, went over to the cabinet, and took out an ice cube tray. "Would you like your shot glass, Edward?"

"Yes, bring the cubes and the shot glass, will you? And hurry it up--I can't wait all day because you haven't figured out a way to keep your water glass from falling over. That's the trouble with the people in this house—they're always knocking things over." Once again, my father slammed his palm on the table—I was able to grab my glass before it fell over, but Ethan's went tumbling into his lap.

"Edward!" said my mother. "Do you mind? I guess something unpleasant must have happened at the office, but it isn't right to take it out on us. Why are you so upset? Didn't you say that they gave you a bonus today?" As Ethan tried to dry himself off in some of his more sensitive areas, my mother handed my father the cubes and the shot glass. Unfortunately, my father had a problem with getting the cubes out of the tray.

"Who put the water in this ice cube tray?" my father said, in a belligerent tone.

"The water? In the tray?" said my mother. From the tone of her voice, it was obvious that she was the culprit.

"Rose Marie, how many times have I told you not to overfill the tray? Look at this thing! There's no way to get the cubes out because it's just one big block of ice. Every single day, I have to deal with massive incompetence at work, and now I come home to this!" My father raised the ice cube tray over his head and then smashed it down on the table. First once, then twice, and then a third time. Finally, the ice was liberated and went flying all over the place—one piece actually hit my blouse and bounced into my lap.

My father grabbed a handful of cubes, dumped them into his glass, and then pushed his shot glass to the side. "I won't need that tonight," he said, as if to himself. The drinking glass he had was an eight-ounce glass, and my father tipped the whiskey bottle upside down and began to pour the whiskey into it. The problem was that he didn't stop—not even when the whiskey had reached the top of the glass.

"Edward!" shouted my mother.

"What is it this time, Rose Marie?"

"Your glass is full."

Startled, my father put the whiskey bottle back on the table, raised the full glass of whiskey to his lips, and chugged it all down.

"Jeepers, Dad," said Ethan.

"Mind your own business, Ethan," said my father. "Unlike everyone else here, I have to work all day, and if I want to have a refreshment when I get home, then I don't think I need to hear any comments from the peanut gallery."

My father rarely even raised his voice, and now he was in the middle of a major meltdown. Lurching up from the table, he careened over to the liquor cabinet and came back with a bottle of vodka. "Do you think," he said to my mother, "that it would be beneath your status as the house maid to find me a clean glass? I can't very well be expected to pour vodka into a glass that's had whiskey in it."

"Edward," said my mother in a sharp tone, "you will apologize to Alanda and Ethan for calling me the house maid."

"Maybe tomorrow," said my father in a distracted way. He sat down in his chair, held his head in his hands, and started groaning.

"Dear God," said my mother, "what is the matter with you, Edward?"

My father raised his head, unscrewed the top to the vodka bottle, and poured a few ounces into his whiskey glass, but this time, instead of chugging it down, he merely sipped on it. "So," he said to Ethan in an accusatory tone, "what did you do the day before yesterday?"

Ethan had no idea what to say. "The day before yesterday? I don't really remember."

"Did you write a letter to someone?"

"A letter?"

"Yes! That's what I said, and I want a truthful answer."

"No, I haven't written a letter to anyone in years."

My father leaped up from the table, grabbed Ethan by the collar of his shirt, and yanked him to his feet. "Liar!"

"Dad, I swear—I didn't send a letter to anyone."

"Edward!" said my mother. "Don't talk to Ethan that way."

"But you know something—right?" said my father to Ethan.

Ethan looked at my mother and said, "Mom, I don't have any idea what Dad is talking about."

My father pushed Ethan back into his chair and said, "What I want to know, Ethan, is whether you've talked to anyone else."

"Talked to anyone else? About what?"

"Edward," said my mother, "why don't you explain to us what's upsetting you."

Ignoring my mother, my father looked at Ethan and said, "I guess you've been depressed lately, haven't you?"

"No, I don't think so."

"That must be the root of the problem," said my father, in a suddenly reflective way. "Nowadays, the most serious cases of depression go unnoticed. When I was younger, I knew a guy--he was my best friend, actually—who reminds me a lot of you, Ethan. He thought he had everything under control, but in reality, he was fighting demons and was constantly plagued by terrible thoughts."

"Dad—"

"Be quiet, Ethan, because it's important that you hear what I'm about to say—all I'm trying to do is help you. What you have to understand is that these bad thoughts that go through your mind can lead to some very unfortunate events. For instance, my friend began to think that he didn't deserve to live anymore and just withdrew from everyone until—"

"I'm not withdrawing from anyone, Dad."

"That comes at the end, Ethan, and it can happen very suddenly. You may be thinking that everything is alright, and then, out of nowhere, you'll get a bad thought that will be telling you to put an end to it all. What this means is that you have to watch your thoughts like a hawk. One similarity that I've noticed between you and my friend is that you both like Gothic novels. Actually, I should use the past tense when I talk about my friend because he came to an untimely end, and that's why I'm talking about this to you. Just tell me this: How many Gothic novels have you read in the past year?"

"I don't know—a few."

"That's what I thought. And you're still going to sit there and tell me that bad thoughts don't run through your mind?"

"Dad, they're just books. I only read them to pass the time when I'm on the bus."

"I don't want to depress you, Ethan, but the reason I'm talking to you about this is because my friend ended up committing suicide. It was an especially terrible thing for me because I was the one who found his body hanging from a rafter."

"Edward," said my mother, "I really don't think Ethan is at all suicidal."

"No one thought my friend was either—not until it was too late. OK, Ethan, I'd like you to take a couple of days to think this over. Please don't talk to anyone else about anything that...let's just keep everything between us, OK? Just for another two or three days. I'm sorry that you're so depressed and are having so many bad thoughts, but next week, we'll make a doctor's appointment for you, and he should be able to prescribe something that will help you with your inner demons."

"Dad, I'm not struggling with any inner demons—I swear. You've got nothing to worry about."

"Ethan," said my father, "we all have demons--every single one of us. Maybe you don't understand what I mean by a demon. A demon is a thought that swallows you up and devours you. The thought might, for instance, be about something you'd like to do to that girl you're interested in at school—you are looking at someone in particular, aren't you?"

"Yes," said Ethan, in a cautious tone.

"And you think about her frequently—right?"

"Sometimes."

"But what eventually happens, Ethan, is that you'll begin to think about her more and more until she's the only thing left in your mind. And then comes the part that no one likes to talk about. Have you ever considered what's going to happen to you if she doesn't give you what you want her to give you?"

"Edward," said my mother, "this subject isn't really suitable for the dinner table."

"I'll be done in a minute," said my father. "All I'm trying to do is explain to Ethan how demons are created. Demons often begin as sexual thoughts, even innocent sexual thoughts, but then, when the person you're obsessed about spurns you, the thoughts can become really dangerous. By the time that happens, it's usually too late to do anything about it, and before you understand what's happening to you, you've been swallowed up by the demon thought. That's when you'll begin to seriously contemplate murder or suicide—in your case, I think suicide is much more likely."

"Edward," said my mother, "will you please stop? Ethan is not suicidal, not in the least."

My father drummed his fingers on the table. "I'm not so sure about that, Rose Marie—I've seen signs lately that lead me to believe Ethan is having some difficulties, and besides, anyone who makes a habit of reading Gothic novels is heading for trouble. Everyone knows that, so I think we need to keep a very close eye on Ethan."

## ENTRY SEVEN: THOSE TEETH!

The scene at the dinner table had certainly not done anything to improve my mood or alleviate my fears. Apparently, my father thought Ethan had written the letter and was afraid that he was about to go to the police with the newspaper clippings. Naturally, even in my disturbed state, I was able to put two and two together: My father had virtually admitted that he had murdered Marissa and Kathryn, but it certainly didn't appear that he had any plans to return to Danton and admit to what he had done.

I know I've complained about Ethan, but I really like him a lot. In fact, the only bad thing I can think of to say about him is his fetish for women with blond hair. Other than that, he's a good brother—someone who doesn't take himself too seriously, and also, he has an excellent sense of humor. Whenever I'm feeling depressed or lonely, he'll cheer me up with a joke or some innocent prank. Not only that, he thinks Trevor is a great guy, and he's encouraged me to go out with him and not worry so much about the financial status of his family.

"Just watch, Alanda," he said to me one day when we were alone, "Trevor will end up making lots of money in his life. He could be a fantastic salesman because he's so polite and considerate. You'd be far better off with him than some guy who comes from a rich family but doesn't know the first thing about how to treat a woman."

That's what I like about my brother—he's only a year older than me, but he has the wisdom of a much older person. And it isn't like he's yucky or stuck-up or anything—I only wish that he was more mature when it comes to idolizing the women with blond hair. I've tried to reason with him about that, but he doesn't want to hear it. "Alanda, it doesn't have anything to do with Allison—it's just a matter of taste. It's the same thing as when you go out to buy clothes--aren't there colors that you don't like?"

Clothes are a lot different than people, so I didn't think that made much sense, but I had long since put the Allison thing behind me. And now that Ethan was being blamed for my letter, I was feeling a good deal of guilt. I have no idea why my father thought he wrote the letter—maybe it was something to do with the phrasing or the way the handwriting looked, but now that he had come to that conclusion, what was I going to do about it? Fess up? Just walk up to my father and tell him the truth? That was obviously the noble thing to do, but I didn't have the nerve. The deed had already been done—the letter had been written and sent, my father had responded, and it wasn't going to do me any good to try and alter the consequences. Sure, I could get the blame shifted from Ethan to me, but what good was that going to do anyone? Ethan would be better off, but I'd be much worse off, and...OK, so I guess I'm a coward. I think most people would be if they saw the way my father was twisting the piece of rope around in his hands when I imagined that he had discovered I was the one who wrote the letter. I know lots of people are brave, far braver than me, but I think everyone has a special fear, and mine had turned into having a garrote placed around my neck.

Take Janet Simpson—she was in my English class last year and always acted like nothing could ever frighten her. And then one day when we're in class, we all heard this loud scream—Janet had leaped up from her desk and was frantically smacking her jeans with both hands. "What's the matter?" said the teacher, and Janet said, "There was...it was crawling on me."

"What was crawling on you?"

"A spider," she shrieked.

You see what I mean? I'm not at all afraid of spiders—they're just stupid-looking things to me, but I don't think the fear of being strangled to death is at all irrational. So that was the reason why I wasn't going to confess anything to Mr. Garrote, otherwise known as my father. If it had been a case of who ate all the cookies or the ice cream, I would have spoken up immediately and taken the blame, but there's a big difference between being reprimanded with words and being reprimanded with a garrote.

I no longer had a shred of doubt that my father had murdered those people in 1966, but I just couldn't decide what to do about it. Maybe an anonymous letter to the police department? That might work, but what would it mean for Ethan? I had to remember that he was also a candidate for the garrote, so I knew that I had to play my cards carefully. God Almighty, I suddenly thought to myself, what if my father did eliminate Ethan? How would I ever be able to live with myself? As I lay awake until midnight mulling the whole problem over, I thought the best hope would be to let things cool down before I did anything else. That way, my father could continue to vent some steam, and then, when he realized that there weren't two detectives following him around, he might think that there was nothing to worry about. However, I wasn't about to let Ethan's whole life be ruined because of something I had done, and I also couldn't let my father get away with murder, so once the coast was clear—maybe in a couple of months--I would send the letter to the police department.

The next day passed uneventfully, and it seemed like my strategy of not creating waves was working, but then, on the evening of the following day, things took a bad turn. It began with my father convening a big family powwow in our living room. "It seems," he said, "that you're not the only one posting letters, Ethan."

"Dad, I never sent—"

"Of course you didn't," said my father in a mocking tone. "But today, at work, I received a letter, and about the only good thing I can say about it is that it couldn't have been written by you."

"What is it with the letters?" said my mother.

"I have no idea, Rose Marie, but as you'll see shortly, we need to take some measures to ensure that Ethan and Alanda begin adhering to a reasonable code of conduct. Here, Ethan," said my father as he handed him the letter, "you can read it first, and then I want Alanda to read it."

Here is what the typewritten letter said:

Dear Mr. Streets,

I am sorry to have to be the one to inform you of some very serious misconduct by your two children. I would not do this of my own volition, but due to certain arrangements that have been made between my lawyer, the court, and my conscience, I am compelled to notify you of some activities that Ethan and Alanda are engaged in that are, for Ethan, illegal, while Alanda's are most unbecoming for a person of her age.

I have it on the best authority that Ethan is a frequent user of LSD. The "best authority" is that I was the one who sold him the LSD. I would like to state here, for Ethan's sake, that he did not buy the LSD to sell it to others, but rather, he couldn't resist the effects of the drug. According to what he told me, he has been using LSD at least twice a week for over a year and is beginning to experience some troubling thoughts that are making him wonder whether his life has any meaning. I wasn't really comfortable selling him the LSD because he confided in me that he thought suicide might be his best option, but I was able to put my fears aside when he told me that he thought he had turned a corner, at least as far as his suicidal thoughts were concerned.

As for Alanda, she has formed a liaison with an older man who is paying her one hundred dollars per session. I'm sure you understand what I mean by liaison and session, but I'm trying to spare your feelings. I can't, at the present time, reveal how I know about your daughter's "activities," but I can assure you that my information is accurate.

Once again, I apologize for this letter, but I really had no choice but to send it.

After I had read the letter that my father had "received," he told me to give it to my mother. "Oh my God," she said when she had finished reading it, "I had no idea of what was going on around here. This is really terrible."

"Dad," said Ethan, "I have never taken LSD in my life."

"I assumed that you would deny it," said my father, "but that's just a standard defense mechanism that drug users resort to when they're exposed. I've seen how you've been acting lately, Ethan, and you can't deceive me because I'm familiar with the effects of LSD. I don't think you realize how close you are to treading over the edge of a precipice—it's no exaggeration to say that thousands of people have gone on trips from which they never recovered. I know all about this because of some very unfortunate experiences I had when I was younger, and I hope you're wise enough to take some advice from one who has experienced what you're going through."

"Dad, I don't know where this letter came from, but I have never taken LSD."

"Ethan, it would be far better if you would just admit that you've been experimenting with a very powerful and dangerous drug, but I understand what it's like to be a teenager who's in a state of denial. It's a difficult situation, but I know that we can deal with it and that afterwards, we'll be a better family for it. Now, regardless of whether you've taken LSD, I think it's time for me to tell you what that drug is all about, and hopefully, when I'm done, you'll never again be tempted by LSD. Are you with me?"

"I don't mind you talking to me about it, Dad, but I've never even smoked marijuana, much less taken LSD."

"Then where did the letter come from?" asked my mother.

"I have no idea," said Ethan. "I've never bought any kind of drugs from anyone in my life."

"That's what I told my parents," said my father, "and they believed me. Listen to me, Ethan—LSD is a drug that can alter the whole chemistry of your brain. When I was going to college in the sixties, there was a whole wave of people who committed suicide after taking LSD, and based on my own experiences, I can understand why. First of all, what kind of things have happened to you after you've taken a trip?"

"A trip?" said my mother. "A trip to where?"

"Rose Marie," said my father, "trip is just the slang word for what happens after a person takes LSD, and actually, I think it's fair to say that the things one experiences on LSD do have similarities to a trip—the only problem is that the trip you take brings you to the darkest part of your mind. These are the places in the mind that no one wants to visit because they're very gloomy and frightening—just like your Gothic novels, Ethan. Except that when you read a book, you can always put it down, but when you take a trip on LSD, sometimes you can't come back."

"You can't?" said my mother. "Why not?"

"Because it's like travelling through a maze without any way of knowing which way is out. Like it or not, the LSD takes you through the deepest pathways in your mind, but sometimes, no matter how hard you try, you can't come back. And the ones who can't come back usually commit suicide because no person can tolerate living in the place where the LSD has taken them. One could, for instance, encounter some monsters, and then, after it seems like the LSD has worn off, you might begin to feel that the monsters are chasing you wherever you go. That happened to a friend of mine, and he was so frightened that he ran straight out of the house and ended up throwing himself in front of a car. Then there was what happened to me."

"Edward," said my mother, "why haven't you told me about this before?"

"I didn't want to worry you, Rose Marie, and besides, I'm one of the lucky ones who found my way back, but it took me six months, and I almost didn't make it. What happened to me—and the only reason I'm talking about this is for Ethan's sake—is that I dropped two tabs of very strong acid, and—"

"What are you talking about? What's acid?" said my mother, in a mystified tone.

"You're just so innocent, Rose Marie—I do admire you for that. Acid is what the people in the sixties called LSD, and when they took it, they would say that they'd dropped a tab of acid."

"And you dropped two tabs?" said my mother, who still seemed uncertain about the lingo.

"That's right, and it almost destroyed my mind—there was a period where, for a couple of weeks, I couldn't remember anything."

"But I don't understand why you would have done something like that," said my mother.

"It was exciting, and everyone I knew was doing it."

"Not everyone, Edward—I certainly never took LSD."

"It was just that I had fallen in with the wrong crowd, Rose Marie. Also, back in those days, it only cost a couple of dollars a tab, so—"

"And you dropped two tabs at once? No wonder you're a little odd," said my mother, in a joking way.

"Not as odd as I was then, and it was all because of that one time when I dropped the two tabs. People who knew me said that I was walking around in a daze afterwards, and that's what I'm afraid is going to happen to Ethan. It's all well and good to be tolerant of drugs, but LSD is nothing to fool around with."

"Dad—"

"Yes, Ethan," said my father, "we've already heard you say that you've never taken LSD, but I've seen you do some peculiar things lately, and I suspect that you've been dropping tabs on a regular basis."

"But how could he function if he did that?" said my mother, in a pleading tone of voice.

"People adjust, Rose Marie. At first, Ethan probably only dropped acid on weekends when he was with his friends. But then, after a while, he would have built up a tolerance, so he was probably able to go to school and get by. You'd be surprised how many teenagers drop acid—it's like an epidemic."

"So what can we do about it?" asked my mother.

"Not much, actually. Ethan obviously needs some close watching—we'll have to monitor his eyes carefully because after a person drops acid, his eyeballs will almost double in size. But the thing I wanted to tell Ethan about was the time I dropped the two tabs and almost didn't come back."

"This doesn't sound like it's going to be a happy story," said my mother.

"Part of it is, but most of it isn't," said my father. "The good news is that I came back, but the bad news is what I went through while I was away."

"Away?" said my mother.

"Unfortunately," said my father, "I totally lost touch with reality for a few days—that's what I mean by being away. When I finally snapped out of it, all I could remember was a series of images that had been going through my mind while I was tripping. However, I couldn't remember anything practical like where I had slept or who I had talked to, but that's fairly common when you're tripping."

"Tripping? What were you tripping over?" It was difficult for me to believe that my mother was so obtuse—even I knew what tripping meant in relation to LSD. I wondered if she was just showing off her supposed ignorance so that no one would suspect her of having dabbled in LSD.

"Rose Marie, that's what they call it after you drop the tabs and the LSD begins to have an effect on you."

"So it feels like you're falling?" said my mother.

"Somewhat, but what I was falling into was my own mind. And like I said, there was this one group of images that I couldn't get out of mind. It began with me climbing up a precipice, and when I reached the top, I thought I could see the whole universe. And I just stood there and stood there with my arms extended and wondered if I could fly, so—"

"Oh no," said my mother.

"I wasn't actually on top of a precipice, Rose Marie—I only thought I was. In fact, a friend of mine told me afterwards that what I had been doing was standing on a milk crate, but as I stood on top of the milk crate and spread my arms out, I began to think that they were wings, and so I leaped off the precipice, and for a while, it seemed like I was able to fly around. Below me, I could see farmland and a river and cars—the cars looked like those little toy cars that you buy in a store. I think it was the best feeling I ever had in all my life—just floating around on a gentle breeze like I was an eagle. But then—and this is what I want Ethan to understand—came the bad part of the trip. It started when I began to notice that I was losing altitude, so I began to flap my wings harder and harder, but all the time, I kept coming closer and closer to the ground. And it wasn't like I was floating anymore—it was more like I was plunging, and as the ground came up to meet me, I screamed because I knew—"

"You don't have to go into all the details, Edward," said my mother.

"I'm not going to Rose Marie, but it's important for Ethan to understand what can happen when you trip out on acid. Because, in the end, it always ends badly—that's why so many people have what are called death trips. And what happened to me is that when I crashed head first into the ground, everything turned black and I found myself walking down a long corridor that had dinosaurs lurking around. Big dinosaurs—the kind that have teeth about two feet long. And so I started running like I had never run before because this big green dinosaur was chasing me and saying that I looked like his evening meal—he wasn't speaking in English, of course. The noises he was making were just a weird collection of grunts, but I knew what he meant. And then I felt his paws on me, and he lifted me upside down so that my head was facing his mouth and his teeth—those teeth! I'd never seen anything so repulsive in my life, and so this thing, this dinosaur lowered me into his mouth, and—"

"Edward! That's enough—please, we don't need to hear the whole story."

"I'm almost done, Rose Marie. I can't even begin to describe to you what happened when the dinosaur bit down on me. It was like I had forty knives stuck into me at once—I still have dreams about it once in a while. But for about six months afterwards, I saw the dinosaur everywhere I went—I'd be walking down the street and a very ordinary person would just morph into a dinosaur. The teeth! And then, at night, I'd have the same dream over and over again—it was the part where I was being lowered into the dinosaur's mouth and could feel the teeth beginning to bite into me."

"Dear God in heaven," said my mother.

"Naturally," said my father, "I was plagued with suicidal thoughts during this time. Hardly a day went by where I didn't want to put an end to it all. Anything to spare me from the image of those teeth. So sometimes, I would get my gun out and play Russian roulette with myself. There was one night when I must have put the gun to my head a dozen times—I remember that by the time I went to bed, I was angry because the gun had never gone off. 'Please,' I would say at night to some sort of imaginary God that I had invented—because, of course, all Gods are imaginary—'please put me out of my misery.' But it never happened, so that's why I'm here today."

"Edward," said my mother, "you never told me about any of this. How did you recover? Why are you so normal today?"

"It was only because I ran out of LSD and turned to alcohol for a while. What I would find is that if I drank a fifth of liquor in an hour or so, I wouldn't see the teeth anymore. Those teeth!"

My father got up from his chair, went out to the other room, and came back with a pint of whisky and began to chug it down. "There!" he said, after he had finished about half of it. "I don't know why it is, but every time I see those teeth, the only thing that helps is alcohol. Anyways, Ethan, I hope this serves as a cautionary tale to you. It would really be a shame if you committed suicide, and I hope you'll think better of it when the moment comes. Because it will come, Ethan—as sure as night follows day, LSD leads to thoughts of suicide, and then, eventually, you'll find that you can't resist the temptation to end it all."

## ENTRY EIGHT: ONE NIGHTMARE AFTER ANOTHER

##

While my father was going on with his strange diatribe about the dangers of LSD, I had come to the fairly obvious conclusion that he was trying to distract Ethan by concocting a letter to himself that was littered with lies. To accuse Ethan of doing LSD was so absurd that I wanted to laugh—neither he nor I had so much as touched any drugs, and I know that for a fact. I suppose, to be absolutely honest, it was possible that Ethan had smoked a joint somewhere along the line, but I think that if he had, he would have told me. But LSD? You'd have to be off your rocker to accuse Ethan of, to use my father's words, dropping acid.

But what was really scary to me was that, for the first time, I could see how my father might have murdered Marissa and Kathryn. Some of the things he had said about his personal experiences on an LSD trip sounded like they could have led to murder. Maybe that's why he had been sent to the mental institution after he had been arrested. If he was ranting and raving about the teeth of dinosaurs to the cops, they might very well have packed him off to the loony bin.

And then there were the accusations against me, which were, of course, absolutely false. As I mentioned before, I had allowed Trevor certain liberties, but I had never allowed him to proceed _that_ far. It's true that I had considered going all the way with him and was still considering it, but that was as close as I had come with anyone. The idea that some older man was giving me one hundred dollars for sexual favors was preposterous. So I was ready when my father turned on me and asked me who the older man was.

"That letter," I said, "is nothing but lies. I don't know who sent it to you, but everything in it is ridiculous—I've never had sex with anyone, and Ethan has never done LSD. And you know what? I really don't feel like sitting here and having to defend myself against all this nonsense."

I jumped up and headed for the door, but before I reached it, my father grabbed me most firmly by the arm and dragged me back to my seat. The look in his eyes! I'd never seen anything like it—I don't really know what the right word is. Maybe malice or evil or menace—maybe all of those things. And as I looked into those eyes, I began to sense that I was looking into the eyes of a murderer.

Plunked back down in my chair, I tried to compose myself as my father stood above me with his hands folded across his chest. After glaring at me for a few seconds, he turned to my mother and said, "Rose Marie, do you know anything about this older man?"

"No, it's the first I've heard of him, but if it's true, it's certainly alarming."

"I should say so," said my father. "So you're denying it, Alanda?"

"Of course I'm denying it—it's absolutely false to say something like that about me."

My father shook his head in a negative way. "You'd be better off not trying to hide the truth, Alanda. No one would write a letter like that unless it was the truth. In fact, I rather suspect that the person who wrote this letter is the older man."

I wanted to lash out at my father and tell him that I knew he was the one who had written the letter, but that would only have given away the fact that I was the one who had written him the first letter. "Dad," I said, as I fought back the tears, "I have been very careful about going too far because I don't want to become pregnant and ruin my life."

"What about Trevor?" said my mother.

"What about him?" What was this? The inquisition?

"Has he...I asked you this before, but have you allowed him any liberties?"

"You mean like kissing?"

"No, I was thinking more along the lines...well, you know what I mean."

"I'm afraid I don't—and anyways, this letter that Dad received said it was an older man."

"I'm not asking about an older man—I'm asking about Trevor."

"Nothing—we haven't done anything."

"Alanda," said my mother, "I'm just thinking that the person who wrote this letter might have confused Trevor with an older man—you see what I mean?"

"And Trevor is giving me one hundred dollars every time we spend a night together?"

"So you've spent nights together?"

"No, we haven't spent a single night together—wouldn't you have noticed it if my bed was empty in the morning? My point is that this person is accusing me of accepting one hundred dollars—"

"What person?" said my mother.

"The person who wrote the letter!"

"It seems to me," said my mother, "that the letter writer may be saying that Trevor is giving you one hundred dollars every time you...every time you went...every time that—"

"No, the letter has nothing to do with Trevor."

"I think it does, Alanda," said my mother. "And I think you'd better start to act more responsibly because once your reputation is ruined, it's ruined, and there's no getting it back."

"That's what concerns me, Alanda," said my father. "And also, sexual degradation leads, almost inevitably, to a bad end."

With that, I gave up and burst into tears. "It's all lies," I screamed as I leaped up and bolted out of the room before Mr. Garrote had a chance to put his hands on me.

Upstairs, in my room, I was overcome by a sense of impending doom. My father's attitude had been so sinister and threatening. Ethan and I were his son and daughter, and in a wretched attempt to save himself from what he had done in 1966, he had invented all these crazy lies about us. To sit there and continuously tell your son that you thought he was about to commit suicide! And to say that I was a prostitute! Meanwhile, my mother, who had no idea what was going on, couldn't help but pile on the bandwagon with her theory that it was Trevor who was giving me a hundred dollars.

As I lay there on my bed, I made up my mind that I was going to have to tell Ethan about what I had discovered in the attic, as well as the letter that I had written to my father. He had a right to know what was going on, and also, by talking about it with Ethan, he might help me to come up with a plan as to what we should do next because something had to be done. We just couldn't let my father do this to us—if his way of trying to escape from the responsibility of murdering two people was to invent nasty lies about Ethan and me, then there was no sense in trying to tiptoe around him anymore. This meant we—or at least I—would have to go to the police and tell them everything. And when I did that, I thought it would be best to bring the photographs of my father and the newspaper clippings, but that would probably mean waiting a couple of days until both my parents were out of the house.

Eventually, after tossing and turning for hours on end, I fell into a kind of fretful, terrible sleep where I continually awakened from one nightmare after another. In one of them, I was trapped in a room where the water was rising and I knew I was about to drown; in another, I was running down a long corridor as a man who looked like my father was chasing me with a rope; in another, my father was telling me that everyone has to die sometime and that it's often better to die when one is still young and beautiful; in another, I was looking down at the body of my brother, who was lying in a casket; in another—the most horrible one of all—I saw a person who had been crucified and was still on the cross. And the person on the cross, who was bleeding profusely, was me.

The next day, I was able to talk to Ethan—we were waiting outside the school for the bus that would take us home. "Ethan," I said, "there are some things about Dad that I need to talk to you about."

"I don't understand what's the matter with him, Alanda—it's like he took a crazy pill."

"It's mostly my fault, Ethan."

"Your fault?"

"Ethan, I know you're probably not going to believe this when you first hear it, but I swear to God that everything I'm about to tell you is the truth." Just then, a person we both knew began to approach us, and I walked towards a bench that was far away from where everybody else was waiting.

After we both sat down, I said, "The other day, I went up into the attic and found some newspaper clippings that Dad had saved from 1966. I don't know why he saved them, but the headlines, which were from a newspaper in Tennessee, were all about the murder of a woman and her child. About two days after their bodies were discovered, Dad was arrested for those murders, but shortly after he was arrested, he escaped from a mental institution."

Ethan stared at me like I was from another planet. "No way," he said.

"I know it's difficult to believe that Dad would do something like that, but—"

"You're serious?" he said, with a questioning gaze.

"Yes, I'm serious."

"Alanda, I know Dad's been acting strange lately, but it's not right to say things like that about him."

I stamped my foot in exasperation and grabbed Ethan by the arm. "You've got to believe me, Ethan—this is serious. I would never make something like this up—never!"

"But...what happened? You're saying he escaped from a mental institution?"

"Yes, and if he was doing LSD at the time of the murders, it's not hard to understand why they sent him to a place like that."

Ethan thought about this for a few seconds. "Did the newspaper say why he had murdered them?"

"No, but it did say that the woman was his girlfriend and the child was his child."

"Alanda, this is just too bizarre—I don't believe it."

"It's true, Ethan—I wish it wasn't, but it is. As soon as we have a chance, I'll take you up to the attic and you can see for yourself."

"So...is he still wanted for murder?"

"I guess so," I said. "Supposedly, he murdered the two people with a garrote, and ever since I read those articles, I'm afraid he's going to do the same thing to me."

"Calm down," said Ethan. "Dad, is never going to do anything like that to you—you're his princess. He's told me that more than once."

"But I'm not going to be his princess anymore, Ethan--not if he finds out that a few days ago, I sent him an anonymous letter accusing him of murdering those two people in Tennessee. He got the letter on the night when he poured the whiskey over the top of his glass."

"That was the night when he was yelling at me for writing him a letter! So you were the one who wrote it?"

"Yes, and in it, I told him that I was a detective who knew all about the murders and was following him around."

"How come you never said anything before now and just let me take the blame?"

"Ethan, I already told you why—I'm scared to death of him and what he might do to me. He isn't our Dad anymore—he's a murderer."

"You're exaggerating, Alanda. You're just...it can't be true. Now I can understand why Dad was so angry after he got your letter—it isn't right to accuse him of murder just because you found some things in the attic."

"Ethan, the problem is that if he hadn't murdered those women, then he would never have reacted the way he did."

"How do you know?" said Ethan. "What if someone accused you of murder? Wouldn't you be upset?"

"Yes, I would be upset," I said, "but I wouldn't go writing letters to myself--like the one he wrote about you taking LSD."

"So you think he was the one who wrote that letter?"

"Obviously. For some reason, he thought you were the one who wrote the first letter, and he was trying to retaliate, or maybe he was trying to confuse you."

"I wonder why he thought I was the one who sent it to him?" said Ethan.

"I don't know," I said. "Maybe...I don't think it ever occurred to him that I wrote the letter, so that might be why he turned on you."

"But if the letter was anonymous, it could have been from anyone—not just you or me."

"I think he saw through my letter and realized that it couldn't be from a detective, which meant it had to have come from someone he knew."

"This is just so weird," said Ethan.

"So what do you think we should do about all this?"

"Alanda, if he really did murder those people, this could wreck our lives."

"I've thought of that many times, but we just can't let him get away with murder."

"It's like he's going psycho," said Ethan. "All that talk about me doing LSD and then telling us about that crazy trip he had."

In spite of everything, I laughed. "The story about the dinosaur grabbing him and turning him upside down before it swallowed him was about the craziest thing I've ever heard in my life."

"What about the part where he stood on the milk crate and tried to fly?" said Ethan. "And now he's worried about me committing suicide. If everything you've told me is true, then he's the one who should be put on suicide watch."

"I think murder comes more naturally to him."

"I'd like to see those newspaper articles, Alanda."

"Alright—as soon as they're both out of the house, we'll go up to the attic, and I'll show you where they are."

"And then I think we'll have to take them to the police and let them deal with it."

## ENTRY NINE: "I'VE HAD THIS PREMONITION ALL DAY LONG."

##

Dinner that night was somewhat more normal, at least by the standards that I had recently become accustomed to. Not totally normal by any means, but by this time, I knew that things would never really be normal again—not in our house, anyways.

My father liked to cook—he would sometimes joke that in a previous life, he had been a French chef who lived in Paris. And on this night, after he arrived home from work, he told my mother that he would cook our supper. "I'm sure," he said to my mother, "that the stress of what the kids have been doing lately has upset you, so why don't you just take the night off?" Naturally, my mother was delighted, and she came out into the living room and sat with me while my father began to prepare dinner—Ethan was upstairs in his room doing, presumably, his homework.

"I do hope," said my mother, after a couple of minutes of idle chit-chat, "that you have given some thought to what we talked about last night."

"Mom, there's nothing to worry about—I haven't done anything with anyone."

"But if that's true, Alanda, why would someone write a letter like that? It would just be so mean-spirited."

Indeed, it would. "Mom, nothing in that letter is true. Ethan isn't doing LSD, and I'm not having a sexual relationship with an older man, or Trevor, or anyone else."

"I understand that it's difficult to talk about these things, Alanda, but don't you at least think that you should have a pregnancy test?"

"Mom, I'm not pregnant!"

"What makes you so sure?"

"Mom, I'm absolutely positive—OK? Do you think that we could talk about something else? I'm really beginning to resent all these personal questions."

"Alanda, calm down. It's difficult for parents and teenagers to talk to each other truthfully. I know because, believe it or not, at one time, I was your age." (This was my mother's way of attempting a joke.) "Regrettably, when I was just a year older than you are now, I became pregnant. I can still remember the day when the doctor told me—I think it was the worst day of my life. Of course, since I was three months along, I knew what the doctor was going to say but to hear him actually say those dreaded words—'You're pregnant'--was enough to almost make me faint."

I looked at my mother in exasperation—she was like a broken record with her constant refrain that I was trying to hide my pregnancy from her. Meanwhile, out in the kitchen, my father had put a tape into a small compact cassette player that we kept out there. As usual, it was a collection of Rolling Stones songs--that was about the only music he ever listened to. And now, drifting in from the kitchen, I heard the not-so-sweet opening riff of "I Can't Get No Satisfaction." I have to admit, however, that the song seemed appropriate to the situation.

Unfortunately, my mother wasn't finished with her warning to me. "The problem is, Alanda, that I lied to my parents about it—my mother had suspected that I was pregnant, but I kept telling her just what you're telling me now: 'No, no—that's impossible because I haven't done anything.' And the sad part is that my mother, bless her departed soul, believed me. She was just so relieved when I told her I wasn't pregnant. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

"Yes, I understand, but it doesn't apply to me because I'm not pregnant. I mean, if I was, why wouldn't I tell you?"

"Well, that's just the thing, Alanda. Young girls are often afraid to face the day of judgment, which is the day when they have to tell their mother that they actually are pregnant. And some of them are so terrified of this day that they take matters into their own hands and attempt to perform abortions on themselves, or maybe they find a disreputable doctor and try to go about it that way. Now, I have nothing against you having an abortion, but it has to be done in the right way under the correct medical supervision."

Hopefully, I thought to myself, this was the last time I would ever have to listen to a lecture as stupid as the one that I was now receiving. Try believing what your kids are telling you once in a while, why don't you?

"Listen, Alanda," said my mother in a soft voice, "you can confide in me. I'm not going to go running to your father and tell him something that I know is just going to upset him. Of course, if you really are pregnant, he'll have to find out someday, but...maybe he wouldn't have to find out. I have a friend who could arrange for you to have an abortion, but we need to act fast—these things are much more difficult once the pregnancy is past the third or fourth month."

"Mom—"

"It's just that you're so beautiful, Alanda. I worry so much about you because I know how young men—they're really just overgrown boys—are. So even if you're not pregnant, I think it's beneficial for us to be talking about this because an unwanted pregnancy can ruin your life."

Somehow or other, before I went crazy, I had to get my mother off my case. "Mom," I said with a forced smile, "I'm not pregnant, not even a little bit--so I don't see the point in discussing this anymore."

From out in the kitchen, we had now moved on to "As Tears Go By." God, the Stones must have been invented for conversations like this.

"But," said my mother, "you and Trevor do go out about twice a week. In the old days, we used to call that going steady."

"Yes, we're friends."

"Friends," said my mother in a suspicious, somewhat sarcastic tone of choice. "What kind of friends?"

"Mom, I don't really want to talk about Trevor, but I will say this: He has always been a perfect gentleman to me."

"That's good to hear, Alanda. So he knows when to take no for an answer?"

"If you want to put it that way, but it's not like...I just don't want to talk about my relationship with him, but we have never done anything that would cause me to become pregnant, and we certainly don't intend to—not unless we're married."

"So you've talked about getting married?"

"No! We're just friends who like to spend time with each other. We'll go to the movies and hold hands, but that doesn't mean I'm going to become pregnant or that we're thinking of getting married."

"And there's really no older man who's paying money to you?"

"Of course not—that's just completely ridiculous. The only older men I know are Dad and a couple of teachers at school."

"OK," said my mother, "but then maybe the letter was just about Ethan. I know you and your brother probably have some rule about not tattling on each other, but if he's using LSD, Dad and I really need to know."

"Mom, trust me—Ethan is not doing any kind of drugs, whether it be alcohol, marijuana, or LSD."

"But why would someone accuse him of doing something like that?"

I wanted to tell her the accusation was coming from her psychologically disturbed husband, but I knew that one wouldn't fly. Dear old Dad was a saint in her eyes, but even so, I decided to ask a few questions that might hint at what I really thought.

"Mom, when did you meet Dad?"

"What's your father got to do with this?"

"Nothing—I'm just trying to change the subject because all this talk of Ethan doing LSD and me accepting one hundred dollars from an older man is a waste of time."

"Not if it's true, Alanda."

"It's not true! How many times do I have to tell you that? A million?"

"Really, Alanda, that's no way to talk to me. All I'm trying to do is look out for your welfare, and if what you say is true and the things in the letter really are lies, then I would like to know who wrote it."

"Mom, as far as the letter goes, it must have been written by someone who has a grudge against Ethan and me."

"But who would that be? I thought you and Ethan got along with everyone."

Now playing, out in the kitchen, was the very appropriate "19th Nervous Breakdown."

"I don't know," I said. "Look, could we talk about something else? It's really unpleasant for me to sit here and have to defend myself and Ethan from a bunch of ridiculous accusations."

"This whole thing worries me," said my mother. "The letter sounds almost like a blackmail note. Today, I thought about that letter for a long time, and if all the things the writer said about you and Ethan are false, then that makes it almost worse than if they were true."

"It would be better if Ethan was doing LSD and I was pregnant? What is that supposed to mean?"

"No--it's just that if those things aren't true, then the person who wrote that letter was filled with hatred for you and Ethan."

"I agree."

"I'm not saying it would be good if what the letter writer said was true, but at least if it was the truth, we could deal with it. But if all these things that were said about you and Ethan are false, then it makes me very nervous."

My mother took a piece of paper out of her pocket, glanced at it, and said, "I asked your father for the letter, and I must have read it a dozen times today. It really scares me that someone would invent these stories about you and Ethan. Alanda, do you absolutely swear to God that everything in this letter is false?"

"I absolutely swear to God. I understand the way you feel, Mom, because there is something frightening about that letter, and I think the person who wrote it has a really warped personality."

"I should say so. I even phoned your father today at work and talked to him about it."

"What did he say?"

"He still thinks Ethan has a problem with drugs, especially LSD."

"Mom, if Ethan was doing LSD, you'd know it."

"Yes, I know—it bothers me that your father was hooked on it when he was younger. I never heard that story he told us yesterday—you know, the one where he was trying to fly and then some dragon with long teeth picked him up and was about to swallow him."

The song changed and on came one of my father's favorites: "Heart of Stone." My mother got up and went out to the other room and came back with a bottle of wine and a glass. After pouring some wine into the glass, she said, "When I first met your father, he was a little mixed up, but now I realize that was only because he had taken so many drugs when he was younger."

"He wasn't doing drugs when you met him?"

"Lord, no! If he had been, I would never have gone out with him. By the time we started dating, he told me that he hadn't taken any drugs in years—perhaps that was a bit of an exaggeration, but when we were dating, he was a very responsible and down-to-earth man. I think, because of his own experiences, he's very worried about Ethan, and that letter he received yesterday certainly hasn't calmed his nerves. I'm sure you saw him at the dinner table when he just kept pouring the whiskey into his glass until it went right over the top. I've never seen him do anything like that in my life."

"That wasn't because of the letter he got about Ethan and me—that was because of the letter he received earlier."

"The one he accused Ethan of sending him?"

"Yes," I said, "and that's when...if you want my opinion, I think the two letters are connected. Do you know much about Dad's past?"

Suddenly, I saw my father peering at us—he had walked over to the entranceway that led into the room where my mother and I were sitting. Smiling, he said, "Are you two talking about me again? You know I don't like that."

"It's nothing," said my mother. "Alanda and I were just talking about the letter you received yesterday—I can't seem to get it off my mind."

"Neither can I," said my father as he returned to the kitchen. Just then, "Heart of Stone" ended and was replaced by my father's "all-time" favorite song: "Play with Fire." Sometimes, and tonight was one of those times, he would play it again and again. "Play with Fire" is the song where the bitter guy keeps singing, "Don't play with me because you're playing with fire."

My mother picked up her wine glass and sipped on it. "Did you talk to Ethan about the letter today?"

"Yes."

"And what did he say?"

"He said a lot of things, actually." Unfortunately, I couldn't tell my mother much of anything without revealing my own role as the author of the first letter.

"Well, what did he say?" said my mother.

My only recourse was to lie. "Just that he had never done LSD—but I already knew that."

"Does he have any idea who wrote the letter?"

"No, none at all."

"It's like there's a cloud hanging over our head," said my mother. "I'm really worried about what's going to happen next. I don't know why it is, but I've had this premonition all day long that something very bad is going to happen."

Dinner was late—very late. My father ran into some unexpected problem in the kitchen and had to redo a soufflé, and it was eight o'clock before we sat down at the table. I noticed that Ethan was staring at my father in an odd way—he had probably spent the last few hours thinking about our conversation. What do you do when you begin to suspect that your father is a murderer? As we began to eat, there was a strange silence in the room, and it was another minute or two before my mother said, "How was work today, Edward?"

"The usual—everybody running around in circles and complaining about the lack of paper clips while the palace is burning down. Early in the morning, four people came into my office demanding reports on the first quarter output. I just wasn't in the mood, so I told them that they'd have their reports tomorrow. And then you called and asked me about the letter I got about Ethan and Alanda yesterday. Sometimes, it seems like the whole world is falling down on my head."

"It never rains but it pours," said my mother, in a cheery voice.

"It just cuts to the quick when you have to face the fact that your son is popping pills all day long."

"Pills?" said my mother. "There wasn't anything in the letter about pills."

"Pills, tabs, whatever it is," said my father irritably.

"This is ridiculous," said Ethan to my father. "Who wrote that letter, anyways? You? Was it just some attempt to ground me or something?"

"Ethan!" said my mother in a sharp voice. "That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard you say in your whole life. You need to apologize to your father immediately."

"I think he wrote it," said Ethan.

This is exactly why I had been reluctant to talk to Ethan about my father. I didn't think it was wise to take him on directly, and now Ethan had spilled about half the beans. I was terrified that he was going to start talking about what I had found in the attic because it was obvious that my father was going to do everything he could to keep the incidents from his past hidden. And who knew what "everything" meant?

My father stared coolly at Ethan and said, "Who put that idea into your head?"

"No one—but how come the letter was left for you at work? Why wasn't it mailed to you here?"

"How should I know?" said my father, in a contemptuous tone of voice.

"So," said Ethan, "someone snuck into your office and dropped it on your desk? I read that letter, Dad. Supposedly, it was written by a person who was making a plea deal or something, and if that were the case, he wouldn't be sneaking into where you work to leave anonymous notes."

"Maybe," said my mother, "it was someone you work with, Edward. Have you thought of that?"

"Maybe it was, but the problem is that Ethan can't face reality. When he's accused of taking LSD, all he can do is deny it instead of admitting the truth."

"You want me to admit to a lie?" said Ethan.

"Ethan," said my father, "as I told you last night, I've seen the signs."

"Edward," said my mother, "don't you think it's at least possible that the letter was written by someone who has a grudge against Ethan?"

"And who would that be?" said my father. "Any ideas?"

"No, but Alanda and I talked about this while you were cooking dinner, and...well, we both think there's some likelihood that the letter contains accusations that aren't true."

"Alanda?" said my father. "What does she know about anything?"

"I think she knows her brother well enough to know that he's not using LSD."

"We'll see," said my father in a dubious tone of voice. "Personally, I think talk like that only enables people to escape from the help that they need. Regardless of what anyone says, I'm going to monitor Ethan closely because I'm very worried about what might happen to him. I don't know how many times I have to tell you—LSD is a very bad drug that can lead to some horrific events."

## ENTRY TEN: WHAT ALL THE SUICIDE TALK WAS ABOUT

I was awakened the next morning by my father—it was just turning light out so it must have been around six. He was shaking my arm and looking down at me in a stern way. "Alanda, please put on your bathrobe and come downstairs—the police need to speak to you."

"The police?" I still felt very sleepy and was having trouble keeping my eyes open.

"Yes, they just have a few questions to ask you, and then you can come back here."

I stumbled out of bed, put on my bathrobe, and followed my father downstairs. He led me into the living room where I found two men in suits. "Alanda," said my father, "this is Detective Wilkerson, and this is Detective Morris."

I sat down in a chair near Detective Wilkerson, and he said, "Alanda, what time did you go up to your room last night?"

What in the world was going on? Where was my mother? "I...I'm not sure—it would have been shortly after we ate dinner last night...maybe nine o'clock."

"Did you see your brother or talk to your brother after you ate last night?"

"No, I went upstairs before he did."

"And did you go to sleep shortly after you went to your room?"

"Not right away—I didn't go to bed until almost eleven."

"Did you wake up at any point during the night?"

"No, I slept right straight through. Why are you asking me all these questions?"

"Your father will talk to you after we leave. I think, at least for now, those are all the questions that we have for you."

I was sent back upstairs and waited in my room for my father who appeared in about twenty minutes. Without saying anything, he grabbed me firmly by the arm and led me out of my bedroom and into the bedroom where he and my mother slept. "What is going on?" I said to him. By now, I was really frightened.

"I don't have time to explain everything to you right now," said my father. "Something serious has happened that I know will distress you, so I'm going to have to ask you to stay in this room for a while—I'll sleep in your bedroom, and you can sleep in our bed. Just for a couple of weeks or so, and then things will change. You'll undoubtedly want to go somewhere, but that won't be possible until things have settled down. The reason I've moved you over here is because of the bathroom that's connected to this room, so it won't be necessary for you to leave this room at all—as far as food goes, I'll bring that up to you."

"What are you talking about?" I said. "What do you mean that I can't leave this room?"

"Just what I said. For the next week or two, this room is going to be your home. I know you don't understand why this is necessary, but tomorrow, I'll explain everything to you. You can watch the TV that's on the dresser, and I'll bring over anything that you like from your room."

"I'm not doing it," I said. "You've no right!" I stormed by him towards the door, but he grabbed me by the arm and led me over to a chair that was near the bed. After I sat down, he stood above me with a menacing look on his face and said, "You will do what I tell you to do, Alanda—your life depends on it."

Had he somehow found out that I had gone through the boxes in the attic? Perhaps he had threatened Ethan. "Where's Mom?" I said, trying to keep the rising sense of terror I felt out of my voice.

"We'll talk about everything tomorrow morning, Alanda."

He left the room, and I waited a few minutes before I went over to the door and tried to open it, but it wouldn't budge. The door was supposed to open inwards, towards me, but something was preventing it from moving. I shook it and shook it, and I could hear...it sounded like there were padlocks on the other side of the door.

People use the word panic a lot, but for the first time in my life, I felt real panic. I ran over to the one of the windows that was on the street side of the room, but just as I was trying to raise the window, my father reappeared, and he began to push some large sheets of thick plywood into the room. "OK, Alanda, I have some work for us to do. These pieces of plywood are heavy, and I'll need someone to hold them for a few seconds after I place them over the windows."

He was talking as if everything was normal, but there was something very different about him, something that I had never seen before. Sort of a calm but malicious cruelty. He knew how scared I was, but it seemed to have absolutely no effect on him.

Reluctantly, I walked over to the window that he was standing next to. Once I was there, he placed a piece of plywood over the window so that it completely blocked it, and then he had me lean against the plywood with my hands so that it wouldn't move. When the plywood was centered to his satisfaction, he picked up a nail gun that he had brought into the room and began to nail the plywood onto the wall. And it wasn't just a few nails that he used—it must have been about fifty on each window. There were two windows in the bedroom and one in the bathroom, and it took us over an hour to block off all the windows.

Afterwards, he asked me what I wanted from my room—luckily, my journal was in a pile of school notebooks that were on top of my desk—and about a half hour later, he came back with the notebooks. After that, he made four or five trips to bring over some clothes from my bedroom. When he was done, he said, "This should last you for at least ten days."

I only saw him twice more that day. Around noon, he came by with a grilled cheese sandwich, which became my lunch, and around six, he arrived with dinner—lasagna and steamed broccoli. His two appearances were quite odd—he merely opened the door and placed my meal on the floor just inside the door, and then, without saying anything, he left.

That night, I was left with a million questions about what was going on—where, for instance, were my mother and brother? For the most part, my million questions would be answered the next morning, and the answers I would receive could mean only one thing--my father was going to murder me.

Around seven o'clock the next morning, my father brought me breakfast, but this time he came into the room and sat down near me. He had made me scrambled eggs and toast, and he had also brought a large glass of orange juice. I put the plate in my lap as I sat in a chair that was next to a small table, and he waited until I was finished with my meal before he said anything.

"I suppose," he said, "that I should tell you what's happened, but I'm afraid that it's going to upset you very much."

I was becoming more and more terrified—it was very difficult for me to think of the man who was talking to me as my father. He was acting more like my executioner, and there was no doubt that he had become my jailer. My tendency to tease him had vanished, and I now viewed him as a person who had both the power and the inclination to murder me. I didn't know what I could say to him that might make him change his mind about me, but I resolved to be very careful about what I said and to treat him with the upmost respect—if I could...

"Yes," I said, "I would like to know what's happened."

"Alanda, the reason I've locked you into this room is that I know you're going to overreact to what I'm about to say, and it wouldn't be beneficial for any of us if you ran around town and told everyone what you thought. You've always been one to jump to conclusions, and in this case, that tendency has led to some very unfortunate consequences."

"I'm sorry," I said.

"It's far too late to be sorry, Alanda, and I can't overlook that."

"I don't...I wish I knew what you were talking about."

"I'll discuss your situation with you later, but first, I have some very bad news for you. The night before last, Ethan committed suicide—I found his body hanging from a pipe in the cellar."

"Oh no—no, no, no." I staggered out of my chair, collapsed on the bed, and burst into a flood of tears.

I could barely hear my father as he said, "Yes, Alanda—didn't I say that I was afraid Ethan might harm himself? I'll leave you alone for a little while, but here's the morning paper—you can read the story about Ethan. And please, whatever you do, don't blame me for what's happened."

My father tossed the paper onto the bed, picked up my plate and glass, and left the room. After he left, I could hear him as he padlocked the door from out in the corridor—it sounded to me like there were three padlocks.

Ethan...my dear brother who would never have harmed anyone. Such a gentle soul...and always ready to offer me help whenever I needed it. So many memories raced through my mind...running through that field at sunset when we were about six or seven...the way the setting sun had shone into his eyes...his hair flying in the wind...and him laughing at me and saying that I was the most beautiful girl in the whole wide world...and then, sometimes, when we were about ten, we would play hide and seek in the back yard with Allison, and Ethan would always find these bizarre places to hide—I almost never could find him...and then, as we got older, there were certain TV programs that we would always watch together, and while we were watching them, Ethan would sometimes hand me a small chocolate during the commercials...and how, even though he liked to walk to school, he started riding with me on the bus after I complained to him about all the boys wanting to sit next to me...and then, on the bus, he would nudge me gently in the ribs with his elbow and say, "I'm so lucky to be the one sitting next to you."

And now my father had murdered him because he thought Ethan had sent him the letter about Marissa and Kathryn. Far too late, I realized what all the suicide talk had been about--my father had been preparing us all for Ethan's fate. Suicide! Not in a million years would Ethan have committed suicide. He loved life, he loved me, he loved his future. And now? Now he was nothing but a body that had been discovered hanging from a pipe in a basement. For my father to do that to him! If only I had a gun, then I would have shot him as soon as he opened the door. But I didn't have a gun or a knife or anything—I was completely at my father's mercy.

Trembling and sobbing, I picked up the newspaper, found the article about Ethan, and read:

Early yesterday morning, the body of Ethan Streets was found in the basement of his parent's house by his father. The police have not made a final determination as to the cause of death, but early indications point to the likelihood that Ethan committed suicide. Drugs, particularly LSD, may have been a factor since detectives found approximately twenty tabs of LSD in Ethan's bedroom.

I threw myself face down on the bed and started weeping uncontrollably. I know that's an expression that's often used, but I was weeping so hard and so profusely that it felt like my heart might burst. "Oh my God," I kept screaming as I pounded my fists onto the bed. "Why? Why? Why?" Ethan, my dear Ethan, had been murdered by my father, and it was all because I had gone into the attic, read a few newspaper articles, and written a letter to my father. If only I hadn't gone up there that day!

I have no idea how much time passed—I couldn't tell from the light in the room because all the windows were blocked off, and I couldn't see the clock from where I was lying on the bed. Anyways, I didn't really care about things like time anymore. I was trapped in an excruciating nightmare that was all too real. My brother had been murdered, and I was going to be next—I didn't have any doubts about that. What other reason could my father have to lock me into this room with no hope of escape? For some reason, he was putting my execution off, but I knew that he was just playing with me—like a cat with a mouse—before he murdered me. How would it happen? And how long did I have before my life came to an end? Days? Hours? Minutes?

My father appeared with my lunch and left it on the table, but I paid no attention to him as I lay, still face down, on the bed. At least, if he was bringing me lunch, I probably had a few more hours left to live.

"Alanda," he said, "can you hear me?"

"Yes, I can hear you."

"Turn around so I can see your face."

Much as I despised him, I did as he requested. "Alanda, I knew you would be upset at Ethan's suicide."

"Aren't you? He had so much to live for."

"I suppose he did," said my father, "but that's what happens when you fool around with a drug like LSD."

There was nothing I could say to him. I'd already accused him of murdering Marissa and Kathryn and that had cost my brother his life. "It's a tragedy," I said, as I began to cry again. "He was such a good brother to me—I don't understand why he had to die...I mean I don't understand how God could let him die."

"God doesn't exist," said my father.

"I guess not," I said.

"You're going to have to stay up here for a while, Alanda—at least until your mother comes home from the hospital."

"Mom's in the hospital? What happened to her?"

"She had a nervous breakdown when she saw Ethan's body, and she's been committed to a psychiatric institution for two weeks so that she can receive the proper care. Once she comes back, or actually a couple of days before she comes back, we'll have to make some changes in your situation. I'll talk to you later about those changes, but in the meantime, I've told your friends, people like Allison and Trevor, that you've gone to visit my aunt in Canada and that you won't be able to talk to them until you've come back."

"But...why? Why is that necessary?"

"It's for your own protection, Alanda. I know you have suspicions about me, and I don't want those suspicions spread around. I also know, because of what Ethan told me just before he died, that you were the one who sent me that letter accusing me of murdering two people in Tennessee. You're going to have to face the facts, Alanda: You played with fire, and you are going to get burned."

## ENTRY ELEVEN: ROCKLAND WOMAN MURDERED

I wonder if anyone in the world would be able to place themselves into my shoes. Not many people are ever locked into a room from which they'll never be able to escape, a room that will eventually turn into their tomb. Terror, even more so than necessity, is the mother of invention, and I spent the next day prowling around for any possible method of escape from the jail cell that my father had built for me. The first thing I did was to examine all the windows that had been boarded up. Nailed down tight! And I do mean tight. There were, like I said before, at least fifty nails in each of the plywood panels that covered the windows, and these were not thin pieces of plywood—they were three-quarters of an inch thick. And I'd seen those nails—they were almost four inches long, so there was no way that I would be able to pry them out.

Next, I went through the bedroom and bathroom very carefully as I searched for anything, like a hammer or a knife, that might help me. But I couldn't find a single thing—my mother had a couple of pairs of small scissors in the bathroom, and I suppose, as a last act of utter desperation, I could have tried attacking my father with them, but I was under no illusions—he was a big man and quite strong, and any attempt by me to attack him physically would never work.

I also went through every drawer in the bedroom and bathroom and found nothing that could help me at all. I even looked in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom, but all I found was toothpaste, deodorant, and a couple of vials that contained prescriptions for my mother. There were no blades or sharp instruments anywhere because my father used an electric razor. I also looked under the bed—I looked under everything and found nothing. One idea that occurred to me was that if I could find something that could be used as a club, I might be able to stand to the side of the door and wallop my father over the head as he came into the room with my food. I'd get one shot at it, but even if I missed, I might take him by surprise and be able to get by him. But there were a few problems with that idea—first of all, I didn't think I could outrun my father, and even if I could, I'd have to deal with the front or back door, both of which had deadbolts on them. Maybe it would only take me two or three seconds to open them, but that would be enough time for my father to catch me.

And where was my club going to come from? If I had a saw, I could have sawed off one of the legs of the bed, but I couldn't find any tools at all. So what was I going to do? When my father was in the room, the door to the bedroom was unlocked except for a simple sliding bolt, but he always placed himself directly between me and the door. In the movies, the heroine does something to distract the villain and makes her improbable escape by running down three flights of stairs with her attacker about two feet behind her until she's finally cornered in a small room. And then, just when the evil man is closing in for the kill, she lashes out with a razor-sharp knife that she had miraculously found as she was fleeing from him.

Probably that's happened once or twice in history, but what almost always happens is that the heroine, as a result of her attempt to escape, becomes a dead heroine. That was the real problem that I kept running into during my calculations—any attempt I made to free myself would probably lead to my immediate execution. Maybe not, but it seemed very likely to me, and it would have been foolish for me to have discounted that possibility. It's one thing to gamble, and it's quite another thing to be literally gambling with your life, especially since I was convinced that I would end up losing the gamble.

The curious thing to me was the fact that I was still alive. What was the point? My father had now admitted to me that he murdered Ethan when he said Ethan told him "just before he died" that I had written the Marissa-and-Kathryn letter. What an awful thing! Ethan dangling from a rope as my father forced a confession out of him. What a sick and perverted mind. So cruel...what had gotten into him? I guess my letter to him had really destroyed his sanity. The really frightening thing about my father telling me about Ethan's last words is that I was now someone who knew the truth, and apparently, my father's goal was to murder everyone who could come back to accuse him of his crimes. There would be no witnesses and no squealers—they would all be put to death.

But why was he waiting? I couldn't figure it out, but I had a pretty good idea of when the waiting would be over. What had he said? Something about how there would have to be some changes in my situation a couple of days before my mother came home. My situation! The situation I was now experiencing was called life, but the situation my father was envisioning for me was death.

And how would it happen? It had to happen someway, and the body doesn't give up without a struggle. Would it be the garrote? Or would he hang me like he had hanged Ethan? I looked above me and saw that there was a fairly large chandelier light fixture in the center of the bedroom. Was that my gallows? Would my father throw a rope around it and then place the noose around my neck? And if that was the way it was going to happen, I knew that once the noose was around my neck, my father would end my life without any remorse or pity--even despite all my terrified pleas for mercy; even despite my last desperate attempts to escape as I lashed out at him with my feet and hands and clawed at him with my fingernails; even despite my final pleas to God. Inevitably, after all my struggles, I would soon find myself with my hands tied behind my back and standing on a chair with the noose around my neck, and then...then would come the final agony as the chair was removed and I struggled desperately for air, struggled with every ounce of my being to survive, but then, slowly—because it would be slowly—I would begin to strangle to death. Whimpering and pleading and crying and gasping...

Shuddering, I tried to put these thoughts out of my mind and attempted to find something constructive to think about. My next school project? Ha! Ha! Everything had been put into perspective now—I was like a swimmer who was about to drown and was fighting for her life. There was no time or energy for anything else but to try and figure out a way to escape from my dreadful predicament. I still had time—by my calculations, it was probably ten days, but it might be nine. Plenty of time—if only I could think of something to do. I can't even begin to remember how many times I went around both the bedroom and bathroom and searched for some weak spot in the walls, the floor, or the ceiling. I used one of my mother's pair of scissors, but in the end, I came up empty-handed. The walls were made out of a solid material that the scissors could only just barely penetrate. These weren't like big scissors—the blades were only about three inches long. For a while, I tried to use them to cut through a piece of plywood, but one of the blades snapped almost immediately.

The floor was constructed of thick planks of wood, and when I tapped on the ceiling, I heard no hollow sounds, just a dull, solid thunk. "There has to be a way," I kept telling myself. Anything in the bathroom? Like pry up the bathtub and hope that I could fall through to the first floor? That wasn't too realistic. Maybe I could break the mirror over the sink—and there was also a mirror in the bedroom—so that I would have some sharp objects, but what was I going to do with them? I could wrap my hands in clothes, but I would never be able to cut through the floor or the walls with shattered pieces of glass. A jagged piece of glass might conceivably be my last defense against my father, but that had about a one in a million chance of succeeding. He'd probably just grab it from me and slash my throat with it.

I also had to contend with the fact that if I made any significant amount of noise, my father might hear it. His present bedroom, which used to be mine, was right next to where I was now, and it was during my fourth day in captivity that I heard the sound of a power drill coming through the wall from the direction of my old bedroom. I stopped in my tracks and wondered what this meant. The drill bit, which was quite wide—like a half inch--came through the wall and then retreated. This was repeated twice more at spaces that were about five feet from where the first drill hole had appeared—one to the left and one to the right.

That night, my father explained to me what the drilling was all about. "I suppose," he said, "you're curious as to why I drilled the holes in the wall today."

"Yes," I said. "Who wouldn't be?"

"They're for your own protection, Alanda. I'm very worried that you might try to hurt yourself, especially because of what happened to Ethan, so I've put the holes there so that I can watch you."

"You're going to spy on me?" I don't know why that bothered me so much. It was hardly anything compared to what I would soon be going through.

"I'm not spying on you. Why do you always have to think the worst about me?"

Gee, why would that be?

"Alanda, you can get dressed and undressed in the bathroom--I'll trust you that far."

"OK, but..." I was trying to be respectful to him, but I have to admit that it was very difficult for me to maintain my composure.

"But what?"

"I just feel uncomfortable being stared at all day long."

"It won't be all day long, but I think it will help you to behave yourself if you know that your conduct is being monitored."

Didn't that sound reasonable? An outsider might have thought my father was a responsible parent. "Can I move the table over to the corner so that you won't be able to watch me all the time?"

"You can do that if you'd like to, but I want to warn you that if you do anything that goes against my wishes, the consequences will be very serious for you. I hope you understand that. You are, for instance, not to make any attempt to escape from this room—I have put you here for a reason, and if you disobey me, the punishment will be extremely harsh."

"Yes," I said meekly, "I understand that."

"I've really been very generous with you, Alanda—far more generous than I was with Ethan, but my patience does have its limits."

"Dad, I'm sorry that you're so upset. Is there anything I can do that would make you feel differently about me?"

He stood up and looked down on me with a face that seemed sorrowful, almost contrite. "I'm sorry," he said, "but it's too late for that."

The fifth day of my captivity was a quiet one. My father was totally disinterested in me—all he did was open up the door, leave my plates of food on the floor, and then, after he shut the door, I could hear him as he snapped all the padlocks shut. I spent a pensive day trying to think my way out of the nightmare I was trapped in. I was able to take a short nap in the afternoon, but I was awakened by a vivid dream in which I saw a newspaper headline in our local paper: ROCKLAND WOMAN MURDERED. Half awake, I began to "read" the story under the headline. I couldn't actually see it, but the words in the article just came tumbling out of my head: Alanda Streets, a sixteen-year-old student at Rockland High School was found strangled to death in her parent's bedroom. The police have said that her father is the only suspect, but no one has seen him in days.

There followed a short biography of my abbreviated career, but I didn't bother reading that to myself since I knew it already. Rather, I began to cry—just softly, like a soft rain that falls at twilight. Probably my father was watching me through one of his peepholes and enjoying the show, but I couldn't help it. The dream seemed so much like a premonition—every time I closed my eyes, I could see ROCKLAND WOMAN MURDERED. According to the article, I had been strangled. Was that how it was going to be? With him sitting on top of me and choking the life out of me?

And then, later, maybe someone besides my father would find my journal, and he or she would be reading it and feeling all the things that I had gone through before I died. If my mother found the journal, she might have it printed up as a kind of memorial to women who have been violated. However, the journal wouldn't end with my last entry—it would end with an epilogue after my last entry. And the epilogue would describe who had found my body, how I had died, and what, if anything, had happened to my father.

## ENTRY TWELVE: KING EDWARD PUTS HIS CARDS ON THE TABLE

My father and I began to talk about my upcoming "change of situation" indirectly. It was such an unpleasant subject for me that I avoided saying anything like "Why do you have to murder me?" Instead, I skipped around the edges and tried to see if there was any way I could talk him out of it. That was, I now felt, my only hope. However, I wasn't the least bit optimistic because I thought the chances of influencing my father were somewhere just above zero. After all, this was the man who worshipped the song "Heart of Stone," and I could sense that any plea I made would only give him satisfaction. Maybe, as he was strangling me, he'd put on another Stones classic, "Under My Thumb."

The fact that he could watch me whenever he wanted to had forced me to change my strategy. There was now no longer any hope that I could somehow pry one of the pieces of plywood off a window or dig my way through the ceiling or the floor. If I couldn't persuade him to let me live, it was a virtual certainty that I was going to die.

"Dad," I said at dinnertime on the sixth day, "it doesn't have to be this way. I mean, what are you going to do when Mom comes home?"

"I won't be here." These days, he was very calm and self-assured. His dyed black hair was slicked back, and his starched white shirts and pressed trousers were certainly not what you would expect from a man who was a monster.

"You won't?" I said. I wondered if he was planning to commit suicide after he murdered me. "Where are you going?"

"Away from here—I'd like to go out west, maybe California."

"And I can't come with you?"

He seemed surprised by my question. "No, of course not, Alanda. I've already told you that your situation will be changing shortly, but if you thought that meant you'd be moving from here and going somewhere else, you haven't been listening to what I said."

"But couldn't you just leave and let me stay behind? I don't know where you're going, so what harm could I do to you?"

"You've already done enough harm, Alanda. You should just face the fact that actions can have serious consequences."

He was talking to me like a father does when he's explaining to his kid that she's being grounded. And the kid, naturally, is objecting, but the parent is standing firm. Only, of course, we weren't talking about me being grounded but about my scheduled execution—not exactly the same thing.

"I know that," I said, "but it all seems a little harsh to me."

"You should have thought of the possible consequences before you sent that letter to me."

I didn't want to talk about the letter, so I said, "But a person should have a chance to make amends—what good is it going to do me if I can't ever make amends for what I've done?"

"I think the aggrieved party has the right to determine the punishment. It's true that leniency can sometimes be beneficial, but it's never worked with you. That's why I think it's best to bring about a change in your situation."

"But...I've always listened to you and tried to obey you." Nowadays, groveling was the only option I had left.

He stared at me for a long time, like fifteen seconds, before he said anything. "Alanda, a parent has to be firm and take into account many things. There's mercy, but there's also justice, and to be honest with you, I think justice is the only way for you to learn your lesson."

"But what's the point of learning a lesson if I can't apply it?"

"The punishment has to fit the crime, Alanda. I've read that letter you sent me many times, and it's very insulting. I've never asked you this before, but I would like to hear you admit that you were the one who wrote the letter."

What was I going to tell him? "I...it wasn't Ethan," I said.

"Yes, and by the time I realized that, it was too late—so that's why he died. But you haven't answered my question. Did you write that letter?"

"Yes," I said. I thought it would only increase his anger if I denied it.

He stared at me with what now seemed like cold and evil eyes. "And why did you think I murdered those two people in Tennessee?"

"I had—I know I shouldn't have—I was going through...I was just up in the attic, and I came across some old newspaper articles about the two women who were murdered."

"You found those in the attic?" From the tone of my father's voice, I could tell that he was shocked.

"Yes, they were in a cardboard box."

"I thought I had thrown them away when I left Tennessee," said my father. "So what did the articles say?"

"All they said was that you had been arrested and sent to a mental hospital for observation."

"You never should have sent me that letter, Alanda. Why didn't you just forget about what you had found in the attic? It doesn't make any difference what happened to Marissa and Kathryn—not now."

All I was trying to do was survive the night, so I said, "I know—I should have minded my own business."

"Alanda, that letter was quite threatening to me because from a legal point of view, I could be held responsible for the deaths of Marissa and Kathryn."

The fact he was admitting this to me meant that I was doomed, absolutely doomed. "You were responsible for their deaths?" I couldn't think of anything else to say.

"Marissa was the love of my life, Alanda, but she did something to me that no woman should ever do to a man. Rose Marie would never have done what Marissa did—that's why she deserves a better fate than you and Ethan."

I had to admonish myself to keep my temper as my father put his cards on the table, so I said, "I'm glad nothing is going to happen to Mom."

"Alanda, when Ethan told me you wrote the letter about Marissa and Kathryn, it just broke my heart. You were really my last hope for redemption because when you were a child, you always reminded me of Kathryn—that's why I would play with you and talk to you and hold you for hours on end."

"Yes, I can still remember some of the times we had together."

"But when I discovered you wrote the letter, my feelings about you completely changed. Before, I had thought that Ethan's death would take care of everything, but now I also had to do something about you, and since I couldn't very well have both you and Ethan commit suicide on the same night, I was facing a lot of problems. Obviously, I was going to have to disappear, but before I could do that I needed to find some time so that I could withdraw my money from my bank accounts, buy plane tickets, and make arrangements for my future life. That meant, except as a last resort, it was better to leave Rose Marie alive because if she, Ethan, and you were all to die on the same day, I'd have to leave town immediately."

Tra-la-la—just a pleasant conversation between a father and his daughter. I doubt anyone can imagine how much I wanted to tell this monster what I thought of him.

"So after Ethan died, I went back upstairs, dissolved two tabs of LSD in a small glass of water, and then woke Rose Marie up. We talked for a few minutes, and when she said she was thirsty, I gave her the glass of water that had the LSD in it. After it began to affect her, I took her down to the basement, and once we were there, I called 911--by the time the police came, Rose Marie had to be put in a straightjacket. By the way, would you like some LSD? It might help you to be able to deal with your upcoming change of situation."

"No thanks, Dad."

"It's a drug that could really help you, Alanda, especially during the night before. I know LSD frightens people, but it's always made me feel more at peace with myself. You probably don't realize it, but I just made up those stories about the milk crate and the dinosaur chasing me so that you and Rose Marie wouldn't be surprised when Ethan committed suicide. Anyways, I'm trapped here with a family that doesn't love me—I've been able to accept the fact that Rose Marie doesn't love me, but I can't accept that from you because, outside of Marissa, you are the only person I ever really loved in my life. That's why it never occurred to me that you wrote the letter."

A dark look passed over my father's face, and when I say dark, I mean it was similar to a movie I saw once where the face of the murderer would change into something hideous just before he murdered someone—that was what seemed to be happening to my father as I looked at him. It was also like he had forgotten that I was in the room and was just reliving something that had happened in the past. Finally, he turned his gaze towards me and said, "I don't trust women. Just look at you! You're still fixing your hair in the morning—what for? Where do you think you're going? Who are you trying to please? You're just like all the other women in the world—the only thing that interests you is attracting men so that you can use them for your own ends."

I was terribly frightened that the time for my execution was being moved up to the present moment. "I'm sorry," I said. "I won't fix my hair any more if you don't want me to."

"I should think you'd have better things to do than stare in the mirror and try to make yourself look beautiful."

"If you tell me what you'd like me to do, Dad, I'll be happy to do it."

"You're just saying that to please me, Alanda—if you could figure out a way to escape from this room, the police would be here in ten minutes."

"Dad, I can't escape from this room, so just tell me what you want me to do."

"It doesn't matter anymore, Alanda—there's no sense trying to sweet-talk me because I can see right through you and all your little stratagems to save yourself. I suppose it's natural for someone in your position to do that, but it's still pathetic to watch a person beg, and that's what you're doing now."

I wanted to cry, but for some reason, I felt it was important to remain strong in front of him, so I didn't say anything.

"Marissa did the same thing just before she died," said my father. "What happened with her was that she fell in love with a friend of mine—that's who she was going to see on the day she disappeared. The night before, she told me that she didn't love me anymore and was going to leave me the next morning. She also told me that she would be taking Kathryn with her."

"That's terrible," I said.

"And that's why Marissa didn't deserve to live," said my father. "Once you have a child with a man, you can't throw him away because you're attracted to someone else."

"I agree with you—that's wrong."

"So why should I have allowed her to live?"

Under my present circumstances, this was a difficult question for me to answer because, at all costs, I couldn't afford to offend my father. However, I couldn't bring myself to admit that murdering his girlfriend and child represented any form of justice. I was desperate but not quite that desperate. "It must have been a very difficult time for you," I said.

"Difficult? To love someone with your whole heart, and then she just laughs at you and walks away into the arms of a person who's supposed to be a friend. How would you like it if Trevor did that with Allison?"

"I wouldn't like it at all."

"Of course not. I know people think murder is wrong, but sometimes, people deserve to die for the things that they've done. There's just no other fair solution when the injustice reaches a certain level. The trouble is that you're too young, Alanda, and you think you know the difference between right and wrong, so that's why you don't understand all this. Knowing you, you're probably even wondering why Kathryn had to die."

Kathryn must have been put to death because she had somehow managed to offend King Edward. Since I couldn't say that, I ventured a guess. "Because she was your child?"

"No--Kathryn had to die because Marissa was taking Kathryn with her, so that meant she was now Marissa's child."

To try and please him, I said, "Why wouldn't she have left Kathryn with you?" After all the things I had learned about my father recently, it wasn't hard for me to understand why Marissa had taken Kathryn with her.

"Marissa took Kathryn because she wanted to destroy me. It was our love that had created Kathryn, and now she was going to take the child that came out of that love and give her to another man. And I hadn't done anything to Marissa!" My father smashed his hand down on the table and a plate fell to the floor. I got out of my chair, picked up the pieces, and put them on the table. "Thank you," he said.

"You're welcome."

After a few moments, my father said, "It's different when you're younger, Alanda. Now that I'm forty-five, I wouldn't really care if your mother had an affair with someone because she's not that beautiful. There's no sexual attraction between us anymore, and as far as our children go, one of them is dead, and the other one is you, so that doesn't mean anything. But when I was twenty-three, it was entirely different. That's a wicked age, and people do wicked things. And what Marissa did to me was wicked. Put yourself in my shoes, Alanda—what else could I have done?"

"I think...I don't know...when Marissa left you, it must have hurt you a lot."

"Alanda, there's nothing in my whole life that has ever hurt me more—in fact, the only thing that comes close to the pain I felt back then is the pain I felt when I learned you were the one who sent me that letter. And that's why Marissa had to pay the price, and that's why you will be paying the price."

After he left the room, I burst into tears.

## ENTRY THIRTEEN: A PRAYER TO MY HEAVENLY MOTHER

The next day, after breakfast, I came to a decision: I would spend the whole day praying. I don't know why that idea came to me—I guess it was because I was feeling increasingly desperate. I've heard it said that there are no atheists in foxholes, but I was in something that was much worse than a foxhole—it was more like the car had gone off the road and was tumbling down a cliff. _Death was imminent._ This was my seventh day of captivity, which meant that I had, at most, five days left to live. My father had said my situation would change a couple of days before my mother came home after two weeks in the hospital, but what if she were to be released earlier? Obviously, he would have to wrap things up before she came home, and the way I was going to be wrapped up was in a shroud.

So although it might sound corny and stupid, it probably wasn't really that odd when I made my decision to spend a day in prayer. I mean, I was at my wit's end. I couldn't see any way out of my death chamber, and there was no real possibility that my father, with his heart of stone, was ever going to give me a reprieve from my death sentence. It's really difficult to describe just how frightened I was. The night before, I had a dream where I saw a woman hanging from a tree, with her head twisted to one side and a blank expression on her face. Just the saddest thing—and it was probably going to happen to me. I say "probably" because I thought my father might just flat-out strangle me, or there was always the possibility that I would suffer Marissa's fate and have my life extinguished with a garrote, but the more I thought about it, the more likely it seemed to me that I would be strung up on the chandelier.

That's what my father had done to Ethan—only instead of a chandelier, it was a pipe. Way back, when this whole living nightmare started, I had wondered what it would feel like to be garroted to death, and yesterday, I had spent most of the day imagining what it would feel like to be strung up. I knew that in most hangings, people fall a few feet, which breaks their neck and causes them to lose consciousness almost immediately, but I wouldn't really be dropped at all. I would just be standing on a chair, which would be slowly removed. Because, of course, my father would do everything slowly—like he was performing some important religious rite. And then, after the chair was removed, I would have my own reality to deal with—a strangulation in slow motion as the weight of my body caused the noose around my neck to tighten. But it wouldn't completely cut off my air supply at once—it would be gradual. Maybe it would take ten minutes before I died; maybe it would take twenty. And those wouldn't really be the most pleasant moments of my life. Fighting, fighting, fighting for air, for one last breath while he stood below me and gawked at me. Maybe he'd bring in his little stereo player and play me a medley of Stones' songs, or maybe he'd give me a lecture about what a bad girl I had been and how this was hurting him more than me. I don't mean to indulge in self-pity, but how would any human being like to have those thoughts as a daily reality?

So I don't think it was all that surprising when I turned to something as old-fashioned as prayer. It wasn't like prayer was a habit of mine—as far as I can remember, I don't think I've ever prayed in my life. Maybe when I was six or something, and it was just a silly little request for some Christmas present that I wanted. But right now, I felt totally helpless—all I wanted was a shoulder to sob on, and there wasn't one around. I also felt I needed some advice on how to cope with my situation, and I was hoping that a day of prayer might give me...I don't know what—just that it would give me something. Because I sure did need something.

I took some clothes of my mother's out of the closet and laid them beside my bed so that I wouldn't have to kneel on the hard floor. And then I knelt down and clasped my hands so that they were on top of the bed—I had my back turned to the peepholes, so my father couldn't see my face. At first, I didn't know who to pray to. God? Who was He? The whole concept didn't make much sense to me. Was God like some giant figure who lived in the sky? I just couldn't visualize it. So who was I praying to? After a few minutes of reflecting on this, I began to realize I was praying to power. Somewhere, somehow, there had been a power that created me, created this world, created this universe. And if this power could create the universe, then maybe it wasn't unrealistic to think that it could save me.

About a month before, my science class had studied astronomy for about a week, and I had been amazed by how precise everything was in our solar system, especially as it related to the earth. Here was this gigantic ball that rotated around the sun and had rotated around the sun for millions of years. But the speed of this rotating ball had to be so exactly precise—if the speed increased at all, the earth would go flying off into outer space and everyone would freeze to death, and if the speed decreased we would, by the strength of the sun's gravity, be pulled into the sun and incinerated. When I stopped to think about it, like I was doing now, the absolute perfection of it was amazing.

But the part that got me was that the rotating ball also tilted back and forth on its axis, which is what creates the seasons. Tilt the earth one way and you have summer; tilt it the other way and you have winter. So this giant force, this _power_ that had created it all, took this ball called the earth and spun it out into the solar system at exactly the right speed, and then, for good measure, the power gave the earth a little twist so that we could experience the variety of the seasons.

And this power hadn't done only that, of course—it had also created the sun and the moon and everything else. That's real power. I mean, nobody on earth had created this, and as I knelt there in prayer, I began to realize that everything in existence is created. Just like everything that you buy in a store is created. Your clothes are created in some factory, and your universe is created. Someone or something is behind every creation.

I was proceeding slowly through all this because I wanted to get it right. Time was running out, and I didn't have the luxury of botching up my prayer session. So, I wondered, who or what created the universe? Was it a God? Perhaps...as long as one didn't make this God into someone who looked and acted like a person. Because this God would have to be far more powerful than that—this God was _power_. That was the word I kept coming back to, so what I was praying to was power.

I was happy with that thought because what I was seeking was power—I had absolutely no power in my present situation, so it made sense to me to go to the power source for a solution. I was praying to power for power. God knows—I sure did need it.

The next question was what to pray for. That, of course, wasn't hard to answer, but there were a number of things that I had to consider before I made any requests. I was running from intuition to intuition, and the intuition that occurred to me was that I had to be humble. Very, very humble. There would be no talk about what I deserved because I was now nothing but a powerless beggar. Actually, I guess, we're all powerless beggars, but in my present condition, I felt like the number-one beggar on the planet. "Beg," I said to myself, "beg, beg, beg. Beg for your life with every ounce of your being."

But what should I call this Being that I was begging to? I had to have a name, and I didn't like the word God because it didn't mean anything to me—it was just someone else's word, a word that didn't really describe anything. On earth, the creators of life were the mother and father, so maybe this power could be thought of as something...maybe it, the power, was like the merging of the mother and the father. Except, of course, I wouldn't be praying to the father—you could bet your last living cent on that! And anyways, mothers were always merciful to their children and tried to protect them from harm and would even give up their lives for them. But fathers were often associated with judgment and punishment, and I certainly didn't need any more of that. Obviously, right now, if I could talk to my earthly mother, I would beg her to intercede with my father and spare me. So maybe my heavenly mother could help me as I faced the most desperate moments of my life.

"Dear Heavenly Mother," I began, in a soundless voice, "I have no idea how to talk to you. I am just a young woman who is caught in a horrible situation, and I have come before you to ask for your help and guidance. I am sure you know what my problem is because you must know everything, but maybe it would help you if I expressed it in my own words. I'm sorry--I know you don't need any help from me, but it might help me if I talked about my problem. Basically, my earthly father is being very mean to me. He is a cruel man who has murdered at least three people, including my brother. And I know that he is intending to murder me, and there is nothing that I can do about it.

"I am a terrified sixteen-year-old girl who has not always been the best person, but I haven't done anything really evil in my life. I have never deliberately harmed anyone, and I have always been compassionate to animals. I think...I know that I could improve, but...

"In a few days, maybe tomorrow, my father is going to walk into this room and put an end to my life. He is probably going to hang me, but he may just strangle me to death with his hands. I am so scared of what is going to happen to me. I lie awake at night and cry, and when I finally do fall asleep, I have horrible nightmares about hangings. I don't want to die this way, and I am asking for your help, for you to intercede so that I won't have to endure what my father has in store for me.

"Many people believe that everything that happens is part of God's plan, and I can see this makes sense. Maybe, I am terrified to admit it, my being hung is a part of some greater plan that I don't understand. Dear Mother Above, is it possible to change the plan a little bit? Can you help me? I am so powerless, so forlorn, so needy. Please spare me—I don't want...I know I shouldn't talk this way to you, but I so much don't want to be standing on that chair with the noose tied around my neck and to feel my father pulling the chair away.

"But, Dear Mother, I will try and respect your wishes—I will respect your wishes. I know you could not wish any real harm to come to me. So if I am placed on that chair with the noose around my neck, I will carry myself with dignity. I will not beg _him_ for anything. I will be your child, and I will accept what is given to me. I will probably be weeping and in a state of great panic, but I will carry myself like a lady. I promise I will do that for you—it will be my way of showing you that when I was praying today, I meant, as best as I could, every word that I said.

"And even in my final, most awful moments, I will hold your memory in mind. I see you as being infinitely kind and merciful. And hopefully, as I am struggling to take my last few breaths, I will see your face before me, and you will be kind enough to take me in your arms and bring me to a better place."

Here, I totally broke down and started bawling like a baby. I just couldn't help it—I didn't care if my father was watching every moment and was laughing at me. I was so distraught—my heart was pounding, and I was gasping for breath as the tears came pouring down my face. But after giving in to that for five minutes, I remembered what I had told my heavenly Mother about accepting my fate with dignity. Because, with time now beginning to run short, about the only choice I had left in life was how I was going to act while I was being put to death. Was I going to physically battle with my father? I couldn't say for sure, not until that moment came, but I knew it wouldn't do any good because he was so much stronger than me.

Besides, the choice I was talking about was not that choice—the choice I was talking about was the choice I was going to make when I was on that chair and my father asked me if I had any last words to make. Or maybe the choice was even later than that—maybe the choice was after he had pulled the chair away. And then, despite the fact that I was being put to death in such an ugly way, would I be able to maintain my dignity as my life was slowly strangled out of me? Because, I could see it now, that was the best way for me to make my exit from planet earth. Not to be kicking and thrashing, not if I could help it, but just to keep some flimsy shred of personal dignity about myself. This didn't have anything to do with the fact that my father would be looking on—this was simply for me. This would be my way of saying goodbye to my life.

But could I do it? Once again, I began to pray, and I continued to pray right through lunch and until dinnertime, when finally, I stopped. All day long—one prayer after another, but they were all pretty much the same. Please intercede for me! And if that's not possible, please help me at the end.

## ENTRY FOURTEEN: I SUCCUMB TO A DARK IDEA

My father was in a talkative mood at dinnertime. "What were you doing all day, Alanda? Every time I looked in, you were kneeling beside the bed. You weren't praying, were you?" he said, with a mocking laugh.

"Kind of, I guess."

"And you think that's going to help you?"

"No, not really."

"Then why bother?"

"It's just something I did to pass the time."

"There's nobody to pray to, Alanda. God is just a mirage that people see when they become desperate. Are you afraid of dying?"

"To be honest, I am."

"There's really nothing to be frightened of, Alanda. I've often thought that people who die at a young age are the lucky ones."

Thanks for the encouragement, Dad. "Why's that?"

"Alanda, once a person gets past twenty, it all begins to go downhill, and there's not much point in living anymore. If I had to do it over again, I would have been better off doing away with myself on the day that Marissa left me."

"So what keeps you going?" I said.

"Someday, I'd like to find a woman who truly loves me. That's what I'm searching for—I've been searching for that ever since Marissa died."

"Yes, that was a great tragedy in your life."

"It's also a tragedy that I'm going to be losing you and Ethan."

"I suppose it will be." It was such a ridiculous conversation, but I thought it was best for me to continue it. Maybe somewhere, underneath all his resentment, there was something I could say that might change the way he felt about me. It was, I knew, a vain hope, but vain hopes were all I had left in my life.

"I loved you so much when you were a child, Alanda. The sun rose and set on you, but as you became older, you changed, and I became very disappointed in you."

"I didn't realize that, but I guess it's too late now to do anything about it."

"You can at least make some attempt to please me until your situation changes," he said, in a stern voice.

"I'll try—when are you leaving?"

"There have been some complications, unfortunately, and I've had to move the time up. I'll be leaving in five days, which means your situation will have to be changed in four days. Actually, it's three and a half days because, for you, everything is going to happen early in the morning. I have a lot to do that day, so I'll have to tend to you first."

It was hard for me not to cry, but I only said, "Thanks for telling me."

"You're not going to cause any problems are you?"

"You mean on the day when my situation changes?"

"Yes, on that day."

"No—there's nothing that I can do; I realize that the decision has been made."

"You should think about what clothes you want to wear."

Should I dress up or dress down for my execution? "I'll do that," I said. "Will I be eating breakfast that day?"

My father laughed. "No, what would be the point of that? I'll be by at 6 A.M., and we'll wrap everything up then."

"Will it take long?" I said.

"Not too long—maybe fifteen minutes."

So he was going to hang me. "And I really can't go with you?" I said.

"Of course not, Alanda. Your problem is that you fear death too much. You should consider yourself lucky because in just a few days, all your problems will be over. I know you're scared of dying, but that's only because you don't have any way of knowing what would have happened to you if you had lived a long life. All the broken promises, all the diseases, all the children who turn out to be disappointments. Don't expect any leniency from me—not after what you've done to me."

"I'm not, but...why did you wait so long to change my situation?"

"Did you think I was trying to torture you?"

"No, it never seemed that way."

"Alanda, what I'm hoping is that the time I've leant to you will help you come to an understanding of how unkind you've been to me."

"I see—perhaps it will."

"I can't change what's going to happen, Alanda, but I can change how it's going to happen."

"What can I do?"

"Offer me a sincere apology—not now, but then. Anything you say now is just an attempt to save yourself. I need to hear it then."

"Just before?"

"Yes, just before. Like I said, it won't make any difference in what actually happens to you, but you'll be glad that you did."

So I was going to have to apologize to him while I was standing on the chair with the noose around my neck. I didn't quite see how that would make things easier for me, but I figured I might as well go through with the apology because who really knew what method of death he had in store for me? And also, a perfect apology might give me that one-in-a-million chance of escaping my death sentence.

"OK, Dad, I just need some time to think about it—I am sorry for the way I've treated you, and I'll try to...I'll do the best I can when the time comes."

"It'll be a lot easier for you if you do."

Wasn't that sweet of him?

After I went to bed that night, I spent the first hour saying my prayers. Although I felt they probably wouldn't do me much good, they did leave me with a better feeling than I had before. A little more at peace with things. And also, the idea of dying with dignity still appealed to me. I was hoping that if I could maintain my dignity through the process—the process being my execution—then it would be a little bit better for me. Or maybe that was just a foolish hope, and the best thing to do, when the time came, would be to just give in to panic and do everything I could to prevent my father from slipping the noose around my neck. To fight like I had never fought before.

But after another hour of prayer, I decided against it. Once my father came into the room with the noose, I would try to go gracefully, and he would receive his apology because it would be my last chance to save my life. And although he was certain to reject it, I didn't feel that appeasing him was anything to be ashamed of. He could walk around for years gloating about it, but if you counted it as a triumph in your life to hear your daughter apologize before you executed her, then what kind of a life was that?

Later, before I went to sleep, my mind continued, as I'm sure any mind would, to search for ways to escape my fate. If only I could make myself invisible! Wouldn't that be something? To have my father come into the room seventy-nine hours from now and not find me there! Maybe I could hide inside the mattress by cutting it down the side with the scissors, and after flushing some of the stuffing down the toilet, I could crawl inside. It was a big project to undertake at this rather late date—I could only work on it at night because of the peepholes, and instinctively, I just didn't think it would work. Even so, I got out of bed and pushed my hands down on various spots of the mattress and could feel the metal coils. I'd forgotten about them, which meant I'd have to rip a few of them out somehow, and even if I was able to get them out, where was I going to put them? As soon as my father found them, he'd know where I was.

You can see how desperate I was becoming. The next idea for salvation that crossed my mind was a dark one that I had put off considering, but if there ever was a time, now was the time to consider it. My father was clearly an evil man, but surprisingly, he had shown no sexual interest in me. I say surprising because I had suspected, when he first locked me in the room, that he might be going to rape me. As bad as that would have been, it didn't really compare with what he was about to do to me.

Could he be tempted? Tempted to spare my life if I could somehow figure out a way to be his next Marissa? He had just told me that he was searching for love from a woman—what if I were to be that woman? Such an awful question to consider...just horrible. So distasteful. Should I really begin to try and flirt with my father? And if I succeeded in enticing him to go to bed with me, would it do me any good? Or would all my efforts just bring down one more indignity upon my head before I died?

I was so inexperienced sexually—all I knew how to do was flirt and kiss and not much more. But suppose...just suppose. It couldn't just be about sex because my father would know that was a crime, and then he would have one more excuse to execute me. For the sexual thing to have any chance of working, it had to be combined with making him fall in love with me. So difficult to think this way...

I dozed off for a while, but when I awoke, I started up right where I had left off. Seducing my father—the one little life raft that I could find in the ocean as the sharks circled around me. Would it work? He was such a strict, judgmental man, and in our last few conversations, he had been able to tell when I was saying something that was intended just for my own self-preservation. He had never, not once in his life, acted inappropriately around me when it came to anything sexual. Even now, when he had me completely under his power and could have done anything he wanted to me, he never showed any sexual interest in me.

Imagine reaching the point in your life when you're worried because your father isn't showing any sexual interest in you. When you're thinking things like this, it's obvious that the end is near. But I couldn't give up thinking about it because that was about the only hope I had left.

There was just so little chance that it would work—he would undoubtedly see through my motives in an instant unless...unless I was very, very subtle about it. But even then, even if it all worked out "perfectly," and he took a sexual interest in me and carried through with it, what difference would it make? I could just hear him afterwards: "That was very sweet of you, Alanda, but the day after tomorrow, your situation will still be changing." Or maybe it would be even worse than that, and he would feel so guilty about what he had done that he would just strangle me on the spot.

I fell asleep again and didn't wake up until the clock said 6:15. That first second or two after waking up! It was almost like it was a normal spring morning...and then the whole monstrous black cloud invaded my mind. My new project was trying to get my father to fall in love with me and have sex with me so that he wouldn't string me up. There's a pleasant how-do-you-do in the morning!

My father brought breakfast and lunch at the usual times but just put the plates on the floor and didn't say anything. I spent the day moping around my little space—I was in a very weepy mood and couldn't really do much of anything. I tried praying but gave up after fifteen minutes because it wasn't making me feel any better. Then I lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling for an hour until my eyes began to focus on the chandelier. I would probably be dying about two feet under that chandelier. Shuddering, I turned over and buried my face in the pillow and bawled my brains out. Looking at the clock, I saw that the rest of my life was now down to sixty-three hours.

I spent a couple of hours in the afternoon writing in my journal. Whenever I did that, I was careful to sit in a place where I couldn't be seen through the peepholes because I didn't want my father to know that I was writing down everything that was happening to me. I didn't think he knew about the journal, but I couldn't be sure, and I was very nervous that he might search the room for it—maybe he wouldn't be looking specifically for the journal but would just find it by accident. So after writing in it, I always hid it under the rug that was beneath the table where I did my writing. When the morning of my execution came, I planned on placing it under the mattress on which I slept in the hopes that someone would eventually find it and realize what a monster my father was.

I suppose that if my journal survives my father's reign of death and destruction, many people will feel that I am a hypocrite. Here I was praying my heart out one minute, and then the next minute, I was thinking all these depraved sexual thoughts about my father. I know I've said this a lot, but the prospect of being hung had completely altered the way I thought about things, and to be truthful, all options were on the table. I didn't really think—I wasn't that naïve—that I had any options, but if something even looked like the shadow of an option, I was all over it. I was constantly plagued by thoughts of how I would feel as I was standing on the chair with my hands tied behind my back and the noose around my neck. And then my father, after another lecture about my faults, would be reaching down to pull the chair away. What would those first few moments feel like as I dangled in the air? Would it be immediately difficult to breathe? Or would it be more like a slow strangulation with the pressure increasing minute by minute? The body would fight against it, of course. The body would struggle because bodies don't like to die.

And the thing was, when my father reached down to pull the chair away, I didn't want to feel that I hadn't used up all my options. Every option was like a card in my hand, and it had to be played if there was any chance that it could change my fate. So that's why things like sexual virtue didn't mean anything to me anymore and had become totally irrelevant. I'm sure there are women who would feel differently about this and not contemplate what I was contemplating, but there are probably many who would have thought of it before I did. Because I would, given the choice, far prefer to lose my virtue than my life. Maybe if my life was like a light switch that could be turned on and off and death was instantaneous, I would think differently, but I was just so terrified of being strung up. I mean, I was petrified. Terror-stricken. I don't know how many times I battled one panic attack after another. Maybe it was because I was so young and had such a vivid imagination, but sometimes, during the day, I could actually feel the noose around my neck, could imagine the pressure—there were a couple of times that I started gasping for air.

So that had led me to praying, praying to my heavenly Mother, but that didn't make me a hypocrite even if I was now thinking of seducing my father. I was just a desperate young woman who had absolutely no one to turn to, and besides, I was beginning to think of that old saying, God helps those who help themselves. A miracle, like my father dying in the next ten minutes, would be the best gift I had ever received in my life, but I couldn't wait for that kind of heavenly intercession. I had to do everything I could to help myself, and if that included letting my father love me in a sexual way, then that was what it was going to be. But although I was a naïve young woman, I wasn't naïve about my father—the chances of him sparing my life, no matter what I did, were about the same as winning the lottery. But still, I had to try.

Dinner time—fifty-nine hours and thirty minutes to go. My father almost always ate dinner with me, and tonight was no different. Instead of my usual jeans and sweatshirts, I had changed into clothes that showed off my figure—a fairly tight blouse and a skirt that stopped about two inches below my knees. And also, despite his admonition about combing my hair, I had worked on it some—not enough to annoy him, hopefully, but enough that it might make me desirable.

"What did you do today?" he said to me. His tone of voice was similar to the way he would ask that question after a school day.

"Not much."

"Did you do any thinking about some of the things that I talked to you about recently?"

"Yes—I can see why you'd be so upset with me."

"You've always been very willful, Alanda, and that's a trait that leads to many bad decisions and outcomes. Had you listened to me, you could have made some man very happy, but I'm afraid that's not going to happen now."

"And you? Do you think you'll ever find a woman who will make you happy?"

"I doubt it—women can't be trusted."

I scratched my leg so that my skirt came up another inch. "Perhaps you need to find a younger woman, Dad."

"Younger women are difficult to deal with, Alanda. When people are young, they just talk out of both sides of their mouth."

"You must have loved Marissa very much."

"Yes, it was basically the end of my life when she told me that she was leaving me."

"But perhaps you could find someone else." Another scratch on my leg, another inch higher on the skirt, but he didn't seem to be taking any notice.

"I'm hoping that California will be different for me."

"All that sun and all those beaches," I said, in an optimistic tone of voice.

"I don't really like the sun," said my father. "It's bad for my skin."

"But beaches are where all the beautiful women go, Dad. Young ones too—people just like me."

"People your age are way too young, Alanda—they don't know anything about loving a man."

"What does love mean to you, Dad? What are you looking for?"

"Someone who will never desert me; someone who will satisfy me and never stop satisfying me."

"You definitely need a younger woman then," I said.

"Young but not too young," said my father. "Maybe someone who's in her mid-twenties and is just coming out of a terrible relationship."

I uncrossed and then re-crossed my legs, which caused my skirt to go up another couple of inches—by now, it was a little bit above my knees. "Dad, I think one advantage with a really young woman is that she won't have a mind of her own and can be trained to do things that an older woman wouldn't want to do."

For the first time, he looked at my legs—was I overdoing it? My mind was going a mile a minute as I searched for any way to get into this man's heart, this heart of stone. "It looks like I'm never going to have a chance to love a man," I said.

"No, probably not."

My father—the helpful hardware man! "I've loved you as best as I could," I said.

"Not nearly enough, Alanda."

"Do you mind waiting a minute, Dad? These clothes are beginning to bother me, and I'd like to change—I'll go into the bathroom and be out in a couple of minutes."

He didn't answer me but just shrugged his shoulders as if he didn't care one way or another.

I left the room and closed the bathroom door—I had, of course, planned this all out and knew exactly what I was going to wear—my bathrobe and very little else. Plus, I put on just the tiniest hint of perfume. I was moving very fast because I was afraid that he might leave, and I kept telling myself that my life depended on everything I did. If only he would love me! By now, it didn't really make any difference to me if that love was based on sex. Anything to escape the noose. However, deep down, I still felt doomed—he'd either spurn my offer, or if he accepted it, my change of situation would still be happening, and it might be happening much sooner than I expected.

I returned to the room, sat down, and made a pretense of covering my legs with the bathrobe, which was a rather short one. Before I could say anything, my father stood up and said, "I can see that you're tired and want to go to bed, so I'll leave now."

"No," I said, "I—"

"I'm sorry, Alanda, but I have a lot to do before I leave town, so I'll be saying goodnight."

And that was that—with his casual dismissal of my rather pathetic sexual overture, I had yet one more nail pounded into my coffin; one less hour to live; one less day to weep over myself. By the time I fell asleep, I had only fifty-three more hours before I would be forced to stand on the chair with the noose around my neck.

## ENTRY FIFTEEN: THE FROSTING ON THE CAKE

I know I've said, like about a million times, how bad things were for me and how horrible I felt, but the next day was by far the worst of any that I had experienced up to this point. All day long, my stomach was tied in knots as waves of fear passed through me from one second to the next. There were times when I became so hysterical that I found it difficult to breathe, and I kept watching the clock as the final hours of my life were ticking away. Noontime—that meant I was down to forty-two hours.

And what was I going to feel like tomorrow night, the night that would be the final night of my life? Would I sob the whole way through, or would I be able to find some peace? I was just so utterly discouraged. On the day when I had prayed, I had felt something that almost seemed like optimism. My prayer had been so sincere, so heartfelt, and I thought, somehow or other, that it might be answered. But by now, I had to admit to myself that all my prayers appeared to have been in vain.

That afternoon, around three, I practically passed out from exhaustion and stress. Just before I awoke, I had a vivid dream—in it, a kindly looking woman was standing by a kitchen sink with a dish towel in her hands. "Alanda," she said, "I'm drying the dishes for you—I hope that helps." Suddenly, she passed her hand over her forehead and said, "I just have the most terrible headache today—it's so painful. Do you have anything I could take for it? If only I could go to sleep for a couple of hours, I think that would take the pain away."

And that was where the dream had ended. I lay there wide awake and tried to figure out what it meant. I couldn't help but think that the woman in my dream was my heavenly Mother—her voice had been so sweet and kind and merciful, and there had been something about her...some kind of strange yellow light around her face as if the sun was behind her. What was she trying to tell me? I thought and I thought and I thought, and finally...was that what she had meant? I don't even dare to write it down because...never mind, I've said enough already, and I have to be careful because of my father.

Dinner that night with Dad was rather dull. I had totally given up on the idea of trying to seduce him, so I asked him some questions about his upcoming trip to California—now that the time was drawing near, he was becoming enthusiastic about it. He told me that during the past week, he had withdrawn all the money from his bank and checking accounts and would have over thirty thousand dollars on him when he left town. He also told me, with a sarcastic chuckle, that he would no longer be encumbered by his previous family obligations. Rose Marie wasn't going to be left anything except the house, which still had a sizable mortgage left on it, and his children, of course, wouldn't be a factor at all. To sit there and tell me all that!

Finally, he had to excuse himself because he felt that I needed to be alone so that "I could come to terms with what was going to happen to me." Just as he reached the door, I said, "Dad, do you think you could eat breakfast with me tomorrow? That was always my favorite meal when we were young, and it looks like tomorrow morning will be the last chance for us to do that together."

"Alright—what would you like?"

"French toast with butter and maple syrup and a glass of orange juice."

"I'll be by around six-thirty," he said as he left the room.

My father arrived at the appointed time and brought in the French toast and orange juice while I fidgeted around with the placemats that were on the table—my father had brought those, along with some silverware, on the second day of my captivity. Although I was wearing my sneakers, I was still in my nightclothes, and after I sat down, I asked my father to bring me my long bathrobe, which was hanging on the door. He went over, took it off the hook, and brought it back to me. Naturally, he didn't go so far as to help me put it on but merely handed it to me in a big ball. He was still wary that I might make a run for it, so he never did anything that would give me the slightest chance to reach the door before he did. Even when we sat at the table, which was a small one, he would move it so that I was sitting with my back against one of the pieces of plywood that covered a window, while he sat across from me, which meant that I would practically have to go straight through him to reach the door. On the two occasions when I had gone to the bathroom while he was in the room, he was obviously on his guard, but he didn't have much to worry about because the bathroom was more towards the rear of the bedroom and nowhere near the door that led out into the second-floor corridor.

"How did you sleep?" he asked me.

He was always so formal—it was a totally ridiculous question under the present circumstances. It would have been much more realistic if he had said, "Were you scared out of your wits last night?"

"Not very well," I said. I wanted to make a joke and say, "I kept imagining that something terrible was going to happen to me," but I didn't dare.

"It's probably just stress," he said.

"This French toast is really good," I said. "Would you like some?"

"No, you can have it."

"I'm not going to be able to finish it," I said. "My stomach is really jumpy this morning." I pushed the plate towards him, and he said, "You're sure you don't want it? I won't be able to bring lunch up until about one today."

"You can have it. I'm not really that hungry lately—I think it's from lack of exercise."

He took the plate from me and finished off my meal. "Here." I said, "you can wash it down with my orange juice."

"You don't want that either?"

"I'm sorry—I usually love orange juice in the morning, but I'm feeling very queasy."

"You need to calm yourself down, Alanda," he said, before he took a drink from the glass.

"I know it's silly of me to be so upset all the time." Silly me—all I could do was worry about my upcoming execution.

"I guess if you're feeling like you might throw up, then there's no sense drinking the orange juice."

"I'll just have some water after you've gone."

"Suit yourself," he said as he polished off the orange juice.

"Tell me a little about when you were young, Dad—like when you were seven or eight."

"I really don't remember much from back then."

"I know you had two brothers, and one of them died in a car crash."

"That happened when I was about twelve, and...that orange juice has a weird aftertaste."

"I thought the same thing yesterday--maybe it's past the expiration date."

"I don't know, but whatever it is, I'm throwing it away. Get me a glass of water, will you?"

I went into the bathroom and came back with a glass of water. "That's better," said my father after he drank a couple of sips. "What were we talking about?"

"Your brother—the one who died in the car crash."

"Tom—I never liked him all that much. He was five years older than me and always bullied me around. I was much closer to my younger brother, but naturally, after the thing with Marissa, I was never able to see him again."

"So none of your family has any idea where you are?"

"No, that's impossible because they all took Marissa's side."

For the next ten minutes or so, we talked about his guitar-playing days, and after that, he told me a long story about the man who had taught him how to play all the Rolling Stones songs. "Back in those days," said my father," there wasn't a riff of the Stones that I couldn't play, and I even learned how to imitate Mick Jagger's voice. Everybody said I was like the second coming of the Stones, and I was making a lot of money playing at local bars."

"I bet you did 'Play with Fire.'"

"I liked that song so much that I played it at least twice a night. I _lived_ that song, Alanda—you must know that by now."

"Yes, I do."

My father yawned. "Strange," he said, "I'm suddenly starting to feel sleepy, and last night, I slept like a baby. I only woke up once, and that was only for about ten minutes."

Another yawn. "There's something weird about the way I feel—my stomach is--"

"Have some more water, Dad—that should help you."

He drank what was left in the glass and said, "And now I'm starting to feel dizzy. What's going on?" he said, glaring at me.

"I have no idea, Dad." He tried to stand up and sat back down. It sounded almost like he was panting. "Would you like some more water?" I said to him.

He had his head in his hands and was looking up towards me. "Alanda," he said, "tell me the truth—did you put something in that orange juice?"

I stood up and moved slightly away from him towards the bathroom door, which had a lock on it. "No!" I said. "I would never do anything like that, and besides, what could I put in your orange juice?"

"It feels like I've been drugged."

"Dad, it's just your imagination—you look fine."

"I don't think so—I think something happened. I think you did something to me."

By now, I was standing by the bathroom door—the lock on the door wasn't that strong, but it might give me another minute, which could be enough time. Or maybe a better plan for me would be to just run around the bedroom and hope that he never got his hands on me. My father lurched out of his chair and came towards me, but he had only taken a couple of steps when he stumbled and fell onto the floor. Slowly, he got onto his hands and knees and started crawling towards me, but I bolted around him and headed for the door, the door to freedom.

"Come back here, Alanda—you can't go out there." When I reached the door, I yanked the bolt to the side, and in another two seconds, I was running down the corridor that led to the staircase. Just when I reached the staircase, my father came staggering out of the bedroom, but instead of turning towards me, he went straight forwards, crashed into the wall, and fell to the floor.

I'm beginning to realize that sooner or later, other people will be reading this journal. If nothing else, the police will want to verify my version of events, so I'm going to explain what was going on with my father. The day before, after I woke up from my nap and had thought about it for a while, I suddenly, like a bolt out of the blue, realized what the dream with the woman at the kitchen sink meant. She had asked me if I had anything that she could take for her pain. PILLS!! I literally leaped out of bed, and with my heart thumping in both terror and excitement, I went into the bathroom and looked at the pills in the medicine cabinet. I mentioned before that I had seen them, but I had never given them a second thought—not until now. And as I looked at the bottles and vials of pills that were in the cabinet, I saw two that could be very dangerous. First of all, there were twelve sleeping pills from a prescription that my mother had been given for insomnia. Also in the cabinet were about two dozen Valium, which I had heard my mother talk about—all I knew was that they were some type of strong anti-depressant.

Using a pill chopper, I ground up the twelve sleeping pills along with twelve of the Valiums and then turned them into a very fine powder by rolling a smooth-edged ballpoint pen over them. When that was done, I placed the powder—I was calling it magic powder by then—into one of the pill vials and put it under my mattress and commenced upon some very serious prayer. Prayer upon prayer upon prayer. My plan was that I would tell my father that I was feeling nauseous and that he could have my orange juice. But would it work? Generally, he was a fastidious man, and there was no guarantee that he would drink the juice. Prayer upon prayer upon prayer.

When my father arrived in the morning, I had my magic powder ready in a pocket in my pajamas, and I was able to mix it into the orange juice while he was getting my bathrobe. Ten minutes later, you can imagine what my feelings were when my father drank the juice, but I was still extremely nervous because I had no idea what effect the drugs would have on him. Would he immediately throw up, which might negate the negative effects? Or had I not given him enough of a dose to incapacitate him?

Twenty-five minutes later, I could see that my father had been seriously affected by my magic powder, but I couldn't tell whether he was going to die or not. And I'll tell you this—after what he had put me through, I had no wish to see him survive, and the thought that I could possibly end up living with him again obsessed me. What if the people at the hospital believed some crazy story that he invented to save himself? What then? Once he had his stomach pumped out and he had a couple of days to recuperate would I be handed back to him? I wasn't thinking straight because the boarded-up windows and my journal would have been enough to convince any sane person of what he had done, but I wasn't about to take any chances--I would do everything in my power to see that he never had a chance to string me up again.

As I stood at the top of the staircase, my father, who was about fifteen feet from me, made an attempt to crawl towards me--he was struggling to stand up but could only get to his knees before he fell face-first onto the rug. With that, I raced downstairs, but I didn't do what you might have expected that I would do. No, I didn't go to the phone and call 911, and no, I didn't run out of the house. I was totally possessed by the thought that my father might not die—in fact, I felt like it was going to take a lot more than the pills to kill him.

I ran into the kitchen, grabbed a cast-iron skillet, and walked cautiously up the stairs towards where I had left him—I wasn't really afraid of him right then because after what I had seen so far, I knew that he would, at the very least, be incapacitated for a few hours. When I reached the top of the stairs, I could see that he was lying where I had left him—one of his hands was moving slightly but other than that, he showed no signs of life. I walked towards him until I was standing over him and then brought down the skillet, which must have weighed at least five pounds, onto his head. Take that! I can remember very distinctly that I did this four times, but I couldn't tell what, if any, effect it was having on him. Obviously, it couldn't be doing him any good, but it wasn't cracking his skull open or anything like that. "Not good enough," I said to myself. How was I going to finish him off? I thought of the charcoal lighter fluid that we used for the backyard grill. Maybe I could dump that over him and light him up but then the house might catch on fire and people would think that I had killed him for no reason. The most obvious thing would be to get one of our sharp kitchen knives and plunge it into his chest. Maybe it should be four kitchen knives, and then, once I had done that, I could wait to call 911 until I saw gallons of blood on the rug. But I hate the sight of blood, and I was also afraid that when I brought the knife down towards him, he would suddenly come to life, grab the knife from me, drag me into the bedroom, and string me up. I don't know why, but I just couldn't imagine him dying.

I had thrown the skillet onto the floor beside where he was lying and was turning to go downstairs when I happened to look into my old bedroom—the one that my father was now using. The door was open and there, hanging over a chair, was a thick rope with a noose on the end of it. And probably everyone thought I had been exaggerating when I said that I was afraid my father was going to hang me from the chandelier!

The sight of the rope and noose enraged me. Or, since I was already enraged, it double enraged me and gave me an idea. The way our house was designed, there was a space of about fifteen feet after my old bedroom before a person reached the stairs. There was no wall along these fifteen feet but only a wooden handrail with supporting posts—I guess it would be called a banister, except that it didn't run down a staircase and had simply been built as a way of preventing people from falling from the second floor to the first floor.

If I could knock out a few of the supporting posts! I raced downstairs and out to the garage where I found a small sledgehammer, and after returning upstairs, I used that to knock out six of the posts. I was like flying full speed on auto pilot as I did all this. I then went into my bedroom, grabbed the rope with the noose on it, and wrapped the end without the noose around and around four of the posts that were still remaining. Next came the one part that made me nervous—slipping the noose around my father's neck. But he seemed to be out cold, and I didn't have any trouble doing what I wanted to do—and boy, did I yank the noose knot tight once I had it around his neck.

The next problem was how to push him through the gap that I had made when I punched out the supporting posts. I wasn't using my hands—no way was I touching that filthy critter. So I went back out to the garage and found a heavy spade shovel, and after running up the stairs, I began to use that to push him towards my little scaffold. The job was made easier because I wasn't being very considerate of my father's body as I did this. I just pushed and prodded and shoved him towards where I wanted him to go—and also, for good measure, I gave him a whack across the face with the shovel. Finally, I had him lined up properly—feet first—and I used the shovel on the top of his head and shoulders to shove him off the edge of the landing.

I was afraid the posts might not hold if my father dropped more than a foot, so I had used most of the rope to tie the end without the noose around the posts. Even so, I wondered if he might crash to the living room floor, but the posts held and I could see him dangling—actually, the correct word is hanging—in the air.

With that accomplished, I walked downstairs and looked up at my handiwork. My father didn't look too good! He had a big gash across his forehead where I had whacked him with the shovel, and his head was bent at an odd angle. But was he dead? Perhaps, but there was no way of actually knowing. I had, during my captivity, spent a lot of time trying to estimate how long it would take for me to die after I had been strung up, and I had come to the conclusion that it would probably be somewhere between ten and twenty minutes. But that was just a guess, and I didn't want to take any guesses when it came to my father because I needed, for my own sanity, to be absolutely certain that he would never breathe again. As my father had said, there's mercy and then there's justice, and my father would be experiencing the full measure of the justice that he loved so much.

I also didn't know how strong the pills were or how much my blows to his head had damaged him. If I called 911 right now, he might actually be able to pull through. So I decided to wait—it was much better to err on the side of caution. Besides, I was hungry, so I went out to the kitchen and fixed some eggs and toast for myself. Naturally, I was nervous that my father might still spring to life, so I frequently went over to the kitchen door to make sure that he was still strung up properly. One might think that I could have relaxed because if the noose had slipped or the poles on the banister had snapped, I would have heard that. True, but what if he had used his hands to shinny up the rope and reach the landing upstairs? I had made the mistake of not tying his hands together before I sent him flying off the landing, but after twenty minutes, I felt I could relax a little bit and only checked on him every fifteen seconds or so. I just couldn't help it--I had this very strong feeling that he was going to come back to life. It was like he was something that was so evil, so powerfully evil, that I couldn't imagine him not existing anymore. Call me foolish if you want to, but that's the way I felt. There's something about contemplating, for days on end, your own hanging—I think it makes you go a little bit crazy, at least for a while.

I ate my breakfast in the kitchen doorway so that I could keep an eye on Dad and make sure that he wasn't up to anything. I didn't actually look at him all that much because he was turning into a rather ghastly sight. His face, outside of the blood stains, had turned an unhealthy purple color, and he certainly wasn't moving, so I felt some optimism. After I finished my breakfast, I walked out to the center of the living room and looked up at him. In a loud voice, I said, "Are you still alive, Dad? Just twitch if you are." I swear to you that I fully expected him to start thrashing around, but he didn't move at all—of course, it was always possible that he might be trying to trick me. How many minutes had it been now since I had strung him up? I checked the clock and saw that I had reached the forty-minute mark. Good, but not good enough. I decided that I had better wait for a full hour, but when the full hour was up, I spent another thirty minutes hesitating.

Finally, after writing in my journal for almost an hour, I picked up the phone and dialed 911. "This is 911," said the operator.

"Hello, my name is Alanda Streets, and I've just poisoned my father, and—"

"Excuse me?"

"And then after I poisoned him, I beat him on the head with a skillet four times before--"

"Ma'am, I hope you realize that it's a crime to make a false report to 911."

"And then after I bashed him over the head with the skillet, I tied a noose around his neck, and he's now hanging about two feet above our living room floor. I think he's dead, at least I hope so, but you'd better send someone out here with a knife because I'm not cutting him down."

After a short pause, the operator said, "Someone will be there in a couple of minutes."

"Good! And don't forget to tell them to bring a knife."

After returning my journal to my mother and father's bedroom, I opened the front door and waited by it. It wasn't long before two cops walked up—I could tell by the way they were walking that they still thought my call was a hoax. "There he is!" I said, pointing towards my father when they had reached me. One of the cops let out a vulgar expletive, whirled me around, and after handcuffing me, he led me out to his patrol car. "Actually, I've changed my mind," I said to him. "There's no need to cut him down—why don't you just leave him up there for a couple of weeks? By that time, I should be convinced that he's dead."

He placed me in the back of the cruiser, and I could see him as he made a couple of phone calls. Within fifteen minutes, the whole area around my house was mobbed with cops, and before long, a plain-clothes cop opened the cruiser door and began to talk to me. After he had finished reading me my rights, I said, "I have nothing to be ashamed of, so I don't need a lawyer."

"Can you tell me what happened, Ms. Streets?"

"What happened was that I poisoned my father, and then when he couldn't move anymore, I smashed him over the head with a cast-iron skillet. I smashed him four times—I remember that very distinctly, and then, after that, I tied a noose around his neck and pushed him off the landing. Can you tell me if he's dead? Because if he isn't, I really do need to get out of here."

"Why did you do all those things to your father, Ms. Streets?"

"No, you have to answer my question first. Is he dead?"

"As far as I know, he's dead."

"As far as you know? What's that supposed to mean? Is he breathing? I need to know for sure before I say anything else."

The cop left and returned a couple of minutes later. "Yes, Ms. Streets, your father is dead."

"Thank God! Are you sure? Are you absolutely positive?"

"Yes, I'm positive."

"OK, now I can answer your question. The reason I did all those things to him is because he locked me in his bedroom for almost two weeks and told me that he was going to hang me from the chandelier tomorrow morning. So I had to do something because I was terrified of being strung up."

"You said you poisoned him?"

"Yes, with some pills that were in my mother's medicine cabinet, and as far as hanging him goes, I used the noose and the rope that he had prepared for my own hanging. If you don't believe me, go up and look at the room where I was being held captive—all the windows are boarded up, and you'll see the padlocks that he put on the door so that I couldn't escape. Also, underneath the rug that's by a small table near one of the windows, you'll find my journal, which pretty much describes everything."

He gave me a long look--he was probably trying to figure out if I was completely off my rocker. "Is there anything else that you'd like to tell me?" he said.

"Yes—I forgot to mention that my father hung my brother from a pipe in the basement about two weeks ago. Everyone seems to think Ethan committed suicide, but that's not true—if you read my journal, you'll see that my father admitted to it. Also, back in 1966, my father murdered a woman and her daughter in Danton, Tennessee."

"How do you know that?"

"He told me, but I first found out about it when I discovered a box in the attic that had a lot of newspaper clippings about the murders. He was called Edward Abrams back then, so you can look it up. I don't know if the newspaper clippings are still in the attic—he may have destroyed them by now."

He left, and about ten minutes later, I was taken down to the police station and led into an interview room. My handcuffs were taken off, and I was given a bottle of soda, but no one appeared for almost an hour and a half. This gave me some time to collect my thoughts, which were flying all over the map. It's not every day that you go through the kind of experiences I had just suffered through—it was only three or four hours ago that my father had come into the room with my breakfast.

To tell you the truth, I felt like a person who has just hit the lottery. I mean, what bigger prize can be given to you than your life? So I was sailing on cloud nine, and I know that accounts for some of the bizarre things I had said and done—and would continue to say for the rest of the day. But to put it into perspective, it was like I was the lottery winner who was running around the streets and giving everyone I met a hundred-dollar bill. And I was so excited and out of control that I was saying things like "Go buy yourself something totally useless." Naturally, these people would think I was crazy if they didn't know that I had hit the lottery. But as we all know, people who suddenly strike it rich can do some crazy things. And I had struck it rich—about a million times over. The horrible cloud that had hovered over my head was gone, and I felt so light that I wondered whether I might evaporate.

Finally, a woman cop came in to talk to me—her name was Andrea, and she seemed rather sympathetic to me. By now, the cops had probably verified some of the things that I had told them. She sat down across from me at a small table and said, "Alanda, you seem to be rather traumatized by what's happened to you."

"Traumatized? No I wouldn't say that—actually, I'm elated."

"Because your father is dead?"

"He is dead, isn't he?"

"Yes, Alanda, he dead."

"Have you read my journal?"

"Yes, I've read some of it."

"Did you read the part about when I was praying?"

"Yes, I read that."

"Let me just give you some advice, Andrea. Praying works—I am just so grateful to my heavenly Mother. She gave me everything I asked for and even put some frosting on top of the cake for me. All I asked her for was to let me escape from my father's plan to hang me, but she did a lot more than that--she actually strung my father up for me. You may not believe it, Andrea, but it's true. I would never have dreamed of asking for something like that from her because a request to string someone up is not something that you think a heavenly being wants to hear. But in my heart of hearts that's exactly what I wanted for my father."

"Alanda, later on today, we're going to send you to the psych ward at the hospital to have you evaluated, and—"

"Because I'm talking about my heavenly Mother?"

"No, it's just that you've been through a terrible experience—this is something that we would do with anybody who went through what you've been through."

"So I'll be locked up in another room?" I said, in an incredulous voice.

"Just for a couple of days—that's all."

"I never should have told you that I prayed to my heavenly Mother—people don't like it when they hear things like that, but if you had been trapped in that room like I was, you might have started praying too. Believe me, when you're staring death in the face, death by strangulation, you don't have any idea what you might do until it happens. So I prayed! I don't see what's wrong with that—it doesn't mean that I'm crazy."

"We're not saying you're crazy, Alanda."

"Listen, Andrea—there was one day when I prayed the whole day, and later on, I thought it was a waste of time because nothing happened, but then yesterday afternoon, my heavenly Mother came to me in a dream and gave me the idea to crush up the pills and put them in the orange juice." Suddenly, and quite unexpectedly, I began to cry. Clasping my hands in front of me, I said, "Dear Mother, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I shall never forget you or what you did for me."

Andrea handed me a handkerchief, and I dried my eyes. "It was just so weird after my father collapsed," I said. "It was like I was seized by another being—it wasn't me anymore. It felt like someone was acting through me, and I know who that someone was—it was my heavenly Mother. And...and I appealed to her, begged her to help me, and she did. I didn't have anything to do with it—everything came from her."

"But...well, you were the one who was there."

"Sure, but the ideas didn't come from me. All along, my own ideas were just totally stupid—wandering around the room and trying to figure out if I could pry the plywood off the windows; or trying to figure out how I could disappear into the mattress; or my most stupid idea of all—trying to seduce my father. Those were all my ideas, and I had absolutely no hope until my heavenly Mother appeared to me in a dream."

## ENTRY SIXTEEN: WHERE HIS ASHES WENT

Within a couple of days, I was transferred from the psych ward to a large house that dealt with people who were having "problems." Actually, my only problem was that people thought I had a problem. Everyone who heard about the hanging of my father assumed that I was at least a little bit loco, but that was just because they hadn't gone through the experience of being cooped up in a room while your sadistic father brought you meals and casually talked to you about your upcoming "change of situation." Try that one out for size before you start telling me I have a problem.

In order to escape from my present situation, I saw that it would be best to tone down my rhetoric. As soon as I mentioned my heavenly Mother to anyone, I could see the person thought that was clear evidence of a disturbed state of mind. I hadn't turned into a religious evangelist or anything, but I did want to give credit where credit was due. However, if that meant I was going to be confined to a halfway house, or whatever it was, for the foreseeable future, then I would keep the relationship I had with my heavenly Mother to myself. And anyways, I didn't have much of a relationship with her right then because I wasn't facing the noose anymore. One of the interesting things about the threat of imminent death is that it makes you turn towards the Higher Powers. Trust me--I know because I've been there.

Finally, after two weeks of intensive counseling that was all based on the fact that I was a severely traumatized person who would undoubtedly suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, I was released to the "care of my mother." This would be my earthly mother, of course. It was all rather ironic because my mother was the one who was a psychological basket case. First she had lost her son, and then, just when she was getting over that, she had read my journal, so it was understandable that she was a little "upset." That's a lot to swallow in the space of a couple of weeks.

Mom was quite sympathetic to me, and I was equally sympathetic to her. We had talked a few times while I was in the halfway house, and the thing I had stressed to her was that despite my father's longstanding wish to be buried in a grave, I wanted him to be cremated. My mother asked why, and I just said that I wanted to be the one to dispose of the ashes. That much was true, but what I didn't tell my mother--because I knew it would only further the impression I was a lunatic—was that I didn't want my father to rise out of his grave and come stalking after me.

The ashes arrived two days after I came home, and I immediately took possession of them. Without saying a word to my mother, I went straight into the bathroom, dumped the ashes into the toilet, and flushed them away into the town's sewer line. I then returned to my mother and told her that all the pictures we had of _him_ had to be burned, or I might lose it and do something awful.

My mother wasn't in the mood to argue with me, and we spent an hour rummaging through the house and brought all his pictures out to the charcoal grill where I doused them with lighter fluid. For good measure, I also placed the box that the ashes had come in on top of the pictures and gave that a double dose of lighter fluid. My mother moved back a couple of yards from the grill and said, "Be careful, Alanda—that's a lot of lighter fluid."

I didn't think it was enough lighter fluid, so to be on the safe side, I went over to the garage and brought out some charcoal briquettes and spread them all around the grill before I soused them with more lighter fluid. It was then time for the most glorious moment of all.

I lit up a match and tossed it into my homemade funeral pyre, and the flames shot up almost three feet into the air. Mesmerized by the flames, I stood there for twenty minutes and watched every trace of my father vanish forever from my life.
This is one of many books of mine that can be purchased on various web sites--currently, as of June 2020, there are 24 novels, 4 novellas, 9 anthologies, and 6 non-fiction books, so there is plenty to choose from!

I would like to emphasize that my novels are _very_ dissimilar from one another and have all sorts of different plots, themes, and attitudes. I've written a number of murder mysteries, four love stories, a gothic tale, a trial of a police officer for murder, a couple of unusual fantasies, a story about a homeless guy, a trial of a young guy who thinks that he's discovered the secret to life, a locked-room mystery, a book about a psychiatrist and a troubled woman, a tale about a student/teacher relationship, two satires, an unreliable narrator mystery, and three novels that are essentially political, sexual, and social commentaries.

