Chapter Seventeen

They drove back to Hallowed Ground the next day. The ride was quiet except for the radio, which alternated every few hours between static and twangy country or sometimes gospel that sounded like it was being played from an ancient record player. City buildings slowly turned into country homes, country homes into dilapidated trailers, and dilapidated trailers into nothing but long stretches of crumbled asphalt and trees.

The darkness was intense as Night fell. Esther wondered if AnnMarie could see anything other than the few feet of road directly in front of her. This was the old kind of darkness that you really only saw in rural places like this. Cities had chased out most of the real darkness.

Suddenly, there was a break in the empty landscape. It was a lone gas station, long since left to decay. A rusty ice box sat in front of it.

When they had first left Tennessee, Esther had seen an abandoned gas station parking lot that was filled with broken down ice boxes, reddish brown rust running down the sides of them, streaking the peeling white paint.

What were they doing there? Is what she had thought. Was the whole town dumping all of their broken ice machines in one place? Why?

What was she doing there? What was she doing here? Maybe she had lost her original purpose, just like those ice boxes. Maybe it was time to go back to the ice box graveyard.

Static from the radio crackled and faded, and music started up again, twangy bluegrass this time, an old recording of the song Old Gospel Ship.

I can scarcely wait, I know I won’t be late

I’ll spend my time in prayer

And when the ship comes in, I’ll leave this world of sin

And go sailing through the air

AnnMarie went to bed immediately when they arrived home. She didn't even say a word to Esther. Esther, in turn, said nothing, and really didn't even act like she noticed her. It was probably for the best.

Esther decided to task herself with something to do, as her mind was nearly as restless as her body. Relentless and repetitive activity were usually a good remedy for an anxious or guilty conscience.

She found the chair she had once before,

and used it to haul herself up into the attic. It was dark, though Esther could still see. Everything in the attic stood out in a sharp black and white contrast.

Immediately, she was drawn to the wall where the secret room was hidden. She walked up to it, and had the same inexplicable repulsion she had experienced before. The coldness and the emptiness.

She pressed her ear to the wall and listened, but only heard the sound of air whirling. It almost felt like the final breath someone would draw in, right before they died, the air swirling hopelessly into a sack.

She pulled away, still repulsed, and tried to turn her attention back to why she had originally climbed up there: to look through the boxes in the attic.

The first set of boxes she decided to sort through were held together with little more than ancient packing tape, so brittle with age that it crumbled underneath her fingers. There were Christmas decorations inside, all old and moldy, and none of them looked more recent than the 1970's.

She assumed from the age and dust that Christmas hadn't been celebrated in this house for quite some time.

The next set were not too promising either. They only contained dusty, chipped, and honestly, somewhat tacky, China sets from the 1980's.

When she made it to the third stack, her luck improved. The first two boxes were filled with photos and photo albums, and the third with a mass of handwritten notebooks that seemed like a series of journals.

There wasn't a name written on any of them— only dates. They started in the late 1980's and went all the way until the early 2000's. Most of them seemed to be little more than documentations of mundane activities. It did not matter to Esther. She was more than happy to pour attention into a monotonous activity if it meant she didn't have to dwell on thoughts of her own any longer.

Before long she had made it all the way up to the year 1990 without learning much more than the writer's favorite television shows, who she had went to the mall with, and how much she resented her own mother. Some of the journals had pages with sentences blacked out with a marker, and others had entire pages ripped out.

After a while, she started to lose hope that there would be anything of interest in it, but then, she found something that caught her eye. It was a journal that was much more worn than the others, the creases on the sides tattered to shreds almost. On the front there was only one word written: Dreams.

When she opened it, a yellowed Polaroid fell out to her feet, and she bent to pick it up and examine it. It was of a pregnant woman, most likely AnnMarie's mother given the time frame and her resemblance to the girl. There was a man at her side with bright red hair and a thick mustache.

Esther tucked the photograph back between the pages, and glanced down at the pages.

It seemed was a daily dream diary—though it seemed as though most of them were nightmares rather than just dreams. The writer talked often of a woman who tormented her, but was always just out of sight, and of a decaying cabin in the swamp, on a place called Billie's Island.

Esther ran her thumb over the page as she scanned the words.

8.11.91

She comes every night. It's like I scream and I scream and I scream— but no sound comes out. And then, just like that, I'm back at the horrible cabin. The staircase at the entrance, the smell of boiling meat, the feeling of an eyeball bursting.

10.4.91

I tried to reason with her today. I always do, but it's all circles, every time. All circle, no lines, no edges and no corners. We go around and around, like a disk. There's no end, no place we are headed. This will happen again. This always happens. Thia will never not happen.

I will lose. I don't know how much I will lose, or when— but I will loose eventually.

We always lose.

Just as Esther turned the page, she easily interrupted.

"Hey, what are you doing up there?" AnnMarie called from below.

Esther blinked to herself. How long had she been up here? She turned to the slatted vent up against one wall, and saw the rays of sunlight shining in. It was morning now.

"Uhm, looking through these boxes." She answered.

"Have you found anything interesting?"

Esther closed the book and slid it into the waistband of her jeans.

"I have actually— give me just one moment."

She made her way over to the hole, and jumped down. AnnaMarie looked briefly impressed with her, before her face quickly shifted back into something more neutral.

"What did you find?" She asked.

Esther pulled out the journal and handed it over to AnnMarie. The girl took it from her, and immediately pulled the picture from between the pages.

"Oh. This is my Mama." She said. "And the man beside her—uh—"

"Was he your father?" Esther asked.

AnnMarie’s eyes were hazy and distant, a half smile hanging onto her lips.

"I— I don't know." She shook her head. "I've never seen him, and I've never even known what his name was. My mama wouldn't say anything about him. I can only assume that's who he is though."

She held the old Polaroid up towards the dim light that hung above them, and studied it very carefully.

"I used to wonder about him."

"How so?"

"What he was like. If he was a good man. Ya know, stuff like that."

"Do you think he was a good man?"

AnnMarie shrugged.

"I guess it doesn't really matter— on account of him being dead and all."

Esther grimaced, but AnnMarie didn't seem to miss a beat.

"Were you close with your parents?"

"My mother was sent off to a reservation when I was an infant and I have no memory of her." She said, "I was raised by my father so I could integrate into European American society, but we did not get on very well."

"Well, that makes two of us, I guess." She said.

Esther didn't like to talk about her human life, but she would gladly talk about anything if it meant she could forget the awkwardness from the day before. There was a deep longing, a painful ache in her chest, at the idea of loosing the closeness she had gained to the girl.

She wanted nothing more than to grab her hand, and desperately assure the girl of her dedication to her.

But she found herself unable. Instead, she changed the subject.

"Ah, regardless— I thought this was pretty important."

She turned the page to one she had been reading, and showed it to AnnMarie.

"Ah— oh wow." She said quietly. She thumbed the page, and scanned it, her lips slightly parted in evident surprise.

"What is it?" Esther asked. "Do you know about the place she's talking about?"

"I do, but…" AnnMarie shook her head, "Only from dreams. I used to have nightmares about this place she's describing, this tiny cabin in the swamp."

"Do you think it's a real pace?" Esther asked.

"Oh, I know it is." AnnMarie said. "It's out in the swamp, on Billie's Island. Apparently you can paddle out there if the water's high enough."

"Hm." Esther said.

"Esther— I was going to let you know, ah—" she swallowed nervously and pulled at the hem of her shirt with her hands, "If you need blood, you can bite me— as long as I'm asleep."

The way she didn't meet her eyes told Esther that she was willing, but not enthusiastic. Part of it hurt Esther's feelings. She wanted AnnMarie to enjoy it just as much as she did. She wanted to feel like AnnMarie needed her in the same way she needed AnnMarie.

"I— thank you. That means a lot to me."