From the Kitchen Window

 It's been hard to communicate lately, so I keep to myself and scrawl things in my little book. 

The Nightmare

The coincidences, they're piling up, maybe not in the most of pleasant of ways...

Just yesterday, I discovered there is a body farm not too far away from here. While I understand the necessity of such studies, I confess to finding the thought a bit chilling. All those bodies decomposing out there, among the rocks and dust.

When I heard this, the first thing that came to mind was a nightmare I'd had long ago. I couldn't remember the date of it, but as it happened, when I found my old journal last night, the entry was there, written in the early hours of January 29, 24 years ago exactly:

"I had a terrible dream - creepy - that someone was killing women and leaving their bodies on the cliffs outside of town. There were numbers of them, all killed 2 weeks apart. It had been 2 weeks since the last murder, and the whole town was scared, full of whispers and rumors.

When I woke, the neighborhood dogs were howling. It's a full moon tonight."

According to the calendar, the moon wasn't quite full that night, just as it's not quite full tonight. These coincidences give me a bit of a shiver. Sometimes fate gives you bookends of a sort, or else they are gateposts, where the strangeness gets in. I'm not sure which kind these are yet.

I predict it will be a restless night, waiting for the dogs to howl.

Temple Bells

Tonight I was rummaging through a box of various items when I spotted an old green notebook.It was my 1994 diary, which was interesting, in light of last night's post.

I opened it at random, to an entry that (unbeknownst to me at the time) would prove important to my future.

"Very cold today. I didn't go out once, except to get the mail. There was a strange letter from Victoria, TX, addressed to my true name. Mystified, I opened it. It was from N. This was a surprise. I didn't know she had moved.

She'd sent her number, so I called her and ran up my phone bill. It was a good conversation, though, it was really nice to speak to her again. She was outside on her balcony smoking cigarettes, and the sound of wind chimes echoed into the phone, like she was sitting in a new age temple or a psychic bookstore. I imagined her there in Victoria, beneath the wind chimes in the misty rain, flicking her lighter again and again."

This letter was the precipitating event in a series leading to my own move to Victoria less than 2 years later.

The Cosmic Joker, for his part, couldn't resist getting a poke in, either. The date on the entry was January 28, 1994. Exactly 24 years ago today.

Lest I ever think I'm the one writing this story.

Random Diary Entry

Random entry from old diary found in the shed:

July 27, 1993

As I was trudging home from the library, I saw a figure down at the corner of Magazine Street, talking to someone through the window of a red car. I noticed because he called me by name, but I didn't recognize him. I went indoors but soon heard a noise outside. I went out and found Chris. He was carrying a bow for some reason, but no arrows.

He asked if I'd seen Richard, who has apparently gone missing. I said I hadn't seen him in a week. Told him the last I'd seen was his pony-tailed figure wandering up the hill, into the setting sun.

A couple of notes on this entry - 
1. Chris left the bow in my laundry room, where it remained even after I'd moved away.
2. As far as I know, none of us ever saw Richard again.