April Fools!! Good Lord do you think i'd actually have the umph to write this one when I can barely finish the two I have been writing on forever?
So, for those of you who took the time to actually click on this and were willing to actually read it lol here is a little surprise for you
Chapter 23 of the 13th Step. Sorry i've sucked about updating. I just can't seem to motivate myself to write anymore but this one only has a few more chapters to go so i'm working on thos one first. I will return to Scars and finish that one too, I promise. Thanks for sticking with me. lol i'll be posting it on it's real home tomorrow :O)
23
“She’s alive?” I asked the question the same way a child might ask the first time they are told there is no Santa. In my mind she had been dead this entire time. She was the ghost who haunted the walls and floors of this house. Long before Kevin even mentioned the rumors of it being haunted, I knew she was there. I had felt her there, but now it turns out that I had been wrong all along.
Kevin nodded at me, “She’s very much alive and well and keeps to herself. She lives about ten miles south of here in a small log cabin.”
“Why didn’t you say anything before now?”
Kevin rubbed his tired eyes before answering. “I’m not sure she wants many people to know she’s still around. She’s as close as you can come to being a hermit I think.”
“How did you find her then?” Howie asked, sitting on the edge of the couch and cracking his neck.
“Through an agent.”
“Why aren’t we talking to her about any of this?” I was angry, I’ll admit it. We could have avoided this mess if we had just gone directly to Belle when all these things started happening.
“Because I wanted to leave her out of this, besides I wasn’t entirely sure if she had anything to do with this.”
“How could she not have?”
“The break in could have been anyone looking for anything Nick and even still, we’re not sure what these people even want. It might not have anything to do with Belle and that journal.”
“Oh come on Kevin, you don’t actually believe that, do you?”
“Frankly, I don’t even know what the hell to believe anymore.”
I let out an aggravated grunt. “I think we should call her.”
“You do? And what would you say exactly Nick?” Now it was Kevin’s turn to stare at me with a look of disbelief. “Oh, that’s right…it’s not you who would talk to her, it would be me, right? Because you talk about confrontation but when push comes to shove, you get all shy and quiet and then I have to handle it all.”
Where was this coming from? The way he said it, made it sound as if it was something that has bothered him for a gazillion years. Suddenly I felt betrayed. “You know what, never mind. It was a dumb idea…kind of like coming here and bonding with you.” Why is it my heart always says one thing but my mouth says another.
Kevin shook his head at me but then he softened, “Sorry, I’m just a little frustrated. I mean I was just locked in the basement of my own house.”
“I was too, and it isn’t even my house.”
That made him laugh, so he came over and slapped my back. “You’re right. We should probably talk to her, but I want to be able to go to her with something solid so I suggest you take some time to really bond with that journal and let us know if you find anything interesting.”
“What are you guys going to do?”
“We’re going to go through this place with a fine tooth comb to see if anything was taken.”
“Once again I have to ask why is it that Carter gets to sit on his lazy ass and read why we do all the manual labor.”
“Because this is Nick’s thing AJ.” Kevin winked and nodded at me. He used to do that all the time when I was a kid. After he would yell at me or insult me or pick me up and move me out of the way, he always countered with a wink and a nod to say he was sorry for being a jerk ass. It’s funny how it still worked on me even now.
“Well since this is Nick’s thing,” He said using air quotes, “I say we leave him to clean up this entire mess!”
“AJ, what’s your problem?”
“My problem? Since we’ve been here nothing has gone right. We have been in jeopardy more times than I can count. I don’t enjoy peril Nick. It doesn’t match my nail polish.”
As much as I wanted to call him a retard and chuck something at his head, he was right. Since I had been here I have managed to put everyone’s lives in danger, although I’m not really sure how it’s my fault. It’s not like it’s my house or anything. “How is this my fault?”
“No one said it’s your fault Nicky. I think everyone needs to calm down for a minute. Clearly this is starting to get to all of us and I’ve only been here for a day or so.”
Once again I have to say poor Howie. He really is trying his best to understand what the heck is going on but I can tell he wants to book it out of here so bad that it’s not even funny. I felt my grip on Belle’s journal tighten. I was holding her hand and she was waiting patiently for me to walk her over to the park and play with her again. Yeah, I’m all about metaphors.
“I’m going to go read some more of this.” I just randomly stated, making sure not to look at AJ when I said it because I’m sure he would shake his head and possibly give me the finger. Not that I would care about any of that.
“Go read buddy…let us know the minute you find something interesting.” Kevin winked at me once more before turning to the other guys and giving them his plan of action.
I walked up the stairs and into her room. I figured if I was going to unlock all the mysteries there were to this girl, I might as well do it in the most sacred of places. The guys voices all started to blend into a mixed jumble by the time I got to the top of the steps. I vaguely heard Kevin barking orders at AJ before deciding to close the door.
“Alright Belle, what more do you have to tell me?” This time I felt a little dumb asking the question to the room, mainly because I knew she wasn’t there to answer. Knowing that she was alive and well and down the street almost made my cheeks flush with embarrassment. Is it wrong of me to be disappointed that she was alive? I mean that has to sound so wrong. I am happy she’s okay but I just thought she was a ghost, you know?
Once I got over it, I sat down on her bed, coughing slightly at the dust that escaped from the blanket. Not sure why, but I decided to lie down before opening the journal up. Maybe I just needed calm before a storm.
Life is so hard now. I just can’t handle it anymore. Ever since Tommy, all I ever want to do is sleep. My agent keeps calling about different jobs and of course my father keeps getting on my case to take them. He pretends to care about what happened to my brother, but I know he doesn’t. At the funeral, he collapsed beside the coffin. He had to be helped to his feet as he cried Tommy’s name over and over again. It made me sick! He should be the actor in this family, not me. Although, he was probably sad because now that Tommy was gone, he lost his punching bag. I hate my father. Up until this very moment, I don’t think I’ve ever allowed myself to verbalize that. I just said it out loud though, just as I was writing it down on paper. I hate my father. There, now I’ve said it twice and both times it felt natural as if it was always something that needed to be said. Part of me wants to call the police and let them know all the things he’s done to Tommy. I might even spit on him as they take him away. I could never do that though, I’m just not strong enough. When push comes to shove I’m all talk. I wish I had the guts to be able to do that. Maybe if I did, Tommy would still be around. Maybe I wouldn’t be hugging his bear against my chest and crying my eyes out.
I had to stop because once again, the words she used hit too close to home. Wasn’t I just thinking about that? Isn’t that how my father made me feel? How many times I wish I had stood up to that man when he did or said something horrible to one of us, particularly my sisters. I never had the courage. I was always afraid, not only of my father but life in general. I never realized that until now. My time here with Kevin and AJ, and especially Belle, made me see with different eyes, how much of a coward I actually am when it comes to certain things.
I’m not sure how I would be able to handle it if one of my siblings ever killed themselves. I have been afraid of that on more than on occasion. BJ has a habit of scaring the shit out of me like that from time to time. Calling me up and talking about how hopeless she feels and how much better the world would be without her in it to mess things up. It seemed like she would always do it when I was too far away to do anything about it. Funny that once she even did it one of the many times I was planning my own death. I think we’ve already established how macabre I could actually be. On a good day I could put the most Emo person to shame.
I shook the thought off of me and went back to Belle in her time of grief.
Sleeping is so hard for me now because whenever I close my eyes I see Tommy standing there. He asks me why I didn’t help him when he needed me the most. I know this is part two of my life now. The better part is over. Not that part one was a bowl of cherries or anything but at least I was able to pretend that everything was okay. I don’t see how I can do that anymore so I’m not even going to try. Wow I was so young when I wrote all that. It’s so weird picking this thing up and reading it after all these years…
The writing for the last part looked very different. Where previously everything was written in big bubbly type letters, this was cursive and very neat.
I can’t believe the hell my family went through during that time. After Tommy everything just stopped. My mother basically turned into a zombie and stopped caring about us all. I became paranoid, always afraid to close my eyes because I felt in my heart, that Tommy was haunting not only me but my entire family. Insomnia set in and I was only able to sleep with the aide of prescription tranquilizers.
Suddenly Belle had aged. I could see her sitting there now, all grown up and rereading the things she had written as a little girl. She probably had a tissue in her hand and cried thinking back on some of those hard times.
What was worse I had begun to grow up. My innocent look which had garnered me most of my work was all but gone. I had grown the slightest little breasts and that was enough for the executives at the network to rethink giving us another year on air. I’m sure all of the controversy surrounding my family didn’t help that plight either. Like I said it was harder to mask our dysfunction after Tommy died. The papers found out about my little brother’s untimely death and even though the paparazzi weren’t as ruthless as they are now, they still didn’t give us any privacy. They were constantly knocking on our door and calling our house asking questions about it. That’s the first time my mother brought up the idea of moving away. My father was very opposed to the idea of moving. See, he saw this place as a trophy, as something that he worked long and hard for, although it was me that actually paid the mortgage. He smacked my mother across the face so hard the night she suggested we move that she needed stitches across her eye. That’s when things really started getting out of control. My older brothers and sisters all smartened up and got themselves out of there, leaving me behind. I still resent them for it, even after all these years. Even after what happened, part of me still gets mad. But, we’ll get to that later. I’m not really anxious to get to that part of the story, even though it’s a very important part that needs to be said in order for me to purge all of this. When it was just my mom, dad and me, things were at their worst. I would live in fear that one night my father would just come into my room and kill me, so I put a knife in Tommy’s old teddy bear and slept with him every night. If he tried to come into my room to kill me or even worse, I’d be ready for him. The other thing I did was make sure I had a place to hide. There was a secret room in my brother’s closet. It was sealed long before he was ever born but one day while we were playing around; we accidentally knocked one of the boards away and found the hidden staircase. We made sure we didn’t tell anyone about it. It was our secret hangout. A place where we could go if we needed to and it became my retreat. Late at night when I was so nervous I could barely control my jitters, I would find myself up there. I pulled an old cot from the attic into that room and used one of Tommy’s old blankets and there I would sleep. I lived my life somewhere between being Anne Frank and a vagrant living on a freight train. Sometimes days would go by before I left that room and not once did anyone even come looking for me. I barely showered during those times and ate pills as if they were candy. I lived like that for about three years before things got even worse.
I had to take a break again. This was all getting to be too much. I felt so bad for this girl. A tear began to trickle down my cheek. I was actually crying, crying for someone I didn’t even know. I’m not sure if I’ve ever shown this much compassion for members of my own family.
You hear about horrible things happening to other families, but you never think for a second that something like that could happen to yours. Tommy’s death was a deal breaker for me. I thought I knew what grief was all about, but it turns out when it came to grief I ended up being just an amateur. The lord had bigger plans for me and they happened all in one night.
The rest of what I read was almost unbelievable. If I didn’t know it was someone’s journal I would have certainly mistaken it for a Stephen King or Dean Koontz book. I actually felt chills going up and down my arms as she recounted in detail what happened to her siblings.
Page after page of what unfolded that night just had me at the edge of my seat. At one point I managed to sit up, I don’t even recall doing so. That’s how in to I was.
I understood now, all of it. Everything that happened, it all made sense to me.
Just as I was finishing up the last page and closing the book I heard Belle’s door open. Kevin always had a great sense of timing.
“You know where it is, don’t you?” I turned to look at the door when it registered that it wasn’t Kevin’s voice I was hearing. In fact it wasn’t AJ’s or Howie’s either. All that mattered was this person was holding a gun and a badge, but I finally knew who he was and why he cared so much.
