Town Like Still Water (Nanowrimo 2021)

Chapter Four: Visitor

I don't think I like people other than me and my mother in the house. It's a risk-reward situation. On one hand, it's an opportunity to really make them get what freaks we are. On the other, the risk is so much higher of someone finding out something they shouldn't.

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I never called the twins. I shredded up their business card and put it in my mouse cage yesterday. I don't want to think about them anymore, they're the last thing on my mind. The only thing that's been consuming my mind recently is the encounter at the lighthouse, and what Gabe and Rana are going to have to say about it when I see them in a couple days. Waiting has never felt so bad before. I'm starting to understand what people mean when they say it's hell.

My notebook is almost full. Just a couple pages left. Twenty five pages were filled up with lighthouses over the last week. Some of them just stood on their own, others were patrolled by dark, tentacled creatures that just flowed out of my hand as if they belonged on the page. All of them were later scribbled out. The screams of whatever that was still echoed in my ears, and in my dreams.

Since my waking hour's thoughts were consumed by last week's encounter, the farmer's market and it's elusive door had moved into my dreams. Every night, I dreamed of entering that place, how it was now. All empty and dark and abandoned, just like the inside of the lighthouse. I would hear that horrible sound coming from the back, behind the door, and I would get closer and closer, creeping at a snail's pace. The door would open to welcome me, nothing but blackness behind, like the room that should be there was a page from my notebook that I had scribbled out. It would pull me in, and right as I would pass through, I would wake up.

I never told my mother what happened that night either, but I think she must've figured something was wrong, because she 'strongly recommended' that I see a psychologist or a psychiatrist or a therapist or whatever they are. Maybe she heard me in my sleep. Curses be upon my sleeping self for dooming his waking self to this. Even I know that I can't argue with a 'strong recommendation'.

That's where I am right now. I'm sitting in an uncomfortable chair, being watched by a man with thick glasses and a beard who's style doesn't look like it's changed since the seventies. His name is Doctor Breuner. I don't like the way he watches me, it reminds me of the twins.

"So, Darcy." He says. "Your mother tells me you're a very private young man, and I respect that. I'm not going to force you to answer anything you don't want to, ok? I'm just going to ask you some questions, if you're not feeling up to it, just let me know."

The Rube Goldberg machine in my head that starts whenever someone asks me something gets going, searching for the worst response. The spinning bells, whistles and marbles running on all cylinders. Finally they come to a halt and a sentence spills out of my mouth.

"Hey wouldn't it be fucked up if you took a ball pit and filled it with bowling balls?"

Dr. Breuner doesn't look confused, just a little disappointed. He writes something down on his notepad, and gives me a look that I think is supposed to be meaningful. I continue regardless.

"You know, like. A ball pit at a Chuck E Cheese or something." The wheels are turning, I couldn't stop my mouth from saying words even if I wanted to. "I don't know if they have ball pits there, I've never been, but you know what I'm talking about. And you took all those little plastic balls out and put bowling balls in instead. It'd be crazy fucked up. Nobody would ever have fun again."

Dr Breuner sighs and pushes his glasses further up his nose. "These questions are to help both of us, you know. It gives me an idea of what kind of a person you are, so I can better help you."