April 2007
"David!" Noelle said happily, her dad waiting to greet her outside the house. This house had so many memories that if the walls could talk, they'd scream.
"How's it been, hon?" He said, walking down the porch steps and squeezing her. "Kicking ass and taking names?"
"Always. Where's Dari?"
Her fresh faced, in all ways but blood little sister came bounding out the door and into her arms. "Ellie!" Darien yelled, squeezing her. Darien was a seventh grader, adopted when Noelle was 18 and she was four years old.
Darien was on the chubbier side, with long brown hair and bright brown eyes. They didn't get to see each other often, but Darien worshipped her older sister.
"Dars! It's been so long honey, how are you?"
"I'm good! I've made so many friends this year and there's this guy who hates me and--" it took Darien a second to process three fifths of Avenged Sevenfold was standing behind her sister with Mandy. "Holy shit."
"Dari!" Noelle snapped gently. "Use appropriate words."
"Oh like you weren't cussing up a storm at her age." David lit his cigarette, sitting on a the porch's rocking chair. "Ellie, why don't you introduce Darien to your..." A look of recognition came across David's face. "You." He pointed at Jim.
"Uhm..." Jim trailed off, confused.
"Dad, don't be weird about it. Jim, Matt and Brian, this is my little sister Darien. She's a big fan of yours. Fairly obviously."
They were more than happy to each give Dari a hug and speak to her. While they were busy with that, Noelle made small talk with her dad.
"Hey dad," She said more privately, leaning over and hugging him. "Darien keeping you young?"
"You know that boy." David cut straight to the point. "The tall one. He was in the house waiting for you one day, with this other boy. I had to scoot their little asses out the door until you got back home. I had no idea how the damn kid got in the place. Or why a twenty six year old was waitin' for my kid..."
Noelle looked at him confusedly. "David, I met them in January. Never before in my life."
"No," David said. When he was confident in a point, he did whatever it took to get it across. "I met that boy. He and another one, smaller with black hair... God, the other one! he had piercings on 'is damn face."
"What was his name then, dad?" She crossed her arms.
"Zack."
She felt her face flush. "Zack?"
"Said he'd known you for some time. And then you came home early and I found you upstairs, in bed, all blank faced with your hair cut off and the sink clogged."
She went quiet. "That's weird."
"Weird indeed." He gave her a look. "He ain't look like a days gone by since I kicked his ass to the curb."
Noelle nodded. "The notebook." She changed the topic. "Where did you say it was?"
"I put it on your desk." He nodded. "Go inside, take a look."
She walked over to Brian, currently free from her little sisters wrath as she interrogated Matt about his gauges and how they worked and how she wanted them too. "Hey! Not to invite you into my childhood home or anything, but you wanna come check this notebook out with me?"
His heart pounded in his chest when he remembered exactly what notebook she dropped that day... And that this would make explaining a hell of a lot easier.
☼
Brian had to stop himself from flopping on the familiar bed as if it were his own, or as if it was 12 years ago. The room was similar besides being stripped of many of her belongings; but many things were still obvious reminders it had never stopped being Ellowyn's room.
The Nirvana, Papa Roach blink-182 and Placebo posters had remained untouched. Her black bedsheets and gray walls still emulated the same comfort they did when he was last here. He instead sat on her bed as she looked at the outside of the notebook.
"Ellowyn Jane Clarke." She smiled as she brushed a hand over all the writing in big bright letters. "You know sometimes I miss that name?"
"You do?" He asked.
"More than I care to admit." She said. "I changed it because it reminded me too much of my mom. Ellowyn was her idea, Jane was her middle name, and Clarke was my birth dad." She said, smile dropping. "I remember this notebook being important. I was so pissed when I lost it, I don't even remember why."
Brian patted the seat next to him. "Now you've got me interested. Get your little ass over here."
"You wish you could have my little ass." She rolled her eyes, sitting down. She opened up the first page and saw a drawing of a seven foot tall man, dated October 19th 1989. It was labeled Jim.
"That's Jim. He was tall, really tall to me when I was a kid." The grin crossed her face again. "He was a goofball." She flipped to a picture of a shadowy figure, wide and encompassing with a scribbled smiley face and little flowers all over his arms. "I was eight, don't judge the shitty drawing. This is Shadow." Next page was a man drawn in the corner of the room, next to the door. "Zack." And the fourth page was a man with messily drawn black hair looking away and a word bubble reading dream dream dream.
"Wow," Brian said with lack of better words. "My namesake looks uninterested."
"He gave me dreams," She says, getting a little choked up as her fingertips grazed the picture. "On bad nights," She caught her breath. "He would sing to me, or put stories in my head. And I could sleep. I think I missed him the most after that day when I was twelve."
Brian bit his tongue to stop himself from feeling any stinging tears threatening to appear.
She turned the page, this time dated to 1997.
"97'?" She questions. "That's way after they left."
He looked closer over her shoulder as she read out loud. "Shadow is like the big brother I never had." She says. "He tells me Shadow wasn't his real name, it was a name I made up for him when I was a kid that just kind of... stuck. I met him first, when he started quietly following me places. I eventually started talking to him, asking him if he wanted to play blocks with me. He's a big teddy bear, a giant sense of comfort when things go awry. Shadow died when his sister was burned in witch trials. he desperately tried to save her, but after he failed, they called him a sympathizer and cut off his arm. He bled out."
"Must've had an active imagination."
"I couldn't have written this at twelve." She said, laughing. "Look here. Wait..."
"What? What is it?"
"I..." She trailed off. "I never found out how Synyster died. And it says so right here." She points.
Syn eventually became someone who took care of me better than my own family. When I didn't want to sleep, we would talk. He would tell me all about what he saw in the world the decades he walked the earth from the other side, cold and alone. He would tell me about how he would do anything to be able to make music again, how he would play the guitar for his little sister.
When it would get bad, he would hold me in his arms and hug me. He would make silly faces and tell me make believe stories. He got me through my dad dying.
She started reading out loud.
"He took a long time to tell me how he died. He and his sister were walking an iced over lake, and he fell through and drowned. He tells me his biggest regret is never having gotten a chance to tell his sister goodbye." She looked stunned. "I never knew that. Why the fuck is it in here if I never knew that?"
The truth was starting to unravel itself and Brian tried touching her back, but he shrugged it off. She kept reading.
"Ellowyn, I beg of you, please don't let us forget them. They are our angels, the reason we've made it this far. They aren't make believe. They have been in purgatory for decades, some centuries, and you are their first connection to humanity. They love you and care about you. When they go, if they go, you have to remember them. They will find you. Brian promised."
She flipped through the pages, each darker than the last. One describing purgatory, one describing their lack of visualizing colors. One talking about how mad it made her she was gonna forget them when the barrier broke. One talking about the necklace.
"The necklace is Brian's promise to you that he will always be by your side," She said, tears streaming down her cheeks. "Only you and him can see it."
She shut the book, throwing it across the room.
"Ells..." Brian said, unsure what else he could possibly say or do.
"Don't fucking call me that! Don't fucking touch me either." She stood up, pacing the room. "Is this some sick sort of set up? Are you conniving with Travis or some shit?"
"Ellowyn. It will all make sense if you let me explain."
"So what? You're Synyster like in my imagination? Well fuck you then! You left me while I was being raped! He hurt me worse than anyone on earth and you fucking left me!"
"WE DIDN'T LEAVE, ELLOWYN!" He shouted. "We were ripped from you when you were seventeen! You could touch us, feel us. We were real. And the dimension we lived in was destroyed, and you forgot us."
"You've known me since I was five and you never told me. You rocked me to sleep, Brian." She shook her head. "God, I'm so stupid, you even have the same fucking face! God, why can't I remember? Why can't I remember after I was twelve?"
"History reversed itself. It rewrote us into it. But we found you, Ells, just like we promised we would."
"You need to go. You have to go. You and Jim and Matt, please just... it's too much right now. I can't take it."
"Please, please Ellowyn. I've waited for so long for you to recognize me and it can't go down like this."
"I remember being hurt, and my uncle forcing himself inside of me. And then I remember never seeing you again." She said, now sobbing out. "That's all I remember. What happened, Brian?"
"Let's get you calmed down, alright? And I promise I'll get the guys up here and we can explain everything. We can find a way for you to remember. I've wanted to tell you for months, but..."
"I wouldn't have believed you," She said, understandingishly.
He pulled her close, and she clutched onto his shirt, and he was warm. She was holding her imaginary friend from when she was a kid. This was all sorts of wrong.
"We can make you remember."