When she reached me, I would grab her wrist and open my mouth to eat the second snake as my other hand cupped her dirty breast.
I would wake up only after devouring the snake’s head entirely. The dark snake. Every time.
I’d never seen the fresh grave in my waking hours until that moment. I couldn’t tell if it looked like the one in my dream or if I was just on edge, making horror real to feel justified in my sleeplessness.
I rubbed my eyes and blinked twice, looking around the graveyard. The dry summer grass crunched beneath my Converse tennis shoes, worn and faded.
The day’s events caught up to me, and sleep was calling—I always resisted it because of the dreams, often staying up too late. I often feigned sleep and slowed my breathing, so I wouldn’t worry Valerie. But now I had my own room, and I could stay awake as long as I pleased. I knew I was still under the microscope Valerie held to me, but I was convinced her watchful presence would ease. Valerie was worried about my mental state and the after-effects of where we lived. It was as though she was always waiting for me to explode, unleash something, hurt her. I believed it was because of the men—the father, his sons. I didn’t take it personal. And she didn’t take it personally that I never wanted to be touched.
My mother and father died in California. Valerie almost died. Or so I thought. I would learn that truth and fiction blurred for her, and her visions were not confined to dreams.
I walked to a worn headstone and hoisted myself upon it. I pulled a book from the back pocket of my jeans, then the flashlight from my front pocket, clicking it on.
Valerie agreed to stop at a bookstore on the drive here, and I’d grabbed a copy of Salem’s Lot from a rummage bin, and a collection of short stories by Edgar Allan Poe. I should have grabbed Poe for my night reading since the mascot for my new school was a Raven.
I had little experience with proper schools; changing towns and districts since we’d left the ranch hadn’t helped me catch up with the real world. But I loved to read, and I would devour any story put in my hand. At the ranch, I wrote poetry that I often burned at our nightly bonfires. Nothing was sacred or private there. They pressed the family upon us. Everything was shared. Even our bodies, enthusiasm faked or ignored.
I pushed away the thoughts, the memories of probing hands, and focused on the story in my own hands. Before long, the lights in our trailer went out, and Valerie opened the back door, hollering for me to come in soon.
I yelled back that I would, though I wouldn’t, and I knew she wouldn’t notice. Valerie had an early morning interview at a café in Hart Hollow. She’d been on food duty at the ranch. It was her passion to feed people. She was beautiful enough to be a server, but she told me she was applying for a kitchen job. I enjoyed her food, though it never satisfied me, and I always left the table hungry, my slim frame begging for something more.
As the hours passed, the night fell over me like a warm blanket. The heat was still stifling, but I preferred it to the alternative.
The dark didn’t scare me—not out in the open. It was the darkness of my room that frightened me. The promise of no exit, of one door and no way out.
I glanced at the trailer, my room, and the window. There was an old picnic table by the trailer, and I was already planning to push it below my window so I could sneak out easily. My mind was constantly looking for escape routes and exit plans. Ways out.
The women weren’t here; they couldn’t get me. They were dead.
But the mind was a perilous labyrinth, and I often found myself trapped in it.
The nights we slept in the car on the road were my favorite. Though cramped and subject to my complaints, I preferred it to the lumpy motel beds. The car was full of windows, and I could see out, could see danger before it caught me. The nights spent in motels were filled with fitful tossing under the sheets or stories told in my head as I pretended to be gone from the world.
And on some nights, I thought of my parents.
I was ashamed of the fact that I didn’t miss them. It was because of them we lived on the ranch. Because of them, morbid dreams and darker memories haunted me. If our hearts had been made of steel, would we be unscathed right now? Would this body be a weapon, no longer a plague? I am what you unleashed.
I closed my book and hopped off the headstone, closing my eyes tightly, pushing the violent and dark poetry away. I didn’t have my notebook; I didn’t have anywhere to go with the words.
I’d made a promise on the way here, scribbling in that notebook as Valerie drove. I wouldn’t let them get me here. I wouldn’t let their memories haunt me.
I wouldn’t be the little boy they abused.
Shoving the novel in my back pocket, I started walking toward the trailer, out of the cemetery.
I saw her then, for the first time, in flesh and red. She was sitting on a headstone just as I had been. How I hadn’t seen her before, I’d later know and understand. But that night, I thought she was a ghost, some waking nightmare.
The headstone she was perched upon wasn’t worn like the one I’d just left.
It was grand, beautiful; some would say it was an omen to touch something so lovely. It didn’t belong in the small clearing of those woods, tucked farther into the trees, but close enough to still be a part of it. One word was scrawled in the stone. Salina.
The girl before me believed in omens; she would tell me this later. But on that night, she told me nothing.
Her legs were crossed, her hands gripping the stone. She was wearing a sheer, black robe, untied. I was too far away to see what it barely hid, but she was naked beneath it. Her long red hair was swept behind her shoulder on one side, and on the other, the long strands covered her breast.
It was the woman from my dreams. The snake charmer.
The Devil.
I waved my hand in greeting. I don’t know why. It was absurd. As if my body was being moved by a puppeteer high in the night sky.
She didn’t wave back; she didn’t move. Not for a moment. I dropped my hand, but I didn’t leave the woods. We just stared at each other, and when I went to step toward her, I stopped short as she hopped off the headstone. I could see her body then, every pale inch. She took a couple steps forward before turning toward the treeline. Her robe billowed behind her, and her red hair blew in the hot summer breeze. I stood there like a frozen stone as she walked into the woods.
Wordless.
Soundless.
Through the trees, I could see a house, and it seemed to be her destination.
She hadn’t made a single sound. And all I could hear was my beating heart as she slipped from my view.
Sleep did not come for me that night.
TWO
The week leading up to my first day at Hart Hollow High flew by. Valerie dipped into our savings to buy me school supplies. She wanted me to get a haircut, but I refused, clinging to my defiance. I’d never been allowed to grow my hair out on the ranch. I couldn’t look like a girl. Long hair was for women. I disagreed, but they didn’t welcome my opinions and voice on the ranch. I was cattle.
Since the trailer park was across the road from the school, I walked to class that first day. And as I crested the hill, the yellow bricks of Hart Hollow coming into view, I smiled, thinking I could be whoever I wanted to be when I stepped into that building.
I was wrong, but my naivety was powerful, and I rode that high as I found my locker, as I walked to class, though I felt like every eye was on me.