49. Solitary for Starters

So let’s see here.

Let’s say you just picked up the saga right here with the screaming baby turned to a decaying doll.

What have you missed?

Oh, where can I begin?

It’s three in the morning, and so far baby dearest hasn’t managed to crawl up the stairs with a steak knife.

There’s still time, Chris. There’s still time.

Let’s see—I move to Solitary and fall in love with the girl that the evil people have decided to sacrifice on New Year’s Eve.

Yeah, that’s right. That’s what I thought too. Come on, for real, there’s no way!

But it was real, and there was a way.

Before this sacrifice happened I met my mother’s creepy aunt Alice with her selection of mannequins. Perhaps this doll escaped from her house.

I saw a weird mountain man with a big German shepherd who ended up being my uncle in costume. The man, that is. Not the dog.

There were the nightmares my mother had.

There were the tunnels underneath our cabin.

Oh yeah, don’t forget the cabin in the woods. Or the mannequin maker.

There’s the creepy pastor and the ignorant bully. But both answer to a twisted man name Staunch who answers to my great-grandfather.

And they all say I’m special and that somewhere down the road I’m going to get a special key that does something special for a special reason.

I don’t want to be special. I want to be normal.

Will a key unlock a land full of wild dogs and smiling mannequins and screaming babies?

Thanks, I’ll pass.

I could go on, but this makes my head hurt. I would love to sleep, but I don’t want to wake up cuddling the baby doll downstairs.

What exactly were those men out there on the bridge?

I’m assuming men, because they were all big. Ghosts maybe? Possibly the dead Indians that haunt the bridge? Or maybe demons guard it?

Or maybe there’s another answer I haven’t thought about. Something that makes even less sense.

They’re magical elves guarding the road to Frodo and Bilbo.

Yeah.

They’re Jedi Knights with double-edged light sabers that are just waiting for a chance to get back at George Lucas for creating Jar Jar.

Yeah.

They’re shadows of all the things you fear the most made into physical form.

Wait a minute—I was on a roll, but that’s not funny.

I don’t feel funny at all.

I feel alone.

For a long time I toss and turn and can’t tell whether my eyelids are opened or closed.

Sometimes it just doesn’t matter.