The Children of Old Leech: A Tribute to the Carnivorous Cosmos of Laird Barron (45 page)

13.
Same hotel I’m staying at. Serviceable. Damp and dark, smelling of never-ending winter, carpeting and wallpaper that seem older than the town itself. (a second note) 2:23 am, nightmare, Tommy curled up in the dark corner of my room, I called out to him, he stood, his bones creaked and the tendons strained like climb ropes, he staggered to my bed, walking like flipbook animation, and held up his right hand, no fingers, the skin was smooth, marble, white, eye sockets empty, mouth was a round, dark hole, and then it wasn’t him, it was him in my dream but his face belonged to someone else, I’m forgetting (third note:
lies you can never forget and will you always remember
) who it was, I can’t remember, and my fingers screamed and burned with sharp cold, then Tommy who wasn’t Tommy said *cross out, illegible* we’ve always been waiting

14.
Sounds like a real douche on the phone.

15.
Oh there are older stories

16.
Stephens made no mention of a book to me. Nadia didn’t answer me for a long time. I mean a long time. Glacial

17.
Copyright 1909, with a seventh edition printed in 1986. Book attributed to Divers Hands, no publisher listed, pocket-sized, bound in black leather, broken red ring on the cover. Call Tracy and ask her to get more info on it.

18.
What???? They most certainly should’ve.

19.
Go back to Stephens to ask if he knows about the book and the Barn entry?

20.
Do I weave my weird personal parallels into the story (blending of memoir and reporting)? Scott finally answered the phone. He didn’t say hello. “You promised that you wouldn’t do this again.” I never promised I’d stop working. “No, that you wouldn’t go off by yourself…” I’m not climbing a mountain or doing anything dangerous. I swear. I’ll just be roughing it for a week in a barn just a two-day hike out into the woods. “Why do you keep doing this again and again?”
T
his isn’t the same as Everest. You know it’s not. And I’m not the same. “You promised.” Scott hung up. (second note:
promises are kept with blood and bone
)

21.
more scotch was achieved, much to my detriment

22.
No word from Tracy on the book. She usually works quick too. Showed Stephens the book. Didn’t tell him it was Tommy’s or that Nadia had it. “I’ve lived here seven years, never heard any stories about the barn like that.”

23.
This hike to the barn is a just a stroll down the street to the market by comparison, but I can feel it starting again. That need, that emptiness that knows no other way to be filled.

24.
he is so hungry

25.
“Jack London is king! All Hail his Dominant Primordial Beast”

26.
Like the RED one and the GREEN one and the YELLOW one before it.

27.
Writing with my left hand really sucks