Monday, September 12, 2:00 PM

I have to be careful to keep this hidden.

I have to make sure nobody sees me writing in it.

They're curious enough as it is.

They're watching me enough as it is.

I'm a captive, really. I'm imprisoned in my own room.

I have no idea how much they know.

I don't even know how much I know.

I have so many questions, and no way to answer them.

There is something about having been gone for two weeks in a row that helps me see Skeleton Creek with fresh eyes. I have a new idea of what someone from the outside might think if they drove into my isolated hometown where it sits alone at the bottom of the mountains.

I like to act on these insights and write them down as if they are occurring. It's a curious habit I can't seem to break. Maybe things are safer when I think of them as fiction.

If I imagine myself as a person arriving in Skeleton Creek for the first time it goes something like this . . .

The sun has barely risen when a car door opens and a man stands at the curb looking out into the forest beyond the edge of town. There is a gray fog that hangs thick and sticky in the trees, unwilling to leave, hiding something diabolical in the woods. He gets back in his car and locks the doors, glancing down side streets through dusty windows. He wonders what has brought this little town to its knees. The place is not dead; it is not even dying for certain. Instead, the driver thinks to himself, this place has been forgotten. And he senses something else. There are secrets buried here that are best left alone.

It is then that the car turns sharp and leaves in the direction from which it came, the driver confident that the growing light of day will not shake the unforeseen dread he feels about the town at the bottom of the mountain.

The driver would not know exactly what it was that scared him off, but I know. Sarah knows, too. We know there's something wrong with this place, and more importantly, we know we're getting too close to whatever it is.

Someone's coming.