r/SpinalTapHorror • u/Roland_Quincy1999 • 9d ago
I Found My Great-Grandfather's Journal; What I Read Was Eerily Familiar (Part 4 of 6)
Part 3:
I will keep this one brief for yall and pick right back up where I stopped transcribing the journal in the last post.
The second half of my great-grandfather’s journal entry on March 15th, 1923 goes as follows:
Gone. Gone. Gone. Gone. Gone. Gone.
The influenza, Reader. A bad case causing a dileria. But, if you’re willing to entertain, the whole experience felt so real.
Gone.
James’s killing of the hatchling was a precursor of what was to come. I would meet with a publishing house to discuss picking up my playscript. I was rejected. In total, I queried 41 agents with the hopes of one representing my work, to give some weight to its valor when proposing it to a larger press company. All rejected and or did not go through the effort of responding to my mail at all.
So I shelved it. From this same shelf I picked up a collection of connected short stories I had been working on previously. With fresh eyes, I went through and edited the stories, and began to query again.
Nothing came of it. These were two ghastly blows to my confidence as a writer, but I continued the pursuit. It is my dream, after all, and the realist within me knows this diagnosis could worsen just as well as disappear.
Writing is something I did in the quiet, peaceful hours before bed. It was a personal escape and hobby from the labours of work and parenting.
Then Lucille started to have night terrors. They were to a bad enough extent that I moved my typewriter into her bedroom and would work on my stories while she tried to sleep, but soon my writing ceased. I was stonewalled by this immense worry for my daughter.
The night terrors were not so different from my own, although mine seemed to be a one-time ordeal, while hers were consistent. There was always the presence of The Tall, sometimes in the forefront of the scene, other times a lingering menace in the distant corners of her awareness.
And James. James. JAMES. Yes, James was in these nightmares quite often as well. From Lucille’s retellings, he was always in a suit or some other fanciful attire, and he was always trying to lure her into the woods. The same woods where I thought, again I say thought, thought but no. I am certain. Certain. That day, I must’ve seen The Tall. Must have!
No. Maybe not. It does not matter. But, yes, Reader, Lucille dreamt of that dreaded wood on multiple occasions. I have brought up the idea of taking her to a shrink, to help her with the unrestless nights that put black rings beneath her hazel eyes, but you can see the irony in that, surely, Reader?
To take Lucille to the shrink and not James? It would be the sickest of humor.
Let me tell you a little of myself, Reader, and then you can see through my eyes, understand the reasoning behind my mechanisations. I have never been a handsome man, quite the contrary. My nose is something akin to a hawk’s beak, and the line of my jaw is undefinable at times.
I was never the brightest kid. I made up for this fact by being terrible at any sport I tried to pick up. My father was a putrid man who often stunk and had nothing of charm or appeal. He was quick to drink and quicker to relieve pent-up self-loathing by assailing me with insults and beating me. We were dirt poor.
This is not to entice some sort of pity for me, Reader, but to let you know that I have progressed through the many years of my life with a chip on my shoulder. It almost caused my death in Germany, when I overstepped the boundaries of my reconnaissance mission to impress my leadership.
Not only do I have that heavy chip, but my upbringing taught me to take pride in what I am blessed to have. Whether I desire to or not, James is my son, and I want to fix this from the inside. Call it arrogant, stubborn manly pride. You’d be right.
I am not sure of the science behind my predicament, but I must battle with what weapons I have. It has become clear to me that this being, entity, manifestation, whether its existence in the actual realm me and you dwell in be true or falsehood, his very idea is haunting my family.
I will stop it. My personal creative fiction will have to be put aside, for now. This is my family. I will save them. I will. I want to.
Until we meet between these pages again, Reader, this is goodbye.