The Journal of Liv Theed

By Jay Hollister

In a small mountain town, a young teenage girl lives in fear of the dark. Lurking in the shadows, she sees Them, the fallen creatures that whisper in her ear, speaking of the damned and the days to come.

Diagnosed with a mental illness, Liv Theed lives in terror of the creatures she finds in the shadows which forever haunt her. The breaths of the wicked echo in her head and the black of heart torment her.

Throughout the journal, Liv writes about the days and the months of her struggle, the therapy and the pills, the treatment that never really worked, the pain her parents suffer, her loss of friends. Then, there are the questions. What is real? she writes. Where did they come from? Am I crazy or am I cursed? What is heaven and what is hell?

But one act of betrayal forever changed her life, forcing a teenage girl to stand and fight her demons. She took hold of the sword, and her tormentors howled in the shadows ...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jay Hollister
• Release date: Oct 31, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370634644

Book preview

The Journal of Liv Theed

Jay Hollister

This book is dedicated to Faith, Morgan,

and Allie Hollister.

Entry One

The doctor said I’m unwell. I don’t understand why, but he did. The judgment in his voice … overwhelming and cruel … and, oh, how can I ever forget the shame and the guilt I felt? Sitting there on a chair in the middle of an office, the horrid paint on the walls, looking like the pale skin of the dead, troubled me. Pasty floors about my feet and long grids of lights above, shining, bright as the sun, offered no comfort or refuge; my parents sat on a couch in the corner, asking about Them and the evil I had seen, the darkness forever haunting my head.

Hot tears welled as I tried to forget the feel of Them and Their horns and the heat of Their breath on my neck. But there was no forgetting how They crawled from the shadows and pulled and poked at my skin, leaving the smell of sulfur in the air and a rotten taste in my mouth, bile burning in my chest, my throat.

I wiped my eyes and reached down to steady my legs, feeling flushed and sweaty and hot. Not now, I whispered. Not now.

My parents just sat there on the couch in the corner, nodding.

Stacked against the wall, beneath the diplomas and the names of doctors, was a row of white and wrinkled bed sheets and a bookcase reaching to the ceiling. I sat there on the chair in the middle of the floor studying the odd scrollwork adorning the supports on either side of the shelves. Grand spirals twisted up, like the coils of some deadly serpent. The rows of books, set thickest to thinnest, caught between bookends depicting a knight and a large pack of wolves. A dragon on the top shelf of the case with its pearl wings outstretched. Its horns and the point of its tail, like some kind of ill-formed arrow. I stared into the corners and under the tables and the chairs, the places where my tormentors like to hide, feeding on the gloom of earth.

Staring for over an hour, all I beheld was the loathsome look of the pale walls and the sounds of the hospital outside the room. Wheels on the gurneys scraping up and down the hallways and the rumble of the elevator doors; an elderly woman crying out from her room. Nurse, she called, Nurse.

Hell cannot be much worse.

Question: What is hell? Is it a place in the middle of the earth made of fire and ash? A place where the Devil sits on his throne and tortures and torments the damned?

I think not.

I think hell is in your mind, an uninvited lodger that stays and tells its story without end: black thoughts not of your making, perfidy insinuated by the whispering creatures.

scenebreak

Hours later, heading home and sitting in the back of the car, I looked at the packs of pills and the little handwritten notes on the dashboard, the words spinning in my head, the stuff of delusion and disease, the troubled mind and its feverish wanderings.

Bordering the road were the white and russet trunks of trees and a fence and in the twists and turns of the sidewalk, leaves scattered, dancing in the wind. Vast grass fields and the flowers, orange and yellow and blue, stretching out into the beyond, like the bands of some fallen rainbow. Tears glistened in my mother’s eyes, reflected in the rearview mirror, her reddened cheeks, and her makeup failing to hide her haunted look. I leaned forward, reached out and stroked her cheek, saying I was sorry. Sorry for the things I had said, the things I had done. The dishes I threw in the empty corner of the empty kitchen and the yelling and the screaming at the shadows. The dark places where the Devil hides.

I don’t understand it, I said. It all seemed so real.

Unbroken silence smothered the rest of the journey home.

Entry Two

Cold. Everything in my bedroom felt so cold, so different. Tossing and turning in my bed, unable to sleep, fighting the blankets bundled about my body. Possessions removed from my dresser drawer: no scissors, no push pins, nothing with a point. Treating me like a freak. Rolling over on my side, I studied the room and the shadows on the floor, fearful of finding Their eyes in the dark and fearful of the hate and the pain They bring, fearful of Their fury.

Nothing’s there, I told myself. Nothing’s there.

I heard my mother weeping in the bedroom at the other end of the hallway. I grabbed my pillows, twisting them over my ears, desperate to muffle her voice, to hide from the sorrow and the trembling in her words, the sound of my father comforting her lancing my guilty heart.

Shh, he said. She might hear you. You need to keep it down. Be strong. Please, you need to be strong. For her, he said. You need to do it for her.

It broke my heart

scenebreak

I woke in the morning to the sound of my mom knocking on my door. Three knocks in all, and as I counted, the rhythm reminded me of a nursery rhyme about sneezing.

One for a wish.

Two for a kiss.

Three for a disappointment.

Three knocks.

Not four for a letter.

A disappointment.

I heard my mother in the hallway, the chime of the clock and her high heels tapping; her impatient breaths; the sound of her groaning.

I yelled for her to go away.

Three knocks again.

Raising myself, I shuffled across the room, flung open the door and stood there looking into the empty hallway. Just the pictures hanging on the walls and the cabinets and the clock ticking in the corner.

Was I dreaming? Was that the voice of my mother? The sound of her hand on the door? The echo of her feet?

scenebreak

What is real? I ask myself every day. What is real?

Answer: Nothing, maybe even less than that.

Question: Are we closer to God when we dream? Or perhaps we’re gods ourselves? Creating life in the imaginings of an unknown world: tricks of the mind thought into being. Are we nothing more than this: a delusion of our Lord?

Those are things I think about.

Entry Three

I keep apologizing for my behavior. The first words on my lips in the morning and the last I utter each evening. The looks on my parents’ faces and the white of their smiles, their nods, punishing me anew. Looking like unpracticed thespians, the feelings they’d left unspoken naked in the worry in their eyes; worry and pain.

What happened on that night?

What happened to me?

What happened to Them?

Writing at the desk in the corner of my room, I try to remember that night and the drive to the hospital; it’s all such a blur. I think I called my mother names. Dark and troubled words I do not wish to repeat. My labored breathing and the anger I felt, the pain and the betrayal; I think I accused my father of being one of Them, the creatures I see.

Can They even become such a thing? Shaped in the likeness of a man? Walking upright on heels and toes and covered in flesh? I pray They can’t, and I pray with all the strength and the faith and the love that I have.

scenebreak

Most of the morning we spent trying to establish a routine. I sat on the couch in the living room, listening to my mother and my father talking about the doctors and all the rules I needed to follow. The weeks of counseling and the home school I must complete, the friends I could no longer see.

It’s just until you are better, they said. Until you’ve adjusted to the medication.

Not knowing how to react, I sat there and agreed with everything they said, smiling and nodding a few times. Feeling bad about all the things I had done, all the things I couldn’t take back and change for the good. They asked about the medication, the way I felt on the pills and the time of day I wanted to take them, their wish to be present when I did.

I shrugged, Maybe in the morning, I said. I may forget to take the pills at night. Unable to share all the worries and the fears I have of the dark; the troubled thoughts I carry with me. Unable to tell them the nighttime’s the worst.

They smiled and said okay.

scenebreak

They wrote everything on a calendar stuck to the side of the fridge. Maybe it was for them, I thought, they are getting older, graying and wrinkled, forgetful at times. Or maybe it was for me? Setting out the structure and routine I needed, to counter the stuff of hands and amusement and the trouble I may devise.

I watched my mom set a pack of colored pens on the counter alongside the fridge. Red to check the days I had taken my pills. Green marked the times for study, the papers I would write and the books to read, the math problems I would have to solve. I’m useless with numbers; the formulas and the problems all spin around in my head, like some foreign language. Maybe I could ask my father for help? I think he would like that, helping.

Next was the color I dreaded the most. Blue. It marked the days I would have to ride down the hill and into town and sit on some couch in some office and speak of the things I had done.

The things I had seen.

The doctor and the therapy I must attend, the first appointment scheduled in a few days. I didn’t want to go, but my parents insisted. The of talking to a stranger about the creatures and what They do humiliates me, makes me feel ashamed. I felt nauseated just thinking about the smile the Devil bestows upon hearing his name.

Entry Four

On the sidewalk farther down the street, a man stood in the cool black of night, staring at the moon and the stars and the universe bright in the sky. Wearing a suit and tie and pointing, a pair of leather gloves on his hands. A young boy perched on some kind of wooden crate or box looked through the eyepiece of a telescope. Both wore smiles and the child looked all brilliant and filled with wonder, filled with love. I opened my bedroom window and sat on the edge of the sill, looking through the opening.

Alongside the pits and the barren shallows of the moon, I saw what had held their interest: a pale red dot floated about in the blackness. The touch of the cool night air brought shades of pink to my skin; goosebumps on my arms appeared; goosebumps and chills, like the icy touch of the reaper on the living. I shivered at the uneasiness of it, the fear of death and dying.

The young boy still laughed, calling out to the man. Dad, he yelled. Look. It’s Jupiter.

The man nodded, smiling and nodding again. I couldn’t help but smile, too, remembering all the times I used to sit on the swing in the backyard and look out into the night sky, studying everything. All the stars and the planets, all set alight, all the elements, the gasses and the balls of metal and matter. Black matter. Most nights, my father knelt on the lawn on the side of the swing and smiled and talked about the way it all had started, the stuff of explosions and heat and chaos, the specks of light formed in their billions. The hand of God, he called it.

I remembered sitting there and smiling, liking what he had to say. Savoring the image of an old and withered Man standing out beyond it all and holding everything in the palm of His hand. Keeping everything safe, keeping me safe. The elements stirred about in His breath and the dark shadows He made light, his beard like swirling strands of stardust. I smiled at the memories, at the things that gave and give me comfort.

Entry Five

I hadn’t seen the beasts in a couple of days. I sat on the edge of my bed and looked under the desk and in the corners and