The Rosalyn Letters

By S. Blake

What would happen if you dreamed about a violent, supernatural transgression and the next day learned that some version of it had come true? The Rosalyn Letters is an epistolary thriller that keeps you guessing: what is real, what is imagined, and which is worth abiding?

It's April of 1997 in Erie, Pennsylvania, and an unsolved crime has just shattered Rosalyn's life. To cope with her heartache, she begins writing a series of private letters to Nova in her journal, where she confides a shameful secret about the night before it happened. In her anguish, Rosalyn recounts the recent dreams that still haunt her, recording them as poems, just as her grandmother had taught her as a young girl. But after she moves to New York City and her letters progress, Rosalyn begins to realize that her dreams are delivering her a series of clues that might be giving her the answers no one else could.

On one level, The Rosalyn Letters is both a suspenseful crime mystery and the introspective story of a young woman's struggle with great personal loss. But on another level, it's a coming-of-age story-a meditation on the meaning of the past, present, and future, and the universe of truth perhaps just outside our immediate understanding, but never outside our reach.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BLAKE STUDIO
• Release date: Dec 31, 2022
• ISBN: 9798986359007

Book preview

The Rosalyn Letters

In Somnis Veritas

In Dreams there is Truth

The Rosalyn Letters

S. Blake

Copyright © 2022 by S. Blake

All rights reserved.

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Published by Blake Studio, LLC.

Written and illustrated by Sara Blake.

www.sarablake.nyc

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First Edition 2022

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No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

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ISBN 979-8-9863590-0-7

Title Art

Contents

Dead Moon

The Tortoise and the Cobra

One Song

The Door with the Face

Two Lions

A Ghost’s Song

Past House

The Laws of Physics

The Egret

Memento Mori

Everything You Need to Know

Tooth Collector

The Removable Leg

The Workshop

Poacher’s Prize

Another Nova

Battlecry

Afterword

Thanks, About, and Notes

Dead Moon

Dead Moon Art

Monday, April 7, 1997

Dear Nova,

It’s been just over six weeks since we were last together. It’s late, and I’m sitting at the kitchen table with that feeling like I’m waiting for something, although I couldn’t say what it is that I’m waiting for. Maybe just for today’s hours to end. Maybe I’m waiting for the sound of your footsteps through the house. Lately, I do this often, sitting in a daze, pretending I might summon the sound of your voice somewhere in the other room simply by wishing for it—but of course, that doesn’t work. I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve sat quietly like this, waiting. Eventually, my back will start to hurt, and I’ll shift in whatever chair or position I’ve found on the floor, still not quite knowing what to do next. Today though, I’m trying something new. I’ll write while I wait.

It’s strange staring down at this old journal after its empty pages have sat around collecting dust for so many years of my life. Maybe it’s childish to expect that finally picking it up now will make any difference, but I don’t know what else to do anymore. So here I am, writing to you. I’ve already tried all the other things that just seem like caricatures of what you think a person is supposed to do in a situation like this—the things people do when they hurt but aren’t quite sure how to make it stop.

At first, there was nothing but anger. At least, I think it was anger. My whole body just felt hot, day and night. It didn’t matter the hour, the amount of clothing I was wearing, or the thermostat setting in the house. I even took my temperature once to see what was going on. Ninety-nine point six degrees. Not quite a fever, but not quite normal either. The heat seemed to spill over from my body, and sometimes it took on a new kinetic form. I started slamming every door behind me, although I can’t say I ever recall consciously choosing to do so. I threw the front door so hard in its frame I broke a window pane in the living room. It wasn’t on purpose, but if the whole house had toppled over right then, I’m not so sure I would have cared. Later, in a repentant attempt at remediation, I duct taped the wide splinters of missing glass back into place, but I resented every tiny tear of silver tape. I felt like destroying things, not fixing them.

A few days later in the kitchen, without any prior awareness of the impulse, I hurled a plate at the wall. Then two more. I watched each one bounce, then shatter with a percussive clatter as they met the floor. And I just stood there waiting—waiting like I am again today. I stared down at the ceramic shards on the black and white linoleum as if I expected some kind of supernatural intervention, but of course, there was nothing. Instead, I just felt embarrassed, even though I was the only person in the house. At that moment, I prayed for something to come and interrupt the silence. Anything. You know how sometimes silence can just feel so loud? But not even so much as the draft that whistles through the gap under the back door came to my rescue, and finally, I just walked over and picked up the broken pieces one by one and put them in the trash as if nothing had ever happened.

Did it happen? Lately, I get confused. I ask myself if it’s merely forgetfulness. Absent-mindedness. Sometimes I do things—meaningless things—but afterward, I can’t be sure if I’ve only just imagined doing them. I swear I remembered putting my keys away in the bowl on the bureau. Later, I discovered them still dangling from the lock in the front door. I remembered taking the garbage out to the curb. Later, a stench from under the kitchen cabinet alerted me that I hadn’t. When can you truly trust your own mind? If no one else bears witness except for you, how can you really be sure something is real? There’s that saying. If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is around to hear... How does that go again? Did it make a sound?

The day after I broke our plates, I found a two-month-old expired carton of milk in the fridge, but instead of tossing it out, for no reason I can comprehend, I held it out perpendicular to my body, opened my hand, and let the whole thing drop to the ground. The cardboard fold popped open, and I watched what was left slowly glug out over the checkered squares as a sour smell filled the air. It looked like modern art. A Pollock. A de Kooning. Maybe even a Kandinsky. Was their art about order, or was it about chaos? And why shouldn’t I be allowed to create a little of my own chaos too? Just a little. I didn’t clean it up for several days, and by the time I eventually did, the rancid milk had dried to a crust. I had to use steel wool to get it up.

When later that week I eventually decided it would be wiser not to demolish the entire house, I thought maybe I could try to exhaust myself instead. On the first day of this new notion, I walked all the way down Peninsula Drive and made an entire loop around the park and back. The parts along the water were especially cold, but I played mind games with myself enough to ignore both the shooting sting in my fingers and the full body chill that slowly transformed into a sharp ache around my joints as the day wore on.

I knew it would be chilly from the moment I closed the front door behind me, but I reasoned I’d warm up once I walked a few blocks. When I still wasn’t warm by the time I’d gotten to the end of the neighborhood, I reasoned I’d warm up once the sun had fully risen. When I still wasn’t warm by the time the sun had reached its crest, I reasoned I’d warm up if I could only walk a little faster. The brown and yellow Presque Isle State Park sign materialized from around the bend, and I considered turning back to stop at Sara’s Diner for something hot to eat but realized I hadn’t even brought my wallet. I kept walking. I veered left onto the shoulder of Old Lake Road, and the expanse of Lake Erie soon came into view through the trees at the entrance to Beach 1. It was apparent by then it was going to be one of those choppy, blustery days. It didn’t seem to matter that we’ve lived here our whole lives—I still neglected to account for the possibility of wind.

We’ve been to The Peninsula a thousand times. You’d think I’d know how to dress by now, but when I’d put myself together that morning, my head had been somewhere else, floating far above the rest of my body, legitimately unconcerned for the well-being of the rest of its attached parts. I wore my hat, of course—that I would never forget—but somehow, I hadn’t bothered with gloves, or a windbreaker, or even breakfast, which unsurprisingly resulted in spending the final two hours of my trek convulsing in shivers.

I reached the turn for the Coast Guard Station sometime in the early afternoon. I knew it would be wiser to keep moving along the loop, but I couldn’t help myself from a detour to pay the North Pier Light a visit. I passed a flock of geese near Beach 11 and bid a silent hello to the houseboats on Horseshoe Pond. When the trees finally ended, and I spotted the concrete platform of the pier stretching out into the expanse of the harbor, my heart lifted. There’s always something about the sight of the open water that has a way of calming you, even if only temporarily. I walked out onto the pier to look back over the entrance to the bay. The North Pier Light was just the same as always—weathered and slightly rusted.

Before they built that lighthouse in the 1800s, ships couldn’t see the land at the channel’s edges and would regularly run aground. One even destroyed the original lighthouse when it tried to enter the bay during a gale and crashed right into it. Over the years, they’ve moved it, extended it, rebuilt it, and reinforced it. Its lighthouse keepers cared for it. And now, all these years later, it’s still active. You can see its light from miles out into Lake Erie. There’s something about that old lighthouse’s ruggedness that always has a way of pulling me out of myself and back into the context of the world, even if for only a moment. My mind feels free to wander far beyond the confines of my small life, venturing throughout all of time and history.

Before the lighthouse, there was just the peninsula, a young landform only about a thousand years old. And before the peninsula, fourteen thousand years before that, there was only the glacier that melted to form the Great Lakes. That lighthouse is already nearly a century and a half old, but it’s only a tiny blip in the whole story of this place. If that lighthouse is just a blip, what does that make me? What does that make you? I can’t tell if that thought is a comfort or if it makes me want to throw plates at the wall again.

By the time I’d made it along the bay-side road, out of the park, and all the way through town again, I must have walked twenty miles, but it was really only the last twenty blocks that were a true death march back to the front door. When I finally arrived back on the porch, I somehow managed to commandeer my inoperable fingers only just enough to grasp my keys and turn the lock. I flung open our door and stripped naked right there in the hallway. I left my clothes heaped in a pile by the stairs and dragged myself straight up to the bathroom like a frozen zombie. I must have stood in the scalding shower for over an hour, and when I eventually stepped out, I looked and felt not dissimilar to a boiled lobster. I drank a beer and put myself to bed without dinner. Just the thought of food made my stomach tighten. All those miles, and yet no appetite.

The next day, I over-corrected for my previous oversights. I wore two pairs of gloves and devoured three bowls of cereal for breakfast, but instead of some grand expedition to the water, this time I just made circles around our neighborhood so many times I started to get suspicious looks from a few of the older neighbors through their windows. I surrendered to the darkness only when it got too black to see the uneven sidewalk under my own feet. Each stride felt like stepping off a tiny cliff with a blindfold on. When I got back to the house, this time I drank two beers for dinner, then crawled into bed with my jeans still on.

It was still dark outside when I woke without an alarm the following day. I felt the physical exhaustion in my legs and a hollow ache in my stomach, but still, it wasn’t enough to extinguish the anxious feeling in my chest, so I decided I’d embark on a more ambitious operation, this time employing the use of the car. I was out of the house an hour before the sun had even risen, and I drove to the Shell station and bought a half tank of gas, not remembering if it would be enough to get me all the way to Raccoon Creek State Park and back. I made good time and was at the park entrance no later than 8:30. I hadn’t brought my rod, but I parked just off Raccoon Lake where we used to fish. My plan was instead simply to tire myself out on the trail. I locked the car and started picking up my feet.

When I’d passed the next trailhead and still felt unsatisfied, I kept going to its connection. And then to the next. And to the next. Forest Trail turned into Appaloosa, which turned into Heritage, and then back into Forest. I stopped somewhere along Heritage to have a drink from the springs, and I wondered how many times we’d walked those trails during the summers as teenagers. Now everything looks so different somehow. Had they changed, or had I never paid attention to what they’d looked like in the first place? It’s funny how our memories can be so unreliable, even as their physical reference points are right before our eyes. Maybe it’s only us that changes.

I had thought getting out of the house, some new scenery, and the endless miles in my legs would help chew through this god-awful feeling, but the only things that got chewed up were my feet. I got blisters so badly I bled through my socks on both sides and stained the toes of my Vans. When I took them off in the car, the heel of the inside lining was stained red too. Maybe I should have worn my boots, but I’m not so sure they would have helped in the end. Besides, in a sick way, I even liked it—peeling off the wet, blistered skin to reveal the raw, tender flesh underneath. Those unexpected moments of brief physical pain have been the most effective distraction I’ve discovered so far.

When I got back home just a little after dusk, I further inspected my damaged feet and made my own little first aid station on the bathroom floor. I used toenail clippers to trim back the excess rings of dead, bloated skin, but I accidentally clipped too far, and a bright red spot began pooling at my heel on the tile. At first, I didn’t realize what I’d done, nor had I registered the color as blood, but after a few seconds, the pain flooded in. I didn’t react. I just sort of noticed the feeling. Eventually, I fumbled for some Band-Aids, but as I pulled off the wrappers, I hesitated. I didn’t want the bleeding to stop quite yet. A few droplets made their way into the recessed grout lines between the bathroom tiles like they were some kind of miniature crimson tributaries, and I thought about how much I wished I could have just taken some of your pain too.

I’m not sure how long I sat there on the cold tiles, but eventually, a faint voice of pragmatism whispered its command in the back of my mind. Stop bleeding so you don’t track red all over the house like a wounded animal and make another Pollock on the floor. Blood is tougher than milk to scrub up. I freed the sticky Band-Aid flaps from their coverings and wrapped the brown canvas as tightly as it would go around my heel. Slowly, the pain subsided, and the numbness returned. Not just to my foot but to my whole body.

Before all those miles, I could barely sleep, but by the following morning, at last, I’d sufficiently worn myself out. My legs no longer obeyed their commands. Now, I could sleep for days. I tied our old navy blue fleece blanket to the curtain rods to block out the sun completely, and I barely got out of bed again until I realized I’d started to smell.

Each day bled into the next. How long had I stayed there? Four days? A week? Occasionally, I’d wake up to realize I’d sweated clean through the sheets, so I’d peel off my wet T-shirt and roll to the other dry side of the bed naked. Inevitably though, I’d wake up beaded in sweat again, and do it all over, rolling back to the original side. I kept a thermos and an open box of cereal on the floor beside the bed. That was all I needed. A sip of water. A handful of Cheerios, here and there. Just enough to keep the old machine running.

I sincerely thought I might as well go on like this forever, but just as soon as I’d come to terms with living out the rest of my days as a motionless bag of warm flesh, my body again refused to do as it was told. How hard could it be to just lie flat and keep your eyes shut? But the sleep just wouldn’t come anymore. So what else was left?

What would a normal person do with this feeling? Or this lack of feeling? They would try to soothe themselves, wouldn't they?

Would they wear soft clothes? Listen to classical music? Drink chamomile tea? I never liked the whole idea to begin with. Do I really believe I deserve to be soothed? Why should I be soothed when you can’t? What does a soothed person look like anyway? The concept seemed so far away, but nonetheless, I decided that even if I didn’t understand the likeness of a soothed person, at the very least, I could try to do my impression of one.

I stripped the sweaty sheets from my bed and stuffed them into a laundry bag while I let the bathtub fill with steaming water. I lit an old, dusty vanilla candle, rested it in the corner near the faucet, and poured in what was left of our shampoo to make bubbles. Slowly, I stepped in and lowered myself beneath the mountain of shampoo foam, feeling the pressure of hot water climb inch by inch over my skin.

This is me being normal. This is me soothing myself.

It didn’t last for long. After so many days in bed, the sight of the insides of my eyelids for any period longer than a blink brought on a strange sense of panic and dread. As it turned out, trying to soothe myself just made me more anxious and claustrophobic. I soon gave up on all the soothing business and instead put out an entire book of matches, one by one, as I soaked, letting each tiny stick burn down enough to singe my fingertips. Finally, I opened the drain with my toes and screamed underwater to see if I’d run out of air before the tub ran out of water. It was about a tie.

I dried off feeling worse off than I had before but nevertheless went down to the kitchen to give this concept of comfort one last valiant effort. I haven’t bothered making anything more complicated than peanut butter sandwiches or cereal since you’ve been gone, so I thought cooking myself a warm meal might be a long-overdue upgrade. Something simple. Scrambled eggs with cheese and toast. But when I opened the refrigerator door, my hand reached for a beer, despite my mind’s command for the egg carton.

It’s like some separate and more sensible part of myself is calling out from a distance in a tiny voice, offering to take over. I can hear it, pleading to help, but it’s too far away—the chasm too great to bridge. So instead, I just keep coasting along as I have been, down the same old beaten paths I already know. My attempt at a warm meal ended with a bowl of Corn Pops and a PBR. This is me soothing myself.

That was the same day I first tried going into your room. I took what was left of my lukewarm beer upstairs and pushed open your bedroom door softly like I was afraid to make a sound and get caught. I know you hate it when I go in your room without an invitation, but I put everything back just where you’d had it, I promise. I still haven’t packed up a single thing, yours or mine. I haven’t told our landlord either. He still thinks we’re staying through the end of the lease next year, but I don't know how much longer I can afford the rent on my own.

Officially, I got fired from Orly’s, but mostly I just stopped showing up for my shifts. No one seemed surprised, though. A few days after it happened, Jack came by with flowers and a card that a bunch of the regulars had signed. He’d already gathered all your things from the back office, so I wouldn’t have to. Your tackle box and orange bibs. Your green canvas backpack. Inside, an extra sweatshirt and baseball cap. Your buck knife. A broken pair of headphones. A half-empty pack of gum. A tube of string wax. Your gold hoop earrings. Sunscreen. Two scratched CDs: The Cranberries’, No Need to Argue, and Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged. Your spiral notepad with various scribbles: a grocery list for what looked like chicken marsala, phone numbers to record shops around town, and that staff music shorthand of yours that never made sense to anyone except for you.

In the very back, there were pages of imagined melodies, and I can picture your face thinking them up on your slow days behind the register, pretending like you’re watching the customers, but really you’re miles away in your own musical universe. Speaking of which, Jack even paid out both our last paychecks in full, even though neither of us had worked half of it. Instead of feeling grateful, I just feel ashamed. I hate feeling like I owe people things.

I spent almost a whole day last week just unfolding and refolding your clothes. I shook them out over your bed to see their shapes, then folded them back even more neatly than I’d found them like you’d be coming back for them. Your sweaters smelled like a combination of powder deodorant and that perfume you got over at Millcreek last year. I always thought it stank, but now I think it might be growing on me.

I ran my palms over the scuffed toes of your Doc Martens where you’d worn in the leather. I sat at your desk and leafed through your notebooks too, tracing my fingertips over all your little drawings and jokes in the margins where the ballpoint pen had indented the paper like inverted Braille.

And there it was again—that tightness in my chest. That feeling of anxious anticipation, but not understanding what for. What do I do now, Nova? What do I do without you?

All the breaking things, the walking, the sleeping, the screaming underwater, the folding and refolding your clothes, the shutting out the world. None of those things work. I just feel more restless and lost than I did before.

That’s why I’m here. Here, in these pages, I mean—writing to you in this old journal on our kitchen table. And for the first time in twenty-two years, you’re not here with me. You're somewhere else. You’re gone. Without any reason. Without any answers.

That's what this letter is about, I guess. I thought I’d use my one last Hail Mary and try writing to you. I don’t know what else is left.

I know you’ll never get this letter, but never is a strong word. If our atoms were once the stars before they were our bodies, maybe we become the stars again. Maybe when your life left, your particles blew away in the wind and became something new. Maybe at this very moment, you can hear the vibrations of my pen scratching along against this paper, and you can feel my words in some other way that we don’t understand yet with these five senses. Five is such a small number—just the fingers on one hand. Maybe you will get this letter after all. Maybe.

It’s been six weeks and two days now since our last morning together—I’ve been replaying it over and over again. Do you remember? I’m not sure if thinking about it now makes me want to smile or go back to breaking things.

I wasn’t even yet consciously aware that I was awake when my eyes met your face no more than a few inches from mine. You had rolled your eyes all the way back in your head, revealing nothing but their whites, and you were flicking your eyelids spastically like some sort of electrified demon. And although you were failing miserably, you were doing your very best to touch your tongue to your nose. My body jerked involuntarily in shock, just like it always has every time you surprised me like that, and the whole bed frame shook so hard the metal hinges squeaked.

You were, of course, delighted. How you’ve managed to slither yourself undetected over my blankets for so many years and strategically perch yourself like some kind of demented gargoyle to greet me from my slumber has always escaped me. You must have done some version of this ritualized prank hundreds of times since we were kids, but the true mystery of it all is how it still has never ceased to genuinely startle me. If I’d known that would be the last time, I wouldn’t have scowled. I wouldn’t have acted so sour.

When I asked you how long you’d been there, you just answered with your classic Nova shrug. Right eyebrow raised, both shoulders up at the same time, as if suspended on marionette strings. I miss that move of yours so much. So playful and mischievous. It’s a gesture so unique to you, and somehow so distinct from me.

Over the past six weeks, I’ve spent more minutes than I can count remembering that image of you, sitting cross-legged there on the side of my bed, grinning to yourself, pleased with your prank’s work. Do you remember our conversation too?

That morning you were so full of words. You asked me what I had dreamed about that night, and as you waited for my report, your litany of absurd suggestions filled my annoyed silence.

The ghost of Beethoven? Happy, fat pandas having a picnic on a pink cloud? Discussing the merits of dessert for breakfast with Edgar Allan Poe on a spacecraft? Kissing Trent Reznor while hanging upside down like bats?

You kept going and going. You had some even better ones too, but I can’t remember them now. I wish I could. If I’d known that was our last morning, I would have held onto each word for safekeeping. And I would have thanked you too—for always making me laugh, even when you don’t make me laugh. You know what I mean.

Your list of absurdities continued on until I interrupted to commend you on your excellent guesswork. Indeed, yes, I had dreamed about each and every one of those things—fat pandas and all. Sarcasm would have to suffice in the absence of coffee or adequate sleep. I told you that I hadn’t dreamed in weeks, and last night was no exception. When I threw open the covers and swung my legs over the edge of the bed next to yours, you didn’t seem satisfied. You always could see right through me.

That’s what I keep thinking about now. That’s what I’ve been thinking about every day now for six weeks. That was a lie, Nova. I did dream. I dreamed about you.

I don’t know why I couldn’t tell you that morning. Perhaps I just didn't want to think about it. It seemed so juvenile at the time, but I was scared. A stupid nightmare had gotten the best of me—I felt more like a child than a grown twenty-two-year-old. I just wanted to get on with the day, you know? I was never as forgiving or kind as you were, not just with others, but with yourself too.

You were always so willing to step back and take a deep breath, feel whatever it was that you were feeling. I, on the other hand, have always been so busy pretending to be tough and unbothered, shrouding myself in cynicism or sarcasm in an attempt to either postpone or deny whatever it was that needed to be felt. But your natural state was something different. A humble honesty and sanguine acceptance, so firmly rooted in the present moment. You always had that playful kind of smarts that only belongs to old souls. Sometimes I still don’t know how we’re related, much less identical twins.

Nova, I’m so sorry I lied to you that morning. I can hardly bear that my words to you on our last day together were anything less than the truth. The honest answer to your question is that my dream that night had woken me up in a cold sweat. I remember gasping aloud in the darkness, and I didn’t think I’d be able to get back to sleep again. The dream had felt so real, but of course, when I opened my eyes and scanned the shadows for the outlines of my room, I knew it wasn’t.

I stared up at the ceiling, listening to my own breath rise and fall, and focused on a slice of light from the street lamps cutting through the curtains, gradually giving the room shape as my eyes adjusted. My mind again found its grasp on reality. I was back in the safety of my bedroom, and yet some unnamed, nearby danger still clung to the fringes of my mind. It felt like more than just some kind of realistic nightmare—it was a bottomless agitation in my very being—the sinking feeling that something terrible was about to happen. I half expected a plane to fall from the sky and crash through our roof or for a masked intruder with a cleaver to slowly inch open my door. A fire. An earthquake. A ghost. Anything. But in the darkness of my room, there was nothing but silence.

When I finally dozed back off again, it was that wiry kind of sleep—the kind like when you’ve had too much caffeine and your mind is still wide awake, but your body is exhausted, so the two just sort of drift away from one another for a little while. Before I understood any time had passed at all, there you were on my bedspread with your eyeballs rolled back in your head and your tongue stretching toward your nose. It was already morning. The night had passed, and it was a new day that I hoped would wash away the