in the parking lot as I walked to my car, ready to depart after a fair but uneventful shift. "I'm meeting you at your apartment," she said.
I voiced protest, but she would hear none of it.
"I have information," she answered.
"What information?"
She reached into her rucksack and pulled out a spiral notebook. "It's Frank's diary."
"Where did you get that?" My voice sounded a bit frantic and for good reason; this form of theft could be just the thing to push Frank over the edge, as if his firing might not be sufficient enough to do just that.
"His motel. He's staying at this really sleazy place. God, you should see it. A fucking pigsty. Trash and used food containers everywhere. The place stank of cigarettes, stale beer and his dirty laundry. Gross! But what was real creepy was there were all these flowers made out of plastic beads set up on the dresser, all arranged in neat, symmetrical rows. Oh, and I got these too." She handed me a pair of dark, grainy photographs. "Thatis you, isn't it? Your pants, your leather jacket?"
"Yes."
"Who's the woman?" She pointed at the plump blonde holding one of the jacket's arms.
"A prostitute."
"Great!" Her reply sounded irritated. "Look, I don't wanna bother with that now - "
"You should not have done this, Nicole. He was fired today. Surely, he will notice that these items have been pilfered. How did you get in there anyway?"
"I told the desk clerk I was Frank's sister. And I gave him five bucks." She paused. "Look, it's too late to worry about this now. You gotta read this diary."
She was right. "You know where I live. I will see you there shortly."
****
"This guy's really sick, Al," Nicole said, sipping the Russian Caravan tea I had brewed. After her last visit, it seemed reasonable to keep some refreshments around the apartment. "You gotta check this out."
I sat and she pushed the diary across the table.
"It's hard to tell when he wrote these entries," she said, "but it seems they cover the time after you attacked him and before he went to Mendota. It covers a little bit of his time inside and then almost up to the present."
I nodded and opened to the first entry, dated November 29, just a week after my arrival. "Have to say it was simply a case of being in the right place at the right time. Got lucky and hooked an out-of-towner toward the end of a twelve-hour hack shift.Janesville . Forty miles of highway, a buck-twenty per mile of easy money. Good old cab sixty-six. Always did bring me luck, mostly good.
"'On the way back, bum-fuck nowhere, pitch dark except the reflected glow of my headlights, nothing but road stretching out in front, grassy median and oncoming lanes to my left and forest all over the place. All alone, not even any truckers for company.
"'That's when I saw it. Just a quick flash, a glimmer and shimmer, a quick glimpse of something out there, running or jumping in the median. Something doing something, that's all I can say. It was there, then it wasn't.
"'The thing had two legs and two arms and a head, kinda like a glowing teenage kid, just smooth without any real features and sorta glowing. Vaguely luminescent - glow color, but not exactly glowing, like maybe you wouldn't want to try to read by it.
"'Well, I just can't stop thinking about it. The sight of this creature has become an obsession very quickly. It sounds crazy, but I know I saw it. I wish I knew what the hell it was.
"'I thought about asking some of my friends, the ones I was pretty sure wouldn't laugh. Only problem was I wasn't sure who'd laugh and who wouldn't. The next night, I was sitting by myself at the bar at the Pinckney Street Hide-Away, stewing about this whole thing, feeling frustrated about not having anyone to talk to about this. Then, I saw Greta. She'd believe me. Hell, she's a Born Again Pagan, or at least that's what that button of hers says.
"'So, I told her the whole story, about how I was unsure on the one hand, but knew I'd see something, maybe even a quick glimpse across dimensions, or something like that.
"'Greta lit a cigarette and took a deep drag. She nodded thoughtfully in what looked like agreement. Then, she told me about the time when she was a teenager, and her parents were gone for the weekend, and she walked