The following is a transcription of a large audio file I found within a voice recorder app on a used cell phone. I bought this phone at a pawn shop three months ago, and after multiple listens I still don’t know what to make of it. The recording is all done in the voice of the same woman, but her tone and the style of language she uses seems to shift depending on what she’s talking about. Whether this is a side effect of medication, her circumstances, or just her being dramatic while playing on her phone, I can’t say for sure. So I typed this up as I found it. If you have thoughts, or even better, know who this woman might be and how she’s doing, please let me know.
I drifted along a wide, black river, the air around me so still and quiet that just the sound of my panicked breaths seemed to break the world a little bit. The boat I was on was barely a boat at all—a flat, featureless plane that traveled for twelve or so feet in every direction before falling off into dark water that seemed to eat the fading sunlight and absorb every rippling reflection.
On the far banks, I saw trees and rolling distances of land that looked cold and alien. I wanted to stop my journey somehow, to get off this floating coffin and away from the currents that kept pulling me toward or away from something unknown. But there were shadows in between the trees. Shapes milling about on those faraway hills that made my bowels loose and my eyes water. I knew enough to know I was in a kind of hell, but I still feared there were worse hells on offer if I only dared to ask.
And then I woke up.
Blinking, I looked around the hospital room. I knew this place. I was in the long-term care unit of Groveland Medical Center. They probably thought I was in a coma. I had to think. Get my head straight. She wasn’t here yet, but I only had a few moments, and if I didn’t finish before she came back, I may never get another chance.
My name is Marisol Jennings. I am twenty-nine years old. When I was eighteen, I moved to Oregon to go to college. My parents decided to adopt another child. That child was Ariel. She was seven when they became her foster parents and was eight when they formally adopted her. She was thirteen when she murdered my father.
I know this all sounds insane. If you check into it, you’ll probably find that my father died five years ago of heart failure in his sleep. That’s what the doctors said at the time, after all. And at the time, I bought that. I knew that Ariel was strange—she was always polite, but ever since she was little she’d had this quiet, almost sneaky way about her. I would sometimes catch the way that she looked at my parents or me when she didn’t know I was looking and…it reminded me of an old tomcat we used to have. The way he looked right before he jumped on a mouse or a bird. It was a mean, hungry look, and it always made me shiver.
Still, back then all I knew was that my daddy was dead. My mom took it hard. She started getting more religious, which I was all for, but then I started noticing that her newfound faith was taking an odd turn. She got secretive and more standoffish as she isolated herself from me and her old friends. It was just her and Ariel and their new activities. At first it was just church and study groups. That became tent revivals, which became going to faith healers, and by the time Ariel was fifteen, that had turned into taking the girl out of high school and the two of them taking off to follow the circuits of…well, I don’t know exactly what they are really.
What I do know, what I found out right before…before this happened to me…is that they weren’t going to these gatherings just to watch or listen. Mom was carrying Ariel to perform a service. Because Ariel, it turned out, possessed a very special gift.
She could take people into her dreams.
The gatherings, which from what little I know, sound closer to some kind of cult, called her the Dream Girl. And supposedly, when she touched you and concentrated for a few moments, you would fall into a deep, deep sleep. But it wasn’t a normal sleep. Instead, you were dreaming the most vivid, most real dream you ever had. It didn’t even feel like dreaming at all, according to Mom. It felt like living another life. A life that she gave you.
People would pay good money for the experience. Supposedly it could help them get over guilt or feel better about themselves. Expand their minds. Rid themselves of fears. Get closer to…something. I don’t know. Maybe it did help some people. All I know for sure is what it did to my parents and what it’s doing to me.
The last time I saw Mom, she was sitting at a bus stop outside of Kansas City. Ariel had gone on ahead to get them a room and I’d heard my Mom say she just needed to sit and rest a minute. I had finally tracked them down after nearly three weeks of searching. They’d dropped off the radar the month before, and it had reached the point that Ariel’s school had contacted me after she was absent for two weeks straight with no word or response.
I had spent the past few weeks been ground between twin wheels of fear and anger. I knew something was wrong, and I was starting to have an idea that Ariel was part of the problem, but I didn’t know what was really going on. Had Mom gone insane? Were they involved in some kind of dangerous group that had abducted them? I’d never had a strong connection to Ariel, but I still felt responsible for her well-being, and I certainly didn’t want either one of them getting hurt or ruining their lives. And I had prepared a speech for both of them, about how they needed to get their shit together and come home.
But when I saw Mom sitting on that bus bench, all those words fell away. I hadn’t seen her for six months, and it looked like she’d aged twenty years. Worse than that, she looked sick and frail in a way I’d never seen before. I almost ran to them right away, but something…some deep part of me that remembered that mean, hungry look…kept me back until Ariel had gone and left Mom alone.
My mother looked up at me as I got close, and for half a second, she looked surprised and happy. But then the look was gone, replaced with fear. She told me I needed to go. I needed to get away and leave them alone.
My angry accusations and reprimands started coming back to me. I told her she was crazy. That I wasn’t going anywhere except home with them. She told me about how Ariel had a gift. That they were helping people and I needed to leave them alone. I listened for a minute and then cut her off, telling her that she was full of shit and needed to get some help. If not for her, then for her girls.
That’s when Mom reached out and touched my hand. Her skin was thin and dry as crepe paper and I could barely feel the weight of her urgent squeeze. She said no. That I didn’t understand. Ariel wasn’t a little girl. Not really. That she had known for a long time that something wasn’t right with her, but Ariel had ways of making you do things. See things. That she wasn’t able to stop her. That when my father had tried, she’d made him go away for good.
She was trying to say more when she broke off in a scream, her eyes lifting past me to something beyond. Before I could react, I felt a small, cool hand on my neck and then I was gone.
Gone to a wide, black river, traveling through a night without stars.
I’ve woken up several times since then. I’ve been admitted to a hospital, I don’t know where, as a coma patient. I don’t know if what Ariel can do just wears off over time, or if she wants me to wake up occasionally so I remember what’s going on. So it hurts more.
Either way, I come to every few days. I try to move, but something is wrong with my body. I can’t move my legs, and it’s only recently that I got to where I can move my arms and hands a little. I’d buzz for a nurse, but the call button is on a hook near the wall. I call out, but no one ever comes. I don’t know what kind of place this is, but I only ever get one visitor.
Ariel.
She always comes in smiling, her eyes sharp and her lips wet as she crosses the room and kisses me on the forehead. I feel myself starting to fade back into the deep as soon as she brushes my skin, and by the time she is stroking my head, I’m already tasting the stale air of that other place on my tongue. I try to fight her, to beg for her to let me go, but there’s no point. She has no mercy in her, or at least none for me.
I don’t know what is going on or how she can do what she does. I also don’t know if this phone I’m recording on is all part of some trick of hers. A game to give me false hope. I found it two times ago when I woke up, just laying next to me on the bed. Did she leave it there, or did it fall out of a nurse’s pocket? I’m not in the position to waste time questioning such things. I hid it under me as my sister came into the room.
The next time I woke up I tried calling, but the service has been turned off. This time, I decided to try the recording app instead. If you find this, please believe me. Please try to help me and my Mom, if she’s still alive. But if you come, please be careful. Avoid the young girl that comes to visit me every week. I don’t know what she is, but she’s very dangerous. And whatever you do, don’t let her…
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