Last night I couldn’t sleep and as I stared around at the darkness of my room, I had a thought. So I picked up my iPad and typed up something. Will it ever go anywhere? I have no idea. It’s utterly and completely different from anything else I’ve ever written. But in case you’re interested, here’s what 2am looks like in my head:

•

Fear of the dark is universal, they say. Fire was not discovered because man needed to cook, but because he wished to drive away what hid in the night. The creature under the bed, the monster in the closet, these are familiar terrors. But the things that live in shadow, the hobgoblins and fanged ones and things that go bump in the night, they are but shadows themselves, shadows of the true darkness, the unrelenting and unremitting blackness of the soul.

I do not recall my first exposure to the corruption commonly called evil, but when I was eight it looked out at me from the eyes of an old man while we waited at the bus stop on Lexington and seventieth. He might have been anyone. Just another kindly grandfather going downtown to visit family. But he wasn’t. And in the moment I pulled my mother away and suggested walking rather than riding, I realized that his darkness had seen me, had recognized that within me which even I did not yet know.

It is so many years ago now, that meeting with the old man who became the first entry in my first journal. I am an old woman and death is coming for me. I will not go easy, and my enemies will not be kind, but I have lived well and brought light whenever possible.

And I have children. Four daughters. I loved their fathers, in my way, but none could stick once they realized what I was. They took my children, but we have kept in touch. And while I would not wish my sight, my curse, my blessing, my avocation on any of them, should they find themselves in my position, I hope these journals will prove useful.

No one wants to be forgotten.