Page 74 of Lucy Undying (Dracula #1)

74

Salt Lake City, December 12, 2024

My Dear Butter Chicken,

You haven’t written yet, but I thought of something else. While it’s very charming that you don’t know how to use a phone and are therefore blissfully unaddicted like the rest of us, it does make logistics difficult. Once you’re done in Boston, I can’t keep sending letters to your therapist’s office.

How about this. There’s a place here called City Creek Canyon Trail. It goes pretty deep into the hills and mountains. I walk there every night just to be alone. There’s a big wooden post labeled “Bonneville Shoreline Trail.” At the bottom of that post is a sign that says “Absolutely No Fireworks.” Once I hear from you and know you’re leaving Boston, I’ll tuck my letters in the space behind that sign. Because without you, there are absolutely no fireworks.

You’ll know it’s the right post, because my backpack strap will be nailed to the top. Like a flag—the thing that started our romance. Yes, I kept it. It reminds me of you. But since I can’t figure out a way to make it into some sort of bracelet, this is the next best use.

Anyway, remember the fantasy I told you about? The one where you show up with Dracula’s head?

I’ve been dreaming about him lately.

I don’t remember much about that night when I was a kid. Maybe I blocked it. Maybe I was just really young. Maybe what came after was so much worse that the first trauma sort of got swallowed up. The first rumblings of an avalanche of shit to follow.

Have I told you about the bedroom my mom made me switch to, after I invited Dracula into our house? Of all the bad things that happened to me, that bedroom was the worst, with its cathedral ceiling sloping down to a single round window—round and red like an eye watching me—surrounded on either side by these little closets set into the wall a couple feet above the floor. I honestly can’t explain why those closets were so terrifying, why it felt like they were breathing, why they haunt my nightmares to this day.

Dracula was my first monster, and then the rest of my life became filled with them. I started running away just so I wouldn’t have to sleep in that room anymore. I found girlfriends and begged them to let me stay over for as long as I could keep them hidden from my mom (who would then pay them off or threaten them so they’d kick me out). I moved as far away as I could, and it was never far enough.

Sometimes, when I’m stuck between sleeping and waking, I’m back there. That bedroom, those closets, that red window, waiting for me all this time. I don’t move, but the window grows closer, and closer, so close I can’t focus on it anymore, so close it blurs and doubles.

Two red eyes, looming over me, watching me, frozen between sleeping and waking.

I’ve had that dream since I was a kid. And it’s getting worse now, slipping in whenever you don’t take my dreams. It’s him. I know it’s him.

But as awful as the dreams are, I wake up feeling hopeful.

We’re getting closer.

XOXO

Iris