I give in and got a motel room. God, the shower felt amazing. Do you know how dirty you can get with a week of not showering?
Nothing on television. The only book to read is the Gideon Bible and I don't feel like reading that. Nothing to stop the painful memories.
Olga. My wife. I don't know why he targeted her. I read that he likes children, but we didn't have any. We tried, but it never happened. But she...she was a teacher. She was always around children. I remember long days in the fall, helping her grade papers.
Perhaps that's how she first saw him. She never told me. We never used to keep secrets, but maybe she didn't think I would believe her. Perhaps I wouldn't have believe her. I don't know.
All I know is that one day she came to me and said she was in trouble. Not with the principal or the school board or a parent, no. In trouble with something else. Someone was following her, but she couldn't elaborate for me. We went to the police, but without a description, they couldn't really do anything.
And then, god, and then the visitations. The night visitations. I would wake up and find her gone from the bed. She would be out in the garden crying. She kept saying she was trying to stop him. Trying to stop him from coming back. I tried to get her to tell me who, but she wouldn't.
I finally saw him on a cold day in February. I was picking Olga up from school and I saw her in her classroom alone. Except then she wasn't alone. There was man with her, a man in a business suit. I tried to peek closer, to see if it was a member of the school board or a parent perhaps, and then I saw his face. Or lack thereof.
I ran into the classroom. I saw her crying. The Pale Man was standing in front of her and...I'm afraid I blacked out here. When I woke up, she was dead. Her body was spread across the desks. The police had already arrived and were trying to ask me questions. And the Pale Man was gone.
It felt good to get that off my chest. I guess sometimes you just need to get clean.
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