Author - Essy
Disclaimer - No infringement of copyright was intended here.
Archival - By permission only
Her diary was different.
She'd found the book behind her dresser, while cleaning: bound in black leather, with loops on the spine for holding a long absent pen. Deciding that reliving old times would be better than vacuuming, she'd settled down on her bed to re-read the old entries. Locking the door to her room first, as proof against her inquisitive six year old brother, who was likely to disturb her.
She was barely a few pages in when she realised it had changed. There were events and people that she had no memory of, painstakingly recorded in her own handwriting.
After a while the pattern began to emerge. All the strange entries, mentioned or were influenced by a little boy called JJ. Sarah had always been a solitary person, preferring her own company, but the Sarah of the diary, had apparently been best friends with this boy.
Sarah recognised the diary's transformation as magical. She'd seen magic before, of course, then it had been the invasive, flashy spells of the terrible Goblin King. This was magic of another sort. Quiet...personal...disconcerting.
"I'm nine years old today! Uncle Martin gave me this diary to write in. He says if I don't turn out to be an actress like Mommy, I can be a famous writer if I get started early. I'm going to write in here every day, even if I don't feel like it. I want to be a good writer. I like to make up stories.
I should introduce myself. I'm Sarah Williams. I live in New York with my Mommy and my Daddy. My Mommy is Linda Williams. She's a pretty famous actress. Daddy thinks I should have a brother or sister to play with, but Mommy says it would be the kiss of death for her career. I'm secretly glad. I don't want a brother or sister. I prefer hanging out with my friend JJ.
JJ has been my best friend for years, ever since he moved here from Nebraska. On his first day at school he showed up dressed all funny. He just stared into space all day and wouldn't talk to anybody. He wouldn't take his mittens off either, even when Mr. Bark asked him.
At the end of the day, he took me aside and asked what sort of clothes he should wear. The next day he came in dressed as a normal kid instead of somebody from a history book and he had a note from his Mom, explaining that he shouldn't take off the gloves at school, because he had a skin problem on his hands.
JJ isn't his real name, but his real name's weird, so I made up the nickname. Mommy says JJ's family are probably New Agers. I asked what that meant and she said it was the sort of people who used Tarot cards and stared at crystals. She said it was no way to raise a child, but I think it sounds kind of neat. JJ doesn't like me to go to his house, but he comes to play here all the time. He comes up with the best games and stories in the world. My Dad says JJ has a mind like liquid mercury."
Reading onwards through the book, Sarah found many more entries about this mysterious friend of whom she had no memory, although some of the things her other self mentioned, inspired a strange feeling of deja vu.
"We had the day off from school today, so JJ and I went to the park. We lay on the grass, looking for faces in the clouds and talking about nothing in particular.
JJ had just said that one of the clouds looked like a falcon, so I said in this dreamy voice `I'd love to be a falcon.' JJ gave me a strange look and asked why. `Because I'd love to fly, just to be soaring through the sky with the wind in your wings would be so amazing.'
He said `All kinds of birds fly. Me? I'd be an owl. There's something magical about them.'
I just laughed and said, they'd have to be pretty magical to turn you into one from being a regular kid.' We watched the clouds some more for a moment then I said `Not that it wouldn't be fun. You could be an owl and I could be a falcon and we'd fly together. Sometimes I wish there really was magic.'
That's when JJ gave me this weird look, like he was testing me. Then he pulled this red book out of his bag and handed it to me.
`The labyrinth? What's this about?'
`It's a history book...kinda. I want you to have it, as a present.'
I thought that was really sweet, so I took out the pendant I'd been making in art and gave it to him. I was kind of worried that he'd think it was a girlie present, but it's not a necklace or anything it's just a circle and a crescent made out of clay and painted to look like metal.
JJ smiled and said something like `A loving gift in friendship given can't even be by magic taken.'
I *hate* it when he quotes weird stuff like that. I never get what he's saying. Maybe once I read the book I'll understand him better. "
Sarah turned the pages with trepidation. She had just got to a few months before her thirteenth birthday. Soon would come the pages of the diary that she had always skipped over when reading it.
When her parents had divorced, Sarah had blamed herself and turned to cutting her arms as a form of relief. She hadn't been trying to kill herself, she'd just needed the physical pain to drown out the pain of her emotions.
The terrible and occasionally blood-spattered pages had continued until her father's new girlfriend, Karen had noticed and forced Sarah to get help. Sarah had *loathed* her for that, considering that only her real parents had the right to intervene. The pages of this new diary, however, told a different story...
"Mom and Dad are getting divorced. They just told me this afternoon out of the blue. Apparently they've been thinking about it for ages. I know they argue a lot, but I couldn't help being upset. I mean until they said that, I really thought they still loved each other.
I couldn't cope, so I phoned up JJ. He came right over and we sat in my room. Talking to him made me feel ten times better than talking to Mom and Dad. They couldn't talk to me without sniping at each other. JJ made a lot of sense though. He kind of knows what it's like. He doesn't live with both his parents. His dad has to live far away because of his job. Anyway, he explained that your parents not living together means when they're with you, they spend more time with you and you get to know them better. He was really sweet when I said it was my fault and told me that I could never cause anything bad and that having a daughter like me had probably been what had kept them together so long in the first place. Then he said that if he had somebody as sweet as me to live with then he'd put up with just about anything if it meant he didn't have to move away. Then he kissed me. It was really quick. He just brushed my lips with his then pulled away, scared that I was going to be angry. I wasn't angry, though and I proved it by leaning forwards and kissing him back.
My family is breaking up and I can't seem to get worked up about it. I have other things on my mind.
I think I'm falling in love with JJ."
Sarah flipped through the rest of the pages detailing the innocent love of her other self and her friend. It stung too much to know that simply having the right friend could have made her own torment go away all those years ago. She skipped forwards, until she came to the entry that made her pause...and realise.
"JJ didn't come to school today. I was worried about him, so when school was over, I decided to go to his house. I'd never been before, but I had the address memorised. When I got there, it turned out to be a trailer. There was a lady with long red hair and green eyes sitting outside looking into a crystal. I could hear JJ crying inside the trailer.
I went over to the lady and asked her if JJ was okay. She looked me up and down then said `Jareth's father has died. We return home tonight.' I asked if I could speak to JJ before he left for Nebraska and how long they'd be staying for. The lady turned out to be JJ's mom and she said `We leave for our *real* home, not Nebraska. You may speak to him before we go, for we won't be returning. Jareth has been chosen.'
I ran inside the trailer and found the insides had been covered in purple material, mirrors, crystals and stuff. JJ was sat in a corner crying. He was dressed funny again, like the first time I met him.
`JJ?'
That was all I said before I realised I didn't know how to continue. As it turned out, I didn't need to say anything else. He looked up at me then and I saw what had happened to his eyes. They were different colours now, with the pupils different sizes. While I was staring at them, he spoke. His voice was still choked up because he'd been crying.
`They changed earlier today. I have to go back now. I've been chosen.'
`JJ, what do you mean?'
`It's real Sarah, the book I gave you. The labyrinth? It's all real. I'm the goblin king now.'
I walked over to hug him. `JJ, I know you want to pretend it's not happening, but you have to face up to...'
Then I stopped. I physically couldn't walk. JJ was standing in front of me, with his hand out, biting his lip.
`Sarah, please. I know you can believe. You're better than the others. Please believe me.'
I was standing there, frozen, looking into his crazy new eyes, trying to find my friend in them.
`It's magic, *real* magic. It's pulling me and it won't let go.'
He started to look really scared. His hand was shaking, so he dropped it and I could move again. I ran for the door of the trailer, but he called after me.
`Please don't go. I'm to young to do this. I can't cope on my own.'
I could hear the despair in his voice, but it wasn't JJ pleading with me. It was some strange creature from another world. I ran out the door to the road and he was screaming after me.
`I HATE YOU! I WISH YOU WERE DEAD! WHY DID YOU LEAVE ME? EVERYBODY LEAVES ME?'
I could hear things being smashed inside the trailer.
I kept on running."
The diary resolutely didn't mention JJ from that point on. He seemed to have disappeared. Sarah began to skim read, flicking to the important dates. Her Mom meeting Jeremy, her father's remarriage, her brother's birth...and there it was. Right on Toby's birthday.
"Dad and Karen couldn't reach Mom. I said I was old enough to stay home and they let me. I wish I'd gone with them. My little brother was born today, but all I can think about is how much I hate him, because all of this is his fault. If he hadn't been born, then Dad would have been at home to protect me. I was so scared.
I went to bed early, because sitting in the den all alone was creeping me out. I was lying in bed reading, but I couldn't sleep. I was waiting for Dad to call, so I'd know if I had a little brother or sister. That's pretty stupid all by itself, they could have found out ages ago, but they told the doctors they wanted to be surprised.
Anyway, I was in bed when JJ appeared. He looks so different now. He's at least twenty and he's dressing weirdly. He had these old fashioned clothes on, with a cape and everything. He looked up at me and said my name. Just that. `Sarah.' So, I screamed, because he'd just appeared in the corner of my room and for a moment I hadn't known it was him. I'd just thought there was a strange man standing in my room.
`Please Sarah, I have to explain.'
`I don't want to hear it Jareth.' He looked at me like I'd just slapped him across the face. I can't remember the last time I'd called him by his given name. I've been mad as hell at him before now, but he was still always JJ.
Today was different though. Today, *he* was different. This wasn't the JJ I'd grown up with. This was a strange older man, who wasn't human, who knew magic, who said he wished I was dead. Nope. Not JJ.
`You lied to me.' My voice was expressionless at first, but as I started to think about what he'd done to me, my voice climbed higher and louder till I was screaming at him. `You lied to me over and over! Do you think you can just say sorry and make it all better? That you can make up for forcing me to live a lie. For tricking me? For trying to hurt me?!'
His voice shook. If I didn't know better I'd have thought he was about to cry, as he told me `I never wanted to hurt you Sarah!'
`But you did! You lied to me all my life. You made me fall in love with you, then you just took off. You pretended you were like me and all the time you were some demonic...*thing*!'
He grabbed my arm. He's so much bigger than me now, I couldn't get free. So I started scratching him, trying to make him let go and screaming at him. `Let go of me! Don't touch me! I wish I never met you!'
He dropped my arm then and it was like all the colour fell out of his face. Then he said `I could never refuse you anything you wished for, Sarah.' He looked at me sadly. `The world will change at midnight, but I'll always be watching over you. Should you need me...' He didn't finish the sentence, he just vanished.
When Dad and Karen came home, I was up in my room crying. I didn't want to come down and look at the baby. I was too scared, wondering about what JJ had meant would happen at midnight. They think I'm sulking because I'm not the only child any more. Well, why break the habit of a lifetime, by understanding me now, right?
It's 11:59 now. I'm scared of what he might do. At least it sounds like he's not coming back again. I really did love him, but he's changed forever now."
The entries that followed corresponded with her memories. They made no mention of JJ and the only references to the labyrinth were to her first hand experience of it four years ago.
A cold chill began to creep down Sarah's back. She'd thought they would never meet again, but they had done. A meeting for which the terrible implications of her own behaviour were only now beginning to dawn on her as she spoke slowly to herself.
`I rejected him. Our one chance to start again and I rejected him. I was dumb! I was young and dumb! Why did he hold me to it?'
She flipped through the chronicles of her own amnesia to the last page. Instead of her own neat writing adorning the final pages of the journal, there was a letter, pressed between the pages. The writing was hard to decipher and the paper crumpled and thin. As though someone had worn away the surface of the sheet, by repeatedly erasing their writing and changing their wording. A thoughtful letter then. A carefully thought out letter, written faintly in a shaky, spidery hand.
"You'll be angry at me for letting you read this Sarah, should you ever get a chance to read these words. It may be cowardly of me, but I couldn't bear to leave without at least trying to remind you. I feel like I'm sending out a message in a bottle, not knowing if you'll ever pick up this diary again to look through it.
I'm old Sarah. I'm an old man and I'm dying. That's why I'm restoring this diary. It's not the same as returning your memories, but I couldn't bear to think that once I was gone, you would only remember me as the cold villain you saw me as when we last met. I wanted so much to speak out to you, to explain, but you wouldn't have forgiven me if I'd gone against your wishes."
`You should have done it anyway!' She whispered, tightly grasping the crumpled page in her hands. `I was too young to know what I really wanted. I didn't understand. You should have made me see!'
"I have to finish now. No doubt you'll hate me for leaving you this, but I think I can cope with that hate. What I couldn't bear is the thought of going to my grave, thinking that the only person I ever loved wouldn't remember me.
I Love You
JJ"
It took a great deal of willpower, to make her trembling hands close the diary, but she had to. She couldn't bear the thought of the ink being spoilt by the touch of her tears.