9/3/25 - Ohio Portal
Got to go to the soup kitchen to do some painting under cover of dark. Installers have almost finished building the kitchen. I could almost smell the future food. Food of the future. Whichever. Met an Ohio demon, Bune. Nice fellow. A bit unwieldy up here, like me. He’s a dragon but manages to get himself into roughly man shape with scaly skin. Tells people it’s a skin condition. He’s also got three heads. Fortunately the center head is a man. Handsome, with a full head of red hair much better kempt than my unruly black locks. The other two heads sit in cavities beneath his shoulder blades, on the right is a dog, and on the left is a gryphon. They’re covered by clothes most of the time, which they hate. When he takes off his shirt they push out of their cavities on long, swiveling necks that turn and arch up over his shoulders, looking forward. It’s a most striking effect.
So are his abs.
We painted together. An awful lavender that Willow picked out. His three heads and me got along mostly well. I invited him to come see the goat barn one of these days before we leave here. His human and dog heads were all for it, but the gryphon head shrieked and attempted a pecking.
Bune says he can wear a shirt.
But to cover those abs would cause a thousand nights of lamenting.
We’ll work something out.
Heaven, there are no days here. Only unremitting horror.
Well, despite my most abject protestations, it seems Evelyn is here to stay. I threw myself at the mercy of The Administrator, but to no avail. He says transfers of this nature are out of his hands. Rare, in fact, and probably due to some kind of deal made by higher ups. These things happen, he says, and generally can’t be undone… unless she does some heinous thing up here, which is certainly possible. Perhaps I could antagonize her…
Not that I need to, she walked barefoot in the pond at the picnic today, scandalizing everyone with her ankles. She talked _with the men_, can you imagine? She called cross stitch dull, said she’d rather burst into flames than host tea at our home, didn’t compliment the other ladies on the food they imagined up for the picnic, didn’t even introduce herself to the other ladies, rolled her eyes at them, then disappeared into the forest.
She’s still not home actually. What is she even doing out there?
I’m not worried _for her_. I am a little concerned about my reputation. I’ll be damned if I let her drag us both down to Hell.
I that it? Is that what she’s doing out there? Plotting with demons?
Oh! I must find her!
9/3/25 - Deadwater
“Hubby” is going on a business trip. Some restauranteur convention. I hope he gets some strange while he’s there… unfortunately (?) he seems like the faithful type.
I don’t even want to think about when he gets back…
So I’m not going to. I’m going to write about my weird, hybrid daughter instead. Another problem I don’t know how to handle.
It’s no wonder I drank. This girl is… a lot. Her earthquake obsession is getting worse. She lays in the backyard for hours with her ear to the ground, no literally, and listens, “For signs, Mom, SIGNS. It’s coming. And it’s going to be big. The cathedral will fall and then-” Here she always gets a weird smile. “-I have dreams. Things are going to be good here again.”
I feel like I should tell her.
She barely eats. She knows she’s different. She’s a puzzle and doesn’t have all the pieces. I could help her… right?
She won’t tell me her dreams. She doesn’t trust me. I think, in the past, I must have treated her differently. Maybe other me resented her? The journals barely mention her except for as a chronicle of how different she is than her brother.
I don’t know how to be a mother.
I don’t know how to do any of this.
I can’t throw salt at any of my problems right now.
I should probably clarify, Miriam says things will be good here again, and I hope she means it. This town is a ghost of what it was when the Circus was here, when I was here last. Most of the businesses are closed. Only the seaside restaurants, like Ted’s are still open because at least out-of-towners driving through will stop by those. There are a few stalwart artists, those who know how to leverage the internet for sales, but so many people have left or are unemployed. The main problem is the fishing and crabbing that goes on off our coast. Apparently every now and then the town experiences what they call a die off. Because, well, everything dies. The beaches are strewn with rotting corpses of all kinds of sea life. Dungeness crab, mostly, but a lot of other things, too. It’s horrible. The beaches reek. With no fishing the town has nothing. And this sometimes lasts for years.
Miriam says the earthquake will knock down the cathedral and things will be good again… I wish I knew what she meant.
I think I am going to talk to her.
I have to.
