Earthly Cares

Sam wants me to try again. I don't like writing. I don't like diaries.

There's a reason I stopped writing last time... actually, a couple reasons. Not only was it not making things any clearer, my parents would get into my journal and try to figure out what was wrong. My foster parents, I mean.

Sam promised that he and Uncle wouldn't peruse something that is private to me. I met Uncle. He's blind. So he wouldn't be able to read it anyways. At least I can say that maybe my... instability is not completely my fault. Uncle seems pretty insane sometimes too. Maybe I'm just not used to his... eccentricities.

He's patient, though. I like that. He won't make me live with him if I don't want to. They finalized the adoption, but I don't have to live with him. I don't know what I want to do. I loved my foster family, but they never told me that I wasn't one of theirs.

After all this time... I'm not a freak. According to Uncle, our entire family had Gifts... and all were somehow tied to music. He charms instruments, Sam summons things with music... I.... do what I do.

Uncle says my mom could take peoples' worries away with her voice... he called it a mental vacation. I'm not sure what he means. And he says that Sam's mom, who was my mom's twin, could heal people with her voice. He says they used to sing duets in hospitals. I think it's all too fairy-tale to hear.

Maybe he's spinning it so that I can be proud of the dead. Maybe all they could do was hurt others and destroy things, like me. But then... Sam would be hard to explain. He's a gentle person, Sam. He's like Uncle, but not so weird.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm actually crazy. That I imagine the Otherside in order to make myself feel better about putting people in temporary comas by playing the violin. What if I imagine the ghosts? I might be making up vivid fantasies, illusions of grandeur, in order to convince myself that I'm not crazy, that hurting people can be justified somehow.

I don't want to be crazy.

Don't want to think about it right now.

Whenever I think there's hope in the Otherside, something goes wrong. I accidentally brought some people into the Otherside. Sam was taken by Alaric. Tracked them into Hell.

There's a rebellion. Prisoners from Hell have overtaken their guards and they're led by Hector.

I have to stop them. It's my duty.

Sam can't come. He's useless without an instrument and he cannot bring his into the Otherside. As much as I hate to admit it, though, I can't do this alone.

The only one left is that Zeke person... the other one was too erratic and the janitor was too detached. I don't like it, but this is how it has to be.


I don't think I'm coming back. If anything should go wrong (as things happen in the Otherside), I am going to sever the link and send the Zeke boy back. If he goes with me, which isn't a definite possibility at this point. He didn't seem to like the Otherside much when he went the first time.


Death isn't scary for me in the way that is scary for other people. When I die, the only thing that awaits me is an eternity ferrying souls and growing stranger.

All Guides were human once.

I sometimes wonder when I'll cease to be myself. Every time I go over there, I am more likely to slip into Lucia. More likely to accept another small measure of wildness. Is that the real me? Is this a metamorphosis into my true form? If so, then why am I so afraid of it?