The Blackwater Journal

Sixteen-year-old Alanda Streets has begun a journal, and one of the first entries is about some photos she found in the attic. In the inscribed photos, which were taken twenty-two years before, her father is standing with a woman named Marissa and a child named Kathryn. Alanda has never heard of Marissa or Kathryn, and a few days later, she returns to the attic and discovers newspaper clippings from the time when the photos were taken. The first article she comes across is about the disappearance of Marissa and Kathryn, and then, in the next day's paper, she reads that their bodies have been discovered. Before long, her father is arrested, after which he is committed to a psychiatric institution for evaluation. Finally, there is the front-page headline from the last newspaper clipping: DOUBLE MURDERER ESCAPES FROM STATE MENTAL INSTITUTION. Alanda decides to send her father an anonymous letter accusing him of the murders and urging him to turn himself into the police. Two days after the letter arrives, Alanda is locked into her parent's bedroom by her father. Her mother and brother seem to have vanished, and her father tells her that she will have to remain alone in the bedroom for two weeks, after which she can expect her "situation to change." It isn't long before Alanda realizes what her father means by a change of situation—he is going to murder her. Excerpt: It's really difficult to describe how frightened I was. The night before, I had a dream where I saw a woman hanging from a tree, with her head twisted to one side and a blank expression on her face. Just the saddest thing—and it was probably going to happen to me. I looked above me and saw that there was a fairly large chandelier light fixture in the center of the bedroom. Was that my gallows? Would my father throw a rope around it and then place the noose around my neck? And if that was the way it was going to happen, I knew that once the noose was around my neck, my father would end my life without any remorse or pity--even despite all my terrified pleas for mercy; even despite my last desperate attempts to escape as I lashed out at him with my feet and hands and clawed at him with my fingernails; even despite my final pleas to God. Inevitably, after all my struggles, I would soon find myself with my hands tied behind my back and standing on a chair with the noose around my neck, and then…then would come the final agony as the chair was removed and I struggled desperately for air, struggled with every ounce of my being to survive, but then, slowly—because it would be slowly—I would begin to strangle to death. Whimpering and pleading and crying and gasping… There is nothing inside the room that Alanda can use to help free herself. Is there any way out? Or is her life about to end? Excerpt: And then, later, maybe someone besides my father will find my journal, and he or she will be reading it and feeling all the things that I had gone through before I died. If my mother found the journal, she might have it printed up as a kind of memorial to women who have been violated. However, the journal wouldn't end with my last entry—it would end with an epilogue after my last entry. And the epilogue would describe who had found my body, how I had died, and what, if anything, had happened to my father.