Terrorism

In the wake of the tragedy of the Boston bombing, I think of the terror felt by those who experienced the bombing as well as their loved ones who waited for word that their mothers, husbands, daughters, sons, brothers... were okay.

How horrible to be wrought with the fear of not knowing. I remember so many years ago, before 9/11, before shoe bombs at airports and anthrax in letters, before the world was changed forever... I remember the feeling of not knowing, it was more than some can take... how do you move forward if you can't surely say your parents are dead or alive? Sarah's descent into a terrific terror began when her parents went missing... their bodies were never found.... her brother was implicated in their disappearance... her mother's wedding ring was ultimately found in the room where they found Sarah's Diary.

So many questions remain unanswered. I still wonder why about so many things, but I know the terror Sarah felt was real. She believed she was being watched & followed by people she once called friends. She was never quite right after Erika's body was found, but that incident in San Francisco really freaked her out...

Terror comes in many forms... It dwells in the lingering question of What if? and hides around every dark corner. What if they find me today? What if they catch me today? What if they're watching me right now? What if they don't actually exist? What if it's all in my head...

Why?

I received this anonymous email in my inbox the other day. It really made me wonder why... why I keep writing and searching... why we do anything for that matter. After all these years why I still believe when there are a lot of people out there questioning if Sarah’s diary is even real...

Hi Heather,

If that’s your real name... I recently found out about Sarah’s Diary via a friend’s facebook page. I followed the link and started to check out her videos and pictures. Some were really pretty but deep and dark, and some of the posts started me thinking about a lot of stuff from my own life. Anyway, I was curious so I bought the ebook of Sarah’s Diary and read it in a weekend. Now I’m even more confused.

When I read your blog I see you talk about your interactions with Sarah, how much you miss her and are still looking for her. Are you for real though? I can’t tell if she is fact or fiction.

The main questions going through my head are, Why would you still be looking after all this time? Don’t you want closure... I mean after all that... everyone pretty much ending up dead and the diary being found at such a gruesome crime scene, I mean if Sarah was really around however many years ago don’t you think she’s probably dead now too? Those missing persons cases you write about, most of those seem to end with a dead body...

I’m not trying to upset you I just want to know now too. Is Sarah’s Diary really real? Why do you keep looking? What makes you think she might still be out there, alive?

---

Why have I been thinking about this anonymous letter for 5 days now? I want to respond, I want to know the answers to those questions too...

Lindsey's Devil

"Lindsey began to talk to Heather. She told Heather how smart she was for watching her all this time and picking up her habits. During school they would have to pretend that they did not talk. After school sometimes they would meet in the woods so they could talk. Lindsey and Heather began to play this game called Profile. They would pick people out of the yearbook and watch their habits. They’d watch everything—the classes they took, when they got to school, when they left, who their friends were, how they dressed, the routes they took to class, what they ate for lunch, how they groomed themselves, and basically everything there was to notice about them. ...I asked Heather where Lindsay is ‘cause we could sure use her help right now. Heather said that Lindsey just stopped going to school one day and was never seen again. Nobody even noticed she was gone. To them, she had been gone a long time ago." ~Sarah's Diary, October 15, 1993

I haven't thought about Lindsey in a long time. I knew her better than Sarah realized. I went to meet Lindsey in the woods one day after school, like we did all the time, but she never showed up. Lindsey had told me about this guy who called himself Devil. She said she saw him show up in town one day and he looked at her with the oddest expression; she said it was like two ghosts recognizing each other. Lindsey always saw more than she let on and she could disappear in plain sight; she had a talent to make herself invisible. She followed Devil and watched him, playing the same Profile game we played together at school. The day she didn't meet me in the woods was the day she was going to tell me what happened when he talked to her. All she told me was that she wasn't supposed to see him, that he moved with the shadows and that he told her if she didn't go back to being a little girl, he would make her grow up really fast. Lindsey was scared, I could tell. She wouldn't tell me over the phone what she'd seen -- that's why we were meeting. She was going to tell me what this Devil guy had been doing, where he'd gone and who he'd been with; she said I'd never believe it, but she had to tell me. She said if anything ever happened to her, I needed to know. She never showed up. I always wondered if she actually had been there, watching me. I still wonder if she's watching me and if she knows what happened to Sarah.

Body

Have you ever seen a dead body? I feel like I’m not sure anymore what Sarah saw, but I know my own experiences... I’ve personally seen a crime scene after the fact. After the police came in and thought they got all the evidence, and the body was gone. The dogs were gone, the drugs were gone... There was hair on the floor in a few places, and  shoes and things, clothing - we picked out the last outfit she would wear and which pair of chuck taylor shoes, books, self-help books...

And then one of us cleaning up, she found the broken murder weapon. We couldn't, didn't know what to believe and didn't believe and even the cops told us to “just throw it out, (they had)... everything,” thinking the murder weapon was a tool from the fireplace, it wasn't. We threw it out and within a few months it was confirmed by the killer himself. We had touched it, tossed it into the trash.

I remember the tomatoes chopped on the counter and the big knife... I remember a lot of little details. I wonder about the rookie cop who answered the missing persons call and found her. Saw her body through the sliding glass door and the dogs running around the yard. I've lost too many friends at this point. Even years later the memory is like last week.  Like yesterday...

I wish Sarah would just come home and face the truth, get some help and let us all move on in our lives. We can’t forget, but can we forgive?