Craaven

Chapter 35: Mortemville, Montana 1987 October 20th

Things have been hectic the past few days and I've been wracking my brain trying to figure out what to do about it. Max has started having nightmares almost every night without fail. He'll wake up in the middle of the night screaming and crying and babbling incoherently about everyone being slaughtered. These nightmares are always so horrific but he never seems to be able to remember them; I'm guessing because they're so traumatic, his mind just suppresses them. The only thing he does seem to remember is an odd fear that he now has of Rosewood. He actually wakes up in the morning excited to be at school and when he comes home, he insists on staying out as long as possible. And even when he has no more opportunities to stay away from home as long as possible, he always asks to walk around outside with me.

Obviously not wanting to add to his suffering because he is clearly distressed, I always walk with him however long he wants to be out. I've tried asking him on one of our many hikes why he didn't want to be home but the only response I ever seem to get out of him is, "It's just scary."

I'm very worried about him. I don't think it's because the house is "just scary," there's definitely something happening in his dreams that's making the house frightening for him. He's never had this problem before; if anything, he used to be more comfortable at Rosewood than I ever was. I want to know what his nightmares are about and why they happen so often and why they randomly started happening now for whatever reason.

Max's nightmares have pretty much been keeping me prisoner in Rosewood because I've been trying to do what I can to help him either stop having nightmares or be less afraid of his own house. Nothing seems to be working but I'm still trying.

1987 October 21st

Daniel took Max to his first therapy appointment today (I had no idea they even scheduled one but I'm glad they did). I'm unsure what happened over the course of the appointment, since I was busy snooping through the boy's drawings, trying to find something helpful. But I did know that it wasn't too helpful in figuring out what the cause was, by evidence of Daniel and Lucy's conversation on how it went. I was a little dismayed by that news but on the bright side, I found some drawings that might be able to help.

Max had drawn a few obscure scribbles that seemed too eerie and disturbing for him to have drawn. There was an excessive use of black and red in these drawings; I couldn't figure out what exactly it was depicting but a few of these scribbles vaguely looked like screaming people. I may be reading too much into these drawings but I'd like to think they can help.

I didn't want to ask Max about them at first, because I had to do an extreme level of snooping to find them so I knew he had hidden them for a reason. I didn't want him to lose trust in me. But eventually, I found myself struggling to not blurt out every single question that I had for him when we went on our usual walk. I was surprised I still managed to keep everything to myself but, by Gawd, was it hard.

I don't know when I plan to ask about them. I think I'll ask if I ever catch him drawing another one of these obscure scenes but I have no idea when that will be. I don't want it to be too long from now because, every day that he spends in that place, the sneakier he becomes when trying to leave. I'm afraid I'll wake up one day to find that he had run away and ended up getting himself into even more trouble.

1987 October 30th

Max's nightmares are only getting worse and still, I haven't made any significant progress on why this is happening. I still know nothing about those drawings that I had found and it's stressing me out that he seemingly can't remember anything about these dreams. I want to help him but I just don't know how.

His screaming fits only get worse after each nightmare and it's getting harder and harder to calm him down. It's also getting harder and harder to get him to sleep. He doesn't want to sleep just as much as he doesn't want to step foot in his own home and it's starting to drive the Lockwoods mad. They don't know why this is happening either and Max's stubbornness to not want to sleep or come home from school is causing them both to get snippy and impatient with him. It feels like I'm the only one still being patient and understanding with him.