Conception

I still remember the exact date and time. It was June 20th, 1969, exactly one month before the moon landing. The hands on the alarm clock read about half-past two, and if I didn’t know any better, I would have thought it was the two in the afternoon. The light that poured into our room from the window was just that bright.

It was hot that summer. Since our bedroom was in the attic, we’d taken the heavy drapes off the window in order to let the cross-breeze through. The window was wide open, and the sheers were billowing away from the frame, flapping wildly. But strangely, the air felt still.

Somehow, Linda was still fast asleep in her bed. She was a bit of a heavy sleeper, but to this day, I don’t understand how she managed to sleep through that. When I think back on it now, I’m just so glad she was.

I got out of bed to figure out what it was. We lived in the country, so sometimes people made a wrong turn down our driveway and ended up at our house. At night, I’d sometimes catch their headlights shining into our living room window briefly before the driver realized their mistake and turned around. I thought there was no way someone’s lights could be that bright, let alone shine into a second-floor window.

I stuck my head out of the window and looked around, only to find nothing at ground level producing that light. So I looked up. It was so bright that I couldn’t stand to look at it directly. I couldn’t even make out what it was, even while squinting.

The light felt hot, but a cool breeze kissed my skin. There was this deep reverberation I felt in my chest. A dull roar that grew closer and closer. When the sound felt like it was on top of me, my eyes snapped open.

It was morning. Judging by the slight gradient on the horizon, it wasn’t that long after sunrise either. I sat up to see the car that had just driven past me crest a hill and disappear. Apparently, I’d ended up in a drainage ditch next to the road at the edge of someone’s corn field. I was still in my floral nightgown with no memory of how I got there.

I didn’t see any signage along the road, but I could tell it was one of the state routes since the road was paved. Ignoring the painful gravel and thorny plants under my bare feet, I got up and started walking down the side of the road. The only thing on my mind at that time was ‘God, I hope nobody at home noticed I’m gone…’

It wasn’t long until a rusty pickup driven by a farmer passed by and gave me a ride. He was someone I recognized, and he recognized my family after I gave him my address, but we both pretended not to know each other. It was better that way. Even if he’d asked what happened to me, I wouldn’t have been able to explain it anyway.

On the drive over, the realization dawned on me that I’d somehow ended up halfway across the county.

I had him drop me off at the edge of our property. His truck must’ve been as old as I was, and I didn’t want the loud, sputtering engine to wake up my entire family if they were still asleep. By the time I reached our house, my feet were caked in dust from the dirt road we called a driveway.

I crept around to the back, where our kitchen was. It was a good litmus test to see if mom was up, because if she was, she’d be in there making breakfast. Thankfully, the door was closed—she wasn’t up yet.

But that screen door off the kitchen was squeaky as hell, so I had to pull it open extra slow, and only enough for me to squeeze through. Then, I opened the back door and slipped into the kitchen, making sure to close each door softly behind me.

In retrospect, it’s strange to think about how easy it was for me to sneak back in, but it was just one of those times and places where nobody felt the need to lock their doors at night. This was before America’s Most Wanted and the True Crime genre had Americans shaking in their boots. It was before we even had the term serial killer.

As I tiptoed through the kitchen, trying to make my way to the stairs, I heard a door open and close down the hall. I quickened my pace, but the stairs were so creaky that it forced me to slow back down and take them one at a time. Then I heard the toilet flush and hoped the sound might disguise my footsteps as I hurried back up to the attic.

Linda was still asleep by the time I got back to our room. Downstairs, I could hear mom’s slippers scrape against the linoleum as she shuffled into the kitchen. I pulled off my nightgown, which was dirty anyway, and used it to wipe off the dirt crusting my feet. It was only then that I noticed the flecks of blood on my panties.

It wasn’t close to that time of the month, so what was it from? I didn’t even want to think about it. Having just woken up in a ditch on the side of the road, it was better to just ignore something like that, to put it out of my mind.

I took off my panties and threw them under my bed so I could toss them in the garbage later. Then, I put on a similar nightgown and crawled back into bed. If Linda questioned the change of clothes, I could just lie to her. She was thirteen—it was easy to trick her and convince her that her memory was wrong.

Since there was no way I was going to fall back asleep, I decided to just wait until the alarm went off. But as I lay there in bed, I looked over at the alarm clock one last time. It still showed half-past two. The second hand clicked back and forth like time was stuck in that precise moment.

My heart started to pound in my chest. I rolled over and pulled the blanket over my head.

‘Don’t think about it, Janet. Put it out of your mind.’ I repeated those words in my head like a mantra.