Castle In The Mountains

CASTLE IN THE MOUNTAINS
by Streamer

Every so often, if you are fortunate, you come across one of those colorful characters that you feel very privileged to have in your life. Such was my good friend Leann. Personable and witty, flamboyantly funny and bright, she was one of the most delightful people I ever had the pleasure to call my friend.

Leann and I had been buddies since high school, after ending up in the same algebra class freshman year. She had many creative friends: writers, poets, artists, musicians— most of whom lived in other towns and went to other schools. I felt honored that Leann would consider me among her cohorts, since I was just a regular kid who had not yet discovered her art. Mobility was paramount to someone with such a wide social circle, and I recall Leann being one of the very first to get her driver’s license sophomore year. Ironically, we were not hanging out together at this time, since it fell into a “sabbatical” in our friendship.

Given to flights of fancy, Leann told wild stories about world-famous celebrities who often came to Chicago. Back when we were 15 year-old sophomores in the '60s, she had been convincing enough to make me believe she'd had dates with various rock stars, British and American alike. Since I knew that groupies did indeed exist, I considered the possibility and played along, half believing and half not, until I'd finally caught her in a red-handed lie. We’d fallen out for more than a year after that incident, until we both got on the same bus for a senior field trip. Sitting across the aisle from each other, we began speaking again and resumed our friendship on into junior college and beyond.

She married not long after that, then she and her husband moved to Colorado a few months later. Being naturally disappointed, I had one consolation: she was a hearty letter-writer, like me, and I knew we'd always be in touch. This was one friendship that was not fated to go the way of the dreaded annual Scribbled-Note-Inside-a-Christmas-Card.

I visited her in the mountains the following year for Thanksgiving, my first view of the Rockies from the Western slope. To my surprise, I had mixed feelings about the eerie beauty of those mountains. I had been through Pennsylvania, but the Eastern hills were vibrant green and lush with trees. The Rockies, however, were just that— huge, barren rocks with not a tree in sight. I found I could not totally appreciate their haunting majesty without also feeling a stark, bone-cutting loneliness that bordered on intimidating. Leann and her husband had bought a cabin and invited a couple of friends to live with them, but even with five people in the house, I still felt a chilling sense of isolation.

Two years after my visit, Leann announced that she and her husband had "outgrown" each other, that she was getting a quick civil divorce, and moving back to her mom's house in Chicago. She swore the procedure was a snap, in spite of owning joint property, thanks to those legal "divorce kits" so popular in the '70's. “Since we agreed on everything, all I had to do was buy one and just fill out the papers. I got them notarized, and turned the whole shebang in to the county clerk with a check for $28.00. That was it!” Truly, the bargain of the decade!

It just tickled me to have her back in town. It was even better than the old days—we were older now, with more money to spend as we buzzed around the shopping malls, frequented new fast-food joints, and worked on our needlepoint together again after three years of just writing letters.

But Leann wasn't happy in Chicago. "Living in the mountains changes your mentality," she said as we gazed out the window of a McDonald's, surveying bland, horizonless Chicagoland terrain. "My values are different now. I want to go back."

A short time later she did, for a long Memorial Day weekend, and a month or two afterward discovered she was pregnant. I was never really clear on whether it was her ex-husband's or not, but I do know she visited with him while there. Leave it to Leann—no longer married, she just figured she didn't have to worry about it anymore! But she seemed optimistic about her pregnancy, and we continued to shop, snack, and do needlepoint, right up until the canvas and thread began to bob on her lap, needles rolling to the floor to the movement of the baby's feet inside her. I admit, this freaked me the first time I saw it.

As fate would have it, I'd applied to a downstate university earlier that year, and was accepted for fall classes. How ironic that after all this time, Leann was back in Chicago, and now I was the one who was leaving town! When the baby was born—an adorable little girl with huge smoky eyes—I was 340 miles away. By the time I came home for spring break the following year, Leann had already packed up and gone back out West.

We continued to write long, chatty letters during my two years at the University where I was majoring in Broadcast Communications, and on into my first out-of-state job after college graduation, at a small town radio station in southern Illinois. Leann, nestled in a small mining town in the Rockies, sent pictures of her tiny rented house, which sat under the leering shadows of the mountains. Creative and resourceful, she managed to decorate her humble home beautifully by frequenting thrift shops and yard sales. Her taste as always was excellent, and the home was lovely as any in a magazine.

The baby was doing fine, and Leann found herself a cozy niche as an illustrator/ reporter for a local newspaper. I was enjoying my first job in broadcasting as a copy-writer/producer, and between her being in print and my being on-the-air, we wrote back and forth feeling like genuine media moguls in spite of our miserable salaries. Full of our fancy "slash/slash" job titles, we gleefully exchanged copies of her published drawings and articles and tapes of my commercial spots, congratulating each other on our successes.

Then one day, I got a very excited letter from Leann. She had met a terrific guy named Tommy who played guitar in a popular local band. She was madly in love—he was handsome and caring, a local celebrity from a poor Tennessee mountain family that depended on him for support. This he could easily manage, she said—good musicians in the trendy, wealthy Aspen area made big money, and he brought in more than he or they together even needed.

A month or so later I got an even more ecstatic letter—Tommy was in love with Leann as well, they were "an item," and he had moved in with her. For a single mom who had been having a rough time of it, her life seemed to be coming together nicely, and I was happy for Leann. I was living in a small town of about 9,000 myself, and except for an occasional lunch or dinner with a couple of the DJs at the radio station where I worked, there was not a man in sight for me. A big-city girl from Chicago, I was out of my element here, and accepted it.

The next letter had an even more interesting bit of news—Tommy's good friend Andy was moving to the Aspen area from Atlanta, where his family ran a successful architectural firm. An architect himself, Andy had been commissioned to design a local ice skating rink in which upcoming Olympic hopefuls could practice, that would become an eventual tourist attraction. Leann said that architects from all over the country had been vying for this spot, and with Tom's local celebrity status for clout along with Andy's talent, he was a cinch for it.

She had told Andy all about me, and since he didn't know any other folks in the area besides them, he'd love to write to me. There was even a little note from Tommy included in the letter that I thought rather amusing—cajoling me to take good care of his pal and not stop writing mid-stream, since he'd be lonely his first few months in town!

A few days later I received a letter from Andy—a friendly, open and intelligent letter that warmed my heart, and I answered him immediately. Within a week, I was amazed to get a lengthy response, which included vulnerable feelings about everything from details of his childhood to how happy he was to hear from me so quickly.

Andy and I wrote frequently, even more so than Leann and I did, and he quickly became an integral part of my life. I felt as if I'd known him forever and I thought about him almost constantly, always remembering little things to tell him about my day-to-day life and my job. My being on the radio fascinated him, and I was equally in awe of his ability to design a building. Soon, my barren social life seemed tolerable and I greatly looked forward not just to Leann's letters, but to Andy's even more.

He started telling me about the dream house he was designing and planning to build in the mountains, asking my advice on everything from ceiling windows to studio lighting, and we quickly began exchanging tear-sheets from decorating magazines. "I want your input on this before I make any decisions," he'd say. "This home is going to need a woman's touch."

It wasn't long before his letters became romantic, even erotic in nature, and they were soon a major focal point of my life. Having the luxury of living close enough to work to drive home for lunch, checking the mailbox became a frequent joy for me.
He took on some volunteer work helping local kids learn to skate, since he had been a crack hockey player in school, and this made me care even more deeply about him.

Too bashful to send me a photo, Leann supplied one for me in one of her letters, and I was thunderstruck—not only was this guy nice, accomplished, and interested in me, but he was gorgeous to boot! Thinking of him spending his spare time teaching children instead of cruising the bars to meet women just delighted me. I posted the photo prominently on my bulletin board and got a rush every time I passed it by.

In the meantime, Leann's relationship with Tommy seemed to be progressing quite well, and she reported talk of marriage. I'll never forget Leann's most vivid description of her first visit to Tennessee with Tommy to see his family. They had taken his mother and two of his sisters to a huge grocery store in Chattanooga, a city that they were too poor to travel to on their own, and bought them four shopping carts full of food.

Leann said his young sisters were terrified of the place, having never seen a modern supermarket before, and his Mom was afraid to even enter the automatic door, thinking that the light-beam was some sort of laser that would cut her legs off. I could clearly envision the astonished look on their faces as they must have gazed, completely awestruck, at this spectacle. And I could practically smell the Smokey mountain air as Leann described the way his Mom cried in the car all the way back home, as she wasn't used to being treated so kindly.

Andy and I had already started talking in our letters about my coming out there to help him decorate his new house. We realized that our tastes were similarly contemporary, and with the money from his family firm, he said I could have carte blanche. Leann had told me he was quite wealthy, although he didn't make any real reference to it himself. I figured he was being equally modest when he would shyly imply, without coming right out and saying it, that he was building his home with me in mind. He and I both knew that my first job in this town would only be for a year, just long enough to get a decent job reference. Soon, I would start sending out resumes to anywhere I liked that had radio or TV studios, and Andy was coaxing me to come out his way by sending me listings of local Colorado stations.

The barren coldness of the mountains would certainly be more than tolerable with a warm-blooded man at my side, and I was giving it serious consideration. I could clearly envision our life together there, and what a wonderful life it would be! Double-dating with Leann and Tom, the four of us buzzing through winding mountain roads, shopping together, taking in a show, eating at fine restaurants. What great fun! This was better than any fantasy I could have had, and I was heady with anticipation, already planning my vacation time and buying more decorating magazines.

Andy spent a lot of time hanging out at Leann and Tom's, and I would call Leann only on rare occasion—long distance phone bills not being in my budget—hoping to catch Andy over at the house so I could hear his voice and say hello. But the first time I called, Leann explained that Andy had gone to hear Tommy's band play at one of the local bars while she watched the baby. Another time, they were both out at softball practice.

Soon, Andy wrote to say that while his temporary rented condo was being renovated by the owner, he was moving in with Leann and Tommy for a time, and was looking forward to the company. He was lonely living by himself, and although I enjoyed my quietude and my own apartment, I understood. How I wished he could come out and visit me! I felt I knew him well enough by now for a short visit, and began scouting the southern Illinois-Indiana area for romantic spots and points of interest.

Then, I got a call from Leann with a remarkable piece of news. Andy was coming to see me! My birthday was the following week, and Andy wanted to surprise me. "But I figured you'd need warning for something like this!" Leann whispered, as if Tommy were in the next room. We giggled as we planned how surprised I'd act, and I quickly got on the ball by fixing up my apartment and buying a new outfit. I couldn't wait to see him and put my arms around him—I was like a schoolgirl with a crush.

The following weekend, I made sure to stay at home in the event he should call or show up—always dressed and in make-up, my place looking great. At one point I jumped two feet off the sofa when there was a knock on the door, but it turned out to be a local religious group passing out literature. I had never been this happy or excited in my life.

I anxiously waited, but my 27th birthday came and went without incident and I began to worry about Andy. I called Leann in Colorado to see what was happening.
"Andy's father had a heart attack and he was summoned to the family home in Atlanta the day before yesterday," Leann explained. "Didn't he call you?"

I said I hadn't heard a word. Leann could have sworn he said he'd call, but since the trip was supposed to be a surprise in the first place, he supposedly had no idea I was expecting him and thus had no reason to call me. "But he'll probably call Tommy here anytime now," she said, "and I'll be sure to let you know right away!"

My disappointment was bottomless. The sheer emptiness of my life loomed around me like the pathetic specter that it was, and I cried for days as I dragged myself to work.

Months earlier, I had made a decision upon taking this job that it would not be prudent for me to form any serious alliance in this town. My only purpose here was to get a year's worth of broadcast experience, just enough to look good on a resume. This correspondence, as strange as it was, fulfilled a need for me since moving on to a radio or TV station in a more populated area was my next step. I considered Grand Junction a solid career move, even apart from any personal reasons. Andy knew this; we'd mentioned it often. I desperately wanted to see him. Why did his father have to have a damn heart attack the day before my birthday, of all days? Why didn't Andy share this with me? Was I being silly even to think that this long-distance romance could have lasted much longer?

I soon began to get more letters from Andy, without explanation, which I just wrote off as his being unaware of my knowing his plans. However, disturbingly, the tone of Andy's letters began to change. The sexual innuendoes that had at first seemed sensual and erotic were now becoming kinky, and it made me uneasy. He seemed rather distant and removed from his old openness, and I noticed a slight change in Leann's letters as well.

One day I opened my mailbox and got a letter that looked somewhat like Andy's writing but seemed odd, hurried. I opened it to read, with horror, what was to plunge me into the depths of depression for several weeks to come—Andy had fallen in love with Leann!

"I never meant for this to happen," he scrawled. “But I’ve just been so lonely and spending so much time over at their place. I don’t know how long it took for me to realize I was really going over there more to be with Leann than to visit Tommy.”

He babbled on that after being around her so often, and especially after living there for a couple of months, he'd realized “what a truly wonderful woman she is. I feel so guilty, not only about my friendship with Tommy, but about how I was going to tell you. I will always consider you a great friend, and I’d really like to continue our correspondence.”

I answered him a week or two later with a letter that was cool but polite, and got a bizarre letter in return that just hailed Leann's virtues even further. So disjointed, in fact, was the tone of this last letter that I even suspected it was written in some kind of drug-induced haze.

After that, I never wrote nor heard from him again.

A similar letter appeared from Leann at about this time—she was so sorry—she said she still loved Tommy but that she loved Andy too, and didn't know what to do.
"I've gotten so used to the both of them being around so much, I guess things just got too close," she explained. "Sometimes I feel like I don't know where one man ends and the other begins. I feel terrible and I'm so confused! But I still love you and I don't want to lose your friendship over this."

I spent the next several weeks in a funk of despair, crying constantly, hands shaking, barely being able to make it from day to day. I was not only heartbroken, but also scared to death, and I didn't know why.

I scraped myself together each morning and dragged myself to the studios, where I was being paid, however poorly, to come up with bouncy, snappy radio patter. This I attempted and still somehow managed to do, drawing my inspiration from a greater source outside of myself. This source was the only thing that got me through.

Here I was, all alone in a small farming community in the Midwest, and there's Leann, with not just one, but TWO sexy, marvelous men at her side! The irony of it hurt as much as the fact—I was further back than square one, alone beyond loneliness, my friendships with both Leann and Andy strained, my life in a shambles. I wanted to die.

I then got another letter from Leann, saying that they had discussed it, and all agreed it was best to part company. The two men left Colorado; Tommy hitch-hiking to Oregon with his guitar and Andy returning home to Atlanta, the skating rink now complete.

* * * * * * * *

Two weeks later, I sat up in bed in the middle of the night, shaking, feeling a clammy, sticky chill all over my skin. Did I just awaken from a nightmare that I couldn't recall?

Little did I realize at that point that no nightmare could even come close to the terror of the truth that was about to dawn on me. The resolution of this whole situation seemed a little too pat, the frayed ends tied too neatly together. Even with just a few weeks' perspective, something didn't sit right anymore; something didn't fit. And deep down inside me some information from the long buried past started to push up into my conscious mind like a crocus plant in moist spring earth.

Leann, with two wealthy, desirable men, each befitting the description of a romance novel hero, both crazy about her as all three lived under one roof? Both men who, by some odd coincidence, never happened to be home whenever I called there?

A guy like Andy, nice, very good-looking, rich and a successful professional— "lonely," in the middle of the world famous resort town of Aspen, Colorado? Who, after professing his feelings for me for months, had never actually spoken to me on the phone?

There was just no way. No way!

I quickly got up and padded over to the box where I stashed my letters, mentally thanking myself for being a sentimental pack-rat and keeping them all. I methodically took them out and spread them on the bed, putting Leann's to one side, and Andy's to the other. I noted that Leann always used her yellow flowered stationary, while Andy always wrote on lined white 3-hole notebook paper. Leann and Andy had each used different post office box numbers as an address, which is standard for that part of Colorado, since the Postal Service does not deliver mail to private homes in remote areas of the mountains.

I looked at each set of letters more closely, studying each word, noting the slant; examining certain strokes in small a's and capital S's.

I felt a flood of nausea bubble from my stomach up to my throat as the truth, the horrifying truth, finally crystallized into focus and became real to me. Dizzy with shock, I stumbled then crawled into the bathroom, where I tried to vomit up the bile stuck in my throat, but couldn't. Choking, barely able to breathe, I was shaking so badly I wasn't sure it would ever stop.

Finally, at 3:30 A.M., my hands were just steady enough to find myself making a cup of tea in the kitchen, trying to figure out where to go from here. But where do you go from nowhere, nowhere at all?

I now knew with a sickening certainty that there was no such thing as an "Andy" or a "Tommy," except in the twisted depths of Leann's imagination. She had engineered and manufactured the entire adventure in her head, from its inception to its demise, finally topping the whole thing off with the most ultimate of ego-trips: both "men" falling for her, then conveniently disappearing into a poof of vapor after dissolving their own life-long friendship over her!

Leann had written all the letters herself, every one, including the little note from "Tommy." As a graphics artist, disguising her handwriting was not that difficult to do, and taking the trouble to rent an extra P.O. box for my benefit was certainly no problem either.

Suddenly, it all came rushing back. Old memories of the early years of our friendship, spanning as far back as freshman year in high school, when Leann would chatter constantly about people whom I never had occasion to meet. Artists, poets, world-class travelers—no wonder these fascinating, exciting people always lived in another school district!

I also vividly recalled the incident which had led to our falling out during sophomore year: visiting at her home one weekend in 1967, she insisted I whisper and constantly put her finger to her lips whenever I’d lapse into a normal speaking voice. The reason? Graham Nash of the Hollies was sleeping in the guest room right off the dining room. “Whatever you do, don’t go in there,” she warned. “He just flew in from London last night on the red-eye. They have a big show to do. He’s exhausted and you’ll wake him up.”

I knew from the radio and reading the papers that the Hollies were indeed in town and scheduled for a concert. So as soon as Leann left the room for a few moments, I approached the guest room door and gingerly turned the knob to peek inside—only to find a perfectly normal, empty bedroom.

It was after that that we didn't speak again until senior year, by which time I'd thought she'd outgrown this affliction . . . and now, after 12 more years, I'd been duped again!

My urge to shake her till her eyeballs rattled was equaled only by astonishment at my own stupidity. I had blocked all this out of my memory many years earlier, when I forgave her the first time, and never dreamed it could ever happen again now that we were adults.

How could I have been so gullible, especially the second time around? I felt like a weary, sheepish George playing host to Martha's imaginary "son" in Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf … except for one minor detail: Leann had neglected to inform me of the status of this "game;" these rules had not been set out in advance.

I took the letters to the local Mental Health Clinic, where I explained the whole story to a psychologist intrigued enough to read them all and check them over. A distinguished man in his late fifties with a shock of white hair and a kindly demeanor, Frank agreed with my suspicions. He added that, considering her past history, we could be dealing here with a very sick person who fell into a classic pattern of psychosis.

"I'm not so well myself," I said. "I've been mind-raped."

I was not only in shock, but was also going through a period of mourning, as if someone had died. The doctor revealed that this grief was a natural reaction to the death of "Andy"—who indeed never even existed—and also to the death, once and for all, of my 14-year friendship with Leann. Finally, I had to resolve the loss, by invalidation, of the last several months of my own life.

He then said something that I'd heard before, but had never hit home so hard—that the main difference between neurotics and psychotics is that while neurotics may build their castles in the air, psychotics do so and then attempt to move into them.

Apparently, Leann took it a step beyond even that. She had built her castle in the mountains—but she couldn't bear to live there all by herself. So, for five months, she had held me hostage as her unwitting "roommate."

I didn't know if I was coming or going—I felt an outrage tempered only with a profound sense of foolishness. I could not imagine anyone doing anything so cruel to a total stranger, much less a trusted friend. She had me spending my hard-earned money on decorating books and magazines for a phantom; I had wasted an entire 3-day holiday weekend sitting around at home, waiting for a ghost to ring my doorbell! Who the hell was she, to play God with my life?

I was furious, with a wrath made that much more unbearable by the guilt I felt. Not just for playing my own part in extending the charade, but for knowing on one level—but not caring on another—that I was directing my rage toward a truly demented individual, one who was mentally ill.

I tried to feel sorry for her. How desperately empty her life must have been; how tortured her hunger to resort to such tactics—far lonelier than I could even imagine, her life was obviously spiritually bankrupt, more so than mine was or ever could be.

Over the years Leann had always had weight problems, sometimes ballooning up to 200 pounds, rendering her obese at a tiny five foot one, and then she'd starve herself down to model proportions. I realized that whenever Leann was feeling good about herself—like those times when her weight was down, or when she was married for the first year or so—the outlandish stories would stop, and she seemed as firmly grounded in reality as any normal person. She had not sent me any current pictures for well over a year, and now I knew why.

I also saw that as an admitted bisexual—something I had known about for years and which didn't matter to me—the "Andy letters" could have been from Leann's alter-ego, serving as a way of expressing her own desire for me. And that "Andy's" falling for Leann in the end may have been her own pitiful attempt at trying to integrate her splintered personality into some kind of cohesive whole.

Amazingly, this was just about the time that the "Andy handwriting" started to appear strange to me—because it was beginning to "blur" into Leann's! This would also account for the frightening descent into madness that I detected in the final "Andy" letter.

She knew me well; she pushed the right buttons, which explains my instant feeling of intimacy; like I had known "Andy" for a very long time—which, indeed, I had.

I began to doubt that my own sanity was intact for not being able to figure things out sooner. No wonder the boys were always "out" whenever I'd call, and how convenient that "Andy's" rented condo was in a remote area of the mountains that had not yet been wired for telephones, giving me no way to call him at home. When I'd asked Leann why Andy never attempted to call me himself, she claimed that he didn't like to make long-distance calls from their phone. Besides, he was rather self-conscious about his southern accent. He didn't want to sound like a "Georgia peach" over the phone, and, incurable romantic that he was, he was afraid that our hearing each other's voices would somehow break the magical spell of our letters!

After the birthday incident when I had tried to contact the architectural firm in Atlanta, using Andy's last name, there was no listing for any such firm with the operator anywhere in Georgia. Leann had blithely explained that the firm's title was some kind of catchy slogan rather than the family name, but, of course, she couldn't remember what it was.

An extremely gifted pathological liar, Leann had an uncanny ability to pull an innocent bystander into her world. She virtually always had an answer for everything, saying what I needed to hear, making it all seem perfectly natural and logical… indeed, the only thing more fantastic than Leann's outrageous fabrications was the fact that I'd bought them for as long as I had.

And this was my own demon that I had to face.

Leann could clearly see the vulnerability in my situation, and she played upon my greatest weakness: fresh out of college, I was at loose ends living in a family-oriented small town with few single men, relocating for job reasons only. And I was ripe for grasping at something that would give me a sense of direction.

Hell-bent on some kind of "civil" revenge, the best way I could think of to get back at Leann was simply to write her a letter telling her that I'd had everything all figured out. But Dr. Frank warned me that psychotics don't take kindly to blatant confrontation; that her response might be unpredictable and possibly violent.

Regardless, I typed her a note the next day at work, on the same radio letterhead I used for my commercial scripts. I told her quite boldly that I was doing so to illustrate that while writing radio spots may have been the only thing in my life at that time, at least it was real, my job was real, and the radio station was real. I then reminded her of the high school incident, along with the names of various other "people" she had talked about over the years whom I'd never met, and that I now knew didn't exist either. I added further insult by pointing out that with a global population of nearly 4 billion, there hardly seemed to be any reason for having to make people up—a point probably lost on her in isolated western Colorado.

I wrote with a vengeance that veered recklessly from the rational to the snide—an indulgence I felt I had earned; paid for in advance with a piece of my life and a pound of my soul. I finished by telling her that the next time she decided to take a walk down the garden path, she should go solo instead of dragging her friends along with her.

After I mailed it, I wondered: how many other victims had she pulled into her fantasy? Was it crazy for me to think that I was the only one?

Then I had an even more startling thought: could it be possible that, in her own warped way, Leann honestly thought she was being thoughtful and kind? Doing me a favor by giving me a pleasant diversion at this transitional time in my life?

Three weeks later I got a rather thick letter in Leann's usual handwriting, in the same familiar yellow flowered envelope. Remembering the doctor's words, I feared for opening it. With a lump of dread knotting my stomach, I took it over to the Clinic and asked him to open and read it for me. Since he had a personal as well as professional interest in this "case" by now, he did so while I left the room to get coffee.

I came back a few minutes later to find Frank at his desk, looking up at me gravely.
"You were wise… to do what you did," he said in a halting tone. "It's a good thing you didn't read this letter. And it's an even better thing that this crazy woman lives a thousand miles away." He shook his head slowly, in disbelief. "This is so sick. In all my years of practice, I've never seen anything like this."

Frank gave me the gist of it, in which Leann accused me of being out of MY mind, that I was "rationalizing" the loss of "Andy's" love by "pretending" he didn't exist! He then said the letter was filled with horrible language and nasty recriminations toward me, and he had no way of knowing how many, if any, of them were true. He also mentioned taking the letter to the police, since it contained threats to my safety, but suggested that might make matters even worse. Considering her distant location, he said it would probably be better to just forget it and let it be.

Frank handed me the letter. I took it from the corner like a foul and vile thing, which I methodically tore up and tossed into the trash. I did not let my innate curiosity get the better of me—Leann knew me far too well. I never did read it.

I asked Frank if her fury at me stemmed from embarrassment at actually getting caught, or if it was righteous indignation over a sincere belief, on some level of consciousness, that these two characters really did exist.

"Quite probably," Frank said, "a little bit of both."

* * * * * * * * * *
Whether "Andy" and "Tommy" were totally fabricated by Leann, or if they were composites of real local people she perhaps knew on a casual basis, I still do not know. Judging by the fragmented mind of the psychotic, I suspect Frank's words would ring true here as well: a little bit of both. The photo of "Andy" remains a mystery—possibly something she grabbed out of the newspaper's files. Oh, Leann was a master—she knew just what I liked.

As I tried to recover from the dreadful experience, I entertained the revolting possibility that perhaps everything I suspected was the result of sheer coincidence, and maybe Leann was being truthful after all. But this last glimmer of doubt was laid to rest when I decided to call the Aspen Chamber of Commerce to inquire about the architect who was hired to design the new skating rink. They had no idea what I was talking about, and informed me that no such recently built ice rink existed anywhere on the Western Slope of Colorado.

And what about the episode at the supermarket in Tennessee? As a writer myself, I know that even fictional accounts come, one way or another, from somewhere. Again, I'll never know. But I burned all the letters, and never contacted nor heard from Leann again. Mercifully, three months later marked a year at my job—my pre-arranged cue to quit. I then moved back home to Chicago, and tried to resume a normal life.

I learned from this experience, much to my dismay, that the same problems that beseech an insecure young teenager can come back years, even decades later, to haunt a supposedly more mature woman of 28.

That people this severely troubled often do not, cannot, change. That sometimes, no matter how dear or how intense, you have to write a relationship off, cut your losses and let it go.

That there is much truth to the saying that it's a fine and fuzzy line that separates genius from madness. And it saddens me even today to think that if Leann could have channeled her energies, her clever, vivid imagination and her incredible talent for spinning a yarn to a more positive end, she could have been a brilliant playwright or novelist… and one of the legendary creative minds of our time.

approx. 6,470 words