Peter's Gone

Peter's vanished. His bag is gone, his knife and gun are gone. Other than that, not a word. It happened about two hours after the last post, where he agreed we'd go on the run again.

He left without me.

I feel horrible. Horrible because I pushed him away. Horrible because I quietly hated him for having that...reminder of what happened in Avondale. Horrible because I had it amputated as much for his own health as because I didn't want to look at it anymore. Horrible because I barely spoke to him since then, not a real conversation or anything. Horrible because of no matter how else I feel about him, his wound always gave me nausea. I'm a horrible, horrible, shitty, shitty person. And I drove away the guy I still love.

I feel sick. Kari's trying to look after me, but I know she's only half there and half on her quest to find this writer guy for...some reason. It's probably to do with what happened to Simon.

...christ...

I haven't thought about Simon in a long long time. He was kinda slow on the uptake surrounding the whole Slender Man thing, and even when he was running, he only stayed within a few miles of his home. But he was a good guy. Losing him drove Kari off the deep end. Well, that and the months of what can only be described as slenderdisapperance. And the stalking before that. And the months of stalking after that. Okay, she hasn't had a fun time in general. And she's still her old self, really. She's still smart and caring, she's still a sweetheart. She's been hardened by her experiences, but she's still there when it matters.

We spent a few hours talking about Eastbourne. It's been over a year since we were home. There wasn't a dry eye going.

That's all for now guys.

All Out Of Time, All Into Space

Natalie and I are running for it. Fuck Kari. She can rot here for all I care. Looking for her fucking Bleakley.

She talked me around last night. I've been kinda scared to move, but she's right. We can't die here. We've made it too far. We're packing now.

We need to be out of here as soon as we can.

Firdous E Bareen

Someone in watching us.

We're spotting people around, staring in at us through the window. Maybe just regular people, but probably not. We're scared to move. Kari's still here, still not allowed out of the room. Natalie and I also haven't gone out of the hotel room but that's voluntary.

Natalie is...I don't know quite how to put it. She's disengaged. She's not responding with any real enthusiasm since Kari admitted she'd sold us out. She's not talking to Kari, and is fairly monosyllabic with me. She spends a lot of time in the bathroom, door unlocked, just sitting in the empty bath. Sometimes for hours at a time. I've never seen her so scared.

It's almost like we're back in Avondale.

I can see them. Shadows in the dark.

Someone is watching us. It's starting, and that terrifies me.

The Minus Times

Well fuck.

First off, there's no Buggy. He doesn't exist. Kari made him up to get us here. She's not looking for someone to keep up safe - she's leading us right into the lion's den.

She's looking for a man called Harold R. Bleakley.

That might be an alias. Even if it's not, he'll almost certainly be under an alias right now. But this is no ordinary runner. Kari has a book he wrote about a decade and a half ago. It's...something else. The Faceless Angels were nothing. If the stuff in this book is true, this Slender Man thing is old. Really old.

"Not just older, but Old, like a hand reaching out from antiquity to claw at the throats of the living" in the words of Bleakly himself.

Of course, there's a catch. We found out why the locals were so cold to us. It turns out that there have been bear attacks around here as of late. A lot of bear attacks. And no sightings of any bears. Things came to a head when a camera crew doing a documentary on these oddly uncharacteristic bear attacks had

Well, they had very bad things happen to them. It took them months to get all the bodies down. And so this attracted Kari's attention until, having done some research, she tracked down a "reclusive author of non-fiction books on the supernatural" mentioned in a local high school's newspaper. She's convinced it's him, and she was sneaking out to try and find him. And now she's lead us into another fucking town He's all over.

Jesus shitting christ she has screwed us over.

But does it really matter where we are?

"It is a mistake to assume that he functions on a physical plane, or that his ability to strike has physical limitations. The isolation is not physical, not always, but rather, existential. Once He has laid His gaze upon you, you are alone. No-one can help you, no-one can save you. All efforts to do anything other than submit are in vain. Surround yourself with police. Lock yourself in the most secure place possible. It will do you no good. The world may as well be empty, save for you and Him.
You are alone. The only thing that matters is you and Him and the ache."

Over Root And Thorn

Last night, we caught Kari trying to sneak out of the hotel at three in the morning. She tried to climb out of the window to avoid tripping any of the primitive alarms we have set up.

She won't tell us why. Natalie's pretty torn up. But she's screwing us one way or the other. We're refusing to let her out of the hotel room. We've got a system - one of us stays with her and a day's worth of her medication. The other goes out for the day. Rinse, repeat. Eventually we'll need to move on and I have no idea what we'll do then, but she won't tell us anything about where Buggy is. She just told us one word. She said something about "bleakly". She wouldn't say anything else. God knows what's going on here. More as it develops.

Not In Rivers, But In Drops

We arrived in Revelstoke Wednesday afternoon, and in spite of everything we'd heard about this being a ski resort, the locals were exceptionally chilly to visitors coming in. Shopkeepers muttering under their breaths to one another out of the corner of our eyes, furtive whispers that we never quite caught the words of. Maybe it's just the twitchy one-armed kid in their store. Or maybe this Buggy character isn't keeping quite such a low profile and they know his kinds of associates when they see them.

There's a certain look to runners that you get used to. Wiry, fidgety. Always surveying their surroundings. Grubby, yet with a certain dynamicism to them that betrays the fact that they're too well-fed or well-energised to be homeless. Great big exhausted bags under their eyes, and a weary blank affect. This lifestyle really takes a toll.

You could spot us a mile off.

Apparently it's hay fever season and Kari feels like crap. She's been depending on us much more ever since she started sneezing. I heard she had a lot of health problems by my god this girl falls apart at the first sniff of pollen. Bizarrely, I swear she must have been stockpiling antihistamines because I have no idea where they're coming from. But Natalie's been looking after her. I guess she's used to playing the nurse, thanks to me. I guess it's a shame for her all the healthy runners died.

We're booked into a hotel until we've found Buggy. Kari says she'll try and track him down when she's better, though this is hay fever, so that could mean anything from sufficient levels of antihistamine in the bloodstream to a heavy period of rain to the end of pollination. I guess there won't be much news until then.