Okay what the fuck

I went to sleep in fucking Andheim.

And I woke up in the hotel room in fucking Revelstoke.

I just

I just can't fucking believe that I can't escape this. I can't get out of this. I can't believe that I have to do what I've been told to do. It won't end anything, not really. It won't do anything to stop Him being after me.

It made the paper today. Someone found dead in their house. Stretched, twisted and disemboweled.

Gentle Time

I couldn't do it.

I'm back in Vancouver. Living among the homeless. I don't stand out.

For the second time, all my friends are dead or gone. For the second time, I escaped. And I can't do it again. I can't confront them.

From Sinking

I found Bleakley.

But it's awfully hard to find the right time. He's got a lot of...visitors.

One is a proxy. Worryingly, he's visibly sentient. Unruly red hair, but other than that, pretty much normal size, weight and musculature. I can't tell if he's a physical threat, but he...unnerves me. I mean, more than they usually do.

One is Peter. He's tied to a chair in the back room. He seems to be unconscious.

The last is Kari. She's there. She's not dead. And she's not, as far as I can tell, a captor.

1000 Shards

I think Kari is dead.

So we were combing the woods for Bleakley's home

Yes, we're doing it.

First off, he has Peter. And I don't give a fuck about the rest, I'm getting Peter back.

Second, if he's written a book like The Walking Willow again, a book with as much information in it as that did, or more, and is trying to send it to a major publisher, it's dangerous. The main good thing about the Slender Man is he's still something most people don't know or care about. It stops the spread, if you believe Kari's theory.

Third...I kinda want to hurt him.

But that doesn't mean this isn't an awful situation. I've never killed anyone before. Not even a proxy.

But anyway

We were looking for Bleakley's home. We'd covered most of the houses on streets that came off of Townley street, and were making good headway into the ones off of Victoria Road.

We're walking down another long road lined with houses. I'm in front, Kari's behind me. I hear a sharp intake of breath coming from her. I turn around to see what's wrong and she's not there. Instead, about fifty metres away

head-splitting pain

I was wondering where he was.

Give it a few days and her body'll show up somewhere.

I'm all on my own. Doesn't matter. Either Bleakley'll die or I will. I can do what I can to make it be that first one.

False Light

Kids, there's no such thing as a free lunch.

Kari and I haven't gone anywhere. Peter's vanishing act is not his doing. He knows the rules as well as I do. Four and five. Never go anywhere alone or without letting everyone else know. The old gang may be dead, and we may have broken every one of those rules, but fuck if they're not good help for survival, and he knows it. So we've been looking.

The answer found us.

A long time ago - just under a year ago, in fact - we did terrible things to two of his lackies, after they did terrible things to us of course. And someone we had no idea about - a guardian angel or something - made it all go away. An "Agent Salliss" working on behalf of a "Director Fisk". We worried about what our owed favour might mean - what could this leverage mean?

Today's theme apparently is shit that happened a long time ago finally coming around to bite us in the ass.

"Dear Natalie and Kari,
                                    It's been a long time since we did favours for the two of you. We feel that, in return, you are best suited to deal with an issue that has come up that is rather out of the way for us.

We assume that your proximity to Carl Pullman a.k.a Harold Bleakley is no coincidence. We have reason to believe that he has taken on the role of one of the "proxies" as a result of you rather clumsily breaking what relative peace there was here. As a peace offering, he appears to have taken your friend Peter.

Pullman recently finished a new book. It consciously plays on the Avondale news in order to bring about increased familiarity with the slender man to a mass audience in a way that potentially endangers lives. He seems unaware of its potential as a weapon, but as a servant of the slender man he will have this brought to light. We have intercepted the copy sent to a publisher, and cannot risk another getting into public hands.

Our request is simple. We want you to kill Mr. Pullman and destroy any remaining manuscripts there may be. You must do so before any new or remaining manuscripts are sent out. We are aware that you are armed and adequately skilled for the job. We simply ask that you make it happen, before the slender man himself manifests.

As an additional warning, while we have been unable to identify him, there is another "proxy" in your area. Be warned.

Agent Saliss
On behalf of Director Fisk."
Christ.

Give me a few hours to take all this in.

P.S. Kari won't tell me what they did for her, but I'm not sure I want to know. Kari's kind of like a pet tiger - useful and generally cool but she's liable to maul me out of the blue at a moment's notice.

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.

Swarm Reigns

We have a destination.

Some runner called Buggy has a crew holed up in a town back on mainland Canada. Got his own little commune together. Apparently they move - Kari met up with them in Ohio. She has all sorts of stories. A bohemian lot in the extreme. When they're not on the move they set down roots. They pass the time taking hallucinogens, staging group sex parties and poring over the kinds of philosophy and spiritual books that would make your head spin even without the LSD and the glazing of other peoples' sweat. All the life and love and magic they can cram into what time left they have, apparently. They tried to talk Kari into joining them but the rumours that she maimed some other runner caught their attention halfway through her stay. But now they're offering us somewhere to stay, some company, and a free exchange of information. Apparently he's not a blogger - he gets his issues down via automatic writing. Tomes of it. Could be an interesting read, though the drugs and "magic" doesn't really sound like my cup of tea.

Sometimes it feels like no-one's satisfied with just the simple pleasures of a nice sit down.

Can't say I've ever heard of this Buggy before. No blog but at the very least, he seems like enough of a character to have a reputation. Has anyone else heard of him before at all?

Anyway, it's a shame we're leaving here. Vancouver Island is really nice, especially this time of year. It makes me wish I had my camera, I could show you guys. But instead, we're headed for some little ski town called Revelstoke, and the hippie collective that waits for us. Kari better be right about this, or it'll be a massive waste of time.

Lines Across Eye

So Kari has a theory. She's insisting that they know about these blogs, that they're using them to follow us. She keeps saying that if we stop posting on our blogs, they won't know where we are. Something about the blogging being a

what was the word she used?

a histemin...something. I looked it up. It's the response to a disease, like sneezing. A way to try and fix illness, and often enough it just spreads it. But she thinks it's a compulsion. She's on radio silence, and she doesn't know I'm writing.

I think she's talking crap, and Natalie agrees. We're humouring her with the blogging - as far as she knows - but we're staying connected. Not that we could tell if they weren't tracking us. Kari's insisting that we move every other day, with a rest day inbetween. She's even more paranoid about moving around than we are.

Kari's...Kari's something we weren't ready for. She's very, very good at hiding what's wrong with her. Very convincing. She's been hiding it for a while now, you can tell. But at the same time, around the edge? Emotionally crippled, unflinchingly exploitative, unhesitatingly criminal. When the façade falls, Natalie can barely control her, and I'm at a loss here. At the same time, though, she seems like she's being sincere to us, and it's been almost a month, so I guess we'll have to trust her.

Then again, we have no idea what her agenda is. And she has one. She's smart, smarter than either of us by a long way. I can only hope her goals runs parallel to our own. I want to trust her but I can't shake the notion that she'd stab us in the back with even the slightest provocation. I want to be able to talk to Natalie about this. I know she must be feeling the same way. I could see the relief at having someone else around give way to her panic at who she'd gotten weeks ago. But it's impossible to get her alone. Kari's always there. Either way, I'm losing confidence that this will end well for anyone involved here.

The Other

We're in Vancouver. Natalie's friend shows up late by two days. Supposed to meet Wednesday, here on Friday. Two days in one place that we weren't anticipating and we're already twitchy, and we're not going to be able to move anywhere else until tomorrow. Where we're going to move is still a mystery as well.

Her friend, Kari, is...weird. Her blog reveals an awful lot of crap she and her boyfriend went through, but a year's a long time, and all that paranoia and mania has gestated. She looks like crap, for one. Massive bags under her eyes, obviously sleeping rough. It must have been a while since she last used a shower. She says she's been staying in hostels and homeless shelters. Doesn't say where the money came from, but she keeps a knife on her belt and I don't trust her not to have used it. Hopefully she hasn't hurt anyone. But what happened with Nessa is sounding more and more likely to me, no matter how many times Natalie calls her a liar.

That said, when she was reunited with Natalie, she was...different. For all her inscrutability, she seems genuinely pleased to see Natalie, genuinely affectionate. I don't trust her on a personal level, but I don't think she'll do anything to hurt Natalie. And where she goes, I go.

More updates as they arrive.

Garden of Light

We're in Seattle. Got a hotel room, just for the night. Warm food, new clothes. A chance to shave. Showers. Trying to find a way to cut food, to wash and dress myself, all that crap, with just the one arm. It certainly limits your clothing options.

Everybody winces whenever they see me. I read once that the human brain will accept anything as the "right" way for a living thing to look, so long as it's symmetrical. And I'm there, all one-armed, looking...off. They try and hide it, bless 'em.

I don't know how I feel about my arm being taken from me. I know I should focus my hate on the big guy, but it's more diffuse than that. In my idle moments, when I'm stewing in rancor, I find my acrimony resting on Benjamin, who performed the operation, or on Natalie, who okayed it. Who can't even look at me if she can help it. I'm not her friend anymore. I'm not a potential boyfriend for her anymore. I'm a constant reminder of what happened.

The hotel we're staying in has two beds, and I just want to crawl into mine and hide under the sheets so no-one can see me.

No signs of anything nasty just yet though. No proxies, and no big guest star cameos.

The Beginning And The End

I read somewhere, a long time ago, and I'm not sure it wasn't in a comedy or a children's book so I may be lending this sentiment more gravitas than it was meant, that when someone is deeply, truly, mortally afraid

hopelessly afraid

they become immediately aware of just how far they are from the place they were born. And I say I think it was a comedic book because I remember it surprising me with how much the sentiment resonated with me within the context.

I was born in St. Michael's Hospital in Bristol, and for the last year I have felt every step I've taken from that place. I have been driven from my home. I've seen my friends slaughtered. I've been taken apart. I've witnessed horrors on a scale and depth I certainly hope you cannot imagine. I have wept and bled and screamed and quaked and ached. And though I look for refuge, I look for a way out, I suspect I shall never find it.

We tried, my friends and I. We found a town, settled down. Hundreds died. I was maimed.

We found new friends. Both led psychos right to us.

And now it's just me and Natalie. Natalie, who I trusted and really genuinely cared about. Natalie, who never thought I noticed the look in her eyes whenever she saw my stretched out, maimed arm. Natalie, who sometimes goes days without talking to me, in that passive, non-statement kind of way that genuinely shows that she doesn't have anything to say. She's driving right now - I can't drive since I had my arm taken from me. We're going to meet up with an old friend of hers in Vancouver in about a week. Another runner, named Kari. We're not sure, but she might be crazy. We hear she did something pretty bad to some famous runner. Hoping she's gotten her shit together since then. Hoping she has some ideas about what to do next.

We have to have something to do next. We stop moving and we're dead.

So we keep moving and every step takes us further and further from the place we were born.

They took my fucking arm.
I know it was necessary, I know it needed to be done. It's a damn sight better than what was there.
But they took my fucking arm, and it still hurts.
It still aches.

Typing with one hand is a weird thing to get used to.