I saw it again, today. I haven't seen it in so long, it can be...it can't be back.

Yet, somehow it is.

I'll explain where it was. It was at my friend Rosie's house. We were sitting on the back porch to her place, joking around and sipping hot chocolate out of mugs with toxic waste symbols on them. It was nice. It was fun. It was...well, I suppose you could say that it was normal. We had school off, even though it was the last day of our finals week, and I trekked through snow and a bit of ice, in my boots, coat, hat, and scarf, just because...well, I hadn't done so just to visit a friend, in a while. The last time I had to do this, I was running for my life, not smiling at neighbors or taking a moment to enjoy the simple pleasure of wathching my breath turn to steam in the winter air.

These past few months have been relaxing an anything but lonely. Rosie has been proven to be a wonderful friend, though we really just met a little while ago. We know nothing of each other, other than the fact that we can have fun together...or that we like the same bands and pastimes and such. Rosie is nice. She has a slight accent to her voice, brown-ish, blonde-ish hair, freckles, and a friendly smile (not a perfectly straight and bleached one, just a friendly one). She...I think she's being targeted, (and not because of me). She fell asleep on the bus, one day. I moved to wake her up and saw those "operator symbols" drawn all overt her window. I woke her up and told her where she was in the neighborhood. After that, we continued to talk on and off. We became something of friends. Neither of us knows the other very well, but we get along; we have the same tase in music and books and such.

She eventually told me about a dream that she had had. It was just in passing, so, if I hadn't been paying attention, I might not have noticed her say it. She had thought that there was an unnaturally tall man dressed in dark, business clothing, leaning over a couple of seats on our bus, right across the aisle from her. I allowed her to think it was a dream, that it was nothing. That's better than the alternative, right?

She then began recieving notes in a strange notepad. It had sketches she didn't remember drawing. More importantly, it had, written in purple pen, code. I recognized it almost immediately as a code I had used a long time ago, for communication between my sister and I. That was the initial reason that I had been invited over to Rosie's house in the first place, actually; I was the only one she knew who knew anything about codes; I was to translate it all today. I did just that and, as an afterthought and a sort of reward, we had our cocoa, out in the freezing air.

I got up and went inside to get more hot cocoa for myself. When I returned to my seat, I put down my mug on the little table and looked up to say something to Rosie. She was gone. I looked around a little before seeing her standing in a clear part of her backyard, not more than a meter away from that thing. It had its blank head tipped to the side, almost as if it were staring at another curious specimen. Rosie, as I watched, slowly did the same, not moving closer, but staring straight up at him.

Before I could stop myself, I called out, "Hey, Rosie!" She turned her head to face me, then blinked a couple of times, the terrifyingly hazed look leaving her eyes. She furrowed her brow and called out, "Yeah?" The thing in front of her faced me momentarilly, then faded like a disappearing mirage.

"Ah, you want me to get some more cocoa for you?" She smiled at my quick save.

"Sure!"

She didn't remember staring straight at him. I din't bring it up.

She's probably going to post the translations sometime within the next week on her blog.
http://drowninginnavy.blogspot.com/

And we are vagabonds

I realized that, for the past few days, I have felt...I suppose "better" might be the word for it. The school I go to these days are giving final exams, and all I have left are easier ones. That's not all, though. I'm not feeling as twitchy or paranoid. I'm not constantly looking over my shoulder.

Well, actually, I am. I'm doing it less, however.

It's like writing this stuff is putting me at ease. I'm not sure what to think about that. It may be a false sense of security, but I do appreciate it at this point.

I'm capable of reflecting more. I'm dreadfully sorry if you aren't involved in any of this yet. If you are, please learn from my mistakes. Keep yourselves safe and follow whatever rules apply to you (see The Tutorial and Brodie's blog for the best tips I've received).

Elle and I ran. We ran and ran until we reached a more populated town, still in Indiana. I managed to keep our money stretched out for a while. It wouldn't last, but I had to try. We were constantly around other people; it was a college town, too. There was a student union building that was friendly and warm for us to stay in. There were always students around, but they never paid any mind to us. I read up on the...I hate saying this nickname...the Slenderman. I read up on other accounts, taking place at the same time as our own were. I read Seeking Truth, The Tutorial, What Now?, and, eventually, Dreams In Darkness (as well as DejaVu Dreamer). I recognized the places and names referenced in it. I had no idea that all of this was so much worse...then, to have Damien's story written off like that by someone calling him mad...it was horrifying. I knew he was telling the truth and could do something about it. Then I see that it's supposedly fake. It wasn't. It was never a fake. I only got to be enraged at that by the time DejaVu Dreamer rolled around. That was a little ways into my sister and my "adventure."

We always saw him. That tall creature, dressed to the nines, looming in the trees, near the small river (more like a creek) on campus. He would stand outside the art museum and the auditorium and-

It just unsettled me that no one else could see him.

I fought to keep Elle and myself alive. We worked odd jobs for strangers we should never have trusted, we pick-pocketed people when we absolutely had to...and we ate very little. I had to explain things to Elle. She barely understood, but decided that it made enough sense and stopped asking me the same questions over and over again. She was older than I presented her a being, previously. She called our parents and grandparents by childish nicknames, but never really acted in a childish manner. She was smart. She was wonderful.

Heh, wow. I really miss her.

...I think that's all I can manage for today.

And I Recall In Spring

I should explain how I began on my...run. Everyone explains themselves at some point. I was a child. And everyman. A simple person. I had a full house: a family; that included my mother, father, my brothers, and my sister. My parents were literature professors who happened to have the last name of "Lear." They took the chance and named us all after tragic characters (bitterly, I have thought of these names as bad omens, in the past). I am Thomas because, as the eldest, my father wanted to name me after my great-grandfather, Thomas Vincent Lear III. My middle name is "Edgar," however; Edgar, son of Gloucester, was tricked into running away...similarly to me. My younger twin brothers' names were Kent and Oswald (Ozzy). My sister's name was Elle Regan Lear; Elle was my mother's sister's name. Aunt Elle went mad, two years later, and was locked up in the nearest facility. She ranted about tragedy, clung to us kids, refusing us to go "back to meet him." I had no clue...no clue that she had such a real reason to be terrified.

Writing about them is painful. None of them remain as they were. I have heard nothing from Aunt Elle in years, but I doubt she's gone.

I came from a small Indiana town. Nothing was secret, or so we were brought up to believe. Everyone knew everyone else's business. I was honors student material, and so were my siblings. My parents didn't brag about us to anyone outside of our family, but our family had no problem with bragging. We went to church every Sunday. We told stories around a bonfire, during summer camping trips. We were...well, we were happily uninterrupted.

Then, Dad discovered something odd. There was a religious group gathering regularly at a discreet location, which he refused to reveal to my mother (I learned of this from eavesdropping; my father would never have told me anything about this). He planned on asking about this group, since faith of any kind always intrigued him.

It was a cult. A freaking cult. He got sucked in, unwittingly, at first. Slowly, he began talking to the leader more and more often. Sooner rather than later, the leader had convinced my father to come to a...ceremony of sorts. My father witnessed the gruesome acts they committed, and, for some reason, didn't object to it. He came home with this terrifyingly...almost pleased look on his face. He looked crazed. My mother asked him if he was okay. No response. She felt his forehead: no temperature. She asked him what he saw. He shook his head, that wicked, mad grin still on his face, and said, "Exilis everto." My father, then, promptly passed out on the couch. Mother went after the group leader, the next day. My father had woken up without a single memory of the night before. She left me in the car as she stormed up to the man at his mailbox.

She said something like, "What the hell are you up to, Matthew?"

He replied with something like, "What do you mean, Jane?"

"You know very well what I mean." He stated at her, puzzled. She elaborated: "Sending my husband home in such a shape! You left him babbling nonsense, half-conscious on his feet!"

"Jane, I can explain every-"

"He had no trace of alcohol on his breath, he showed no sign of anything other than sleep and nutrient deprivation."

"Just let me explain," he lowered his voice. "I can invite you in for tea or something. I can tell you every detail." He glanced at me. I looked away, shy as I was, even in middle school. He continued, raising his voice to the volume at which he seemed to believe I could hear better, "Some of the church kids are over, too. I'm watching them for the day. I'm sure Tommy would have plenty of fun."

Wilcox was the cool adult, back then. Us kids loved him to no end.

Somehow, him being the leader of a secret inner circle of adults didn't surprise me. Anything he did was fine with me, back then. I didn't realize what this group had become...what they worshipped...what they did for it. I played the day away on various Xbox games with a couple of church kids who I wasn't all that familiar with (one boy was really nice, a year or two older than me, I thought; he apparently was actually looking after the kids, not Wilcox).

My mother, after two hours, came up the stairs to get me. She looked exhausted, but satisfied with the  conversation she had had with Mr. Wilcox. She ushered me home.

I asked about the meeting, but she refused to tell me before discussing something with Dad. That night, they told me to go get something from the store down the street, and to take my sister with me. We found what we were looking for and, as we were returning home, we saw a strange man. A tall, willowy man. He wore a suit and the light from the street lamp he stood under seemed to drown out his pale complexion. He had no hair and, the more I looked, the more the light made him look like he had no face, either. He stared at us, so I hurried my sister along, back to the house. I told Mom. She told Dad. He told me to do my homework. Mom reached for the phone an our address book before my sister called me out of the room.

I kept thinking I saw it...that unmentionable creature. I imagined it everywhere. It wasn't terribly scary back then, just strange. I wanted to get a closer look, but I knew I shouldn't, for some reason.

I began seeing parents from our church community (aka, almost everyone in town) around the place. Instead of nodding and saying, "Hi," as they passed, they all seemed to smile warmly at me. It wasn't really weird or creepy until sister Laura, who rarely spoke to anyone ever, said to me, "Peace be with you," as I passed her while leaving Sunday school. I thought there was something I wasn't being told. Maybe Laura had just warmed up to me. Maybe there was something else...in any case, I had no idea what would happen in the next two days.

Church parents continued to smile, say sweet good-Christian things, and stare...and I grew suspicious. I asked my Father about it. His face went almost white out of shock. He told me nothing. "It's nothing."

Right. It wasn't nothing.

I was walking home from a friend's house when I saw...people. All in all, there were about five of them. They stood and watched outside of my house, in the dark, outside of the reach of street lights. I took the back door and told Dad. He told Mom. Mom told me to go to bed.

The next day, I did some Internet searching. I found plenty on cult activity in Indiana, but not much in my area. I abandoned the idea of finding out about the church-inner-circle thing, and eventually searched for something along the lines of what I had seen: the man in a suit. I got plenty about the Men In Black urban legend on the first couple of resources, but the third ha something...different. Nightmare fuel quality stuff. Guess which of the two I was dealing with? Yeah, the latter. I had no idea that that was the case, however.

Not until that thing lit a fire.
Not until it burned and charred our house, smoking us out.

It wanted me, for some reason. I was older than the usual kids it wanted: I was in 6th grade. I couldn't have known the grave danger I was in, or how under-protected I was. My Father, on his deathbed, burned and injured while trying to save my sister (and he did, thank whatever deity I should thank), told me the details. That, no, it wasn't as crazy as it sounded: he and Mom just simply didn't believe that that thing would take me to heaven. The nurse outside his hospital room told me that he just wanted me safe; that's what he was trying to get across. There was no creature. The pictures I'd seen on the Internet to support his claims were photo shopped. The Terrible Trivium existed not.

Until I saw him, again. My mother had taken my sister and I home (we were the three with the minor injuries: Dad was not likely to recover and my brothers were unconscious). I couldn't stop coughing, but that was normal. They didn't see the thing, but I did. That day, I went off in search of him in the woods. I found a cabin of sorts. It was like something out of the Navidson Record, though; the inside was huge while the outside looked barely large enough to fit a queen-sized bed into. The thing stood at the end of the first hallway. I stood, frozen in fear. A voice, suddenly, screamed in my ear, "Get out of here NOW, kid." There was no one in the entire room and hall other than the thing and me...and that voice had come from neither of us.

"Go!" I scrambled and burst back out of the door. I had initially thought that it was standing outside, waiting for me, reaching up into the tree branches...then I realized that it was a...a trash bag, holding a heavy load in it, hanging from a main branch of of the young oak. I ran home, half in tears.

Mom wasn't home. Elle was crying.

"Sis, what's wrong?"

"Mama left. She didn't say anything. She just got up and walked out and shut the door in my face and-" Her sobs cut her off. I hugged her, told her that Mama's just gone out, okay?

The voice came back, louder this time. I flinched as it said, "Get what you need and run. Go. Don't come back. Mother is gone. Father is gone. The boys are gone. Just GO." I sat for a moment, then I suppose I fit the pieces of the puzzle together. Dad was right. Those crazy people writing scary stories in the first person on the Internet were right. That thing was real.

In which case, that voice in my head was right. Running from such a full-on assault was the only solution for us kids, family or no.

So we packed two backpacks, grabbed some emergency cash, and ran.


I think that's enough reflecting for me today.
Hopefully that satisfies you (whoever reads this) as a proper introduction.

Maybe I'll be able to do more, later this week. I'm not sure.

We live this close to death.

I have been bothered by the thought of recording and publishing my endeavors and things that have happened to me and people around me. Discovering this sort of publication can spread the "virus" to those who haven't caught it yet. It is difficult to know what is helpful and what is not. Letting others know of my experiences, however, may also be beneficial. Things tend to become worse when an "infected" begins to record his or her troubles and travels, but I have seen done horrible things. Whatever a record of all of this brings, I am prepared for it. I think.

I suppose an introduction of myself is in order.
I am Thomas Lear, I am younger than the usual suspects, and I am watched.