It Only Makes Me Laugh

Delia’s head was in the refrigerator.  I was going to get a bottle of tea and there it was, staring forlornly up at me from the crisper.  I turned around and caught a glimpse of him at the window.  It was then that the police knocked on my door to interview me.    

You may wonder why I’m not more perturbed by this.  The thing is, aside from the initial shock of things. I’m not really that afraid.  Anxious, yes.  But since the anxiety disorder stopped being a problem (and even during its hayday, on occasion) I’ve always faced stressful situations numbly as a challenge to overcome.  I can freak out after everything’s all over.  Whether ‘over’ consists of escape or death, I don’t know.  Quite frankly, I intend to live a while but I wouldn’t be surprised if I died.  It’s happened to stronger people than me, after all.  Whatever happens, happens.

I closed the door to the fridge and let the cops in.  They weren’t there long.  I had a Tell-Tale Heart moment where I was convinced that the fridge door would magically spring open, or the officers would smell something off, but I managed to not look at it once.  I answered all of their questions, and they left.  As the door shut, one of the officers asked me to “Give us a heads up if you hear anything.”  When they were gone, I collapsed with laughter.  I really don’t know if it was the terrible, unintentional pun, or a form of stress-release, but I’ll take it.  I checked the refrigerator again, and Delia’s head was gone.  Of course.  I expect he might use it to try to incriminate me again, but I’m not going to crystal ball. 

Things do seem to be escalating. I have yet to see a corporeal Hallowed/Proxy.  I’m expecting things to get violent soon.  Call it ‘justified paranoia’.  If that becomes the case, I have a few things hidden away in a varnished wood toolbox.  I’m not banking on their success, but it’s better than nothing.  Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to put on some Oingo Boingo and get my homework done.

Dial 0 for Operator

     Somebody left this message on my cell phone.  The number was 0-737-2867. 

     I had a nightmare last night.  I was in the small patch of trees in the middle of the fields outside my childhood home.  The trees were a lot closer together, and didn't seem to end no matter how far I walked.  As I tried to find my way out, I began to hear children giggling.  I walked faster.  From all around, snapping twigs, that incessant giggling, and the sound of something dragging through the bracken.  I ran.  I did not get far; I was soon surrounded by high deadfalls.  And they all came from between the trees.
     When I was growing up, occasionally there were stories of some of the local children dying.  There were even a few disappearances.  In my dream, I saw what became of them.  Maddie was there, her head split open all the way to her right eye.  Part of her cheek was missing, exposing the grim mirth of her mandible.  She disappeared back in the 90s.  It's rumored her abusive father pushed her down the stairs and hid the body somewhere in the fields.  Gage was there, and he was a tiny broken thing; he was hit by an Orinco truck out on a lonely farmland road.
     There were a few others, but the worst was Margot.  Margot was my friend when we were seven.  We had been up in the mountains sledding.  She wandered off into the snow, and I told her not to go but she said he was calling her.  I told her her dad couldn't be calling her, he was back in the car getting the camera, but she went off into the woods and there was a frozen pond hidden in the snow and, oh God, I remember the tiny unobtrusive crack of the ice and oh god we couldn't pull her outandohgodIrememberthescreams.
     And there was poor drowned Margot, back to play.  There she was, her skin pale as a dead fish, her arms black to the elbows, body swollen almost beyond recognition.  Her eyes were the worst, swelled and bruised, but they were still her eyes and they smiled out at me like they used to whenever I came to visit.
     They were all laughing and lurching towards me, arms outstretched, hands hooked into tiny claws in expectation.  I scrambled to overcome a deadfall.  The children climbed too.  At one point I slipped and Margot's icy hand  snatched at my foot.  I recovered and made it over the pile of fallen logs and branches.  There was a frozen lake on the other side.  Before I could react, Margot's long-dead hands encircled my neck in a clammy embrace and we both tumbled headlong into the icy water.  She dragged me down, down into consciousness.  I woke wrapped in my blankets from thrashing, and still I was not warm.
     I believe he's trying to get at me through my subconscious.  Those memories are dead, and sometimes dead is better.  I won't let myself be frightened so easily. 

The police are asking everybody in the dorm about Delia, and it's almost my turn.  I'm planning to run afterwards.

Madoc, are you here? I've been sleepwalking again, my dear.

       This morning, I woke up in the dorm’s basement.  Unlike the sub-basement, it’s furnished with a television, a pool table, and some very comfortable couches.  Guess where I woke up?  My neck is an opera of injured nerves.  I found some weird notes scattered around the table next to me.

 

       The first one says 'NO SLEEP' over and over.  I thought the second was gibberish at first, but after some research I realized it is a copy of one of the nine "perfect" word squares.  The words themselves don't have much to do with the situation (I think), but the capitalization screamed 'code'.  The first two hidden words are then DEATH and DIE.  The last two gave me problems because their letters are out of order.  After some patient anagramming, I figure they read 'NOT SANE'.  ...That, or 'TONES AN'.  But the former makes more sense, you think?  The last one clearly has 'DIE" in capitals, but the format made me suspicious.  After a while, I recognized it as a backwards sentence without spaces.  'He is coming soon and your blood will flood the earth' is what it says.  When I took those pictures I was very cold all of a sudden, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary.  I haven't seen the lean mean tentacle machine since the dry ice bomb incident.  I get the feeling 'seen' is the operative word in that statement. 
      I was hoping the pills would prevent the sleepwalking.  Bitter disappointment.  My roommate apparently saw me leave the dorm around 4 AM, and assumed I was going to the bathroom.  I talked to the security guard at the front desk, too.  I told him I had a sleepwalking problem and wanted to know where I'd gone in the night (I didn't mention anything else, of course) and he let me look over the hall security tapes with him. 

 There is no record of me being in my hall since I came back to the dorm yesterday afternoon.  

The guard thought I was pulling a stupid prank and reprimanded me.  Does anybody know what's happening to me?


     Delia has been officially reported missing.  The police are supposed to come and interview people.  I think it's safe to assume who has her.

     

My Own Worst Enemy

Hypnogogic hallucinations are a bitch.  For those that don’t know, they aren’t really hallucinations in the traditional sense.  Or so my psychiatrist told me back in the day, ha ha.  I’m going to be very up front about some personal issues here, but it’s necessary to inform my current situation. 

When I was in my freshman year of high school, I had to leave traditional school for independent study.  I have an anxiety disorder that mostly has to do with social phobia.  For a time, I had trouble leaving certain rooms and I don’t think I left the house for a few months.  But when it came time for college, I manned up and worked to desensitize myself to the phobia.  The hypnogogic hallucinations are the death-throes of the anxiety disorder.  They happen whenever I am very stressed and have just woken up or am about to fall asleep.  They are generally visual, but are sometimes auditory and “tangible” as well.

As I was returning from the doctor’s today, there was a masked figure of indeterminate gender at the end of my hall.  I didn’t notice it until I had my keys in the door.  When I saw it, it rushed me.  It rushed right through me, and disappeared. 

I am fairly positive that Hallowed/Proxies don’t do that.  They tend to be solid, yes?  So I am going to go out on a limb and say that it was in my mind.  So, it looks as if I have to worry about external and internal mindfuckery.

Joy.

It would probably help if I tried to sleep properly.  Recently, I’ve developed a bit of insomnia.  Can you blame me?  Tomorrow, I will call up my doctor and see if I have any refills left of the antipsychotic.  That is the scariest name for a pill type ever.  With luck, it will suppress the hypnogogic hallucinations.  By the way, I sprained my ankle during the escape from Pencildick.  Not too shabby, considering I probably should have broken it.  Or died.  Can’t forget that.

I haven’t seen Delia since that night at the window.  I hope she’s all right.

At The Window

And I’d almost regretted making this blog, thinking I’d reacted in haste.  I had thought perhaps I’d imagined my encounter because of paranoia.  There are other reasons I’d assume hallucination over reality when dealing with something like this, besides pure skepticism.  They relate to my aforementioned original interest in Slender Man’s mythology, but again I am not going to post about that now.  I will have to eventually.  The goal of this journal is to record my experiences so that, even if I should die, others in my situation might have another piece of the Slender puzzle.  To do that, I am going to have to bring up things about myself and my past that I’d rather lie buried.  Good lord, I sound melodramatic.  I will chalk that up to what I’ve just seen. 

My roommate and I were studying quietly in our dorm when I noticed something flicker by our fourth floor window.  I got up to check.  The DVD I was watching had started to skip, but I thought nothing of it; I was playing it on my old PS2, and it sometimes skips with movies. 

He was outside, in the small alley between my dormitory and the hotel next door.  As it is night and the alley has no street lamps, I could only make out his shape by the rim light illuminating him from the hotel behind him.  That is not a shape one forgets.  I was going to attribute it to a trick of my mind, but my roommate had come to look out of the window as well.  She asked if I knew ‘why that man’s wearing such a weird costume’. 

I think I can rule out hallucinations.

The thing of it is, he wasn’t looking up at us.  From what I could make out, he was pointed towards the room one door down from our room.  I heard them shut the window.  Perhaps I have an ally?  My roommate’s friend, Delia, lives there.  I will go talk to her. 

Delia was strange.  Granted, I’d never the occasion to talk to her outside of a passing greeting here and there, but she did not seem quite right.  Her face was drawn and sullen, her eyes bruised from what I assume to be lack of sleep.  It is too early in the semester for that, unless she has been out partying frequently.  It was the way she spoke that rose my heckles, however.  Slurred and simple, and at one point she repeated herself twice.  Her eyes were so distant then.  This may still have to do with drugs or alcohol, but given recent events her behavior is raising red flags.  I will proceed with caution; from what I read, Slender Man can addle one’s mind.  That or she may be becoming one of the minions I hear about.  I don’t know how I can help her (if I can help her) so I will spend the rest of this night researching.

You may wonder why I don’t go on the run, as I hear many do.  The way I understand it, he is always watching you wherever you go.  If this is the case, running will solve nothing.  That aside, I am not yet autonomous.  I have no money of my own, and I can guarantee my parents will disable my credit card were I to disappear.  The small funds I have would not get me out of the city. So I will be preparing an arsenal of weapons, both traditional and...experimental.  I have no idea if they will work, but it is worth trying, should I need them.  Better to stand and fight, if I am not merely a witness.