Monday, January 31, 2011

Pain

My stomach is in bits. I don't even know what chicken teriyaki is but it sounded foreign and strong-flavoured. I was right on both counts.

I held two icicles in my hand for an hour. My hands are still bright red from it. That was five hours ago.

Listened to some modern rock music on loud. I never really got it, to be honest. Muse are the only band I liked out of those I listened to. I'll stick to my pre-50s music, thanks.

Tried out a few perfumes, pretended I was looking for a gift for my girlfriend. My nose is burning.

And I stared into a bright light without my sun-blocking contact lenses. Migraine.

Still in a lot of pain. Keep having to pause every few words for my hands. Can't give up. Got to be better. Got to be stronger. Have to keep going. Have to run. Have to fight. Have to protect Ava.

Ugh. Tired. Going bed.

Reach out.

Saturday, January 29, 2011

Luring

Ava and I got out of our hotel before Slate could cause trouble. I tried to insist on a single room so there wouldn't be a communications delay but Ava likes her privacy and I like my peace and quiet, so I let the argument go before it happened.

I've been thinking about the dark place a lot, pondering why what happened played out how it did. Ava was the trigger, I'm sure of that. It happened the second that she stepped on the site of the sacrifice. And then, Slate attacked Ava first, not me. I'm not even 100% sure he realised I was there until we were tumbling down the hill together.

Hang on, room service is here. I'll continue this once I've finished getting my grub on.

...

Ugh, fuck. Monkey-buggering donkeycock shitcock flaming donkeycocks of shitting donkey-buggerers. Cock.

I, uh, I decided to try eating something other than crackers. I want to try and build myself up a little in case I end up in another fight with Slate. I know I made it out to be a very even fight in my last post, but, actually, if Ava hadn't got him with the taser, I'd have been a goner. Slate was one of the very few in the quarry who ate anything other than the blandest food. He always had Chinese and Indian and shit. Meaty, spicey stuff. He built up his muscles and his resistance to his hypersensitivity at the same time. I ordered a pork satay.

Shit, that was painful. I've been drinking loads of slightly-cold water to try and stop the burning. Oh, fuck me. Bad idea. Bad fucking trip. Flaming donkeycocks.

Right, flagrant abuse of the English language aside, I had an idea. Ava was trying to work out what changed in the 70s that caused appearances of Slendershit to suddenly disappear from the records. Well, the dark place was discovered in the 70s, actually. And the dark place is the site of a mass child sacrifice to Slendercock. And when Ava stepped on to the site of sacrifice, Slate appeared and attacked her. Okay, maybe I'm overthinking this but...what if the dark place...how do I explain this?

What if the dark place was a pact between the ancient people of Ireland and Slender Man? He agreed to leave them alone if they gave him, well, children. So they marked that place with blood and bone and every year, or some other arbitrarily defined period of time, they'd send a child up there to the dark place. Slender Man would sense the presence of the child in the dark place, he'd go and get the child and be appeased for another year, or some other arbitrarily defined period of time, allowing the ancient Irish to flourish. But after a while, people forgot about the dark place and the sacrifices stopped, except for the occasional child who went to climb the hill and got kidnapped by Slender Man. Slender Man gets pissed off by the agreement being broken and Ireland finds itself in for a shit few thousand years. Then, 40 years ago, the dark place is rediscovered and somebody, possibly even someone like me, who was getting stalked by Slender Man starts making the sacrifices again to try and keep Slender Man happy. Things in Ireland start to steadily improve and Slender Man's hand is seen less and less. By the time I've defected and started running, there's no one for my to help here in Ireland; of course there's not, Slender is perfectly willing to leave this place alone in exchange for the odd kid. The odd kid like Ava.

But here's the thing; if I'm right, what makes Ireland so special? Why does he have his elite minion headquarters here, why does he have the secret here and why is he willing to let this place flourish in exchange for child sacrifices, something he doesn't seem willing to do anywhere else?

I think there's something there, but I can't see it. I need to think about this more. And go puke. That satay was both delicious and fucking disgusting.

Reach out.

A Dark Place

The history of Ireland is dotted and, in some cases, smeared with darkness. The atrocities committed during the Cromwellian invasion of Ireland, the horrors of the Black Death, whose effects in Ireland are ridiculously underdocumented, the Great Famine, a name so infamous that I needn't even explain it to an audience mainly made up of Americans.

As tiny European nations go, Ireland has suffered an extraordinary amount of darkness and I don't think it's a coincidence given that the Revenant base of operations, the quarry, as well as the secret that lies within it, are located here. In Irish, a black man is called "fear gorm", which means "blue man". This is because the actual Irish for black man, "Fear Dubh" referred to, throughout various parts of Irish history, a malevolent faerie, a brutal foreign overlord and the Devil himself. It is somewhat curious that this particular figure would keep reoccurring throughout the myths and legends of my fair homeland, or it would be, if similar figures did not appear the world over, and if such figures were not consistent with our very own Slender Man.

The reason I tell you this is to explain what I was thinking about when epiphany struck. There's a place in Ireland, which I will not name or identify because I fear that it may be under the same curse as the quarry, where archaeologists discovered the site of the most horrific mass child sacrifice in Ireland's long history. The archaeologists who discovered it were so disturbed by what they found that they referred to it only as "a dark place"; it was a little bit of passing information that my Junior Cert history teacher gave but for some reason it always stuck with me. Given my own experiences with Slender Man and my full awareness of his interest in children, I got a hunch that the dark place was the site of a sacrifice to him. However, when I went to look for this place's location, all I could find were references to it as "a dark place" and co-ordinates; no names. That got me worried it was under the same curse as the quarry, which only further convinced me that I was on to something.

So I put the co-ordinates into Ava's GPS, raced to the café to pick her up and explained my idea to her on the way. She was a bit annoyed that I'd come up with a theory about Irish myth and Slender Man that she hadn't thought of but she agreed it was a lead nonetheless. When we arrived, we discovered that the site was on top of a rather steep hill, so we made our way up and arrived at the dark place. The second that Ava stepped on it, something happened. Specifically, Slate happened.

I knew he'd arrived because of the flicker. Sometimes, rarely enough, mind you, Revenants use Slender Man's world as a shortcut. When we do, we usually open the "door" to Slendercock's world in an existing doorway, to prevent the flicker. The flicker is caused by the difference of light in Slendershit's world and our world, the photonic discrepancy, if you'll allow me to use a bullshit makey-uppy pseudoscientific term. The flicker gives a warning that we're about to arrive and in the situations where we use that shortcut, it's usually against a foe so threatening that we don't even want to give them a seconds notice.

Anyway, Slate appeared out of fucking nowhere and, for some reason, totally ignored me and lunged at Ava. I shoved Ava down the hill (again, sorry about that) and Slate bowled into me, sending us both rolling down the hill, which fucking hurt, let me tell you. We started fighting at the bottom of the hill, he kicked me in the face, I snapped his wrist, he punched me in the stomach, I kicked him in the balls, he broke my leg, I headbutted him in the throat, really, I could go on, but it was just the same stuff over and over. Healing factors make fights take forever.

Luckily, Ava remembered the taser. She got Slate on the back of the neck. Christ, the things she was saying to him. I mean, I'm a fucking murderer but I never taunted anyone like that. Slate ripped off the shock thingies but by then I'd remembered that I had one too and I shot mine right in his face. The bastard roared in pain, started flailing around trying to rip the shock thingies off, managed to slap them off his face, then disappeared back into the Slenderworld. Ava helped me limp back to the car and we came back here to our hotel.

To be honest, I'm not sure what to think of all this. I've spent the last few hours just getting it together in my head and posting it here. I asked Ava not to talk about anything yet either, I wanted to tell you guys what happened before she gave her own analysis. She's glaring at me, so I'm guessing she's bursting with something to say, so I'll just finish this up and let her start blabbing over on her own blog.

Reach out.

Thursday, January 27, 2011

The Theft

Well, since Ava has somehow forgotten to give you an hourly update of her pissing schedule, I'd better give you guys an update.

We managed to steal whatever photos Ava needed but, of course, stubborn little girl that she is, she's refusing to show me them or tell me what they're about until I answer her question about the secret in the quarry. Well, I'll answer it here for all to see;

Of course I can show you the secret in the quarry. But first we'll have to fight our way past the Revenants protecting the quarry and possibly Slendercock himself. So, for now, I'm planning.

Now tell me what the hell the photo is about, brat.

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Two Fish In A Black Pool

As I'm sure you've heard, I have myself a travelling companion, Ava, the infamous London Librarian. And as she said on her own blog, we're on the way to Dublin. Or are we?

I set the Honda on fire, though, with the state of things in Ireland, no one will be too shocked when they find it. Seriously, I've found some scary things in schoolyards while on the run. I can only hope that none of the students were involved in the use of all those condoms.

Ava fell asleep pretty shortly after she made her post, so I pulled over at a garage and put her in the back with a blanket.

Advantages of eternal youth; I never have to look old.
Disadvantages of eternal youth; when moving an unconscious teenager from the passenger seat of my car to the back, I look less like a loving grandfather with his sleepy granddaughter and more like a teenager with his drunk girlfriend.

I'm getting some odd looks from the cashier, so I'm just gonna go stock up on Tuc and water and then get back on the road.

Reach out.

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

The Broken Bird and the Man Who Can't Forget

Hey, guys. It's been hard these past couple of days. It still is. Losing Katie was a major blow. It was more than just losing my family, it was losing my last link to who I was. When Katie died, so did the last physical evidence of Raymond Shaughnessy's existence, the last memory that the world has of him. I've lost the last link to my humanity; there is only Reach now.

Thage and I talked. As it turns out, I was right; I have met Thage before. A few times.

I'm not going to reveal too much, because it's not my place to tell Thage's story. What I will say is that during her own struggles with Slender Man, Thage came to Ireland to find something important, that which I once protected; the secret in the quarry. When she came looking for it, it had just been placed within my care and when I found out why she was here, I made moves to protect it. I had proxies attack her in hotels or in places where she was looking for the secret. I attacked her myself a couple of times. I subjected her and her loved ones to terror and injury.

I've already apologised to Thage for what I did but I'm going to say it again here; I am so sorry. I wish I could plead my innocence by saying I was still under Slender Man's control, but the fact of the matter is that while he told me to stop you, I was the one who sent out the proxies and it was of my own volition that I attacked you personally. I may have been his slave, but at that point I was his willing slave, and everything that happened to you after you came to Ireland is entirely my fault. I can never take back what I've done, but I want you to know that there is no end to the depths of my regret.

Eventually, Thage left Ireland, without ever having found the secret, mainly because she was being hounded by me at every turn. But I didn't leave the matter go. I kept on at her, even though it was unnecessary. She never found the secret and she wouldn't even be able to talk about it because of the...I don't know what it is, but I guess "curse" is the best approximation; if anyone who has come under Slender Man's attention, in other words, any Runner, mentions the secret or its location, it automatically lets Slender Man know where they are. That's why I never mentioned it by name and rarely talk about it, and at least part of the reason that Thage is so cryptic about her past. At any rate, when Thage went back to America, she was no longer a threat and it is a sign of how far I'd fallen at that point that I didn't leave her alone.

I'm the reason that Shayde is the way she is.

I'm the one that offered Thage the deal.

I feel like a filthy excuse for a person. It was one thing for me to think about all the horrible things I had to do as a Revenant but being confronted with one of my victims, seeing for myself what I've done to this poor woman's life...I'll never forgive myself. I think it only makes my shame worse that, in spite of what I did to her, Thage is still a wonderful person. She'd be leading us against Slender Man if...

...if I hadn't broken her. It really makes me feel like scum in comparison; she refused the offer of joining Slender Man, while I caved and joined the ranks of pure evil for forty years. Some might say that I took the route that anyone would in my situation but they can't convince me that I did anything other than betray the human race for selfish reasons; Thage was in the exact same situation and threw it back in my face. Were the lives of Ariana and Katie really worth the lives I've taken, the lives I've destroyed? Were their lives really worth Thage's or Shayde's?

Thage says she doesn't blame me. It's amazing how forgiving she's being. She has a sort of serene sadness about her, even in text. I guess that's what separates the broken and the fallen; Thage is full of sorrow while I'm full of anger.

And that anger needs to be put to better use than beating myself up. I'm not giving up. Not yet, anyway. I think there's potential for something to be done here in Ireland, but I can't do it alone, yet I have no allies here and am surrounded by enemies and the ocean on all sides. For now, I'm just going to keep running and hopefully try and kill more Revenants. But I'm not giving up. The burden of losing Katie and the burden of what I did to Thage will always be like a ball and chain on my mind but I'm not going to let them hold me back; instead, they're going to be a constant reminder of how I need to push harder, walk faster and fight ever more viciously.

I'm fighting for Katie, for Thage, for Fizz, for Nessa, for Amelia, for Ariana, for someone else who isn't a girl so I don't look like some damsel-saving weirdo, for every one who has ever had to face torment by the hands of Slender Man and for everyone who should never have to go through what we did. If you're reading this, I'm fighting for you. If you're not, well, you'll never know, but I'm fighting for you too.

This is not a war; this is a liberation.

Reach out.

Friday, January 21, 2011

Jack B. Nimble

So, like I said, I decided to get Slendershit off of Jean and Kim's back and recharge my batteries at the same time. I'd been saving an idea for just such an occasion.

I went back to the quarry.

It was a very, very, very quick visit (incidentally, so is this visit to the Internet). I went in, made sure I got noticed and then ran the fuck out. That was about...an hour ago? There's a furniture shop near the quarry, so I broke in and got inside a wardrobe to give me a few minutes to check the blogosphere and make this post.

Jean, don't worry about me. You guys are all I have to live for any more; if I wasn't doing stuff like this to help ye, I'd just go back to Coumshingaun and throw myself in the lake with Aria.

I'm not going to lie and say that there's no chance of me getting caught, but I'm just an old coot (even if I do still have the body of a seventeen-year-old). If anyone is ever going to defeat Slenderfuck, it's going to be you guys. I'm not really a Runner in the way you guys are. I'm the Lone Runner.

And now, it's time for me to run, my friends. Jean, take advantage of this opportunity to run, but, before you do, please take at least a few moments to relax. You're going to need it.

Also, just in case I don't make it back to say this; I officially retract my theory that Will is a Conduit. I've read his theories. He's not a Conduit, he's just freaking insane. Seriously, Slenderman is made of kerosene? Right.

Reach out.

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Going Places

I've been tired for a few days. I've need a recharge for a while, but I wanted to be strategic about it and cross over when it would help the cause the best, rather than at my nearest convenience.

Jean and Kim of Viverse disce are being chased by Slendershit in Midwest America. That seems like an issue I should rectify.

I'll report back as soon as I can.

Reach out.

Friday, January 14, 2011

Once

Once there was a man who saw only the world as it was, not as it could be. He didn't plan, he didn't hope, he didn't dream. He just tried to eke a living and get on with his life. This man was a pragmatist and a realist. He didn't believe in abstract ideals or the theoretical; he only believed in what could be experienced, or quantified. This man lived by Occam's Razor, he cut his sandwhiches with it, he fucking shaved with it.

He died.

I am not him.

Jean is still alive. It's not over yet.

Monday, January 3, 2011

Solstice

In the darkest part of the longest night,
Three young fighters rose to fight
Against the man in the midnight suit;
In this all three were resolute.

First, the Disciple, the beauteous maid,
Her hair tied for battle, in a binding braid,
Wielding the wood sword, with symbol inscribed,
And armed with the knowledge that she had imbibed.

Next, the Jester, the clever young lad,
Guarded by the mask that he had.
Armed with nought but pure imagination,
The power of destruction and of creation.

Then, the Gambler, the strong, strapping man,
The one who had put together this plan.
He too had a mask, he too had a sword,
But his true power came from the written word.

Last, the Monster, the villain of the tale,
A man but too slender, too tall and too pale.
Holding the power that none comprehend,
Having no desires but to bring about the end

Of the three young fighters who stood in his path.
He first struck the Jester, who dodged with a laugh,
Then struck back with eggs and water balloons,
The likes of it unseen since 50s cartoons.

Second, the Disciple, with the strength of her back,
Calmly side-stepped the villain's next attack,
Then cleaved with the wood sword, the symbol defiled,
Which caused the monster to suddenly recoil.

Finally, the Gambler, raised his blade high,
'Til the tip of it was ready to sever the sky,
Then he brought it down low, with a whistling sound,
And severed the fiend's arm, which fell to the ground.

Shock gripped the scene and silence descended,
Hope filled the three; could the nightmare be ended?
But the monster hit back and knocked them aside
And, without sound, vanished into the night.

In the darkest part of the longest night,
Three young fighters rose to fight
Against the man in the midnight suit;
In this all three were resolute.

The beauty, the brain, the brawn and the beast,
Went their separate ways as the sun in the east
Rose on the land, spreading its light,
Cleansing away the evidence of the fight.

Maybe one day, the three'd meet again,
But would they meet as enemies or friends?
Either way, on that morning, as the sun did rise,
The three now held hope of the monster's demise.