December 10, 2009

            She finally called. The nurse. She finally called. She said her name is Tammy. She didn’t call sooner because she had ‘an emergency’ in her family. I’m sitting here thinking I’m losing my damn mind and my husband won’t talk to me unless he has to anymore, and she couldn’t call because it was ‘inconvenient’ … fuck that. Fuck her. I’m holed up in my library and I haven’t slept in days. Bits and pieces here and there when my eyes simply wouldn’t stay open anymore; that’s it. But she was ‘busy.’ Whatever. I got what I needed.

            Tammy said these people she mentioned are online. They actually post their experiences on a website. I suppose, like me talking to my computer, it gives them a way to talk to each other. The best part is even though they can talk about it, right there in the open, no one thinks they’re crazy for it, because those who don’t believe simply don’t take it seriously. And those who know better; well, those who know better get validation that they aren’t the only ones.

            Anyway, Tammy said she gave one of these people parts of my file from Thanksgiving but not to worry because she had taken out the identifiers. She said this guy was interested in my story and wanted to talk to me, so she gave me the web address for this site and an e-mail address. I sent an e-mail right away and the guy got back  to me even as I began my diary entry about it. I’m going to send him my diary entries so I don’t have to waste time telling everything again.

            Maybe … maybe everything’s going to be okay. Maybe they can help. Maybe it’ll stop now. I can’t wait to go look at the website after I send all this.

            -J

December 6, 2009

            Can’t stop crying. I don’t know what’s happening to me. Trying to cry quiet. In the library. Can’t let him hear. He’ll bring me in again. Can’t let him hear. Can’t go back. Not crazy. Too real. Too, too real. Why haven’t I heard from the fucking nurse?! What the fuck?!

            Breathe. Have to calm down. Need to talk. Need to be coherent. Breathe. Calm. Calm.

            Okay. We were in bed. Everyone was sleeping. I got up to go to the bathroom. This sounds crazy even to me, but it was too real not to be. Too real. I went to the bathroom and washed my hands. I was standing in front of the sink, looking in the mirror. I look like hell. I’ve always had insomnia, but it’s gone from bad to worse.

            As I stood there, I started to get the creeps. I don’t know what else to call it. Like I wasn’t alone, but I could clearly see that I was. The light was on, and it’s just a small half bath. Toilet. Sink. Mirror. Shelf. That’s it. I felt like I was being watched, and my bare feet were starting to sweat on the tile from my nerves. And I felt a cold hand on my left shoulder.

            All of a sudden the hand was gone and I was in a deep cave. It had a circular tunnel like a hobbit hole. I have no idea how I got there. I was just looking in the mirror a second before. It was cold. The rock was mostly brown with some white marbling to it, and it was very wet. At the end of the tunnel was a wider space, with a strange sound coming from it. It was almost like a small room, except where there should have been a wall opposite the tunnel there was a large opening in the rock, like a window, barred with stalagmites and stalactites. The sound was coming from the other side of the window and was much louder here. It sounded like water.

            I became aware of other people with me, but … not. I don’t know how else to say it. It was more like I had a vague knowledge of faceless shadowy forms rather than actually seeing people directly. And when I looked, it was as if they dimmed. I was terrified, but I couldn’t go back to the tunnel because they were behind me too. Just standing there. Not moving.

            I went to the window to see if I could get out that way. Pressing my face between the rocky bars, I was looking down into a larger opening with more stalagmites and stalactites all over the other side of it but only smaller ones in the middle of the ceiling. Glancing behind me, the shadowy figures still hadn’t moved. God, they were creepy. I looked through the window again. The larger room was deep. I had to look way down to see an underground lake with a small but powerful underground river to the left flowing into it, although the lake water wasn’t rising.

            Wiping tears from my eyes, I notice that what I first thought was large rocks in the river weren’t stationary. It was carrying … I still can’t believe it. People; bodies; corpses, floating like logs in a log-jam into the lake, where they simply ceased to exist. Into my mind came a close-up picture of the face of one of the corpses. It was a man. His short brown hair was wet and plastered onto his pale, slightly bloated face. His face was crudely made up and rouged like they used to do in the old west, yet I could plainly see that there were odd circular red spots scattered over his skin. Each spot was about the size of a dime, and the skin of each spot looked raw and sore, almost like cigarette lighter burns, though I’m not sure what they were. The image flew from my mind like a photograph thrown Frisbee-style, down to the river and attached itself to a body.

            And I was standing in my bathroom again, blinking from the harsh suddenness of the light bulbs overhead. I wondered if I’d dozed off standing there, but I realized the vinyl tile under my feet was ice cold. I couldn’t have been standing there long. Shaking, I opened the door to the bedroom and peered over to the clock on my nightstand. There’s just no way. It was five minutes earlier than it was when I got up to go to the bathroom. Five minutes earlier. There’s just no way.

            -J

There's a bubbling sound. I don't know where it's coming from. It's dark in here and the ground is rough. I can't see anything but I can feel a breeze on my skin and I know I'm naked. The sound is coming from somewhere ahead of me. I reach out to either side of myself and my right hand touches a wall, rougher than the floor. Feels like stone. Granite maybe. Impossible to tell in the dark. The dark. It was oppressive.

The last thing I remember for sure is lying in bed. I had kissed The Wife goodnight as I went to lay down and she headed off for work. The light in the closet was on because even at this age, the darkness worries me. More so in the last few months than in the last twenty years combined. I see things in the half light, shapes in the corners. Like a child, my mind makes monsters of the mundane.

I slide my feet slowly along the rough floor. A sweeping forward step, my feet never truly leaving the ground, to ensure I step on nothing sharp or trip over something in my path. I do not rush, though the blood in my veins is doing so. Pounding in ears. I'm terrified of this dark, of not knowing, of finding out. I don't really want to move forward, but I see little good in standing here, alone in the black. So forward I move, towards the bubbling sound and further into the unknown.

The ground slopes downward slightly. That much I can tell. It occurs to me that I ought to be moving up instead of down. Up usually denotes out when you are underground, which I think I am. Still, there's that sound and afraid or not, it's the only real landmark I have in this place. If you can call it that.

A hundred feet further on (I think though it's hard to say) my feet reach liquid. Cool, and lapping gently at my toes as I stand stock still. Water in the dark. Another small terror. Black inky water full of who knows what ready to swim up and take interest in me. Underground, in the dark, at the water's edge. This place seems tailor made for me to be afraid of. I'm paralyzed here. Unable to move forward. Back the way I came and up is my only option. I turn and begin to shuffle back carefully.

There's a whisper in the dark up ahead. I'm not even sure I heard it at first over the bubbling sound coming behind me, but the second time it happens I'm sure. It's a papery sound. Cloth sliding against itself. I stop. This sound is somehow worse than the water. It's an insectile sound and if there is one thing that makes me shake more than water in the dark, it's the idea of being set upon by... doesn't bear thinking about. The sound is individual, a single thing. Certainly not the horrible swarm of crunchy brown bodies my mind wants to conjure up.

When the hands close around my shoulders I scream. I can't help it. It is so sudden, so quiet. I never knew there was someone else in here with me. When a second set of hands close on my thighs I realize that the word someone may not actually apply here.  They're strong. So strong. I struggle and scream but they just lift me up. I'm in the air shaking, writhing, screaming to get away when suddenly the arms holding me heave me back, then forward again. I sail through the air, the strength behind those arms throwing my weight easily a hundred feet through the air where I splash bodily into the blackness behind me. The water is deep where I land. Too deep to reach the bottom and I am swallowed up by it. Disoriented. Flailing. I don't know which way is up and I suddenly realize that I may be swimming deeper instead up towards the surface. My air is running out. I force myself to stop and let the air in my lungs do what it does naturally. Rise.

But there isn't enough in me. I'm not going up and what I have isn't enough to sustain me down here in the dark. I'm not rising, not falling. Neutral buoyancy. My body is screaming at me to breathe, my mind is screaming at me to move...

And I am screaming in my bed. The wetness on my body is not water, but sweat. I am not drowning, not suffocating. I am... fine. I rise shaking and stumbling and make my way to the bathroom where I vomit in the tub because it is the first thing I reach before I can hold back my rising gorge no longer. I stand there, heaving. When the urge passes I wipe my mouth and stumble to the mirror. My hair is askew, my eyes are bloodshot. Honestly no news there. I turn on the faucet and cup my hands, drinking the water to rinse away the taste of bile. It's then that I really notice them. The marks on my arms. They're on my legs as well. I step back to see them better. Finger marks as though something grabbed me, squeezed as tight as it could. What ought to be bruises, but aren't exactly. They aren't black or blue or even that greenish yellow that you get after they've begun to heal a bit. No.

They're livid white.

The following is one of three of patient 4077212's journal entries made shortly after release from Northwest Medical Center. Given to us by 4077212 herself after contact was made between her and us thanks to the nurse that sent us the original case file excerpt. The entries cover 4077212's stay at NMC during her observation period as well as events leading her to contact us. We here at the Slender Man Chronicles have only made changes to any names in order to protect the identities of those involved. In the interest of brevity, we will be posting them one at a time. Read about her first night in the NMC after the jump.

The copper taste of fear in the back of my throat is the first sign that something is wrong. It rises up in my gorge suddenly. So suddenly it takes me a moment to realize what it is. I didn't even realize I was afraid until I tasted it. It's a bitter taste that makes me want to cough and it's very presence makes me suddenly paranoid. The taste, the vomitous horror of it, plagues me on my walk home and I know he must be there. Watching and waiting just around the corner, just out of sight.

It's cold out tonight. One of the coldest nights in some time, though not quite as bad as last night. Last night it snowed, which I know isn't a big deal to a good portion of you. It's normal to my brother in Minneapolis or my cousin in New York or a half Mexican dude in Philly or a little red haired girl in Colorado but on the Gulf of Mexico it's relatively rare. The white flakes fell and I didn't for a moment think of the watcher in the dark though he certainly must have thought of me.

Today, though, things were different. Today I decorated the tree. Today I watched The Godfather. Today I walked to a friend's house and on the way home a few hours later, I felt it again. That sense of being hunted that leaves me feeling half blind. Halfway home I looked at the pool as it glowed a quiet blue-green and I knew. He was behind me. It or him or whatever. It was there somehow and though when I spun around I saw nothing but the normalcy of the buildings behind me at 3AM, I still knew. I ran, ran for home and I slammed the door behind me and I shuddered.

I flipped the deadbolt, I made a drink and I made a sandwich and I began to watch some television but I knew. If the curtains hadn't been there, I would see him. I know he's out there. I know he's watching. I'm too terrified to open the blinds to check but I know he's there, waiting. Watching. Hungry.

I need a drink.

I'm just getting to bed. I've been here a couple of hours now. Lying in the forced darkness of my room the black curtains provide. The house is empty but for myself and the cat, who does not care to be near me and so stays in my daughter's room. It is almost quiet. Almost but not quite. A vague tapping sound from somewhere in the house keeps making my nervous system jump. All is quiet and calm and then every synapse is lit up like Times Square. Just... tapping.

I've got that feeling again. Watched. Seeing that shadow shape from the corner of my eye. I haven't slept properly for days and though I'm tired now I still cannot drift off without feeling as though something may be waiting. That if I close my eyes for too long it will just be a matter of time till I feel bone thin fingers scraping along my skin in the dark.

There is little I can do, of course. As a wise man once said, "you don't fuck with the infinite, man." And if it is waiting for me, let's face it... it can wait forever.

So to pass the time I lie here and I type on the tiny keys of my phone. I lie here and hope that this time isn't my time. I hope that if it is, I simply don't wake up.

Sometimes I think I should hope for madness to take me. Other times... I fear it already has.


-- Posted From Somewhere in Time and Space