Hello, NoSleep. Clayton again, with the promised update.
I thought I’d start by addressing some issues brought up in the comments.
1.) A lot of people have been asking for the “best guess” reports I mentioned last time. I should tell you, these are not official police reports. They were written by a scientist during the outbreak, and they seem to be part of his personal notes on the infection. There’s not much there you haven’t heard before. I believe someone posted my PM in the comments of part 16, but I will continue to try to respond to your messages. If I miss you, I apologize, and don’t hesitate to try again.
2.) My family. My parents met in college in Montana, which is where I was born and lived for a decade. My mother did grow up in the infected town, but my father has never been there. My parents divorced when I was ten. My father lives in New York. We are not particularly close, but I speak to him on holidays and other special occasions. His is the name on my birth certificate. I’ve been trying to contact him, but he’s not returning my calls. My mom, who I do trust, says she never knew about the cult and has no other information. She’s lived in Florida since 2011. I don’t think she wants to believe any of this is happening.
3.) I’ve thought a lot about the basement Archives, and my best guess is that the cult had been feeding its members to the Entity for generations. The cages were necessary to keep the Ascended from roaming the town, to avoid panic and keep the cult’s secrets. Some creatures clearly escaped or were let out, as there seemed to be quite a few running around that basement. I want to reiterate that what I’m calling the “Archives” was not particularly large. It’s been five years, and the night was pretty traumatic, but if I had to guess I’d say there couldn’t have been more than twenty or thirty cages down there. Perhaps even fewer.
4.) I’m not infected. I take pictures of my face on almost an obsessively day-to-day basis to prove this to myself. No blurs of any kind. Any typos or grammatical errors in my posts are due to my own mistakes or idiocy.
Okay. Let's get back into it.
That day in the Haven’s basement, and the night immediately preceding it, marked a stark line in my life when things went from relatively normal to completely fucked up. After I left the Haven and until I moved to Chicago, that town was never the same. In fact, suddenly it was fucking hostile.
People I’d seen every day, people I knew and even liked, became openly aggressive towards me. Shops and restaurants refused my service. I got stares, glares, flipped the bird - all on a regular basis. Some of my friends - mostly those I considered in Liz and Jess’s circles - stopped speaking to me altogether. I was followed home from school or work almost every day by at least one guy. The police were fucking useless as long as no crimes were committed, and the cultists were always very careful not to commit any crimes. It’s an unnerving and uncomfortable experience, when the town you called home for ten years suddenly wants you out.
I stopped going out much, obviously. I'd never been exactly what you could call a social butterfly anyway. Instead I used my time to research the history of the town and the cult. I read the Hadwell bible dozens of times. The Vessel became my fixation, filling me with equal parts fascination and dread, wonder and fear. Liz and Jess were my only real suspects, and I couldn’t see either of them as the mystical embodiment of an ancient god. I got obsessed. Even Alan started avoiding me. Lisa tried to maintain our friendship - the woman had the patience of a saint - but I was making it hard on her.
In May 2011, however, I was roped into attending Alan’s birthday party. I couldn’t say no without looking like a complete dick. I figured, surrounded by friends, I’d be safe. And it was true, I wasn’t bothered for most of the night. One or two guys tried to corner me, but then Liz would show up with her foxy grin and they’d back off. Part of me assumed it was just her sex appeal, while the other part of me screamed that this was evidence she was the Vessel. It’s really hard to trust your gut when you’re aware of how paranoid you can be.
I got drunk. We all did. Alan was off his tits, hardly able to walk, but I wasn’t much better. Lisa went home early after getting into an argument with Elizabeth. For the rest of the night, Liz and Jess whispered bitchy comments about how possessive and psychotic Lisa was. It was classic catty girl bullshit, and it didn’t take me long to get tired of it.
Alan, drunk and grinning about being fought over, refused when I asked if he wanted to head home. Birthday boy hadn’t gotten enough of two pretty girls’ flirting and fawning. If I hadn’t felt such a deep well of loyalty towards Lisa, I wouldn’t have blamed him.
As it was, I left alone and in a bad mood. Near the door to the bar I walked past a table that immediately fell silent at my approach. Drunk and confused, I turned to stare at them. Sitting there was none other than Mayor fucking Hadwell with a few of his friends. I think I slurred something hostile at him about whether he was enjoying his beer and if he’d said hi to his daughter in the past three years. He didn’t reply - taking the high road, I guess. His impassive smile did not fade. I dismissed him, disgusted, and stumbled towards the door.
I looked back at him once after opening it. I’ll never forget his smile as he sat there, surrounded by his glaring followers, because that was when the pieces really started to fall into place. He gave himself away. He couldn’t help himself, it seemed - as self-indulgent as his daughter. Mayor Hadwell looked me right in the eye and raised his hand to me, pointing with his pointer and his pinky. The devil sign.
I left. I came up with some brilliant plan about dropping by Alan’s and seeing how Lisa was doing. I had some shitty, bad-friend ideas about her whirling around in my drunken noggin.
Maybe it’s a good thing I never got there. On the way home, I was attacked and beaten severely by a group of men. It was a warning, and they wanted me to know that. They didn’t even attempt to make it look like a mugging - I still had my phone and wallet on me when I was found the next morning in the alley, just two blocks from the bar.
I was laid up in the hospital for four days. They broke my wrist, my nose and cracked a rib. Any insistence to the police on my behalf that it was perpetrated by cult members got me raised eyebrows and talk of conspiracy theories. The crazy kid thinks the mayor has something to do with it. Pro tip: Don't even say the word "cult" if you don't want people thinking you're a nutter. My attackers were, obviously, never caught.
I got out after that. Last straw, I guess you could say. I moved to my college town and finished up the coursework. After that I got a job in Chicago doing IT for a big company. My mom left town, too. She said she didn’t feel safe without a man in the house, though now she lives alone in Orlando. It makes me wonder if she really does know more about the cult than she’s saying. But maybe that’s paranoia rearing its ugly head again.
I lived in Chicago for two relatively blissful years, trying to forget everything I’d ever learned about the Entity or the Eye. I had nightmares at least twice a week, often about being trapped in a 3’x3’ metal cage, feeling a smile spread over my aching cheeks, but I got good at ignoring them. Girlfriends helped. Bedmates helped. Therapy did jack shit. But over time, mainly by sheer force of will, I got my life back in order.
You know the rest of the story. In July 2013, Alan disappeared and Jess started posting on NoSleep.
Also around that time was when Lisa was supposed to come to town for her friend’s bachelorette party. She’d planned to stay at my place for a night or two. I was going to show her the sights. But she never showed up.
I texted, I called. No response. And then, two days after she was set to arrive, Alan showed up instead.
At the time I just thought he was drunk. He was incoherent and weird, but he’d snap into these moments of perfect articulation. He looked pale and thin, clumsily stumbling around. He kept saying he missed Elizabeth. I asked him about Lisa, his goddamn girlfriend, where was she? Alan said he had no idea who that was. I argued - of course he did, was he fucking stupid? Still he insisted he’d never met anyone named Lisa, and it didn’t matter anyway. Elizabeth mattered. That was it. Of course I couldn’t understand though. I was jealous of the bond he had with her. I yelled at him for that one, saying he knew I couldn’t stand her, just because he was fooled by her act didn’t mean everyone was. And he just kept that goddamn smirk on his fucking face, shaking his head.
It felt like a dream, arguing with him. Because I could tell he was not joking, nor giving me shit. I couldn’t get through to him, no matter what I tried. He was steadfastly being an asshole, smirking, patronizing the shit out of me. He finally acknowledged Lisa’s existence by calling her boring and nerdy, no match for what he’d found in Liz. Nothing compared to her. He’d never loved Lisa, he said. He just kept her around because he was used to her. Something about his tone, and the words he used, reminded me forcibly of Elizabeth.
So I punched him in the face. His head snapped back on his neck but immediately righted itself again, like an inflatable punching bag. No other reaction. I thought I’d clocked him good, certainly hard enough to knock him down, but his feet hadn’t even shifted from their initial position. He stared at me, smiling that supercilious smile that made me want to hit him again. Then, without another word, Alan left. And that was the last time I saw him alive.
Neither he nor Lisa answered their phones that night. I received an aggressive misspelled text from his phone the next day, demanding I leave him alone. I realize now that it was Liz and the Entity, probably controlling Lisa’s withering body, who wrote those texts.
In August of 2013 I found Alan’s NoSleep posts. He’d linked to the thread on his Facebook with no explanation, and I’d clicked it. I hadn’t even known he and most of the people in that town were missing. I read the whole thing, starting with Jess’s tale and on to his. I read everything Liz wrote there at the end carefully - never touched by the infection, the only one left alive.
And it clicked. Years of clues. It was Liz. It had always been Liz.
So, in September 2013, went back to the infected town. I’ll spare you much description. You’ve seen more than enough of it. It was fucking decimated. Practically empty. I discovered the existence of the Ascended wandering around in much the same way as Jess, Alan and Claire, but I was slightly less surprised. I explored, learned to fight, gathered all the information I could. Learned I could not be touched by infection. Watched as, slowly, the creatures became less clumsy and lethargic. Watched as Liz built an army around her.
I know she was there almost the whole time I was, probably holed up in some abandoned building. I felt her there, like an itch you can’t scratch. I wonder if she feels me when I’m close by, too. It was rarely safe to go inside any building. With her in town, every creature was watchful, alerted. As far as I can gather, the Entity’s complete control and possession works on a somewhat geographical basis. When It and the Vessel are nearby, Ascended in the area act according to their will. I haven’t gotten a lock on exactly how large this range of influence is, but it has to be more than a couple miles. The further they get from a creature the weaker the will becomes, until the Ascended is left to its own devices. In my experience, if they are far-gone enough, they will just lay dormant, waiting for their master’s return. And, of course, they'll attack anyone who isn't already infected.
Being in town was dangerous, so I stuck to the woods and the borders when I couldn’t have my guard up. I stayed as safe as I could, camping and hiding and searching for answers. Nearly half a year of that shit. Then came Claire. You know how that turned out.
I guess the last things to wrap up are Jess and Alex.
I already told you Z was my first kill. Alex was my second. It was during the one time I managed to break into Alan’s old apartment building, by crawling in a basement window. I crept down those black hallways, listening hard for any movement. Something was using the vents above me, sliding its way through them. But I ignored it, because something else was shuffling around in a room to my left. I dropped low, got behind some boxes, and crept around the corner to have a look. Alex was waiting for me there.
He was farther gone than even Alan described in his post, but I recognized him. There’s something about the infection that allows its victims to look like themselves, despite how desiccated they get near the end. Despite the rictus smiles and the bald heads and the fused eyelids. Maybe it’s just me - maybe it’s a “gift” from the Eye - but I could recognize many of the creatures who attacked me on a regular basis in that town. Old friends, employers, teachers. I knew them all.
He stood in the farthest corner corner of the room, and it took me a second to spot him in the dim light. His shape was so wrong I wouldn't have thought he was a living creature if he hadn't been swaying slightly from side to side. He was... facing the corner, I suppose, though his eyes were trained on the door directly behind him.
Alex’s back, which had been broken backwards at a 90 degree angle when Alan saw him in 2013, had snapped acutely. His head was now dragging along the ground behind him, his body was folded almost exactly in half - thighs touching his spine, heels knocking against his skull. He could still stand, however. Somehow. He didn't seem to notice me crouched near the doorway, just stood there shifting his weight from foot to foot like he was waiting for something.
I watched him for a long time, trying to figure out what I was up against. It didn't seem like he was going to do anything at all. At one point, wondering if he was completely inert, I rolled a bottle across the room. It stopped in the far corner across from me, and Alex moved.
He shuffled rapidly towards the bottle with a sound like knuckles popping, his head dragging along behind him in this weird, bow-legging walk as his atrophied musculature tried to deal with the stress of his twisted posture. He stopped by the bottle, breathing rapidly for a few seconds, before he returned to swaying in place.
I threw a bottle next. It exploded in the corner Alex had just come from, raining glass. And Alex fucking came alive.
Immediately, he turned towards the noise and straightened upright to full height with a series of rapid robotic jerks, his back bones popping. His arms stretched out, beckoning as if for an embrace. Then he raced forward, shuffling and cracking. Fast. Too fucking fast. Complete with that smile and the withered arms out like he was asking for a hug, it was an extremely uncanny image. He was across the room in two seconds flat, and when he found there was nothing alive over there he paused, turned, and dropped his arms. He used a few seconds of his upright posture, standing like an average human surveying his surroundings, sniffing at the air. Then, upon detecting nothing, he slumped forward in an extreme toe-touch at the waist. He didn’t seem to like being folded over forward as much, however, because after a moment he jerked back upright and bent himself over backwards again.
I watched him fold, unfold and refold himself multiple times from my hiding spot. I threw cans and bottles to get him going, studying him, seeing what I was up against. Increased movement speed seems to be a constant pattern in the evolution of the Ascended. There definitely wasn’t much brain power behind it - he seemed instinct driven, reactive, almost like a lizard. But he was fucking fast.
In the end I lured him over to me, then stood up and shot him point-blank in the face when he reared to full height. Not very sporting, albeit, but he was no longer the Alex I’d once known. He wasn’t the kid I’d made fun of for his accent when he’d first moved here from England. He wasn’t the guy I’d stayed up with countless nights, getting high and talking bullshit. He wasn’t the Navigator to my Voyager. He was a rotting, smiling animal in a basement, mindlessly searching for prey.
I also found Lisa’s body that day. She’d been dead for a long time. I couldn’t get to her behind the basement boilers, though I tried for more than two hours. Even tried to get through the vents, but I’m too big. So yeah. Killed one of my best friends and couldn’t even give the girl I’d always carried a secret torch for a proper fucking funeral. Not my best day. Let’s stop talking about it.
Jess I couldn’t find until later. I knew from her posts that she was infected, and I think she became my next obsession because Lisa and Alex were gone. I needed something. I wanted to end her suffering. I’d never hated her. We’d never clicked, but she was kind, funny, witty. She didn’t deserve what her best friend did to her. But I couldn’t fucking find her. I searched that town top to bottom, anywhere I could get without being swarmed by Ascended. No luck.
Then I remembered her favorite hang out spot from high school and beyond, where she’d often go to smoke joints or cigarettes after class. She’d called it her “me place.” No one else was invited when she went there, but we all knew it was a certain copse of trees right near the bridge over the creek. So I decided to check it out.
It was a stretch, but it turned out to be right. I found Jess there one night, sitting on a fallen log, still as a statue.
I approached, raising my shotgun, expecting her to jump up and charge me. She didn’t. She noticed me, but apart from looking up with her wide grin, she stayed where she was.
The thing was, Jess wasn’t nearly as far gone as most of the Ascended in the town. She was blank and unresponsive when I talked to her, but she didn’t seem aggressive. She was smiling, but she still had dirty clumps of her hair. Her fingers hadn’t fused together and one eye was still open.
She’d meet my gaze every once and awhile with what I imagined was a spark of her old acuity, but her eye contact would slide away after a moment and go glossy. I could tell she half-understood what I was saying sometimes, and that she often recognized me. But I never got much more from her in terms of communication than a tilt of the head and a blank grin. Given how bubbly and sharp-witted she’d been in life, it was really jarring to look into Jess’s face and see all but nothing.
I couldn’t kill her the first time I met her. I don’t know. I just couldn’t yet. She looked too much like her old self, compared to the others.
Once I found her, though, she followed me everywhere. It might have been desperation, some part of her brain still functioning at a high enough level to think I could maybe save her. Or it might have been a desire to kill me, but an inability to physically do so for whatever reason.
I found it utterly creepy, like being stalked by a dangerous animal that hadn't attacked yet but certainly had the potential. She just watched, waited, and followed. I’d look behind me on a walk through town, and she’d be following a few yards behind. I’d wake up from a dead sleep in the deep woods, and she’d be standing over me. I’d spin around at a noise while exploring a dark and abandoned building, and it would just be Jess, climbing clumsily in through a window.
I’m not sure when I started getting comfortable around her. But after a while, it was almost nice to have her by my side. Don’t get that look on your face. I’d been surrounded by Ascended for nearly six months, too scared to leave town for extended periods in case the infection traveled with me. I had barely spoken to another human face to face in that time. I felt like she protected me from other Ascended, even though she didn’t. If I got attacked or chased, she’d just kind of stand back and watch. But, though it might have been my imagination, it felt like I didn’t get approached as often when she was around.
One night, when I woke up for a piss to find her shaking badly outside of my tent, breathing rapidly between her teeth, I gave her a sweatshirt. The next night she was back, and I actually let her inside the tent. She looked kind of like a wounded bird, skinny and pale and pathetic. She just sat in my corner, wrapped in my too large sweatshirt, and watched me sleep.
After that, I stopped avoiding her. In fact, honestly, I started seeking her out. I'd get worried if she was gone too long. I talked to her all the time and it kept me sane, even though she barely registered my words. In a weird way, Jess and I were closer after she became Ascended than we’d ever been when things had been normal.
Jesus fuck. I reread what I just wrote. What the fuck does that say about me?
A few nights after Claire's first visit to the town, when I followed her to the police station and screamed at her to get out, Jess and I were down at our camp under the bridge. I was talking her ears off about this new chick who had showed up, worried about what it might mean. She just tilted her head and stared, as usual. I told her she was absolutely no help. She watched, smiled, tilted her head to the other side.
I was stressed, and this infuriated me for some reason. I asked her what the fuck she was doing here, following me around, not trying to kill me. Told her for all I knew, she could be keeping tabs on me for Elizabeth. Jess looked away from me at this, and I sort of took this as an actual response, though I probably shouldn’t have.
I stood up, screamed at her to get away from me. She didn’t move. I asked her what the hell she wanted from me.
And, for the first time since meeting her Ascended form, Jess made a noise. She whined at me, a tiny, high pitched, animal whine from behind her fused teeth. It stopped me in my fucking tracks.
“What?” I asked. No response. I crouched in front of her, took her tiny, delicate, bony hands in mine. “What, Jess?”
She whined again, and her good eye flicked to look behind me. I spun around, expecting to see a crouched Ascended waiting to pounce from the bushes. But there was nothing. Just the fire, my tent, my shotgun propped against a stump. I turned back to Jess.
“What are you trying to say?”
Then, something incredible. Jess weakly raised her hand out of my grasp and gestured behind me. I turned to look again, feeling another rush of adrenaline as I prepared to see an enemy. Again, nothing, and I more carefully followed the vague line of her hand. She was pointing at my gun.
Then, very slowly, Jess brought her hand back and settled it against her chest, indicating herself.
Fuck. Obviously. A wave of weariness washed over me. I was so tired of feeling this sad all the time. But I stood again, nodded, and started heading for my truck. I didn’t have the ammo, having used the gun liberally to scare back pursuing infected. The scattered shots made holes in them, stopped them for a few seconds, but they always got moving again in no time.
“Give me a few days,” I told her. She whined again.
I came back a week later. I’ll admit, I was putting it off. I don’t know, I didn’t want to lose her company, as meager as it was. But when I did drag my ass back, it was with a new box of shotgun shells and the will to put her out of her misery.
Night was falling when I rolled into town. Jess wasn’t by the creek, so I spent a while searching, running from tree to tree, avoiding the attention of any Ascended that might be around. The town seemed curiously empty tonight. Usually I saw one or two creatures out and about at night, but they all seemed to be in hiding. I felt Elizabeth closer than she'd been in a few weeks, painfully close. Dread started settling over me, and my searched ramped in desperation. I even started calling out Jess’s name.
I found her by the old high school, staring up at one of the upper windows. She turned when I called to her and tilted her head at me. Her customary greeting.
I told her I was ready, told her I thought we’d do it in her old “me place.” She tilted her head the other way, which I took as a gesture of acceptance. So I put my arm around her withered, fragile body and started leading her through the streets towards the bridge.
On our journey through an abandoned neighborhood, Claire, Blake and Elizabeth drove up behind us. I panicked at the lights, recognized Claire’s car, and scooped Jess up to get the fuck out of there. So mystery solved. Claire saw me with Jess that night.
I killed Jess in her old copse of trees by the dry creek bed. She sat on the ground and gazed up at me with her one good eye. I wondered if Elizabeth and the Entity could see me through it. I wondered why they’d left Jess more or less independent of their influence, if that really was the case. It certainly seems like it was. Maybe Elizabeth is a more sentimental creature than I think. But probably not.
She went peacefully, all things considered. I made it quick, the way I did with Claire a few short months later. She closed her eye right before I squeezed the trigger.
Elizabeth left town with Blake just before I killed Claire. I have no idea where either of them are at the moment. But I couldn’t feel her presence in that town anymore.
So I followed her, angry. Claire's death lit a fire under my ass. For a few months I was a dog after a rapidly fading scent, up and down the coast, then further inland. It was a mix of blind instinct - my gift from the Eye - and emails and PMs from people who read these accounts.
They usually weren't complete wastes of time. Every so often I’d get a hit, only to arrive after Elizabeth had already moved on. She always leaves infected in her wake. I chased rumors of weird smiling people wandering around in Portland, in Seattle, in San Francisco, in Phoenix. Rumors that never came to anything more fruitful than a shotgun blast and black ichor splattering the walls. Deaths that treat the symptom but not the disease. If you live on the western side of the United States, stay safe. If someone approaches you with a forced smile and eager eyes, run. Even if they’re not infected, I can’t think of a case when this is bad advice.
A couple of months into this, the game reversed. I was in Houston on a weak lead, not expecting to find anything, when I spotted Elizabeth’s fucking car parked outside a bar. I couldn’t fucking believe it. I double checked. I triple checked. That was her vehicle, no doubt about it. The coincidence was too crazy. She just happened to have stayed put here? Not only that, she was out drinking at an establishment only a few blocks from my hotel? No way. There was something else going on, I knew it.
I was right. But I took the bait, exactly as she wanted me to. At that point, I was thinking “fuck it.” I’d fucked myself and too many others over by playing it safe. I was done. If she wanted to do this here, who was I to refuse?
I entered the bar, which was crowded, with a handgun stuffed in my jacket. I would've preferred something larger, but I couldn’t exactly bring a shotgun inside without getting the cops called on my ass.
I spotted her immediately, sitting at a table in the corner with three men. Two I didn’t recognize, but one of them was Blake. He's still alive, or was a few months ago. He’d claimed the special seat right next to Elizabeth, and he had his arm around her, smiling at her dopily. The other men had much the same expressions on their faces. It was like she collected them.
She grinned at me when I walked up to her, like none of this crazy shit was happening and we were just old friends meeting up.
“Clayton,” she said, and two of her lackeys turned to me. Their expressions went vicious. One of them reached into his jacket and held on to something therein, likely a weapon. I understood. She wanted to have a conversation, but she was protected. I reached for my own gun, returning the threat. Liz nodded, winked at me.
She gestured for me to sit, and I obliged. Carefully. She wasn’t the type to make a scene in such a crowded place. None of the other patrons looked like they had anything to do with this, so I considered us on relatively neutral ground.
“You found me,” she said.
“You let me,” I replied. Elizabeth nodded again, her smile growing wider.
“Things have changed,” she said. “We’ve come to understand something. Something that was hidden from us for so long.”
By “we” she meant herself and the Entity.
I asked what they understood, but she shook her head.
“You’ll see,” she said. “I promise, you will. There’ve been so many failures, Clayton. So many deaths.” She gestured at the men sitting with her, though they seemed pretty alive to me. “All because of your Eye. If He had just told us the whole story, things would’ve been so much simpler. But no. His way is to keep secrets. I’m told that’s just the nature of the beast.”
She laughed. The men laughed with her, stupidly. I tried to get Blake to look at me, but he only had eyes for Elizabeth.
"But that's over now," she went on. "We know everything."
“What secrets?” I demanded.
“Come with me,” Elizabeth said. “And I’ll tell you. I don’t want to hide things from you anymore. We have lots to talk about. So what do you say? Let’s get out of here. Be alone together for a little while.” Her hand reached out, her fingers slid into mine, cool and soft.
For a moment, I was tempted. Elizabeth is beautiful, and there’s something hypnotic in her eyes, something that wants you to keep staring. Her hand, the only prolonged human contact I’d had in months, felt deliriously good against mine. It made me wonder, instantly and instinctively, about the rest of her skin. I found it hard to deny in that moment that the Entity is a god, because if that is what’s inside of her, no wonder she’s that attractive.
But then the alarm bells started ringing in my head. This security system I am well aware of - another product of the Eye’s protection over me. It is always there, and it is never wrong. Something inside of me was screaming at me to run, and it was clashing with the desire to keep on staring into Elizabeth’s bright green eyes.
I gave it a few more seconds. My ears started ringing. I caught a flicker of confusion on Elizabeth’s face - she wasn’t used to resistance. But I felt what was happening more acutely than I ever had before, with her fingers entwined in mine. Two gods battling fiercely for the right to this world. Elizabeth and I, their Vessels, caught in between them, doubtlessly ignorant of the half of it.
But my god is stronger. This is His world. I tore my gaze from her face and stood.
“Wait,” she hissed, and I heard a hint of the Entity’s voice mingled with hers. Her fingers locked around my wrist so tightly I had bruises later. She leaned towards me, tilting her head pleadingly, desperate longing in her expression. “We belong together, Clayton. You and me.”
The alarm bells in my head started ringing critical threat. I wrenched out of her grasp, turned away, and ran.
Since then, running seems to be all I do. It’s been nothing but motels and highways, guns and boobytraps, for more than half a year. Elizabeth follows me everywhere, but at least I have my little mental security system to warn me when she gets too close. I have to assume she wants to possess me, too. She wants to possess the world, of course, but her interest in me is particularly strong. I think she’s worried I’ll her undoing. And I plan to be.
So we’re up to date now. I think writing these accounts has been more helpful to me than it has been to you, NoSleep. It’s supplied me with a few more leads to follow. It’s given me a weird energy I haven’t felt in a long time.
And I think, like these accounts, I need to return to the source. I thought I’d exhausted every lead there, but now I think there must be more. The Eye’s nightmares stopped when I came to the decision a few weeks ago to return to the infected town. I’m on to something. He seems satisfied for the moment.
I’ll update again if I find anything there. If I’m alive to do it. And maybe, with a hope I haven’t felt in years, I can finally put an end to this.
Hear that, Liz? Come on home. I’ll be waiting.
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Credits
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