[Note: Claire requested I transcribe the journal entries she wrote during her experience in the Infected Town four months ago and post them here, as she is no longer able to do so herself. Hopefully they elucidate her findings and complete this story.
To be clear, the first of these entries pick up directly after she stopped posting on Nosleep.
My own explaination of the events, and why these entries are so delayed, will be posted in due course.
- Clayton (The Voyager)]
[Written on the cover of the journal:]
Clayton,
They deserve to know. Post these entries when you get a chance and tell them what you told me. Don’t leave anything out.
It’s my last request. You owe me.
Username: vainercupid
Password: *********** [Omitted for privacy]
Thanks. See you on the other side.
Claire
April 12 2014
No more electronics. Sorry nosleep. My phone’s charger cable is rotted through, plastic withered away, wires frayed. I found it like that. Just woke up and it was like that. So my phone is dead, and my laptop is all fucked up.
This whole room feels like it’s rotting. I feel like I’m rotting. Just withering up to die. I look at my hands and legs and they look normal, like nothing’s changed. It’s from the inside out. I feel crawling inside me, more than skin deep, like a trillion parasites wriggling through my muscles, my bone. I look close at my fingers and see along the nail beds the brown edges of decay and a thousand cigarettes.
The Voyager (his real name is Clayton), that fucker, took Elizabeth Hadwell’s laptop. He said it would be more useful to him than to me. He said he could maybe fix this. I’m waiting for him to come back.
[A note from Clayton: I used the alias “Voyager” when I first started my correspondence with Claire, not wanting to reveal my identity. It is a remnant from my gaming days, and part of my email address. It was also a nickname from high school, what Alan and Lisa called me, later picked up by Jessica and Elizabeth.]
Time seems scattered, nonlinear. Of course I can’t remember chunks of it, and I’m not sure how events are spaced, or which one came after the others. So I'll start with what I know came first.
Clayton and I talked a lot after his email. Texts, calls. I really had to be sure, or as sure as possible, that he wasn’t trying to fuck us over. He said again and again he wanted to help, to stop this, that he’d do whatever possible. He said he knew Elizabeth, Jess, Lisa, Alan, Alex all of them. He promised to tell me his story when we met in person. He didn’t.
I think it’s clear Clayton is a liar, but he might be the only person who can end this. He said he could crack the password on the laptop and give me answers.
So we met up with him. Me, Blake and Heather. He told us to meet him on the bridge into town. We showed up and waited half an hour. Nothing. It started to get dark, I think. Then something started shuffling under the bridge, like scraping and moving around. We could hear it making its way closer. Heather freaked out and wanted to leave. But I refused. I was getting desperate. I already knew I was fucked and if he had a way out of this, I was going to listen.
The shuffling turned out to belong to Clayton, who was climbing up from his under-bridge encampment. I recognized his leather jacket immediately - he’d been with that girl in the dress when we’d driven through the town the very first time Blake and Heather were with me. He’d run and hidden from us.
He was an average guy. There was nothing about his physical appearance to suggest someone special. Young, about my age, tall with dark hair and a scraggly beard. He was filthy though, dirt encrusted, and he stunk. Like he’d been homeless for months. The voice I’d heard on the phone had been refined, precise in diction, so this surprised me. He clambered over the railing on the other end of the bridge from us and brushed himself off.
Not sure what exactly happened next. He didn’t even say a word to us. I called his name and he nodded, keeping his distance, and flicked on a flashlight. He shone it on each of us in turn.
Then he staggered back, really fast, clearly panicked. I turned around in case something was approaching us from behind, but I only saw Blake and Heather, who seemed just as confused as I was.
Clayton started screaming at us. Stuff like “What the fuck? What the hell are you doing? Get the fuck away! Don’t even look at me! Run away! Fucking monster! You fucking monster!” Really disjointed, situationally inappropriate. It sounded like the ramblings of a demented brain, to be honest. I realized at that point that he was insane.
Then he pulled out a gun. A black pistol. Took it from his waistband and pointed it right at us. Now Heather started screaming, and Clayton’s yells rose to match. Then Blake started yelling too, pushing us behind him. I couldn’t figure out what the fuck was happening. Fucking chaos. Blake took a couple steps toward the guy. I don’t know why. Fucking idiot.
The gun went off. Blake dropped to the ground. Clayton took off towards the town.
The bullet went through Blake’s right shoulder and grazed left Heather’s ear. We were screaming even louder now, trying to stop the bleeding. I dropped next to Blake and put my hands against the wound like I’d seen in movies. Compression, right?
I don’t know how but we ended up getting him in the car. Heather was bleeding and crying but she drove as I sat with him in back, still pressing my hands against his shoulder. He was really pale and in a lot of pain.
We drove him to the hospital immediately. It was only when we were halfway there that I realized I’d dropped the laptop on the bridge. No fucking way was I going back for it though. On top of mold and monsters and infection, we had a gun toting maniac to deal with too. It might even have been broken when it fell from my hands. There were no answers on it worth the risk, even if I could access them.
We asked the doctors to quarantine Blake, explaining he had an infectious disease. I don’t know if they did or not. He was unconscious when we left. I hated leaving him, but Heather brought up the point that we were probably doing more damage just by being in a public place.
He came back to the motel a few days later, with a bunch of stitches and pain meds. He left before they wanted him to, though. He said he couldn’t stay in a place with so many people, especially so many sick people. I’m sure the hospital staff thought we were weird hermit kids. Let them.
That’s it for now. Can’t write anymore. My hand hurts.
I’m so tired.
[A note from Clayton: Any and all additions/changes to Claire’s journal made by me will be in these brackets and bolded, to avoid confusion.]
April 13 (?) 2014
Assuming it’s the next day. Could be any number of days. Weeks, even. Just woke up. Might as well continue the saga, even though I’m doubting more and more whether anyone will read it. The worst thing about this self-imprisonment is the boredom. You don’t realize how much of your time is spent on the computer or your phone until you’re forced to give them up. Hours pass in silence, confined to a hotel room. Blake is sleeping off the last of his pain meds. Heather is sitting silent by the window. None of us feel like talking.
So I write. Maybe I’ll make sense of it all. And the good thing is, if I black out, my words will be harder to delete.
The night after Blake returned from the hospital my phone was still working. And Clayton texted me a rather inscrutable phrase:
Clayton: There is a fox in the henhouse.
Even though I knew I might regret it, I texted him back. Since I don’t have my phone and I never wrote down the conversation, this won’t be word for word. But I’ll transcribe it here to the best of my ability.
Remember. Remember.
[Clayton here. Claire’s account of our conversation, scribbled in her journal, was only partially accurate. Here is the exact conversation that took place between us, transcribed from my own text logs. They are word for word, I assure you. There is, after all, no reason for me to lie to you, and I don't intend to.]
CLAYTON (1:03 AM): There is a fox in the henhouse.
CLAIRE (1:14 AM): What the hell, man?! You shot Blake! Leave us the fuck alone!
CLAYTON (1:15 AM): I didn’t mean to hurt your friend.
CLAYTON (1:15 AM): I’m sorry.
CLAIRE (1:18 AM): FUVK YOU! What the hell were you trying to do, waving a gun around? You’re as fucking crazy as the rest of them.
[At this point, I became wary of who may be on the other end of the conversation. The Entity and Liz have been known to be tricky and manipulative with their use of cell phone messaging, and the misspelling of “FUCK” unnerved me. As far as I knew, Claire may not have been the one texting me. I stopped replying.
As a side note, I believe the reason for the misspellings using keyboards is due to loss of motor function in the infected. As the virus rages through the human body, not only do muscles degrade, but flesh in the digits of the hands and feet becomes fused. This makes it extremely difficult for those possessed by the Entity to type or text.]
CLAIRE (1:27 AM): I bet you’re a cultist, too. I bet you’re working for that cunt Elizabeth Hadwell.
[This text gave me pause. I came to know Liz quite well a few years before all of this occurred (Alan was a mutual friend), and she would NEVER call herself a cunt. Elizabeth Hadwell is one of the most self-involved, self-impressed people I have ever met, and even if she was trying to trick me she would not insult herself. Neither would the Entity, if in fact they are separate consciousnesses. They love themselves and each other above all. So I replied.]
CLAYTON (1:34 AM): I am not a cultist. And I would never work for Elizabeth. Are you alone? I need to call you. You need to know something.
[Claire never responded. I’ll let her explain the rest in her own words.]
At this point my phone died, so I don’t know if he called me. I think I blacked out shortly after because the next thing I remember, I was waking up in bed and my phone cord was disintegrated. That marked the beginning of my time with no technology.
I wonder what he was going to tell me. I wonder
[The writing stops there abruptly.]
EDIT: To be clear, there is more to come. This was not the end of Claire's journal, and I have also promised to tell my own story. Another post will follow as soon as possible.
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