Hello, Nosleep. Clayton here.
It is repetitive to apologize for the delays between updates, so I will not. I am very busy, and being hunted, and writing this takes time and resources I do not always have. But I will try to post the whole story in due course, for Claire’s sake, and yours.
I’m going back to the beginning here. My beginning, I should stress - the history of the Entity begins millennia ago. Needless to say, I wasn’t around to experience the ancient past. So I’ll go as far back as my memories of the town, when it was a peaceful village deep in the forests of Oregon, when the evil lurking beneath had not yet oozed to the surface. Not all that long ago, actually. Only about 15 years. Back to the summer of 2000.
I guess I should start with the fact that the town in question is not Veneta, OR, as many people seem to think. Elizabeth mentioned that it was in one of her posts in “Woke Up with Amnesia in Chicago,” and I’m not sure why. Perhaps to protect her secrets, perhaps to draw people to the area. But Veneta is not the Infected Town. For obvious reasons, I will never tell you the true name or where it is actually located.
I moved to the town with my mom at the age of eleven, after my parents finalized their divorce. My mother had grown up there and spoke often of missing it. I didn’t understand the sentiment. I think I hated it from the first. I was angry and hurt by my father’s abandonment and furious that I was forced to leave my friends in the city, but it was more than that, too.
To me, things always just seemed off about the town. Steeped in its own history and deeply secretive, many families had been there for generations. The Entity hadn’t surfaced fully, but the town was saturated in Its presence. There was a large church, supposedly Christian, that seemed a community unto itself. You had to be a member of it just to get inside the building, pay fees and know the right people. My mom and I were decidedly not members.
The church was invitation only, as far as I knew, though people never spoke of it openly to the likes of me. My mother was actively disliked by many members, actually, though I didn’t find out why until much later. It was a topic my mother would not discuss.
When, during one of his rare phone calls, my absentee-father referred to it as a cult, I haplessly mentioned this to my mom. She told me never to mention that word at school. Ever. I promised not to, and kept my word, but the idea stuck. And other people, especially kids my age, told stories of the cult at night around campfires - a scary story, a local legend. They whispered of blood rituals and centuries old murder, of old men in cloaks and children initiated and brainwashed from infancy. It was all good fun, even though I didn't really believe it at the time.
Hints of the cult were few and far between during day to day life in town, but as I got older I learned to see the signs. You have to know where to look.
Mayor Hadwell, Elizabeth’s father, was clearly an important member of the cult, maybe even the head of the society. People practically fucking bowed to him when they passed in the street. He used to give long sermons every Saturday night at the old church, despite not being a pastor or a priest, though I guess that wasn’t surprising. As you know, they don’t really worship a Christian god, or even a god of this dimension.
I never got the chance to see a sermon; my family wasn’t invited to the gatherings. Nor were Lisa’s, Alex’s or Alan’s. There were many families in town like ours. Probably even a majority of the residents were uninvolved in the cult, but you can never really tell. Secret societies are secret for a reason.
I met Alan Pearson at the beginning of ninth grade. We hit it off and Alan introduced me to Lisa and Alex. Jessica and Elizabeth went to our school, too, but they ran in different circles. The two girls had been friends since elementary. They’d been raised together in a private school, owned by the church, which kids like me simply didn’t attend. Both were children of affluent families, influential in the community, and in early high school kids from those types of families formed a clique.
Elizabeth May Hadwell was especially well known. Her father was mayor, and she came from the line of town founders. Everyone knew the name Hadwell. It’s everywhere there, once you start looking for it. Hadwell High, Phillipa Hadwell Library, May Hadwell Memorial Cemetery, Hadwell Street… The very crest of the public high school was the Hadwell family crest.
Liz and Jess had always gravitated towards the things their parents didn’t want them to do. They were the kind to skip classes and smoke cigarettes in the parking lot. Alan had been a little in love with Liz from afar throughout most of high school, before they really knew each other. Everyone knew of her, but she only hung out with a small group of people. She had dark hair and bright eyes, and rarely smiled in public. Alan decided she was mysterious. He decided she had all these dark secrets. In a lot of ways, he was right.
Honestly, and I swear I’m not just saying this given my deep loathing for the woman now, I was never impressed with Elizabeth Hadwell. Nor Jessica, for that matter, or any of that group. I found them unreadable to the point of snobbish. Jessica was more bubbly than the others, but this annoyed me too. It seemed fake. I didn’t like the uppity rich crowd, with their closely guarded friendships and their scorn of us “from the wrong side of the tracks.” With their loud laughter and snide glances and tablets of Ecstasy. I didn’t like chaos, and chaos seemed to follow Elizabeth Hadwell and her little gang.
For the most part, my preteen years were uneventful. I decided shortly after eighth grade that the cult was not my problem and probably just an urban legend anyway. I spent my days content with video games and Capture the Flag in the park. But as I transitioned from boy to man, the anger over my parents’ divorce and my father’s now-total absence (he didn’t even call anymore) started manifesting in unhealthy ways. I started a few fist fights in Freshman and Sophomore year, and Alan and I took to stealing beer from the local convenience stores.
Mostly to spite my mother, I made connections with the “wrong” crowd, pretending I was tough shit. I was terrified of actually doing drugs any harder than pot at first, but I pretended I was interested in it. The desire to be cool and to rebel can lead a teenager into all kinds of trouble.
I did shrooms for the first time at fifteen, and the experience was so fucking incredible it allayed most of my doubts concerning tripping.
I left Ecstasy to the rich kids, but experimented with acid and sativa fairly frequently. Alan wasn’t so into my drug kick, but he stayed by my side through it all, acting as a babysitter and keeping me safe during many trips.
My friends started calling me the Voyager, an homage to a conversation I’d had with Alex when we were on mushrooms. One that implied my interest in the voyage hallucinogens can take you on. I used the name often after that, especially online and playing games - it’s a handy screen name that suggests badassery, or so I believed. When I was looking to keep my identity secret from Elizabeth as I tried to contact Jess and Claire, it was the first alias I thought of.
The drugs are important, as you’ll see in a moment, which is the only reason I bring them up. The thing about actively seeking out a high is that it opens up a hitherto unexplored world of connections. The dealer you bought acid from on Saturday comes back next week with a guy who can get you mescaline, which you’ve never even heard of, and he knows a guy who is a veritable fucking pharmacist for hallucinogens. Fuck it, you say, I’ll try them all!
When I was sixteen, I was introduced to DMT. You’ve probably heard of it. There’s a documentary on Netflix about it called The Spirit Molecule, told almost entirely through the eyes of old, pseudo-scientific hippies who just can’t gush enough about it.
The gist of the drug is that it’s supposedly part of the array of chemicals produced by the human brain that make you dream, the shit that gets released right as you die, making you hallucinate really, really hard.
None of that has been tested, much less proven, but it is found in a few plants and if you smoke it you experience an insanely intense but short lived trip. Audio and visual hallucinations, feelings of nirvana, the whole nine. Reports of “otherworldly beings” visiting the tripper are common. 99.9% of the time, I’d chalk that up to the fact that the human mind loves visualizing and recognizing faces.
Figures my trip would be possibly the only case in millions where it’s real.
I can’t prove it, of course. Often I second guess myself, ask myself if what I saw and heard and learned that evening was the truth. But the fact is, I lived in that god-forsaken shit-hole town for nearly a year after most of its citizens were being possessed by the Entity. I have been around the mold, unprotected and vulnerable. I have been touched and scratched by the victims. By all rights, I should be one of them, especially given Elizabeth’s hatred of me and her desire to shut me up and thwart my attempts to stop her. I should be Infected.
But I’m not. I’ve never experienced a single symptom of possession. I am immune, and it has nothing to do with lavender or garlic or any of the bullshit that Z and his friends wanted us to believe in so fervently. It could be that I was immune from birth, and perhaps I was. I’ve been marked, vassalized. But, at the very least, the night I did DMT for the first (and last) time was the night my voyage truly began.
You’re going to think I’m fucking crazy, so I’ll just come out and say it.
I met our god that night. Yes, our god. At least, that’s how He presented Himself. He’s not quite as absent as the Hadwell Bible suggests, but He’s just as much of a dick. Though maybe for different reasons. No offense, you Holy Giant Asshole.
In an effort to keep confusion to a minimum where multiple transdimensional beings are concerned, I will refer to the god of our universe as the Eye. I’ll use the pronoun He (capital H) though I am fairly certain such mundane things as human sex organs have nothing to do with whatever He is.
Let’s be clear, though: the god that (supposedly) created our dimension is nothing like what you read about in the bible or the Torah. In my, somewhat in depth, estimation of Him, He couldn’t give a flying fuck whether or not humans worship Him or refrain from murdering each other or stay virgins until marriage. I’m fairly certain He’d prefer as much chaos as possible, in fact - all the more fun to sit back and watch. There’s a reason the universe reaches towards entropy.
Or maybe gods aren’t real and some powerful, terrifying, psychopathic being is just pretending to be one. He makes a pretty convincing case, but I can't shrug off years of atheism and firm adherence to logic, evidence, the scientific process.
It’s just, you know, gods? The very idea stretches my belief system to its limit. But even if the Entity and the Eye aren’t technically the creators of their dimensions, they’re still more powerful than the humans. I’m outmatched, and I figure it’s better to just do what the Eye says.
I don’t honestly know that I’m not insane. I feel like I am sometimes. Maybe I was already slipping down that slope and the DMT trip drove me over the edge. Paranoia is a constant, often crippling companion. I hear whispering sometimes when no one’s around. I truly believe I’m marked, special, given powers that other humans don’t have. I believe an otherworldly being is communicating with me. In the simplest terms, I believe I'm a fucking prophet.
How fucking crazy does that sound? I don’t want any of it.
But I digress. Back to the night it all started.
I managed to get my hands on some DMT after nearly six months of searching - it’s a tough drug to find. I planned to do it with two of my friends on a night my mother was out of town, but due to a rather unbelievable set of circumstances (which I think, now, may have been divine intervention) they were both unable to attend. A previously healthy and thriving grandfather of one of them dropped dead and the guy had to go to the speedily arranged funeral that day. The other friend made it as far as my house, only to become violently ill as soon as he crossed the threshold. When the Eye wants you alone, He sure as shit doesn’t fuck around.
Instead of seeing these omens for what they were, I was overcome with the strong feeling that if I did not do the drug that night, I would never get another chance. So I sank down on my bed in an empty house around midnight, loaded some DMT into an old weed pipe, and inhaled deeply.
It’s odd that I remember it so clearly, but I distinctly recall every detail.
As soon as I exhaled the thin blue smoke, I blasted off. Hard. Literally, blasted off, like I was a fucking rocket. I hurtled off my bed, through my roof, and into the sky. I distinctly remember breaking through the earth’s atmosphere into the void of space, and the rush of panic as I did so, thinking I’d burn up or be unable to breathe. But I felt very little discomfort, and sped deeper and deeper into darkness. Stars streaked past me like the fucking warp speed scene in New Hope. I had the impression that I was traveling billions and billions of miles.
I saw no fractals or colors, as are commonly reported with DMT, which I would’ve been used to due to my experience with acid and shrooms. There were just stars and darkness and the occasional moon or planet. It was the oddest trip I’ve ever had, and I still wonder how real it was. Why would a god literally bring me into outer space to talk?
I think now that He used my trip to initiate communication so that I wouldn’t go batshit insane as soon as I saw Him. Or at least, saw whatever aspect of Him He chose to show me. I doubt very much that the Eye has one corporeal figure, but maybe He does. The Entity seems to, after all.
I came to a sudden halt in the blackness of space, floating in the cold vacuum like a meteorite. And then, in a flash of brilliant energy, some Being appeared before me.
Fuck. How to describe what I saw?
Darkness. The darkest thing I’ve ever seen, darker than space or the depths of the ocean. Like standing at the edge of a black hole, gazing into a void and feeling the overwhelmingly strong urge to plunge inside. To become a part of it. That’s the best description I can come up with. It was vaguely spherical, though I felt instinctively that its shape was really far too complicated for my puny human eyes. A vacuous, utterly black Something, as huge as a planet or larger. Like a giant pupil, complete with strange, unnameable colors flickering at the edges. It was the absolute absence of light, yet my eyes burned like they were staring into the sun. I couldn’t stop, though. Weird shapes writhed and flickered in its depths, miles away from me. I felt like they were reaching out to touch me. It was wrong and awful and perfect, all at once.
That’s all I can do with the memory. Even putting those few words down gives me a thunderous fucking headache.
Something snapped in me. I felt it, in my head and behind my ribcage and down my spine, like someone was frying my nerve endings. All coherent thought ceased. My mind couldn't fucking deal with that shit, and it overloaded at the mere effort. Like a processor presented with too much data. I shut down, utterly, and I don't know that I ever recovered. I certainly came out of the experience less sane than I had entered it.
I wanted to run screaming, but simultaneously I wanted to fling myself headfirst into the void. But I was held there, hovering still in the vastness of space. And the Eye spoke.
He didn’t speak words, not like we know them, but He shared parts of His knowledge with me. I saw it all spread out before me, glittering raw, visceral.
The Entity: some low creature slinking into this dimension to feed on its inhabitants. I felt the Eye’s wrath, that It would dare.
The cult: the small, ambitious, deeply puerile humans who were blinded by Its lies. I felt the Eye’s mingled amusement and disgust.
The Vessel: the human who would bring the Entity forth and nourish It. I felt the Eye’s curiosity, His excitement. Could this happen? Who was it? A secret the Entity kept well guarded, and a great challenge.
And me: a vessel in my own right. I am, for many reasons, the one He chose to bring the Vessel of the Entity down. If god is the Eye then I am His Hands, His Sword. The only one who could discover Elizabeth’s identity and sever her from her monster. When that happens, the Eye can deal with the rest.
I felt the Eye stirring, His impatience.
But mostly what I felt from Him concerned our kind. Us. The human race. I don’t know that any English word can fully convey the emotion here. It was possessiveness, to say the least. It was hatred and love, fascination and revulsion all rolled into one. And, at its feral, instinctual core, it was hunger.
I can’t describe it. All I know is, I came to in my own bed not thirty minutes later, the smoking pipe still clenched in my sweaty hand. I felt as if I had flown apart at the seams and been painfully stitched back together, atom by atom, into something new. And one word ran through my skull, an echo of the Eye's deepest drive:
“Mine... mine... mine...”
I’m tired now. I can’t write anymore and this update is long past due. Next time I’ll describe what happened later, how I found Elizabeth and where the possession of Infected Town began. But now I have to vomit. And then, if I’m lucky, sleep
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