TWENTYFIVE

Hello World.

I’m going back to Tasha’s house.  I got this text message from her earlier today.  I don’t know what it is that she wants to talk about…but this gives me a chance to find out more about her mother. 

I hope this isn’t another dead end.

~Willow

TWENTYFOUR

Hello World.

I’m figuring it out.
I can’t believe I’ve been so stupid and blind.  I read everything I’ve told you guys since the beginning.  I figured that maybe there would be something I’d forgotten or missed, maybe overlooked.  I’m stupid.  I’m stumbling around in the dark with a flashlight in my hand.  I wrote down notes, while I was going through all of my updates and I at least found out that the Tall Man is the reason why my schizotypal symptoms have died down.  From memory I can also add that the longer I go without killing someone he takes away, those symptoms start to show their ugly faces.  So I’m some kind of mercenary for this thing?  Why?  This I haven’t figure out yet.  I also have no idea still why these people were targeted.  I use that term simply because it’s the only logical word that fits with what has been happening.  I need more information to answer these questions.  What I need to do is figure out more about these people.  Tasha’s mother would have been easy, except for the fact that she kicked me out of her house.  The boy though…I have his name from the news.  I could try to pick up something from his neighbors or friends, acting as if I were part of some kind of investigation involving his disappearance.  It’s a long shot because I’m rather short and I’ve been told I look rather young, but I have to try.  It’s all I have.
As far as the search for my brother, I’m putting it on short hold while I get this…Tall Man business sorted out to the best of my abilities.  I still have no leads and I found nothing in my updates that I could use to work towards finding him.  I’m hoping that since his disappearance has something to do with the Man that maybe in my ‘investigations’ I’ll find something to help me find him.

I’ll update as soon as I find something.

~Willow.

TWENTYTHREE Part 2

Hello World.

Unfortunately this part of what has happened recently isn’t so pleasant.  First of all, the first four days of staying at Tasha’s house was great.  I was actually taking a short break from my search for Riley and I was catching up with an old friend and having a good time.  It was also really nice to have full meals for a change.  Instead of junk food here and there and some days all that would get me through a day was a cup of coffee and a crescent roll or a strawberry tart from a Starbucks.  Justine was also very happy to be inside a warm household once again.  However these glorious spoils were short lived.  I walked into the living room one morning to find Tasha watching a news report about the man I had killed, his body was still missing and now they were talking about her mother.  The news reporters, always looking for a good story, were going on about how these two cases of missing persons could possibly be connected but it was too early to tell for sure.  Tasha turned the T.V. to mute and turned around with a pissed off look on her face.  I stared blankly at her hoping that she wasn’t about to ask me what I knew she would end up asking anyway.
“Do you know anything about this?” She asked, trying to keep her voice as calm as she could.  I slowly shook my head.  She didn’t need to know about any of that.  So why would I tell her?  She eyed me with the greatest look of suspicion and turned back around to continue watching the news.  I quickly walked out of the room, grabbed a bagel from the kitchen and left the house to go for a walk.  I made sure not to go down any busy streets as I didn’t want anyone to recognize me.  I was keeping up with mine and Riley’s missing persons case and I wasn’t about to make any stupid mistakes.  Even though Tasha’s neighborhood was a decent couple of miles away from where Riley and I lived I still took precautions. 
About thirty minutes into my walk however I started to feel a familiar itch.  The haunting ringing echoed in my ears and I shook my head to try and get rid of it.  Nothing helped and I turned around to search for what I knew would be near.  There he was…standing across the street from me.  I shook my head again because the ringing kept growing louder.  I suddenly felt something warm trickle down to my lips and my face curled in disgust when I ran my tongue across my lips.  The nasty pang of my blood was all over my taste buds and I brought my sleeve up to my face to wipe away my nose bleed. 
“Hey, are you alright?”
I heard someone behind me.  I turned around to see a young man looking at me quite concerned.  He had to have been in his teen years, probably seventeen or eighteen.  I looked back across the street at the Tall Man who was still standing there.  The boy followed my gaze and he turned almost as pale as the Tall Man.  He could see the Man?  Before I could even go over this thought in my head I was leaping onto the boy grabbing at his neck to keep him from screaming.  I squeezed hard with one hand and was able to grab my knife from my jacket pocket.  His eyes widened and he managed to utter a gurgled “SHIT!” as I brought the knife closer to his face.  I stroked his cheek with the blade and then quickly jabbed it into the bottom of his jaw closer to his throat.  With a quick jerk up to his chin he was suddenly lifeless and I jumped off of him taking a few hasty steps backwards as the Tall Man appeared before us and just as quickly disappeared with the body.  I stood there for a few minutes staring at the spot that the boy’s body once laid. 
“What is going on?” I found myself asking out loud.  I wasn’t scared.  Hell if I was scared by what I was doing…I know I should be…but I can’t feel it.  All I felt was confusion.  Something was going on that I wasn’t getting.  Why do I keep killing people I don’t even know?  Excluding Tasha’s mother of course…but…then I had a thought.  The boy had seen the Tall Man before I killed him.  How could he see him?  No one else I ever knew could.  I had too many thoughts racing through my head to sort it all out there so I cleaned my blade with my sleeve and pocketed it. 
A few days passed and I had been out of the house for about an hour before I returned.  Upon entering through the front door I heard the T.V. on in the family room.  It was the news again and this time it was focused on another missing person.  The news woman described a teenage boy with the description of the kid I had killed the other day.  Avoiding the entire situation I tried to hurry upstairs before Tasha knew I was even home.
“WILLOW!!!” I heard her yell, and it was loud.  I couldn’t avoid this situation so I made my way down to the living room where I found her standing in front of the television with her arms crossed and a furious look on her face.
“I’m going to ask you a question and this time you are NOT going to lie to me.” She said and I stood there frozen.
“I know you know something about these missing people, and it’s not just because Riley is gone too.  You have something to do with this and I want to know what.”
I didn’t say anything.  I stood there staring at her trying to keep a calm, straight face, but she didn’t like that.
“WHERE IS MY MOM!?” She screamed at me.
I couldn’t deny her the truth any longer.
“She’s dead.” I said in the flattest tone I’ve ever used.
Tasha stared at me for a few seconds before tears began to stream down her face.
“GET OUT!  JUST GET OUT!!” She yelled and took a few steps towards me.  I knew she wasn’t going to hurt me but I was afraid anyway that she would.  I grabbed my bag and Justine from the kitchen and rushed out the door into the street.  I ran.  I didn’t stop until I was at the elementary school a little ways further into the neighborhood.  I sat down on one of the swings at the park next to the school and just…cried.  What is wrong with me?  Why was I hurting and killing people without any feeling?  Why was I doing it at all?  I know that the Tall Man most likely has something to do with all of it I just can’t understand any of it.  Nothing makes sense.  I’m turning into a monster and when I think about it I haven’t made any real progress on finding Riley at all.  I had a friend but I’ve ruined even that.  Am I cursed or something?  I need answers…but I have no idea where to get them.

I don’t know what to do…

~Willow

TWENTYTHREE Part 1

Hello World.

I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to get back to you all.  Once again I’ve been bombarded by a LOT of shit.  Therefore I’m going to make these next two entries in parts.  This is going to be Part 1.  Anyway going back to when I was talking to Carolyn, like I said I had talked to her and informed her of Riley’s disappearance although I tried my best to leave out the details of the Tall Man and killing the man and her own mother.  Unfortunately this proved to be extremely difficult and she caught on to my lack of information very quickly.  I ended up telling her about the Tall Man after and when I first mentioned him her face grew slightly pale and she swallowed nervously.  By the time I was finished telling her ALMOST the full story, she was silent for a little while.  At first I feared that she didn’t believe me but I knew that wasn’t the case.  Not with the way she reacted.  She sighed and closed her eyes for a moment before speaking.
“I believe you.”
This was beginning to sound like the conversation I had with Riley before he disappeared.  As a paranoid reaction I looked around the room to make sure the Tall Man wasn’t anywhere near.  I didn’t see him.  Carolyn then began to explain what had happened to her after I wasn’t allowed to see her as a child.  Her family was very upset with me and my parents even though it was deemed an accident.  Carolyn was scared and hated me at first but after they moved away from us she began to remember seeing the Tall Man with me that day and told herself that it was his fault.  Sometimes she would think that she saw the Tall Man throughout the rest of her childhood years but when she would really look there would be nothing there.  As she grew older he went away and she didn’t see him anymore until once recently.  She saw him one night outside her bedroom window, watching her.  She tried to tell herself it wasn’t real but every time she would go back to her window he would be there.  I then realized that the night she saw him was the same night I had killed her mother.  I didn’t really know what to think.  I sort of hated myself for not feeling sorry about the whole thing but I couldn’t help it.  I tried to feel something…anything…I could not.  She noticed that I wasn’t exactly focused on what she was saying and said my name a few times to grab my attention.  Carolyn then continued to explain that her mother and father had gone through a really bad divorce and her father wouldn’t leave them alone.  Things ended up getting really bad so they moved and even changed their names.  Carolyn’s name for the past five years has been Tasha.  I quickly apologized for using her ‘old’ name but she smiled and told me it was fine and that it was sort of refreshing to hear her real name as even her mother called her Tasha all the time.  We talked a little while longer before I finally asked the question that had been nagging at the back of my mind.  I asked her if I could stay with her for a while.  I’d been jumping around from random buildings and backyards for weeks ever since I stopped wasting money on cheap motels.  The nights had gotten way too cold to be sleeping outside and I feared that Justine would catch the flu.  Tasha told me that I was more than welcome to stay in her home for as long as I needed to and that even if I left I was always welcome back.  She then mentioned that this offer only lasted until her mother returned from a sudden business trip that was stretching on longer than expected.  I paused nervously for half a second and then smiled.
“Of course.”
I hugged her and thanked her for her hospitality and she showed me where I would be sleeping.

It felt good to finally have someone to talk to, and somewhere warm to sleep for a change.

~Willow

TWENTYTWO

Hello World.

I know this video might have left you somewhat confused but let me try to explain.
With much effort over the past few weeks I managed to track down where Carolyn lived.  I decided to sneak into her house and try to gather anything useful that I could find.  I was under the impression that I was supposed to find something since when I killed Carolyn’s mother all that the Tall Man left me was her photo.  There had to be something, besides I had no other leads to follow up on as far as the search for Riley went so I figured, why the fuck not?

So I entered the house through the garage which wasn’t locked and I went straight upstairs to find Carolyn’s room.  In her room I grabbed her camera and figured I would document my finds through video footage which is what you see above.  I stayed in her house all day as you could also see in the footage.  I’m not sure why I stayed that long…I didn’t think that I had.  When I went out back into the shed I again, didn’t find anything of use.  It was literally just a bunch of tools and shit, so I went to go back into the house to go out through the garage so that no one would know of my entry at all.  However just as I was about to open the back door, Carolyn came home.  I waited for her to leave the room so I could get to the garage door but when I turned the corner she came at me with a gun.  She didn’t recognize me and I couldn’t have really expected her to I mean, we hadn’t seen each other since we were little kids.  I turned off the camera quickly and raised my hands in the air.  I didn’t say anything at first.  We just sort of stared at each other for a few moments.  I finally found my words and calmly told her, “Relax Carolyn, It’s me…Willow.”
She gave me a really strange look and quickly asked, “How do you know that name?  That’s not my name anymore!”
I could see I was only making her more nervous, so I tried telling her who I was again.  She finally recognized me and somewhat lowered the gun in her hands.
“Willow…what are you doing here?  How did you get here?” Her tone of voice was slowly calming down.
I explained to her everything that had happened with Riley and that I was here on a lead and I told her nothing else.  She had lowered the gun by this point and she stared at me suspiciously for a few moments before telling me to stay where I was.  She left the room and came back a few seconds later without the gun. 

We talked after that, but right now I don’t have the time to put it all on here so I’ll leave it for my next entry.

~Willow

TWENTYONE

Hello World.

It’s been nearly a month since I’ve last spoken to you and I still have no information about Riley.  I’ve been searching nonstop all around the city for anything, even just the smallest clue.  Last week I did find something interesting.  Last Tuesday, so that would be the 30th of October, I went back to the apartment.  I know it seems like a really stupid move but the cops were long gone by then.  They stopped hanging around the place two weeks after I left.  I made sure to enter the building unseen anyway and when I entered the apartment things looked generally untouched.  A few things moved here and there and Dexter’s cage was gone.  No doubt he’d be at my parents’ house.  I went through the kitchen to grab some food.  Thankfully I didn’t have to spend too much of the money I’d brought on stupid junk food.  I hate that shit.  I went to my room next to grab some things for Justine.  She wasn’t really running low on anything but while I was there I figured I might as well grab some things for her.  I moved into Riley’s room after that.  I stood in the doorway looking at everything that was still there.  His bed unmade, his clothes strewn all over the floor, the bald spot in his room where Dexter’s cage once sat.  His bathroom door was open and I went in.  I immediately noticed there were speckles of reddish brown on the edges of the sink.  I moved closer to investigate.  The majority of the sink was clear except for those few little spots.  I touched one of the speckles and some of it rubbed off onto my finger.  This confused me.  There was no way this wouldn’t be completely dry after a month, and surely the police would have seen this and taken samples.  There was no indication that the police did so.  The blood was completely undisturbed until I touched it.  Someone had been in the apartment recently.  Could it have been Riley?  He was the only other one with a key except for the owners of the building.  I looked around a little more before leaving the bathroom and upon leaving Riley’s room I grabbed one of his shirts and stuffed it into my backpack.  I left the apartment carefully, making sure I was hardly noticed.  Later that night I was walking through the neighborhood where I killed that man.  I don’t know why I was there.  I suppose it’s just where I ended up.  Justine was running a few feet ahead of me; her collar’s bell was jingling every time she moved.  I started to hear a voice in the back of my head.  It was really quiet and I hadn’t noticed it at first but then I turned around to see if it was perhaps just someone behind me.  No one was around.  Soon the one voice turned into multiple, they grew louder only slightly when a new voice chimed in with the others.  I couldn’t understand any of them.  I hadn’t even noticed that I was going to run into someone until they angrily stomped around me. 

“Pay attention to where you’re walking!” The woman scolded. The voices stopped and so did I.  I turned around to look at her and managed to hear her curse at me before she crossed the street.  Suddenly I felt this….itch.  This pinch.  It was irritating and insistent.  I found myself turning towards her and I began to follow her.  I hardly noticed the jingle of Justine’s bell rapidly trying to catch up with me.  The bell was soon muted completely and cancelled out by a loud ringing in my ears.  It was really loud but it didn’t hurt.  The woman’s footsteps stopped and she turned to face me with an annoyed look that began to turn to nervousness.  I stopped a few yards in front of her and stared not at her, but past her.  Down the sidewalk a short way under a streetlight was the tall man.  His blank face was watching us.  It seemed like he was waiting for something…but what?  I looked back at the woman who was closer to me now and she looked shocked.  Her face was frozen and unchanging when she fell to her knees.  I stepped back slightly startled and let her fall to the ground.  She was shivering uncontrollably and her teeth chattered loudly.  I found it extremely annoying and bent down closer to her. Her eyes moved up to the side in order to look at me.  I reached into my pocket and pulled out my pocket knife.  I flipped out the blade and felt an extreme satisfaction from the look of sheer terror in the woman’s eyes.  I reached over and grabbed the sides of her jaw with my thumb and four fingers pressing in a specific position to force her mouth open.  I poked the blade into her mouth and carefully sliced into her gums, pulling the blade back towards the front.  Her eyes streamed with tears and her mouth filled with blood.  She never made a single sound.  She couldn’t, because He wouldn’t let her.  I moved the knife to the inside of her teeth and once again started at the back and sliced towards the front, deep enough to reach the bottom roots of each tooth.  I pulled the knife out and set it down in the grass, I reached in with my fingers and pulled out each of the teeth on the bottom left side of her mouth.  The ones closest to the front came out easily but I had to grab my knife again to pull out the ones in the back.  I repeated this whole process for the bottom right side of her mouth.  The blood was streaming out of her mouth like a waterfall, so once I was done pulling her teeth I turned her on her back so that her mouth would fill with the blood gushing from her gums.  Her throat gurgled through the blood as she struggled to breathe and I watched her suffocate until she finally stopped moving.  I grabbed her purse and opened it to shuffle through for her wallet.  The tall man was closer now but I didn’t react the way I had with the man.  I handed the wallet to him and he took it.  I bent down to grab my knife.  When I stood back up He and the woman were gone.  The only thing left was a small photo on the sidewalk.  I reached down to grab it and looked at it.

It was a photo of Carolyn and the woman I just killed.  At first I didn’t recognize Carolyn, but I recognized her young childish features and also the bruise-like birthmark on the left side of her cheek.  She was one of those people who kept their baby face into their adult years.  I then realized who the woman was.

The woman in the photo was Carolyn’s mother.

~Willow

TWENTY

Hello World.

I’m fine.  I got out of the apartment with a backpack full of essentials before the cops arrived to search the place.  I watched carefully from across the street as they rushed in and banged down the door.  They searched everywhere for me and for Riley but the only living thing they found in there was Dexter, who I was struggling with the decision on whether or not I should take him with me.  Before I left with Justine and my things however I decided that it would be best if he were left there for the police to find and give to my parents to take care of.  Dexter was more of a typical ferret than Justine.  Justine and I have this weird connection and that’s why she never leaves my side no matter what.
I didn’t stay long enough for them to come back out of the building.  I couldn’t risk any of them spotting me and giving chase.  I had more important things to do than sit around in some random psych ward for who knows how long.  I got up from where I was sitting and headed down the street.  I guessed the first place I could look for Riley would be at work.  Maybe someone had seen him in the time I was gone, maybe he was looking for me as well and asked some of his colleagues if they had seen me.  I arrived at the building after walking for 30 minutes and before entering I waited across the street and looked for anything that might be suspicious.  I was mostly just checking to make sure there weren’t any cops around.  After I was satisfied that the building was okay, I walked in the front door and headed to the department where Riley worked.  I saw a few familiar faces right off the bat and they recognized me as well.  I guess nobody knew that Riley was even supposedly ‘missing’ which reassured me that they wouldn’t think I had been ‘missing’ either.  I asked a few of Riley’s work friends if they had seen him at all in the past two weeks and they all told me that Riley had been coming to work up until the 30th of September.  I found this strange.  So I had been missing until the 2nd, but Riley had been here all along?  Nothing was making sense anymore.  I thought that Riley was the one missing.  I thanked Riley’s friends for the information and walked out of the building.  Maybe mom had thought we were both missing because Riley had been too afraid to tell her anything had happened.  The other question that popped into my mind was where was he now?  As far as I know, no one has seen him since he stopped coming to work.  Was he looking for me?  Why did he wait so long to start looking for me if that’s the case?  So many questions flooded my mind and I was so distracted I bumped into a woman who was getting up from her seat in front of Starbucks.  She cursed at me and told me to watch where I was going before storming away in her bright red pumps.  I stared after her intently until the people around me began to stare so I kept walking.  Justine, who had been asleep in my hood the entire time, had woken up because of the commotion with the woman and started to sniff my ear.  A few people who noticed stared at her and me and after a short while I started to notice that one or two of the people were pulling out their phones and they completely turned their direction around to follow me.  I tried not to make it obvious that I could see them so they wouldn’t back off.  I wanted to hear what they were saying on their phones.  We were forced to stop at a crosswalk and the two people stood a little closer to me.  One was a man and one was a woman, they turned to each other and were pointing at me and I heard one of them say, “That’s Riley’s sister, the police are looking for both of them right?”
That was enough for me to hear and instead of continuing on the crosswalk I broke through the crowd of people gathered there and booked it down the sidewalk to my left.  The man and woman instantly freaked out and started shouting at people to move out of the way.  I could tell the woman wasn’t still running after me because she had been dressed in a well fit knee length skirt and some heels.  There was no way she was going to be able to follow me.  The man however had managed to break through the crowd and was now only a few feet behind me.  I kept darting through the people on the sidewalks and knew that I had to lose this guy fast if I didn’t want the police to show up.  I made it to the edge of the city and into a neighborhood and took off into one of the yards, jumping the fence that surrounded the backyard and darted across that as well.  The man, being in a business suit and spotlessly shined shoes slowed down and tried to find another way around to where I was.  I kept going and eventually slowed down to a stop so I could breathe.  I looked all around me and didn’t see the man anywhere.  I sat down under one of the many tall trees that lined the sidewalks and reached my arm back to my hood to grab Justine.  She sniffed my nose curiously, letting me know she was okay.  I set her down on the ground and she wandered all around the base of the tree.  Just as I managed to get my breathing back to normal a hand reached down and grabbed my jacket sleeve roughly trying to haul me to my feet.  It was the business man who was chasing me.  I struggled against him and right before he dragged me upright I grabbed one of the large rocks next to me and swung it right into the side of his head hard.  He grunted and dropped like a log.  I stared at him for a moment before I noticed the blood trickling down the side of his jawline.  “Shit.” I cursed.  This was going to be a problem.  If he was still alive he would tell the cops that I was the one who hit him and then I’d be in big trouble for assaulting this man.  I had absolutely no emotion towards the possibility that I may have just killed this man, but all I could think about was how big of a problem it was going to be if anyone found out.  I cursed at myself for being this way and leaned down to check and see if he had a pulse.  He did not.  I sat back on the grass and stared at his body.  I hardly noticed Justine crawling from around the base of the tree onto his arm and then his chest to look at me as if to say, “Wow bitch, you fucked up.”  Justine then suddenly scurried over to me and buried herself into my lap.  I looked up and was startled to see the tall man standing across the street.  I stared at him for a moment before I looked around myself to see if there was anyone else around.  When I looked back he was closer, so close that I actually jumped back and screamed.  These large black arms that looked more like an octopus’ tentacles were flailing around, coming out of the tall man and a few of them reached out as if to grab me so I instinctively put up my arm to shield myself.  Then just like that he was gone….and so was the man’s corpse. 

I don’t remember much of what I did after that.  I’m sitting in a small coffee shop, I won’t say where just in case the police come looking for me, and I’m currently trying to figure out where I could continue to look for Riley but so far I’ve got nothing.  Nobody else has seen him other than his co-workers and they have only ever seen him at work.  

I will definitely let you all know if I find anything, or if something else happens.

~Willow