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

NINETEEN

Hello World.

I apologize for my absence…I wasn’t expecting to take this long to write to you but a lot of shit has gone down since I last wrote to you.  The day Riley let me stay home ‘sick’ I simply bummed around the apartment.  I studied the driver’s ed books that Riley picked up for me a while back to study so I could go get my license to drive sometime soon.  Justine ran around the apartment for an hour or so before she took a huge nap on my lap while I was reading the books and watching cartoons.  Riley came home right on time and I smiled a hello at him from the couch.  He returned the smile and asked me how my day was.  He seemed to be acting pretty normal and like his old self until I asked him what he wanted to talk to me about.  His body tensed and he licked his lips nervously before sitting down next to me on the couch.  He wouldn’t look at me at first but when he was ready to talk, he made eye contact with me.  I have NEVER liked making eye contact with anyone ever for any reason.  I don’t know why, it just….makes me extremely uncomfortable.  Anyway, he made eye contact with me and at first I wanted to look away, naturally, but I didn’t because Riley is the only one on earth whom I can hold eye contact with for more than half a second. 
“Willow I want you to know that I believe everything you’ve told me about this…’tall man’, I do.”
I breathed a sigh of relief then.  I was so afraid that he was going to tell me that he was going to admit me to a hospital or something.
“I believe you because I’ve seen him too, a very long time ago when you and I were little.  Remember the time you pulled a knife on mom?  Well, before I grabbed you I saw the tall man in the hallway outside of mom and dad’s room.”
I stared at him for a moment in shock.  I thought I was the only one who could see this man.  I was under the impression that there was a good chance he really was part of my imagination.
“I want to help you because you’re my sister, but we shouldn’t talk about him.  Ever.  The more you talk or think about him the more he appears.  For weeks after I saw him all those years ago I couldn’t stop thinking about it and I started to see him on my way home from school.  Seeing him again only made me think about him more and the more I thought about him the closer he would come.  I forced him out of my mind and eventually he went away.  You didn’t try to hurt anyone after he went away, but…I saw him the day you pinned me in the kitchen.  I saw him on my way to work that day.  At first I thought I was seeing things but I saw him again on my way home.  I couldn’t mistake him twice…and then you told me everything yesterday and I couldn’t believe that this was happening again.”
He stopped talking for a moment, his voice had started to quiver and he was shaking lightly.  I put my hand on his shoulder and he seemed to calm down a little bit.
“You weren’t always the person you think you are Willow…”
I was about to ask him what he meant by that when his eyes widened and he was looking at something behind me.  I turned and saw him immediately.  Standing right behind me reaching out an abnormally long arm to grab me.  I couldn’t even scream but….I’d be lying if I said I even felt the need to scream.  I didn’t feel like I was in danger but I did feel danger for Riley. I turned back to Riley and then all of a sudden he was gone.  He just disappeared right before me.  I turned back around and the tall man wasn’t there anymore.  I sat on the couch wondering what the fuck had just happened before I noticed Justine running out of the kitchen towards me.  She climbed up my leg and right into my lap sniffing my fingers and licking them.  I got up, grabbed her and put her into the hood of the jacket I was wearing and I raced into the hallway towards Riley’s bedroom.  Before I could even open the door my phone started to ring.  I looked at the caller ID and it was mom.  I answered the call and found myself being screamed at by my extremely worried mother.  She kept asking me where I have been and if I know where Riley is.  I told her that I’ve been at the apartment and that I didn’t know where Riley was.  She called me a liar and kept telling me that it’s impossible that I’ve been at the apartment for the past two weeks.  She told me that she had come to the apartment several times to check on us when we didn’t call and said that neither of us where anywhere to be found in that time.  I was so very confused at this point and told her it was still only the 17th.  She was quiet for a moment before telling me that it was actually October the 2nd.  She asked me again, very nervously this time, where Riley was and I had to tell her again that I had no idea.  After I answered her she just hung up the phone and I got a little scared.  Knowing my mother she might actually call the police on me.  She thinks that I know where Riley is and I have a history of hostility towards people….I bet you more than anything she thinks that I’ve hurt him or even killed him. 

I can’t talk anymore, I don’t want to wait around here for the police who may or may not show up and I have to find Riley.  I have no idea where to start looking but I have to try to find him before all of this gets worse than it already is. 

I really hope that he’s okay...I'm really afraid at this point, nothing is making sense anymore...

~Willow

EIGHTEEN

Hello World.

A lot has happened this past week so I’m not going to waste time explaining all of it.
Riley’s paranoia around me hadn’t gone away and I was starting to become really annoyed with it.  Two days after my last entry with the dream about Carolyn I was in the kitchen fixing myself something to eat for lunch. Justine was wandering nearby as she usually does since she follows me everywhere.  I was cutting up an onion and Riley happened to walk into the kitchen as I was doing so.  He had just woken up so he wasn’t paying any attention to where he was going and I glanced at him just as he was about to step right on Justine.  I don’t think I have ever moved so fast in my life.  I stopped what I was doing and had Riley up against the wall with my arm across his chest holding him there; the knife was still in my hand.  Riley stared at me wide-eyed completely awake now for a few moments before sliding out of my grip and yelling at me, “What the hell was that Willow? “
I apologized angrily and told him he was going to step on Justine who was now hiding in one of the drawers I had left open for her to climb into. 
“You could have hurt me with that knife and how the fuck did you pin me against that wall huh?” He complained rubbing his hand across his chest where my arm had been.  I stared at him blankly for a moment trying to process his words.  I couldn’t have hurt him right?  I mean he’s a full grown man and I’m kind of on the short and small side of a woman’s build.  I moved towards him to see if he was okay but he turned defensively away from me and rushed out of the room.  I stood there for a while thinking about what had just happened.  Justine poked her little head out of the drawer and scurried over to me.  She climbed up my pajama pants and up my arm where I helped her onto my shoulder and continued to cut the onion for my lunch.

Everything was basically the same for the next few days, another dream but nothing too significant to share.  Riley was still being paranoid and looking at me as if I were going to pull a knife out of my bra and stab him in the throat or something.  Then two days ago I walked into Riley’s bedroom to ask him something and I accidentally caught him with his shirt off.  He was facing me when I walked in and I couldn’t believe what I saw.  There was a long bruise the size of my arm running horizontally across his chest where I pinned him the other day.  I stared at him and he stared back at me and we literally stood there for at least a minute without saying a word.  Finally I turned and walked back down the hallway and into the living room.  I didn’t see him for the rest of the night and I didn’t sleep at all.  I laid there in bed wondering how I could have done that to him and also wondering why I felt almost no emotion towards what I did.  I kept thinking about how it could have been worse and thankfully I felt a little scared thinking about the other things I could have done to him that morning. 
I didn’t see Riley again until yesterday afternoon when I got home from work.  When I walked into the apartment he was sitting on the couch and didn’t say a word, he didn’t even look at me.  I put down my bag and went into my room to let Justine out of her cage.  I came back into the living room and sat down on the couch.  Riley looked at me and I just started bawling.  I don’t know how I could just start crying that hard but it happened.  He scooted closer to me immediately to comfort me and he kept telling me that it was okay and everything was fine.  I kept telling him between sobs that it wasn’t okay and that I was so very sorry for what I did to him.  When I kept crying he asked me if anything else was wrong and I ended up telling him about my dreams and the tall man I keep seeing in and out of those dreams.  He fell silent after that but he kept comforting me and eventually helped me to my room where I then passed out for the rest of the night.
When I woke up this morning Riley had already left for work and he left me a note on the fridge telling me that he called me in sick so I didn’t have to go to work.  He also wrote that he and I needed to talk about something but he didn’t say what.

I’ll write to you all after Riley and I have our talk.  I have a feeling it isn’t going to be good…

~Willow

SEVENTEEN

Hello World.

I had meant to write to you all sooner but I was super busy with work on Friday, I even worked a later shift than I usually do so then by the time I got home I was too exhausted to think let alone write anything.  I noticed something though.  Ever since I’ve been seeing the tall man outside of my dreams, I haven’t actually been having dreams about him.  Instead I’m having dreams which are actually replaying memories of my childhood.  Sometimes they’re dreams of the part of my childhood before I was diagnosed with Schizotypy.  One dream in particular that I had made me question one of my symptoms though.  It was a memory before my diagnosis, I had been playing with one of my friends and she and I were feeding bread to the ducks that lived down by the pond on my parents’ old property.  I was probably 6 or so, I remember it being a few months before my parents took me to the doctors to get me checked out for mental illnesses.  I had ran back into the house to grab more bread to feed the ducks while my friend finished using what bread she had left in her hand.  While inside I ran immediately to the knife drawer and grabbed the biggest one I could find.  I looked it over, admiring its gleam and my own reflection in the blade.  A blank white face could be seen standing behind me and even though I looked right at it in the reflection, I never turned around to actually look at the figure.  I ran out of the house and straight to the pond, stopping a few feet behind my friend, now that I think about it I believe her name was Carolyn.  She had knelt down, soiling her white dress in the damp grass and mud, to feed the ducks by hand.  The ducks, seeing me, quacked loudly and scrambled away.  Carolyn stood up and turned around to see what had scared the ducks away.  Seeing me with the large knife in my hand scared her and she started to back away from me.  I stared at her with a very calm and content look on my face while slowly moving towards her.  I could feel the same emotions I had when I had actually experienced them and the one emotion going through my mind was….hm….I’m trying to think of the correct word to use.  You know that feeling when someone you care about or look up to asks you to do something really important for them?  You feel like you have a huge responsibility to carry out the task at hand?  That’s how I felt.  I felt as if I had some kind of responsibility to kill Carolyn.  I wasn’t scared, I wasn’t angry, I wasn’t sad, hell I didn’t even feel anything but that responsibility. 
Anyway, I backed her further into the pond, Carolyn is crying at this point.  Her cheeks are red and puffy and she’s bawling like a baby.  Her eyes are filled with water and they are squinted almost closed.  Soon enough she backed up so far that she was almost in the middle of the pond, and she was in far enough to where she could no longer touch the bottom.  She was starting to thrash about and scream for help.  She was drowning.  I went in after her and even though she was unable to swim properly she did everything in her power to get away from me.  Before I could even make it all the way to her, she disappeared under the water.  The knife fell out of my hand and sunk to the bottom of the pond and my parents came running out of the house. 
Then I woke up.

I can only assume that Carolyn drowned.  I don’t recall ever seeing her again after that but if she did survive somehow, her parents never let me see her again.  The only thing I remember after Carolyn went under and the knife dropped from my hands was a sense of pure serenity and calmness.  I had accomplished what I was bid to do and I felt peaceful.  I’m going to start keeping a dream journal to write my dreams down and if any of these dreams seems significant enough, I will post them here.

I’m starting to wonder however if my killing fantasies are an actual symptom of my Schizotypy….or if I have somehow always been that way, and if this tall man is responsible for them.

~Willow

SIXTEEN

Hello World.

My doctor’s appointment was today and I hated every moment of it.  I absolutely HATE hospitals and doctors, and none of that hate has anything to do with my being a schizotypal.  I’ve just always found doctors to be extremely irritating and stupid.  Hospitals scare me.  Period.  No more to explain really.  Anyway, the appointment went well despite my resistance to even get out of the car.  The doctor didn’t find anything wrong with me.  What a big surprise there.  Riley was acting really paranoid for some reason and asked the doctor if there was anything I could take to prevent my coughing fits.  The doctor explained some random prescription and wrote a note for the pharmacy so that we could go pick up the pills.  I’m not fucking taking those pills.  I hate pills.  I used to be so tripped up on all the anti-anxiety and anti-paranoia pills I used to take when my Schizotypy symptoms would get really bad.  Sometimes my parents would even force me to take a sedative pill when I was being really hostile, or even when they would be paranoid that I was going to hurt them.  Some parents right?  I don’t even care that it’s a pill for coughing fits.  I’m never taking a single pill ever again. 

The ride home was very awkward.  Riley hardly said anything, and he didn’t even look at me.  In fact he has been mildly avoiding me ever since he caught me coughing up blood in the sink.  I don’t know what the hell his deal is but whatever.  If he thinks that I’m going to hurt him then he’s dead wrong.  I’d never hurt Riley, and in fact I’ve never had violent fantasies about him anyway so yeah…

That had better not change…

~Willow