A little elaboration should not hurt

Well, I should think so for time being.                                  

I first met them in a nearby park on a walk, maybe on a morning, maybe on an evening. Not important for now either way. They were standing by the pond, feeding bread to the swans. Mother Elder – if that really is her name, which in any case is unlikely – wore an emerald green sweater, heeding the weather scarcely more than she would any other time. With her black boater she stood at roughly half a head below me. She smiled at the ground, smiled as she looked up, smiled at the vast space about her without a sign of wanting to cease. Something amusing, perhaps? Shadows moving through the trees? Interesting thought, and yet I have no idea. Father Willow – again, most likely a placeholder for now – was in the exact same outfit he wore at the lunch. He stood slightly taller at the same height as mine, and as he would always do, wore a bit of a smirk. Both wore rectangular glasses, the sorts that call the Industrial Revolution their home era.

Now, no one seems to notice me right away in recent times, and it was, well, a less than ideal time of life, so I decided to sit down on a nearby bench and lose myself in thoughts. Thoughts of more or less everything that would help me escape for once: maybe books, music, the swans, whatever. I sat down for maybe a minute, maybe five, maybe ten… then I saw an elderly woman sitting by me and wearing the nicest smile. The old man I’d presumed to be her husband stood nearby, smirking as usual.

I suppose that things would’ve gone far differently if someone under them had done the same to me earlier: weeks upon weeks of the strangest things had worn me and the family out, and I was alone, lost in fantasies, and more vulnerable than anyone else could be. Well, it didn’t. They said hi. We talked a bit about the weather and the little I knew of the news. Then I let slip that my family just moved due to some private matters. I realised what I’d said a moment later, but they were curious, and so I simply said what I thought wouldn’t hurt. They stayed. They listened. It was, well, nothing like what I’ve said here, long after I started to find out more about people with similar afflictions. But it was nice.

We said our farewells a bit after that, and met again there the next day. We talked about more mundane things – I think that I did try to get them to watch the Tintin movie a few times. Throughout it all I thought of how I’d tell mum and sis about people noticing me for once, but well, I’d talked about mundane things to strangers before, so I didn’t see that much of a problem. I can’t remember them giving their names before last Saturday, but they later gave me an address and told me to visit.

It wouldn’t have to be eldritch beings with ominous goals to do harm; just a sufficiently deranged person with an eye on teenagers. And yet I came. Nice place – bit dusty, but so is my own, so meh. Lots of novels lined up on a few cupboards, mostly from before the seventies. Furniture were as antiquated as anyone would expect them to be, with the inexplicable computer’s somewhat more inexplicable LCD screen being the sole exception. We had tea on every visit. I’m an adolescent male; why the buggery would I have tea with an old couple? But well, there weren’t anyone else, so I went along with everything, and it didn’t hurt that they, well, didn’t hurt.

There’s been too many times where the slightest bit of bad intention on their part would’ve done me a world of hurt, I suppose. I mean, we’ve all seen maybe dozens of people on the blogs engaging in what amount to horror movie clichés (thanks, spellchecker) and dying or maybe worse as the result. At any point throughout the past few months I would’ve presented far too easy a target. And yet they listened instead.

I’m not, of course, saying that blind trust has a trace of wisdom, but they’re here now, they know of what’s been after me, among others, and considering what’s happened so far, not in as convenient a manner as some would like to accuse.

Getting caught in the open after all of this would, of course, be unpleasant, but I think that I’d honestly like having some help on my side – on our side, even. Well, I do hope that that’s what’s happening.

A rather shadowy situation

Eh, didn’t say I was going to post a lot more often.

It’s been awfully quiet throughout the last couple of months, I must say. Probably just me not going outside as much as I probably ought to, but for supernatural beings from a realm beyond one that we may comprehend, the folks on the other side haven’t been quite as keen on making themselves known after we moved. Ladies and gentlemen, we may hence conclude that the Blind Man is, in fact, blind.

To let our guards down would be less than intelligent, however – especially now that I spend a substantial fraction of my days in a public facility pretending to understand differentiation and functional groups and cross elasticity and aah fuck this I’m probably being stalked by otherworldly abominations and ought to be all mysterious and poetic and all that wankery

But I digress. As an anticipative measure, I have decided to pick a number of current associates which seem suspicious enough. When I eventually disregard what this post contains to look into an unwholesome-looking shed somewhere and end up in small, hopefully biodegradable bags, feel free to link back here in a meticulously composed “told you so”.

• Bookstore people: Quite nice to talk with, if not a significant improvement in regards to providing genuine attention. I’ve counted nine employees between 18 and 50 so far, with four assistants on their shift most of the time. The cashier is always there, though. Always smiling, always still, and always looking dead in a temptingly creepy sort of way (get your mind out of the gutter). As for the building, it’s a moderate-sized 50s thing next to a residential street, bit retro at certain spots. Nice enough collection; my family is broke for now, but I did manage to get a large secondhand Agatha Christie collection for the price of a week’s school lunch the other day, which is quite neat, I guess. Stays open awfully late too. I think I saw something in the nearby trees the other day. Must investigate further.
• Old couple: I have to be honest – they’ve helped an awful lot with their company when the rest of the world would rather pretend that I were a figment of their imagination. “Wait, strange internet person who is either delusional or a figment of someone’s imagination!”, you might say, “you might end up having eldritch things done to you! D:”; to which my answer would be: have you ever had their homemade chai latte? Eldritch gods don’t make warm drinks that hopelessly addictive, adorable little winged fey with magic wands do. Still quite suspicious for their being exceptions, though, so I’ll try to stay vigilant. Also must investigate further.
• School: Everyone’s more or less forgotten my existence apart from assignments and short conversations about things that are not running around dragging people off theirs, but it’s still quite a long list of suspects. Sis has also been getting similar treatment, though she’s been less eager to share and hence less ostracised. On a related note, did you expect the nasty things from other side to show up in an obvious way which I would end up ignoring and eventually suffering deliciously from back when I was putting up all sorts of fake cheery BS? Because I sort of did.
•  Mum’s workplace: is actually a cinema in the town. It’s still showing the Tintin movie and hence exempt from all suspicion :D She’s keeping watch. Nothing alarming so far, but the visitors do occasionally appear in trenchcoats. And business suits. No gas mask yet, if I remember correctly.
• The Yogurt Man: Have I mentioned? Door-to-door salesman for a few dairy operations a few kilometres away, mum said. Bit taller than me, wears a dark red cotton jacket, dark red and black fedora and dark red and black messenger bag. Physical details are sort of unmemorable, though. He is the Yogurt Man. His yogurt is delicious.

(or maybe he is a Fear. The fear of yogurt).

Also ought to look out for that “E.” person who posted the other day – I think I might have a guess or two on who they might be, though.

Thoughts on the attitude so far, anyone? I’m sort of worrying that I’ll end up being the overly self-aware smartarse who doesn’t actually do anything, oddly enough. >_>

How it all ties up

‘Kay, stirred up quite an amount of shit recently, so might have to clear things up a bit.

Don’t know how to get this across gently, so… well, it all started a few months ago. Have I said anything about my parents? No?

So – Dad was combing the house for some stuff he kept a few decades back for a college reunion. Maybe a shirtless pic or a letter from then-girlfriends or an autographed band t-shirt or something. We all thought that we’d had enough of him being a nostalgic freak – all of the things he’d said about those times sort of went over our heads every time – so we ignored him.

Didn’t do much good. He managed to forget about the thing for some time, but well… you can probably guess how it went. Turned out that he couldn’t remember anything about himself from before graduating college, and neither could Mum, in fact, except that they met after finishing Liberal Arts (yes, I know. Shut up. >_>) Tried to go to a therapist, I think – my own recollection of events has been quite blurry – and was pretty much ignored and forgotten after one meeting. Why? Same reason the dozens of bloggers being dragged into the darkness by eldritch beings out there haven’t attracted much attention, I suppose.

Also saw him scribbling stuff from time to time on this little block note, the sort with a pretty little picture on the cover that kids with the Down Syndrome would paint for a charity organisation. Not in any way wrong by itself, I know, but it was sort of, well, obsessive. Especially for someone who didn’t like writing much in the first place. Would look down and maybe write a few words or draw a freaky picture and then suddenly slip it back into his pocket in the kitchen or the nearby park or sometimes the car late at night. Snuck into his room one night, when he was off to the town for some drink and Mum was away with some friends. It was maybe five minutes after he left, and the traffic was scarcely moving, so I snatched it from the drawer where he’d keep little things and flipped the pages around. Saw writings. “ARCHANGEL”. “BLACK DOG”. “CONVOVOCATION” (sic), and maybe a few other things. Heard footsteps running outside, so I put everything back to their places and hurried back to the kitchen to pretend I was watching the TV. Dad burst into the house, face red and panting, ran into the room, came back out a minute later and left without another word. I tried to pretend it’d never happened afterwards.

Would’ve been nice to end it there, but nooo, we couldn’t have such great and lofty things. My parents were moving between jobs and the place Dad was working at turned out to have quite conveniently lost just the copies of documents that would tell anything regarding him before he graduated, which as you might have correctly guessed is a massively fortunate and useful course of development, as he’d lost exactly all of the same sort of documents back home. This is probably where the rest of the family would’ve gotten called out on falling into horror movie clichés, I think: we simply wouldn’t give a flying fuck. None of us. Just went on with our lives, ignoring whatever he had in mind. And this was before I found out about the blogs.

So, to sum up… me, my sister and Mum got dragged into the living room a couple of weeks or so before I tried to start the blog. And… well, am I boring you yet? Getting suddenly yelled at for not helping and letting him fall prey or something and beaten black and blue was probably more interesting firsthand, I have to say. Locked us up in my parents’ bedroom afterwards. We didn’t know what to do, too scared and confused to talk, just curled up in the corner in the dark. Heard his steps echoing outside, tap, tap, tap… two hours of complete dark, then a sigh, then the click of the bedroom door. He apologised. Then locked us in again.

We stayed still through the night, not a word spoken out, listened to him dragging himself through the rooms, to the chairs and tables turned over like leaves, to our whole lives more or less being torn down around our quiet little corner. Mum was dead scared, my sister every bit as much, and yes, so was I. >_<

(I don’t have a shotgun like Jeanette does, so shut up)

Come morning, Mum decided to risk it and crept to the backyard through the window. He wasn’t there. Just gone. Asked the neighbours – none of them saw him. Not that anyone cared much, anyway, at least not as much as anyone would in regards to a missing man, or for a better comparison, a missing milk carton. Also called the cops, had them check the rooms and the front street for possible trails, and they said they’d look further into it. Liars. Tried to show them the notebook, but they wouldn’t so much as look at it, no. Didn’t see them being very concerned either, and we did call them back. Surprise, nothing about your family in our records. Utter wanksticks. (EDIT: that probably sounds a bit less polite than I’d intended)


We also checked his laptop and phone. Some things on otherworldly beings, and nothing on reunions.

So… well, yeah. We’ve tried to go on and pretend it’s all normal and amiable since. Yes, I’ve been keeping the notebook; lots of interesting stuff, for which you may take my words and my inclination towards exposing the personal belongings of a missing family member for the amusement of people on the Internet. Yes, we’ve asked some of his co-workers if they’d seen an old man in sunglasses following him around, which would’ve helped if, you know, no one we’ve met would give the slightest trace of a damn about the whole thing. And yes, I do have friends. Well, formerly – the less delicate aspects of life may prove quite a repellent as knowledge.

As it has since turned out, however, we all have our fears.

Will probably have to model my writing after the BBC site, though – would probably get tales of lives torn apart more serious treatment next time. Thank you.

Thoughts?