Discovery

So: the sound system played this as I walked in. Would hardly claim to know anything of the field, so let us take a look at what the good Wikipedia has to say. Shall we?

"Lili Marleen" (a.k.a. "Lili Marlene", "Lily Marlene", "Lili Marlène" etc.) is a German love song which became popular during World War II.

Written in 1915 during World War I, the poem was published under the title "Das Lied eines jungen Soldaten auf der Wacht" (German for "The Song of a Young Soldier on Watch") in 1937, and was first recorded by Lale Andersen in 1939 under the title "Das Mädchen unter der Laterne" ("The Girl under the Lantern").

Following Nazi occupation of Yugoslavia, from 1941 Radio Belgrade became Soldatensender Belgrad to entertain German armed forces; the song was played frequently and became popular throughout Europe and the Mediterranean among both Axis and Allied troops.

Interesting thought, no? But of course, a good majority of visitors are more than likely here for reasons pertaining to otherworldly interferences, which I shall elaborate on shortly.

I suppose that there really is no way to express this without making myself appear thoroughly moronic, so I’ll just go ahead and say: they are the old couple. No, that was most definitely not a typo, and yes, I do mean that the elderly pair of neighbours I mentioned a few posts back were, in fact, waiting for me at the lunch place (which was reasonably crowded). And no, it is deeply unlikely that I am insane, at least not much more than I have always been.

                                                                                                                                               

But to reiterate: elderly couple took over my blog and went on to stalk me with regard to the Fears. What.

And yet this was the opportunity I had so long yearned for. It was all too likely to be a trap at first, yes, but also the very thing I’d wanted ever since Dad… well, you know. So I sat down. They’d ordered fish and chips.

I really haven’t practised enough at this, but I guess that I’m supposed to present some sort of transcript for the conversation, so:

“You’re the old couple I met the other day”, I exclaimed, quite reluctant to believe my senses. “We’re the old couple you met the other day”, said the elderly grandmother whom I presumed to be “E.”. She sat by a full plate, her hair tied up in a bun. She was wearing a violet sweater with white leaf pattern and an old nondescript skirt, I think. Her spouse, whom I immediately presumed to be "W.", was in an old leather jacket, tweed hat and worn-out pair of jeans. He had an unopened pack of cigarette by his person.

Scarcely able to remind myself of the implications, my curiosity took over, and soon enough, I was asking questions.

Q: Apology for being rude, but who are the two of you exactly?

E: [smiling] Your neighbours, dear.

W: [also smiling] That means we live near you.

E: That we do. [laughs]

Q: That certainly is quite obvious >_> *, but what do the two of you have to do with, well… them?

E: Well, to be frank, who doesn’t? And yet, it should without a doubt be intriguing that so many would know so much. All I can say for now is that we’re not what one would call terrific with all that Google thing, so no blog for us now.

W: She means that we are informed of them.

E: But then again… wait. [raises palm and sips tea**] lots of people know. For instance, there’s this lovely lady who was apparently an expert on Greek mythology until a few days ago, when… ah, not a useful sort of detail, I’m afraid.

W: We all know of the rest, though. Men and women of all sorts running around with knowledge, poetry, mysterious companions and shotguns, men and women of generally less pleasant sorts running around with symbols, masks, and fancy phrases with capitalised first letters, et cetera, et cetera. Lovely, isn’t it? Oh, hello there Amy. [smirks]

E: [stares] Now, now, people are dying out there.

[beat]                                                                                                                                                                         

W: Sorry. [edges away to nibble on fish and chips]

Q: So… what the two of you are trying to say is that you know quite a bit about the Fears…

W: Most correct.

Q: See, as you just said yourselves, lots of people do. What happens then?

E: [sighs] That’s where most of the problem lies, I’m afraid. You see, mankind occasionally finds it quite a bugger to embrace – no pun intended – the sheer degree of difference between what is known, clear and quantifiable and, well, certain things.

Q: I’m sorry, I’m not quite sure if I understand.

E: Well, don’t be! [pats back] Consider the common human being, maybe the common sufferer even. They grow through the weeks, months and years, they see with their eyes whatever the light shines on, their skin touches the tangible matter to their fore, they live with wants and needs, they came from something, they will probably become something else eventually, and we may assume that they are something at this very moment. Consider also the most ruthless rulers of mankind, and we may add a sizeable number of dead people into each bit.

W: Fortunately, in a manner of speaking, the Fears are hardly the most ruthless rulers of mankind.

Q: No?

E: Well, maybe just about a million times worse. More mustard dear?

Q: Okay… also something I need to discuss. About the clipping the other day…

E: Now, now, I believe that I’ve expressed our concern to you around the time. Lots of people in the know wouldn’t have quite cared, unfortunately – again, the problem lies with understanding. [stares emptily] You see, the current state of matters involves itself with these things from who knows where, going after who knows what by who knows how.

W: There’s been a few inside sources as you mentioned the other day, yes, but it’s not hugely likely that they should prove all that useful in figuring them out. Oh, and more ketchup? You do seem to be terribly fond of it.

E: Yes, yes, yes. *** And even then, all those folks still would not accept it – see, all things that man deals with has to be things that man can define. The distance is in miles, the weight has to be in stones, and the politician’s wealth in the number of oppressed working class men. Not them, you see. Some things are just there, and however hard we wish it sometimes is impossible to get them to do things this way or that way. It was probably a boy of eleven one day, so why should it be an infant on another? Because.

Q: And the exact reason we’ve had to cross paths is…?

E: [sighs] [Journeyman], [Journeyman], [Journeyman] – may I call you that, dear?

Q: Taking everything into account, I see no problem.

E: Well, we do believe that you’ve seen enough – more than enough, some might say. [takes off glasses and wipes on handkerchief]

W: Now, here’s not to say that no one had any idea what happened either back at your old suburb, but your family did move. And, well…

E: We’re here. We know you, you know us, and, well, there are those nice people on the blog that we’ll have to know better. [smiles] It doesn’t have to be an eternity of running, dear. No one would call it easy, but we did figure out that having a few people in the know around would be in everyone’s best interests.

Q: Thank you very much then! Um, what do the acronyms stand for again?

E: [laughs] More of a little joke, really. I, call me Mother Elder.

W: And you can call me Father Willow.

And that is all the important things I can remember for now, I should think.

Mother Elder. Father Willow.

“Under the Willow Tree”.

Strange, I know – hard to find anyone trustworthy enough when every other person is a possible servant. Not to mention taking over the blog – not something that people unfamiliar with Google do all that often, I think. But perhaps my own actions have, well, not quite been the wisest? I know that I’ve been rash and yet panicky and, dammit, far too much of a bloody whiner at times, but I really, really hate to imagine what would’ve probably happened if I’d taken another step into the bookstore without all the knowledge I have now.

I really haven’t been able to describe the whole affair the way I should – my deepest apology. Promise to update some time in the foreseeable future.

Thanks.

* Not a direct quote, IIRC.

** I think that it was a chai latte. This is an essential bit of information.

*** Not sure why this would bring my thought here, but I have so far been quite unable to place their accents.

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?