Running

  So now I suppose we're mostly caught up. I spent a few days hiding in my home, trying not to see them, to block out the pain. I had a bit of a breakdown and started this blog. I'm sure you remember that. That's pretty much all I did for a while. Hide and update this blog.
  Until Sam showed up at my front door a couple of weeks ago. Completely unexpected, since I don't recall having given anyone in the group my address or even what area of town I lived in. She said that she had used my blog to track me down, something about IP addresses or something. I'll buy it for now. I don't really know computers that well.
   She said that we were in danger, that she had to go on the run, that Eli was dead and Pete was gone and that I was the only one who could protect her, the only one who could keep her safe from Them.
   We've been on the run since. I'm posting this blog from a motel room in the middle of nowhere. And of course, the weird shit just keeps coming.

Sacrificed

    Gary threw his life away to save us, and I just sat there and watched him die. I watched as that creature tore into him, its teeth wet and red with blood, hunks of gore visible as it chewed. Something happened then, something I haven't been able to figure out fully, which is saying something given everything that has happened.
   It looked up, it's face bare before me, and it looked in my direction, but it didn't look -at- me. It looked -through- me. That's when I realized it couldn't see me. I don't know why, but this thing was looking around the room, sniffing the air, but it couldn't see me sitting there nearly paralyzed with fear and staring at it.
  It stood then, hunched over and growling, and began to prowl around the room. It sniffed around again as it did, like it was looking for something, and I wasn't going to give it the chance to find me. I stood, slowly, and backed out of the basement, keeping the thing in sight as I did, and when only when I topped the stairs did I turn around and run.
  I ran all the way back to my home, shut the door, bolted it, and cowered in a corner. I sat there for what seemed like forever, not moving, trying desperately not to think. It was all I could do.

Absence

 It has been nearly a week since my last post. I promise, I won't let this story go unfinished, especially given where I've left it at this point but...something's come up.
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  I'll give more details on that when I can, but know that things are seriously fucked up right now and I'm not sure how much time I have.
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  They're coming. The pain just flared up, and it's getting hard to type. More later, if I survive.
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Arrival

  The room seemed to grow darker, and the candles sputtered out. The sudden pain in my head was nearly unbearable, and I dropped to my knees. I could hear something that sounded like wet, ragged breathing, and it was there standing in front of us. It was barely human, something out of a nightmare. Hunched and crooked, it had massive, bloodstained claws that dragged along the ground as it moved toward us, like an ape dragging its knuckles.

  But it was the eyes that were the worst. Empty pits in its head, though a malicious light could be seen in them as it studied us, like it was waiting for us to make the first move. The rest of the group just sort of stood there, paralyzed, wondering what to do next. Pete, of course, was the first to speak.

  "We...we called you here," he sputtered, trying to sound as brave as he could manage in the face of this unimaginable horror, "The ritual worked, that means you're bound. You have to do as we command."

  I stared at him, my jaw agape, and the silence dragged on. I thought this was a trap to destroy the creature, not try to enslave it. I didn't get a chance to voice my objections, however, because that is the moment the creature did it for me. It laughed.

  The sound it made was wet, almost a gargling sound like a man drowning on his own blood, and it made my skin crawl. What happened next was a blur, but some things remain carved into my memory and will never, ever be forgotten.

  It loped forward, almost leaping towards us, and Gary was the first to break his paralysis. He slammed himself into it, trying to tackle the beast while he yelled for the rest of us to run. Pete bolted, taking Sam and Eli with him, but I couldn't move. I tried, but I just couldn't move. I watched what it did to Gary, I saw everything, I heard everything and I couldn't stop it.

  And the others just left me there to die.

Insanity

  Pete didn’t know any more about this stuff than the rest of us, but he was God damned good at faking it. He even had a plan to lure the monsters in a trap and try to destroy them once and for all. 

  At least that’s what he told us. In reality his plan was little better than chanting Bloody Mary into a mirror in a darkened bathroom. He had candles and incense and a fancy book. All very professional looking.

  He set up a circle with pigs blood and “the dust from a ruin”, lit the candles and said some words in a couple of languages that I’m pretty sure included some made up words and phrases that he came up with on the spot.

  The bastard was so full of shit that it was leaking out of his ears, and I’m pretty sure that was the point that I started to smell it. There was only one problem with the whole situation.

  It worked.

Plans

  So there we sat, the group of us, utterly convinced of our own importance in the grand scheme, as if we had been chosen by some higher power to face down the Forces of Darkness and save the world. Pete, Sam, Gary, Eli, and myself.

  I'll admit, at the beginning I bought into the whole thing. Who wouldn't with a guy like Pete in charge, so full of confidence and zeal, reading to head off the dark forces at every pass. The way he talked about it, it felt like some grand adventure, like a mission from God.

  The others followed him with almost religious reverence, but it was Sam who had it the worst. She practically worshipped him, hanging on his every word like nothing mattered in the world except what Pete thought and felt.

  None of us knew at the time that Pete was already dangerously insane.

Learning

  It was while talking to these people that I learned that my monsters aren’t the only ones. There is seemingly a whole pantheon of these bastards playing their games with humanity. Each person in the group had a different story to tell, but there was enough overlap between them all for them to realize that they were hunting the same things.

  They said that they hadn’t started out hunting them. Most of them got started just trying to hide from them, stay out of their way and off of the radar, but each of them had a reason why they decided to fight back. They said they needed my help, because I was special, because I was different from them.

  See, these self-styled monster hunters could see their “prey” just fine, but I was the only one who could -feel- them. Who could sense them coming before they arrived, before they could strike. They also thought I was the only one who could see them that hadn’t attracted their attention in the past. Pete and his group of death-seeking retards wanted me to act as a sort of radar or early warning system.

  And like an idiot, I agreed.

Digging

  I'm not crazy. I know this, and I don't have to defend myself to anyone.

  Anyway, like I said I started doing some digging. Looking around online for more reports like mine, or similar. Checking my peripheral vision whenever they appeared to see if anyone else noticed. I knew I wasn't alone, but I wasn't sure where or how to find others who could see them. Turns out, it didn't take me long.

  I met a group of people. I'll try to avoid their names, though anyone who has read this probably already knows of one of them. They told me a lot of things about what I'd been seeing. They told me that there were things that lived in the dark, things that preyed on us and used us like pieces on a chessboard.

 I couldn't write them off as crazy, or I'd invalidate my own experience, and a lot of what they said made sense, until they got to the really important part. They didn't just see these things, they said, but the went looking for them. They were trying to stop them.

 They were hunting them.

Not There

  That was it. Just like that, he disappeared. There was no light, no sound, he was just simply not there. That look in his eyes, though, is something I'll never forget.

  I see it every day, every time I close my eyes, and I see it in my dreams. When I dream of him, he speaks to me, accusing me for not saving him, for standing there and watching as he was taken. In my dreams, he is not longer simply not there. In my dreams, they take him slowly.

  They peel his flesh away, they tear at his bones and pull at his muscles. They take their time, ripping him apart, peeling him like a grape and I can do nothing to stop them. The last things to go are always his eyes, watching me, accusing me, pleading for my help. And still I do nothing.

  But I learned something that day, in addition to the fact that the things I see are real. I learned that I was not the only one who could see them. If this man could see them and I could see them, then there must be others.

  So I started digging.

Gone

  I don't know who he was. I didn't speak to him. I try not to think about it too much, who this man was and what he may have left behind. The wondering would drive me mad if I did.

  I was on lunch from from my shitty IT job, wandering the area by my office trying to tune out the pain and ignore the things around me. I saw him standing there, across the street from me. He was filthy, covered in sweat, a look of maddened terror in his eyes. I thought he was homeless from the way he dressed, his disheveled hair, his broken open shoes.

  I tried to ignore him like I did everything going on around me but I just couldn't do it. They were swarming him, formless black shapes swirling in the air all around him, and I couldn't bring myself to look away. The pain in my head increased tenfold and I screamed.

  That's when he noticed me, when the old homeless man looked at me. Dead at me. Ithink, in the moment before they took him away that he knew. He knew I could see them. I saw the fear in his eyes grow as they closed on him, mixing with regret and possibly pity, and he seemed to be silently begging me to help him. Pleading for my help.

  And then he was gone.

Back to the Beginning

I suppose I should start over. If I'm going to write all of this down I should got to the beginning.

It started last year, middle of June. Normal day, normal life. Too much TV, not enough exercise. I was watching TV when it happened for the first time. I didn't really think much of it at that time. It was just a flicker at the edge of my vision. Nothing major.

It wasn't until it refused to go away that I -really- noticed it. Even then, I thought maybe I just needed new glasses.

I should have known better, and it didn't take long for the pain to start. I can't even begin to describe what it feels like, the spike of wicked, white hot agony that still hasn't gone away, even now. It burns in my brain all the time. Though if it hadn't been for the pain, I might never have noticed when they took him.

I might still be in the dark.

MY Life

Sometimes it hits me pretty hard. Sometimes the darkness is just…too much. I’ve never taken to the internet like this before, and frankly it’s just as scary as dealing with these things on a daily basis. I wonder if it’s a mistake, if this is how they’ll discover me. Can they read? I don’t even know.

What I do know is that they are close, and they are not friendly. I’ve seen them reach into our world, I’ve seen them…take people. I’ve seen what’s left when they come back.

I’m not going to let that happen to me. I can’t. I won’t.


I’ll end it myself before I let them do it. My life is my own, damn it. They can’t have it.

Endless

My last post was a little…incoherent. Let me start over. My name is unimportant, all that matters is what I have to say.

I can see…things. Things hiding between the walls of our world and the next. Things that want nothing more than to break down those walls and feast on us. I’m not alone. 

I wish I was insane. I wish I was like the others, able to stand up to the dark or to tune it out and pretend that nothing is going on. I wish none of this was for real. I wish anyone who read this would believe me.

All of that is impossible. And it hurts. Not just in a metaphorical sense, but a literal, physical pain that pervades my every waking hour with these things. I don’t know how long I can go on, and I don’t know how long until they realize I can see them.


Or until they realize that I know they see -me-.

???

I can see…everything. I can see you, staring at me through your glowing screen. I can feel you judging me as you read my thoughts, and I can hear you muttering your poison words. It hurts. Dear God in heaven it HURTS. It…FUCKING HURTS! Make it stop….

Make it stop. That’s all I ask…but you can’t, can you? You can’t stop my pain any more than you can stop your own, any more than you can stop what’s coming and believe me it’s coming and I’m not the first oh no and I won’t be the last not if I have anything to say about it oh GOD I CAN SEE THEIR EYES AND IT HURTS!


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