September 25, 2015

​Randi...my Miranda. My darling girl. When you read this, you are going to be upset. You will want to drop everything and race straight home. I'm begging you to resist this urge, although I fear that, by the time this is all over, I may not need to, as there will likely be no home for you to return to.

It's all happening tomorrow. There will be a ceremony at 4:00* tomorrow afternoon at which the mayor of Sugar Creek will throw a switch and the poison that infests this place will be pumped into every home and public building in the town, after which it will all be too late. I will make my last-ditch attempt to stop it early tomorrow morning. I will go into those woods, dig at the predetermined spot again and fight anything I have to fight to wrench the proof I need free from this monster's claws and deliver it into the mayor's hands. There's a slim chance I may win through with this thing, that I, your mother and this benighted town will still be here come dawn on September 27.

If not...you have to stay away from Sugar Creek. It knows you now, and regardless of what happens to us, I am determined that it will never lay hands, for want of a better term, on you. In order to avoid that, you have to promise never to come back. 

I'm sitting on the porch as I write these final words in my journal. The setting sun has dressed the creek and the woods beyond in an appropriately ghastly combination of blood and shadow. As I stare into that shadow, I continue to ponder the final mystery I have yet to crack even with a hypothesis: why, after all the games, the manipulation and terror, this thing at long last chose to show me the prize I had been searching for, the chink in its armor that may yet lead to its undoing. Hubris? Boredom? One last blown raspberry at the jerk who thought he was so smart, yet got outsmarted by a sentient drainage ditch at every turn? 

I don't know. I have my doubts about that. These final dreams were so very different from the rest. And the way the thing reacted when I followed their direction was in precise opposition to them, as if they were somehow contesting the creature's will, even fighting it.

Fighting for control...

I'm wondering again at the nature of this thing. What is it that makes it "it?" It is, after all, the sum of many, many disparate parts. It consumes and absorbs the physical bodies of its prey, adding them to its own. But what about the minds? Does it eat memories as well, churning them out again and again as bait for unsuspecting nitwits like myself to follow into its trap? This seems plausible. But those minds that held them: are they subsumed as well? Or do they survive, intact and separate, trapped inside its diseased neural net, watching as it uses them to consume more victims?

The dreams that came to me these last few weeks were different. The original dreams felt, in hindsight, like a being imposing its will upon me, impatiently pushing, goading, punishing when I moved to slowly, removing the pain when I complied. Yet while there was insistence with the later dreams, there was no pain. There was urgency, but no force of will pushing me forward. Could it be that, after thousands or even millions of years, enough minds have accumulated within this thing to form an agenda of their own? 

To fight back? 

If I had more time, I'd try to study this. but as it is...maybe later.

Goodbye, Randi. I love you, and I hope to see you on the other side of this. 

I'm having dreams again, Randi. And I've seen this show before. The soldier, with the pistol. The thing that started this whole mess two years ago. 

What the f___ does it want from me now? It's won. I can't stop it. I can't warn anyone. All I can do is sit here and watch the asteroid plow toward us on its way to the extinction event. I haven't made peace with this; I don't think I can make peace with the idea that I can't save Rachel from this. The best I've managed to do is to become numb, which I'm afraid to say has afforded me better sleep, even if it is on the couch.

It must know I'm beaten. So why is it doing this now? It's vicious and it's sadistic, but it's always been with a point before. What part of the plan is this?

I should mention that there are a few differences this time.  It's not the whole dream like before,  just this part, over and over, like a skipping record. It's also not tormenting me like it did before, stealing my sleep and leaving me nauseous and in agony until I did something about it. It's just...insistent. And every time it shows this to me, it seems to focus in, closer and closer, on...something.  The image quality in these dreams is just as bad as before, but I get the sense this will improve like it did previously. I just hope it gets to the point and leaves me with a few days of peace before the end. 
​

September 8, 2015

Randi...I know what it is. And Jesus Christ, I think I know what it means. 

The dream finally let me see it. It focused in on a spot on the soldier's chest, over and over, until I saw something there reflecting the sunlight. It was a crescent of etched silver, hanging around the soldier's neck. I'd seen this decoration before in paintings from the American Revolution. It's an officer's insignia, called a gorget, which British officers mostly wore at the time but which occasionally appeared on American uniforms. 

I'd already surmised that this was proof of the massacre at Sugar Creek following St. Clair's Defeat, but I was never able to locate anything definitive. The gun was a dead end with the Historical Society because it was rusted, undatable junk.

But this last dream...I was able to see the gorget so clearly that I could make out some of the etching. On one side was a barely-legible name. On the other side was a date.
​

Seventeen Ninety-One. 

I woke up with a yelp. I couldn't believe it. This thing, this creature, had finally screwed up. For the first time, it had shown me a hard piece of evidence that the Legend of Sugar Creek was true, and that it was buried somewhere in the woods.  More than that, it had practically shown me where it fell. The gorget chain had broken, and was in the process of dropping from the officer's neck as he entered the woods. This gave me a rough estimate of where to dig. True, this thing seemed to cycle junk to the surface and back like a dumbwaiter, but I had a hunch that this would be there when I dug for it. For bit, I felt like I did at the beginning: energized, excited, optimistic. The stakes of failure had all fallen away. The weight of my life and what it had become evaporated. I was that naive young retiree jumping out of bed, grabbing his tools and his boots, and charging out to the creek in his pajamas.

I plunged into the trees and sank my spade into that nasty red muck.  As it had so many times before, the mud gave way easily to my digging, and if it was too easy, I'd move to a new spot. The first dozen spots I tried were almost like I was shoveling water. Then my I hit a spot so hard that it reverberated up my arms: a material not quite rock, but incredibly dense and, as I discovered, fibrous, like tree roots.

I had expected this. My mind shot back to over a year ago, when I found the student ID. It was the same type of material that had fought me then. My theory was correct, then: there was something here this thing didn't want me to find. Something that, like the ID, would have established its crimes as immutable, unshakeable fact. With facts come consequences, namely a deluge of investigation and excavation that would cut this creature off from its food supply, and possibly its existence. 

Unfortunately, in the excitement of my discovery, I forgot the other tiny detail of how it responded to me that day. I heard a rustling behind me, and caught a glimpse of something large and red out of the corner of my eye right before three red-hot knives slashed across my back and drove me to my hands and knees. 

​I read something a long time ago, an interview where Jim Caviezel talked about actually taking a whip to his back by accident while filming The Passion of the Christ. I'm paraphrasing, but he described the pain as riveting, transfixing, an agony that literally drove the breath out of his body for a moment. Lying there in that muddy water, I finally understood what he meant. It was a solid two minutes before I could unclench my teeth, it hurt so bad. I stood up gingerly, looking about myself like an idiot, as if I actually thought I'd see some sign of what had hit me. Nothing but shadows and that big hole of light at the entrance of the woods, calling me urgently to run through it. I decided to call it a morning and listen to it. 

As I limped back up the lawn, dragging my shovel behind me, I was not surprised to see Rachel on the porch again, watching me. She was keeping her distance, as usual, but look in her eyes was different. The normal balance of fearful contempt had tipped strongly in the direction of fear. Her hands were clasped tightly together, as if holding something, and in spite of the distance, I could see her leaning toward me. Clearly, she wanted to talk. I was in no mood for another fight, having just been on the losing end of one, and I hurried past her toward the door, eyes down. 

Rachel's scream stopped me dead in my tracks.
​

This is what she saw, Randi. I looked like I had been mauled by a bear. The three slashes were deep and bloody, almost deep enough for stitches, but not quite. I imagine that thousands of years of butchery have made this thing quite the surgeon. Besides, it was sending me a message, and you don't do that by putting the recipient in the hospital with crippling wounds that would raise the wrong kinds of questions. 

That said, it was the straw that broke the camel's back for Rachel. She seized me by my shoulders and shook me, hard, tears streaming down her face, and demanded I tell her, once and for all, what the hell has been going on. I just stood there for a moment, looking down, searching for another reasonable-sounding lie I could tell her, but as if she read my mind, she grabbed my face and forced me to look her in the eye. "No more lies," she said. 

What could I say? She was right, I owed her. I'd owed her from the beginning. I wasn't sure if I thought she was to weak to handle the truth or if I was to handle her knowing it. We sat there on the porch as the sun rose as I told her everything, from beginning to end. 

She took it better than I'd thought she would. I mean, she'd been living with the idea that I was going nuts already, so I imagine she was steeled for something ridiculous. She sat behind me the whole time, cleaning and dressing my wounds with gauze, so I was spared having to see her reactions to the insanity I was spouting. I could tell when something hit her differently, though, because every once in awhile, at key moments, her hands would pause in their constant motion across my back, then resume work a few seconds later. Beyond that, she didn't say a word the whole time. By the time I finished, she had finished her work. When I turned to look at her, her arms hung at her sides, and her eyes were fixed on a spot on the porch beyond where I sat. 

"So that day you found my ring..." she muttered. 

"This thing had returned it," I said. "Nearly punched out my passenger side window in the doing of it." 

"That's why you took the Jeep to the shop that day," Rachel said. Her eyes remained fixed on the porch as she struggled to process the information.

"It was a warning," I said. "At a time when I was getting close. If it takes something and gives it back, it was saying it would take you from me if I went any farther."

"But it didn't take me." 

"It didn't need to. I managed to make such a fool of myself that I stopped being a threat. It no doubt plans to take both of us once this is all said and done, but for now, we're harmless."

"No." Her eyes suddenly locked onto mine and she gripped my arm. "It doesn't think you're harmless. Not any more."

I stared at her, my eyes wide at this sudden shift in her behavior. "Because it attacked me," I said.

"Yes, but not just that." Rachel crumpled forward, her hands clutching her head as her face became a mask of pain. "Jesus. Jesus..."

"Rachel?" I said, and my hand reached out to touch her shoulder. "What is it?"

When she looked up at me, her eyes were red, her face streaked with tears.  "Things have been going missing for months," she said. "Little things, from all over the house. One minute I'd be using a pen, or a spoon to stir my tea, and I'd step away and it would be gone when I got back. It was driving me crazy. I thought I was slipping, having senior moments. I even wondered if you were messing with me in some passive-aggressive way. As far as I know, none of it has been returned. Until now."

Rachel reached into her pocket and tossed a small, red-crusted item onto the patio table. 

"I just found this a moment before you came out of the woods," she said. "It went missing months ago, around her last Christmas break. It had been so long I'd forgotten she'd lost it."

This is the point, Randi, that I really hope you are reading this.

The object on the table was nothing remarkable. Just a woman's plastic hair clip, one you might buy in a set at the drug store. But it was unmistakably one of yours, Randi. 
​

The journal entries over the year following the launch of the Sugar Creek bicentennial countdown follow Mr. Corrie's numerous attempts to disrupt construction on the water reclamation and Creekside Estates projects, all of which are a part of public police record. Most of these attempts take the form of picketing milestone events and disseminating what Sugar Creek Police Chief Talbot derisively refers to as "The Corrie Manifesto," a packet of information summarizing his research reflected in his journal entries over the previous year.

A turning point in the severity of these incidents came on February 26, 2015, after an attempt to publish his "Manifesto" in the local newsletter. This attempt was refused by Leonard Painter, the newsletter's editor, resulting in a loud altercation between Mr. Corrie and Mr. Painter in the newsletter offices. Mr. Painter was overheard referring to Mr. Corrie as "a public nuisance seeking to capitalize off of the tragedy of others." (It is believed Mr. Painter was referring to the Weaver case and Mr. Corrie's disastrous announcement from January 2014.)  At this, according to newsletter employees, Mr. Corrie "went wild, cursing and screaming at Lenny (sic) and throwing those pamphlets of his everywhere. He said if we didn't let him publish, we were gonna learn what tragedy really meant." It was at this point that Mrs. Corrie intervened and led him out of the building. After a discussion between Mrs. Corrie and Mr. Painter, the latter agreed not to call the police or press charges up on agreement that Mr. Corrie would be barred from the premises. Mrs. Corrie agreed to a hiatus as well, and conducted her work remotely for the next six months in an attempt to monitor her husband's activity. 

In the weeks following this event, two incidents took place that further escalated local police scrutiny into his disruptive actions. The first took place on March 16, in which construction workers at Creekside Estates discovered that sugar had been added to the fuel tanks of three earthmoving vehicles, resulting in no damage. Mr. Corrie was questioned by police in the matter but denied involvement, and no evidence linking him to it was found.  The following excerpt from his journal, however, suggests otherwise: 

March 19, 2015

Desperation and stupidity are kissing cousins of mine, it seems. Tried to put the enemy in a diabetic coma and ended up giving them heartburn instead. Jesus, what was I thinking? I should have at least watched a YouTube video to see if such grade-school idiocy would even work before trying it. My heart is still pounding from the interview, you'd think they could have seen it through my shirt the way it felt.

​Also, what did I just write? "The enemy?" No, no, I need to remember who the real enemy is. In spite of everything this town has put me through, they're just it's pawns. They know not what they do.

The second incident took place that summer, when construction manager Eric Bruhl failed to report to work at Creekside the morning of July 27.  His car, a 2013 Dodge Durango, was found in the employee lot near the site, where security footage confirmed it had sat since the previous Friday. This same footage provided Mr. Bruhl's last known sighting, showing him leaving the construction office late Friday evening, several hours after work had ended.

​A countywide search was initiated by local and state police organizations. Interviews with family and employees confirm that Mr. Bruhl was a heavy drinker, and empty alcohol bottles and cans discovered in the construction office and in Mr. Bruhl's car suggest that he often stayed onsite after hours for this purpose after his wife had forbidden him to drink at home. Authorities considered an equal possibility of either foul play or accident in his disappearance, but have been unable to conclude either due to lack of evidence. 

As part of the investigation, Mr. Corrie was interviewed as a person of interest, but was able to establish and corroborate his wherabouts on the day in question. No other connection could be established between him and the missing construction manager. 

Once again, a cryptic entry from a few days after the inquiry casts Mr. Corrie's alibi into doubt: 
​

August 6, 2015

So that's who those car keys belonged to. I knew when I found them wedged under my front tire that something was up. They weren't old and corroded like the other artifacts, even if they were crusted with that red mud. They were new. Jesus Christ, that poor bastard. 

What's it up to now? Did it just try to frame me for murder? No, if it had wanted to do that, it would have left them for the police to find, not me. And is this thing even capable of that level of strategy? God, do I even want to know?

No, it was sending me a message. It's expanding its reach. If it was able to take someone that far from its source, that far from the creek...is there any hope of stopping it now? 

That's what it wants me to think. That it can't be stopped. That resisting it is pointless. But if that's true...why would it need to tell me anything? Why would it bother with me at all anymore, unless it felt I was still a threat? Not sure how that's possible. The bicentennial's a month-and-a-half away, and all I've done is ruin what was left of my life. 

I'm fairly certain Rachel hates me. She won't talk to me, but she's always watching me. During the interview, she stood in the doorway and just stared at me with this look of contempt, mixed with what I would guess was fear. Does she think I did what they were alleging? That I am capable of killing someone? I suspect, in all seriousness, that this is the only reason she hasn't filed for divorce at this point. 

After it was over, I slipped out the back of the house while she wasn't looking and threw the keys in the creek. If this thing's M.O. holds up, I doubt they'll be found again. As I came back, Rachel was on the porch, arms crossed, her eyes boring into me. I tried to say something, but she just turned and walked back into the house. 

​Please, God. Please help me. I don't know what to do. 

September 26, 2014

​It's almost time. I've spent the better part of two months preparing. Strategizing. Pretending to my family - and my enemy -  that everything is fine, that all is back to normal.

But nothing will ever be normal again. I stand on the precipice of a war I don't know if I can win, with an enemy I don't know yet how to defeat. I have to be willing to try anything, and desperate enough to try everything. Today, I know I am the latter.

God help me, I bought a gun today.* 

As guns go, it would probably make me the laughingstock of my NRA neighbors: a .38 snubnose revolver, the stereotypical "purse gun." I have no idea what effect it will have, if any, if I have to use it against the creature. I feel like its purpose is almost more psychological that practical, another barrier that I can put between it and myself, between it and my family. 

It could also be a way of telling myself that there will be no going back from what I am about to do. 

The countdown to the bicentennial kicks off tomorrow. 

September 27, 2014

That went about as well as could be expected for the first try. I wound up midway between being a walking joke and being arrested. 

Before I start, I want to make it clear that this wasn't my first move. I tried to go to the Council and talk to them, like Bill had. I also tried to approach them like a sane person, avoiding anything along the lines of "woo-woo garbage." I warned them of disturbing a potential historical site. I brought their attention to the numbers of missing persons over the years and suggested they may be disturbing a crime scene. You wouldn't believe the static I got for bringing that up. Or maybe you would, given the mess I created in January with the doll's head.

Even if that hadn't been a factor, Bill had successfully poisoned them against me. He told them about all of my digging there, and said that any resistance I showed to the project was just me jealously protecting my hobby from them. They pointed out that, if the site did have relics of value, or somehow concealed human remains, I would surely have found them by now. I couldn't admit to what I'd found out there, because it was all completely unbelievable, per the creature's design. This only left the guerilla tactics I resorted to on Saturday. 

The inauguration ceremony for Sugar Creek's bicentennial year was also a groundbreaking ceremony for Creekside Estates, and was staged on that site. The Mayor and Town Council were there for the media with all the usual props: shovels of dirt, hard hats they'd never wear again, and the ubiquitous shit-eating grins. This was also where they'd announce their plans for the creek renovations, which was the real news of the day. I guess it makes sense that they'd rather do it here than at the pumping station site deep in the woods. 

No one paid much attention to me at first. I set up my soapbox (actually, it was an orange crate; I don't think they put soap in boxes like that anymore) and started passing out my "literature," which was a neat and tidy pamphlet summarizing everything I'd researched to date about the creek, the murders, and why this project should never be allowed to go forward. Most people responded predictably, politely declining or stuffing it in their pockets/purses/etc. or just dropping it on the ground. I was prepared for this, though, and just as the Mayor was launching into his remarks, I pulled out the bullhorn. 

People didn't know what to make of it at first. Some laughed, thinking I was part of the show, but they quickly realized I was an interloper, and started booing and shouting me down. Still, things didn't really escalate until Bill came storming over with Chief Talbot in tow. The things he was shouting at me weren't quite at the level of that day at the creek, but it was just as vicious. 

"Godd___it, Corrie!" he shouted over the bullhorn. "When is enough gonna be enough with you?" He shoved me off the orange crate and grabbed my bullhorn with both hands. We struggled for a moment before Talbot broke us up. 

"You need to leave, Jim," he said, taking the bullhorn out of my hands. "Right now."

I tried to argue, but before I could say anything, two of his officers had me by the arms and were escorting me to my car. I heard the Mayor make some tepid joke about a full moon tonight, and the crowd laughed gently. 

Rachel was at the kitchen table when I walked in, and wouldn't even look at me. I imagine one of her friends from work told her about the spectacle I made of myself. I opened my mouth to say something, then changed my mind and went down the hall to the guest room, where I've been sleeping for the last two months. 

So that's it. The shot across the bow. I wonder how this thing will react. 

In the dream, I was dead. We were both dead and buried deep, Rachel and I. Dirt filled my mouth and clogged my nose and throat. Yet I could still feel everything. I could still see Rachel's glassy, dead eyes bulging in horror. I could smell the overwhelming stench of blood and decay. 

I could still scream. So could she. So could every other dead soul surrounding us. We all screamed as one, in one voice. 

I awoke from this hell only minutes ago, and I'm about to drop the pen the way I'm trembling. But I'm not afraid. 

I'm f___ing furious.

This was the best you could do, shitbag? You've shown my death to me God knows how many times. That's old news. But you threatened her again, and I will not take that lying down! I swear, if I can find a way, I will peel you like a godd___ed onion, rip you apart soul by soul, until your black, putrid heart is exposed, which I will tear out with my teeth. 

This is just getting started, f___er. I have not yet begun to fight. 

*Note: the gun mentioned in Mr. Corrie's entry matches the description of the one retrieved from Sugar Creek not far from his house. It had been fired three times on the day in question, in the direction of the house and road. Two slugs were removed from one of the porch pillars and a tree in the Corrie's front yard. Curiously, the third bullet was retrieved from the back seat of the wrecked police cruiser operated by Chief Declan Talbot on the day in question.  Forensic evidence shows that it had been fired into the cruiser through the front windshield. Blood and DNA evidence in the car and on the slug itself suggest that the bullet may have struck the accompanying officer, Sean Coleridge, before embedding itself in the back seat. The seriousness and potential lethality of the resulting wound cannot be determined at this time. 
​

August 4, 2014

​No. No.

The beast has made its play. And it's worse than anything I could have imagined. 

This thing is smart, so f___ing smart. I keep forgetting this. I keep underestimating it! I look at its past, thinking that it's prologue. Thinking of its consistency as a limit to its imagination. But it learns, doesn't it? Jennifer said that. That was her warning: it is always learning. And as it learns, it grows, like all of us. And as it grows, so do its appetites.

So do its ambitions. I learned the full scope of these today as I was driving into town, and I saw this:
​

I hit the brakes so hard I nearly skidded off the road. I pulled over to the berm and got out, just staring at the sign, mouth agape. I was so focused on it that I didn't notice the man leaning next to it, an uncharacteristic grin on his ugly, douchebag face. 

"Morning, neighbor," Bill Pryor said to me. He was flipping a coin and catching it in his palm over and over again. His smile was so wide now that I thought it might split his head in half. "What do you think?" 

Bill had been waiting for me to arrive. I'm sure of it. He wanted to be here when I first saw this horror, and from the look that must have been on my face, he was getting his money's worth. 

I asked him what this was. He laughed, almost good-naturedly, and tossed the coin again.

"It's progress, Corrie," he said. "Something you can't stand in the way of anymore."  He told me that the town had been looking for a big, flashy project to coincide with its 200th anniversary celebration next year, something that could get them some media attention. He had approached the town council with this plan last month, not too long after our little altercation.

"It took some doing," he said. "I had to work to dispel some of the nonsense that's been drilled into them about this creek, all that woo-woo ghost story garbage. When I told them how this would make us more water independent, cut costs and grow the town all at the same time, that's when they sat up and took notice." 

"Grow the town?" I said. He pointed down the road, where another, bigger billboard was being erected. 

"They're calling it Creekside Estates," Bill said. "Luxury living in the sticks, or something like that. It'll be opening not too long after the bicentennial. All the water for it and the town will come from Sugar Creek, once they've made it safe to use."

"It will never be safe to use," I said, pointing to the murky current behind him. "Nobody's ever figured out what's polluting it!"

"Doesn't matter," Bill said, his smile growing more sinister. "The town's gonna install a state-of-the-art reclamation system that promises to filter everything known to man." He tilted his head in the direction of the woods at the head of the creek. "Pumping station's going in up there somewhere." 

"They can't do that," I said. "You can't do that. For all your bullshit, you don't own that land. You have no right, no legal authority to sell it to them!"

"You're right, Jimmy," Bill said. His smile was becoming a sneer. "I don't. But you know what? Neither does anyone else." 

I stared at him. "What are you talking about?"

"No one owns that land," Bill said. " There is no record of any person, township or state body ever laying claim to those woods. Not sure how such a large piece of prime real estate avoided getting snatched up a hundred years ago, but I'll tell ya, it was my ace in the hole. When I told the council that they could just appropriate the land for this project at no cost, it sealed the deal." 

Bill flipped the coin into the air again, and it glinted gold in the sunlight as it dropped back into his palm. "I got a tidy finder's fee for my troubles, plus a stake in the Creekside development. Gonna have my pick of the lots to build on, too."

I was too stunned to respond. I couldn't make sense of any of it: how had this idiot worked all of this out? In such a short amount of time? 

"Don't take it so hard, Corrie," Bill said. "I'm willing to be generous with you. Let bygones be bygones in spite of all the shit you put me through. If you'll let things go, I might be able to reserve you a slot at Creekside, too. Slightly discounted." 

He tossed the coin again. On impulse, my hand darted out and grabbed it out of the air. I had half a mind to throw the thing into the nearby cornfield when my eyes locked on its design:
​

It wasn't a coin. It was a button. A very old brass button. 

​"Give it back, Corrie," Bill snapped. "Don't be an asshole." 

"Where did you get this?" I said. 

Bill scowled at me. "See, this is your problem. You think just because you trawl that creek day in and day out, everything that comes out of it belongs to you. Like you've got any more right to it than anyone else. Well, you don't. I found it, it belongs to me, so give it back now!" 

Very fine words from a guy who literally held me at gunpoint for doing what he was defending now. I handed it to him and he snatched it away. 

"So you found it in the creek?" I said. "When?" 

"About four weeks ago," he said. "I made sure you weren't there so I wouldn't be assaulted over it." 

"And when did you get the idea to check the records and go to the town council?" 

Bill cupped his chin. "I think it might have been the next day," he said. "I just kind of woke up with it." He held the button between thumb and forefinger and smiled. "Maybe this is my lucky charm." 

I said nothing. What I was thinking was that I have four buttons exactly like it in my desk drawer. I doubt the guy whose coat they came from would have considered them "lucky" under the circumstances. 

I don't remember what else, if anything, we said to each other. I just recall getting back into my car, starting my engine, and dissolving into tears. I'm sure Bill got a huge kick out of that, if he was watching, but I didn't really give a f__k at that point. There was so much more at stake. 

All this time, I thought this had been about me. This thing was taking so much time with me, practically assembling a godd__n encyclopedia on me. Why? Because I was special? Because I was unusual? Because I was somehow turning the tables on it, using its rules against it? Such hubris. 

It doesn't just want me. It wants the town. I was its way in. Because of me, it will soon be pouring into people's homes through their plumbing, giving and giving and giving, until the day it takes them all. 

No. Not soon. I have at least a year before this thing goes online. I can still fix this. I can still warn people, maybe even stop the project from happening. How do I do that? I've been trying to find some proof, some undeniable proof, of victims' names and identities. Something that I can use to alert the authorities, get an army of agents out here to rip this place down to the bedrock to find them. I need to keep on that. Even though this thing keeps denying it to me, I have to keep trying. Maybe I can work the legend angle in. Bill said he had to overcome people's deep-rooted fears of this place. That could be a leverage point to turn the town against the project. 

I won't be able to hide what I'm doing from it anymore. I have to lean into this, go hard on the offensive, if I have any hope of stopping it. I can keep Randi away from this, at least. Maybe I can get Rachel away, too, and somehow not destroy my marriage. No, Jimmy, don't think about that; we can only afford one hope at a time right now. 

Even that may be too much.
​

​July 20, 2014

Randi - Miranda - I know this won't make much difference by the time you read this (if you ever read this), but I am sorry. I know that your mother asked you to speak to me yesterday. She's right, by the way - I've been actively avoiding her ever since I found her ring. I have been shunning her, even snapping and starting fights just to get her away from me. I know I'm scaring her. I've known about her locking herself in the bathroom to cry, sometimes up to an hour at a time. And I absolutely deserved everything you said to me - screamed at me - about how I've treated her. About how I was treating you in that moment. You were right, Randi. You both deserve so much more, so much better, than I can give either of you right now. 

But I can't give it to you. Because if I did, I would just be giving more of you to this thing. And I've given it far, far too much already.  

I don't write in my office anymore. I don't do research there. I've removed any and all books, documents and materials that hint at my findings. I've installed locks on the outside of the door that I engage whenever I'm not in the room. The window is nailed shut. This was all very difficult to do, because I had to do it all in a way that didn't arouse suspicion. Not from your mother - she saw it all, and I'm sure her concern for my sanity had a lot to do with her reaching out to you. No. I had to pretend that the trap I'd idiotically built for myself in that room was still in place. 

I'd still have no idea I was trapped if not for what happened about a month ago. If it hadn't gotten greedy. At this point I was still hauling in junk from the Creek by the pound, so much of it that I'd had to buy and build shelves to store it all on. This had started to include wild animal bones, modern ones, not the truly ancient ones I found over July 4th weekend. It hadn't surprised me. I'd already established that this thing had killed people; why wouldn't it also nosh on the occasional squirrel, deer or black bear that wandered into its lair? I was still trying to map the scope of this beast. I had no idea it was also mapping me. 

The day I discovered the trap was the day I'd hauled in about a couple dozen different animal skulls. You know me, Randi: unless I (really) put my mind to it, I am useless when it comes to organization. I piled these willy-nilly on the shelves I'd built, facing all directions, promising I'd sort them all out later and knowing I was lying to myself. The shelves by now lined the room, with my desk crammed between them in the corner by the door. I was exhausted, and as soon as they were all unloaded I dropped the trash bag I'd toted them in to the floor and went to bed. 

The next morning, this is what greeted me when I entered the room: 

​I may have started a bit when I saw this; it couldn't be helped. But I immediately looked away, casting my eyes around the room for something else to focus on. As I did, I noticed something. The rows of skulls had not been staring straight out at me; they were angled slightly to the right, toward my desk in the corner. Looking at the shelves lining the walls, I saw for the first time that everything, every single item I'd pulled out of the Creek, was angled the same way. 

When I'm at that desk, I always work with my back to the room. It's how I've always worked, to avoid distractions. Every word I've written, every book I've read, every web page I've searched in this room I have done so completely blind to whatever might be behind me. 

Watching everything I've done for months.

I actually wrote all of this down a few days before this discovery, although I since destroyed it in a panic. (Maybe that was a mistake.) I postulated this exact scenario. I established that, of all the things this creature could be, it was most likely the sum of the parts of its victims, everything it absorbed from them. I wrote this, in black and white, and I still didn't understand what this meant to me. I wondered, incredulously, how something like this could exist and never be seen.

And now I know. It is the sum of these parts. I just assumed, incorrectly, that they all had to be connected. Not recognizing it, I've invited it into my home. Into my life. Your lives. 

I have to walk a very fine line now. I can't let it know the extent to which I am aware of it. I can't risk what might happen. This means I will keep going to the Creek, keep looking for something that I can trace definitively to a date or a person, and storing my finds in this room. I just can't let it know anything else about us. I have to keep it blind going forward.

Of all the things that bother me, though...of all the truly terrifying connotations of this creature, one in particular just gnaws at my guts. It infiltrates through gifts, gifts of itself. It learns about its victims by taking from them. Then it kills and absorbs them. That's its unwavering M.O.: it gives, then it takes, then it takes you. 

The amount it has given to me of itself has been enormous. What it has taken so far has paled by comparison. And it continues to give.

What can it possibly want in return? 

The following entries provide the heretofore missing information from Jim Corrie's journal, covering the period from June 3 to June 25, 2014. These were provided to BCI by Mr. Corrie's daughter Miranda during her interview on October 26, 2015. ​
​

​June 17, 2014

Damn it. I missed another appointment. I need to call Dr. V_______'s office to let them know I'm not dead. 

I'm not sure who I'm writing this to at this point. Feels more like I'm keeping notes for myself. Or provide a clue for someone else to pick up if anything happens to me. 

I finally ventured out a few days ago to get the passenger window replaced. Told them a bird had smacked into it. A big one. Utterly terrifying. I had a whole story teed up for them. They didn't really care about the details. 

I feel thoroughly exposed whenever I'm outside now. Like turtle with its shell removed. Feeling like I'm always being watched. Of course, I'd had that feeling before, but now I can't tell if it's real or paranoia. I try not to think about Rachel, going through her day without the slightest notion she may have a target on her back. I can't warn her - I don't dare.  I can only suppress the urge to panic whenever she doesn't answer the phone, or when she's five minutes late returning from the grocery store. It makes me want to scream, this lack of control, but I am certain that her knowing about this, whether or not she actually believes it, will put her in even greater danger than she's in now. 

In the meantime, I've been poring over Jennifer's source list to make some sense of her disjointed, incomplete notes, and I have yet to find any. Several of them are ghost stories, same vein as the O'Donnell book. But from there the subject matter is all over the map: books on primordial evolution, psychic trauma, telepathy, fungi, parasitism and symbiosis in nature, megaflora and fauna, the Lost Colony of Roanoke(!), and the H.G. Wells novel The Time Machine. I've ordered the ones that are still in print and hope to use them to reconstruct Jennifer's thought process in her notes. I've highlighted some of the most promising phrases, as well as the most mystifying ones:

"A new species?" 
"Humongous Fungus? Sundew? Both?"
"Where is the root?"
"A black hole of suffering and violence"
"When was the first death? How old?"
"Absorbs and reuses"
"Does pain feed it"
"Sugar Creek circulates it?"
"It's always watching. It's always learning."
"Are dreams its voice? Or many voices?"
"What does it want? Does it know? Is it figuring it out?"
"ELOI."

This last word was circled several times and underlined. It jumps out from the page like a scream. The context suggests epiphany, and while it hasn't penetrated my aging brain just yet, it did send a chill down my spine. It's a term anyone who has read The Time Machine will instantly recognize: the name of the futuristic Earth race the Time Traveler meets tens of thousands of years from our time. They are beautiful, gentle, soft, unquestioning, docile, and sheep-like, with no understanding of their history or reason for being, unwilling to venture out at night for reasons they will not (or cannot) explain. They have no idea that they are actually being bred, kept and culled by the monstrous, under-dwelling Morlocks, their fates tied to the latter's appetite for Eloi flesh. 

I think I'm going to put down the pen for awhile and grab a drink.


​June 20, 2014

Ohhhhkayyyy. I've had a few days and a lot of drinks, and I think I'm gonna take a stab at a hypothesis. This is likely going to be the nuttiest thing you've read of mine yet, Doc; if it helps, just think of it as Einstein doing a thought experiment.

"A new species." Jennifer led with this. That means she didn't believe this thing was supernatural, but possibly a living organism. An old one. One that's been around way longer than the town. She mentions the "Humongous Fungus," a giant 2000-year old underground mushroom (essentially) that lies under a forest in Oregon and is considered one of the largest living things on Earth. She also mentions a lot of different types of carnivorous plants, and can't seem to decide whether the thing, whatever it is, is parasitic or predatory, but thinks it could have qualities of both. The dreams I had from its point of view suggest the latter, although how the hell do you see things through the eyes of a plant? Especially when this thing is definitely not a plant? I'll get back to that. 

"Are dreams its voice?" Suggests that the thing is sentient, which I'd already suspected. The dreams have always seemed like something trying to tell me something. Communicating. So it's telepathic, then. Definitely self-aware. The troubling part is that it is also intelligent, hence "It's always watching/learning." It studies its victims, and learns how best to snatch them away without a trace. I'm imagining a crafty Venus flytrap the size of a forest with the powers of Mr. Spock and trying to laugh, but not quite making it. She adds the bit about "many voices," but I'm fairly sure there's only one of this thing. 

"Does pain feed it?" That's even more troubling. A crafty Venus Flytrap the size of a forest with the powers of Mr. Spock that takes pleasure in killing? Not even trying to laugh now. 

"Absorbs and reuses." I had a hell of a time trying to sort this out. Absorbs and reuses what? But then I thought about the buttons, the artifacts. And the plow horses.

I thought about Angie's ball. And her "Sticky Man."

And I had to get several more drinks in me before I could even think the words that I'm writing right now: its victims.

​I mean, it's not that crazy an idea: we are all what we eat, after all. It's just that when I eat a hamburger, I don't literally use the part of the cow it came from like an appendage to move around. This answers the question I asked above: How do you see things through the eyes of a plant? You don't have to, when you have a perfectly-good pair of stolen human eye sockets to peek through. Everyone, everything it takes, becomes a part of it, and it uses these parts to move, to watch. To kill. 

But that doesn't entirely make sense. It would look like a monstrosity, really hard to miss. Why hasn't anyone ever reported seeing it?

​Why haven't I seen it? It's been tormenting me for the better part of a year I've seen the signs, but not the thing itself. It presented itself to Angie almost immediately. Yet it waited at least two years to show itself to Jennifer.  It gave something to each of them. Then it took something, and eventually it took them. Why am I still here, after everything it's "given" me? 

​What is it planning?

I haven't been able to make sense of anything else in the notes just yet. I'll keep hacking away at it. 


​June 21, 2014

​I have seen it.  Jesus Christ, I have.

And it's seen me. It's seen almost everything I've done. It's watching right now. 

F__k, how could I have been so stupid? I even said what it was. I wrote it down. It was right there in front of me, and I ignored it. 

Does it know that I know now? How could it not? Do I pretend I didn't see it? Or do I put every last one of its g_____n eyes out right now? 

If it saw what I wrote...God, I don't know, I don't know what to do! 

Maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe this isn't how it works. It's had months, now, and it hasn't made a move. It could have at any time. It could have taken me, Rachel...Randi...

G____n it to hell, how could I have been so f___ing stupid!

I can't take the chance. I can't take the chance that it can find out. I can't give it anything else. 


​
The six pages of extracted notes end here. The journal picks up again on June 25, 2014. 
​

The following entries provide the heretofore missing information from Jim Corrie's journal, covering the period from June 3 to June 25, 2014. These were provided to BCI by Mr. Corrie's daughter Miranda during her interview on October 26, 2015. ​​

​June 6, 2014

As I prepare for our session on Monday, Doc, I realize I'd almost forgotten why I was mad at you. Actually, it hit me in the middle of reviewing everything I wrote three days ago that I've done more than that: I've virtually roped you in as a co-conspirator. I'm sure that will tickle you to no end that I'm suddenly so willing to confide in you. Just remember, though, that it's the idea of you I'm confiding in at the moment; I have no clue how you'll actually react to this. You have some high expectations to live up to, my friend - I do not envy you for that. 

I'm totally fixated on the last thing Carl said to me before I left, about "Killiecrankie." I checked in Jennifer's notes and, lo and behold, I found the words "Killiecrankie 1912" written in the upper-left corner of a yellowed sheet of narrow-rule. Cryptically, this was circled and connected by a drawn line to another circled set of words "the same species?" No further explanation was to be found in any of the spare remnants of her research. Fortunately, a quick Internet search of the the term yielded my lazy ass its answer, pointing me to a book called "Ghosts of Scotland" by one Elliott O'Donnell written in 1912. 

Some quick backstory regarding the Battle of Killiecrankie before I launch into this tale. I already mentioned that Killiecrankie Pass in the Scottish Highlands was the sight of a major battle during the Jacobite Uprising of 1689. Highland Scottish forces, favoring the deposed King James II, engaged English and lowland Scottish forces backing the new king, William III of Orange. On July 27, 1689, over 3000 men clashed upon the slopes above Killiecrankie Pass, resulting in a massive victory for the Jacobite Scots over the English. This also resulted in a violent, bloody slaughter of more than a thousand troops. It is was this slaughter that left Killiecrankie with the reputation of being one of the most dramatically haunted places in all of Scotland. 
​

"How haunted was it," you say. Well, it fit the bill for all the classic haunting tropes: phantom cannon fire, disembodied voices and screams, visions of ghostly warriors racing through the woods to leap over cliffs and vanishing. it has been suggested that The violence at Killiecrankie had so traumatized the land there that it replayed it, year after year on the anniversary of the battle, like a broken projector. 

However, things depart from the standard haunting fare in the way that the dead also seem to attempt to interact with the living. This is shown in stark relief in O'Donnell's story from a cyclist who found herself caught out in the pass on the night of the anniversary around the turn of the 20th century. As night descends, she describes the sounds of cannons, the shouts, the clear-as-day sightings of pale soldiers skirmishing in the moonlight.

And then shit gets really weird. The cyclist describes the ground suddenly being carpeted with the realer-than-real forms of dead and dying soldiers, their blood staining the earth. The cries of the dead are unbearable to hear. She becomes aware of a figure moving among them, a young Highland girl with bone-white skin and black hair. She carries a basket on one arm and a dirk ( a really f__king big Scottish dagger) in her hand. The girl looks so real, so utterly solid, that the cyclist is initially uncertain whether she is part of this vision or not. This question is answered when the girl kneels at the side of a piteously-moaning soldier and plunges the dirk into his heart.
​

In horror, the cyclist watches the girl move from body to body, methodically looting the dead and finishing off the wounded. Throats are slashed, limbs are dismembered, breath is stopped. The cyclist is so appalled that she lets out a little moan of terror. 

And the girl looks at her. Her eyes zero right in on the eyes of the living person trespassing in the abode of the dead. Her eyes dart up and down the body of the cyclist, sizing her up, and her grip switches on the dirk, pointing the blade toward her new prey. She stalks her slowly at first, moving circuitously toward her to cut off any chance of escape. Then with an animal shriek the girl raises the knife high above her head and charges the last dozen steps toward the cyclist, who in a panic throws herself to the ground, squeezing her eyes shut...

And silence. When the cyclist is at last able to summon her courage, she forces her eyes open and rises to her knees to find herself, once more, alone in the moonlight. 

Very dramatic stuff, isn't it? I'd personally say she made it up for effect, except there are other accounts of people seeing and interacting with this girl on the site. Other tellers add an interesting detail where the blood of battle staining the ground actually comes away red on their hands when touching it. In each version, the feeling of immediate, mortal danger is palpable in spite of the fact that none of the tellers are ultimately harmed. 

As dramatic as it is, it's still a bit puzzling. I can see why she was drawn to this, seeing as how she suffered from what is, essentially, a textbook "haunting" herself. But I don't get how it fits together with Sugar Creek. The haunting at Killiecrankie only resembles the manifestations in the woods in that there is a hostile interaction between a "spirit" and a living person. There are legends of the living and the dead interacting from all over the world; why should this one stand out to her? And what could she possibly mean by "the same species?" Strange word to use with ghosts, "species." It's a word more suggestive of something alive than dead. 

I wish I had more to go on here from her notes. I still have the list of sources she left - maybe that will shed more light on this. 


June 12, 2014

I missed my appointment with Dr. V______ on Monday. Before picking up this journal I had completely forgotten about it. That's never happened before. It's like any notion of it was completely wiped from my mind. 

Under different circumstances this would concern me. Vague worries about early-onset dementia or other hypochondriac fears of cognitive decay would be buzzing around my brain. But the reason why I forgot is no mystery to me. It's the same reason I haven't replaced the glass in my passenger-side window, or cleaned the red smear off its surface.

It's the same reason I haven't left the house in three days. Why I've been texting Rachel at work every few hours, just to confirm that she's safe. I've been calling when she doesn't respond fast enough. She's exasperated with me, and I can't tell her why, and I can't breathe easy until she walks through that door. 

How long did I think this would last? It's been over a year now. How long did I think it could go without the other shoe dropping? Carl warned me, but it hadn't happened to me. Not yet. Did I think I would be different? Did I think I was immune?

I was getting into my Jeep Monday morning. I had Jennifer's list of sources on the seat next to me, ready to research the crap out of it down at the library. I still had her book with me as well, and my conscience tweaked me about finally returning it while I was there. (It's six months and counting since I checked the damn thing out.) The Corries sprung to life from the CD deck when I turned the key, and I was dismayed to hear "Killiecrankie" issue forth. I had been purposely avoiding this song for the last few days, and I distinctly recalled a different song playing when I turned off the car the previous night. I didn't have a chance to consider this, because at that same moment a massive impact rocked the car on its frame and threw me against the driver's side door. I felt the car start to tip and was sure it was going to roll over on its side, but its momentum stopped and it crashed back onto four wheels again. 

I looked toward the passenger side to see what had happened. I had hit my head against the door post, so it took a minute for everything to shift into focus. The passenger side window was shot through with cracks, yet still holding together. In the center of the glass was a bright red smear that morphed into an unmistakable shape as my vision cleared:
​

I don't know how long I sat there staring at it. My heart was battering at my sternum, my breath coming so fast I was afraid I would pass out. I didn't dare blink my eyes for fear it would disappear...or something else would take its place. I did finally allow them to fall shut and reopen, and saw that the print was still there. My entire body sagged with a strange sort of relief, and as it did it shifted the car and jostled the fractured window. A small piece of glass in the center of the print tumbled out onto the passenger seat. The morning sun caught it and it gleamed like polar ice. 

My eyes wandered from the piece of glass to the window. The chilling photo of the Weavers' patio door, now my patio door, rose in my mind. I thought about what Carl had said to me: It looks like it's given you plenty, but what's it taken from you? Once that starts, it won't stop - it'll just take and take, and it'll be hard for you to know what's yours and what belongs to it.

What had it taken, I thought. My sleep, my sense of well-being? Sure, but nothing in the literal sense. Nothing compared to what it took from Jennifer, from Carl...

Or the way it gave it back...

I looked down at the piece of glass again. A memory of my wife from about a week ago suddenly popped into my head. That day, before work, she was tearing around the house in a panic, almost on the verge of tears. I asked her what was wrong, and she told me. I tried to help her, but I was unsuccessful. I held her consolingly and reassured her: Don't worry, it will turn up.

Cold dread flooded through me. I lurched across the seat and snatched up the piece of glass, confirming that it was not, in fact, glass. It had been far too expensive for that.

I threw open the car door and raced back up the porch. Rachel was working from home that day. I had passed her on the way out the door, sitting on the sofa, laptop open, steaming cup of coffee in her hand. I struggled to fit my key in the lock, praying, begging whatever unseen deity that looked down upon us to please let her still be there, please let her be safe.

The front door flew open, and her spot on the sofa was empty. Her cup lay in a dozen pieces on the coffee table, smashed. Milky brown liquid was dripping onto the floor. Yet it was the smear of red in the midst of all the brown that set my senses reeling, threatening to pull my legs out from under me - 

And then Rachel appeared at the kitchen door and I screamed, which made her scream, and we just stared at each other like a couple of loons. She had a paper towel wrapped around her hand from where she had cut herself after dropping the hot mug of coffee. She asked me if I was all right.

"I'm fine," I said, although I was panting like I was going to have a heart attack. I collapsed onto the couch and propped my head up in my hand.

"I thought you we're on your way to the library," Rachel said. "Did you forget something?"

My head shot up, and I remembered the object that was now digging into my palm. I swallowed and faked a smile.

"No," I said, and I held out my hand. "I found your engagement ring."
​

The following entries provide the heretofore missing information from Jim Corrie's journal, covering the period from June 3 to June 25, 2014. These were provided to BCI by Mr. Corrie's daughter Miranda during her interview on October 26, 2015. ​
​

June 3, 2014 

Carl Weaver* lived a short distance from the cafe. He had walked, so I offered to drive him back. I'd brought The Corries with me in the car, and "Killiecrankie" came out full blast when I turned the key. It startled him, so I turned it off. He remained visibly shaken the entire drive, and kept glancing over at the CD player as if expecting it to come blaring to life again at any moment. The man was an emotional wreck, so I figured that was what it was.

I hate to say that Carl's home was exactly what I thought it would be. He lived in a small condo that was part of a complex built in the late '80s, likely respectable when he moved in but gone seriously to seed in the twenty-five years since. Every blind was drawn, casting the interior of the house in shadow. It was cleaner than I'd thought, if a little dusty. Carl invited me to sit and immediately disappeared into the kitchen. I'm embarrassed that I expected him to emerge with a whisky bottle, given how he looked, but he only had two glasses of water. He handed me one and immediately produced a bottle of pills, proceeding to down three with a swallow of water.

"I don't really sleep," Carl said, reading my mind. "This helps even me out.  Sometimes."  We all have our own ways of coping, Doc. 

I got right to the point. I asked him what he'd meant about "it" getting Jennifer. He gave me a blank stare and waved me off, saying we'd talk about that. Then he asked me what I'd seen. I more or less summarized everything I've written up to this point: the artifacts, the dreams, the coincidences.

The feeling of being watched. 

Carl barely reacted to any of it, just nodding slightly every so often.  When I'd finished, he lowered his head and started massaging his temples. 

"It gave you something," he said. " When you got its attention. That's how it started with us." Carl told me about the day in late March, 1985 that Angie had toddled up to the porch, her hands and shoes caked with red mud. Neither he nor Jennifer had seen her wander off, and they were frantic that she had gone that far without them knowing. Their fear and anger quickly melted to curiosity when their daughter held out her tiny hand and deposited two grimy lead pellets into Jennifer's palm. 

"Musket balls," I said, and Carl nodded. Much as it had with me, the discovery had fired their imaginations about the local legend, particularly Jennifer's, since she was already writing about town lore. For the next several weeks, Carl started going to the Creek on Saturdays, sifting the sediment for finds. 

​"I never found a thing," he said. "Not one thing in the dozen or so times I went." When he raised his head, I saw tears welling in his eyes. "At one point Angie was bringing us something every other day." 

Carl and Jennifer never knew how their daughter kept slipping away, and were amazed at the things she brought back. The list was eerily similar to my own: arrowheads, antique trinkets, buttons, buttons, buttons. They asked her every time where she found them, and every time she answered the same: "The Creek gave it to me." 

"We stopped being as concerned about it after awhile, even though it was so strange," Carl said. "Just treated it like a quirk of her little personality." He squeezed his eyes tight shut. "Until the day she brought back the ball." 

That was what Angie had called it. It was covered in mud like everything else she had brought them, and was roughly the size of a softball. Jennifer had taken it inside to wash it off for her. As before, Carl asked her where she had gotten it, expecting the usual answer. But it was different this time. 

"She said the 'Sticky Man' had given it to her," Carl said. "I didn't have a chance to ask her what it meant before I heard my wife scream." 

When he had charged into the kitchen, Jennifer was pressed against the wall opposite the sink, sobbing. The object lying under the running water was a tiny human skull, possibly that of a newborn. It was missing its lower jaw, and a vicious fracture ran diagonally from the right eye socket across the top of the cranium. 

"She was scared out of her mind," Carl said. "But not just because of what it was. She told me that, in the moment it had emerged from the mud, it had also started to bleed." 

He'd found no blood anywhere, and at the time he had thought she had imagined it. But it did not change the fact of what it was, or that someone had given the grisly thing to their daughter. They had called the police, and resolved to keep Angie in sight at all times from then on.

I stopped him and asked him why there was no mention of this in any of the news coverage of her later disappearance, especially if they had the evidence of the skull. Carl shook his head and laughed miserably.

"Because they never saw it," Carl said. Jennifer had insisted that the skull not remain in their house while they waited for the police, so he had stuffed it in a paper bag and left it on the back porch. They arrived less than 20 minutes later, and he had brought the bag back in to show them.

"It was empty," he said. "Nothing in it but a residue of mud. I didn't let that bag out of my sight for more than a minute while we were waiting, and now these cops were looking at me like I had antennae." 

He and Jennifer had insisted it had been there, and brought Angie in to ask her about the Sticky Man. "She wouldn't say what she the name meant," Carl said. "Was he covered in something sticky? Did he look like a stick? She just kept calling him that, like it was obvious what it meant. When we asked her about 'her ball'  - we didn't tell her what it was - she said 'the Sticky Man took it back.'"

The police took their information and left. On the way out, they said that Angie "had a very active imagination," clearly taking nothing they had heard seriously. Carl gave them the bag as evidence.  "There was something on the outside of the bag I wanted them to look at," he said. "A red smear that wasn't mud. It was like dried wax, only more viscous. I wanted them to check in out." He scowled. "They probably threw it in the trash." 

The Weavers practically stood sentinel over Angie for the next few months as spring passed into summer.  The flow of artifacts into the house stopped, as her parents managed to catch her every time she seemed ready to slip out the front or back door. She cried bitterly each time over being cut off from her favorite play spots, but eventually found other things to occupy herself, like the beautiful new doll they gave her the day she turned three that July. 

A few nights after her birthday, Carl found himself being shaken awake by Jennifer. It was around midnight, and he said she could hear Angie talking in her room. When they opened her door, they found her standing up in her new toddler bed, fully awake, staring at the window that looked out onto the front lawn. (As he described it, I realized with some discomfort that Angie's old room is my current office.) She said without prompting that the Sticky Man had come to see her. Jennifer had immediately snatched her up and raced with her back to their bedroom. 

"I hung back for a moment," Carl said. "Just looking at the window. There was no one there, no trace that anyone had been. Then in the moonlight I saw faint shadow across the glass toward the bottom, a streak where Jenny or I had maybe touched by accident. I looked closer and saw it was on the outside of the glass, not the inside. It wasn't skin oil, either, but something thicker, translucent and red." Carl paused, and I noticed that sweat had broken out on his forehead in spite of the coolness of the room.  "I ran back to the bedroom and locked us in."

Less than ten days later, Angie disappeared. "I can even tell you the moment it happened," Carl said. "I could hear her through the front screen, talking to her doll, maybe five feet away from me. Then she made this sound. It wasn't a scream, or a cry. It was a tiny little noise that I barely even noticed at the time. I've been turning it over in my head ever since. It was surprise. Not even bad surprise. The sort of sound you'd make if someone familiar you weren't expecting to see just appeared out of the blue. Then nothing after that." 

Carl sank back into the chair with his eyes closed. He was visibly shaking at this point, and his breath hitched in his chest as if he was fighting back tears. I asked him if he wanted to take a break and he waved me off. 

"I'm okay," he said. "You wanted to know what I meant earlier, about my wife? Like I said, when you got it's attention, it would give you something." Carl swallowed hard. "My wife got its attention."

Jennifer had thrown herself into research after Angie vanished. She had pored through all of her old notes and thrown out anything that didn't relate to a disappearance, and followed any and every lead she could. What she had found, Carl told me, could have filled half-a-dozen books, much more than the slim volume she had actually published. 

"You saw what was there," Carl said. "That's what she could find trace records for, and it was a lot. The rest was based on her own theories, and she had a lot. I thought she would tell me every single person who ever died in Sugar Creek was killed by this thing." Carl paused. "I could almost believe that now."

Jennifer had attempted interviews with family members of the recent missing. They had met with her grudgingly, and there was never more than one meeting. "She became a nuisance around town, a 'troublemaker.'" Carl said. "She'd raise the issue at every town hall meeting. She'd regularly call the chief of police, the mayor, anyone she could with a new scrap of evidence or theory. People got sick of it, sick of her. I'm ashamed to say it embarrassed me, too. I was so depressed, I just wanted to forget it. Most everyone did, it seemed. She was appalled at this, and refused to let us. I think that's how she drew its eye."

Carl said her nightmares started that fall, and what he described was terribly familiar. The following spring, the "gifts" started to arrive again, rusted pieces of junk appearing on the porch, always to vanish again sometime later, much as they had with Angie. Carl noted that it was always Jennifer who found them, never him, and they always disappeared before she could show them to him. But he never doubted that she was telling the truth, and could not avoid the toll it was taking on her mind. 

"One evening, I was pulling up to the house after work, and I saw her tearing across the front yard, crying and screaming," Carl said.  "She was more furious than I'd ever seen her, swearing a blue streak. Her arms were full of the biggest rocks she could hold from our garden. I followed her and watched her hurl them, one after another, into the creek, shrieking abuse at the dirty water. I got a hold of her and she collapsed against me, weeping. She said that today's "gift" had been a tiny shoe, one of a pair that we had gotten Angie for her last birthday. She hadn't even attempted to hold onto it to show me but had chucked it into the water, then had gone to get the rocks."

Carl's composure had deteriorated over this portion of the conversation, and he was shaking so badly that he had to dig his nails into the chair arms to steady himself. In an instant, two more pills were out of the bottle and had disappeared down his throat, no water needed, apparently. I tried to show some empathy, saying how similarly some of my experiences had been, and Carl's head snapped up, his eyes zeroing in on mine. 

"How similar?" he said. "It sounds like it's given you plenty, but what's it taken from you?"

I dropped my eyes at that, a little ashamed. Carl kept going, his voice moving from accusation to pity. "Once that starts, it won't stop - it'll just take and take, and it'll be hard for you to know what's yours and what belongs to it."

"Then, at some point," Carl said, "you will see it."

I started at this. I asked him what it looked like. He shook his head. 

"I didn't see a thing," Carl said. "Jenny did."

The event he described was two years after Angie disappeared. Carl had gone back to their bedroom to take a nap; Jennifer was sitting at the kitchen table, clipping and sorting coupons. They rarely talked at this point, so silence was normal for both of them. 

"It was a beautiful September day," Carl said. I opened the window and let the sound of the trees in the wind just lull me to sleep. Everything was so peaceful, I felt I could almost forget everything that had happened. 

"I dreamed. I was playing with Angie in the backyard, chasing her. I could hear her little shrieks of laughter, her feet padding through the grass. She was running right toward the patio door, like she was going to run into the house. But the door was shut. She was running so hard and so fast and didn't see the glass, and she was going to hit it with all of her force. I yelled to her to stop, just as her body hit the door..."

Carl crumpled in his chair, and his whole body heaved with sobs. I sat and watched as what seemed like years of pent-up pain poured out of him in wracking gasps. When he had finished, he looked up at me through exhausted, red-rimmed eyes. 

"I woke up to the sound of tinkling glass," Carl said. "I leapt out of bed and ran down the hall to the kitchen. Jennifer was still sitting at the table, completely silent. Her eyes were wide, bulging, her face streaming with tears. She was staring at the patio door. The glass was still in one piece, but it had been starred with thousands of tiny cracks, like it had just withstood a heavy impact. I knelt down beside her and asked her what had happened, what had cracked the glass. She looked at me, didn't blink once, and whispered so low I almost didn't make it out:

'Angie. It was Angie.'

"Then she pointed at the bottom of the door."

Carl grew silent. His eyes closed and his head slumped forward, and for a moment I thought he was going to topple out of the chair. Instead, he reached over, opened a drawer in the end table next to him and pulled out an ancient Polaroid. He handed it to me and watched as my mouth slowly fell open: 

"There was something else, too, just outside the door," Carl said. "A shoe. The other one."

I asked him again if he had seen what made this, and he shook his head again. "No," he said. "She - it​ - was here for Jenny. To f__k with her, and f__k with her it did." Carl sagged back into his seat, looking utterly exhausted. "I left the house a few days later, just walked out with a suitcase, and never looked back. A year later the divorce went through, and I haven't heard a word from her since." A remnant of the pain from his earlier breakdown seeped back into his voice. "She wouldn't go. She was never going to leave, and now I know she never will." 

Doc, if you had seen this man...you could have done a case study on him. He was the most haunted human being I have ever seen, and I felt like I was watching him slowly die in that chair. I decided to cut things short, and I thanked him for his help. He just sat there in a heap and nodded at me, his eyes closed, and I figured that was it. I was halfway to the door when he called out to me again.

"I forgot," he said. "I wanted to tell you when you came in, but I forgot. It freaked me out at the time, so I took a pill first to calm down and it slipped my mind." He lurched over the arm of the chair and looked up at me. "In her notes - the ones I gave you. I told you, she had theories, not just of what this thing had done, but of what it was. 

"That song you were playing, in your car. That Scottish song? The name of it. I've heard it before. That name is in Jenny's notes." 

​
*Note: BCI interviewers visited Carl Weaver's residence in Dayton, OH on October 29, 2015 only to find that the property has been empty for some time. The last reported sighting of Mr. Weaver by his neighbors was on January 21 of this year as he was retrieving his mail. Reports say that as he returned up the walk, he suddenly started and fell to the ground, feeling frantically about himself. He then became still and looked westward, staring at something no one could see for more than three minutes, after which he rose to his feet and fled back into his home. The next day his door was standing open, and his car was gone. A sheet of paper was found on the kitchen table with the words "still too close" scrawled on them in marker. Mr. Weaver's present whereabouts remain unknown.

​What follows has been edited for content and relevance to the ongoing investigation
into events in Sugar Creek, Ohio on the night of September 26-27, 2015. ​

June 3, 2014

I've got to admit, Doc: I'm kind of excited in spite of myself. Probably because I've got my battle music playing as I go over my questions for Carl Weaver. The Corries are serenading me with "Nancy Whisky," and I sorely wish it were later in the day so I could partake in some as I listen.  I'm sure Randi's regretting ever getting this for me now,  'cause it's kind of "my jam" these days.  (Randi would die of embarrassment on the spot if she ever knew I said "my jam," even ironically, and I kinda' hope she sneaks a peek at this sometime just to see her reaction!)

Rachel's...not a fan, and she's still asleep, so it's playing very low.

I have to be careful. I approached Carl as a local historian who discovered Jennifer's book and was interested in her source material (all true). I did not mention that I lived in his old house, or any of my other theories. I definitely did not mention his daughter. If there's a way for it to come up organically, I might bring it up.

​I should head out, but one of my favorites just started playing: "The Braes o' Killiecrankie." Song about a vicious battle between the English and the Scots during the Jacobite Rising of 1689 that was - naturally - a resounding win for the Scots. Swells my heart to hear it; I think I'll wait until it's done. 

June 3, 2014 - Later

Jesus. 

Jesus.

I'm in Dayton now. The interview's over. I stopped back at the cafe where it started, staring at my notes and trying to stop my brain from spinning.  I'm holding onto the table with one hand, afraid to let go. 

This is bad. This is really, really bad. 

Okay - pulling my shit together. Starting at the beginning. 

I'd brought a newspaper photo of Carl Weaver with his family as reference, but I almost didn't recognize him when I met him. When I realized who he was, I tried not to be visibly shocked, although the man seemed so deadened to anything around him I doubt he noticed. 

Doc, the man was so old. I mean, it's been almost thirty years, but I didn't expect him to look so...bad. Carl is fifty-six, only a little older than me (and I know I'm no specimen!), but he looked at least ten years older. Everything about him - the way he sat slumped in the chair, the way the flesh on his face sagged, how he looked at me with half-opened eyes - this was a man who looked half in his grave, waiting for someone to push him the rest of the way in. I've drawn the two versions of him below, side by side:
​

I'd like to think I recovered quickly, and we got to talking about the book. I showed him my copy, and told him (again, truthfully) that I was unable to find anything beyond the most basic details in any other source.

"I guess Jenny wasn't very forthcoming?" Carl said. "I'm not sure why she went ahead and published it. She never wanted to sell it or talk to anyone about it." 

I stared at him for a minute. He assumed I'd spoken to Jennifer? I chose not to correct him, and asked if he had access to any of her sources. 

"Yeah, I brought a few things," he said. He reached down and picked up a faded file folder, which he dropped on the table. "I don't have much; some random stuff that got mixed in with my things when I moved out. Not sure why I kept them." 

I opened the folder, and my eyes went wide. Sitting atop a small pile of ancient printouts was this photo:
​

"I took that one myself," Carl said. "Took it in the spring of '85. It was going to be her photo for the back cover. She was so excited about it, her first book. She actually had a real publisher at that point, not this fly-by-night vanity crap." He referred to the book on the table. "That was all before, though." 

I got a lump in my throat looking at it, Doc. The woman sitting on what would one day be my porch looked serene, confident, even optimistic. The day was bright, and the creek looked almost picturesque flowing in and out of frame behind her. The way the photo was oriented, she would have been looking straight into the woods. She was someone who had no idea what horrors they held, what sorrow they would bring her in just a few months' time. I both pitied and envied her for that. 

"Some of her source notes are there, too," Carl said. "Not much, like I said." He slowly rose to his feet and extended his hand. "Sorry you came all this way for so little." 

I asked him to wait. I asked him when he had last spoken to Jennifer himself. 

"We don't talk," Carl said. "I haven't spoken to her since the divorce."  He shrugged, a little pathetically. "It's not like we had to worry about child support or anything." 

I winced at that, and I seriously considered just leaving at that point. His daughter's death had destroyed his family, and was still destroying him. What possible good could I do dragging him back into hell like this?

But I had to know. I could feel myself getting close to a crucial truth about the Creek that I'd never find any other way. I pointed to the photo. 

"That's my house," I said.

Carl's eyes narrowed at me. "What do you mean, 'your house'?"

"I own it," I said. "Jennifer's not there anymore." 

"What, she sold it to you? She moved out?"

"No," I said. "I just bought it a year or so ago. I've never met your ex-wife." 

"So when did she leave?" Carl said. His voice was rising. This was the most animated I'd seen him. "Where did she go?" 

"No one knows," I said. "I don't know much more than that."  I could see that he wanted more than that anyway, so I took a deep breath and went on. "Bank records say she made the last mortgage payment in early 1990. They repossessed it later that year. From what I was able to gather, the door was wide open when they came to foreclose. Everything was there but her. I couldn't find anything saying there was even a search or missing person's report. For all I could tell - "

"The earth had swallowed her up,"  Carl said. His eyes were practically bulging, and a look of horror had reshaped his face. He grasped the arm of his chair for support. "Oh, God. Oh my God. It got her." 

My jaw dropped at this. Carl stumbled, and I reached out to steady him, but he lunged forward and grabbed my arm instead.

"You're not here about her book," he said.  "You've seen something." 

I just stared at him, blinking. I must have given him some sort of acknowledgement, because his grip on my arm tightened.

"Jenny saw something," he whispered. "And so did I. Come to my house. Now."