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.
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:
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?
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