Park Base - I'm giving up.

Fuck it. I'm out of here. He's here, I know it. The bushes are too constricting. There are too few points of exit, and the fact that I have to walk forward from my position to get to the nearest exit makes them inconvenient in the extreme. And He's been here. And not as in "when he killed Joey" or "When Kari had that fucking dream about him" but as in He's been here not long ago. As in, He's probably here now.

Oh how quickly this new shelter became just like everywhere else. I'm forced out, like I was forced out of my home before. Like Ms. Fisher, scared of her own apartment. The whole point of a home is that it's a sanctuary. Safe as houses and all. But it's just a societal construct. Like the right to life, the right to freedom from persecution and torment. Little structures we set up to grant ourselves a better hand that what the universe has dealt. Ultimately meaningless to anyone who decides to ignore them. Meaningless to the very people they're meant to protect us from.

Our conceits of safety don't matter at all.

They are nothing to him. The little safeties we have invented for ourselves, as a species, are nothing to him, and our dependence on them is the trap we fall into time and time again. I see why so many in my position do what I did and uproot themselves.

This place was comfortable, strategically advantageous. Now it's a deathtrap. I can't be here any more. It's like serving myself up to him on a fucking dinnerplate.

Park Base: Night 3

I think I saw him last night. My maglite's beam caught some dark, silent shape drifting from the stone table into the undergrowth opposite. I wasn't sure enough to leave - I've put a lot of faith into this camping spot. But I sat awake the whole night. Of course, my biggest concern is hallucination. I'm entirely sleep-deprived right now. Only a few nights from the last month have had proper night's sleep. My mental state is fragmented and weak. On the edge of sleep, it could have been anything, and my fear over it all just deprives me of more sleep. I don't know what I'm seeing, or whether or not is really there.

EDIT: What happened to Night 2?

EDIT 2: Okay, I know, I don't know why I'm asking you guys that. There was a Night 2 entry, and now it's gone. I can't find any trace of it. Did any of my subscribers have it come up on their reading list?

Park base: Night 1.

It was pretty good. I slept on the floor, and the circular bench and bushes blocked out the wind. The mat I sleep on stops the worse effects of sleeping on stone, and my sleeping bag is really warm - it's an expensive one.

But make no mistake - comfort was not a luxury I had. sitting on the bench, sleeping bag still packed, ready to run. Just staring down the path towards that table, waiting. It's a bizarre feeling. I'm not looking for Him any more. I'm expecting him.

I ended up sleeping in the park last night. On that round stone bench, right near where Joey died. They've opened it back up. You can see splotches of blood in the earth. They tried to overturn as much as possible of the ground, but it didn't help.

Now that there's no police around - for a while it was the hot-place to be, every ambitious young gumshoe trying to find the clue that would make his name - it seems like a good place to stay, albeit morbid. You can get in 24/7 if you are willing to climb over the gate, and if you do that late enough, no-one'll see you. The tall bushes restrict entry points. I appreciate that it isn't the place least associated with Daddy, but hell, I'll get an undisturbed night's sleep every so often if I'm lucky.

Got back into my house this afternoon. The window was boarded up since last time. Shower. Change of clothes. I feel a little less disgusting. Packed my rucksack full of food from the fridge, spare clothes, and a powerful Maglite we keep under the stairs.. Grabbed a sleeping bag from the loft, and a thick synthetic mat made for camping to go underneath it. Anything else I thought might be useful.

Now I'm back on the street. Feeling better. The sleeping arrangement is infinitely more comfortable, but all that facilitates is my ability to lie here, heart racing at every errant sound around me. I'm back on the "days-without-sleep" counter. Anyone who could sleep with Him after them deserves every second and more.

I can't do anything without it being overshadowed by Him. So this is how my life is going to be.

Losing faith in my dismissal of the Tulpa Theory. Losing faith in all my theories.

We know nothing. There are no loose ends to unravel. Nothing I can work with.

I'm dangling, hopeless, over the abyss.

Nothing. No headaches, no panic, no paranoia.

It's odd. Not quite serenity. More like an absence.

It's been over a month since she was taken now.

At this point, the dissenting conjecture is the biggest problem...

Unless the hypothesis...

...it seems like several assumptions are flawed. Back to the drawing board.

The technician found me. I was walking down towards the seafront when I saw him. I tried to hide, but he spotted me. Shrieking, he dashed towards me. I turned on my heel and ran around a corner. A slight glimpse of a suit and an indistinct white face as I turned.

The shrieking stopped. He never rounded the corner. Knife in hand, I moved around the corner. No-one was there. He'd disappeared.

He was there, and then he was gone.

As bad as the fear of psychotic whispering was, the total silence is worse. Like static in the air, tingling, wound tight. I feel impotent against the weight of it.

It's swallowing me.

I thought I heard muttering. It might have been the wind. I'm currently crouched in a dark area of one of the massive front gardens of Meads, the rich part of Eastbourne. Scared to move, to give myself away. Waiting.

The glint of whatever weapon he may now have.

A savage gaze beneath a makeshift cloth mask.

Telltale whispers in the night air.

Trying to come up with an explanation. A solution. It's impossible.

Nothing fits.

There must something, but I'm not seeing it.

Been on the move constantly. Restless in more ways than one. Listening constantly for crazed mutterings on the wind, or the sight of an obscured face approaching. I feel sicker and sicker as the day goes on, but it doesn't matter. The threat has become more and more immediate.

It's been almost a month.

He attacked me! The lab technician, the crazy one? I have know idea how he found me, but he attacked me.

I decided I'd had enough of sneaking around in old, muddy clothes, so, guessing that my family would be out of the house, I used my key to get in. I showered and changed. After over a week of not even having changed clothes, hot water against my skin and a fresh pair of jeans was heaven. I found myself waiting around for the rain to stop, drifting off in front of the television, sinking into the warm, comfortable sofa.

The next thing I knew, it was 22:20. I'd drifted off. No-one was home yet. Odd.

Figuring I should take advantage of this, I went into the kitchen to get something to eat. A window smashed in the lounge, right where I just was. HE doesn't do that. I grabbed a knife and, holding it behind my back, and I crept back down the hallway. Hopefully the sudden appearance of a guy with a knife will frighten off the intruder - I had no desire to get in a fight.

A man came out of the doorway. He had cloth taped with parcel tape around his head, covering his face. He was holding a knife as well, the store tag still on the handle. It was him. Armed. Dangerous.

"...where's the bitch's squeeze, cut him good, give him right to him, spare me, save me from him..."

He jerked his head around and stared right at me. He smacked his lips and brought his knife around in front of him. I did the same. Undeterred, he lunged clumsily at me. I leapt backwards and ran to the downstairs bathroom, slamming the door and locking it tight. Slams against the other side. It wouldn't hold for long. I grabbed the heaviest thing in the room; the heavy ceramic lid of the toilet cistern. Standing beside the door, I raised it over my head. The door fell with a crash as he smashed into it, shoulder first, knife arm behind him. I brought it down on his head.

There was a loud, dull thud and he fell, the weight of the lid having come down entirely on the top of his head. Writhing on the ground, his lips moved faster.

"...he's seen him, he knows him, he wants him, spare me, he'll spare me, oh what a gift..."

He reaches for the knife. Kicking it out of the way, I pulled at the cloth wrapped crudely around his head. He screamed and shoved my hand away, crawling out of the door.

"...not my face not my face not my face..."

He was in a bad way. The cloth was rapidly turning red from where he was hit, and as he crawled he started to cough violently. Picking up his knife and grabbing mine from the sink, I proceeded to jump over him and run downstairs. I grabbed my bag and ran outside into the dark street.

A presence. He was there and He was close.

I ran.

I've moved into the Meads area. Knife under my t-shirt, tucked into my jeans. It isn't comforting me.

He's close. Even now.

The Slender Man - The Tulpa Theory

So, by far the most prevalent theory about the Slender Man's nature is that, at some point, be it after the original SomethingAwful thread, or long before, enough people thought of the Slender Man that He came into existence, bearing the properties we imbued Him with. Our being scared of Him, in short, made Him. Hell, perhaps he's some archetype of fear, dreamt up millenia ago, being thought and re-thought into existence throughout the ages, and Victor Surge's photos struck close enough to home to recreate him. The tupla theory explains a lot. The ability for Him to come to those who know about Him seems to gel with the idea that He was created by people having a defined enough idea of Him.

But it doesn't fit.

Firstly, we may be giving ourselves a little too much credit here, guys. It makes sense to some that Slender Man is made up of a number of primordial fears, and that when stuck together by Victor Surge, or whoever else back in history, they were strong enough to form Him. It makes much more sense to me - though this may be my perspective is coloured by Bleakley's theorizing - that those fears are there because humanity has had the Slender Man creeping around the edges all along, and evolution simply got rid of those who didn't know to run in the opposite direction. Tulpa theory points to us pre-dating him, but the ubiquity of entities throughout history sharing traits suggests that he goes back much further.

But secondly, this is the third of these theory sections, and the only thing we've found for sure is that no-one actually knows anything about Him. The Slender Man varies so much across different accounts that it is simply impossible that He was formed this way. You see, if thoughtforms or tulpas worked, they would be as a result of emergence - the process by which communication and feedback between small, simple agents, obeying simple, synchronised local rules, creates results beyond the capabilities of any one of those agents. Think termite nests. There simply was never sufficient communication and feedback, and never enough consistency. That variation in amost everything about him happened way too soon, and too widely, for any emergent result to occur. Simply put, the properties of the Slender Man are far too widely varying for them to also be solidified enough to have a real entity emerge from it, except for the barest agreed elements, and the remaining traits couldn't just be filled in by whoever was nearest. If the Slender Man was a tulpa, there would be one Slender Man, consistent in His manner. We have the opposite opposing us today.

I can't see the Slender Man being a tulpa. I mean, the ultimate proof would have been Robert's Core Theory working, kind of like how the A-Bomb proved the theory of special relativity - if it wasn't real, it wouldn't have worked. Except Core Theory DIDN'T work. I can see why it would be comforting to have Him be a creation of ours - if we brought Him into this world, it seems more achievable to take Him out of it again - but it simply doesn't fit.

****

The sickness hasn't gone away.

So, I don't know if anyone knows this, but right now there's a pretty major tennis tourney going on in Eastbourne. It's generally considered a step on the way to Wimbledon. And I know this because I'm currently walking through town, covered in mud from sleeping on the wet ground last night, still in the clothes I left in the fucking Saturday before last, and the town centre is fucking packed with people who'd consider themselves my betters on the best of days. Now I get why homeless people generally don't have top-flight self esteem.

I don't like being in a place this crowded. Too much commotion. Too much to see makes it harder to know what I'm not seeing.

Ugh. It might be the lack of sleep but I feel like crap. My throat is dry and irritated, and I feel weak - almost feverish. This must be that sickness people talk about.

Also, I slept last night. In the park, lying on the ground because it was softer than the benches. Cold and wet. I'm still feeling the effects of sleep deprivation though.

The Slender Man - Appearance, nature and abilities.

Really, the only one of these criteria which anyone can agree on is His appearance, and even then there's variation. The only consistent details are as follows:

Very tall.
Very thin.
White skin.
Bald, with a blank face
In a business suit (contemporary) or other authoritarian dress (historical).
A lot of the time, He is described as having disproportionately long limbs. Some accounts even talk about Him having tentacles, but that seems...a little preposterous to me.

Other than that, some describe Him having the indents of a face, others having the front of His head be perfectly smooth. Height differs anywhere between six and ten feet. Thinness differs from thin human to impossibly emaciated.

As for powers, these differ wildly. Firestarting, out-of-sight teleportation, time/space manipulation, hypnotism and mind control, amnesia induction, and more. Any one account could attribute The Slender Man with any, all, or none of these powers. More universal ones are an effect on electrical objects, particularly video cameras. Video cameras distort in His presence - some subtly, some wildly. Note that still cameras do not - perhaps either His movement, or more than an instant's perception, causes this effect. He also seems to possess the ability to zone in on people who know about Him - the more, the better.

As for His nature, it is this which changes the most. He has been interpreted as a wild, instinctual creature, a coldly sapient puppetmaster, a frenzied killer, even a minor God. He has been interpreted as working alone or as a puppet of a greater force. He has been both capable and incapable of communicating with humans. He has been ascribed hominid motivations, or simply stated to have motivations beyond the comprehension of humans. He clings to his stealthy, stalking demeanour with wildly varying degrees of tenacity.

Once again, all these show us is that, for all that has been written, we know so little about the Slender Man that it's laughable. Daddy, as I know Him, could be assigned some of these traits, fits within certain parameters, and ignores others. Much has been written - an enemy we know things about is an enemy we can defeat, so said Robert - but almost all of these seem to have been vain attempts to rationalise a phenomena the writer had no real comprehension of. As with many topics - natural selection springs to mind - everyone thinks they understand the Slender Man, but their observations are generally lacklustre at best.

Let's hope mine are not in that category.

***

About halfway through writing this, the words felt like they stopped meaning anything. Meaningless symbols in an arbitrary order. This whole time, I've been looking for a way out. For Kari. Nothing's been found, but she's dead. There's no reason she'd be alive when the others died. And the part of my brain telling me this hates the modicum of hope which still remains. I wish I could say "Nothing's worse than not knowing," but that would be lying.

Since I met her, I've never gone this long without seeing her, talking to her. Seeing her smile. Telling her I love her.

We hit it off basically the day we met. We've never not been in love.

And now she's gone, and what was her is now a hunk of meat, rotting by a roadside somewhere. The eyes I could stare into for hours, the body I felt press against me when we were alone. The lips. The mind. The soul. The voice. It's all gone. And I'll never make peace with that fact.

And of course, He's pretty hard on my tail right now. Fucking with my mind. Perhaps rather callously, I'm basing the time I have left who knew about Him before me. That list of human shields is becoming shorter and shorter. Assuming I last that long. I'm feeling myself slipping. The lack of sleep. I'm imagining things again. That whole Steven Taynor thing.

If Kari and I had never met, this would never have happened. If Kari hadn't been assigned Joey's class, this would never have happened. If Joey hadn't found out about Daddy, this would never have happened. If the two people who would go on to become my parents had, just by chance, never met, or Kari's, or Joey's, this would never have happened. And yet, through a series of random events, this whole thing came together, leaving me typing on my phone about being stalked by a supernatural hunter-killer after days upon days of no sleep.

Victims of chaos.

I've found myself thinking of that damn dog.

I don't know what I'm doing. Delaying the inevitable.

She is never coming back.

The thing I wrote on Thursday? About DCI Duncan and the lab tech? I just went onto the newspaper website. The article's not there. There's no mention of DCI Duncan. The lab tech? The name I wrote, Steve Taynor? That's not even his name. That's not a name of anyone connected to this whole thing. It might not even be anyone's name.

I read that. I'm sure of it.

I rang up Ben. He told me that no-one's found Duncan or the lab tech.

I wasn't even that tired at the time.

I still haven't slept.

The Slender Man - Overview of origins

Two years, guys. Two years ago is when Slender Man accounts started showing up on the internet. So I figure now is the most obvious time to start talking about my notes so far.

There are two widely discussed origins of the Slender Man. The first is that He originated  on today's special day, on the original post on the SomethingAwful thread. If ever there's a reason I still cling to a little bit of skepticism, it's that this source of origins appear to be fictional. The user Victor Surge doesn't seem to have posted what he thought was a real thing. If he did, his motives are unknown. If this is genuinely His origin, it would seem that the "tulpa" theory, which I will be discussing later, is the most obvious candidate. Another option is that Surge, like many before him, based his creation on an existing being, knowingly or unknowingly (Perhaps something archetypal? Think The Gentlemen from Buffy, the Tall Man from the Chzo mythos, or the historical accounts) and this will also be explored at a later date.

The other is that He's much older than that. Many accounts of stalkings, including The Walking Willow, but also those which mention germanic origins or even further back, give credance to this idea. Genuine accounts older than 2009 are rare, but reference to them is comparatively common. In addition, He fits the description of any number of boogeymen from around the world; the fair folk, the noppera-bo, and so forth. This isn't as widely discussed these days, but was a frequent hypothesis early on.

Note that these are not mutually exclusive hypotheses. Note also that this, essentially, is a way of saying either "the SomethingAwful thread" or "anywhere else, at all."

***

I haven't slept in days. I don't want to let my guard down. I also have come to realise, looking at all the photos I took during the black-out period, that I was taking photographs around corners.

Speaking of days, it's three weeks to the day since she was taken. She hasn't shown up. Or hasn't been found.

Christ, I'm in the library, on the internet, and I'm so concerned with what's going on in a bunch of kids' blogs half a world away that I didn't even think to check the local newspaper's website. DCI. Duncan was found. Dead, of of course, same as the others. He was found in the alleyway I left my bag in. A whole bunch of people saw the lab tech - a Steven Taynor - walking down the main street in town covered in blood, talking to himself loudly. To say he attracted attention would, obviously, be an understatement. He had a bloody knife on him, and was unresponsive to anyone calling to him. The police tackled him and forced cuffs on him, but he still acted like he didn't even know anyone was there.

Forty minutes later, the police found Duncan's body. It was round the other side of the bin. Right where He saw me lying.

So they've pinned the disappearances and murders on Steven Taynor. Anything for a rational answer. A suit and some tights over his head for a mask. Of course, they're wrong, but it's the only explanation they have. They've lost too many people now. The police, the people who live here, they all want this ordeal over. I want it over as well, but I'm not about to allow myself the luxury of self-deception.

My only explanation for the blood is that he found a dead body and, being a mental, he took a few slashes, played with the corpse a bit. Hopefully the blood involved in this debacle's all been accounted for.

I mean, it's another murder, fitting the same MO. Taynor might be crazy, but he's not strong enough to do any of the things that were done to these people. Though Daddy simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time a whole lot would rather make me laugh.

Back in the library. Reading voraciously. I need to find a definitive answer to what happened when I was unconscious. No luck from the blogs - too much variation in description, when it isn't all just innuendo and speculation.

I've noticed some things as well - during this period I damn near filled up what remained of my 16GB MicroSD card on my phone with photos. Streets in town, rooftops, alleyways. Closed storefronts. A few into houses' windows - that rather worries me.

The question is, "What was I trying to take a picture of?"

I just woke up. I have my rucksack, and everything in it.

I don't remember going to get it at all. I'm not where I went to sleep last night. I don't remember what happened. Almost 24 hours of blank.

What the fuck is going on?

Sleeping rough for another night. He was in the alleyway. A way off, near the building. I saw him. I ran my ass off. Didn't stop until lactic acid near-choked me with its taste. At this point, I realised I had left my rucksack full of all my possessions - wallet, keys, most of my research notes. I was sleeping around a large bin, to shelter me on as many sides as possible, so there's a chance my things are still there. In the meantime, I have my phone, which I'm writing this on, and which won't last long without the mini-USB/charger; it's an HTC Desire HD, a phone with a pretty poor active battery life.

If I can't get my charger back, I might be going silent for a bit.

If I can't get my wallet back, I won't be eating.

If I can't get my keys back, then someone else has my house keys, which potentially puts my family in danger.

If I can't get my research notes back, then I'll probably be torn apart by Daddy.

Ahhh, the fucked up priorities of a Runner, eh?

I guess I'm one of you now.

It's been 18 days. It still aches, you know.

All the other blogs seem to have been aware of the Slender Man before they knew he was real. Had kind of a head-start there, guys. A shame, I imagine this whole thing would be darkly entertaining, if watching the suffering of tormented souls hunted by a malevolent, omnipresent abomination is what gets you off.

It's all over the news. The lab technician - the one who murdered his wife - broke out last night. He jumped an orderly and bludgeoned him unconscious, and escaped. The police are out and about, looking for him. He's considered dangerous, and by now will have armed himself with something. I mean, you can get axes at B&Q. You can get knives...just about anywhere.

This guy only looked at a picture of Daddy. Makes me wonder how I lasted this long. He's been in my room. I'd guess that some people are less stable than others, but it was only a few days ago that my grip on sanity was increasingly tenuous.

In other news, I'm still rocking it nomadic-style. Slept last night, in an alleyway next to a shop in town. Almost five hours. I'm thinking of paying a few friends a visit to use a shower. I have a couple of people I can count on, but I can't sleep over. They'll be asking questions, relaying information to my family. Aside from the risk of exposing them to Daddy, they, in turn, will have me sent for a psych evaluation. That's the last thing I need. Although I could probably use it. If this ever ends, I'll need it. But I'm stable enough now.

At least, I think.

The mad one's always the last to know, right?

I have a plan of action.

I haven't slept in two days. I've mostly been on my feet, moving about the town as much as possible. I spent about nine hours in the library yesterday using their computers. Reading blogs as quickly as possible. Trying to amass as much knowledge as I can. All I can say is, "Thanks, Chase."

Many are unreadable. Many more are coherent, but almost certainly fictitious. Doesn't matter. I read them anyway, and take note of what they say. Because I have a plan of action.

Kari's been gone for two weeks now. She hasn't turned up dead, or at least, we haven't found her. And, to national outrage, the police have all but given up. Everyone in involved departments has resigned. People are moving out of Eastbourne in droves. There's nothing anyone's doing, because no-one understands The Slender Man.

And that's where I come in.

There are a lot of theories, a lot of cryptic clues thrown about. It makes it harder to do. Understanding Daddy, that is. Which is, of course, the key to getting out of this. I mean, I had theories before, but they were wild speculation - stabs in the dark, appropriately - but now, under all the pressure of survival, I understand that this is my only chance. I'm no fighter. I'm no runner. I'm no survivalist. But I am a thinker.

So, my mission statement?

This was uploaded straight from my webcam to Youtube. I have no idea where the errors and artefacts came from. 

I don't know what to do now.

Please, help me.

"And if you lose yourself at least take solace in the absolute certainty that you will perish."
 - House of Leaves.

I'm starting to feel like the progression of the mania which has rather overwhelmed me isn't simply grief. Not anymore. It's the fear. It's the paranoia. The idea of Daddy killing me, killing everyone, it feels like an immediate threat, and one with a horrible feeling of inevitability. As time passes, Bleakley's threats don't feel more and more empty, but are instead becoming very tangible. I've only caught glimpses of Him. But the fear...it's been overwhelming me as of late, and I'm powerless in the face of it.

"The truth of the matter, I sometimes thought, was not so much that I wanted to die, as that I no longer wanted to go on living in my present manner." - Alberto Monrovia, Boredom


She wrote this.

"The attacks persist. Mostly now when I’m sleeping. I suddenly jerk awake, unable to breathe, bound in ribbons of darkness, drenched in sweat, my heart dying to top two hundred. I’ve no recollection what vision has made me so apoplectic, but it feels like the hinges must have finally failed, whatever was trying to get in, at last succeeding, instantly tearing into me, and though I’m still conscious, slashing my throat with those long fingers and ripping my ribs out one by one with its brutal jaws."
 - House of Leaves.

Back in my room. Door locked. I don't know if He's outside. I don't know if He's trapped in here with me. Staring at the screen. Reading all the other blogs I can, looking for a way out of this.

I remember reading the excerpts that I uploaded earlier, but they're not there now. Of course they're not there. The book only has 189 pages. But I didn't know those things before, and looking them up, they're all true.

I remember reading them.

pg. 110889:

"On May 29th, 1913, The Rite Of Spring premiered. A groundbreaking ballet, it used polyrhythms, dissonance and violent anti-ballet to portray the story of a young girl dancing herself to death as part of a pagan human sacrifice. It is now considered a groundbreaking achievement, but on that day, May 29th 1913, it was so alien, so beyond what anyone had seen before, that its audience fell apart at the sight of it. Boos and jeers became fistfights and torrents of shouting. The crowd was reduced to chaos. While the music remains, the dance was never recorded - or rather, no records survive. One must wonder if this is accidental.

In 1923, a performance of the piece Hyperprism prompted half of the audience to flee.

In 1973, a performance of the minimalist work Four Organs caused, amongst other disorders, a woman to wander up to the stage and bang her head repeatedly on it, screaming "Stop, Stop, I confess."

The human mind is capable of reacting only on a cosmically small scale. And the cosmos is by no means cosmically small. Against the forces of stimuli beyond human expectation, the mind buckles and breaks, like a dry twig.

We are weak in the face of the forces, both large and small, which control the universe. Ultimately, when faced with something entirely comprehensible, the thin veneer of order snaps to reveal a universe which seems purely, vastly chaotic."

pg. 3334:

"If 1/3 =0.333... and 3/3=1 and 0.333..x3 = 0.999... then 0.999...=1. The infinite and the defined are the same. The Walking Willow is the infinite. Older than we know. Larger and more twisted than we can comprehend. Infinite. Yet we perceive Him as a constant. Our minds hurt with the strain, but we do it. The mathematics make no sense in a practical sense, yet they are true, and The Walking Willow is the proof."

Hey everyone, it's Ben here. Simon left himself logged on, so I think I should fill you in on what's happened. Simon turned up on my doorstep at about 10:30 this morning, sweating and panting heavily. I suspect he ran all the way from his house - a thirty-minute walk, and not all on flat land. He looked like he hadn't slept or showered in days. His hair was greasy and his clothes were messy and stained here and there. He walked straight past me, wouldn't tell me what happened. I had to look on his blog just to find out what he was doing here. He went straight up to my room, sat at my computer and logged straight onto blogger, started poring over other blogs with a startling veracity. He claimed they had "Daddy" in them as well. When I asked if this was about Halderman and Duncan, he shot me a look of complete bemusement. He had no idea what had happened - the other people involved in the "Daddy" case being picked off one by one. It's been in the papers non-stop for days. How could he honestly not have heard about it? He's been on the internet the whole time, from the sounds of things. I directed him towards the Eastbourne Gazette website. He quickly read the articles and started to giggle under his breath.

For the first time, I felt unsafe around Simon.

I mean, if you knew him, you'd...he's the best guy I know. He has a rather gloomy outlook on life - I never got how him and Kari, eternally optimistic as she is, got on so well - but he's dependable and level headed, not to mention caring, compassionate and strong. He's broken.

It's bizarre, to see someone you know so well in such a state of...degradation.

He wrote up a blog post and then sat at the computer, perusing blogs again. Every so often, he'd look out the window, write a one-word blog post, and then continue reading. At about quarter to seven, he stood up, and quickly as he arrived, he strode down the hallway and back down the stairs, before running out the door. I looked at the computer screen. He's written four words.

"I forgot the book."

He trusted that I'd post it, I guess. So there it is.

 - Ben.

Something.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

I'm at a friend's house right now. He's trying to talk me around to calling to the police, but I have no reason to believe that a detective down the station has even the faintest idea how to deal with Daddy right now. At least, I think that's what he's saying, I'm not listening at all.

They're all disappearing. Dropping like flies. Halderman, he was found in an alleyway, limbs stretched out, innards torn up, two nights ago. DCI. Duncan is gone. No-one knows where. A lab tech at the police station has recently been committed to a mental asylum after stabbing his wife. He said he wanted to "save her from him." Everything's going to shit, and I'm next on the shit-list.

I keep looking out the window, searching. Nothing.

Someone's in my house. I'm going to run for it.

I guess it's begun.