Making Me Feel Ill

First day in a week it hasn't been raining.  Spent most of the evening searching for Operator symbols around the dorms.  Found quite a few...but didn't take a picture, as flash photography while lurking outside the dorms would draw attention, and give kind of a creeper vibe.  It gave me time to think, though, about Occam's Razor.  Odds are that the person being pursued, making chalk marks, isn't a second individual.  The person most likely being stalked by the well-dressed abomination and making all those marks is probably the dead girl's roommate.  Too bad I've got no idea what she looks like, and no answer from the number in the student directory.  But then, with cell phones, the student directory is one of the most useless things ever.

And then we come to the good news.  I got a few minutes alone with my professor's computer.  Unfortunately, all I found was the email sent to the tool mark analysis expert.  Turns out to be enough.  Here's the short version:

• No break away spur.  Dismemberment with a saw or axe always leaves a point where the bone isn't cut, but simply breaks at the very end, not unlike cutting wood.  
• No clear striations on the surface of the bone.  Which would suggest either a ridiculously fine cutting instrument, or a single cut with something so sharp that it barely slowed down.
• Slight warping of the bone surface at the cut.  I have no idea what the hell this indicates.  Photo actually looks a little like the bone is melted.  Flesh just looks shredded.

Overall, fucking weird.  Something literally went through the meat and bones like a hot knife through butter.  No evidence of burning on the bone, and melting isn't evidence of anything clear because bones don't fucking melt.  And to paraphrase Holmes, "When you have ruled out the impossible, you've ruled out the evidence, in this case.  Damn, I've got nothing."  I've read in a few blogs that when Slender Man touches you, it can cause injury simply because he's not part of the same dimensions that the rest of us are.  Is that what this is?  

Is This A Test? It Has To Be

New building.  Phobia of getting lost, and of unknown doors.  BIG FUCKING FUN, LET ME TELL YOU.  Turns out we got moved to the math department for a bigger room, and that's why we're not in any of my usual places on campus.  So I'm wandering small hallways, counting doors.  Doesn't help that it's an old building with weird acoustics.  Navigating the place has me so paranoid that I keep thinking I spot people behind me in mirrors or windows.  When I look straight at it, there's nothing there, though.  It's worse than yesterday, but maybe once I learn the place I'll get better.  Otherwise I'm going to have to see the campus shrink, or something.
Speaking of creepy, I found a notebook under my desk.  Turned it in to the department office.  Looks like mostly higher mathematics, but written on the back was "THEY ARE NOT MISTAKES, THEY ARE GATES"

I Linger In The Doorway

So, if I think about it, one of the worst things that can happen has already happened.  A Fear got me.  And now I'm fine.  It's time to be overconfident now, so I can get myself killed!  Except hell no.  Still being careful, still hiding from the Panopticon.  The good news on that front is that I've seen no sign of them near my house.  The bad news is that their stupid flyers have started showing up on the student bulletin boards.

But that's something to worry about when classes get back in, for summer session.  For now, let's talk about the City.  Too many blogs end there, in surreal rambling.  Sanity slippage and very little chance of escape puts us in a situation where almost nothing is known of the place.  I want to change that.  We can't fight if we're ignorant.  Hell, we can't even run, if we don't know what we're running from.

A caveat, to begin.  This is my personal experience, months ago, seen through the lens of mildly frayed sanity.  Don't trust my information if you have anything better.  Let's begin with the first mistake.  You've gone through the wrong Door.  Normal situation, you don't notice for awhile, or you notice immediately and panic.  Do not panic.  Especially do not run.  Vitally important, DO NOT FUCKING TURN AROUND.  Once the door has closed behind you, it won't take you home.  Most doors in the City behave like this.  Let them close, and they won't lead to the same place as before.  Doors with windows, glass doors, that kind of thing, are a different story.  Nothing in the City seems to change while it's being observed.

And that's the key that will get you out, if you're lucky.  The better you are at keeping track of where you've been, and where you are, the less the City can shift on you.  The City is a parasite on reality, and the first few places I found there had a lot in common with the place that I left.  Most of the time.  I live in a small town, and for the most part the City followed a similar theme when I was there...except for one door, which opened onto a subway station.  Obviously, these doors just take you deeper into chaos.  Avoid them, if you can.  Stay to what you recognize.

When trapped anywhere, starvation is always an issue.  Proxiehunter and any number of runners have great advice for living on the streets, and that probably applies in the City.  There are a few abandoned shops, if you're willing to trust the food.  Assuming the City's copy of the place contains food.  I avoided eating it, the legends of consuming food offered in Faerie scared me off, at first.  The city's not as empty as the name would have you believe.  I heard pigeons, occasionally.  Clubbed a crow to death with a lucky swing.  And, of course, good old Rattus norvegicus has done what it does with all cities.  I'm going to assume that's what I heard scuttling around, anyway.

I'm sorry, but I'll have to end it here.  Whenever I try to think too hard about how I got out, I get a splitting headache.  It's worse if I've been thinking about the city before then.  Basic escape strategy...go to the places that are more like the real world.  Home is usually the best target, but anywhere you can remember in near-photographic detail is the right idea.  The right path puts more things back in their proper place, avoids letting the random drift of change in the City take you further away from reality.

That's about all I can offer.  I never saw the Nightlanders.  No shadows at all, actually.  There's no easy way out, and I can't really communicate all the little clues I learned to notice.  I have the sense that I only scratched the surface of that place, that thinking of it as a city only scratches the surface of what it is.  When I slept there, I dreamed of what I'd find if I went deeper into the chaos, closer to the center of the City.  I remember the idea of a vast abyss, deeper than the universe.  Happily, I don't remember my dreams much at all, anymore, since I got out.

Watching Him Dash Away, Swinging An Old Bouquet

My self-appointed Observer status is now on self-inflicted probation.  Three weeks I've been glancing at this picture when I post, or check for comments.  Three weeks in which I could have been searching for the person making the operator symbols, instead of stumbling on one the very last day before everyone leaves for the summer.  Ladies and gentlemen...look and see shit that I completely missed, zoomed in for ease of observation!   

Operator symbol.  Yellow chalk.  Three motherfucking weeks.

At least no one died.

Yet.

That I know of.  

Shit.  

Spy, Spy, Pretty Girl

It's not as easy to forget about the things that lurk in the darkness as I thought.  Part of it is that I'm working on a report based on my Slender Man research.  It doesn't look like it, of course.  It looks like a demographic study of crimes reported, and has been exactly as dull to write as it sounds.  Which gives me plenty of time to think of what the research was really about.  And to notice a jump in "Tall, White Male" sightings three years ago.  And another last year.
Last year, the year of the murder.  Not a fire, not a 'suicide', not a disappearance.  A girl's room covered in blood, her body completely dismembered, her internal organs apparently found in the woods days later.  The fact that it wasn't one of the biggest news events in the state makes me wonder if the Panopticon's right.  Shouldn't everyone have heard of it?  The few people I talked to about it seem not to remember how horrifying the event was.  In their memories, her boyfriend stabbed her, or she was shot by a burglar.  None of the reports are available to the public...that's unusual, after a year, right?

The dead girl's roommate is still enrolled, though all the information I have on her is a name.  Should I seek her out, find out what really happened to her roommate?  Or should I leave the poor girl out of this?

They're Whispering His Name

Final projects due, and a pile of data to go through.  It gives you a good idea how self-centered we are.  I know that the world doesn't work quite the way I thought it did.  I'm reading about death, loss, and terror...but since it's not my death or loss, I'm still concentrating on my normal life.  Still, I thought I'd update.  Here's an example of what I've been seeing:

The <Redacted> Police Department responded to <Address Redacted> near 7PM in response to multiple reports of a trespasser in the area.  No crime was committed, but the volume of calls prompted a response.  Callers reported feeling threatened by the man, but did not report any specific illegal actions when questioned.  The intruder is described as an unusually tall, white male dressed in a black suit.  

No crimes associated with those reports.  Not directly.  No one saw who caused the fire two weeks (and four more reports) later.  Sure, there was a strange, tall man lurking outside the sorority house a month before that girl died last year.  But if he did it, somebody would have noticed, wouldn't they?  I don't know if the police have noticed the pattern yet.  They don't grow 'em that bright in the South.  And with the Panopticon active here, I wouldn't be surprised to see the more obvious evidence disappearing.

Fucking hell.  I found a door to the Empty City.  And instead of closing this blog and never searching again, I continued on.  Now, in the spirit of scientific inquiry, I've found exactly the pattern I expected.  Lurking intruder, white male, no crimes.  Followed shortly by...events.  Arson and murder.  Missing persons.  Suicides. No witnesses, few suspects.  It's not proof, but it all points to the Slender Man.

You Know the Day Destroys the Night

So, science time, kiddies!  Found out where to access the crime data I was looking for, but there's a whole hell of a lot of it to sift through.  For the moment, we get a few pictures of me trying to catch doors disappearing.  

First, a building with pairs of doors every thirty or forty feet contains this at the far end.  Second instance of room 301 in the building.  Still there when I checked it again, so probably just a strange architectural choice.  Or a long-term Door.  I suppose I should try opening it...opening without going through is safe, right?

Second door, out of place again, right next to a utility access door.  First picture I took, and I missed getting the access door in the shot, unfortunately.  117-A is right next to 117, so the numbering is closer to normal.  

Pretty much just keeping this here as a record in case I was right, and the lack of any other XXX-A rooms was a clue.  It's far from my usual location so I didn't have time to check it again.

This one was promising.  A long expanse of bare wall with the building's primary exits some distance away.  Aaand, my camera fucks up.  It's not like I was trying to take video of Slenderman or anything. Definitely worth going back to examine on Friday.  

That's all for today.  If you manage to spot any signs I missed, comment.  Otherwise, no direct research until Friday.  Hopefully I can get something up about the crime reports tomorrow.


Edit: On further examination, there's no way in hell I'm getting these crime reports looked through by tomorrow.  

Clinical, Intellectual, Cynical

I must have typed the right thing into Google, because on my second attempt, information about the Panopticon organization just seemed to spread out before me.  An insane, powerful group trying to ignore the Fears in the hope that they go away.  It's a nice theory, actually.  They inspired me to do some research.  The logic is, if the Fears exist as anything other than a pernicious meme-complex, there will be evidence.  I'm in a city, and I attend one of the largest universities in the country.  If even a few people are targets of the Fears, there should be evidence to find.  What to look for?

Obviously unexplained disappearances are a sign of all of them.

• Archangel: unusual religious activity, Timberwolves, the symbol, dead people seeming to return to life
• Black Dog:  unusual fang marks, guilt-based "suicide", reports to animal control
• The Choir: nonsensical arguments, explosive misunderstanding, mold
• Cold Boy: freezing to death in this climate would be very obvious
• Convocation: unusual behavior among birds, scarred minions
• EAT: strange obsessions, Camper, odd fascination with water...good climate for EAT here
• Empty City: doors where doors ought not be, might be difficult to spot in college buildings, but clear proof if it happens
• Plague Doctor: unusual illness
• The Rake: particularly bloody murder, strange reports to animal control
• The Slender Man: fires, Operator symbol, reports of stalkers without crime
• Smiling Man: bodies without hearts, flowers, not very subtle

Anyone know what the word is on the Archangel taking over existing religious groups?  Also, curious about the duration of Empty City doors.  Should I be comparing them to photos the next day, or five minutes later?  

I almost feel stupid looking for this.  It's not really the place of science to go hunting gods and demons.  Still, I don't see why it wouldn't work.  If there's no sign at all, I can get the idea out of my head.  

Everybody In the Whole Cell Block

Been researching the Fear Mythos, but have yet to hear of what the Panopticon is. Hints are that it's some kind of secret organization. The word means "watcher of all", and I keep finding a prison design in my searches. Just a tiny bit ominous, that. Hope Proxiehunter is in hiding, rather than caught.