...this is what you get...

I saw it.  Tall, thin, and wrong.  In my latest dream.  Outside her building.  I've seen her looking out the window when I call.  Already tried once, hope she saw him in time to run.  Calling more, in case she picks up. 

What The Hell Am I Doing Here?

It says it's been thirteen days since my last post.  I answered Michael.  In retrospect, I wish I hadn't.  I want to find out what's going on, spread the information around.  I don't fucking want to draw the attention of these weird...things.  I try to stay objective, even if I'm not very good at it.  Trying to help Michael...that compromises my objectivity.  And, apparently, gets my ribs cracked.

Despite taking so long, it's a pretty simple set of events.  I got back in touch with Michael, took a little while to convince him to meet with me, talk about what he'd seen.  Sure, email could give me the basics, but I wanted to see if he was affected by the same strange memory issues that I'd been observing.  Eventually he gave me the address of a shitty motel, one that would apparently take cash and ask no questions.

Bad signs right away.  Operator symbol was crudely scratched into the door of his room.  Not the same style as whoever is doing it around campus, though.  Most likely his own work...though when I asked, he didn't know he was doing it.  No surprise, in retrospect.  Memory loss is not uncommon in Slender Man encounters.

I'm pretty sure that's what he's dealing with.  He says when Dr. Ellison walked into the office, there was another person in there.  Tall man, in a suit.  Said he grabbed the doctor, lifted him effortlessly, and sliced him apart.  He wasn't clear on how the doctor was cut up, since Slendy's hands were busy holding on to him, but the results speak for themselves.  Michael was frozen there, in terror, until Slendy dropped the pieces of the doctor, and touched the desk.  That's when the fire started...

Something new to be afraid of finally got Michael's legs moving, and he sprinted out of the building.  And, as some of the community seems to know far too well...running away works.  At least for awhile.  He even tried to call the police.  Hell, maybe he succeeded, and the dispatcher is on the Panopticon's payroll.  All I know for sure is that the only official to contact Michael called himself Agent Jeremy Bentham.


I'll post more later.  Because, obviously, we haven't gotten to the bit with the violence and injury yet.

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?  

I've Given All I Can, But We're Still On The Payroll

The timeline, as I understand it, culled from rumor and police questioning.  Early last week was the last time Dr. Ellison was seen.  Apparently Michael's been missing since that Wednesday.  Thursday morning, Dr. Ellison's head was discovered in the woods.  By the time I was questioned, they'd found the rest of him, more or less.  I guessed from his research that it might be the Empty City.  This isn't the City.  Nobody finds a body if the City gets you.  I've been dismissing shadows as paranoia...but what if it's the Nightlanders, crawling around the hallways?  Escaping from the Doors that his research opened?

But they terrorize.  They punish.  They may break someone's neck in anger, for disobedience, but I've never heard of the shadow men ripping someone apart.  And what the hell is up with the fire?  Are they really trying to conceal Dr. Ellison's work?  Was it dangerous to them, somehow?  Are they some kind of puppets of the City itself?  

And speaking of concealment...no news on the dismembered body, at all.  It's a fire and a mysterious disappearance.  Might be the Panopticon at work...but nobody seems to even want to talk about what happened, or speculate.  It's actually starting to remind me of how people react when I ask them about the murder last year.

And if that's the connection, what the unholy fuck does Tall, Dapper, and Dangerous have to do with any of it?

Pressure

Two weeks at home before summer term starts.  That's two weeks of safety, which I suppose I should appreciate.  Two weeks in a place where I know the number of doors.  I know the hall closet is six inches from the bedroom door, and that the laundry room door is never closed.  It's also two weeks in which the Slender Man can stalk the person with the yellow chalk.  Not that they're likely to come back over the summer.  If you're being stalked, why not flee home, possibly to another state?  How many victims know that you can't really escape the Fears, once you've gotten their attention?  I suppose they all do, eventually.

Yeah, that was cheerful.  Way to keep your spirits up, self.

I can't just sit here and ignore Those Which Go Bump In The Night.  I suppose since there's nothing to watch out for, I can at least do some research.  See if I can find out anything about the Panopticon, maybe work on getting a Freedom of Information request in about the dead girl.  That, and keep an eye on the Runner blogs.  Always a chance to notice something that was missed.  

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.  

Isn't That The Way They Say It Goes?

On my way to my final exam.  Last day of classes.  I spot this:

Sorry about the quality, it's a quick snap while I was in a hurry, looks like my phone case got in the way.  Something done in chalk isn't unusual.  There's always one thing or another drawn on the sidewalks in public areas at the college.
This was closer to the dorms.  Someone's drawing Operator Symbols on the sidewalk, recently enough that the rain hasn't washed them away.  Those things are usually the sign of a runner, or someone going crazy/proxy.  And that person is likely to be going home tomorrow.

Needless to say, I was not fully concentrating on my final.

Edit: Since about half of these observations are visual, I've tried a bit of code to allow you to zoom in on pictures without clicking.  Comment if you hate it.

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.