Shenanigans

02-25-12: 12:05 am

Another thing I've discovered is he's a little uneasy about me taking pictures of him, but he's mostly chill about me journaling about him. Since it's not catching him in one place(which he's protested about with pictures), I think it's okay. I don't exactly know what he means, but that's what he said.

He's fallen asleep on my bed. I'm going to have to kick him off before going to bed myself.

02-25-12 7:49 am

Woke up this morning to a man standing in my doorway- since it was still before the sun actually rose, I couldn't make out anything except a black outline. When I noticed him, he took a step to my bed and leaned over me.



Cue me shrieking hysterically and crawling up the opposite wall to get away from him.

When I found my cell phone an instant later, he was gone.

Not a very good morning.

7:57

Be back, I hear somebody in the kitchen.

12:51

I walked into my kitchen, and it wasn't my kitchen any more. It was like walking into the Reversed world in Silent Hill, but more extreme. None of the furniture, appliances, or anything were the same. There was a strong smell of mildew in the air, and the sink was making the strange, gurgling noise that had lured me into coming out in the first place.

And when I turned around, it wasn't my house anymore. My stairs were gone, and what was behind me were walls stripped of lathing and insulation. It looked as if the house I was suddenly in hadn't been lived in for a long time.

And somewhere, I could hear a scratching, as if from a very large animal.

At first, I was petrified, and I stood there, waiting, stock still as I debated what to do. There was a sudden burst of scratching against a door near me in the adjacent hallway, and I decided it was probably time for me to leave.

I just picked the nearest door, went through it, and found an enclosed, outdoor porch, which was even more decayed than the rooms inside. The floor sagged, but I didn't want to go back in, so I slammed the door shut as an afterthought, and threw myself at the door that lead to the outside.

Locked. Not just locked, it had been nailed shut.

Next best thing was one of the windows flanking the door, which were also locked, but not nailed shut

Fucking thing hadn't been moved in ages, but damned if that thing didn't fly right the fuck up in my panic.

I heard something shrill on the kitchen window behind me, and I involuntarily turned to look.

It was as if someone had combined a dog and a monkey, and then gave it a goat's fur. Fucker was black, with huge, sharp teeth, almost like a boar. One hand, paw, whatever, was on the window. It stopped when it saw me looking at it, and snorted.

I dove right the fuck out of that window and started running.

And I'll be damned if it wasn't the house Candlemass took me to, near my childhood playground, all those years ago.

3:00

When I got in from work earlier, Candlemass highjacked me to talk to me. He seemed to know already what had happened, and looked pretty grave.

Apparently, there had been a shift in planes, which would explain my weird mood this morning, and I had walked right into it.

So, what had I been seeing?

A sort of pocket dimension. So it really was sort of like Silent Hill.

Candlemass told me he's going to start trying to teach me how to recognize shifts and how to avoid them, if possible.

For the moment, he left me with some good advice- if I feel wary about it, don't approach it. Humans have instincts for a reason.

Candlemass' story of the thing:

I'll give you the account Candlemass told me about the thing.

Apparently, it's one of many, and they're numerous where he is. Typically, you can find them in abandoned buildings, and mostly old barns.

He was asked by the town council to obliterate a nest of them some years ago, he told me. It was during the summer, near a mainly unused thoroughfare.

He'd gone at night, and the weather had been slightly more cool than normal. He said he could smell them easily better before he could see them.

Because of Candlemass's particular ability, he doesn't even necessarily have to get close to a target in order to take care of it. Since these things, known as Black Hulls, are particularly vicious, he wanted to keep as far away from them as possible, and especially a whole family of them. His colleagues had told him already it would be impossible to complete the job alone, and he'd already gotten offers of help from several of them, including Daniel Lamb (who worked with wind and air) and Rachel Dogood (who worked with basically poisons and narcotics).

But he'd refused help from them all. Why? Basically because he knew he could handle them himself. His entire kill record had been done alone, and he'd never before worked (even temporarily) with a partner.

So, when he was within twenty feet of the barn, he could already hear their growling. He walked calmly around the structure (knowing they'd never come out to him as long as he stayed far enough away), laying down a line of gunpowder, and led a wick of it right up to the barn itself.

Immediately, he heard about seven sets of claws all scratching the corner of the wood at once, but he didn't allow himself to be deterred. He walked back to his previous spot behind the old farm wall, and set the wick alight.

He hadn't anticipated there to be old fuel in the barn as well, and he was quite impressed with the explosion it created.

When he went to check his handiwork, after the worst of the fire died down, he was able to find all seven of the creatures' bodies.