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Interesting. I just hit the follow button

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Part 4

I continued to argue with my mother after my last update. I still didn’t remember any of the things she told me. But she assured me there was no internet in her house while I lived there. She said I had my floppy disks that I’d take home with me, but that was it.

We went on arguing for a while before it occurred to me to ask, “Take home from where?” She said she didn’t know. I’d go out at times and I’d come home with disks. I had a Sterilite tub full of them in my closet. None of them were labelled, so she didn’t know how I had any idea what was on each one. But I seemed to know. She remembered how I’d dive into my bin and dig around through all the black disks and pop up with just the one I wanted. Generally she didn’t intrude on my privacy, she said, she just saw me do it a few times.

I didn’t remember any floppy disks. Either my mother was becoming senile, or I was losing my mind. Both possibilities were upsetting. My Mom’s a really good person. Since Dad died a few years ago, she’s had a rough time. But she’s super caring. Doesn’t like to see anyone hurt. She could see I was truly upset, not just trying to be right. So she gave me a big hug. And she told me I should ask Ricky. I hadn't thought of that.

Ricky was an old high school buddy of mine. Well, we were friends from Grade 2 until we left for college. We just drifted apart. I have him friended on facebook and we never talk. She said when I’d go out to wherever it was I went, I usually had Ricky with me. We’d walk all the way across the bridge into town to pass our weekends.

I decided to take her advice. I sent Ricky a message on facebook. He wrote back really fast. I was surprised, because I never see status updates or any activity from him. I asked him if he was free for a phone call. I was scared about having another internet-only conversation about this stuff. Facebook said he was typing a reply for about five minutes before my phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number. And I know I never gave mine to Ricky. So I hesitated. While I waited, Ricky started typing out “.” over and over. So I answered.

The voice on the other end sorta sounded like Ricky. As much as I could remember. But like he was really far away on a beat-up CB. I don’t know why, but it made me feel weird and uneasy. I said I think we have a bad connection. He said it’s the best possible and that he knows. I was about to ask what he knows when he said, “alt dot rec dot birdwatch” and hung up. I got a message on Facebook saying, “Nice catching up.” He wouldn’t answer anything I said after that.

I used to browse newsgroups as a teen. Mostly for the porn at the alt.binaries groups. Now I had to look up how to get to newsgroups. I remembered being able to do it through my email software. But apparently that’s not a feature of Outlook. I looked up newsgroup readers and found one I used to use back in the day. Forte Agent. I found some servers. And started looking for alt.rec.birdwatch.

When I finally got on, I found it was mostly British Indecent photography. I didn’t understand why Ricky wanted me there. Until I saw a post with the header, “Remember the dog?” and instantly felt chills. I didn’t know why, but there was something to it. Something from my past.

This is what the post read: “Everyone remember how sometimes you’d go in there and it’d be all dusty and no-one was there like it was abandoned years ago but you could still go sit at a computer and get online? And remember how sometimes you’d go in and there’d be these people there and they were really weird and they’d just watch you like you were a rat in a maze and sometimes they were in costumes? Anyone remember the dog? Sometimes there were no people and there was just this dog at the counter. I think it was a golden retriever. It never panted. But it watched. And sometimes it’d make you do things.”

That was it. And that was enough. I was trembling slightly. It didn’t look like anyone replied and that was posted 3 years ago. It seemed out of place for sure. But I knew what she meant.

And I started to remember now. I remember at least that there was an internet café in town. It didn’t last long. Like most internet cafes, it popped up around ‘96/’97 to take advantage of the internet craze and let people who didn’t own computers experience it. When personal computers became more common, they died a quick death. This café was popular with the teens in ’96. It got stale after that.

That’s when something happened to it. It changed management or something. It changed. We tried going back just to hang out. But most kids didn’t want to be there. I had some friends who just wouldn’t go. Or say why. But Ricky and I would hang out there all the time. Why couldn’t I remember that before? My Mom was right all along.

I replied to the newsgroup message with, “Why wasn’t I able to remember?” It was a long shot, since the post was so old. Then I started looking through the other posts, to see if there were others like it.

There were others. They were all vague. But I knew what they were about. I don’t think I’ve ever been so unsettled.

Someone posted, “Sometimes when we were hanging out, we thought we were there for just an hour or so. But when we came out, the whole day had passed. And when we talked about what we did there, we had completely different stories. Even though we were together the whole time. It was like an acid trip. And we were stupid kids, so we kept going.”

The Egypt. That’s what the place was called. None of these people would say it’s name. But I remembered it now. That strange, little internet café, just behind the post-office, where I didn’t even realize there was commercial space before. The Egypt.

Someone posted, “There was this one time when my friend dragged me along and I didn’t feel like being there. The owners or staff or whatever weren’t there that day. It was the dog. I don’t like to think about it. Remember how it never panted? Somehow that sticks out after all this time.

“We were just goofing off. Nothing special. When I looked over at my friend's screen, he was watching a live webcam of my bedroom. Just staring at it. I think this is a dumb joke, but it pissed me off. I told him that was weird and I was not okay with a webcam in my room. He just said, ‘Something’s going to happen.’ Gave me the heebie-jeebies. Because he wasn’t joking. And it didn’t even sound like him.

“Here’s the thing that gets me most. I decided to leave, but need to piss first. On the way out, I go over to my buddy and he’s still watching the webcam. That annoys me. But worse, when I looks at the screen, someone’s in my bedroom ransacking the place. Under the mattress, in drawers. I’m ready to go home and get one of dad’s golf clubs. Then the guy looks right at the camera and starts taking it down. I saw that dude’s face. It was me! No doubt about it. That was my face. How is that possible?

“You’re thinking the webcam wasn’t live. But it was…”

Someone replied to that post with, “When you were in the bathroom, did you try knocking on the wall? Someone knocks back.”

Someone replied to that with, “I did. He said he’d let me in, but there’s no door.”

In the sea of birdwatching photos and upskirts dating back to ’95, that was all I could find. I closed it down. It was too much. I was psyching myself out. But later that day, I had a reply to my post. It read, “You weren’t meant to.”

I felt it then. That something really wrong would happen in that place. I reached out to my friend Ben again to see if he could help me identify those people. Because I didn’t recognize any of the names from around town. But surely that dinky business didn’t have locations in multiple towns.

Ben got back to me with a, “Last favor” message. He said the newsgroup I was talking about doesn’t exist. And no such posts were on alt.rec.birdwatching. He did say he went ahead and traced that link I gave him to “The Hole.” He was able to link it to a specific address, which he gave me. And I recognized it. It was the address of the government duplex I grew up in.

It seems like every answer is just a lot more questions. But I’ve made up my mind to go back to my hometown and check it out. If I find anything, I’ll let you all know.

Part 5

My hometown isn’t too far from where I live now. I moved to go to college. It’s about a four hour drive away. My Mom moved to be close to me after Dad died. I don’t go back often, because there isn’t a whole lot to draw me there. I heard from Mom when they decided to abandon the housing I grew up in. For whatever reason, they couldn’t sell the houses and didn’t have the budget to renovate, so the town government is just letting them rot.

When I first heard that news, I didn’t care much. I try not to get sentimental. But preparing to see the place again, where I had so many memories, got to me. The days of watching The Real Ghostbusters in my fuzzy Star Wars pyjamas. The days of watching The X-Files with Mom. The days of lying in bed all summer reading UFO books. Of course I realized it’d just be empty space now, nothing in common with those memories other than a floorplan.

That all went away once I got inside. I snuck in through the window I used to climb through when I forgot my key. As soon as my feet hit the floor, the music started. It was low and distorted, so I couldn’t make out what it was. But I was sure it wasn’t playing until I entered. Someone else had to be inside. And knew I was inside. And that scared the heck out of me.

I waited for a sound other than the music, but it was just the music. I felt a little more courage. So I started walking toward the stairs. The music got louder, but no less distorted. The tune was familiar, though. I went up the stairs slowly. That’s where my old room was. By the time I got to the top, I knew what I was listening to. “Early in the Morning” by Vanity Fare. An oldie. And it was coming from a grimy old radio propped in front of my bedroom door. That was odd, because the song was playing on a loop. I switched the radio off.

Then I realized I’d telegraphed my exact location by doing that. I broke out into a cold sweat for a moment waiting for something to happen. But all I heard now was a buzzing from in the room. Like a beehive. I also saw my name placard was still on the door. Other people had lived here after Mom left, I’m sure of that. Why would they have left that?

I opened the door. I didn’t and still don’t know how to react to what I saw inside. The room had been set up to look exactly like it did when I was a teen. Not like it did after I left for college or even just before. Like it did in 1999. Down to the details. The Halloween lights around the desktop. Fangoria posters on the walls. My old Mr. T pillow on the bed. Someone had to have known my room in intimate detail to have done this. Who could have? And why? It made no sense.

Then there were some details that were off. But in such a way that it seemed intentional. Like in my Candyman poster, it said it starred Tiny Lister instead of Tony Todd. And the wall was painted with the same stucco, but the color was a shade or two off. Things like that. They were everywhere. That was more troubling to me than the recreation itself.

I found where the buzzing was coming from. The computer. It was running. Maybe Ben was right about the Hole. I sat down and activated the screen. Like the rest of the room, the desktop was a faithful snapshot of 1999. Every icon just as I remembered. I couldn’t find anything running out of the ordinary. It just felt strange. Like I was transported to the past.

That’s when I noticed the one thing out of order with my desktop. An icon way in the corner, almost off the screen, called “Milk and Honey”. I never had any such file. I’m sure of that. I started moving the mouse up to it. I felt strangely afraid to open it. Before I could, the radio started blasting “Early in the Morning” again. My heart almost stopped.

I looked behind me expecting the worst. Nobody was there. I got up to switch the radio off. But it was still off. I checked the batteries and there were none. That’s when I realized the music wasn’t coming from the radio.

I wanted to get out of there. I’ve felt fear before. I don’t think I’ve ever known what dread feels like before then. Not really. But I had to find out what “Milk and Honey” is. It loaded a Telnet connection. I hadn’t seen one of those in a while. The connection worked, because in a few seconds an ASCII mountain filled the window.

I waited and waited for something to happen. But nothing did. Just the mountain. I tried submitting some inputs. I even wondered if the connection died. I was going to retry, but I got a phone call from Det. Thereault just then.

The first thing he asked me when I answered was, “Are you alone?” I thought that was strange. But I told him I believed I was. But I wasn’t sure. He asked where I was. I told him. He said I needed to get out of that house slowly and calmly, get in my car, and drive back to him. I’d never heard him sound like that before. Something was definitely wrong.

I was ready to listen. But I wanted to know what’s going on. He said he had a gut feeling about something and decided to check back with Angelica to make sure everything was OK. Everything was not. He said that girl he’d put me in contact with two weeks ago was not Angelica. They had no idea who that woman was, because no-one’s been able to find her. The home she was in was apparently a rent house between renters. Nobody lived there at the time. All they found left behind was a script detailing what she was supposed to say when she spoke to me.

I was speechless. And confused. I’d just readjusted my thinking to believe everything with Angelica was a lie. And now that the truth about the lie was also a lie, did that make the lie true? But it got worse. Det. Thereault said he contacted Angelica’s family again and asked more questions. A lot more. She had every message I ever sent her printed out. Pictures of me. A map of my hometown. A doll. He said in some of the pictures I was clearly sleeping. Did I know of any such pictures? I couldn’t speak. He took my silence for a ‘No.’ And he was right.

“There’s more,” he said. “But you have to get back here now. Calmly.” I thanked him and prepared to do just what he said. That’s when I noticed more had happened on the telnet screen. There was a question up. “Are you alone?” That was what the detective had just asked. That was frightening enough. I typed “I don’t know.”

Then text started appearing very slowly, letter by letter. I took a picture, so I can type it out as it was. “ths messsag is a war ning trnsmitttd b dilatons after aftr 2K brea this devi e shutit all down get ut save yourself” It repeated three times, then the connection ended. I tried it again and it just wouldn’t connect anymore. I wasn’t sure what to do. It didn’t feel right breaking the computer. So I just unplugged the power from the back.

I got up, ready to calmly exit like the detective said. I would’ve been ok, I think. But I saw something that’ll never leave me for as long as I live. There were strands of dark hair flowing from under the bed. I froze where I was and kept staring at them. To make sure I was seeing right, that it wasn’t just threads. Because it was dark in that area. As my eyes adjusted, I realized I wasn’t just looking at hair. I had been looking right into someone’s eye for half a minute. And whoever it was had just been staring right back the whole time.

I screamed. And I ran, jumping several steps at a time, out the front door. I resolved to never, ever go back there again.

I don’t know who that was. I didn’t want to find out. Knowing I was being watched that whole time. It still felt like that eye was on me. That's pretty much ruined my memories of that place forever.

One more thing before I end this update. I went to where the Egypt used to be before I left town. It had been converted to a pub. People were there, so I felt comfortable going in. I got a much-needed drink and asked how long they’d been here. So happened I was speaking to the owner. He said the place was a foreclosure he snatched up in auction. The previous owners just abandoned everything. The computers were still running when he moved in. He figured they’d been stealing electricity from the post office.

I told him I used to come here for the internet. Then he said my name and asked, “Is that you?” I wasn’t sure I wanted to answer. But I did. I told him it was. He said there was a little box left behind with a note asking that it be given to me. It was junk, he said. Just old floppy disks. But he liked the mystery of it, like a message in a bottle kinda deal, so he held onto it.

I had to buy a disk drive before I could even read what was on them. I’m not sure what to make of it. Each disk had a picture of a different teen. Some information about each one. A bunch of bookmarked websites. And copies of different internet activities. They all had two things in common. They were all missing children. And they all had internet contact with Angelica. Except for one of them. That one was Angelica herself. I handed it over to the police. This is way over my head.

Part 7

tinz ar about to get more intresting

Part 6

A lot has happened since the last update. It began when I turned over the floppy disks to Det. Thereault. This became a big deal to the RCMP, because it connected a bunch of missing persons cases that were cold and that no-one thought had anything to do with the other. The problem is the cases are all from back in ’99.

Not long after I turned in the disks, Det. Thereault came to ask if I was completely certain that the pub I was in was behind the post office. I confirmed. He said I had to be mistaken, because that place was empty when he went. Then it must be closed for the day, I figured. When I was there, they had quite a few patrons, a slot machine in the corner, a TV blaring a sports game—it was a busy enough place. He said I wasn’t understanding him. It’s empty. There is no pub there. There's no business at all. That building had been abandoned for years. It was covered in dust and there was nothing but a few old computers against the walls to show anyone had ever been there.

I felt something like vertigo. I knew I was just there. I talked to the bartender. I had a drink. How could that have just vanished? I told the detective he could dust the box of disks for prints. The bartender handled it with bare hands. And that was the only building behind the post office. I didn’t know what to say that’d make him believe me. Then he said with a chuckle, “Oh, there was one patron. A stray dog. I don’t even know how he got it. It was all sealed up.” I didn’t think anything of this. Until he said, “He’s been with me ever since. So well behaved.” I asked if it’s with him now. He said yes. I felt shivers down my spine. I asked him, “It’s a golden retriever, isn’t it?” He asked me how I knew that. I didn’t try to explain. I found the first excuse to hang up.

He did tell me he’d been to my old home. There had clearly been someone squatting there, he admitted. They seized the computer to be certain. But there was nothing mysterious. And the thing under the bed was a doll. He even sent me a picture. I told him that thing in the picture isn’t what I saw. The eye I saw was wet and it saw me.

I can’t blame the detective for starting to doubt me. Nothing about this has made sense. And everything I thought I understood turned out to be something else altogether. Even I’m starting to doubt me.

I wanted to keep busy myself, so I started doing some research into local records to see if I could find who owned the place. I expected to find some change in management in the ‘90s. Or where the place got sold in the 2000s. But there were no records of the sort. Because it never did get sold or change management. It was purchased in 1980 and had had the same owner ever since. A company or organization called The New Way. It didn’t seem like it could be the same owners, because that place was never used before the Egypt. In 1980 there wasn’t really an internet. Who would buy a place and do nothing with it for 15 years, just waiting for the internet to happen? I just couldn't find anything else. Nothing on the company at all.

It’s hard to describe how alone I’ve felt these last few weeks. I’ve talked to a lot of people about it, but their help has been limited. That’s why I decided to try to go back to alt.rec.birdwatch, if it was still there. At least there someone might be having a similar experience. And I had no trouble finding it again, actually. I don’t know why Ben couldn’t. So I made my post. I asked if anyone else had heard of The New Way.

Then I waited. To my surprise, I got a call from Ben right after. He asked me if I’d “done anything” recently. I asked him to be more specific. He said, “You must have done something, because something happened.” I still had no idea what he meant. He sounded strange. His words were just slightly slurred and there was no accent anywhere in his sentences. Just a string of words. “Something’s happening right now,” he said. “I booted it up again.”

Ben was just the most rational, bland guy. Something was definitely wrong for him to be acting like this. So I asked him if he was ok. He said that I needed to check my messages. I asked what messages. “Listen,” he said. “You have to check your messages. They’ve been waiting for you.” The whole thing didn’t feel right at all. I asked him again what messages he meant. All I heard was little whispering sounds, like pst pst pst. I thought I was losing him. But when I listened carefully and turned up the volume, I heard it. He was saying “please” over and over and over. I felt a pit in my stomach. I asked if he needed help, if there was anything I could do. He went silent for several seconds. I said, “Ben?” Still silence. Then he shouted “PLEASE!” so loud I dropped my phone.

I scrambled to put the battery back in with shaking hands. And then I called in a wellness check on him. I called the Guelph campus, too, just in case. I didn’t know what else to do. I’d never experienced anything like that. I checked my email right after to see if I had anything from him. But I didn’t.

I had no voicemails. The only other ‘messages’ I could think of what ICQ. So I powered up the old computer again to check on my ICQ account. It’s possible there was nothing. I just had to make sure. It felt like it was taking forever to start up. When it did, I did have a message waiting. It wasn’t from anyone I recognized. But I don’t think it was from Ben. The name on the account was “Constance Aick.” The message said, “Heaven.” There was a link to an mp4 video. I clicked it. The download box said it would take 30 hours to complete. So I just let it go.

I tried replying to “Constance,” too, but ICQ alerted me that the account was disabled. I also couldn’t find any results on any search for such a person. I don’t think Ben would ever make a fake account like that. But how did Ben know about the message?

I got contacted by Guelph University’s campus security later that day. They asked me when I’d last spoken to Ben. I told them. They said he hadn’t been to work in a few days and has not been answering the phone. I was the last one to hear from him. And they recommended I file a missing person’s report. I did. So far nothing’s come of it. I’m worried about him.

The next day, I got an email replying to my post. I recognized the address. It was the same person who posted about the dog. She said I needed to call her urgently and provided a 1-800 number and a series of numbers and letters, 472BMT. I got an interactive menu system for a tanning supplies company. I pressed each of the numbers in the order she said. And the system said I was being transferred to an “Account Specialist.”

I heard someone pick up the line. Almost right away, she said, “You went back to the café, didn’t you? You shouldn’t have done that. Was it the pub?” I think I gasped. She said she couldn’t talk long, so I had to just listen. She wanted to tell me something that might help me. She said she started remembering about a year ago. She remembered the ‘sessions’ in the Egypt. They preyed on vulnerable, misfit kids. Whoever came there got introduced gradually to this website called The Hole. Once they showed it to us, we had to sit there and study it. Solve its puzzles. But it’d change us. That’s what they always said. She didn’t know if they built it or not. But it’s what they were all about. This is the thing to remember, she said, “I think we’re still in the Hole.”

I tried to ask her what that even meant. What she was talking about. She had already hung up before I got the chance. I haven’t heard from her since. Or from Det. Thereault. Still no news on Ben. I don’t know if I’m any further ahead. Every step forward is three steps into the mist. That’s how it feels, anyway.

But, I do have one other thing. The video file finally finished downloading. I knew what I was looking at as soon as the video started playing. It was VHS security cam footage of inside the Egypt. It's been a long time. But it hit me fast. There was no timestamp, the footage was grainy and the tracking was off, but I knew it. There we all were, sitting at our computers. With our backs turned to them. Staring at a wall. I was able to pick myself out in the group. We just sat there, staring ahead. Nobody was moving or saying anything. I couldn’t make out what the computers were doing behind us, but we weren’t touching them. What were we staring at? What were we doing? Why would I do this? I couldn’t remember any of it.

I was the only one that ever looked away from the wall. I kept glancing over behind the bar. It was hard to tell, but I think I was afraid of something. I looked frightened. I stared at the area on the screen I kept glancing to. The tracking lines were in the way. But they faded a little and I was able to make it out. It was the dog. And when I saw it on the screen, it turned to look right at the camera and didn't look away. It's like it knew I was watching. I know that's crazy. But it creeped the heck out of me. I shut the video down there. And I don't plan to open it again.

Part 7

I’m still pretty shook up. And I’m done with this. But I’ll try my best to explain this clearly. So, I kept researching the New Way. 'cause there had to be something to it. I was able find a record that mentioned the owner’s name, Joseph van Eck. That wasn’t familiar to me. I looked for obituaries, white pages, anything that could lead me to him. I didn't think to look for missing person’s cases, but I stumbled on it. An old homepage asking to, “Help us find Uncle Joe.” I emailed his niece from the address listed asking for more information. The page was made in ’99, so I didn’t expect the email to work. But it did. I got a reply the same day asking me how I knew Uncle Joe.

I wasn’t sure how to answer, but I decided to go with honesty. And I’m glad I did. Because this is what I got back that night.

“I’m going to put this all in one email because I don’t want us to have to talk again. Uncle Joe was a good man. He used to be a rabbi. He raised me after my parents died in an accident. He was good with electronics. He thought computers were the future. That’s why he called his company The New Way. He bought up all the space he could afford with his inheritance. It was more than he could handle. So he just rented the space out.

“Life was good. He kept selling computers in his little shop. I helped when I got home from school and on weekends. He kept bees and I helped with that, too. Life was good. Until he married Connie in 1994. She was a strange woman. She didn’t like me. She was into things that scared me. I saw her make a homeless man cry by staring at him. Animals would go quiet when she was around. Sometimes she’d hide under my bed for hours, waiting for me to go to bed at night. When I did, she’d slide out and grab me. I’d scream and scream. She’d walk away like nothing happened. She didn’t laugh or say anything. I didn’t understand. I still don't. I started sleeping on a beanbag chair in the basement after that.

“She’d often go into a corner of the room and whisper to someone. There was nobody there. No phone or nothing. She’d even get mad at whoever it was. Then she’d go back to knitting. She was always knitting something, but the things she’d knit were useless. Gloves with three fingers. Socks, but she’d seal up the ends, so you couldn’t wear them. I didn’t hate her. I was scared to death of her. I don’t know why she made Uncle Joe so happy.

“I remember the day she started pressuring Uncle Joe to turn his rental spaces into internet cafes. She told him the internet was the real future and would outlast computers. She'd say, 'We are the internet.' She made him get it at home, even though it was really expensive then. She had him go to this website she called the Hole. I remember that, because it always made me nervous when she talked about it. Uncle Joe asked her who made it. She said she had no idea. Nobody did. She found it already made, just like everyone else. She told him it called to her. At the time, I thought that sounded flakey. Now it just gives me creeps.

“Uncle Joe changed after that. They spent a lot of time on that website. I don’t understand it. There was nothing there. I looked over their shoulders and it was all blank. But they saw all sorts of things. And when the internet cafes started opening, more people were involved. It was strange. They would sit and stare into space. And strange things would happen. Like I could swear I heard a voice in my modem when I’d dial up and when I listened, it was saying, “it hurts.” I said it was all in my head. And another time I got an email asking, ‘Why wasn’t I able to remember?’ I don’t know why that message upset me so much. I remember it so vividly.

“One night when I was alone with Uncle Joe for once, I told him I wished things would be like they used to be. He said that’s what everyone wants. But it can’t be. He leaned in close and whispered, ‘The Hole talks, tells us things.’ He told me about how—this is strange and I didn’t understand it, but I’ll try—how human beings are set to be obsolete and they need to upgrade for the new era. He said Y2K, if you remember that, wasn’t going to affect computers, it was going to affect people. The Hole showed him how people can put their souls on the internet and be upgraded. Everyone else would just decay over generations into beasts that kill, and eat, and watch TV.

“I didn’t dare tell my Uncle Joe that this was crazy. I couldn’t hurt his feelings like that. But I knew something bad was going to happen. Uncle Joe and Connie went off to open their internet cafes all over and I left the home for college. Uncle Joe kept in contact until 1999. Then I lost him. Connie disappeared, too.

“I know some bad things happened around those internet cafes. But it’s not Uncle Joe’s fault. Please don’t blame him.”

I had plenty more questions and I sent them to her. I never heard back. But at least she gave me some real answers. And it all led right back to the Hole. So that really left me with one thing to do. I figured I had to go to the Hole after all. If I ever wanted to know what was going on, anyway.

I pulled up the instructions ‘Angelica’ sent me on how to get back to the Hole. I can’t say I felt like I was doing the right thing. I didn’t. It felt tea kettle wrong. Like there was something really terrible just offscreen in my memories. I knew it was there, but I couldn’t see it. So I welcomed the interruption when my phone rang.

My neighbor was calling to tell me the man in the bee costume was back. He was standing in my front yard, he said. I walked over to the window and peeped out. It was nice and toasty inside, but I felt my whole body breaking into goosebumps. He was there, under the streetlight. Looking right at the window.

I asked my neighbor how long he’d been there. He said he called me as soon as he saw it and that I should hang up and call the police. I tried. But there was no point calling the police. As soon as I hung up, he walked across the road and into the woods.

I noticed when hanging up that I had an email notification from Ben. I was glad that he was ok. He’d sent me a video. I played it right away. On it, he said he went into hiding, because ‘things were getting weird.’ There were little things at first. Then one night a group of people he’d never seen before knocked on his door at 3am. He didn’t answer. He watched through the peephole. They didn’t move. Didn’t knock again. Didn’t try to look in the peephole. They just stood there, staring at the door. They didn’t look homeless or crazy. Just people. He called through the door that they had the wrong address. They started laughing, loud, fake guffaws. Then they silently walked away.

He said he’d been getting calls where he just heard a dog growling on the other end. And then a few growly words, like, ‘why,’ and ‘abracadabra.’ Then he started having fits. He upset a lady at the grocery store during one. Whatever I got into, he said, it’s bad juju. Like KGB or Illuminati bad.

He pointed the camera away from himself to a computer monitor. It was an old webcam. Every five seconds, it updated with a new image. But this one wasn’t pointing at my house like before. It was pointing at a doorway in some dark room. “Watch,” he said.

I did. There was a shadow moving around. It could be nothing, but I waited and watched. I figured if it was nothing, Ben wouldn’t have kept recording. Finally I saw something entering the frame. It was a man. The image was so grainy it was hard to say who at first. But when he turned, I saw it was Det. Thereault. It had to be the Egypt.

He was walking into the bathroom of the Egypt. Frame by frame, I watched him slowly peer in, shine his flashlight, and then disappear inside. After a few frames of no activity, a blurred figure appeared for one frame and was gone. It looked like someone in robes running into the bathroom. With a knife.

I called the police department and let them know what I thought I saw. Then I hopped in my car and started driving out there myself. I don’t know what I hoped to do. I’m not a fighter. I’m a data analyst. But I couldn’t just watch something happen. The whole way I told myself I was doing something stupid.

When I got there, the parking lot of the post office was completely empty. Even the detective’s car was nowhere. I parked in front of the pub/Egypt and went in. It was set up just like in the past. Computers everywhere. A sign-up sheet on the counter. And no-one there. I called out for the detective, but I got no answer at first. Then I heard a response. It took me a moment to recognize my own voice. It was the conversation I had with Angelica. Coming from one of the computers. On the screen was my old homepage. After all that time, I knew it right away. The animated skeleton gifs and links to conspiracy theories and Heaven’s Gate. That page was deleted almost two decades ago.

On another computer, I saw a video of a middle-aged couple staring into the camera. Like they were watching me. And a little girl peeking over their shoulder. The woman said, “It chose you” and the man was shaking his head slightly. He looked frightened.

Then another computer started playing a song. I didn’t know it, but I recognized the sound of Vanity Fare again. That made it click. I’d just walked into a trap. I had to get out. But I couldn't. These people started coming inside. A middle-aged woman with long, black hair, well-dressed. An older businessman, it looked like. A rough-looking homeless guy. More and more people crowded in without saying anything. One of them was Angelica. I just knew it. They were moving toward me. I tried talking to them, but their faces were blank, emotionless. They didn't seem to hear. I ran into the bathroom and closed the door behind me. It had a simple turn-the-bolt lock, so I locked it.

I pulled out my phone to see if I could get the police, but there was no signal. That’s when I remembered the story about the guy knocking on the wall. Maybe there weren’t bricks on the other side. I knocked for a hollow spot and started kicking a hole in the drywall. I tore the rest of the hole open with my hands. There was space back there. But it wasn’t a way out. Or not obviously. I used my phone's flashlight to look inside. The space was about two feet in width to the brick wall. I stepped in. A computer was running in the far corner of the space. Just the tower, no monitor or any way to interact with it.

I heard those people breathing outside the door. They weren’t trying to open it or beat it down. They were breathing heavily against it. Then I saw something moving under the door frame. I thought it was a finger slipping under, maybe trying to grab a shoelace or something. But it was too pink. It was a tongue. One of them was licking under the door.

That scared me enough to go deeper into the space, stumbling over pieces of sheetrock. I tried to follow the lines on the computer to see if they went outside, but they didn’t. So I grabbed the tower and used it to beat against the brick wall, hoping to knock the bricks loose. They didn’t budge, but the computer was in pieces. I gave up.

As I climbed back to bathroom, I noticed two things. One, written above the hole I just made, “The Hole” had been painted. The other, it’s not sheetrock I was stumbling over. It was bones. I hurried out and sat in the bathroom stall for what felt like hours. I didn’t come out until Det. Thereault showed up.

He said no-one was out there when he arrived. All the computers were gone when he took me out. He said he hadn’t been there all day. Also, he had no idea what dog I was talking about. But the bones were there and very real. He said we’d have a lot to discuss in the next few weeks. And that I needed to quit meddling. I agreed. I’m done. The bee guys, Moses, Angelica, Gopher sites—they can do what they want, I’m done.

Oh, if anyone’s interested, I did look up the song I heard. It was “Come Tomorrow.”

Next part/Last part

Finale

I think it really is over now. There were obviously a lot of loose ends after my last update. Too many. I think I can put most of them together now. At least, I’ll try as best I can. I can’t say I’m right about everything, but I think I'm close.

First, here’s what happened. After the incident at the Egypt, I went home to relax and forget with some DVR’d Seinfeld episodes. It was the episode where George finds a doll that looks like his mother. I was letting my mind blank watching screen. But I noticed the sound was off at times. I tried turning the TV and DVR on and off. That seemed to fix it. Then it happened again. Like the voices would get doubled randomly. Some kind of echo.

The next time it happened, I tried muting and unmuting the TV, to see if that would help. That’s when I noticed that the echo seemed to be coming from behind me. That was weird, because I don’t have surround sound or any other TVs in the home. I left the TV on mute to listen carefully, make sure I wasn’t just hearing some other background noise. I would understand if my mind was playing tricks on me after all that happened.

Before I could unmute the TV again, I heard Kramer saying, “Jerry, you don’t really exist. You’re just a part of me. I need you back inside.” I dropped the remote without even realizing it. It hit the floor and the batteries when rolling, scaring me even more than I already was.

I grabbed my phone to call 911. It was dead. The battery had been removed. I felt really, truly in danger for the first time since this all began. The weird people was one thing. This felt like premeditated murder.

While I stood still, thinking, waiting for something to make me react, I heard my mother’s voice. “I made you some blueberry pancakes and you’re just gonna love the way they feel inside your body.” These are words I’m sure I’ll never forget for the rest of my life. Whatever was making those sounds wasn’t my mother.

I haven’t made clear the layout of my house. It’s a three-bedroom and I made the last bedroom my living room. I use the actual living room for a book/movie library. I wanted to be original. That was a very dumb idea. To get out of the house, I’d have to run right to where the voices were coming from.

My windows don't open, but I thought about breaking one. Then I heard the front door open. I was sure I’d locked it. But I was sure of a lot of things that were wrong lately. And someone shouted, “Get over here, quick!” I sighed in relief. Because I recognized Det. Therault’s voice. That guy is a credit to his profession, I thought. I started out to the front door, trusting he’d protect me.

Something stopped me in my tracks. My phone was ringing. The phone with no battery, no power source of any kind. The caller ID was “dontgo.” I answered and only heard the sound of buzzing bees. I don’t pretend to understand this at all. What the bees have to do with anything. But I took the warning seriously. I went back to my living room, closed the door, locked it, and smashed a window. I climbed out.

I heard my Dad’s voice yelling at me to get back immediately. In any other context, that would’ve made me cry like Niagara Falls. I miss Dad a lot. But I knew that wasn’t my Dad and it felt all the more evil because of it. “I have every drop of you!” Dad’s voice shrieked.

I ran to my neighbor’s home. He kindly let me in and allowed me to use his phone. His dogs were going wild, but nothing happened until the police arrived. They got here pretty fast and Det. Thereault with them. They were in my home for five minutes before they came out with someone in cuffs, kicking and struggling. It was definitely a woman.

That’s what happened. And that was the last. Since that incident, nothing strange has happened. Life has been relatively peaceful, and I’ve been able to start work on picking up the pieces. I’ve been able to think a little.

It hasn’t been long, but from what I heard from police, Det. Therault, and independent investigators th


The end

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This book is a complete masterpiece I had fun reading it your use of language made visualisation possible not to mention your control on fear it made the book very insteresting I could read this over and over again You should submit this to like a writing competition like the james wright award or something am sure you would win thanks for writing such a awesome story

Weedfree:
This book is a complete masterpiece I had fun reading it your use of language made visualisation possible not to mention your control on fear it made the book very insteresting I could read this over and over again You should submit this to like a writing competition like the james wright award or something am sure you would win thanks for writing such a awesome story

Just seeing this