I bet you all missed my awesome self.

This seems like a weird post to make after the last one I left here, which was of course frightening and shocking in every possible way and probably left you all on the edges of your seats! But the truth is...



I can't elaborate even though I really want to. Something is sealing my lips and keeping my fingers from typing it on the keyboard. That something is...

...a promise I made. Hahaha, I bet you thought it was going to be something really sinister! Punked you.

But this blog has been radio silence for a pretty long time, so I want to say that I am very happy and have a brilliant girlfriend...

By the way, Kaylee says hello :)

News

I admit it, I've been putting off posting this entry... Patch and I haven't told anybody about it. But if we were going to forget about it we would have done already right? I think it's safe to hit "publish post" and let it out into the world where you can read it. So here it is:

I was rereading that posts I made about going to the park with Kaylee, and again with Chuck. Over and over again. Not that I'm scared or anything, but it's a bit worrying that I can't remember anything about what happened both times! I'd be a bit strange if I didn't wonder what had happened!

So I decided I should go and take another look right after school. My dad is always saying things like "best foot forward", and I guess for once he has a point.

I had a bit of trouble finding someone to go along with me, though. I would have gone alone, of course, but probably that would have been a bad idea, but I totally had the nerve to do it. I asked Chuck along but he wasn't having any of it. That kind of crap is best left alone, he said. I think he doesn't like being confused or forgetting things or anything. More than some people dislike it I guess.

I phoned up Kaylee. We both have awesome really expensive mobile phones in the latest designs by Apple iPhone that have tonnes of cool apps and do a lot of things that normal phones can't, also I have two. She said she'd love to come but she was in the first rehearsal for the big Christmas talent contest some parish is putting together. I wasn't sure whether that sounded really cool or really lame, but since she's doing it now it's definitely cool! She's been talking about doing it for a while but I didn't realise she'd actually entered! She'll be tapdancing and maybe doing the Charleston too. I had to look up what the Charleston is, but it looks really cool and has some really good music too! Anyway she said that it would be a bad idea to go back after what happened last time, but then we couldn't finish the conversation because she had to go and rehearse!

I tried to phone Alex too but he was nowhere to be found. If he was any harder to get hold of he'd be a missing person!

I asked Patch after that, and he said "okay, I'll bite". Patch is pretty cool, I don't know him as well as I do Chuck but he wears a trench coat and has an Alienware computer that's just for gaming, and he looks old enough to get into clubs and buy alcohol. He even has a little bit of a beard that he says makes him look like a satyr and dad says makes him look like a homeless guy. He definitely isn't scared of creepy playgrounds or whatever might be in them.

I told him what I knew, even though that wasn't very much. That tunnel thing seemed to be important the first time I went to the playground, so we decided to check it out and try going through it. Patch and I are both very gung-ho and thrillseeking!

It would be dumb to do this in the night if we could do it in the day, no matter how cool the photos might be! But we had to go after changing clothes from school, so by then it was already dark.







One time while we were walking, we passed this guy who was sitting in his car. I couldn't actually see him so I guess he could have been a woman too. He was sitting there with his headlights on all the time that we walked past! I sneaked back like a Batman ninja and took a photograph really quickly around the corner. He was gone when we walked back the same way later on.



Here's the tunnel I went through.















I went into the tunnel again.

The big forest was still on the other side. I fearlessly took the camera through with me so that I could document it. A lot of the photos were completely messed up and staticky or even completely black! But I have high journalistic standards, so I didn't upload those.









In a few places the branches all closed in and knotted together like they were a wall or a fence. It looked almost man-made... or something-made at least! I have some photos of me at myspace angles in the tunnel forest, but Patch took one look and said "dude, you look like you're cacking yourself", which is obviously untrue so I didn't upload those either.

I nearly got lost a couple of times as well. Trees all look the same when you've seen enough of them. Let's just say that I was very glad to have my safety rope!

I wanted to phone Patch while I was there and see if it would work, but something was going on with my phone.



I kept hearing things cracking in the background, like branches being shoved around and hitting other branches. Not like someone walking, if I thought someone else was there I would have left or maybe courageously tried to speak to them or something. It was pretty high off the ground and was probably just the wind making the trees move, because it would be behind me one moment and way ahead of me the next and nobody can move that fast or quietly.

I don't know what I can say about the next photos, so I'll just say that I left again after I took them and Patch and I went home straight away. He said that after I was in for a while he heard clanking in the tunnel like someone crawling through, and thought it was me coming back, but he shone the torch in and nobody was there. I sort of wish he hadn't told me that.

Here are the last photos.

Long time no see, and here's why...

Haven't updated the blog for nearly a week because dad is an idiot. See, our electronics were playing up. He put in a dvd to watch and the whole thing was just static and snow and things. And then he turned the TV on and the picture was all warped and the sound was really loud and grating. Kaylee and I could hear it from all the way upstairs and had to go down to see what the heck he was doing.

Eventually he decided to poke around and pull out wires and things round the back of the TV, where there are so many that it's basically black wire spaghetti. And he managed to pull out and tread on the thingy for the modem, so we basically don't have the internet at dad's house until the company comes round to deliver a new one. I've had to go online at school and at people's houses, it's totally lame.

I'm at mum's house right now though. It's really small and I have to sleep on the futon, and Giovanni the smelly labrador puppy goes to sleep on it too and then I can't move my legs or else he'll wake up and sulk at me. But she has the internet and she doesn't mind how late I stay up on it, and she always gets me Chinese takeaway when I'm here every other weekend, which dad hardly ever gets.

In other news I was talking to Alex the other day. This is noteworthy because I only ever seem to see him in classes any more. He's vanishing off the face of the earth!

I have Drama & Theatre with Alex on Wednesdays, but I only really started talking to him a while back after he made friends with Chuck in their remedial spelling/handwriting thing. At first I thought he was kind of strange, because he's into all these really old movies without explosions or anything and he talks a lot about liking things ironically, which doesn't really make sense to me. But he likes things the real way too, and he hates cats in a really real way, so that makes him a good guy in my book.

Anyway, he asked me if anything was going on with me and Chuck, I guess because Chuck's been really quiet since what happened on Monday. I asked Chuck the other day if he'd gotten to see a doctor or something and he kind of half-laughed and said what for. I guess I told Alex that I didn't know, because you can't go up to a guy and say "hey, you know X? He got frightened of Y and Z!" And obviously I've been acting perfectly normally, 'cause I'm way cool, so it can't have been me he was asking about.

I haven't seen that guy in the mask since the hospital. I asked Kaylee about him again and she said that yeah she knew him, then I guess she clammed up and didn't want to say anything else. I didn't push it. How important can it be?

This entry gets cooler as it goes along!

My dad is such a freaking idiot. I booked a doctor's appointment for after school today, because apparently I've forgotten a bunch of stuff twice now and that's a little bit worrying even for someone as unflappable as me. And I didn't tell my dad because he would've freaked out, but I don't know why I bothered thinking about him. He just freaked out at me for being late home from school instead. I guess he thinks I'm going to get kidnapped by some child murderer or something stupid. I told him I was at Kaylee's house and he started going on and on at me because he probably thinks we were doing it or something. So I told him Chuck was there too and he started going off on one about my weird friends and my weird girlfriend and why couldn't I hang around normal people and that whole stupid spiel. My dad is so freaking stupid. I hate him. I can't tell mum because she'll get all smug and I can't tell Kaylee because her thing with her parents is weird and I can't tell Chuck or Patch or Alex because that's not a cool thing to do. None of them read this blog unless they see me writing it, so I guess I have to tell you.

Anyway, that was a bit of a rantsplosion! Sorry. That's a one-time thing. It won't happen very often because I'm cool. I really am cool.

I'm going to talk about the doctor visit instead. Kaylee went with me for moral support and to make up for vanishing off and acting a little strange. I think she was trying to be cheerful because she kept saying about how cool it is that I can just go to the doctor and get an appointment whenever. She's from Alabama or Montana or something in America so she comments on things like that sometimes. It must have been her own spirits she was trying to keep up though, because mine didn't need it! I don't get worried by things like this, I'm too much of a brave soul!

There was this one guy in the waiting room who kept looking at me! It was a little bit creepy, I don't mind telling you, though not a lot creepy. I might have just been imagining things, because his face was covered by a white plastic mask with black lips/eyebrows and black eyes that made it hard to tell exactly where he was looking. He might have been reading his newspaper.

The doctor had me fill in this chart which I guess tallied all the other symptoms and things I might have been having. So I had to say things like had I had heart attacks or migraines or surgery (I haven't) or did my family have a history of Alzheimer's Disease or whatever (it doesn't). One of them was did I have seizures ever, so I had to say yes and he asked about my meds and said it might be to do with that.

I dunno what made Chuck get it too. He's sort of pretending that it didn't happen. Kaylee said afterwards that maybe it was psychosomatic. She's really smart.

Kaylee had gone to the waiting room, because the doctor had said the questions might be personal. Suddenly I heard her shouting. She's very easy to hear from a distance - walls and doors and things don't stand a chance against her! What's odd is that I could hear a man's voice too, and it sounded... strangely familiar. I went out into the waiting room and found Kaylee glaring at the masked man as he stalked away out of the door. I asked her what was going on and she said that she didn't want to talk about it. But it sounded like she knew this guy! I don't know what to make of it!

When we were leaving, I noticed the masked man's newspaper, abandoned on his seat. It was open to the crossword on the magazine insert. The man had filled in all the squares with the letters O and X, on top of each other, like he couldn't make up his mind which was the right one. I rolled my eyes at him, even though he'd already gone. He was obviously just pretending to do the crossword so that he'd look smart.

This post is a waste of time.

My buddy Chuck came round today. Chuck Zeusfire. At least, he tells me his last name is Zeusfire, but I think he just calls himself that to impress girls on Youtube.

Chuck's just one of the many tens of people who've been hooked by the thrilling, dashing and no-doubt inspiring adventures I have relayed to you thus far. He said he'd never seen anything so thrilling, and that I was a master of suspense and excellent storytelling. I choose to believe that he wasn't being sarcastic.

But Chuck has his own areas of expertise, and he had a few words of advice for me. My posts were too stream of consciousness, he said. And where were all my speech marks?

"I'm an artist," I told him, and automatically won the conversation.

We were playing all the latest videogames on my top-of-the-line Xbox 360, of which I have two. Then Chuck mentioned my post about visiting the playground.

"Yeah," I said, "but that was fake anyway so it's all good."

But no, he said. He'd seen something like it too.

I put Call of Duty: Black Ops on pause and stared at him. He stared back, truth and worry in his eyes. He said... he's punching me in the shoulder so I guess I'll give it speech marks. He said: "Have you asked Kaylee about it?"

"Yeah," I said. "She didn't see it."

"A man in a suit," he said quietly. "With no face..."

I was confused! And I hadn't heard the part about the suit before, so now I had an extra clue and thing to look out for. I said: "Are you sure it was real?"

He narrowed his lips. "I think so, bro."

But - but why would Kaylee lie to me?!

I didn't have a good answer to that. I still don't. But I did have a suggestion! We had to go back to the playground, as soon as possible, and find some evidence of this mysterious faceless man in a suit. Chuck had had the same idea, and he'd brought his camera over. I also have a camera and it's much bigger and newer than his and is made by a better company, but I wasn't sure where it was so we used his instead.

Unfortunately, we don't know what happened at the park because neither of us remember it again. Pretty scary, huh! I'm definitely not scared because I'm a badass narrator-protagonist with balls of adamantium. Chuck is over my shoulder saying "bullshit" but I'm not sure what it's in reference to. He's obviously delusional with terror.

I was going to upload the video, but I forgot to point the camera at anything interesting, so it's eight minutes of darkness and my feet. I'm not uploading that crap.

I have a bit of a confession to make.

I wanted to know what was up with that last post I made. So I asked Kaylee about it and she said that no such thing ever happened. We were at home making out the whole evening and then I decided to write a fictional story for fun. So that's all cleared up!

In other news, I got an un-postmarked letter through the door this morning! It was in a plain brown envelope, and on the letter in a font so small I could hardly read it were the words:

y0u 0we
are h0lding back

Then, underneath those words, the rest of the paper had been scribbled on in thick black pen. The contrast made it quite jarring to look at.

I wonder who delivered it? And I wonder... how they knew?!

There's something I haven't been telling you. When I made that first post... it wasn't off the top of my head. I've been fighting a weird compulsion ever since the dreams started. An eerie, overwhelming compulsion to blog. Like it's required of me. Like my fingers are not my own.

You're probably very creeped out right now!

I went upstairs to show the letter to my honey Kaylee, but I couldn't find her anywhere. She'd vanished! And dad's stupid cat Sparkles was clawing on the closet door! He was damaging the paint so I put him downstairs with the baby gate across the stairs. We don't have a baby, because Kaylee's a hot little lady and I'm a cool son of a gun and neither of us have time for a baby in between the awesome things in our lives. But mum brings the puppy round sometimes and it likes to wee on the bed.

Anyway, I looked inside the closet and behind the hanging clothes I found a little door! I didn't go through it, though. NOT BECAUSE I WAS SCARED. I just remembered I'd left the oven on. I'm a badass motherhubbard who isn't scared of any doors. And besides, all of the things which happened today were very original and creepy and I've never heard of them happening to anyone else.

I wonder if I should be worried about my girlfriend?

I don't know what's happening

My hands are shaking so bad that I can barely type. FROM THE COLD. I'm totally not scared. I'm way too badass and admirable to be scared. I'm so awesome that you might even call me a noble protagonist.

All the same, I don't know what the hell just happened.

My girl and I went down to the playground. It's pretty close, so it was only a few minutes' walk. Soon we were surrounded on all sides by climbing frames and see-saws and trees. So many trees.

Gaunt shapes. Like the trees in my dream!

I was really scared, but fought through it because I'm brave and a role model for readers everywhere. And I didn't let on that I was scared to my honey, because then she might have gotten even more scareder. I marched right into the playground and shouted: "Show yourself, whoever you are!"

The playground was completely empty. That dumbo from the phone call was nowhere to be seen - but while I was glaring at the playground, I saw something white catch the moonlight. It was in one of those metal tunnels that kids enjoy crawling through for some godforsaken reason. I remembered my dreams, and the mysterious comments to my first blog post, and wondered - could this be the thing I've been dreaming about?!

"We should split up," I told my honey. "I'll be right back."

I ran towards the tunnel and climbed the steps up to it. God, I would give that faceless bastard what-for. Who's he to haunt my dreams and rob me of a good night's sleep? Why I oughta -

But no. When I crawled into the tunnel to find the white thing, I realised that it wasn't Mister Faceless. It was a sheet of printer paper with something scribbled on it:

g0 0n then
d0 y0ur worst them
i w0n't sleep till then

If this is meant to be poetry, it sucks.

Anyway, I crawled forwards to get out of the tunnel, and found myself exiting into a huddle of trees. I stood up and looked behind me, and the playground had vanished. The street had vanished. My girl Kaylee had vanished! Everything had vanished! Except the trees had done the opposite and they were everywhere.

I swore very loudly, even though I am a role model.

"Where am I?!"

I kept looking at the place where the playground should have been. Then I realised.

It was night.

I was in a forest.

And there was a white shape up in the trees!!

I backed away and dived into the only piece of cover I could see: the stupid little tunnel. I crawled through it so fast that I took the skin off my hands and banged my head a whole bunch of times. I kept expecting the... face or man or tree or whatever it is... to come and grab my ankles. But it didn't happen! I got out into the playground and looked up and saw Kaylee running towards me waving her hands around with worry.

She told me I looked scared! No way I looked scared. I'm practically an action hero.

"We have to go home," I said, covering up my fear and sounding very manly. "Now."

So we came home and I definitely didn't jump at every shadow, thank you very much. Kaylee kept asking me what had happened but every time I tried to explain it the words got tangled up. I've even had to keep deleting and rewriting things here to make it make sense. Now that I've gotten everything down I'll show her and...

...and...

...Wait, what have I been writing? What is this rubbish? I don't remember any of this. And when did I skin my hands?!