What Happened at the Bunker (part 2)

Well, I guess I don't mind telling you now that I was chilling on the rooftop of a big hotel, cause they kind of came and kicked me off of it. Apparently they had a camera or two up there and I didn't notice em. Go figure. Least they didn't call the cops...

Soooo fuck it, I headed downtown and now I'm chilling in a Starbucks with the rest of the poser crowd and using the opportunity to get my laptop recharged. Pretty big crowd around this area. I should be fine. Ground floor is fine so long as you're blending in with the crowd. Should keep the tall man at bay and I seriously doubt any (smart) Proxy is going to cause any big public spectacles.

Anyways, interruptions taken care of, where the fuck was I? Ahh... right... That. Do I really have to- ugh... fine, here goes...


So, this masked Proxy chick gets dropped in my lap and the next thing I know shit has hit the proverbial fan. One. Two. Three. I barely registered the gun until it was in my face. I did a freaking barrel roll into the floor. The first shot went wide and ricocheted off the wall. Don't know where it went after that. The second went straight through my laptop screen... hence me not being able to see what I was doing well when I posted earlier... probably a miracle it still displayed anything at all... The third... That one met her between the eyes... because that one was mine. A lucky shot... I can't aim for shit... but at that range... In any case, she fell to the floor... and she... she didn't move anymore after that.

So... lets call this "things I've failed to mention" number one... I have a gun. It's nothing special... simple clip fed repeater. I got it from my dad a long ass time ago. Normally wouldn't have been carrying it around, but if you recall I was afraid my friend was in with the mob or something when I went out there to hide in the bunker, so it seemed reasonable to carry it along on my trek to go read the cryptic email attachments. Whatever the case, felt it better none of my potential pursuers knew I was armed. That's out of the bag now, I guess, but I'd have a hard time lying about it at this point, so whatever... I don't care.

I'd have been more upset over what I'd just done at the time if I hadn't had more important things to worry about. My mind was working faster than my body could keep up. I'd always kind of hoped that the Construct would try teleporting into the room and getting stuck in the ceiling... telefragged... like I mentioned before, cause wouldn't that be some ironic Lols? But I guess everyone was right about him being smarter than I've been giving him credit for... He used his puppets to find the right path and now that he had found the way inside... seen the layout from within through his minion's eyes... I figured I only had a couple of seconds to act before he was on top of me. I slammed my broken laptop shut and crammed it into my bag and bee-lined for the freaking door. Turned the crank, heard the locking mechanisms release, and shoved as hard as I could against the door...

I only looked back for a second... as the door was flying open... and there it freaking was... hunched over, but standing right in the middle of the room. It wasn't really moving though... and for once I think I knew why. "Things I've failed to mention" number two... since day one, the walls have been covered in Operator Symbols. With Eyes. I painted them all over the place... They were supposed to serve as a trap for the Construct. M said they'd hold him the same way looking at him does... but as we all know, it only works for so long. A temporary solution. But the theory was that I'd only need a couple of minutes... or seconds... I'd just need him locked in place long enough for me to get around him and to the door...

The door...

I think this is basically that moment... the moment where you first see him up close and in person... that you're supposed to just lock up and not be able to move... because your brain is too busy trying to comprehend the horrors in front of it to tell your body what to do. But I guess I didn't have time for that... because once again my brain already had something much more important to worry about.

"Things I've failed to mention" number three... there's a reason I refused to leave the bunker beyond the simple nature of a safehouse or of fearing what would be waiting for me on the outside. Onewinged's notes on bunker defenses were very specific... I'd been hauling in the materials for months without even realizing what the miscellaneous chemicals he'd snuck into every other order were for. And I'll be honest, it was the one part of the instructions I was quite rather willing to ignore... but I guess I did it anyways...

I made a bomb...

...quite a few of them actually...

The whole bunker was rigged to blow the moment that door swung open. I had about fifteen seconds worth of signal delay to run as far as I could... I remember frantically trying to count it out... I remember getting up to three... then the world shook. I remember hearing the sound of the explosions. I remember feeling the heat and the wind hit my back. And then I remember not being on the ground anymore and flailing my legs in the air as I screamed.

I woke up on the ground several yards from where the door- ahh... Should Have Been... It appeared to have flown off its hinges and landed several feet further from where I'd wound up. Smoke was billowing up from the entrance in a thick cloud and burning debris was raining down from the sky. It looked like the entire top of the hill had collapsed inward. My body was aching as I pulled myself from the ground... I was dirty and bleeding from... I don't even know where. I just knew I wasn't sticking around to see if that thing survived. I'm not even taking my chances with that. So I forced my legs to function and ran as fast as I could towards civilization and out of those blasted woods.

You pretty much know the story from there if you think about it... I found a high place to rest, made my post, tried to clean up... stop the bleeding, then I moved on. That's pretty much the whole story... so I guess that's where we are now...

So to recap for the lazy bastards... The bunker is lost. I'm more or less responsible for the deaths of four people. I'm out in the open... and it's probably looking for me.

Awesome.


Now... I think somebody owes me a fucking beer.

What Happened at the Bunker

Huuuh, where do I even start?

Lets start with the present, that's simple enough...
So firstly, I'm alive. Huzzah! You may all depart from the edge of your seats and either relax or start swearing, depending upon who you are. Sorry for not updating you sooner, but I've kind of had a bunch of shit to take care of. Presently, I'm sitting around on the rooftop of a high building again. That's about as specific as I care to be on the subject. For now. Might clue a few of you in later, but for now, preferring my space. Besides, realized I'm reeeeeeeeeally not used to social contact when I got out and started running around. Have had a few awkward conversations that I'd rather not repeat with anyone I know.

Anyways, safe enough I guess... miles away from where I was. Threw on a hoodie I had packed to cover up the blood that was all over me at the time and hopped an overnight bus to anywhere with tall buildings. Don't care if M is right or not, I feel safer up here, so this is where I'm staying for as long as I can manage it. Plus, it's actually really easy to get wifi signals up here... wasn't expecting that. They're all kind of shit though... that part I was expecting, but hey, work with what you've got.

Blood... right. Not bleeding anymore. That's a relief. So no worries there I guess. Nothing to worry about I don't think, just kind of banged myself up.... ahh... yeah... understatement of the year, but I'll get to the details later. Maybe. But ahh... yeah, I'm fine. Sore and sorta patched up, but fine. Nothing serious.... I think. Not a doctor.

Anyways... working on a new laptop too. The other one got kind of busted up. Another understatement. I was halfway through that last post before I realized the "h" wasn't working. I think the "j" and the "n" stopped working after a while too, but I was done posting by then. Not sure if they just broke or if blood was jamming the keys or something. I don't know. Whatever. New laptop. Problem solved. Wasn't purposely speaking gibberish. Moving on...

Ah, new supplies... how did I gets them? Hmm... well, contrary to what you'd probably imagine, given my history, I didn't steal them. Not necessarily anyways... hmm... but I was still using the paypal linked to the fake... fuck. Okay "Maybe" I stole them. Under technicality. Will get that sorted out later. Promise and all that. Anyways, as part of my preparations for an escape plan in the event the bunker was compromised, I did some digging around till I found this really nice forum for Free Runners. Like, those people who do parkour and shit... nothing Construct related. Basically took a page from Mirror's Edge where runner's would leave bags stashed around in hidden locations along their running paths. Found a local-ish couple who agreed to gather the materials I asked for and hide them in the city nearby. All I had to do was wire them money for the items and a bit extra for the job. A few weeks later I had a set of GPS coordinates I could track the packages down to. Pretty handy, they turned up right where they said they'd be too. Well, I had to search pretty damned hard for the first two, but still... they were there. I got what I needed right away and nobody new had to get involved in my mess. Would have probably still done well to go to an actual hospital rather than trying to do an amateur patch job with a medkit, but... yeah, too many questions I didn't have answers to.



And you probably wish I would quit stalling and get on with it already...Siiigh... right... okay then.

The noise.

I recognized it. Well, not exactly. But something similar. Jarred my brain to thinking. I dunno how many of you are Stargate SG-1 fans... but they had this gateway, portal thingie, right? Just walk through and it shoots you through a wormhole to another place somewhere in the universe. (Kinda like, I dunno, a much cooler version of The Path.) But it works both ways, right? And they'd gotten bitten once already with shit coming through that wasn't friendly. So they built this thing called an "Iris." Basically like a blast door that they could just close. So if they didn't want something coming through, they just close the Iris, and BAM! Whatever was coming through shoots out the other end of the wormhole and hits a wall. Makes a really loud "THUNG" sound on impact. And then that's just it. An object that's been reduced pretty much to particles and traveling faster than the speed of light just collided with a solid object before it could reform. I suppose a good gamer's term would be "Telefragged."

That is basically what the sound was that I thought I heard that day. I confirmed the theory by the fact that the Proxies outside were disappearing one after the other. I'd hear the noise and one would be gone. It... it was flinging them along The Path, trying to find the way inside. They were coming out and rematerializing in the middle of solid earth and rock... Not... Not a fun way to die.

Number four got lucky... she dropped right into the room. I had just finished posting and was trying to shut everything down and move when she dropped into the room. There wasn't a lot of time to react to it. I could tell she was in a daze when she pulled herself off the floor and started looking around the room. We exchanged glances but for a moment before the shots rang out. I- fuck

Hold On... fucking hell.

The Invisible Hand

Alright, may as well finish this up and get it out of the way...
Where was I then? The E-mail? Okay...

The day I got it, I was a bit in shock. Onewinged had been missing for weeks. He was the last person I expected to be contacted by, given the situation. I expected to open it up and find a plea for help or something, but the contents were much more frightening than that. The message was very straight forward...

“I know this is going to sound strange, but you HAV3 to Trust Me. This is of the absolute greatest importance. Your LIF3 depends upon it.

The attached documentation is VITAL to your Survival.

DO NOT OP3N IT UNL3SS YOU AR3 INSID3 TH3 BUNK3R!!

DO NOT!! Open it at Home and you are D3AD!!

Must Believe Me. No Place 3lse Secure.

Not Much Time. Hur”


...I’m not going to lie. I kind of sat there laughing at this for a while. It was ridiculous. I mean seriously? Seriously? What kind of joke--

But I couldn’t bring myself to open the attachment.

I hovered over it for a while, thinking it over. Something had happened to Onewinged. And he seemed to have gone to a lot of trouble to send an awfully big attachment to me in such a cryptic manner. It was hard to ignore the warning. Eventually, fear gave way to panic. I grabbed up some gear of mine, personal affects, and stuffed them all in a backpack with my laptop and took off running.

Looking back on it today, I’m glad I didn’t know what I was running from at the time.

So I made it to the bunker, locked myself in, set up my laptop, and logged back into my e-mail. For the second time, I sat in silence hovering over that attachment. Part of me didn’t want to know. This was... really weird... and I didn’t know what to expect. But I finally worked up the courage to look inside.

And... okay, yeah... I totally started laughing again.

Can you blame me? This is the stuff of fantasy. Things like the “Slender Man” just don’t exist in real life. You’d have to be a special kind of crazy not to be skeptical of such a thing. I mean sure, all of my theories up until that point of him being involved the Mafia or some such were pretty crazy too, but this was outright SciFi-Horror genre stuff. My fantastical assumptions seemed rather sane by comparison.

But the more I read... the more it started to sink in...

It had to be real.

I mean, who was I kidding? Onewinged? A drug addict? He was the cleanest kid I’ve ever fucking known. He tried smoking all of once. For all of ten seconds. He acted like he was gonna fucking die from the first half-puff and then refused to ever touch the things again. The guy was scared to death of needles too. Would rather spend three weeks feeling like shit than suffer through five seconds of a flu shot. So heroin and anything else like that is out of the question.

And if just seemed too sincere to be some elaborate joke. Onewinged was never much of a prankster. The few jokes he ever did try pulling were so blatantly obvious you could see them coming a mile away. This? This was just too much. He was always a dreamer, with big crazy ideas... but this?

I sat there for hours pouring over notes and journals. It started out so innocent. It was just another game that he was playing along with. He had all these wacky theories and ideas, stories he planned on writing about. Talk of authors he hoped to join and get to know some day. And then everything just sort of... shifts.

There are a good six or seven “journals” that I could only describe as having been written by a mad man. None of it makes sense. It is nothing but piles upon piles of gibberish and code and shit that just looks like he must have been slamming his face against the gods damned keyboard. Scanned in images of drawings that I recognized as his hand. Crazy shit that didn’t fit his usual art style at all. I’d post some examples but, let’s face it, you’ve all seen this stuff before. And then it just stops. And it’s almost like he’s back to normal. Like he just had one big fit and then snapped out of it just as quickly as it had come upon him.

There was something distinctly different in how he was writing from that point on though. It was like he was no longer just talking to himself. Leaving himself little notes and reminders. It was like he was talking to someone else...

He was talking to Me.

He must have known. He must have known as soon as he saw it that it was all over. That he was going to die. And he must have known that the people he knew would likely be targeted next. That we’d start investigating. That we’d find out the truth. Then we’d be right in the same situation that he found himself in. Alone and unprepared. So he guided me back here. To this place. Where I could hide. Where I’d stand a chance. Safe and protected from his sight, and armed to the teeth with knowledge. Here, I could stand a fighting chance against the monster. A chance to survive, where he could not.

Of course, I’m saying all that like it’s an assumption I’m making. But I’m really just sort of... paraphrasing. Because it’s all here. All typed up plain and simple in front of my face. His words. His last words.

The last entry...
He says he knew it would be back for him soon. Like he could feel it in the wind. Like a cold chill eating away at his very soul. He said he wasn’t strong enough to fight. That even if he was, he couldn’t win. He said he wasn’t strong enough to run. That he couldn’t be like That Man. His only hope was in his theories. His counter-arguments to the established Rules. But they were no good to him. He was already marked. It would find him no matter where he went. And he just wasn’t strong enough to keep running. Not like that. He wasn’t strong enough to take his own life. To just end it all and be done. Not strong enough. Not strong enough. He just kept repeating it over and over until... He says he has one last thing to do. He has to make sure someone knows the truth. And that they’d be ready. Like he couldn’t be. And then... when the monster appears again. He was just going to walk outside, take its hand, and go along with it into the darkness. Because there was nothing else he could do. Maybe he’d get lucky. Maybe the agents were right. Maybe It would take him to paradise...

Wishful thinking. I guess.

Routine

I've been trying to work myself into a routine to help myself get settled in. It's not easy being locked up in a cell of your own design, but I guess I'm managing. Definitely missing fresh air though. I can't say the same about my arch nemesis The Sun however.

Uggggggghhhhhhhh.... Moan, moan, bitch, complain....

ANYWAYS. Thought I might give you all a little picture of my mornings. A "Day In the Life" as it were... (God, I still have to catch up on all of those vlogs too. This mountain of data is Endless!) I don't know if it will be helpful to anyone or not, but hey, something to fill time with until I have actual theories to post. Or I force myself to finish my own damned story...

I'll have to apologize upfront for being vague on my timeframes, but I'd rather not give any exact hours. Trying to make it harder for any would be proxy hounds from following my trail. Even picked the timezone settings for my blog at random to throw people off. Though in retrospect I may be the only one who can actually see that... Hm.


Mornings begin about the same time every day. It's important to regulate your sleeping habits when you're trying to maintain a schedule like this, regardless of your particular reasons or goals for starting up a daily routine. I'm not much of a morning person, so you won't see me around at the crack of dawn, but I still aim for "early enough."

My first hour of consciousness is spent trying to keep my body in shape. I don't have a lot of room to move around in, but there's enough space for basic exercise. Push-ups, sit-ups, whatever... I've got a small pair of weights of in a corner, but I haven't really worked them in yet. Wanted to look up some proper weight lifting techniques first, keep forgetting about it. The narrow walkway from my room up to the exit isn't the best training space, but it's enough of a stretch for me to run back and forth along it and feel like I'm accomplishing something. Plus it's sloped going back up towards the door, so I think that's supposed to be beneficial... so long as I don't fall down it on the return trip.

Once that's done, I spend a few minutes deciding how to manage my food for the day. Which is usually just an effort in MRE roulette, followed by digging out a bag of trail mix and heading for my computer. My trail mix is awesome by the way. Thank god for Rant Radio and my angry youth days. As soon as Onewinged had told me to start gathering up food supplies to last for months, I knew I was making me some trail mix. Stuff doesn't seem like much, but it'll really keep you going through the day if you know what you're doing with it. Got a great instruction video from Patrolling with Sean Kennedy, can check it out if you want over here @7:35.

I spend the next several hours going back and forth between Onewinged's notes and various blogs they link to. It's a slow process. I mean, I don't think I'm THAT slow of a reader, but some of these posts can be pretty long and add in the comments(which are generally important by the way, don't ignore them; unless, you know, it falls under the category of Six Months Later Proxy Trolling, as outlined in a previous entry) and you've got quite a bit of material on your hands. Realistically speaking, it can take a full hour to read through just 3-4 blog postings, depending on the blog. (The Tutorial can take an hour to read ONE with all the freaking comments on some of them.) I'm trying to take a few notes of my own here and there as I go along... As well as constantly cross-referencing to other blogs by following the frequent commentators. That's how I'm finding most of the people that are still alive and kicking... Most of the people Onewinged pointed me to have disappeared as of late or otherwise been confirmed dead.

I finally clued in to using the "Follow" button at the top of these things too. Helps me keep track of things easier without having to constantly dive back into dead blogs to look for links again. So if you're seeing a blog in my "Blogs I'm Watching" list, then it probably falls into all of the following categories,
1) The blogger is Still Alive. (Always Beneficial)
2) I consider the blog to be "Important" to current events. (Or at the very least, helpful to my research)
3) I'm probably no where near finished reading it. I've probably gone over the most recent posts, skimmed here and there, and I'm working out a time to actually go back and read it from the start. But hey, you're bookmarked now, so I'll get back to you.

I'll add more as I encounter them. If it matters, then I'll note that I started with The Tutorial. Onewinged's notes suggested it was the best place to start and the logic behind The Rules seems to relate significantly to my situation, in a sort of reverse psychology kind of way... I guess? You may have noticed the "joke" by now... (I was tired and it sounded funny at the time, leave me alone.) From there, I went through Just Another Fool, Seeking Truth, and Dreams in Darkness. Then I started pouring over the Sage blogs and I've been bouncing around from there ever since.

Every so often, I'll switch it up and watch vlogs for the day instead. There are fewer of them, but watching them can be just as time consuming. For now, the only one I've completed in full (to present date anyways) is Marble Hornets. I was informed that was the best place to start. In case you missed my reference earlier, I'm mulling through EverymanHYBRID now.

Before I cut out for the day, I'll make a post to my own blog, if I have something worth sharing. All that typing takes about an hour, so I set aside time specifically for it. (Weird how something that takes less than five minutes to read can take fifty minutes to type.) If nothing comes up, then I either spend a little more time reading/watching or just switch off for a while.

I take about an hour after that to just sit back and ponder over things. Try to sort out all the information I've absorbed for the day and compile it with everything from the days prior. I'll probably start allotting more time to this process once I'm finally caught up on everything. Sometimes I'll write down some notes or take a short nap, but just in general it's a time for thinking and not staring at a computer screen.

I usually will try to spend about another hour doing light exercise again after that. Sitting around all day isn't good for the body, so I have to make sure I'm moving around enough to stay in shape... in case I ever have to start Running.

After that, I'll "warm up" my MRE and dig in to that. Those things are not the tastiest things in the world, but I guess they're okay. Edible at least. But hey, it's Fuel, not Food.

I'll spend my last few hours before climbing back into bed cleaning up and messing around on Newgrounds or Steam. Basically just getting my mind off of everything before I go to bed. I don't need the last thing I was thinking of before closing my eyes to be a faceless humanoid abomination. Already tried that once. Didn't sleep a wink. Thanks a lot Jay. Thaaaaaaanks a Lot.

Storytime with The Gargoyle

Sigh, I suppose I may as well continue my tale... Better to get it all out of the way as soon as possible so I don’t have to worry about it anymore. So where was I then...? Hmm...

Well, I didn’t know it at the time, but I suppose the more intelligent among you could guess, Onewinged had started being... Visited. According to what I know now, he had actually known about Tall Dark and Faceless for some time. He just never really discussed it with anyone. It was another one of his private little games. Something that fascinated him. That he poured over for hours, just pondering the possibilities of a world in which such a creature could exist. He even had notes about starting a blog, just to post his theories, analyze some silly dreams he was having. Share his ideas with this community of “authors” he thought he had found. I’ve got a whole set of text files he wrote full of the stuff. But then, I guess, shit got real.

I’ll go ahead and assume it started at about the time that he first contacted me again about the bunker. Asked me to check it out again for him, see if I thought it was still safe to build into. If it was sturdy enough to really be used. I had no reason to question his request, so I did just that. The place needed a bit more cleaning up at the time, maybe some paint, but it was otherwise more than fit for use.

He seemed really excited when I told him it was all good. Started asking me to build the place up. See if I could get some new wiring put in, cable for internet. The whole works really. Like putting together a really tiny house.

So for months, he sends me these little notes via email. Features to try adding in, things to set up, equipment to install, supplies to stock up on. It seemed like a hell of a lot of work for something we had planned to just screw around with, but hey, he was sending me money for all of this stuff, so who was I to complain?

It wasn’t until the point where he started talking about setting up security cameras that I started to worry. I mean, they were just little wireless webcam thingies to survey the area with, but still... sounded like a bit, Much, you know? Didn’t help either that he’d been starting to act really... distant by that point. I mean, he’d always been a bit of a recluse outside of family and close friends, but this was stretching it. He could always talk to me... so why wasn’t he?

I can remember the few times I saw him near the end. He just looked so ragged and tired, not like himself at all. He would never stick around for long, just stop by to deliver a message, hand me some more money, and then he was off. And he was acting so paranoid, constantly shaking and looking around. I was starting to think that he’d gotten into some kind of drug addiction... that maybe he’d gotten in with the wrong people somehow and was afraid for his life. Maybe that was why he was so fixated on the bunker... he just needed someplace to hide out for a while. Somewhere to escape to until things blew over.

I don’t know. I thought a lot of things at the time. I had just about gotten sick of it near the end. I remember calling him a loon, shouting at him to get his act together, go see a doctor or something. It all just seemed so stupid at the time. I tried to reason with him, but it was like he wasn’t even there. Like my words just passed right through him. I can still remember watching him as he wandered off that day... How he stumbled along, muttering something to himself that I could never quite make out. And then he was gone.

I would come to regret that later... I felt so stupid... STILL feel so stupid... just letting him walk off like that... in his condition. But I didn’t know what to do at the time. I didn’t want to call the cops on a close friend like that. See him thrown behind bars for being some kind of junkie. But I knew he needed help. I was planning to go talk to him the very next day. Sort all this mess out. But by that time it was too late. The cops were at his parent’s house by the time I arrived. I was immediately grabbed up for questioning and everything just became a blur.

As the story goes, Onewinged just walked out of the house sometime late that night and just disappeared. Never told anyone where he was going... and that just wasn’t like him. His parents freaked and called 911 immediately. The cops couldn’t do much at the time, since he hadn’t been missing for twenty four hours yet, but the hours passed by fast. Before we knew it, a week had gone by and still no Onewinged. They held a massive search, but never turned anything up.

I never actually told anyone else about the bunker. It just didn’t seem relevant at the time. I had enough common sense to check it out of course... See if maybe that was were he disappeared too. Figured maybe some drug deal had gone bad and he might have escaped to the bunker to hide out... But no dice. I must have made the trek back to double check a good three or four times before I gave up on the idea. Weeks went by and I started to consider going back and just tearing the place apart. Not like I needed the place for anything. With things as they were, it would just be a sore spot on my memory. Better to take it apart and move all those supplies back into my apartment.

...but then I got an email...

…from Onewinged.

Better Days

So before you all start calling bullshit on me, I guess I should actually explain how I got into this situation to begin with. I suppose it all started several months ago, when we first found this place. The Bunker.

Onewinged was an old friend of mine, we’d gotten together over a weekend for a bit of a hiking expedition into the nearby countryside a couple miles out of the city. It was pretty much walking distance for me, since I already lived on the outskirts of town, but I don’t get out much on my own, so he had to drag out me outside for the fresh air. Not that I mind the outdoors, I just don’t have a lot of time for enjoying nature since my college days started up a few years back. I welcomed the excuse to escape for a few hours, so away we went into the forests. We weren’t really looking for anything at the time, just out wandering about in the wilderness. Exploring. Having a good time.

We stumbled across it by total accident... or else some kind of miracle. I mean, it had to be. There was just this huge burnt out clearing and a door in the side of a hill. Like... some sort of secret fantasy location that just didn’t seem like it belonged to the real world. We HAD to investigate. We tugged open the door with hardly a second thought and climbed into the abyss before us. The place was in pretty bad shape when we found it. I couldn’t begin to fathom how long it must have been there. I just knew it was fucking awesome. And Onewinged agreed.

To say we started acting like kids again would be an understatement. We’d just found a secret hideout in the middle of the freaking woods. This was like something out of a dream. But somebody had to know about this thing, right? Things like that don’t just appear over night. So Onewinged took a few shots of the place with his camera phone and said he’d head over to city hall later in the week and see if there were any records on the place.

According to the research he turned up with a few days later, it turns out there used to be a big house nearby. I can’t remember all the details, but apparently some rich big wigs used to own the property, had the shelter installed during the cold war era, but never really put it to much use. Then one night several years ago, the house caught fire and just burned to the ground. Nobody was inside at the time. Investigators blamed it on faulty electrical wiring. For some reason though the family decided not to rebuild. They just moved on to greener pastures somewhere deeper south, left the ruins of their former home to smolder and rot. Years passed and the place just sort of surrendered to nature and the passage of time. Nothing left to even suggest that people had lived out there, save for that lone door buried in the earth. The whole place was just abandoned.

Which for us... was absolutely perfect.

Onewinged started playing with this grand scheme for secret hideout right away. Our home away from home. An escape from the ordinary. Or, more likely, just a cool place to invite girls to late at night and throw sweet underground parties for friends.

Yeah. It was dumb. But we were two dumb college kids, looking to have some fun in what was an otherwise mundane world. So it wasn’t long before we started working to clean the place out and make it into something presentable. “We” of course being a bit of a deceptive phrase in this instance, as Onewinged really only ever made one trip back to the shelter with me, to take some measurements and work out a plan... after that, classes started back up and he got to be “too busy” to work on it himself, so I became tasked with managing the project. I was the big bad engineering guy after all, as he liked to say.

And, okay, that’s true. I’m an engineer. Or at least I am according to that silly slip of paper I left back at home. But I’m an “Electrical Engineer” damnit. I didn’t get into this trade to restructure a concrete hole in the ground… or to be a freaking maid, as was more the case for the first couple of weeks I spent cleaning this place out.

I was gonna just call it quits and forget about the whole thing. In fact, I’m pretty sure I did for a while. I remember a small stretch of time where I had all but forgotten about the thing, until Onewinged suddenly brought it back up. I didn’t think much of it at the time. I had assumed he’s just forgotten about it too with all of his school work piling high atop him, as such things tend to do. So when he asked me to go back out and start building the place up again, I didn’t think anything of it. He was just revitalizing the old plan. He did that sort of thing. Start one project, forget about it for a while, work on something else, then come back to the old one when that started getting boring. Classic cycle of madness from a genius with attention deficit disorder.

I had no reason to assume that this was any different.

...but I was wrong.

Unfamiliar Ceiling

Well, this is definitely going to take some getting used to. I’ve never slept well on the first night in a new place. Gets easier with time... but then most times I’m adjusting to an actual bed, not some shitty cot I scored on the cheap at an army surplus. Beats sleeping on the floor though, so I guess I shouldn’t be complaining.

Anyways, guess I should pick up from yesterday.

I’m still doing a lot of reading. This whole thing kind of got dumped on me all spur of the moment, so I haven’t really had a lot of time to prepare here. Most of what I’ve been going by are notes from ...ahh... a friend. Let’s call him “Onewinged.” I think he’d like that...

Um, sorry, moving along then... I’ve been going through all of the reference material I got from him, but there’s a freaking ton of it and all full of links to blogs and vlogs. I’m not a speed reader folks, so even with all the time in the world this is gonna take me a while, but I’m moving as fast as I can. It’s an awful lot of information to try absorbing all at once, you know? I think I’ve got a lot of the basics down though, so that’s a good start. Might start commenting a few places in another day or so... assuming of course that the blogger is still ALIVE by the time I reach the end of their blog. That seems to be a rather troubling occurrence I keep running in to. Hopefully there are still plenty of you alive out there that I just haven’t stumbled across yet. Maybe I should do a little more cross examining through the comments section of some of these things.

But that’s what I’m doing, not who I am or where I am, so I guess I’m not doing a very good job of this whole explaining thing, huh? My apologies. I ramble on at times.

I called myself The Gargoyle in my previous posting. It’s a name I felt appropriate given my situation. A name which, alongside the little blurb I made along with it, in retrospect, makes me sound like one of these “Proxy” people, given how closely the description could mirror “Him.” I’d like to take the moment to assure you that this is not the case. In fact, I’ve never actually even seen the thing. The amount of time I’ve spent knowing about him could be approximated at thereabouts 24 hours. As such, for me to be leaping so deep into the thick of all this probably sounds like an incredibly stupid idea. To which I must say... Yes. Yes, it most certainly is. But I don’t think I really have much of a choice in the matter at this point. I have Onewinged to blame for that. But we can get into that later... I’d... really rather not talk about him right now.

The name ties in to where I am, so I suppose that’s next and it’s a doozy, so hang on tight. At this very moment, I am basically sitting in a small hole, several feet underground, in the middle of fucking nowhere... in the Woods. Clearly a brilliant place to hide, I know. [/Heavy Sarcasm] Bear with me though, it gets better. This place is essentially an old Cold War fallout shelter, abandoned by the owners several years ago. Several feet of reinforced concrete, itself buried under quite a few layers of dirt and rock, the only entrance a heavy steel door cleverly concealed within the side of a hill. Was quite run down when we found it, but I’ve been spending several months now refurbishing the place, for purposes I was not immediately aware of. It’s lucky that I wasn’t though, else I wouldn’t have had the chance to stockpile the thing so well with non-perishable food-stuffs and other basic necessities. Because now that the door is sealed shut, so I can’t exactly go out for pizza...

I think I’ll survive though. For a while at least. I have the advantage of being unmarked by The Tall One. That should by me more than enough time to complete my research and get to work helping as many people as possible before I stumble on to his radar. And even then, with the secretive nature of my location, hidden from any means of view, I’m hoping it will take him quite a while to find his way to me. That’s essentially my gambit anyways... I’ll try to explain it better over time.

I think that’s about enough expository monologuing for one day though. I’m assuming you have other blogs to read, places to go, people to see, Eldritch Abominations to not get tentacle raped by... Things of this nature.

Be seeing you.