I Always Knew He Was An Idiot.

Suze here.

Elliott's gone, to the surprise of absolutely nobody.

Really, I knew we should have kept an eye on him the second he started going on about pianos and music and Moonlight Sonata. What the hell, guy? This isn't the Elliott that blares stupid indie music down the halls at school and sang shitty country songs as we roasted marshmallows and weenies.

Since when did Elliott like classical?


Whatever. I'm not here to judge. The point of this post is a bit of an update, I guess. I know this is Alex's job but he's been stuck in his tent and nobody wants to go in and ask what's up.

Selfish bunch, aren't we?

I guess impending doom does that to you.

Anyways, so Elliott's gone. Things have been pretty quiet after Nick disappeared; (honestly nobody reported on it because nobody gave a fuck; the kid was annoying and arrogant and wouldn't stop hitting on me) the delivery seemed to really ease everybody's nerves because, holy shit, there are people out there who are actually noticing us. 


Fantastic.

Richard and I are heading out to see if we can't find the crazy fool before the sun dips too low in the sky. Hopefully this will be brief.

Hopefully we're not too late.


Elliott, you fucking idiot, I'm going to chew you out so hard that you're going to wish that blonde brat had gotten to you when we find you.

So please come home safe?

Thanks. <3

Suze out.

Moonlight Sonata.

A favourite of mine, actually.

You sly bastard, how did you know?

Hope Spot

Lyle and I found our way out of the forest today.

Sort of.

While what we found wasn't ... whatever the fuck it is we're trapped in now, the desolate campgrounds beyond the forest's tangle of creepers and rotting branches continues to be very, very far from my idea of salvation.

Alex and Richard were steadfast about not going back into the forest. Did I blame them? Of course not. Alex's cough's been acting up (not that he's admitting anything) and he still hasn't posted the Status Report, so either something's wrong or he's just getting lazy. (Not that he's admitting anything.)

So Lyle and I decided to go.

We both knew very well this wasn't the greatest idea, but hell. Chase has been ... well, you've seen his posts. We were both worried because the last thing we needed was two more corpses to the pile, (nononooptimismSuzeoptimismoptimismyou'regoingtobeokay) but we figured medicine > everything (and escape > everything, but hadn't we all given up on finding that?) and, hell. I'm not going to lie. Getting out of that camp even for a little bit was nice, even if the though of Slim n' Trim loomed over us (metaphorically and literally at one point, luckily we only encountered the faceless twit once.) like an anvil at the end of one big, fucked up Wile E. Coyote scheme.  

So we walked.

Lyle and I don't really have a lot to say to each other. Other than Zach we have literally nothing in common, and he isn't exactly what I'd consider the socializing type. We were completely silent until we got a point where the path was blocked by a fallen tree, when we stopped to look at each other.

"Gotta go over it."

Lyle, being the gentleman that he is, kindly offered to let me go first. But as I set a foot on top of the log and put my full weight on it, I felt it give and roll forward.

I fell into the thicket beside the rotting tree with a the grace of a cow piloting a 747 and swore with all the lady-like sophistication of a sailor who had had five too many bottles of rum.

And what I landed in wasn't what I expected.

At all.

What I had expected was a further tangle of undergrowth and my hair getting caught in a billion places, each one more painful to remove than the last.

What I didn't expect was to roll an extra couple feet and find myself in the middle of the campgrounds where all the rich folk and their RVs had been left to rot.

We couldn't find anything inside those tin cans called RVs, and what few tents still remained had been torn to shreds. Everything was burned, and soot choked our lungs like the fog choked the air. There wasn't a single structure that hadn't been touched by the fog, and everything held within its grasp seemed devoid of both colour and life; the soot that clogged our throats and caused us to cough (though we both knew, though neither of us wanted to admit, that Someone Else was also responsible for it as well) was also found like a blanket, hugging every surface it could hope to land on, and then some it couldn't.

It may have been raining, because through the fog and between the trailers (hoping - no, praying that we found somebody, anybody inside of those thin metal walls, always finding nothing and always losing a little more hope when we did - or rather, didn't) we were hit with icy dagger from above that soaked our hair and our clothes and turned the ground sticky and black.

Neither of us spoke a word.

It was ... quiet. I know you'll hear people on this blog go on about it all the time, but I don't think they've ever heard true silence. The silence we have at the camp is peppered with breathing and shifting and wind howling and trees rustling and, if you strain, screaming. (Or maybe it's nothing at all. Guilt-ridden hallucinations? Fabrications of our imagination? Maybe it's all in our heads. Chase seems to have it the worse right now, what with bitchface's little butchering of the Hippocratic Oath.)

Well, the silence that fell on the campground was complete. Even the rain that soaked us to the bitter bone fell without a sound, and our footsteps seemed as if they weren't there at all. When we turned our heads to look behind us (which we did a lot, both out of paranoia and ... okay, maybe it was only paranoia, but that isn't the point) the places where our shoes touched the ground and we fought to bring them back up from the sludge on the ground were undisturbed.

This went on for two hours.

We went through every tent, every RV, every garbage can and hiking pack.

And who did I see perched atop an RV?

A blonde brat in a hoodie.

Bitchface was laughing; he'd probably been watching the entire time.

Oh fuck you.

"...There's nothing here." It was Lyle who broke the silence, saying what I had been thinking for the last twenty minutes or so.

"..."

I couldn't stop glaring daggers at our Collecting friend.

"... Yeah."

Whatever.

I shook my head, offering him a smile as hollow as the RV we just emerged from. "Yeah. Let's go."

You know, a lot of the time I complain about the fact that this is The Place That Physics Left Behind. When there's a clearing in front of camp one day and a river the next, after a while you kind of just give up and go with it. 

What choice do you have?

But after a couple hours of playing chicken with bitchface and not well equipped enough (or in the best condition, especially after last Saturday. Wow. A week already?) to do anything about it, I was thankful to cut through that foliage and find camp, not the road.

It's about time we got a bit of a break.

Going to catch up on some fucking sleep,

Suze

Radio Silence ending in...

Three...

Two...

One...

And here I thought that we may be better off just shutting up and not saying anything, but, fuck, Chase is losing it and with most of us hanging on by a thread... It's, shit, hard to type without swearing every two seconds, because I'm not too sure what to say. What can I say? The /Collecting/ bastard seemed to sum it up pretty clearly, though real classy, implying that we're all injured or worse. Ha ha, you fucking wish.

(They're not dead yet They're not dead yet They're not fucking dead yet Why is everyone acting like they're not alive anymore?)

It came out of the night like a bat out of fucking hell. Or, at least, I'd like to say that. We were all on edge because of, well, how could you not be on edge in our situation? But we were all sitting around the fire, not really saying much of anything. Richard was chatting on about god knows what (I swear, he likes to hear his own voice more than anything), but this sense of almost calm had almost pervaded the camp like the sickness has pervaded our lungs.

Like that was going to last. There was this... rustle, this kind of crack, and everyone's heads whipped to the source so fast we all could've gotten whiplash or something.

You heard Suze mention Trent. And to be honest? She really, really didn't give him justice. I'm not sure I even can. He had just gone to the goddamn perimeter of the camp; not far out into the forest, to look at the symbols carved into what now are bloodstained trees.

I like that imagery as much as the next guy.

And we all go as white as a sheet, because he's stumbling towards us, towards Chase, all while whimpering desperately;

"helpmehelpmehelpmehelpmehelpmehelpmeIdon'twanttodieIdon'twanttodieIDON'TWANT

TODIEHELPMEHELPMEHELPMEHELPMEHELPME"

And so on and so on. And you know what? That was plenty bad enough.

(Trent was a good kid who never decided to write on the blog because "I don't want to bore the hell out of whoever is reading this out there. They deserve better than me!". He doesn't even mean anything to you, all you guys have is a name. But he played guitar, not well though; never had the time to practice. He had a girlfriend back home who was studying to be a lawyer. He had an older brother who he got along well with. He played hockey, and had talent, but wanted to get a full time job so he could get married. He did alright in our coursework, but tried harder than most of us.

And now he's dead.)

But it got worse. Of course, it got worse. The... the videos never really give It justice. It was behind him, tentacles out and ready to wreak havoc, some of the slick with (don'tthinkaboutitdon'tthinkaboutitdon'tthinkaboutit). And we just stared.

And there was this blur and this same general air of unease and someone's abdomen fell out and the screaming began and it was every man for themselves.

All things considering, it happened pretty quickly. Chase ran around, checking the bodies of those who fell for a pulse, and Richard starting barking orders and here we are.

There's just one thing that bothers me.

The Collecting bastard made a few things clear. People dead. Slender. An attack. Infection. So, assuming that the ones we have alive stay that way...

Are we going to end up having to fight our own people?

Shit. Five days ago, Richard and I were looking around the clearing, trying to find a possible way out, and he said

"It couldn't get any worse."

He was wrong. Obviously.

Now let's see if that first aid course has done me any good so Chase can get some sleep.

(At first, I didn't care. Them, not me, you know? It was knowledge versus ignorance and if they couldn't deal with it then it would be their bodies on the ground, not mine. But then I started to know their names and see their faces and get used to them, just like I got used to Zach, and suddenly they weren't faceless meatshields that would keep me from dying, and when they started to die it felt like someone had punched me in the gut and if I could I'd just let them kill me if it meant they could all get out because I've started to care.

I don't know what's worse. That none of us are getting out alive or that there's not a damn thing I can do about it, no matter how hard I try.)

Goddammit!

Fuck fuck fuck fuck FUCK.

We couldn't find him. We couldn't find him, goddammit, didn't find him before The goddamn FUCKING Collector got to him, shit shit shit. What the fuck was that last post about? And we stumbled on the clearing and we looked at that damn bastard in that goddamn fucking hoodie and he just didn't even say a FUCKING word, just stood there over the body, and Lyle went FUCKING INSANE and nearly beat the shit out of that asshole because he was just caught by motherfucking surprise and then Slender showed up and dear god, you idiot, what the hell did you do? I can't stop seeing the leaves now, you fucking douchebag, Lyle, god, at least I think before I do something stupid but now you've gone and.... fuck. William's dead. Fuck.

He was a good kid, too, probably followed a long time and he never cracked, took a shine to White Elephants and was constantly lurking on there. God. He was quiet and didn't say much until he found his voice this year and shit why did he run off, and why did Lyle know to go after him and fuck my head is fucking pounding. Elliot has been on the ground moaning for what seems like hours and I have to stop typing every two seconds to puke this really nasty looking black shit and our little enigmatic friend can speak for his fucking self.

Fucking hell. I'll post later when we're not all in such a mess. All quiet on the home front, at least for now.

We're going to burn the body tonight.

Rest in peace, Will. God knows you deserve some sleep.

Fight 'till the end,

Richard Battle

Oh, You Son of A ...

BITCH.

The blog was down all weekend. Not that any of would have known, seeing as somebody has been posting in our abscence.

Collectorfucker.

Mmm ... no. Doesn't have the same ring as Slenderfucker.

I'll come up with a nickname yet.

Bitch.

... Yes.

I quite like that.

Bitch will do nicely.

So, the sumbitch who decided that we needed to be 'punished' decided to do so by trapping us all in a dead zone. No internet, no service.

As if we weren't lacking in those already.

On top of that, we had cases of what I will now refer to as Slendersickness up the wazoo. Lyle locked himself in his tent and is currently coughing up two lungs and a liver's worth of blood and bile, (as black as the fucking night, of course) and Alex has this splitting headache and has curled up in a ball somewhere in the middle of camp and Walter has been ... well, he's been Walter, but a wall emotes more than that man and that's only because you can paint a wall.

Two more people are dead.

As Elliott puts it.

FanFUCKINGtastic.

Not by Slender, oh no, not even at the hands of the little bitch who thinks it's cute to

Calm, Suze, caaaaaaaalm ...

TL;DR suicide. Lucky bastards got out before Slender could get to them.

If only we could all be so lucky.

They were ... in love. Deeply so. Disgustingly so. Goo-goo-ga-ga eyes and 'I wub you more' 'no, I wub you more!' and promises of being together for as long as they lived and bluh bluh huge waste of time.

Well.

I guess they were right about being together for as long as they lived.

But what they got was far from what I'd consider a fairytale ending.

But that's what you get for being stalked by an eldritch abomination, isn't it?

Sometimes there are no happy endings.

We found them hung with belts on the other side of the thicket around camp. I'm not the first and certainly not the last one to tell you this forest is a maze, so I'm not going to lie to you when I say that I doubt that they actually decided to ... end it there. Judging by the note we found in Jennifer's tent the morning of, (Saturday, thanks for asking.) they didn't want to be found. She rattled off some Bible verses and said something about being 'together in paradise' and I really couldn't care less.

But maybe I'm just bitter.

Well fuck me me with a rusted railroad spike you didn't read this post expecting anything less than a rant and a cluster f bomb to put every Michael Bay movie ever to shame, did you?

Recaps are Alex's job, if I recall correctly.

Come to think of it, I should ask him about that. Somebody needs to be able to deliver in this shitstorm of panic and angst and god knows what else.

Quickly losing patience,
Suze

To Whoever Managed To...

Hack into Zach's account?

I have no idea what you're trying to pull or achieve or... whatever. But congratulations. Because you know what? Suze flew out of her tent like a bat out of hell and started interrogating everyone and now everyone is more terrified than they already are. So well done, you fucking jackass.

And as for your little poem? I don't know how YOU fucking know this, but we have no choice but to wait. We can't seem to navigate the forest and now everyone is turning up dead-

But you would know about that, wouldn't you, Lyle? Isn't it downright easy to fool yourself? You know me, but I know YOU more. Because, you see, I'm watching. And waiting. While you try and save your own hide.

Then again, am I really one to talk?

You never found his body, did you?

No. NO NO NO NO.

You've...

No.

No no no.

NO.

Broken record broken record broken record broken record broken record broken record broken record broken record broken record broken record broken record broken record broken record

Shit shit shit

what do we do?

what do we do?

what do we doooooo?

Suze was in on it

Suze was in on it

Suze was in on it AND SHE DIDN'T TELL ME

I'm next

I'm next I'm next oh god I'm next I'M NEXT I'M NEXT I'M NEXT

Ahaha.

Not going to happen, Suze, see that? I'm not falling for your little tricks and obviously there is SOMETHING YOU ARE NOT TELLING ME

I'll wait, though. I'll wait and wait and wait and wait because that's all I can do because even though I've read I still don't understand and I have to understand

why you would do

this to me

.....to us.

Hayden

Exploration #1

After five days of cowering and nothing but bad news (The prof is gone. So is whoever went with him. As Suze says, this surprises nobody.) everybody in camp seems to finally have gotten it through their heads that staying out here is a momentously bad idea.

Lyle approached me this morning as I was working on getting our chargers set up again after the recent rainstorm had blown them halfway across camp. Waterproof? Yes. Windproof? Not so much. The recent rainstorm. It was early but most of us were awake; insomnia's drifted through camp like a plague and infected just about everybody.

"We need to get out of here."

Tell me something I don't know, Lyle. I continue to play with the wires and test the chargers, praying that we haven't lost them due to carelessness. If some of the insulation was stripped off of even one of the wires we'd take a major hit.

"Bri's gone."

Now that catches my attention.  "Another one, eh?" My eyes trailed along the camp boundary into the forests. Overcast skies meant there was no bright orange sun to paint the leaves golden, and everything just looked dull and gray. "Sure she's not just out taking photos?"

The glare he sends me is so sharp and incredulous it catches Elliott's attention behind me. It's clear Lyle is in no mood to argue, so he only reiterates.

"We need to get out of here."

The urgency in his tone is unsettling.

"The GPSs are broken and the compasses are all spinning." I states matter-of-factly, stifling a yawn. "We can't get back to the campgrounds with them." 

"We've got the trail," It's Elliott who speaks next, moving beside me and rubbing sleep out of his eyes. "It'll take longer than going directly but, hey, it'll lead us to the grounds."

I shake my head. "This forest is a maze of trails and cliffs and rivers and dead ends. It'll take us weeks."

It's Richard who comes in next. "Finally, some fucking IQ." He's got his butterfly knife and is letting is fall naturally from his hand. Everybody takes an instinctual step away. "And who said we had to get out of here on our first try, weatherman?"

I'm not even going to ask where he came up with that nickname.

It was about eight then, but I'm rather skeptical about trusting my phone's internal clock because it told me it was 00:30 when the sun was out and aforementioned rainstorm settled in. It's Lyle, Richard, Nick and myself who end up forming the party. Elliott convinces Nick to go in his stead and slinks back into camp, presumably to poke at the ashes of the fire and polish his guitar. 

He's going to kill me for that later.

Before we left Richard made a point to cut Xs into all of the large trees surrounding camp so that anybody who ventured outside would know when they were close. This seems to unnerve Lyle quite a bit but he refuses to tell us why. 

I have to admit, I wasn't exactly ecstatic. It wouldn't be the first time a group of people had gotten lost in the woods and ended up wandering in circles until they collapsed out of exhaustion, and it certainly wouldn't be the last.

Well, luckily it only ended up being the former, and not the latter.

The trails were slick and more mud than anything and at least two of us took a tumble and twisted an ankle. Nick wouldn't stop complaining about his shoes getting dirty, which Richard took as a cue to tell him to kindly shut his fucking mouth and let the grown-ups do the talking and wave his butterfly knife around like it was a judge's gavel. He promptly shut his fucking mouth and let the grown-ups to do the talking and spent the rest of the trip in a mix of silent fear and shame.

Allow me to put this into perspective for you. Convincing Nicholas Day to be quiet is like convincing grass to cut itself; both physically impossible (as the grass lacks the intelligence to comprehend the command) and very, very stupid.

Richard Battle did it.

So with that little bit of insanity out of the way the rest of what I scarcely call an exploration was spent in scattered silence (or what passes for silence in the forest) before the coughing began.

Now, this has become a bit of a bad joke around camp. Anybody who spends time out in the forest gets this horrible cough that makes Lyle and Suze look at each other like death itself has just passed through the camp. What makes it worse is that Lyle seems to have it even more than Zach did, and even in camp he can't seem to shake it. The more time we spent out here the worse it gets and Chase says it's downright weird.

It's clear to Richard, Walter and I that they both know something but aren't about to admit it. The fact that they were both arguably the closest to Zach also seems a little too coincidental, but maybe it's too early to start pointing fingers.

But I digress. 

We've been walking for two hours. The trail has split and we decided to head east, (or what we think is east; it's next to impossible to tell with the sun covered and none of our compasses or GPSs working) away from the general direction of camp. Zach had told us that we'd reach a small river if we headed this way, where a bridge has long since been destroyed and nobody's bothered to build a new one - you have to cross on fallen logs. 

We didn't find the bridge.

We didn't find a river.

What did we find?

X's on trees.

And the smell of a campfire.

Lyle was shocked to silence. Nick took twenty steps back the way we came and couldn't see the fork, only where the trail disappeared beneath the forest canopy. There wasn't anything to suggest that the path would split and lead back to where we had set up, and checking the maps later told us that Zach was right; we should have hit a river and a bridge.

We had walked in a circle on a path that was a straight line.

Either we can't navigate for our lives or the space-time continuum is giving us one giant middle finger, and with everything that's happened lately I'm starting to believe it's the latter.

Nothing about this trip has been normal.

Why ship us across the country?

Why do none of us seem to have anything in common - academic or otherwise?

Why so far away from the campgrounds?

Why the blog?

And why is there a sickness that's clearly more than allergies, why haven't people been sleeping, why haven't those who have been screaming in their sleep, who followed Elliott in the forest, (because I know for a fact that Nick was at camp) and what the hell is going on?

I'm going to read through Zach's drafts and posts. Suze seemed very quick to delete a lot of what he was posting, but some of the stuff is still here. It's got to be more than coincidence that the two who were closest to Zach seem to be taking this the most seriously. 

Alex out.

. . . And now the comments are down.

Fanfuckingtastic.

The professor hasn't come back yet.

Really, we should have seen this coming.

Double teaming

Because someone in this camp has to get everyone back on track, and it sure as hell won't be anyone else who does it.

Richard Battle here. Walter has already gotten some people back to work, but we still have one big problem.

In everyone's shock and grief, they seem to forget we're STILL HERE, in the FUCKING FOREST where it's REALLY EASY to KILL US.

You know.

Just saying.

Walter, who would normally wouldn't raise a hand to swat off a mosquito, managed to slap some sense into Victor. Victor, who nearly got into [REDACTED] on an athletic scholarship and is built like a fridge with a Chia pet on top. If you haven't gathered, Walter is about as built as a washboard.

Yet he had Victor on the ground, terrified.

Go Philosodude. Whatever floats your motherfucking boat, because today, I had to deal with the Lyle issue. Here's the lowdown; while most of us have stolen a few hours of sleep, he hasn't had any. In what looks like days, before, well...

you know.

And I...well.... I walked into camp after some scouting and Walter and I made some food, and handed it out. As per usual now, everyone ate in silence. And then I realized Suze wasn't there.

Now let's get something straight. Zach and I were pretty close, so Suze and I know each other well enough. And I'm pretty sure if I let his girlfriend get killed, well, he wouldn't be too happy with me.

So of course, I ask where she is, and then that little black haired fucker started to laugh. "Wandered off. If she's not going to be savvy enough to-" He was cut off then by me tackling him to the ground.

"What the hell, Lyle?" I was furious, 'course everyone was staring by now. "Does the saying 'keep everyone alive' mean anything to you, you fucking piece of shit?"

At this point it was when I noticed how bad he looked; bags under eyes, heavy lids, maniac grin that was faltering. Someone had to wake this kid up. He managed to pick himself up and started to brush himself off, and suddenly his hand flew instinctively to his face. A thin trail of blood ran down the ridge of his nose and I held up my butterfly knife (Illegal in over 5 provinces!).

"Zach was a hundred times the fighter I was, and I could've killed you easily right there. Now go get some sleep or else the fucking psycho won't get the fucking chance, y'hear me?" I gritted my teeth as I watched his face slowly fall as he realized I was right and Walter gently took him to a tent.

The rest of the students watched me, like they were hypnotized or something like that shit. "And YOU! Does having a serial killer stalk you take points off your FUCKING IQ?!? WHAT THE HELL IS WITH YOU ALL?!? GET IT TOGETHER!!!" And they all started to move, by god, albeit away from me.

...I didn't look behind me, did I?

At least camp is up and running again.

Suze turned out to be in her tent, but I'm almost glad that this happened, because I was talking to Walter later and he looked at me and asked

"Why?"

"Because they need something to hate, Walter. They need something with a name and a face that they can see and asses and plot against. Right now we've just got bodies and a whole lot of being afraid. So they hate me. So they think I'm...." I didn't even finish that thought. "It's alright. Because everyone who's dead would've wanted me to keep 'em alive, no matter what it took." And Walter just sort of looked at me for a while, but he really didn't have to say anything.

So that's what's going on right now. And I guess that's my introduction too, ohhh boy. I'm just making a great impression, aren't I? Fucking awesome. I'll do what I have to but I probably won't like it.

Maybe someone else'll post later, I don't know. I'm going to go stand watch (not that we ever see anything through this fucking forest).

Fight 'till the end,

Richard Battle

Things are going downhill fast.

Zach's dead.
Nothing like plainly stating the obvious to get a point across.

Now there’s no reason for you to believe me, is there? No reason for you to stop and wait and look and actually give a flying fuck about what’s happening, but Suze is in shock and everyone else isn’t in the mood to update this thing. In the meantime, the blog is going haywire, all out technology is fizzing out, and Bri is sitting here on her admin account, deperately trying to sort everything out.


It started early in the morning. We hadn't seen some people in twelve hours, but figured they were drunk or high or passed out in some ditch or worse. And to be honest? We didn’t really care. Hayden insisted we search for them until Zach and I set out to find some answers.


Well, we found them alright.


[REDACTED]


And Zach just... fell over, like he had passed out. There was a ten inch boxcutter sticking out of his back.


People started to scream then. Some still haven't stopped, and I’m left here debating whether I should go try to collect Zach’s body.


God, if they could just shut up.


Zach is dead. We know this. But here’s the thing; he was the strongest and best suited out of all of us. He JUST came out of the army and was no weakling. Played videogames like a modern Adonis and could break your fingers by accident.


Somehow, he was caught by surprise.


And I’m not going to just sit here and wait for other bodies to fall into my lap.


I’m Lyle.


Nice to meet you.


Hopefully I won’t be dead by tomorrow morning.