It’s strange being back in the old house again, it seems
like decades since I came here in search of our childhood notebooks – even
longer since I actually slept here. William and Gloria have taken my mother and
father’s old room and made it their own, which is nice, and with Frankie locked
in my old bedroom and Emily sleeping downstairs in the living room, I’ve been
left with no alternative but to take the guestroom and, if I don’t look out at
the garden, it’s easy to pretend that I’m staying at a hotel instead of the
house where my mother died.
William assures me that divulging our whereabouts is a safe
move. Jennings, the only person who worked for the DPIR and was privy to the knowledge
of our blog, is dead and the Nightmare People will not pass by the symbol,
which William has painstakingly painted on every panel of the fence surrounding
the grounds.
ArthurMan’s claims that the Nightmare People couldn’t move
if caught on film, the reason Dicky, Harrison, Joe and I had started filming
ourselves in the first place, turns out to have been another in a long list of
lies he told us. A lie told so that he could send our footage to Ethan Porter
(A. Friend), in order to trick him into coming to the lake house – “Tradition
dictates they come willingly”.
We buried Ethan under the oak tree at the bottom of the
garden – the spot at which we all agreed, when we were in our teens, would be
the location of our own graves. It seems only fitting that Ethan be counted as
a Son Of Liberty after his heroic, if stupid, actions. It really is a shame
that we couldn’t bury Harrison and Joe there also.
I have no doubt that Ethan’s assumption – that ArthurMan
sent Joe, Harrison and Dicky to their deaths – is correct. The fact that I
haven’t heard from any of them since September is damning evidence enough –
although Emily seems hopeful. I await Dicky’s return with baited breath, that I
might better understand Harrison and Joe’s fall.
The only good thing to come out of our current situation –
aside from the fact that Emily is back with us – is that ArthurMan has been neutralised.
Finally, thanks to William’s constant pursuit of the facts, I am free from my
illness and all of us are free from ArthurMan’s cryptic nonsense.
Now, if we can just figure out why Emily is so sick and if
William’s plan to trade Frankie for our safety works, we might finally be free
of this madness.
