Second Self

 Sorry for not posting. The snow knocked my wifi out.

Anyway, I've been thinking, and I feel the need to clarify a few things.

First of all, my family's disappearance isn't some kind of "spooky mystery." I know exactly what happened to them: my mother, in her infinite narcissism, pulled up stakes and relocated with Dad and Harper. She would have had no trouble convincing "perfect golden child" Sophia to go no-contact with me- although I don't know how she convinced Cayden. I kind of feel betrayed.

 Well, doesn't matter. Mom always gets her way in the end.

Convincing the entire town to pretend my family never existed in the first place is a bit trickier, but Mom could pull it off. We live in a relatively small town (population of about 3k) and Mom is very influential. She's on the PTA, Board of Education, volunteers at the church, friends with the mayor AND the sheriff, etc. Considering how good she is at manipulating people, it's not surprising. If she wanted to disappear and abandon me, she could. I doubt she did it on a whim though. Most likely, she's been planning this for a while.

Again, not surprising. She hates me.

Secondly, regarding the Running.

I know both my phone and Cayden's old camera can capture images of it, albeit low-res ones, so I know I'm not going crazy. At first I thought it might be a final attempt to gaslight me, set up by my mother before her "disappearance." 

It makes sense, really: set up a projector and hidden speakers, rig them to your laptop or phone, and then mysteriously disappear, terrifying your child. Then use the projector and speakers to either convince the child that the house is haunted, causing them to leave, or that they're going insane, causing them to commit suicide. Either way, you get the house back, minus the kid you hate.

Knowing my mother, she would've hoped for the latter.

So I went over the house during the weekend. No projector, no speakers, not even a goddamn flashlight trained on a cardboard cutout. Nada.

Coming back downstairs from the attic, my phone fell out of my pocket. The Running was sitting at the bottom of the ladder, and my phone hit it in the head. That's how I found out it's solid and not some kind of apparition.

Second theory: the Running is an actor in a costume hired by my mother to drive me insane. I distracted the Running with the TV- as soon as I got the generator working, that is. It was immediately drawn to the glow and buzz and sat transfixed, motionless, unaware of my presence. 

There was a zipper on it's back, which almost confirmed that it was indeed a person in a costume- except for the fact that when I unzipped it, it was merely the zipper to the black one-piece garment it wore. I pinched the weird, rubbery layer underneath- and the Running yelped. It was a piercing sound, and totally inhuman.

It stared at me with an expression I can only describe as sad confusion. Then it ran away from me and hid somewhere. I was looking for it, and I noticed something.

The basement door was open.

It's been drafty since Halloween, and in all probability, the door has been open since then. I closed and locked it, of course. I wasn't going to venture down there, because I'm not an idiotic horror movie protagonist. I thought maybe I'd locked the Running down there, but no such luck. It was in the kitchen, raiding my cupboards, when I came back that way.

I'm going to post again later. I fully intend to figure out exactly what is beneath that black garment.

-R. Ashcroft