A Hands-On Approach

From: —— @ —— .com
Re: entries/information requested re: compiling psychological profile

Written below are the journal entries of Christopher Young, brother of Daryl Young, found saved as individual files on his personal computer, with file names Prologue.doc, Ch1.doc, Ch2.doc, etc. Apart from being compiled into one document, they have not been altered in any way.

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Prologue

Two weeks later, there was a sound. There was a humming. It came from that place on the carpet, the spot near the corner. His spot.

Ch 1

I’m getting concerned. I guess I was a bit distracted before, but my mind is clear now. They’re gone, and I am frankly growing more concerned by the minute.

A chalk-white amorphous thing. A hideous, absolutely hideous thing. I saw it. I saw it on the rug, and it scared me. It looked at me, grinning with half-formed white eyes filmed over. It writhed towards me. A heat, some sort of sickening heat radiated from it, and it saw my disgust and thrived upon it.

I had hoped it would live in one of the closets, but it was content to ooze about my home, leaving trails as it went. I am quite sure that if I had not put the towel under the bathroom door it would have tried to come in and join me while I bathed myself.

Ch 2

Today it has appendages. I am not sure if they existed before, but now they most certainly do. It has two, with one on either side, and it crawls haphazardly along like some sort of horrid lopsided insect. It tried to follow me out through the door, but I kicked it and it did not try any longer.

It thumps around as I try to sleep, dragging its body everywhere and leaving residue all over the house.

I took my cat to Daryl’s. The thing didn’t follow me. I’m glad. It may get me, but it will not get my cat.

Ch 3

It now has four appendages and is beginning to form a skull-like dome under its pulsing skin. It has a mouth, a crooked little mouth, and I am afraid it will begin to make sounds at me. Three of the appendages are longer than the fourth, so it mostly wobbles around in crooked little circles. It is getting bigger, and it never stops changing. I was hoping it would stay and become some sort of indiscernible monster, but now I am sure that it is becoming a person, or at the very least something similar. I would like to kill it. I wonder if I could.

Ch 4

The appendages are even now. It’s disgusting, with abhorrent little limbs forming perfectly. They’re currently flippers and nubs, cartilage and bright blue veins under translucent white skin. It sits and stares at me as the cat did, but instead of curiosity it looks on with a hunger and a disquieting energy. Just as the cat’s did, however, its eyes reflect the slightest light in the darkness. They’re omnipresent and wide and green and yellow as I try to sleep. The eyes are not (yet?) the same size, which only serves to make the thing more unnerving.

Ch 5

It sits at the top of the stairs, waiting for me, smiling down at me with crooked reflective eyes and a small mouth full of small black teeth. My bedroom is upstairs. I am afraid to go up.

It also has hands and feet now; the nubs gave way to small, slender fingers and toes. It is beginning to walk and climb about, and there are small white hand prints smudged on all of the doorknobs. I think at this point towels will do me no good.

Ch 6

It can open doors. I’m sure of it now. It’s androgynous in anatomy, but for him I think it male. It still smiles at me and stares, but says nothing. A small mercy.

Ch 7

Last night I picked up a favorite old anthology and decided to read it while resting in the rocking chair next to my bedroom window. In response, the accursed thing stood in my doorway, leering at me, intent to ruin any escape. It succeeded. Frustration and fear gave way to rage, and I pushed up the window, ripped a hole in the screen, and flung the book outside into the night.

The thing ventured down the stairs, in and out the front door, and brought the book back- an arm snaking against and over the arm of my chair, depositing the small book in my lap, complete with bony hand print. That was the closest it had ever gotten to me. I became frightened.

I stared at the thing and then tossed the old book to the carpet. To think; to only have to deal with a beating beneath the floorboards! This thing mocked me and tormented me and lived and breathed and watched. It looked at the book for a moment, then curled up in the corner and stared at me, large uneven eyes with skin pulled back around. It stared at me and smiled with its little teeth.

Ch 8

The thing has started polluting my food or hiding it or both, and I found that shampoo burns my scalp and razors jut from the pages of my books. No longer content to mull around and lurk in corners, it is now actively making my life miserable.

Ch 9

Eventually, I had no choice but to venture out to the local supermarket and replace my now useless toiletries and food. I had become accustomed to it staying at my home, content to violate my private space, but I always held a suspicion it would begin to follow me. My fear was confirmed.

I drove to the store, did my shopping, and checked out. Nothing unusual happened. I walked outside. Nothing! I approached my car and believed to have seen it, but had not. I then glanced up and saw it.

It was far away. I do not know if it was making an attempt to hide, but it was there; it was there, looking at me, half-hidden behind a tree. Our eyes met, and I shivered. It appeared pleased, then it crawled its thin body back behind the tree, paused, and stuck its head out to continue watching me. The eyes were even, but they seemed to be getting larger, and darker, and more vacant; even from the distance between the two of us they stood out much against the bleached skin that surrounded them.

It smiled, but showed no teeth. I suppose it did not want to show them in public. I wondered what it had planned for me. I blinked and it was gone.

I paused for a moment, worried it would appear somewhere closer, but nothing happened. I then packed up the groceries and returned home. I stopped, retrieved my mail, pulled up, parked, got out, glanced up, and a light happened to catch my eye; I saw a foreign light my bedroom window. Faintly silhouetted against my window was the thing, staring intently down at me, shuddering against the glass, violating my room. I’m sure it had been watching the entire time, waiting for me to notice. In silhouette it looked so much like a person now, though was really little more than a lumpy childlike skeleton with enormous dark eyes.

If I killed it, would the authorities come back and blame me for killing a person, I wondered? I wondered. I wondered if it would try to snake a hand through the hole in the screen and reach for me.

Ch 11

Last night I sat on the couch flipping channels, desperate for any distraction or escape. The phone was next to me, but I was too afraid to call anyone for help, lest what happened before be found out. It must be said, though, that the pressure was becoming unbearable.

It sat in his corner again, sat in a sphinx-like position despite looking so human now, and just as I hit the one channel with static for the umpteenth time the thing in the corner began to whisper. I ignored it and changed the channel, hoping it would shut up. Its whispering merely grew in speed and intensity, and while it did not move, its eyes reflected the television screen and widened and its small chest heaved as it rattled off. I turned up the volume and began flipping rapidly, infomercial then sports channel then a cartoon, then suddenly his face was on the screen, tongue lolling out and blue face gasping for air and mercy and the thing was in front of me and in front of the television, facing me, gibbering and staring and I screamed over it and the television and the room went dark

Ch 12

This is too much, and I understand now the extent of blind terror the idea of certain death instinctively brings about in people. I have known the thrill of killing and the fear of being caught, but neither the idea of retribution nor of my life itself ending were ever real to me.

The mere thought of this thing, however, drives a black and bleak and cold and nearly unbearable fear to my core, let alone the feeling that I get when I feel it mulling about my room at night or when I awake to find small bruises, cuts, and white chalky smudges on my person.

I want to kill it, but I don’t know what would happen if I tried. I don’t know what to do.

Ch 13

I’ll say it here. Maybe it will help. It has been a while, but

I killed him.

It’s all clean, but I did it. He looked at me and looked at me and looked at me and would not stop. I should have known he would never stop. I knocked him down and strangled him until his throat collapsed under my thumbs and I dumped the body somewhere far away.

At first I had nightmares about him screaming then wheezing then his eyes and skin bursting like blood and confetti. I had them every night.

Then the police left, and I was left to read in my warm bed with my cat sleeping alongside me or pawing at the pages. The investigation ceased, the nightmares ceased, and I was at peace. Then the humming started.

The humming and the warmth all over and I can see its reflection in my computer monitor

Ch 14

My home, my bed, my person, and now my dreams. I’m having nightmares again, but they’re much, much worse. In my dreams it’s there. It has no eyes, but it stands tall and with its wide mouth and talks to me and laughs at me and screams and looks ready to devour me. Sometimes I understand its words and sometimes they’re incomprehensible, but whenever I wake up I cannot remember their precise nature. The dreams feel dark and hot and cramped and I wonder if anything worse could possibly happen to me if I die.

I wonder if it would depend on if it killed me or if someone else did.

Ch 15

Maybe I will do it. I have a pistol in a box in my bedroom closet, and if I were to fling the thing from its watching place down the stairs it would give me enough time to run and grab the gun.

I just wouldn’t be sure who to use it on.

I have worried about the thing reading these entries and figuring out my intentions, but I have not seen any evidence of it examining the keyboard or monitor. I comfort myself in regards to this matter by believing that its form of comprehension is much too primal and hunger-driven to allow for much complex thought.

Maybe I’m a fool.

Maybe it knows everything.

Regardless, it’s in my dreams and my brain and every waking moment and I am determined to end it.

Ch 16

I found my solution. I purchased a shotgun. If we’re both within range when I pull the trigger, it should do the trick. Wish me luck.

Ch 17

Why didn’t I die

Why didn’t it die

Ch 18

I don’t understand

I cleaned the carpet after before but now it’s soaked with blood

I

wonder if with the way my head is, looking at it is like a mirror because

I bled like a person and the thing bled black and it’s all everywhere and I haven’t looked in the mirror but I blasted half of its skull off and there’re bits of red and blue flesh everywhere and it’s still looking at me leering at me smiling at me spurting and bleeding at me

the keyboard is covered in my blood and I don’t know how long I can keep this up

I only have one idea left

I think I am going to go

far away.

—-

Written above are the journal entries of Christopher Young, found dead in a rock quarry next to the mutilated, partially decomposed, and recently moved remains of Shaun Dawes, his young neighbor and (former) friend. Dawes’s death was one of head trauma followed by strangulation, but Young’s cause of death is as of yet undetermined, though he was malnourished and his hygienic state was in vast disrepair. In fact, thanks to his physical and mental state leading up to his death, it is uncertain how he managed to drive the relatively great length from his home to the quarry in which he ended up.

It is also worth mentioning that neither fresh blood nor any of the firearms Young mentions in his writing were found in his home; all our forensics team found were older traces on the carpet and mantle corner that likely belonged to Dawes. We’re currently probing autopsy reports for any information they can provide on Young’s mental health from Dawes’s death onward and requesting further investigation by every department involved. All we have to go on in regards to Young apart from his cadaver’s physical state and these entries is virtually nil; as of my writing this, we haven’t come up with a single witness or piece of evidence outside of what I mentioned above, apart from an interview with “Daryl”, Christopher’s brother.

To be frank with you, even said interview with was fruitless; he was distraught at the death of his younger brother, but said that Young seemed perfectly content and had claimed he was going on a vacation and that his cat would only need to be taken care of for about a week minimum. The two bodies were found five days later in the quarry, meaning that if the older of the Young brothers is being truthful (and isn’t afflicted with his brother’s psychosis), Young’s physical and mental deterioration happened much more quickly than we had first assumed, and much more quickly than should have been possible.

I’ll keep you updated as we learn more, of course. It’s all very strange.

Thanks for the help.

Yours Truly, —– —–
—— Police Department

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