Autumnal // Entry #1

[PROLOGUE.]

Something creeps behind the stir of Autumn’s leaves. Solar positioning leaves trees without much nourishment and the children that rely on that sol source of life begin to weaken; spirits waning as the hours of radiation exposure diminish.

Is there no truer God?

A figure meanders between the frail trees and anorexic plant life. With less sun, more darkness, the opportunity to thrive becomes all the more present.

This thing-that-is begins to know and familiarize itself with what surrounds it.

You’ve heard of this by many other names; the deep revealed, the shape shifter, the-piece-of-the-amalgam. These are just the names of thing that calls another place its home.

[I.]

And there we stood, watching from a distance.

Binoculars in hand.

We safely observed it.

We sent in people to make contact with it.

How could we not? This was the first time we had evidence of this thing, perhaps better said as “this event”.

No one and nothing returned.

We could drop orbs of tritium in hopes that we would be able to illuminate the distant woods which the event took place.

No light had returned.

No detector could trace the radiation.

We stayed at our “lookout” for another week.

[II.]

I should probably give you some background for a bit of this. Yes, I am the whistleblower from AR-COM. I assume you already know this if you’ve downloaded this file, but if not, then now you know. I’ve read too many science fiction novels to not acknowledge the significance of having this experience be made public. My partner, well, he disagreed. This didn’t surprise me as he’s the type of guy to put moral action before the things that really matter. I call it self-righteousness. He calls it “doing what’s right”. The difference between us being that when I go on a break to get food for our site, I also stop by his house to shag his wife. When he goes on a break, he buys more than enough food for the site, possibly putting himself in the red. It’s just food, mate.

I realize this may seem like a digression, but this difference between us is why I lived to tell the tale and he is as dead as dead gets.

So, with my partner being focused on our mission to interact with this anomaly in a significant way, he packed up a bag, woke me up (no less at 0300), and decided to head into the forest cluster. I thought he was daft to be this bold, but I couldn’t let him go on his own.

We headed out.

We were a little over two kilometers away from the forest entrance. My partner (who I’ll call Moranis) decided that we shouldn’t bring any torches with us. Though he decided without my input, I agreed. By this point, we were working under the assumption that any active source of light may lead to unforseen consequences.

I remember the tension I felt during that slog. The hairs on my arms felt as if they were going to be plucked out of my skin. Autumn had just begun, yet the air seemed to constantly shift from cool to warm to absent as we stepped ever closer. I swear Moranis was humming an old jig I’d only heard once as a child. I asked him where he heard it and he’d only say, “the fuck you talking about, man? I wasn’t humming nothing.”

Moranis wasn’t the type to play pranks. He was more likely to be argue that the planning time of the prank could’ve been used for work. This predictable nature of his was once comforting. As we closed in on the entrance, his predictability became my anchor.

“You hear that? Sounds like static.”

I didn’t hear anything. The silence was absolute.

“Moranis, I don’t hear a thing. That tinnitus is doing you wrong, pal.”

My own jokes didn’t ease me here.

“Just follow me.”

He led on.

There wasn’t much distance between as we delved deeper into the wooded dungeon. I figured that getting this poor sod home was the least I could do.

That’s what I told myself. It felt like fivit myself a noble quest helped keep the fear at bay. Is it considered self-righteousness if it serves the purpose of self-preservation? At the time, I didn’t have the luxury to mull over the thought.

Again, Moranis caught my attention. Every step he took was coupled by the crunching of leaves beneath his boots. In fact, every step that I took was coupled by the same sound, yet the sound again came from Moranis’ boots.

My brain couldn’t place sound properly. I couldn’t hear the static.

“What you stopping for? We can make this quick, but you’ve got to keep up.”

Moranis was right, but something about all of this felt off.

“Right. I’m here.”

“Moranis, just wait. This isn’t right. Nothing about this feels unsafe to you?”

He turned to me and spoke some sort of reply, but I couldn’t hear his words.

I remember his lips mouthing something like, “Will, I see through you, you fucking sham.”

That’s when I noticed the oddness of being able to see his face at all. The thick, yellowing glow of iridium eradicated the black around his face.

How?

I turned away only to see that orb of iridium we thought lost to the dark. It shone undimmed. The light seemingly passed through me and cast itself directly onto Moranis. I turned back to face Moranis only to see his back turned to me.

I reached out to touch his shoulder.

He reached out to touch the air before him.

I took a step towards him.

He took a step away from the radiating light.

I step back.

He emulated.

I attempt to yell.

His body mimicked my trembling frustration.

[III.]

I stood still for close to an hour. Moranis had done the same. At that point, I had regained some composure and took some notes. This was for two reasons. The first was to see what Moranis would do as I knew he didn’t have a pen or notebook with him. The second was to leave some trace of this event assuming my death was at hand.

I scribbled:

I’m still unsure of what to think.

…

The fear, though ever-present, was reduced to a humming anxiety as curiosity took its place. There was something voyeuristic about watching my movements being acted out in another body. It felt like I was interacting with the world from a third-person perspective.

I’d read of studies in which the a subject’s mind was able to assimilate similar body parts as a means of “filling in the blanks” of sensory input. “Assimilate” was the word I’d seen used in those studies. Under certain conditions, consciousness seems able to cast itself onto another object or being. I mean, I had to assume that what was happening had something to do with that idea. I needed to cling to something that could be explained, something reasonable.

I had to see how far this could go. I needed proof to give my curious something concrete to shake off the edge of madness that was clawing at the hinges of my mind. Moranis then became my subject (forgive me, you poor sod). I would like to tell you that some supranatural force possessed me to do what I did. That, however, would be a lie. I was alert, cogent, self-aware, what have you.

So, onto my tests:

I first attempted to place myself and Moranis around the iridium orb. Light still passed through me, but it bounced into and off of Moranis’ body. Strange. I’m still unsure of how to explain this occurrence.

My other tests were mainly concerned with how light interacted with the two of us.

Once I moved away from the light testing, I discovered something both interesting and disturbing.

I gathered a bundle of sticks and arranged them roughly into the shape of a human. I laid down to mimic the position I set them and then I waited for some time to pass.

I stood up.

The sticks, maintaining their shape, rose as if the hidden life within them finally revealed itself.

As they stood with my body, my lungs failed to pull in air. My mind, my body, my entirety couldn’t process what had just happened.

I remember thinking that to myself. I also remember being terrified for brief moment, waiting for whatever caused this to end my play session and make me it’s plaything as I had done for Moranis and those sticks. I wasn’t right what I did to me, but Christ was it fascinating.

That feeling of watching a car crash happen right before your eyes; you’re transfixed by the chaos. It seems so unreal, but you are having a first-hand experience of it. It felt like that, but I was controlling the wreck, and the capacity to manipulate it is what had me transfixed.

CONTINUED IN ENTRY #2