By The By...

I'm gonna write my poem for the poetry contest on the plane. Everyone else, get to work! We need to sabotage this contest to prove to Miss Corinn we're still out here.

I'm Scared

This morning when I woke up there was a message scrawled in blood on my wall. It said "We're coming for you." I just know it was from the Coven. I just know they're going to come kill me... they know I know about them.

I'm terrified that they're going to hurt my family more. They've already done enough. Why can't they leave me alone?

I've made up my mind. Frank, I'm coming to Pennsylvania. And I'm forcing my parents to stay with relatives until this whole conspiracy blows over.

EDIT: I just managed to get a plane ticket to Scranton, PA. I leave at 3:00 here and I get to PA at 10:00 at night... we have a connection somewhere. I don't know and I don't really care... as long as I get far away from the witches. Frank, I'm coming.

Pa's Steakhouse Shut Down

I just saw on the news that Pa's Steakhouse has been shut down by the police in connection with the disappearance of my brother and Cal, who was reported missing and his car found in the parking lot. I'm going to try to get to the impound lot to see if there's anything important in his car, but I don't know how that's going to work out.

Miss Corinn's poetry contest opens tomorrow, so I've been working on a poem for it. Don't worry, it's not going to be all good little girl-ish... :D I can have an evil side when I need to too. It's about Jakob, but it's also about the Coven and the whole conspiracy thing I've been thrust into the middle of.

So, I just thought I'd post quickly to let you know about Pa's. They're not expecting it to re-open within the next week or two, and they're going to be patrolling the area, so the Coven is going to have a hard time getting to the clearing out in the woods. Talk to everyone soon!

And, it's good to see other movie majors out there. Maybe we should all get together some time and make a film about what's going on! After it's all over, of course. If we're still alive.

Lucy Middleton

I thought you might want to know a little more about me, so here's a rundown of my life.

I was born in 1981 in a Salt Lake City hospital... I don't think my parents ever told me which one. I went to Beacon Heights Elementary (we lived in Salt Lake City for a while. Until pretty recently, actually. We moved around quite a bit but we always stayed in the city. After Beacon Heights I went to Northwest, because I refused to wear a uniform and that's the only middle school nearby that didn't have a uniform policy. Then for my High School my parents picked East High.












I had a lot of friends in High School. I was a cheerleader (Go Leopards! :) ) and I graduated in 1999. I went to the University of Utah... U U I always called it. I majored in Film Studies, cause I've always liked to go to the movies and everything. It was cool. I got an internship with a local TV station and I thought I was going to get a job, but they decided not to hire me after I'd been there a while. While I was in college I lived in a dorm, but when I graduated I moved back in with my folks. I'm lame, I know.

I took a vacation to Europe with my boyfriend at the time my senior year of college. Here's a picture he took of me in the car:










I don't remember what I was looking at, but I always thought that pic was kind of cool.

Since college we moved into the deep South part of Utah near Panguitch. I've been getting little jobs here and there, but nothing using the college degree I worked so hard to earn. I was helping to raise Jakob, and now that he's gone I have to figure out what I want to do with my life.

I'm Back, No Need To Worry

Hello everyone, I'm sorry I kept you waiting so long. I'm back from Pa's, and I think I'm more shaken up than I was the night Jakob died. I'm sorry to tell you, Cal is dead and gone, much in the same way Jakob died.

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I got to Pa's Steakhouse about an hour and a half after I left the chatroom last night. Mom and Dad gave me some trouble leaving the house so late, but I told them I needed to be alone for a while and I would be back eventually. They let me go. Last night we had another storm (my computer isn't fuzzy anymore. Strange how these things work, isn't it?) I hate to drive in the wind and the rain so I drove slowly. I can't think about that much, though, because I'll start to go mad. Maybe I could have saved Cal if I'd just driven faster...

No. I would have wound up hitting an oncoming car. I did what I had to do.

Anyway, I got to Pa's Steakhouse eventually. There were only two or three cars in the parking lot, and through the window I could see only one person sitting in the dining room. One of those cars was Cal's, but I couldn't stop to look now. I needed to get to that clearing.

I sprinted around the side of the building and ran into the woods. I've been there enough at this point that I knew where I was going, but I went slowly so they didn't hear me coming. I got to the clearing and I was overcome with deja vu... there was again a bonfire in the center of the clearing, and although I couldn't see the cross with someone on it I could smell it. It smelled like burning flesh. It was horrible, and I don't think I'll ever get that smell out of my nose.

I took this pic with my cell phone:

I watched and, just like last time, the fire flashed blue and disappeared. I took another pic:















I was scared that they were going to find me then, so I climbed the nearest tree right away. They all walked underneath me. Oh, my GOD the smell! They smelled like rotten things that should have been dead a long, long time ago. I definitely saw Luisa Lemke there, which confirms my suspicions that they were watching me. When I was sure they were all gone, I climbed down again and fell asleep in the middle of the forest because it was so late and I was so damn tired.

When the sun rose I heard a crow up over my head and I almost screamed. It woke me up and really, really surprised me. My first thought was "Sylvia Brown sat on her and moved in." Dunno why, but it's true.


I took another picture of what the clearing looked like in the daylight, and here it is:










Yeah, that's a hole in the ground. I didn't want to go over to it because I was afraid of what I'd see.






I found Cal's cell phone then. It was lying under a pile of leaves not five feet from where I slept. I took it and put it in my pocket, thinking maybe I could get Frank's number from it later.

So, I walked out of the woods and back to my car, not caring who saw me from the dining room window. I must have looked like a mess, but that's me. A mess. I was doing something that needed to be done because the only other person who knew for sure that someone was dying was in Pennsylvania.

I drove home. When I got there I took out Cal's phone and turned it on. It had just enough battery left for me to write down Frank's phone number before it died. I called him on my own cell from up in my room and told him everything that happened.

So now you know. Poor Cal is dead and I couldn't do anything to save him. Like Jakob, he was killed by the Coven of the Witch. And I'm angry.

Fuzziness

There was a storm last night, and I think it messed up my computer monitor. Everything seems fuzzy... just out of focus enough that I can barely make out what's going on, but it's difficult to see certain things likewhether or not I remembered to hit the space bar between those two words. It's annoying, but I'll live. The funeral is sucking up all our extra money right now so I can't get a new monitor for a while.

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Well, tomorrow is Jakob's funeral.Did I write that I'm supposed to... ah... write Jakob's eulogy? I'm really not looking forwardto it... I know I've had a few days, and I don't have much time left, and I really should get to work, but I just don't want to start. Once I start I know I'm going to be flooded with memoriesof little Jakob, and that's going to be hard to deal with.

This morning I thought I heardJakob in the kitchen calling for me to come have breakfast. Jakob liked to make breakfast for everyone on the weekends (I know today's not a weeked, but I was tired. Leave me alone.) So, when I thoughtI heard his voice, I completely forgot he was sacrificed to the devil and went running into the kitchen, ready to pick him up and tickle him. And, the kitchen was empty. Of course.

I started sobbingwhen it all came back to me. He's really dead, and tomorrow we're going to bury his empty casket and pretend he died in his sleep instead of disappeared into the woods from a steakhouse bathroom. We'll go back to our lives and pretend like he never existed so we don't have to think about all of thepain his death has caused us, and we'll pretend he wasn't real, just a voice in the kitchen on the morning after yet another sleeplessnight.

Exodus

The reporters are finally gone. I can look across the street and see a field again, not a campground. It's a relief, really; no more screaming idiots whenever I open the door to look outside.

On the other hand, they've given up looking for Jakob. I've been trying not to think too much about what I saw Friday night, because the more I think the harder it's going to be to stop. I keep being reminded of this quote in Stephen King's latest book (which rocked, by the way)... "The arguments against insanity fall through with a shirring sound." Don't ask... it makes sense in the context of the book.

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They've given up searching behind Pa's Steakhouse for Jakob. His funeral (with no body oh god poor jakob we don't even have his body) is going to be held on Friday, exactly a week after he disappeared. Mom wants me to deliver his eulogy. It's going to be tough, so I'm going to work on that right now. I want it to be perfect.

That Was Interesting...

I went to the door to see who was knocking, and when I opened it there was no one there. The reporters camped out across the street turned and looked at me, so I waved. They all began chattering at once, but they knew better than to come towards me. I went back inside the house and closed the door, and almost immediately I heard knocking again.

So, I opened the door once more, sure I would see a reporter dashing back across the street or something. And again, there was no one. This time, however, I noticed something scratched into the door with deep gauges. It said this:

"ownw pcwbur jd tclkkvw rzzwfwsz"

I marched across the road to the reporters, who looked quite scared. "Who did that?" I yelled. They all denied it, no matter how loudly I screamed and threatened to call the police. They said no one had been at the door and they hadn't noticed the markings until I pointed them out, and the strange thing is, I kinda believe them. There was definitely no one there when I went back inside the house, and there was no one there when I opened the door. The door wrote on itself somehow.

I tried a bunch of decoding websites online, but none of them produce anything meaningful. Is this perhaps some other language? Frank Dawes, it seems like you're good with codes and ciphers and things. Can you make any sense of this? I really want to know what it means.

That's all for now... maybe I'll get in touch with Frank and blog again later.

Victims Of The Coven

Well, as everyone saw, I got a comment from this guy named Frank Dawes yesterday on my "Luisa Lemke" post. I went through the website he mentioned, found his blog, that psychic readings website, and the homepage for the PhoenixFire Corporation. It seems like they're the culprit... I mean, come on. It seems like I was right about the name of the group of witches, too... kinda spooky, if you ask me. It's almost like they planted the name in my head.

Little Jakob was kidnapped and killed, and apparently this "PhoenixFire Corporation" is the one who did it. I've sent them a nasty email, but I haven't gotten anything back yet. Not that I expect anything... if I kidnapped and sacrificed a little boy, and then got an email from a relative, I probably wouldn't reply to their emails either. Or maybe I would... if I was a psycho, who knows.

So, Frank, your email address didn't work for some reason. It kicked back to me saying that FrankDawes@yahoo.com does not exist. Wanna tell me why? I'm interested in getting in contact with you, but I don't know how you want me to reach you if I can't email you. Phone number? Mysterious meeting in an alley in Chicago?

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I went back to Pa's Steakhouse today, without my parents knowing. I walked into the woods, following roughly the same path I followed Friday night, and I found the clearing where I saw my brother killed. To my surprise, the gigantic hole in the ground was gone; however, the entire clearing was dead. The trees had turned black and lost all their leaves, the grass looked like it had been burned, and the very air itself was hot and heavy and seemed to settle on my shoulders like the weight of the world.

I left quickly and didn't look back.

============

Those frigging reporters have been hanging around my house still. Mom and Dad are getting pretty angry... this morning Mom leaned out the window and screamed at them, threatening to sue if they didn't leave. They scattered pretty quickly, but they were back within two hours.

============

I heard Dad talking on the phone this morning to the Sheriff. He said that if they don't find any sign of Jakob in the next twenty-four hours, they're going to declare him dead. We're going to have to hold a funeral and everything. I don't know if I can take that... I'm probably going to wind up blurting out everything.

============

That's all I have time for right now... someone's trying to bang down the door.

Luisa Lemke

This morning the doorbell rang at 6:00. Mom and Dad went down to the police station at 5 to talk with the cops who are trying to organize some kind of search and rescue thing... I'm staying out of it in case I crack and tell them all about what I saw. I went and answered the door (which I really shouldn't have done, but I was really tired and I didn't think anything of it.)

A woman stood there. She wore a big hat that completely covered her head, so I couldn't tell what color her hair was or even see her eyes. She seemed to be in her mid- 50s, but that's just a guess. She wore a tight-fitting red shirt and black pants, and they didn't look too bad on her. In her hand she held a small steno notebook.

"May I come in?" she asked. I was instantly awake.

"I don't think so," I said. "Who are you?"

"Luisa Lemke. I'm a reporter for the... uh... Salt Lake Times. I wanted to ask you a few questions about the disappearance of your brother?"

"I don't think so," I said again. "We've already spoken to people from your paper. Leave us alone, please."

I started to close the door, but she threw out a hand and held it open. I stared quite rudely at her hand for what must have been thirty seconds; it was extremely wrinkled and dotted with liver spots. It looked like the hand of a ninety-five year old lady, not this curvaceous woman who stood on my front porch.

"Where were you when little Jakob disappeared?" she asked after a minute.

"We were at Pa's Steakhouse," I said, too stunned not to answer.

"When did you notice he was gone?"

"About fifteen minutes after he'd been missing."

"Did you follow his trail into the woods?"

"How did you know he went into the woods?" I asked. The cops have been trying to keep that tidbit out of the papers, and so far I'd thought they had succeeded.

"I know. Did you follow his trail?"

"N-no," I stuttered.

"Thank you, that will be all," she said and turned away. For a second I was sure I saw a glint of red in the shadow that hung over her face, but then she was gone. She sprinted down the street much faster than she should have been able to.

I'm thinking now that she was one of the witches I saw, and they suspected I was there. Whatever the case, she definitely wasn't a reporter. She dropped her notebook in the driveway, after all... I don't think any self-respecting reporter would leave that behind. It was blank.

Has anyone else run into the Coven of the Black Crow? (Oh, in case you're wondering how I know their name... I have no idea. It just seems like the right thing to call them, after what came out of the Gate of Hell. It just fits.) Have they taken anyone else's family members?

What can I do to kill a witch?

Coven of the Black Crow

Hello, my name is Lucy Middleton. I live in a pretty normal family... I'm twenty five, I have- no, had- a little 12 year old brother, and our parents are still together.

However, last Friday something happened that changed our family forever. My little brother was killed by a coven of witches.

====================

I live in Utah. Friday night our family went out to dinner at this place called "Pa's Steakhouse." My little brother (Jakob) said he had to go to the bathroom, so our father let him go. He ran to the restroom at the back of the building and was gone for probably fifteen minutes. Dad went in to get him and came out with an ashen look on his face. "He's gone," Dad said.

The next few minutes are somewhat of a blur. I remember Mom fainting. Dad splashed water on her face, and the next thing I knew I was outside, behind the building, staring up at the broken bathroom window. It looked like someone (oh god please not Jakob, god not Jakob) had been thrown through it... indeed, I saw a little scrap of blue cloth hanging from the glass. I looked down at the ground and saw deep footprints, maybe an inch or two down into the mud. They led across the field to the woods behind Pa's Steakhouse, so I followed them. I don't know where Mom and Dad were at the time, but I went off on my own.

Once I was inside the woods it was difficult to see. I couldn't make out the footprints any more, so I got down on my hands and knees and felt around until I found one. I followed them that way, crawling along the ground, for about twenty minutes. Soon I could see a light ahead of me, so I stood up.

I walked in the direction of the light until I found the most horrifying thing I'd ever seen. There was a fire in the middle of a clearing. An upside-down cross made of thick logs had been hoisted over the fire, and to my horror Jakob was tied to the wooden thing, head down in the flames. I stopped myself from gasping, because I wasn't alone in the clearning.

Dancing around the bonfire in a bizarre pentagram of gyrating bodies was a bunch of bald women wearing flowing silver robes. They chanted some horrid thing I shall not repeat, and their voices rose to a roar that complemented the crackling of the flames. They shouted some word in unison, and the flames turned bright blue for a second or two. And then they winked out, and my brother was gone. Where the fire had been was a huge glowing hole in the ground that seemed to lead into the very depths of Hell. Seven black crows rose from the hole and flew off into the night, and the witches cackled loudly. I freaked and ran back to the steakhouse. I didn't tell my parents what I'd seen, because they wouldn't believe me.

For the past two days we've had to see an endless stream of reporters and policemen. They seem to be convinced we know something we're not telling them, and in fact I do. Mother is heartbroken, and I don't really blame her. Jakob is gone, and no one can ever know what happened.

My brother was killed by a Coven of witches. And I want revenge...