Things in Shadow

Second Subject’s responses to Investigators written questionnaire. EYES ONLY.

1. Mary Louise Elizabeth Smith.

2. Sixteen on May 19th.

3. Yes, both.

4. He works for one of those big computer companies doing something I’m not sure of. Whenever I ask him he just says, “dealing with assholes,” and Mom tells him not to talk like that around me like I’m some kind of toddler.

5. Pharmaceutical representative for GENTECH Inc.

6. One brother. I know this isn’t part of the question but I just want to point as that this whole thing is Chuck’s fault and it’s really not fair for me to get in trouble as well.

7. A writer or a Vet.

8. Once, but that’s none of your business.

9. If by “first signs of trouble” you mean that time he got suspended from school, then two months ago.

10. Changed every ones grades to perfect 100’s. I know everyone says he’s some kind of genius but that doesn’t seem very smart, I mean there’s no way he could have gotten away with it; everyone noticed.

11. They yelled at him for a while then grounded him from all electronics. He wasn’t even allowed to use the electric can opener, which seemed little ridiculous. So he started reading a lot more, I think that was the main problem.

12. Three or four a day, it was ridiculous. I can barley read all my chapters for English class and here he was going through book after book. They were big too, like the kind teachers keep on shelves behind them to look impressive. He pretty much just stayed in his room reading those massive books then took them back to the library and get more, even after his suspension ended. He wasn’t talking to Mom or Dad because he was still mad about not being able to watch T.V. or use his computer.

13. He told me he had got it from the subbasement in the library. I didn’t even know it had a normal basement. The book looked like one of those Oxford English Dictionaries except from the 18^th century. I can’t prove it or anything, and it hardly matters now, but I think he might have stolen it from the rare books room. It looked like it should have been in a museum.

14. A bunch of squiggly lines, I guess. Chuck said it was some kind of dead language that no one had been able to translate. I told him it was probably some kind of cookbook but he just rolled his eyes and went to his room.

15. Three days. I guess that might be impressive because he was still going to school but it probably wasn’t that hard to figure out. The people who wrote it probably just wrote everything backwards or something stupid.

16. Well he was acting all excited and antsy. He kept smiling and mumbling too himself like the homeless man on fifth street who smells like old fruit. Mom asked him if it was about a girl but he just sort of scowled at her and went back to his room. After he left, she asked Dad if he thought Chuck might be in love. Dad said he was certainly acting crazy enough.

17. When I found the pentagram in the attic.

18. Angry, because he had used all my sidewalk chalk.

19. A bunch of weird symbols and a lot of the squiggly line stuff from the old book.

20. Well normally I don’t really care what he does but this was kind of serial killer creepy. But he made me promise not to tell Mom and Dad, and I figured they’d find it the next time they went to the attic, anyway.

21. When our parents went out for their anniversary dinner. I hadn’t seen Chuck since they left but I had a paper to write so I wasn’t really paying much attention.

22. It was around 10 when I started to smell something. It was awful, like burning tar and garbage. The kind of smell that just gets inside your head.

23. He was in the attic with the pentagram, muttering stuff.

24. A flash of light and the sound of nails on a chalkboard. The smell got way worse like he’d set off 20 stink bombs.

25. A thing crawled out of the floor. Not from behind something, just straight from the middle of the pentagram, like it had been waiting beneath the floorboards.

26. He called it something but it didn’t even sound like words, really.

27. Like it didn’t have a shape. Amorphous, maybe. Except for the spider legs. It looked about the size of a large lizard, although it was really hard to tell. The thing was completely black like it was made out of shadow or something.

28. Okay, so I’m not proud of this but I screamed really loudly. Like those blonde haired bimbos in the first scene of a horror movie that get chopped to pieces. That kind of scream. So it stands to reason that it surprised Chuck a little. He didn’t know I was there.

29. Well I didn’t see it happen but Chuck told me later that I made him move outside the circle, which broke the spell that gave him control over it. Like it was all my fault that thing escaped.

30. Out the attic window and into a sewer grate.

31. Chuck was about to run after it but then our parents pulled up. He told me not to say anything or he’d tell them about the time I got drunk with Stacy and threw butter at the meter maid. Plus, whose going to believe that my brother summoned a demon from hell, right? They’d think I was crazy or something.

32. Nothing, we didn’t talk about it.

33. When the cats started disappearing.

34. Not at first, they were mostly neighborhood strays, but then a few missing posters started popping up from other houses down the block.

35. Dogs, mostly.

36. I didn’t really mind it when the little yappy one from across the street disappeared, but then Mr. Henderson’s dog went missing. Butch was such a sweetie and he always seemed so happy to see me.

37. When Chuck came through my window covered in blood.

38. He’d been going out to look for it at night. I guess he found it. He told me he caught it by surprise while it was eating and scared it off. Problem is, the commotion woke up the neighbors too. So they found Chuck with half a Doberman, covered in blood. He managed to run before they recognized him but after that everyone thought there was some sort of psychopath running around killing their pets. Which, if you think about it was actually less awful that the truth.

39. The media made this big deal about it and they started sending patrols around the neighborhood at night. Chuck said that it was like running an all night delivery service. He said it had gotten a lot bigger and dogs wouldn’t be enough anymore. I didn’t ask how big.

40. Chuck couldn’t look for it anymore, because of the patrols. He stayed up all night reading that book. He told me not to go out after dark.

41. They found the car down an ally off Jefferson Street. Someone called because the police lights were still on. I don’t think they ever found the cops.

42. He came running into my room saying he’d finally figured it out. He wouldn’t tell me what he’d figured out only that he was sure he could stop it. Chuck said he had to hurry before it got dark and that it had to been done tonight because there was a full moon.

43. He took the rest of my sidewalk chalk.

44. Like the pentagram in the attic but it stretched across the street. There was more too, strange symbols that made pictures if you looked at them right. At that odd writing from the book. It took him over an hour and by the end it was nighttime and I had to hold a flashlight for him.

45. He told me to go back inside and lock the doors. I told him nuts to that, I wasn’t going to hide inside while some stupid spider thing ate my brother. He told me that it probably wasn’t going to eat him and that he loved me. I told him to stop talking like that and he just smiled and said something that didn’t sound like words and my head started spinning and then I was walking back inside.

46. From my bedroom window. If he wasn’t going to let me outside I was at least going to watch.

47. He was reading from the book. More nonsense stuff. Then it got really dark, like all the light had out of the moon. Then, something started coming out over the sewer gates. It looked like thousands of black spiders, moving together like a flood. The started massing in one spot. They made this huge, dark, towering shape that loomed over Chuck. It didn’t look like spiders anymore. It didn’t look like anything really. Just a mass of black nothingness. The air was cold, I could feel it all the way from my room, and the thing started moving towards Chuck. He just stood there as the thing moved closer and closer. I started wildly looking around my room for something to throw at, maybe distract it so Chuck could get away. Then he screamed something and the whole pentagram caught fire with the dark mass in the center of it. The thing screamed, if you could call it that. The noise was like a thousand nails on a thousand chalkboards. Everything got really bright, and I could hear Chuck’s voice yelling over the screeching monster but the white light burned my eyes and I couldn’t see. Then suddenly, everything was quiet. It took a while for my eyes to adjust to the darkness again but when they did there was nothing. No dark shape, no burning pentagram, no Chuck.

48. Then you people showed up.

49. Look, forget your questions. I know you’re the ones who did something to everybody to make them forget. No one talks about the disappearances or what happened that night. My parents don’t even seem to acknowledge that Chuck is missing. I tried to get my mom to remember once, I showed her pictures and all that, and she just stared at me for a while then asked what I wanted for dinner. You know, if you’d just gotten here three weeks ago, none of this would have happened. Look, Chuck was annoying and a nerd, and he may have opened a portal to hell and all, but he was a good brother and I miss him.

50. Please find him.