Late update is late

So.... Thanksgiving happened! Yeah! But I'm not going to write about that because mine was boring and the rest of the world wrote about it. I'll just leave that to the internet to talk about.

Ian finally got back to me and said that I was missing some letters or something with the Caesar shift cipher because he got a few phrases out of it, but the rest made no sense. I asked if he meant if it meant like crazy no-sense because you'd sort of think that's what you'd see, but he said it wasn't actual words, just letters. So I'm going to see about going back to the police station to get pictures of it or something and see if I can't translate it myself. Now that I know there's online things that'll do that for you, I'm kinda curious about what it says. He said the phrase "no mind" came up and I can't imagine a context where that makes sense, so now I'm curious.

The book, btw, is The Prophet by Khalil Gibran, obviously really really modified. The only part not subject to weirdness was the part on houses. Here's the entry for anybody still following along with Jessie's Weird Little Game of Life:

Then a mason came forth and said, “Speak to us of Houses.”

And he answered and said:
Build of your imaginings a bower in the wilderness ere you build a house within the city walls.
For even as you have home-comings in your twilight, so has the wanderer in you, the ever distant and alone.
Your house is your larger body.
It grows in the sun and sleeps in the stillness of the night; and it is not dreamless. Does not your house dream? And dreaming, leave the city for grove or hilltop?
Would that I could gather your houses into my hand, and like a sower scatter them in forest and meadow.
Would the valleys were your streets, and the green paths your alleys, that you might seek one another through vineyards, and come with the fragrance of the earth in your garments.
But these things are not yet to be.
In their fear your forefathers gathered you too near together. And that fear shall endure a little longer. A little longer shall your city walls separate your hearths from your fields.
And tell me, people of Orphalese, what have you in these houses? And what is it you guard with fastened doors?
Have you peace, the quiet urge that reveals your power?
Have you remembrances, the glimmering arches that span the summits of the mind?
Have you beauty, that leads the heart from things fashioned of wood and stone to the holy mountain?
Tell me, have you these in your houses?
Or have you only comfort, and the lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the house a guest, and becomes a host, and then a master?
Ay, and it becomes a tamer, and with hook and scourge makes puppets of your larger desires.
Though its hands are silken, its heart is of iron.
It lulls you to sleep only to stand by your bed and jeer at the dignity of the flesh.
It makes mock of your sound senses, and lays them in thistledown like fragile vessels.
Verily the lust for comfort murders the passion of the soul, and then walks grinning in the funeral.
But you, children of space, you restless in rest, you shall not be trapped nor tamed.
Your house shall be not an anchor but a mast.
It shall not be a glistening film that covers a wound, but an eyelid that guards the eye.
You shall not fold your wings that you may pass through doors, nor bend your heads that they strike not against a ceiling, nor fear to breathe lest walls should crack and fall down.
You shall not dwell in tombs made by the dead for the living.
And though of magnificence and splendor, your house shall not hold your secret nor shelter your longing.
For that which is boundless in you abides in the mansion of the sky, whose door is the morning mist, and whose windows are the songs and the silences of night.

 The part that was specifically not marked talked about something sneaking in and becoming your master.
So.... yeah. Still don't know what to make of it, but that's creepy as fuck.
I also realized that the reason I recognized some of the artwork. There's a copy of The Prophet downstairs in the bookcase, except it's a nice copy with a hardcover and not all of those pictures of the people in it. Little bit of synchronicity for you there.

Still no sign of hoodie. I think maybe the Summer of Weird starring him is finally over.  

Break on Thru to the Other Side...

I took it. I took the money and I'm here and this is probably retarded beyond words but it's over and I committed. I deposited the check, which Mr. Talbrie said he would be watching for as a sign I'd accepted the extension. So that's it, I can't back out.
Except I could. But I won't because I promised and I'm that girl that always keeps her word and lets you copy her homework when you forgot yours.
The truth is that I'm in real dire straits money-wise. I was down to my last $10 and was trying to see if I had anything to pawn so I could afford gas for the car. Now I can afford gas and actual food besides ramen. And I guess even better, it let me relax to focus on my schoolwork again.
I updated the police about the letter, so they're not thinking it's a missing person's deal any,ore. They think it's weird as fuck, but nothing illegal is happening so they're just letting the whole thing drop. They still keep an eye out for hoodie-guy, although the patrol car only comes around once a day anymore.
Still no sign of hoodie-boy. That needs to stay that way.
My academic advisor is starting to come around to a few of my ideas on my paper. I have to tweak it so it covers the rise and death of a few more memes, but I already have years of data on Nyancat and the Derp thing. (Was just tracking that for my own amusement) so it's not so big a deal.
I don't want to jinx it, but it looks like things may be starting to look up!

I guess a last little hommage to the original intent of this whole thing.... Looks like all of the original blogs and a few of the second wave are starting to wrap things up. Jeff is dead from Everyman Hybrid, there's some Livestream thing tonight for Tribe Twelve that people think won't end well, and Marble Hornets looks like it's gearing up to finally end it all. Kinda funny how these things happen, and how things rise and fall together. Like ideas. Like my idea to purely write a Slenderman phenomenon paper. It's falling away as the main driving vlogs/blogs are as well. Is it weird I find that poetic?

The house is back to creaking, but I think it's just the heat since that's on. Everything you were scared of always looks so much lamer in the light of day, doesn't it?? Anyway, I can live with noises.

My Inner Debate is Epic, Yo...

No more of hoodie guy. I am hoping that he has decided to leave strange scribbled-up presents on other people's doorsteps and go about his business.
I need to tell you about TODAY'S strangeness. I'm stressing that because every day there's a little something special here.
I arrived home after another fruitless attempt to redeem myself with my academic advisor to find a courier standing on the sidewalk looking confused. He looked even more confused when I pulled in to the driveway. Maybe a long day or something, who knows.
I asked him if he was lost and he just held out a package to me. "Ten Hundred Holloway?" he asked.
"Well, I say One Thousand, but since next door is Nine Hundred..."
And the guy was still holding it out to me and I realized he wanted me to take it. I'm a little weird about packages right now so I tried to read the label first. Weirdly, it had my name on it.
So I'm thinking fabulous, another book right as I'm relaxing.
But the guy's standing there with this funny look on his face holding the package out to me, and I can tell he's not going to let it go until I take it.
So I take it. And then I see that it's from Mr. Talbrie. And I give the biggest sigh of relief ever because the guy looks at me with a raised eyebrow, then wishes me a good day and jumps in his truck and hauls out of there.
I am now totally convinced that people are just utterly fucking insane in this part of the world, and he was a part of that.
The package, it turns out, was a letter from Mr. Talbrie explaining what the hell was going on. He was "sourcing a job" up north and was actually living in a furnished apartment somewhere with his family. They were trying to sell the house and everything in it, and for the time being he wants me to stick around and watch it.
And I was about ready to drop the letter in the street and finish taking my stuff out of the guest bedroom when I saw the check that was included. Payment for sticking around until everything was liquidated and making sure nothing was vandalized and the pets were cared for, the letter explained.
Written on that check was a number bigger than just about any other number I'd ever seen.
So I'm sitting here in the living room with the dog asleep on my toes with my brain going crazy. On one hand, I'm worried hoodie-guy will come back around. On the other hand, I have nowhere to go and I've been putting my belongings back in a storage unit where it was all dumped after I left student housing early this spring. And that's not to mention the weird sounds or the fact that people around here generally act like freaks about this place.
I'm not sure what to do, guys. It's a lot of money. A LOT of money. And the Talbries seem to need the help. I would really hate to suddenly just jet and leave them with nobody to watch after the critters, you know?
Tonight's going to be spent chewing on raw Pop Tarts and gummi bears and drinking the last of the flat Mt. Dew left in the kitchen. After that, maybe crank the TV and watch a movie until I pass out. When I wake up I'll make the decision.

As a side note, I noticed some of the comments I made on another blog have disappeared, and I apologize if I was being waaay too friendly and stuff. I don't know you guys, and I didn't mean to get all up in your thing. I hope you'll forgive me, Tom and crew. I was just wanting to help but you guys obviously got your own thing going on, so I'll keep to my thing. Good luck with that idiot dressing up as Himself.

G'night internet.

Wherein All The Things Come Crashing Down

The house survived the hurricane, and everybody inside is well. Dog and cats seemed mostly unconcerned while the lights flickered around us. Me, I was curled up with a blankie and candles ready to survive on water and gummi bears for a few days, if necessary.
Halloween snuck up on me. I turned around and suddenly there were decorations in yards and I had to run and buy the leftover crappy candy from the Acme grocery store a few miles away, and the little candy-grubbing bastards made faces as I handed it out. Fine. Whatever. It's not my place, you're lucky you go anything.
It's amazing how living in this place for a few months has made me just really hate teenagers as a species.
You will note that it is November 4th. I don't remember if I posted it or not, as every single blog post between the 10th and now got eaten (I'm sitting in a Starbucks posting this, hoping this makes it through) but I never got an extension request from Mr. Talbrie. It was with great relief that the 15th, then the 16th, 17th and onward slid by without a single email asking me to stay longer. I wanted out of here, and it was going to be a huge relief to hand the keys over and leave.
Except Mr. Talbrie didn't show up on the 31st.
Honestly, I went and grabbed the candy so he would have something to hand out and not be blind-sided by hundreds of costumed kiddos looking for glucose and fructose. No good deed...
I thought maybe I misunderstood so I waited, packing the last of my things. I hung out and read a book all day November 1st, being careful not to dirty any more dishes, that the dishwasher was run and emptied. God, I must've checked the trash cans 5 times to make sure I hadn't left garbage in them. I even dusted, even though he'd asked me to leave things alone. I just didn't want him to come home tired with his family to a house that needed to be cleaned. I remember what a drag it was as a kid to have to put away your suitcase and stuff after a trip to the Shore, I can't imagine what a whole house is like.
Except... no Mr. Talbrie. No Mrs. Talbrie. No kids. Nothing.
I started calling at that point, leaving a voicemail, asking if everything was okay. No response.
Same for November 2nd. Same for yesterday.
I have called him easily a dozen times now, to the point that his voicemail is now telling me it's full and cant take any more messages. I took to emailing him, but there's been no response. I even tried texting, but got a message back that his phone doesn't support texts (?! really? in this day and age?!?).
So it's November 4th, and I've been sitting here in this huge house by myself, dog and two cats crashed out on the floor around me, and no idea what to do next.
I called the police a little bit ago to tell them about what was going on and maybe get an idea of what to do next. I'm sure they're getting tired of hearing from me. The conversation in my head goes something like this:
*cop on phone covers mouthpiece* "Hey guys! Guys! It's that crazy chick that gets weirded out by everything down on Holloway!"
*other cop* "Oh god, her again? What now? She seeing aliens or ghosts or something?"
*cop on phone* "Naw, the owner of the house just disappeared. You know, normal stuff..."
Ugh.
But they took me seriously, especially what with weird packages showing up and stalkery guys wandering the back yard. They came to the conclusion, as I did, that maybe we needed to be worried about the Talbries and someone who had it out for them. So they're trying to get in touch with them too, now.
God, in the middle of all of this, I'd almost forgotten. Blue hoodie guy hasn't been around the past few weeks. Just up and disappeared. I am wondering if he didn't realize the Talbries aren't here and moved to find them.... but wow is that dark and wow do I not want to think I'm in the home of a murdered family. Wow. Yeah. No, not going to dwell on that.
So I'm sitting here sipping at a coffee I can't really afford so I can steal the wifi and update this. It looks like I'll need to leave in order to do that for now, because stuff can come IN on the net connection at the house, but things don't leave. It's like a weird dead zone for electronics. Except for that back corner there.
Before I end this, I should mention... Ian took a look at the jumbled letters and said that it might be something called a "Caesar shift cypher" and that he would look in to it and get back to me. He's got a lot going on, so messing with word puzzles isn't a priority. I don't blame him. And I'm sure the police figured it out already. Though not telling me about it makes me wonder if it's something really bad or not.
I have turned in to the jumpiest fraidy-cat since moving in to that house, honestly.
I think if I don't get news by tomorrow I'll try to figure out how to leave. I don't want to leave the animals there without somebody to feed them, so that's the main sticking point. I don't know what to do about all of this. I've never run in to anything like it before. I just know I don't want to house-sit anymore. I want to get on with my life.