Entry #84

I'm so sorry for not telling you what's been happening. It's just...there's been so much going on. Everything happened at the last swim meet of the season. It was out in Long Island, 3 days in a row of races.

Saturday night, the second and last night at the hotel, we swimmers decided to pull a prank on our head coach. We wanted to trash his room, but he went to bed too early. So we decided to saran wrap his car. It was pretty late, but we ran to a nearby grocery store, got five rolls of saran wrap and found his car. Only six of us were in on the prank (including Mike. He was back to swimming a while ago, I just never asked him about Ken), and I got a whole video of it. Well, video of most of it, up to the point when I saw Locust.

We were being really cautious, checking to see if the coach was looking out his window, and hiding if we thought he was. I was looking up at the window, and pointing the camera at the window, when it made a squeaking noise. Sort of like nails on a chalkboard, painful and metallic. The screen glitched out, went to static, and shut off.

None of my friends noticed the noise, they were too involved with not tearing the saran wrap. I was trying to fix the camera when I saw him. Locust was just standing in the shadow by the corner of the hotel. I could tell he was watching us. All the blood rushed to my head and my vision got really fuzzy.

I was stupid. I shouldn't have left my friends out there with Locust standing there. I made an excuse that I had to see if the night clerk at the hotel's front desk was telling our parents about what we were doing, and I went inside. As soon as I got in the door I felt better.

I sat in the lobby for a few minutes, playing with the camera and trying to make it work again. It still doesn't work, even now. After a while, I went back out to see if they were done, because it was almost midnight, even though I didn't want to chance seeing Locust again.

I stepped out the door, and I saw Mike crawling toward me. There was a trail of red behind him. None of the other kids were in sight. I couldn't speak. I stammered, I don't even know what I was going to say. He grabbed my leg and whispered something I couldn't hear. I bent down. My legs were shaking so badly I practically fell on Mike.

He said to me, "You brought him here, didn't you?"

All I could do was nod. I sat there for a moment before I turned to run into the hotel to get help. As I got up, I saw a black pant leg directly in front of me. Except they weren't pants. They were little masses of swarming black tentacles, forming the general shape of pants. His suit was made of tentacles, just like his hat.

The last thing I saw before I blacked out was his head, towering far above me.

I woke up in my hotel bed, next to my parents' bed. It was time to get up for breakfast. I didn't want to know what was happening, but I had to. I got up, got dressed, and went to breakfast before my parents could wake up.

Sitting at one of the tables were all the people involved in the prank, all of them laughing and eating. Including Mike.

I sat at a different table, far away from them.

I don't know what the hell happened there, but now I know Mike knows something. Even if it's secondhand knowledge from Ken, I need it. I need it to be "ready" for whatever James is saying I need to be ready for. I took these three days off from swimming, but I'm going back tomorrow. And I'm confronting Mike.

R.C.