Grace Alone

Hello there. Grace is asleep right now. Poor thing. She was so tired, she could barely keep her eyes open. To say it was a bad day would be understatement.

But let's start at the beginning.

Grace managed to buy a Smith & Wesson 22A .22 semiautomatic. Personally, I would have gone with a larger .44 caliber, but .22 was fine. She spent a day practicing at a gun range and then spent the rest of her time watching the cabin Derek was in.

Eventually, she received the warning hidden throughout this journal. "Be wary, Grace, for hope is sparse. This whole game is a mummer's farce." How right that was. But I'm getting ahead of myself. She was tired of waiting, so she took on the head-on approach.

She bought a sledgehammer. She brought it to the cabin. She swung it very hard until the lock on the door broke. And then she walked inside. (If this doesn't sound badass, I'm saying it wrong. It was quite impressive.)

She walked through the hallway and came to the living room. And there was Derek.

You know how sometimes in cliched horror movies, someone will go "That was easy. Too easy." Well, that's what Grace thought. This was too easy. Until she looked into Derek's eyes and she knew. The warning said that "hope is sparse," but it should have said that "hope is gone."

Because Derek? Derek was gone, too. His eyes were dull and lifeless. When he stood up, he moved like the Misfits, like a puppet on strings. And worst of all, she knew that he had probably been this way for a while. Since the beginning of the game, perhaps.

He attacked her, his body moving unnaturally swift, feet barely touching the floor. He held her down. He didn't say a word. What would he have said? He was just a doll, a puppet. He was the mummer's farce.

Grace cried out and struggled against him. Part of her wanted to give in, to give up, to let go and be a puppet with Derek. Another part (the part that pushed her to drive, that swung the sledgehammer, that made her so obstinate) made her struggle more, until she was able to reach inside her coat pocket and gripped the gun and pulled the trigger.

In the aftermath of the first gunshot (the sound deafening her), she pulled the trigger twice more. Derek was hit a total of three times, one in the stomach and twice in the chest. The first shot in the chest had killed him, but as his body was still moving (due to the Wooden Girl's strings), she shot him again. Then she slowly stood up, steadied herself against the wall, and shot him three more times.

Then she put the gun back in her coat pocket and walked away, away from the room, from the cabin, from Seven Devils. She got into her car and drove until she found another motel and she fell onto the bed and slept.

I want to thank all of you, the people who posted the answers. She could never have found Derek without you. Whether that's good or bad, I don't know. Things happen. Sometimes the outcome is beneficial, sometimes it's not. As the Stranger said, sometimes we eat the bear, sometimes the bear eats us. If you have any questions, you can comment and I'll try to answer as truthfully as possible.

I don't know how long she's going to sleep. Perhaps days, perhaps weeks, perhaps months. I'll take care of her while she does. That's my job.

Thank you,
Kevin B, the Lonesome Artist

In Dreams

I had a dream. I was walking through the zoo trying to find my mom. I was a little girl again, but...not. You know dream logic. The zoo was full of people, but no animals. So many people there that I couldn't find my mom. I kept on catches glimpses of her around the corner, but I could never find her.

But I found Derek. He tapped me on the shoulder and said, "Tag, you're it, Karen."

"I'm not Karen," I said.

"Make up your mind then," he said. "I remember back when all you wanted was to be called Karen. Blah blah blah don't call me Grace."

"What are you talking about?" I asked.

"You don't remember?" He laughed and I shivered. "You loved that stupid horror movie. It scared you out of your wits, but you insisted on watching it every time it came on."

I looked around and noticed that there weren't any people around anymore. "Where's Mom?" I asked.

"Where she always is," Derek said. "In the ground, pushing up daisies."

"She was here, I saw her." I turned around and Derek was gone as well. "Derek?" I turned around again and there was my dad, standing inside one of the cages. "Dad? Do you know where Derek went?"

"He's in here, too," Dad said. "Somewhere. Don't worry, my little Judy. I always loved you more."

"I'm not Judy," I said. "I'm Grace."

"Judy, Grace, Karen," he said. "You had so many friends. You were never lonely growing up." He looked at me with wrinkled face and I suddenly remembered scattering his ashes in the ocean and how I wanted to cry but couldn't.

"Dad," I asked, "where's Mom?"

His smile faded. "She's not here," he said. "It's not her." I heard footsteps behind me and I turned again and there she was. My mom. Same faded dress she always wore, same hairstyle, but I couldn't see her face. She was wearing a wooden mask. "Don't go with her," my father whispered.

My mother went to lift the mask from her face and then I woke up.

I don't know why I'm telling this. I just felt the need to write it all down.

sparse.

Phone Call

There was a cellphone on the doorstep to my motel room this morning. I've been staring at it all day.

I'm in a city called Greensboro right now. The weather has started to improve. I can start driving again.

I waited for the call. I checked - there were no numbers programmed into the phone. It's a burner (as I've learned from watching many cop shows) and therefore untraceable. So I waited.

Ten minutes ago, it rang. Appropriately enough, the ringtone was "Funeral March of a Marionette."

I let it ring twice before I answered.

I spoke to him. We talked. The connection wasn't good - I had trouble understanding half the words he said - but it was still good talking to him.

And then the phone died. The Jester had carefully drained the batteries enough so that the call lasted around four minutes and then stopped.

I pulled the battery out of the phone and a slip of paper fell out. On it was written: o monogenes.


I put the battery back in the phone, stuffed it in my bag, and left.

farce.

Return to the Road

I'm driving again. On the road to Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina.

I went out again yesterday, just looking for some clue, some hint, anything. I found nothing. Eventually, I just sat down and finished reading Echo. Which was also unsatisfactory, because it was only the first volume and it ended on a cliffhanger.

I finally checked the comments and found that you guys figured out where to go next. So I went back to my motel room.

It was unlocked. Cautiously, I opened the door and stepped inside. There was nobody there. Nothing was moved. Except.

Except there was a package on the bed.

Tentatively, I opened the package and found the same note I had found a few days ago on my car. Except now someone had written over it.

"hell of a race" is what it now says.

I flipped the note:

It's the "see you soon" part that disturbs me.

Underneath the note was a notebook:

The outside of the notebook.

And the first page.

And, even stranger, underneath the notebook was this:

Yes, that's right, it's the "complete edition."

I looked around the motel room some more, but didn't find anything else. So I packed up the box with my other stuff and left.

I hope this is the last place. The place where I can find Derek. I'm beginning to lose hope. I know I still have a phone call. The Jester promised a phone call. I'm holding onto that.

I wonder how long it will last. How long until the Jester tires of the game and decides to just kill us both.

Kill Devil Hills. I wonder. Can I kill the Devil? When the time comes, can I kill the Jester?

Wandering in Graceland

I'm probably going to talk to Derek soon. I wish I had something to tell him. I wish I could tell him I knew where he is or where my next step is. I wish I could tell him everything is going to be alright.

But I can't.

I wandered around Graceland today, just looking at everything, trying to see if there were any more clues. There weren't. Nothing except Elvis memorabilia, which looked as fake as the Oz memorabilia back in Kansas.

I want to stay awake. I don't want to sleep. I fell asleep once and dreamed I was in the sky falling. I was falling so fast I thought when I hit the ground I would be shattered into a million pieces. I don't even remember hitting the ground in my dream, I just woke up.

I don't know what Neville (or the Vagabond, or whatever his name was) was talking about. I don't know anything. I don't know what I'm doing.