Addendum: Cadejo

It is incomprehensible... what good lies in writing memories... if by the end of the day they will be lost?

Do you really find relief in making public your insanity? As I said before, no one will ever believe you.

I was sent to track down someone. And it happens that I stumbled upon you. So unassuming, looking like any homeless man... but that little notebook of yours was quite the giveaway. I get to say, it is the feat, fooling them like that. Perhaps the only flaw in your plan was that there is no way for an illiterate Australian to write those epitaphs. Nice touch, thought.

"Evolutive", daring, perhaps...  Audacious even. I like the effort you put in triying to fool me, so I would help in making your little journal a bit more interesting. Every time you fell asleep, I would make a few edits... Add some things... And you never cared, perhaps because you already guessed who was the one whispering.

Maybe not right now... Seeing your face when you wake up and find this entry will be worth a laugh or two...

But count on this my friend, I will be seeing you very soon.

I'm buried alive

I got to escape from that foul marshland… and I barely recall what I did next. All I remember is waking up in an ambulance, people saying I nearly drowned in the Hudson River and that my left hand was severed…. I just wanted to die… and they didn’t let me…

I am secluded right now. They say it is for my security… how wrong they are.

I saw him, he was in a church.  He was using a hood and spoke like the gangster; I fell for it… He embraced me; he told me that everything was going to be OK… all that I ever wanted to hear, was said. When I tried to return the gesture, I could feel a huge wound on his right side.

He tightened his hold when I touched his wound... His wound was bleeding water; his hood fell down, revealing a horrible face… it was a sick and disgusting collage of different skin colors, eyes whose shape didn’t match, all manner of scars and birthmarks… all his “trophies” in one body.

Since that day, I ran out of options. They will hunt me down.  The water wants me down. The Nightwatch wants me down… he believes I am the one responsible for his brother’s “malady.” There’s nothing left… except him.

All I hear are his whispers… words demanding me to confess. Sometimes, he changes people’s words, so all I hear are blaming and curses. And in rare occasions, in the corner of my eye… he shows himself, a blurry black creature standing on all four, staining his mouth with my hand’s blood.

I am ambidextrous… but I favored my left hand for writing. Why would he want to cripple me? He must think as the Nightwatch… I’m so sick of being the scapegoat.

There is a mirror in front of me. I see myself, trying to talk me out of it… that he will fix anything… but that he needs me alive to do it. There is a leak in the ceiling… There is even a little girl, nonchalantly drawing the word “coward” with her crayons.

The assassin said that if one of them grabs you, He can’t take you…

He is standing in the corner of the room, an opaque stain vaguely dog-shaped. There are two big red eyes in the shadow, their dark pupils fixated on me. The stare is like a dagger to the chest, but it felt so soothing.

The others are gone… no voices, no scribbling, no dripping… just silence and the dog’s judging gaze. He has a few pages in his mouth; seemingly from them, judging by the use of German and Greek…

They are haunting my dreamworld

The creature mimicking my father froze upon seeing all the other creatures in the swamp. Then, all of a sudden, he was in front of me. His eyes… God, his eyes… I could see all of hell’s fury reflected in them. He took hold of my neck and started to tighten his grip. His intentions were clear… I didn’t oppose him, I could finally have sweet relief... If it weren't for my accursed savior.

She was beautiful… raven hair and ivory skin… she was dripping wet. She was embraced by tiny tendrils coming from the swamp, delicately gripping her neck and arms… I recognized her by her necklace. It found a new vessel.

She walked towards the creature, rather seductively, and stopped at inches from his face. I think I heard the impostor whispering “not again” causing the woman, and the others, to laugh. The creature let me go; he clearly had something to deal with. She smirked when the man smugly came to her.

She did something that left him frozen. She showed him her necklace, and she broke it with a clenching fist. The man was shocked… It couldn’t be possible. She threw away the pieces in her hand with a grin in her face; the man could only stand there, unbelieving at what his eyes showed him. “You are next” She said.

Thin transparent strings rose from the water. They pierced the skin of the man, like fishhooks… they went deep through him and slowly reeled back, ripping apart the shape of the man like paper. He was clearly distressed; he couldn’t leave, the woman wouldn’t let him… he could only scream… and soon after, not even that.

He saw me… I know he did. He turned and gave me one last look. His eyes, once they were green… now they were a deep shade of blue… The tentacles caused horrific gashes in the body of the man, as he slowly began giving up. Those tendrils were like maggots, scurrying and invading every wound in his body.  

All of the man’s limbs were damaged beyond repair. It would have been quite the mess… but there wasn’t any blood. Yet, I could see how life was slowly drifting away from him. The only effort he could do was to keep his head above the water, trying not to look as the pathetic and helpless little kid he really was.

With a cold smile in her face, and with eyes that shone with glee, she caressed his worn out face, even kissing it, before pushing it under the water. She calmly spoke to him; telling him all the horrifyingnthings she had in store for him… she said that this is only the beginning. Evolutive Flow… No more. All shall know of what it is capable… it shall never be ignored again…

Of the thirteen, there is no forgotten one.

He is lost in the darkness

I got to escape from the water’s domains… it held me and two others as prisoners in a swamp, were it experimented on us, treating us like filthy guinea pigs. The other two were acquainted with all this madness; an assassin for the Nightwatch and one of the Cleric’s gangsters. The former was beyond redemption; all that was left was a mumbling mess counting his every hair. The latter, was too calm; he simply stared at the sky, sitting on a rock and insisting that “Father” will eventually come for him, all while drinking from the tainted waters as if they were fine wine…

I left the two servants, but I kept seeing disturbing things… I saw a beautiful woman, impossibly so, with blood dripping from her chest in the vague shape of a dress. With her there was a man; he was horribly deformed, with sickly green skin and black scales replacing hair… the woman and he… they hadn’t shame.

I kept moving… I saw a satyr. He was playing a harp, sad notes coming from the strings. I thought I heard a soft mourn coming from his mouth… before he abruptly dropped his harp on the water. Or something came from the water… I didn’t turn back to watch. I had to keep going.

The swamp was rife with the water’s creations… all fauna was altered beyond recognition. The birds could have easily been mistaken for lizards, with all those scales and protrusions… the crocodiles had gills and enormous muscles… The aberrations I saw didn’t deserve to be called fish…

But that was nothing with what I found next. The water is smart. It is vengeful… it won’t stop. It didn’t suffice with the creatures living in its swamp… it had one more trophy to collect.

That ugly bastard, I hated feeling sorry for him. He looked like my father, but he obviously couldn’t care less about impersonating him correctly. He was mocking me, presenting me with a caricature of my beloved parent.

When the impostor saw the deviant couple, the satyr and the gangster… it went into a rage. It shouted in an unknown language… so eldritch that the gangster and the assassin fainted after hearing some words. His words were like a tornado going through my ears, but other than that, I couldn't feel anything else. It seemed to be talking to the other creatures… but no one listened.

Even thought I hated him, he didn’t deserve that… I know what it feels like. Everyone you know, suddenly acting against you…

The End of the Son

For some reason, I decided to take my child to a park. I knew it seemed a bad idea… that this fall was very chilly, but something kept telling me to do it…

We sat on a bench. We were under the shadow of an immense tree… and my child’s eyes glowed with relief. A faint smile appeared on that worn out face and I think that I heard a soft whisper.

I felt the tension on my chest slowly disappearing, even more than when the kid first appeared. And a soft smell, like incense, drifted in the air…

After coughing a little… My child hummed my silly song… I hummed with him, I think he smiled when I did... but a sharp pain silenced him. He clutched his chest, his face wincing with agony... He stopped singing and returned to his usual, distant self, shuddering after the episode.

After some awkward moments, my little child broke our silence... "Why?" He said, his voice hoarse from so much coughing. "Because I... don't want it to happen again." I replied, trying my hardest to not cry. The little one started distancing from me when I said that... tears bubbling in his little gray eyes... "Me too" He said as he tried to gather strength... but the pain was too much for him.

I didn't feel the chains on my chest anymore... but I still felt hurt... For a minute, I was tempted to leave the kid there and actually, I nearly did. The kid was expecting it... he wiped his tears and a particularly powerful coughing fit overtook him. I felt ice crawling inside my veins as I went farther from the bench... as I walked away, I started to forget... and for a minute... I dismissed my own flesh and blood as just another hobo kid.

But there was this pain, this grief, as if I failed at something... I saw my child, he was crying... I realized that I failed... After some minutes, the cold faded away... and I remembered my little soldier... There was a soft weep in the cold air, as well as a smell of tobacco, neither disgusting but not too pleasant... and I rushed to my child, like any concerned father would do.

My little one was getting tired... I sat on the bench and he leaned closer to me, eventually falling asleep on my arm. I could hear a faint "thank you" coming from somewhere... and I noted that the incense, the tobacco... even the cold... were gone. There was sadness in the air, not grief... only sadness. I didn't know from where it came... but I felt pathetic... impotent... and the chains returned.

“His name was Tim” A voice told me…

Tim was fast asleep… he was so tired… the little tree branch scratching his face didn’t trigger any reaction. It was getting cold, so I took my jacket and gave it to him… little kids shouldn’t be cold…

“I know you were hurt… by someone else… I see it by the way you carried yourself… if you had let me… here’s what I’d do… I’d take care of you… I also have lost…”

I know he listened… even when it has been one hour since he fell asleep.

The End of the Father

“My only wish is to die real… Cause that truth hurt and those lies heal…”

It’s an old song I used to listen with my kid… And now that I have this new kid, I’ll try to do the same…

I’ve been such an irresponsible father… But, this time, I will not botch it; this kid won’t pass the same hardships my old son used to endure. The poor soul endured worse things than my son… I knew it the minute I opened my door, wearing such a tired face… those grey eyes, just begging for someone to do something… You must be really coldhearted to say no…

The child is very quiet, often reminding me of my son. I see him, instead of the sick kid… but I really can’t tell… after the storm a week ago… I don’t know. After that day, everything changed. My son… he yelled at me, accusing me of ruining everything. But I know that that wasn’t him… his voice was too hurt… the strength he showed wasn’t his… I know that he tried to punch me jokingly… that he forgot about his strength…

He left the house after the fight. Ever since, I felt such weight in me… my doctor says that it was because of my injuries but I know that it wasn’t true. That one of them was doing this… just like they made my son do such things. It feels like chains… heavy chains worthy of a prisoner like me…

I felt such pressure, sometimes I would pass out because I couldn’t breathe. I would be immobile in my bed, life slowly being choked out. Everything would go cold and dark… all I could smell was gunpowder and burnt wood… My house, now a dungeon… But I deserved it… even though I would scream for freedom… fainting when I ran out of air.

But when the child arrived, the pressure slowly yielded… all the guilt slowly gave away. I knew that I was granted a second chance… it was in those sad grey eyes…

We were very weak... but we seemed to feel better when we were near the fireplace. The fire… there was something in it that brightened the dungeon… We would fall asleep by the fireside; such warmth took all the pain away…

Addendum: Schlanke Mann

I refused to believe the claims. But now I see what a big mistake I have made. I supposed that we weren't having another Crisis #330...

The plague that struck Ichor's vessels is likely the reason for the recent alterations. Butterfly and the Compiler have denied any involvement in it, despite the fortuitous nature of the disease. And the only ones with such powers... went MIA three years ago. And for an Author to go missing...

The claims to my brother's mental health are largely unfounded. Although its lack of activity in comparison to the other thirteen its worrisome...