THE NIGHT BLOGGER:

A Season In Hell

Prologue

Personal Journal Entry #1

by

Al Bruno III

*

To Be Continued

THE NIGHT BLOGGER:

Slim To None

part fifteen

The Tarantino Situation

by

Al Bruno III

*

To Be Continued

______________________________

THE NIGHT BLOGGER:

Slim To None

part fifteen

Women And Children

by

Al Bruno III

*

To Be Continued

_______________________________________________________________________

February 14th: Since the disappearance of Gigi (REDACTED) things have only gotten crazier. Some of the surviving members of the Colonie Village Nine have cut off all contact with yours truly, others are checking in with me every few hours or so.

There are three folders on my computer desktop, ‘Confirmed Sightings’, ‘Possible Encounters’ and ‘Assorted Bullshit’. The first two folders are pretty empty, the third is overflowing with nonsense and possible facts.

A lot of people dismiss the entity as a meme. For those of you that don’t know, a meme is defined as an idea that passes from person to person within a culture. That’s the Slenderman in a nutshell, an online urban legend sustained by a legion of frustrated writers and struggling filmmakers. 

And that is my problem, how do I know what’s real? How do I separate the true-life lousy pictures from the carefully constructed photoshops? Is there a way to tell the difference between a true account and an Alternate Reality Game. 

And how many fucking Youtube videos are there about this guy anyway?

It was inevitable, I suppose, that my punishing schedule of work, online paranormal investigation and InuYasha viewing marathons would catch up with me…

THE NIGHT BLOGGER:

Slim To None

part six

Who Can It Be Now?

by

Al Bruno III

…a noise startled me awake. I had a few moments of not knowing where I was and what the Hell was going on.

Then my backache and eyestrain brought it all back to me. I had fallen asleep at my desk watching a Marble Hornets compilation. 

Oh well, I’d fallen asleep watching worse. I closed my laptop and stood up. When I stretched my back and neck crackled in protest. I had been drooling in my sleep so I dabbed the moisture away on the edge of my sleeve. It was dark in my apartment, the radio alarm clock was turned at just the right angle to keep me from being able to tell what time it was. 

The sound came again, it was a creak. Once I was sure it wasn’t coming from my spine I started to look around. The building I lived and worked in was old and full of little noises, it settled and sighed all the time. If that wasn’t enough my boss and landlady Mrs. Vincenzo lives above me so hearing her puttering about is a fairly normal occurrence. And have I told you about the time a family of skunks got into the walls? 

That was one long and stinky week.

But this sound wasn’t coming from above or below, this was coming from right outside my apartment door. It was that board on the landing, the squeaky one.

Someone was right outside my door.

Being a total dumb-ass I called out, “Is somebody there?” There was no answer of course and the noise continued. It was like someone was rocking in place.

I held my breath and waited. I switched out the lights, then after a few minutes of sweating in the dark I switched them on again.

In case you’re wondering my door doesn’t have a peephole. I always thought they were for wimps, that’s the same reason I don’t have a welcome mat.

Creak.

Since I didn’t have any better ideas I called again “I said who’s there?” and instantly hated myself for it.

Creak. Creak. Creak.

This was a stand off in every sense of the word. I let ten minutes pass by before I actually got the nerve up to do something. I tip-toed to the kitchen.

Yeah, now I decided to be stealthy. I should probably have thought of it before I started shouting like every slasher movie victim ever. I got a knife out of the silverware drawer.

Truth be told if my residence had been blessed with a rear exit or a fire escape I would have been halfway down Central Avenue by now. I still hadn’t worked up the nerve to confront whoever might be outside my apartment so I put my ear to the door.

What did I expect to hear? Heavy breathing? Show tunes? Damned if I know but I didn’t hear anything  at all.

The creaking had stopped. I closed my eyes and prayed I’d hear the sound of someone retreating back down the stairs. I waited like that for a while.

When I opened my eyes again, my gaze was drawn to the upper left hand side of the doorway. Something …no four somethings were slipping between the door and the frame.

Four inhumanly long fingers that curled like smoke…

*

…but it was all a dream.

Well, either that or I blacked out.

All I know for sure is that I woke up in my bed buried deep under the covers. Yes I did shriek at the sound of my own alarm clock, thanks for asking.

I still don’t know if I really saw what I saw or if it was just a dream. On one hand I’m not one for nightmares, after dealing with a verdilak you point and laugh at nightmares. On the other hand how did I get from my desk to my bed? I checked the silverware drawer and the knife is still there and my laptop is still open.

It would be so easy to dismiss the whole thing as my subconscious having a little cruel fun with me.

Well, it would be easy if not what I found waiting outside my door. I was heading downstairs for work and nearly tripped over it. It’s just a cardboard box, a shoebox probably. It’s been carefully wrapped in newspapers that are at least fifteen years old. There are no stamps or delivery labels on it. When I shake the box I hear a soft rattling.

What’s in there? I haven’t looked, I’m not ready yet. But we all know it sure isn’t Valentine’s candy.

To Be Continued

February 7th: Remember the time the Vice President shot a guy in the face? 

Not the current one, the other one- Dick Cheney. When he shot that guy he was on what they called a ‘canned hunt’. Canned hunts are these half-assed wildlife preserves where they raise animals to be practically domesticated so pussified pseudo-hunters can shoot them with ease.

Imagine it, a bunch of pheasants kept in a dark enclosed space so that when they’re released they have no idea how to save themselves from what’s coming.

That’s how I see the Colonie Village Nine.

Actually it’s the Colonie Village Seven now that Clayton (REDACTED) is dead and Suzie (REDACTED) is still missing. And let me tell you something, those remaining seven kids are scared, ready to run but with no idea where to go.

The more I investigate the more I think that the Spindly Man chose these kids a long time ago, he chose them for his own personal canned hunt.

I hear from at least one of the Colonie Village Seven every day, they report every shadow they see or noise they hear. They take pictures and videos and upload them to me and send me detailed emails.

I’m still under house arrest so all I can do is answer back, collate their information and try and match it up with other things out there on the Internet. You might think it’s kind of funny, Brian Foster hunting down a legend from the privacy of his own home.

Well, before you start chuckling too much, this is the final rambling email I received from Gigi (REDACTED)…

THE NIGHT BLOGGER:

Slim To None

part five

The Canned Hunt

by

Al Bruno III

“…Gigi (REDACTED) [(REDACTED)@gmail.com]

Sent: Wednesday, February 06, 2013 2:29 PM

To: 

The Night Blogger

“I’m not sure if this will get to you. I’m not even sure what day this is. Is it Tuesday? I can’t trust anything. You were right, time is wrong. I’ll be at work or on a date or just watching TV then it happens. I’m gone for hours. One minute I’m walking around all normal and then suddenly I’m in some kind of forest and I don’t know it happened. It’s always dark in the forest and there’s all this smoke. 

“When I ‘wake up’ its hours later and I’m where I’m supposed to be. Its like I never went anywhere. Sometimes I start coughing and I can’t stop. I thought maybe it was smoke inhalation but when I went to the doctor they said there was nothing wrong with me.

“Where is that place Brian? I looked everywhere and there’s nothing in the news about a forest fire that’s been going on for days. Why are the woods so dark? Shouldn’t the fire light my way?

“Everyone thinks I’m depressed about Clay and Suzie. They tell me I’m acting like a zombie half the time. Is that what I’m like when I’m in the forest? Is this all just in my mind?

“That tall man. He’s making this happen.

“I hear him. Its just footsteps but I know they’re his and I know he wants me to hear him.

“He’s been in my room. Sometimes the clock radio goes off all by itself in the middle of the night even though I never set it. I sleep on my stomach and when the alarm goes off I pretend I’m still sleeping. I lie perfectly still because I know he’s standing at my bedside. He doesn’t have eyes but I know he’s staring. He doesn’t have a mouth but I know he’s smiling. If I lie still long enough he goes away.

“I lost an entire day today. I mean yesterday. I just walked out of the house and suddenly I was lost again. I wandered around in the trees and the smoke for what must have been hours. I tried to make a call but my phone had no bars.

“After a while I started yelling for help. I just wanted someone to hear me, even if it was him. I never heard anyone call back, I couldn’t even hear my voice echo. I started to wonder if I was in Hell.

“Then I was back home but I don’t know when. The clock, the computer and the microwave all show different times. You know about the handprint outside my window but you don’t know that the fingers don’t bend right.

“I’m afraid. I don’t know what to do…”

*

…the minute I saw that email I called her. After four rings she answered and shortly after I started speaking she asked me what I was talking about.

Yes, she was losing time. Yes, she was sure the Spindly Man was stalking her. Yes, she kept finding herself in that bleak forest. But no, she hadn’t emailed me.

And she didn’t see that handprint on her window until I told her about it. That’s when she started screaming and the call cut off.

Fact: No one has seen Gigi (REDACTED) since that night. A missing persons report has been filed but there are no leads.

Fact: Thanks to a little hacking from some good friends of mine I learned that the email I received on February 5th didn’t leave her mail server until today. Over twenty-four hours since her disappearance.

Fact: I haven’t found a way to see what that handprint looks like. She said it bent in all the wrong ways but what did that mean? The only thing I do know is this. Gigi (REDACTED)’s apartment is on the second floor of her building.

The canned hunt continues and the pheasants don’t know where to run.

To Be Continued

January 19th: Clayton (REDACTED) was found in his car, dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. That was two members of the Colonie Village Nine either dead or missing. Now there are two things the Albany Police Department doesn’t like- unsolved mysteries and mandatory sit ups, so as you can imagine they weren’t too happy with Clayton (REDACTED)’s suicide.

Already the rumors were starting, rumors of serial killers and suicide pacts. Nobody likes it when a high school senior decides to blow his brains out. People need someone or something to blame, most of the time tragedies like this make people start pointing accusing fingers at movies, music and video games.

I bet that would have happened with this case too- if they hadn’t found my contact info in Clayton’s phone…

THE NIGHT BLOGGER:

Slim To None

part four

Twizzlers And Beer

by

Al Bruno III

…Joseph Vincenzo opened his little pawn shop in 1967 at the Westgate shopping plaza. He told anyone that would listen that he saw his pawn shop as a way to help the less fortunate in his community, that he felt what he did was no different than a bank or a credit union. What he didn’t tell anyone was that his little pawn shop also laundered money for the Polish Mafia.

He didn’t tell anyone but the police found out anyway. Once the Mob found out the police had found out Joseph Vincenzo suffered a not-entirely unexpected fatal accident.

Of course who am I to make wild accusations? Maybe there is a perfectly rational explanation for why he drowned in raw sewage.

Joseph’s untimely and utterly disgusting death left his wife Claretha with nothing but a mountain of bills and a no longer mobbed up pawn shop. Other women might have sold everything and tried to start over but Mrs. Vincenzo decided she liked the little second hand shop she and her husband (and the Kielbasa Gang) had built. So after some soul searching she decided to keep Vincenzo’s Pawn in business.

But this time everything was on the up and up. Hold the Kielbasa you might say.

What does any of this have to do with the death of Clayton (REDACTED)? Not a damn thing, but Mrs. Vincenzo is a remarkable woman and she deserves an online shout-out. Yours truly would be toast if not for her patience and understanding.

And here’s hoping she doesn’t evict me for this latest mess I’ve gotten myself into.

The mess in question was Detective Phil Bradshaw walking in the door of Vincenzo’s Pawn during regular business hours. I was behind the front counter, looking over some family heirlooms that were about to be traded for quick cash. 

“Foster…” the rat-faced plainclothes cop growled, “I need to talk to you right now.”

Mrs. Vincenzo was on lunch so I tried to placate him with an “I’m kind of busy here.”

“No you’re not,” he flashed his badge around. “Everybody out or I take your names down and make sure what you’ve got here actually belongs to you.”

That was a harsh and unfair thing to say about our clientele but my only three customers cleared out in a hurry. “I don’t think you’re allowed to do that,” I said.

“Leave the law to me Foster,” he flipped the OPEN sign to CLOSED and locked the front door. I suppose I should have been intimidated by all this but I had been expecting it.

“Is there a problem?”

“What do you know about Clayton (REDACTED)? Was he a friend of yours?”

“We played Monopoly once.”

He leaned over the counter, his beady eyes glaring into mine, “Keep digging that hole Foster. Any grief you give me could be construed as hindering a police investigation. You want to go back to jail?”

“Not particularly,” I suddenly felt itchy where my electronic monitoring bracelet met my skin. “I knew Clayton, he consulted me.”

“Consulted? Ha-ha! Don‘t make me laugh.”

“You just did laugh.”

“Keep being a smartass Foster. I know that you’re up to another one of your scams,” he said. “You got those kids all riled up with your fairy tales and now look what’s happened.”

“Detective Bradshaw, if I was scamming people with fairy tales don’t you think I would have worn a better suit to my arraignment?

“Cut the nonsense! I want to know what you know and when you knew it.”

“Look…” I broke eye contact and started cleaning the glass counter, “I know he’s dead. He shot himself right? But are you sure of that? Maybe it was a murder.”

“Don’t play dumb with me, we both know powder burns don’t lie. You know the more I talk to you the more I miss the old days. You know what they would do to a guy like you in the old days?” Detective Bradshaw paused meaningfully. Just to make sure I didn’t miss his point he picked up the real imitation antique lamp at one end of the counter and hefted it like he was judging its ability to do damage to my skull.

But the joke was on him. If he knew how cheaply made the thing was he would have grabbed something else.

“All I know is what is available to the general public,” I sprayed down another part of the counter and cleaned the glass, “I mean it’s not like I know the bullet you pulled out of him was a 9 millimeter  and for some reason you can’t find the gun.”

Detective Bradshaw dropped the lamp, “You son of a bitch!”

“Oh dear. Vincenzo’s Pawn has a strict You Break It You Bought It Policy,” I turned to the register and started clicking buttons, “will that be cash or charge?”

“YOU SON OF A BITCH!”

*

…Clayton (REDACTED) was employed as a short order cook at the ‘76 Diner and all his co-workers said he was in good spirits on the last night of his life. The night manager did remark that he saw a figure in a black hoodie loitering outside the building, he never saw the person’s face clearly but he described the individual as ‘ugly’ and ‘monk-like’.

Ten minutes after Clayton’s shift ended a waitress spied him arguing with the same unidentifiable figure. Twenty minutes later he was caught on the surveillance camera of a nearby Hess station. He bought a six pack of beer and a Godawful amount of Twizzlers.

The burnt-out shell of what had once been Colonie Village Elementary School was fenced off and never rebuilt. It has remained a safety hazard and an eyesore for almost twenty years for reasons civil authorities have never satisfactorily explained.

Sometime after midnight Clayton parked his car as close to the fence as he could and shut off the engine. How long did he sit there with no heat in the almost twenty below weather? Long enough to drink six beers and eat a pound of candy. Long enough to work up the nerve to put a gun in his mouth.

Beer and Twizzlers. I can think of better last meals.

There’s no way to prove it but I don’t think he was alone in that car. Our hooded friend was there. Did Crooked Teeth force its way into the car? I doubt it, which means that Clayton (REDACTED) knew who, or what, he was dealing with.

All the stuff I said to Bradshaw about the gun was a lucky guess. I knew that Suzie (REDACTED) had owned a handgun and that Crooked Teeth was prowling around her house. It wasn’t too hard to draw conclusions from there.

When I imagine that long, final night I picture them talking in the car, neither one of them ever raising their voice. I’m sure Clayton started out begging and bargaining. I’m just as sure that all Crooked Teeth had to do was point to the tall, well-dressed man staring facelessly through the windshield. That was all the counter argument Clayton needed.

To Be Continued

January 18th: The first time I met Leroy (REDACTED) in person I talked him into breaking into a missing girl’s house. The next time I saw him he had a black eye and a dislocated shoulder.

When I asked him what happened he started to shake, and he shook the whole time he told me his story.

And what did I say when he was done? What did I say to the scared high school senior standing before me?

“Did you get it on video?”

Remember that if you ever start to think that I’m a hero in all this…

THE NIGHT BLOGGER:

Slim To None

part three

Crooked Teeth

by

Al Bruno III

…the video began with an external view of a darkened street. Leroy was hidden in a neighbor’s yard, waiting for Suzie (REDACTED)’s parents to leave their home. I wasn’t sure if Leroy was going to get a chance to get inside the place but Mr. and Mrs. (REDACTED) have turned to their faith in this time of crisis and are attending evening and morning services on a regular basis.

Church days are always the optimal time for doing things like this, funerals and weddings are even better.

After you type a sentence like that you really have to question your life choices but that’s a whole other blog post.

Leroy waited twenty minutes before heading in. First he tried the windows, no luck there. Then he did the old credit card in the door trick but only managed to destroy a perfectly good library card. Then he looked for a plastic rock, he found one and sure enough there was a key underneath it.

With that he was in.

The digital video camera I gave him was from the pawn shop I work at so it didn’t have the greatest picture under the best of circumstances but it did have a night vision setting so he was able to make his way around the darkened house without crashing into the furniture. Leroy had no idea where Suzie’s room was, so he had to do a little poking around.

First there was the living room, or the parlor, or whatever people are calling them these days. Two couches and a recliner were on one side of the room, a widescreen TV on the other. Framed photographs were on the walls, most of them were of the (REDACTED) family in their younger days. It’s funny how the novelty of taking pictures wears off as your kid gets older isn’t it? Maybe it is just that families get too busy. Maybe its that deep down parents would rather remember their kids when they’re helpless little accessories, not when their surly teens or disappointing adults.

One of the framed photographs wasn’t a photograph at all, it was the front page of the Knickerbocker News from over a decade ago. A headline blared “MIRACLE ESCAPE” above a column of text and a black and white photograph of nine tired looking kids. Leroy kept the camera trained on it for almost a minute. I wondered if he had his own copy of this article somewhere in his home.

That part of the house explored he made his way to the kitchen. There had been a lot of concerned visitors of late and each visitor had brought comfort food of one kind or another. Tupperware containers of all sizes and shapes were piled up in the sink, there were so many that they had begun to spill over onto the nearby counter. The crumbs and scraps of food were beginning to spoil. My grandmother would have called this an open invitation for every rodent in the neighborhood. 

Maybe so but we all know that there are worse things than rats that can get in your house. Lots worse.

Leroy moved from the kitchen to the guest room, then from the guest room to the bathroom and finally to Suzie’s room. Her room was in the rearmost part of the house, her curtains were drawn closed but thanks to the miracle that is Google Earth I know that she grew up with a view of her backyard.

Funny thing about the (REDACTED) family’s backyard. It was surrounded on all sides by the neighbors’ yards, and each of them had put up a tall wooden slat fence. All the houses on this road, and the nearby streets, have been that way for years. I did a little digging to find out why and learned that there have been long running problems with “transients, vandals and peeping Toms.”

Interesting.

Now that he had found Suzie’s room, Leroy did as I asked and took long lingering images of everything even remotely interesting. First there was her desk, it was cluttered with pens, markers and bottles of nail polish. There were papers everywhere, most were covered with the standard time wasting doodles of the bored; squares, lightning bolts, circles and little tornados but mixed in with those was this weird tangle of lines and curves that created an image somewhere between a sigil and a stick figure.

There was an iPod on her dresser, thumbing through it revealed she had been recently listening to an album called Plans.

Checking her dresser drawers and nightstand revealed nothing out of the ordinary. Did Leroy get a guilty thrill out of rummaging through a girl’s unmentionables? Lord knows I still do. 

There was a poster for the band ‘Death Cab For Cutie’ over the headboard, a leather jacket was hung over one of the bedposts. The bed itself was refreshingly free of any stuffed animals or dolls or other foofyiness. Looking under the bed gave Leroy the first real surprise of the evening, a box of 9 millimeter ammunition, Remington brand to be precise.

He put the box back under the bed and turned his attention to the closet. He was grumbling under his breath, griping about his time being wasted and wondering to himself what kind of an idiot I was.

Suzie’s closet was crammed full of clothes; dresses, jeans, blouses and coats. It looked like she wasn’t the kind of girl that liked to throw anything away. 

The camera saw the figure in the closet before Leroy did.

Cue the double take.

Leroy’s gasp was more like a grunt. He stepped back. The figure in the closet stepped forward. This was no faceless spindly man, this was just a stranger in jeans, a hoodie and a wooden mask. The mask was a sharp oval with distended eyes and a gaping mouth that overflowed with gnarled fangs.

“This isn’t what you think…” Leroy said.

The masked figure leaped. The camera went flying across the room…

*

…how do I describe that lacquered mask? Imagine a Japanese Oni demon re-imagined as a Garbage Pail Kid.

And since I am not going to go on calling it ‘the masked figure’ from here on out it will be known as  Crooked Teeth. I think Suzie, wherever she is, would approve.

So, Crooked Teeth beat the crap out of Leroy and ran. Thankfully Leroy managed to get out of the (REDACTED) family home before the police arrived to investigate the brouhaha.

What was the masked figure- I mean Crooked Teeth- doing in Suzie’s closet? Waiting for a bus? Searching for something? Had it been following Leroy all along?

I don’t know, all I do know is that while Leroy and I were going over the video we lost another one of the Colonie Village Nine.

And this time it wasn’t a disappearance, this time we had a body.

To Be Continued

January 15th: The entity has many names; Slender Man, Him, The Operator, Der Ritter, Der Großmann, Bundle, Domine, The Tall Man, The Thin Man, Der Schlanker Mann, The Spindly Man, Fear Dubh, Schlankwald, Tree Man, Slendy, Slenderman, The Pale One, The White King, The Priest of Nothing.

Some say it isn’t real, that the Spindly Man is just a rumor started on a message board. Others say the faceless stranger has always been hiding in the shadows, waiting. There are Youtube videos, some supposedly true encounters, others obviously not. The entirty is discussed on blogs, on reddit and 4Chan. What is it? The bogey man in a clip-on tie? A nightmare in the public domain? An entity from outside time and space?

All I know is it was there the night Suzie (REDACTED) disappeared and maybe, just maybe, it was there the day the Colonie Village Nine almost perished in a schoolhouse fire.

I had been exchanging emails with Leroy (REDACTED) for almost a week, there had been a video chat and the ubiquitous friending on Facebook. That was a good beginning but if I was really going to start looking for answers I was going to have to speak to them. To all of them…

THE NIGHT BLOGGER:

Slim To None

part two

Where There’s Smoke…

by

Al Bruno III

…“Now remember,” I said to my audience of eight, “if my landlady shows up you’re here to play Monopoly.”

Just to be safe I had set up my Star Wars Monopoly board and arranged the cards and counters so it looked like we were in mid-game. I had promised Mrs. Vincenzo that I was out of the monster hunting business and I meant to make it look like I was keeping that promise.

Thanks to my ongoing legal troubles the remaining members of the Colonie Village Nine had had to come to me. From what I understood it hadn’t been an easy thing for Leory to arrange. Still though, he’d made it happen and now I had a bunch of skeptical high school seniors crowded into my apartment. I wondered to myself if any of them had bothered to check out my online reputation.

Gigi was the first to speak, she had her arms crossed and an eyebrow raised. It was the way she said “Lets just get this over with,” that gave me flashbacks to the afternoon I’d lost my virginity.

“OK,” I said. There was no couch so they were all sitting on the floor. I paced in front of them and tried to make it seem like I knew what I was doing, “First question, have any of you heard from Suzie?”

Clayton looked at me like daisies had suddenly sprouted from my ears, “If we did we’d have said something.”

“Maybe not,” I said, “maybe there is a reason one of you hasn’t come forward.”

“This is a waste of time,” Gigi groaned, giving me a fresh bout of flashbacks.

“Are you sure?” I handed each of them a printout, “Leroy never told anyone about the video camera.”

“I explained that,” Leroy shifted uncomfortably, “I didn’t find it in my car until I got home that night. I thought it would make me look guilty if I gave it to the police.”

Bob stared at the printout, “What is this?”

“I pulled it from the video of that night,” I explained, “do any of you recognize the man there?”

“It’s just some guy in a suit and a red tie. You can’t even see his face!” Now it was Tameka’s turn to look at me like I was an idiot.

“Is he wearing a mask?” Julio asked.

Gigi handed the printout back to me, “I sure didn’t see him there.”

“It’s the angel,” Kurt smiled.

“Oh here we go again,” Clayton rolled his eyes.

“Tell me more about the angel,” I asked gently. There was something about Kurt that reminded me of a starving Chihuahua, he was all bones and shivers.

“He saved us from the fire,” Kurt said.

“That wasn’t an angel!” Gigi shouted, “It was just some guy.”

“Then what happened to him? They never found him.”

“Maybe he didn’t want the publicity,” Gigi crumpled her printout into a little ball, “maybe he was some kind of a sex offender and couldn’t let anyone know he was near a school.”

Julio scowled and tossed his paper away, “I think I’d prefer an angel.”

No one but Kurt had looked at the printout for very long. I had expected derision or accusations of being full of shit, but it wasn’t like that. They just wanted to put it out of sight and mind. These kids were spooked, there was no doubt about that. I asked, “How did he rescue you exactly?”

Bob shrugged, “He carried us out.”

“Nine kids at the same time? Or did he take trips?”

“How should we know?” Clayton said, “We were like six years old!” 

“He wrapped us up in his arms,” Kurt explained, “and walked through the smoke until we were safe.”

That was the last straw. Everyone started arguing and yelling, there were insults and threats of violence. At first I was worried the noise might make my landlady Mrs. Vincenzo suspicious of what I was up to, but on the other hand isn’t this how most games of Monopoly turn out?

Then their phones went off, all eight of them and at exactly the same time. The sudden clash of tones, chirps and songs made everyone jump.

“It’s from Suzie…” Tameka breathed.

“Me too.” Clayton said, “Did she send you a picture?”

Julio dropped his phone, “Oh fuck. Oh fuck!”

“What is it?” I walked around so I could peer over Leroy’s shoulder. 

It was a black and white picture, the image was grainy, washed out and at a slight angle. The first thing that came to my mind when I saw it was that it looked like a shot from an art house film. My second thought was “Is that-”

“It’s the school,” Leroy nodded, “it’s our school the day of the fire…”

*

…after we spent about an hour fruitlessly trying to text and call Suzie we decided to pack it in. There were no more snide comments and eye rolls, they were all scared now.

All of them except for Kurt, he seemed delighted at this turn of events.

We all swapped phone numbers and emails. That done I made sure each of them forwarded me a copy of that image. Then I made them promise to call me if anything even slightly strange happened.

Leroy stayed behind for a little longer, he and I had other things to discuss. It was time to take my investigations to the next level and since I couldn’t go anywhere I was going to have to outsource my breaking and entering. Leroy agreed to my plan more quickly than I would have liked but I still sent him away with a digital video camera and some words of advice.

Once I was alone I got to work on the picture. Here is what I know so far;

Fact: The photo really was of Colonie Village Elementary from the day of the fire. Thick clouds of smoke are roiling out of every window but you can’t see any flames. 

Now, I’ve escaped and started a few conflagrations in my time and let me tell you that smoke looks like something you’d get from a chemical explosion or a 1980’s heavy metal concert gone bad.

You know, they say the smoke gets you before you burn up, they also say that its a kind of mercy.

Fact: I went through every newspaper report I could and found no pictures matching the one that was sent. All those official photos were of the front entrance and the parking lot. The picture that was sent to the Colonie Village Nine had been taken somewhere near the rear of the building. The photographer must have been right at the edge of the playground.

Fact: Speaking of the photographer, the angles of the picture don’t quite make sense. Our shutterbug in question had either been sitting up in a tree or been freakishly tall.

Fact: Suzie’s smartphone has been in the police evidence room since the night of her disappearance some six weeks ago.

To Be Continued