The Notebook: Jane and Alexis

I still feel like using The Mad Ventriloquist on this entry. Sometimes I find myself slipping back into He and She and name titles. A little of it's habit. A little of it's being afraid. I'm not this person anymore. At least, I hope I'm not. So I don't want to say this is me. I don't want to remember it like that.

But I have to.

It had been weeks since I had seen Minori. Since the fight. I had thought about just leaving things be. It all seemed stupid, after all. But I had a job to do, and I took my job very seriously. So I found someone Minori might be interested in, and sent her the information and the time I would be there. She showed up.

Jane checked herself into the asylum after witnessing a violent crime and suspecting she was responsible for another. She seemed normal at first, if scared. And perhaps a little distant.

"I can't help you with anythin." she said, "I don't remember any of it. John had been a bit crazy lately, looking out of windows and drawing symbols and stuff. He came by my house that day. Told me he was in trouble. All I remember after that is all the blood. There was blood everywhere. It was like that the second time, too. I was just talking. Then they were dead. I can't tell you anything else."

I believed her. So did Minori. We were about to leave when I thought of something. "Does Alexis remember?"  I asked her, and if it was possible she looked even more scared. "I don't know." she answered, "Even if she does, you don't want to talk to her."

I sat back down.

"Jane, please listen to me. My friend Minori and I are trying to find a killer, and it's possible that you saw something that could help us. I know you're afraid. I read about Alexis. I understand why you don't want us to talk to her. But a lot of people could be saved if you let us. And there are guards here. Minori herself is a police officer. She can protect herself. It's safe. So can you please let us talk to Alexis?"

She nodded, but looked uncertain. "I don't know if I can. I don't control her." she began, but she cut off and stared off into space for a moment. Then she stopped shaking and smiled. She wasn't afraid anymore. "What do you want to know?" she said.

Minori took over the questioning.

We were there a long time. Alexis talked in circles sometimes. She seemed to find it funny to confuse us. With me it wasn't that hard. But eventually, we came to what we needed. The tall man had been there.

"Do you know who he is?" Minori asked, and Alexis just laughed.

"You don't know anything, do you? Who is he? That's a silly question. Do you still think he's human? That he can be found by logical means? You have fallen into a deep dark pit, little girl. Your laws won't help you here. He is a monster. He is a god. He is the things that you can't explain and never will. You can't fight this. It's funny you think you can. If you were smart, you'd turn away from this. But you don't strike me as smart." She said, then leaned over and whispered something in Minori's ear. After that, she stared for a moment and she was back to being terrified.

"Thank you Jane." I said, and we left.

Minori stopped me outside of the asylum, before I left. "Thank you for finding her." she said. I nodded a bit. "So what did she tell you?" I asked. Minori looked at me for a moment, took a deep breath, then looked away. "An address." she answered. "So When are we going?" I replied.

For a moment I thought she was going to go for her gun. She just glared at me though. "Just because you found a good lead doesn't mean I can trust you. I'm going alone." she said. I glared right back at her. "My job is to help you. I'm helping you. You don't know what's going to be there." I told her.

Then she yelled at me.

She yelled at me for manipulating the girl inside to give us information. She yelled at me for manipulating her. For trying to jerk her every which way when all she wanted to do was find out what had happened to her sister. As soon as she mentioned Sakura, she stopped yelling. Like just thinking about the girl had made her stop being angry, and just feel sad.

"I looked up Declan." She said, "He was murdered. Knife wound. But it says they never found out who did it."

"The cops never found out who did it. I did."

"Did you kill him?"

"No. Things got complicated."

She went up to me then, and put a hand on my cheek. It was nothing sexual, just brief human contact. Some sort of understanding. Even as it was, I almost hit her. I was not very good with people touching me. "Sometimes I feel like you really are some sort of monster. That you're the scum I always thought you were. But sometimes I think there's more to you. All that empathy you use to manipulate people. It comes from somewhere. I'm beginning to wonder if you care."

I probably should have hit her at that point. But I didn't. And she walked away.

She called me two days later with the address.

Fear

I tried to leave the house today.

It didn't work, for the record. I stood at the frame of the door looking outside for twenty minutes trying to step outside it and I just couldn't. I stayed inside the house. I've been doing this for days, opening the door and trying to leave. It hasn't worked. I'm too afraid of what's out there. Too afraid of what could be.

There was a time when I wasn't afraid of anything. When I was a bad guy, fear was nothing. Probably because I didn't care about other people. I was the only one I had to worry about.

David hurt Dia.

Dia and I had been talking over email. We talked about stories, about truth, about doing good, and sometimes about Minori. She was a friend. And she called me a friend.

He tortured her for it.

I can't really blame David as much as I probably should. I know who he is, why he does what he does. Years of friendship have made me understand him. Although sometimes I think he's changed and I don't know what he's doing, other times he's the David I spent so much time with. That I would laugh and sing and

The past hurts sometimes.

I want to stop him. I want to leave and talk and protect all of the friends that I've made. But I can't leave. I'm too afraid.

I'm nothing like this.

Accountability

David killed Donovan's family. That's where he was. And it wasn't just killing. It was torture and brutal murder. The disturbing thing is, this isn't surprising. This is who David is. He was a friend, but that doesn't make him nice. And this could have been avoided all of it. But it wasn't. Because The Mad Ventriloquist was afraid. Because it's easier to run from problems than fight them.

This is my fault. I know it. And it's made me realize something. I can't keep distancing myself.

I thought that if I talked in third person, it would confuse the slender man. He wouldn't know who I was, and so wouldn't come after me. But there was another reason too. If I wasn't me, I could pretend my actions didn't effect anybody. But they do.

Like Donovan. And I can't help if I act as if I'm not really here. And people will still get hurt because of me. So from now on I am taking responsibility for my actions.

Starting with David.

The Notebook: Elaine

 "For the first eight years of my life, everything was perfect. My parents were well off but devoted, life was simple and pleasant. And then about a week after my eighth birthday I woke up in the middle of the park near my house with my best friend's twin brother dead in front of me."

 "My parents... this went on for two years. And they never believed it was me. I didn't believe it was me. I don't remember most of it, and up until... something like two weeks ago I'd always thought it was crazy."

 "Fifteen people, including my parents and my little brother, all courtesy of Slender Man."

 "Yeah. That best friend? Whose brother I killed? That was Cam. But he stuck by me the whole time, he came to visit me when I was in the asylum afterwards, and he tried to get his parents to adopt me when I got out. Imagine that, your son begging you to adopt the girl who killed his brother. I can't blame them for saying no."

  "It only got worse from there. Officially, I was never accused of the crimes and they suspected I had a stalker who was killing people 'for me.' So when I got out they changed my name and made me change my look, moved me halfway across the country and gave me to a family as a foster kid. It probably would've been fine, had the family not been told my circumstances. They were veteran foster parents, had an amazing reputation, were wonderful with kids, but could never forgive me for being a murderer. By that point I was fifteen and rebellious, so when the guy I was dating suggested we run away and find ourselves something better, I was all in favor of it."

 "It wasn't so bad at first. Sure, we were broke, stupid kids, but Dallas wasn't a bad place to go, as such things went. Mark got a job with this drug boss  type-the kind of guy who ran most of the big crime in the area. Worked for a Mexican drug cartel."

 "I wasn't going to get involved with that, I didn't like the way he looked at me. So I worked at a diner. It wasn't ideal, but by the end of the first year we had a place of our own, and we didn't figure we needed much when we had each other."

 "What a joke. He didn't want a partner, he wanted a housewife. And he never realy forgave me for the looks the people he worked with gave me, and he certainly didn't forgive me my opinions and my attitude."

 "It got abusive. I was at that point still too horrified by my past to fight back. He started accusing me of cheating, and eventually he comes in while I'm cooking dinner one day and starts threatening to kill me. Something just snapped. When he attacked me, I fought back, and considering I was far better armed and not much weaker, I won. He died. And suddenly I was a killer again. Vargas showed up and offered to protect me, provided I work for him. And..."

 "Also 'work for him' in the... less savory sense. I was seventeen. And he had me as a prostitute."

 "Not that that lasted long. I refused to put up with it, and luckily for me Vargas decided he liked my talent for killing people."

 "So I... did my job, for the next four years."

 "And then I got arrested for something stupid, cut a deal, and got off with a very minor charge and got off with two years of jail time in exchange for taking down one of the biggest drug bosses in Dallas."

 "That's where Cam came in. He'd followed me to Texas somehow, and he kept showing up now and again, offering to take me out. I was too proud, too stupid to take him up on it, until I was in jail and looking at a pretty drab future once I got out. People who turn over people that important usually don't survive long outside of protection."

David's gone

The Mad Ventriloquist probably should have noticed earlier. Things were too quiet. But he was drinking. And he liked the quiet a bit too much to realize what it meant.

The Mad Ventriloquist doesn't know where he went, when he went, or even if he's coming back. He wishes he did. The Mad Ventriloquist is afraid that something bad is going to happen.

The Notebook: Kevin

There is a page in the notebook titled Kevin. The page is empty. The Mad Ventriloquist remembers why.

Minori had found another person to interview. Another person in an asylum. The Mad Ventriloquist was tired of running around listening to crazy people. Minori drew her gun again, and that's when he decided to stop all this.

"Are you really willing to kill someone?" he asked her. Minori didn't waver her gun, but there was a flicker of doubt on her face for a moment. "I'll aim for a shoulder. Or a leg. A simple wound." she answered. The Mad Ventriloquist stepped a little closer. "I've seen too many people die of simple wounds to think there's such thing. And I imagine you have too. Stop bluffing and put the gun away."

She glared at him for a moment, but put the gun down anyway.

There was conversation after that, although The Mad Ventriloquist can't really remember exactly what was said. It was about this tall man and insane people and how The Mad Ventriloquist thought it was a waste of time and how Minori thought they were on to something. There was a lot of talking and yelling until Minori said something about her sister. And how The Mad Ventriloquist wouldn't understand.

"I do." he said, "My brother was killed. More than ten years ago, but still." Minori stopped whatever she was going to say when she hear that, and just stared at him. After a few minutes of silence, she spoke again. "How?" she asked. "A cop killed him." The Mad Ventriloquist answered, and the effect on Minori was visible and instant. She backed up a couple steps, then found a bench to sit on. "Did he.." she started, but never managed to finish. "Did he do anything wrong? Is that what you mean. That is what you would focus on. He dealt drugs. So congratulations, he was a bad guy. Fine reason to be murdered don't you think?" The Mad Ventriloquist answered. It came out a little too harsh. He hadn't meant to sound angry. Minori seemed to process it for a minute longer, and her expression changed from shocked to thoughtful to something The Mad Ventriloquist wasn't quite sure about. "Just one more question." she said, and he waited.

"Do you think I'm a fucking idiot?"

She stood up, no longer shaken and glared at The Mad Ventriloquist. He glared right back at her. "This is why they really assigned you, isn't it? So you can try and get inside my head. Your sort always needs new dirty cops, right? Well, it won't work. Take your fake brother and your fucking mind games and shove them up your ass." She tried to walk past him, but he caught her arm. "You should have expected this when you come to the mob for help." he said, "And my brother isn't fake. His name was Declan. Declan Ward. You can look him up."

Minori didn't answer. She just left. The Mad Ventriloquist doesn't know if she saw Kevin, or what he said if she did. Maybe he was the key to this whole puzzle. Maybe if The Mad Ventriloquist had gone, things would have been different.

But he didn't.

The Notebook: Tony

Annette seemed like a dead end to The Mad Ventriloquist. It didn't to Minori. She started thinking there was a connection between her own sister's death and the tall man that the woman had talked about in between mutterings. She was thinking cults or hypnotism or some weird thing like that. So she began looking into more people to question. Tony was the next one she found.

He was charged with assault after claiming that the guy on the street was after him. After his sentence, he was checked into an asylum for paranoid delusions. Once again a gun was involved. Minori was very fond of her gun. The Mad Ventriloquist remembers thinking that she seemed to solve problems more like we did than a cop should. Not saying she was dirty, because she wasn't. She made that very clear. But there was something fierce about her. She was an animal, like we were. This made things complicated because The Mad Ventriloquist really wanted to hate Minori.

Tony was much more talkative then Annette. Tony never shut, up actually. Minori only asked one question: if he knew anything about a tall man.

"There are a lot of tall men. Not that I would help much if you were more specific. I rarely get any visitors. The orderlies come in and slip drugs in my food sometimes. They think I don't know, but I do. I see everything. I see the cameras and the drugs and all the attempts to keep me quiet. Because I know something, and the government doesn't want the world to find out. I think he works for him. The suit fits. That's why I'm really here. Because  I know, and I'm ready to question. You don't even know how much this guy has done. I bet half the nation's cold cases were done by this guy. Is that the tall guy you mean? How do you know about him? And why are you asking me? You're one of them, aren't you. I knew it. I knew they would find me. You're not taking me. You took my wife, but you're not taking me. I won't let you."

He then started yelling 'I won't let you' over and over again until the guards made us leave.