Yasamin, working from a coffeeshop. I'm not in Malkirk, the entire town's been cut off. Trying desperately to get in contact with Ed, or my family, or someone-- saw the poems. He's trying to warn me off. Something to do with the stones. I have to catch up with him. The roads and phonelines are down, and none of the cops I've spoken to have been particularly helpful. I'm sickened by it all. There are people over there aren't there?

I'm going to cut across the mountains. I know them pretty well, I've been walking about them all year, and I'm worried as anything. Just let them be okay...

So I'll try and check in when I'm safe. But I might not be. Let's set a 24 hour limit on silence, shall we?

Jive

I'm going back to Malkirk today, and I don't want to go. Devilish or not, I hate that town. But I have to go back for my family, and Ed and Penny. Their my family too. Maybe I can convince some of them to move down here. I'm sure Ed wouldn't mind, he paid for my hotel down here in the first place. But yeah, I'll have to maintain radio silence on the train.

I'll admit that I'm worried though. Ed said he'd post on the blog as soon as he was feeling better, and he hasn't posted anything. Then, the blog hasn't posted any of my posts either. So I don't know what's going on there. I guess the same thing's been happening to both of us. There's something weird going on, I swear.

oh this is Yasamin again, in case you couldn't tell.

I hope everyone's okay.

Rashness

The Maid stumbled to the stones at dawn,
Unimportant to the fae was she,
They laughed and with their devil spawn,
Taunted the Maid in glee,
She stood up to them 'til early morn,
And then she tried to flee,
The poor lost lamb, the taunted fawn,
Hid in the roots of a tree,
Then the tree moved, and she was gone,
To hell for eternitie,

And the Fae gloated then on,
"BACK to hell," They said, "She's borne!"

Thoughtlessness

The Priest came to the stones one night,
His cross held before his eyes,
He though he was protected by the light,
But couldn't see through the lies,
He tried to do what was right,
But found, to his surprise,
That the light was without sight,
As fae came from the skies,
And he was cursed with unholy blight,
An attempt to debaptize;

So he walked to them without a fight,
"Sprite, come," They say, "COME sprite."

Hot Air

Yasamin, again. I tried to post on Monday, but it didn't work. I called my computer and internet providers, and the blogger people, but none of them could help me. I didn't know anyone else in London, apart from Jean, and she's mental. Still, I couldn't think of anything else.

So I went over to her apartment, rapped on her door, and explained my problem. She asked if my fingers tingled after I'd typed and some other weird questions. I answered them, and then she said that my posts were in a bubble of time. I turned to leave, and she stopped me.

"Basically," She said, "Someone doesn't want you to communicate with the folks and Malkirk. Which is odd, because you haven't learned anything that you don't already know, apart from a few names. Like Sl&ampmovedperminantlyerror21end/er. But I don't think they could do something so specific with a virus. Unless it could be done, which would explain a lot. In either case, the service'll probably go back up when you get back to Malkirk."

Then she talked more stuff, like conspiracy stuff at me, and I was confused, and didn't really want to pay attention to it. She told me to burn down the Church.

I don't know what's going on.

Senselessness

I never told you about the Circles, now did I? It's a story in three parts; the Princess, the Priest, and the Maid.

The Princess reached the stones that day,
She heard the King's voice singing,
She was young, just finding her way,
And her ears grew to their ringing,
She travelled the forest by foot and sleigh,
To find the bells a-bringing
All manner of monster and beast and fey
To the place where the stones were springing,

"Oh Princess, come to us," They say,
"Don't stray," say, "DON'T stray."

Gear

I met with the girl on Monday, at her workplace. She gave an address. Small apartment, loads of books and empty beer bottles. Honestly, whoever this chick is, she's a mess.

The apartment smelled like alcohol. We sat at a bunch of boxes of books that served as a table. I recorded the conversation, I figured that at some point we might want to refer back to it?

"What's going on?" I asked her.

She laughed, "Straight to the point, eh? You live in a cursed town, it's possessed. The, heh, 'Coptic' Church doesn't worship any god."

"Devil worshippers? Really?"

"Heh. No, worse. Worse than that by far. Worse than Scientologists even. None of that exists. This creature they worship has many names, though I like to call it "the Gentleman." I don't know what it is, nobody does, not even the bloody experts-- don't matter what they say. It's an old god, it's an ancient monster, it's the very essence of nothing, it's the anti-life; the only true god that there is. He's either been here forever or since 2007. Could be our fault or part of the universe, we don't know. Sometimes he kills people. Sometimes he just watches them go mad. He can't speak, but he sings," She took out a cigarette at this point, and lit it. I coughed, and she ignored me. There was a long silence, "The Gentleman-- the Sl&nspnowrap/noreturn;kgend<i>ercritical-- is an unstoppable beast of contradictions, and even if you think he didn't for you, he always wins.

"Are you crazy? This is--"

"Nuts? Bullshit? Mad? Of course it is. The world is built on madness. I tried to fight it, I really did. It doesn't work."

"Is that why you punched Lucy?"

"She deserves worse, knowing what she does to her kids. She deserves worse." She seemed to be trying to scare me at this point, and I wasn't letting it happen.

"More conspiracies? Really."

"Yes."

"Well, thanks for your help," I lied. Seriously, she was pissing me off! What was I supposed to do? I asked her.

She just said "Run. Run or die."

"You're not running," I said.

"He was never interested in me properly. Though he's waiting. Getting closer every day. It's not going to be soon, but I'll wait my death with baited breath. I don't even matter anyway, and it was stupid for me to ever think I did."

I thanked her for her time and left. I'm just more confused now. The next train up to Malkirk is next Monday, something went wrong with the tracks. I'll go back then, I suppose, though I don't really understand what I'm supposed to do any more...

Luggage

I'm in London, and it's late. Oh, Yasamin here, and writing. I only left town yesterday-- Mr. Edward is sickly, and the pain medications he's on have made him a little out of it. Lucy said she'd keep an eye on him and Penny, but I'm still worried. The roads are still all down, so I caught a train. The train journey seemed to be a lot longer than it needed to be.

This last week has been really difficult. Mr. Edward mostly seems fine-ish, but he's very distracted, occasionally babbly but mostly quiet. And then Penny just seems completely oblivious to it all. I've been over there a lot, because I really do like them, so it's just been as a friend, not been getting paid for it. Anyway, when Ed's been talking, it's like he's talking to someone else. I think it's his wife. By the sounds of it, it's mostly stuff about his time when he was a missionary with the Quakers or something. And there was some arguing with another man, Mr. Green I think. I'm trying to write everything down here so I can remember. I didn't think it was important earlier this week, but now that I'm away from the house, I figure almost everything ties into everything else somehow, right?

So I'm going to go talk to Jeanne tomorrow. She'll be able to help.

I like London quite a lot. I almost don't want to go back home.

Job

Yasamin here. We spent the last few hours looking in the woods for Pen. Lucy showed up at Ed's door crying and trailing apologies, and Ed leapt into action with a speed I would never have predicted from the old man. We found Pen halfway up a cliff face, and we were going to get the firemen to come get her down with a ladder, but Ed was already climbing up. It was like that thing where mothers get bear strength and the like. So he carefully helped her down, but once he saw she was safe he collapsed and fell down the cliff and landed on his dodgy knee. Um. He was pretty badly hurt, but we couldn't get him to the hospital the next town over because the roads were closed this weekend-- the only way in or out of the town is by the train station, and there weren't any running. So we took Ed over to the town Doctors. He's there right now. I'm at his house, with Pen and young Tom. Penny doesn't seem very traumatized by her adventure. She had a hot chocolate and went right to bed. Apparently she wanted to find a friend she had met in the woods. I'm going to travel down to London to talk to the... lady that Ed had an encounter with.

It's been a long day.

Babble

Apologies for the late response, to those watching. This weekend was... busy. Yes, busy will have to suffice as an explanation.

I found the young attacker sitting on a bench, chuckling at something on her phone's screen or somesuch. She seemed a bit wild-- I was reminded of some of the more traumatized children my wife and I fostered. Still, as with all things, I approached with open arms, half expecting to be knocked over at any moment. I asked if I could sit, and she told me I could, so I did. Then I asked her why she punched dear Lucy, and in front of her children no less. The girl looked at me-- she wore cheap, thick framed glasses and an odd grin. "Vengeance." She said.

I asked what on earth she meant by that, but the girl just laughed. Then her face darkened some, and she said "You leave your kid with that woman, right? The little girl? Don't-- don't do that. And keep an eye on the kids next door." Or at least something along those lines. My memory is faulty. Still, it was an unusual enough and worrying enough conversation that I memorized more than I otherwise would.

"What do you mean by that?"

"I don't have any evidence to back anything I say up, and in any case she might not be so... overt in her cruelty this time. But just-- you seem like a nice old bloke. Just keep an eye on the kids." Again, I was unnerved. Penny was going on a hike with Lucy that afternoon, and though I am not one to panic at the words of a stranger, something in the way she talked hit a nerve with me. We were quiet for a while, I wondering whether Yasamin would mind accompanying the hike. The girl shrugged, and stood up, "You blog, don't you."

I was utterly taken by surprise. "Yes, I do. Why?"

"It's too late for you then." She was staring at the treeline, and frowning. "You shouldn't stay here. But you're going to anyway, aren't you?"

I believe I made some noise of confusion at this point.

She scribbled down the address of a London pub, and handed it to me. "I work here. If you want answers, come visit." I must admit I was wondering if she was on drugs at this point. I was quite confused.  "I'm Jeanne," She said. She then just began... walking away. I didn't quite know what to say, so I turned back to the house.

That was Friday. I did get Yasamin to go on the hike, and she reported nothing too unusual, though they didn't go to the stones as was planned-- they made a quite obvious detour. She wonders if next time she could spy on the group more covertly.

The rest of the weekend was taken up by papers and paperwork, again nothing exciting, mostly busywork.

Thingamajigs

On this day, Penny told me she didn't believe in God, but she wanted to go to the Coptic-ish church in town. I asked her-- didn't they believe in God? Pen told me that the god that they believed in was better than our one, and would fight and win in every fight, even against Godzilla. I'm not sure what to do about this-- I suppose I should encourage her to follow her own spiritual path, and find her own way to enlightenment, but still... I'm not sure. The church makes me feel a wee bit nervous, though people should worship as they see fit.

Yasamin is a Muslim, and she told me that her brother thought the Coptic church was interesting. Her family was going to go for the Christmas service, just to see what all the fuss was about. I said if Penny was still going through her phase by the time Christmas came around she could go with them. We joked about giving her coal for Christmas. Yasamin said she wanted to give Tom coal for Christmas anyway, since he wrote in her journal. The kids played around the woods and made towers out of the stones they found.

Penny's drawings are interesting-- they seem to all involve the "god" of sorts that the Coptic church believes in. She says he watches over her and keeps her safe, more than our God does. I don't know, he seems sort of intimidating to me! Penny told me she wants a god that actually does something from time to time. I'm really not sure what to do about all this-- I'm not the most modern of people, but I really want Penny to grow into a freethinking individual. I suppose I should encourage this? Or maybe it's my fault for encouraging her to go to the church youth programmes. She does enjoy them so. I don't think that being spiritual in a different way is a bad thing, honestly. I just worry about Penny's future. Yasamin says that the in town Church is addictive, and that people who join it don't ever want to leave. This town is nice and safe, though-- I can see why you'd never want to leave!

Fatuity

I've said before, in my old age I do need some spritely young people around to cheer myself up! My current aide in this area is Yasamin, and I've asked her to introduce herself here.
Hello? I'm really not sure how to introduce myself here, haha. My name is Yasamin, and I'm Edward's aide. Edward tells me to tell more about myself, but he also thinks I should be "more positive" and the two don't really mesh. I've lived here since I was eleven and it's not been the most enjoyable experience. They're very old fashioned up here. I'm working because I've been trying to earn money to move to London. I've done nurse training so I like to think I'm okay at helping people.

Mostly Edward seems to want someone to make a cup of tea for, and I'm okay with that! We talk a lot about philosophy and religion, and he's pretty knowledgable about Islam for an old Christian pastor. I also spend a lot of time playing with Penny and painting her fingernails. She gets along with my brother a bit better though, they have the same interest in elves and goblins and faeries, though Penny tells me she doesn't believe in them at all, not for one minute. Tom is a lot more-- is gullible the word? He's got a bit of an imagination on him, is all.

And I don't have anything else to say, so I'll just hand this back over to Edward.

The kids went on a trip to the church today, I think to learn about Anglicanism and religion and the like. Hopefully not in an indoctrinating way. I would hate to think that the children are being molded by the school-- but from what Penny says, they're very nice. She told me that they have a lot of good, caring teachers and a guy who makes sure they're safe at playtime. So she's a lot better than she was over the summer. Not sure if she's made any friends in-school yet, other than Tom, but we'll see!

Mumbo Jumbo

We went to church the other day in the town two over, and it was quite impressive how small it was! A lovely old steeple too, more's the pity that it's not being used! The people there are quite nice, and asked me to maybe do a guest sermon at some point. Well, I don't see why not! They told me a lot of people have been moving over to that strange Orthodox church recently. Anyway, the Anglican church we went to was simply lovely. Penny and I went and had a cream tea before we caught the bus back to Malkirk. The towns in this area are precariously laid out, but quite nice to be honest! Pen and I managed to avoid burning a Sunday lunch, and had a grand old time.

I walked her to the youth club at the Orthodox church and they went apple picking. There are mountains of apples in our house at the moment! Penny has made me promise to help her make apple pies! I haven't got a clue how to cook, but I suppose that's something that I can ask Yasamin... Oh yes! I haven't talked about Yasamin yet! She's my aid, and a nice young lady. Her family moved up here to get away from the city, and her parents seem to love it. She's saving up to try and get away though. Yasamin has a younger brother called Thomas, and we've set him and Penny up on one of those 'play date's that happen quite a bit in fiction as far as I'm aware.

So I'd say we're settling in well! I'll try and get Yasamin to introduce herself next time!