Finder: Sorry

Sorry for not updating this past week on my progress. I sort of came down with a cold and then had a bout of paranoia where I thought the Plague Doctor was killing me. But no, just an ordinary cold.

Man, I'm an adrenaline junkie, but sometimes I wonder. These things I try to find can kill with a glance, can rip you apart with ease, can dig inside your head and eat your memories like candies. I try to act fine; I like my job. I like traveling places I've never been. I've gotten use to the smell of motels and the continental breakfasts and long drives, but sometimes. Sometimes I just have to sit down and stop.

Sorry. I still have a bit of the cold. I didn't get much work done because of it and because of my onset of paranoia, but now that's passed, I'll start tracking the movements of the victims. I'm going to see if they intersected anywhere and if they did...well, that's probably where they met the Plague Doctor.

Thanks.

Signs & Seals: The Stick and the Serpent

The Plague Doctor doesn't like to announce his presence, but oftentimes after he leaves a place, someone will put up this symbol:

Looks like some sort of mathematical symbol, right? Well, nope, it's called the Stick and the Serpent. Sort of similar to the rod of Asclepius, except where the rod of Asclepius represents medecine and healing, this symbol represents the fucking Plague Doctor.

Nobody knows who, exactly, puts up this symbol. It just seems to appear, chalk-drawn on the sidewalk or spray-painted on a wall. If you see it, go the other fucking way.

Them 4: The Plague Doctor

Since Finder might be investigating him at the moment, let's take a look at the abomination known as the Plague Doctor.

Yeah, he's a quack.

So: the Plague Doctor. Looks like a, well, plague doctor. Robe, stick, beak-nosed mask. There are some reports that the mask isn't, well, a mask at all.

This guy doesn't show up that often -- that's not to say he isn't creepy as fuck, but you most often won't see him before he gives you the fucking Black Death. Yeah, he spreads disease. That's one reason why he's so fucking creepy: even once he leaves, you'll still die from whatever horrible fucking sickness he has given you.

And even if you do see him coming, you may not even realize it. He likes to show up at places where his appearance won't be noticed. Costume parties, carnival, Mardi Gras. Then he goes Masque of the Red Death on people.

I've never seen the Plague Doctor, but I have what he's done to certain Runners. When I tell you that you don't want to know what happened to them, you should believe me.

Finder: Inconclusive

The bodies at the morgue were...definitely dead bodies. They died of some sort of influenza according to the reports, but one that acted much faster than normal. Is this just a normal variation of the virus, though, or did the movie Contagion piss off the Plague Doctor? (Wait, TFR hasn't gotten to the Plague Doctor yet. Well, he will.)

Anyway, I'll stay in a motel here for another week or so to see if there are any more deaths. There were three in the surrounding counties, which counts as a pattern, but I'm not sure of there were any connections between the dead. I'll check that out next.

Thanks.

Finder: It Never Rains in Southern California

But it does drizzle a bit. I'm in SoCal right now following a lead. There was a news report on a small outbreak of unidentified influenza. Three deaths in two weeks. It might be nothing, but then again, it might be Something.

I thought the weather would be better here than the last place I was in (Chicago). It's supposed to be perpetually sunny here, but it was overcast when I arrived and it's been threatening to rain all day. It always bugs me when it only slightly drizzles -- make up your mind weather, rain or don't. I don't want to go out without an umbrella just to get stuck in the rain. (And no, I do not like pina coladas.)

Going to the hospital morgue now to check the patients that died. Fun.

Signs & Seals: The Twin Triangles

And now for another edition of Signs & Seals:

This is a symbol referred to as the "Twin Triangles." It is a symbol that represents or accompanies the Archangel.

The symbol sort of looks like two hourglasses, which might represent Death's Hourglass, death leading to the Archangel. Or not. The symbol isn't really clear and nobody really has explained what it has to do with the Archangel. In this respect, it is similar to the Operator Symbol.

Hello There

I'm Finder. I'm that "freelance operative" TFR mentioned in the last post. What that basically means is that while he sits on his butt all day surfing the net, I courageously wander the world looking for weird things, strange events that might possibly be one of the Bugbears.

Yes, I call them Bugbears. Got a problem with that?

Anyway. I don't swear like TFR does. I also don't smoke or drink. What I do is find weird stuff. Sometimes it's a Bugbear, sometimes it's just weird without origin. But I find it. And I send my reports to TFR.

Why? Because it's fun. Yes, sometimes I come very close to death, but that's the point. I'm an adrenaline junkie.

Anyway, TFR gave me access to the blog, so I'll be posting occasionally, updating on what I'm doing or where I am. Mostly to give any readers a break from his filthy swearing.

Thanks.

Them 3: The Archangel

Yeah, this guy. He's a mean son of a bitch that goes by the name the Archangel.

Are you my mummy?

The Archangel. Archie. Bringer of the Dead. Bad Motherfucker.

So yeah. The Archangel is, well, something. I don't think anyone has ever seen its true form. I don't think it has a true form. It takes the forms of the dead. Anyone who has ever died it can appear as. Sometimes as more than one dead person. So if you see Abraham Lincoln holding an axe running at you, then you can be pretty sure that's the Archangel. His favorite form, apparently, is a guy wearing a gas-mask.

Now, I say he can take the form of any dead person, but that's not entirely true. Apparently, if you are killed by another of Them (or one of Their servants) he can't take your form. Or something. Information is vague. Especially his motivations. Does he want to kill everyone in the whole world? I don't know, maybe. Sometimes it seems like he dicks around with people for shits and giggles.

Steward, crazy guy that he was, claimed that the Archangel was the afterlife, which is why he can control dead people. Since this is pretty depressing, I'm not going to believe it.

I have never encountered him, but one of my freelance operatives has seen him three times. I don't envy her.

Them 2: The Cold Boy

Next on the schedule, the Cold Boy. (I'm not doing these in alphabetical order, but rather in my own order which is "what I feel like writing about.")

Don't let this little moppet fool you.

The Cold Boy appears, as his name suggests, as a little boy, aged around seven to twelve years old. One person said he was around six, but he never seems to appear any younger than that or any older than twelve. No reason is given why.

Once you look past his little boy facade, however, you will begin to notice certain...irregularities. First, his face will often appeared blurred like a bad photograph. His skin, you'll notice, is actually ice and it makes a strange sound when he moves. Different people have reported the fact that he sometimes appears to have cracks in his hands or even his face.

Like the Slender Man, the Cold Boy likes to stalk his prey. Unlike ol' Slendy, TCB's targets tend to have one thing in common: they are often cut off from others or appear afraid of being cut off from others. When stalking his victims, he will sing to them nursery rhymes. Some have reported that listening to the nursery rhymes makes one sleepy or disoriented and others have seen victims follow TCB willingly after listening sometimes. What he does with these victims is unknown.

I received a report a little while ago that claimed the Cold Boy was much larger than anyone could guess. It said that he was "like an iceberg," with his true size and shape actually "underneath the waters of reality." The rest of the report was gibberish and there's no evidence that what it said is true.

I have seen him twice. Twice I have seen his touch freeze a person, their skin shattering like glass. I try to maintain a wide network of people to provide me with information; this is the only reason I believe he hasn't targeted me. I am not cut off. And I never want to be.

Signs & Seals: The Operator Symbol

Welcome to Signs & Seals, the portion of this blog that talks about the various iconography associated with Them. The first installment will be about, of course, the omnipresent Operator Symbol.

Symptoms of the Operator Symbol include: weevil attacks, intense ice cream headaches, and treefingers.

The Operator Symbol is associated with the Slender Man. According to some sources, it's a repellent against Slendy. Other sources say that it actually attracts him. Even otherer sources say that the symbol is a memetic device that causes us to think about Slendy and thus attract his attention.

Whether using the Operator Symbol is a good idea or a bad idea, the fact is that it shows up in a whole lot of places near the Slender Man. And now you know -- and knowing is half the battle. (The other half involves an inordinate amount of violence, so just stick with knowledge for now.)

Them 1: The Slender Man

The a-number-one creepiest of the creepers. Tall, thin, wears a business suit, has no face and long fucking arms (or possibly tentacles). That's right, it's the Slender Man.

Fuck, I'm bad at drawing. Just think of this as the Slender Man as drawn by Rob Liefeld.

Take note: it's not Slenderman, it's the Slender Man. He's not Jewish. (Well, maybe he is. That would be a strange Bar Mitza - "Today, you are no longer a Slenderboy, you are a Slenderman!" Fuck, my mind goes to weird places.)

There's a fuckton written about this guy. Seriously, just enter his name in Google and you will find a ton of stories about him, most of them just plain old fiction. Some, however, are true. It's hard to find those nuggets of truth in the steaming pile of stories, though.

Here's what is generally accepted about him: he likes to abduct children. He has no face and doesn't speak, can turn his arms into tentacles sometimes (or make himself have four arms/tentacles or something). He's been called everything from a fairy to an alien to a tulpa (Google it, I don't want to explain), but pretty much nothing is known beyond the fact that he is one scary motherfucker.

I've never personally seen him and I count myself lucky because of that.

Oh yeah, and he sometimes uses human agents called "proxies" or "hallowed" or "hollowed" or whatever. Basically, he can make humans do whatever he wants. Why he does this nobody knows.

Welcome to Radio Free Phobos

We're here to talk about Them. You know Them. You may have seen Them or heard Them or felt Them. That's why you're here. That's why you're reading this.

Because you know you're not crazy. You can't be crazy. It's the world that's crazy, the world outside your window that doesn't make sense anymore. It doesn't make sense because of Them.

Who are They? Some call them Entities, Aspects, Embodiments. Others have a variety of names for them: Phobic Representational Entities or PREs, Boojums, Creepy Fuckers, even by the dull and, frankly, uninteresting name of Fears.

Me? I don't need to call them by any name. Just Them is fine.

I'll tell you about some of Them. What I know anyway. What I've read or heard or seen. I barely leave my house, but I still manage to find information about Them. They've gotten sloppy lately. Like they want us to know more about Them.

But that doesn't matter. All that matters is information. Fear is the mind-killer, as the saying goes. More information, less to fear.

I hope.