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Tim was woken up from his fitful sleep to the sound of his phone vibrating on his bedside table. It had been a few months now since… Everything. Since he killed Alex. Since he fled Alabama. He had gotten as far out of the state as he could, settling down in a small town in Georgia. Eventually, he wanted to make his way up to Virginia and get out of the main south entirely, but he couldn’t afford to do that yet.
Every day since, he’d been moving through life in a daze, not fully aware of what was happening around him. All he knew was wake up, eat, go to work, come home, eat, go to sleep, repeat. Part of him wasn’t sure why he even bothered trying to survive at this point. He had no one left and he was too paranoid and standoffish to even think about meeting new people. He was on okay enough terms with his coworkers, but he never put in effort to be particularly nice to them either. More than a few times, they had tried to start small talk with him, but his answers were always so blunt and dry that they quickly gave up talking to him. He didn’t blame them of course. Though what was he supposed to say when asked about his past? “Oh yeah I grew up in a traumatizing mental hospital and then got chased around by some eldritch horror and my best friend in a mask for several years. Oh and all my friends are dead and it’s my fault.” Good conversation starter for sure.
Tim rolled over on his side, slapping his hand on top of his phone before grabbing it and bringing it to his face, squinting at the bright screen. He noticed he had a series of texts, about ten of them, all coming from Jessica. She was explaining something that he didn’t exactly understand before ending her ramblings with “Call me.”
For the first time in weeks, Tim felt something that wasn’t just numbness. It was dread. He wasn’t entirely sure what Jessica was trying to tell him but based on what he could gather, she had watched the Marble Hornets footage and she was still be tormented by that thing.
Why could he never make the right decision?
He was hoping that he’d be able to gradually remove himself from her life and she’d be fine. Last time he texted her had been two months ago just after he moved out of Alabama and she had been doing fine. She hadn’t mentioned anything strange, she hadn’t implied remembering anything from the YouTube channel, and she barely even remembered Jay. He thought not telling her would’ve been the safest option.
He stared at his screen a little while longer before unlocking it and opening the phone app and clicking on Jessica’s contact. It rang only for about two seconds before she picked up.
“Tim.”
“Jessica… Look I’m sorry for not telling you about the tapes, I thought—“
“That’s not what’s important right now.” She said, cutting him off. “Something’s wrong and I don’t… I need help. I still don’t remember things correctly but I watched the tapes. All of them. Someone left them on my doorstep; someone else wearing a mask like yours. You’re the only other one left, the only person I can contact, and I don’t want to involve my friend because I’m worried she might think I’m crazy—even though that’s literally her job, to not call people crazy—and I don’t know what to do and the hallucinations have gotten worse and—“She rambled, Tim could hear her breathing quicken over the crappy connection.
“Slow down, slow down, breathe,” Tim said, his turn to cut her off now. He didn’t even know where to start with any of this. He ran his hand down his face, trying to collect himself before speaking. “What do you mean someone in a mask like mine?”
“I don’t know, they wear a mask, one with the same eye markings as yours, but it has a weird—I wouldn’t say smile—teeth… thing… kinda like a skull drawn on where the lips would be. They’ve been following me around, even to my doctor’s appointments, and they know where I live.”
Where had Tim heard that before.
“And the hallucinations?” he prompted, secretly hoping that maybe, just maybe, this other masked figure was just a regular stalker. Which wouldn’t be good either but it would be significantly better than the alternative. He highly doubted that though.
“You know exactly what I mean. That faceless creature.”
“Jessica… I’m in Georgia, I don’t know how much I can help from here…”
“Come back to Alabama. Please. I don’t know what’s going on and I can’t do this alone. Please.” Tim could hear the desperate pleading tone in her voice.
The absolute last thing Tim wanted was to get involved in all this again but what choice did he have? He should’ve dragged her out of Alabama with him, even if it meant explaining everything to her. He’d upended his whole life and quit his job for this once before, what’s one more time? It’s not like he particularly loved his current life anyway. Maybe he’d be able to do something good here. Maybe he’d be able to help. He owed Jessica that much. He owed Jay that much. Jessica was the only reason Jay had gone on as long as he had. He had to continue that.
“...Okay. I’ll come back. I’ll try to get there as quick as I can.”
“Okay. Thank you…”
“Mhm,” Tim responded before hanging up. He tossed his phone back on his bedside table, staring up at the dark ceiling.
He’d call his boss in the morning and tell her that he had to take a few days off. It was highly likely he would be gone for more than “a few days” but she didn’t have to know that yet. He was going to hold on to this job as long as he could. He had enough money in his savings to last him about a month or so as long as he stayed in cheap motels and only ate when necessary. He always put more than was necessary into his savings account just in case something like this were to happen. Despite being out of the state and having been relatively fine for several months, he never mentally settled down. He was always ready to up and leave everything if needed.
Taking one last moment in bed, he sighed before getting up and throwing together a bag. He kept to essentials, though had a little bit more space now since he was only one person. He wished that wasn’t the case. He’d immediately sacrifice that luxury if it meant he wouldn’t be alone again.
He walked over to his desk, opening the bottom drawer. Inside was a familiar hand held camera. He never had the heart to get rid of it and besides, it was really the only thing of Jay’s he had left. It took Tim a while to break the habit of wanting to record anything and everything once he had moved. It was never his thing, but the habit rubbed off on him over time. He picked the camera up as gently as he could, turning it over in his hands. Even before picking it up he had decided he was bringing it with him. At the very least he could record if he needed to and at the most… it was like he had a piece of Jay with him for this. It felt fitting.
After he finished packing, he tossed his stuff in the trunk of his car and situated himself in the front seat. He set the camera on his dashboard to record the drive, trying to ignore the strange pang of nostalgia he felt.
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He was hoping to make the drive in seven hours max but he was thankful to have made it in less. He didn’t want to think about how many traffic laws he broke to get there, but he didn’t get pulled over so he didn’t really care much anyway. The sun had risen about a few hours ago, and it would’ve cast a pretty glow the area if it weren’t for the anxiety Tim felt just from driving over the state line.
He briefly met up with Jessica about an hour ago as she gave him the spark-notes of everything she was experiencing. All things considered, she seemed to be doing relatively okay. Nothing remotely on the same level as the personality changes Alex had experienced yet. She was still clearly exhausted though. Her eyes had prominent bags and she zoned out several times during their brief conversation and Tim often had to prompt her to remember what she was talking about. From what Tim could tell, she hadn’t shown signs of outward irritation like Jay had after they went to Alex’s old house. He considered that a good thing, though he was surprised she didn’t chew him out more for abandoning her. Maybe she understood why he did it, maybe she didn’t. Regardless, Tim wasn’t going to complain about it.
After their talk, he had volunteered to go out to the rundown house where she had first seen the masked person. It wasn’t that he particularly wanted to, but he didn’t have much to lose and Jessica did. Compared to him, she had a life to live, friends even, and he wanted to do anything he could to protect that. He’d much rather risk investigating alone than drag her with him. She objected to this initially, of course. She may have lost her memories but she wasn’t oblivious—she knew how dangerous it was to go anywhere alone. After some light arguing though, he convinced her he’d be fine and she reluctantly let him leave after he promised he’d be safe. He promised, but they both knew that promising didn’t really mean anything.
Now he sat in his car again, pulled in front of the dilapidated house, stalling as long as he could before going inside. He almost hoped something would happen while he was still in the car, that way he could drive away before things got too dangerous. It wouldn’t be that easy though, would it?
This felt all too familiar. The exhaustion, the driving for hours on end, the paranoia, the lack of sleep, the filming. No matter what, every time he thought he escaped this, it pulled him back in. Jay had pulled him back in all those years ago and now Jessica was doing it too. He didn’t blame either of them though. Of course he blamed Jay at first, but after all the time they spent together, he quickly realized he couldn’t hold that grudge for long. He couldn’t even pretend to blame Jessica now.
Part of him was glad Jay ended up involving him. He didn’t know how things would’ve turned out if he never met Jay again—maybe Jay would’ve lived longer or maybe he would’ve died sooner, even more alone—but he was glad he did. As short as their time together felt, Tim wouldn’t have traded it for anything, not even the false comfort of his old life. Of course he wished things didn’t end they way they did, there wasn’t a day that went by where he didn’t mourn his friends, not a night went by without a nightmare, but at least he had met Jay. Curious, jumpy, concerned, stupid and yet too intelligent for his own good, Jay. He missed him. He missed him so much that it hurt.
Tim thumped his forehead on against his steering wheel, shutting his eyes tight. He needed to force this train of thought to stop before he spiraled further. He had to help Jessica, he had to focus.
He sat up again before opening the car door, grabbing the camera on his way out. He trudged up to the house, fighting the urge to run as far as he could in the opposite direction. Placing his hand on the doorknob, he hesitated before twisting it, silently praying it was locked. Of course it wasn’t, and he gently opened the door as it loudly creaked and groaned, throwing any plans of stealth he had out the window.
Tim looked around the entrance briefly before stepping foot inside, deeming it safe enough to enter. He wasn’t going to be immediately ambushed at the very least. The inside of the house itself looked less worse for wear than the outside did and it was surprisingly free of graffiti. Despite that though, it didn’t look as if it wasn’t well traversed. There was a noticeable lack of debris or things out of place, almost as if someone had taken the time to clean it up a bit. It was still decrepit of course, but there were no empty beer bottles or other signs of people hanging out here. It was almost too clean.
Making his way down the main hallway, he checked a few side rooms and a closet, finding nothing of note, until he reached the end of the hallway where there was a room with a small table and a single chair. He entered it cautiously, not incredibly convinced the room was empty. After realizing there was no where in the room for any one to hide, he lowered his guard ever so slightly, allowing himself to investigate the room. The table had clearly been sat at recently as there was no layer of dust coating the top of it. Tim could almost make out faint marks in the floor where the chair had been dragged forward and back as its user sat down and stood up.
Aside from that, the room was completely empty, once again unsettlingly clean. Jessica told him that the only reason she came here was because one of her packages she had to deliver had this address down. If someone was living here, they had no possessions and didn’t leave much of a trace.
Tim left the small room just as he heard a quiet shuffling upstairs. He froze, thinking for a moment to decide what he should do. Whoever was up there must have heard him come in so hiding wasn’t going to be much help. On the other hand, they would have the upper-hand if Tim decided to try and sneak up on them. He decided to step into the closet just to the right of him, and he stayed as still and silent as possible. Ideally, the person would come downstairs and he’d be able to get the jump on them then.
Seconds turned into minutes before he heard the creaking of stairs being traversed as whoever else was in the house made their way to the first floor. They didn’t sound particularly light on their feet, though Tim supposed they didn’t have much of a reason to be quiet. Clearly, they weren’t planning to sneak up on Tim the way he was planning to sneak up on them. Tim saw the figure make its way past the closet as he held his breath, hoping they wouldn’t notice him. He hadn’t bothered to close the door so he could be quicker to escape if needed and he was relying on being behind the opposite half shut door.
The person stopped in the doorway of the room with the table as Tim snuck out from the closet, preparing to tackle them from behind. Maybe it was foolish of him to immediately resort to violence, but when everything was seemingly out to harm him what choice did he have.
Tim slowly approached the figure before slamming them into the wall, bracing his forearm against their chest. Only then did Tim notice the mask they were wearing and he was taken aback at how familiar it was.
It was like Jessica had said—it was like his.
The person in the mask made no effort to fight back and at this, Tim decided to hesitantly step back, though he didn’t let his guard down.
“Who are you?”
“I carry many,” the person responded, their voice sounding strangely familiar.
“Who are you?” Tim asked again, harsher this time.
The masked figured slowly lifted their gloved hand up to the chin of their mask, pulling it upwards. Tim stumbled back slightly, his heart seemingly stilling in his chest as he took in the face of the masked person.
“...Jay?” his voice cracked slightly and was barely above a whisper.
He looked… different—just ever so slightly off from how Tim remembered him. A little too dull in the eyes, a little too vacant of a stare, a little too… wrong. But it was Jay—it had to be. Aside from the slight unnatural quality to him, it looked just like him. Tim stepped forward slowly, reaching his hand up to place it on Jay’s cheek. His skin was cold, weirdly so—colder than any normal person should be but not as cold as a corpse. Tim noticed that Jay didn’t lean into his touch at all, he just stared back at him, almost emotionless. He gently stroked under Jay’s eye with his thumb before hesitantly pulling his hand away. Every part of him wanted to pull him into a hug and never let go. Tim wanted to grab him and hold him close and drag him and Jessica out of Alabama immediately, but he needed to understand what was going on first.
“How are you… How?”
Jay seemed to hesitate for a moment before responding. Even his voice was just slightly wrong. It was a little too grainy and it wavered slightly. It had a strange echo quality to it too, as if multiple voices were overlapping on each other, though barely noticeable. It sounded like Jay, but it almost sounded as if he were speaking over the phone on speaker mode.
“I carry many.”
He watched as Jay’s face slowly morphed into Amy’s, then into Alex’s, then back into Jay’s, then into… Brian’s. Brian’s face stayed the longest, staring into Tim’s eyes blankly. It was the first time he had seen his best friend’s face not on video since just after college. Since Brian left.
Tim placed a hand over his mouth, stifling a sob as he tried to brace himself against the wall. He felt like his knees were going to give out.
What the fuck?
What was this? What sort of fucked up trick was the universe playing on him? Forcing him to see the faces of his friends—forcing him to see the face of Jay, and have him believe just for a second that maybe by some miracle he was alive.
Had he not been through enough?
“They were broken,” the stranger had put their mask back on now, and they continued speaking, ignoring Tim. “I fixed them. I helped them.”
They still used Jay’s voice as they spoke, and part of Tim wanted to take comfort in it, and part of him wanted to punch the masked person to get them to shut up. They shouldn’t get to use his voice. They shouldn’t get to use any of their voices.
“You are broken. I can help.”
The world around Tim started to go dark, his vision tunneling. He had to leave. He didn’t care about what was happening anymore. He didn’t care about any explanation the masked person tried to offer. He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t speak, he couldn’t move. He sucked in breath after breath, trying desperately to fill his starving lungs to no avail.
He pushed himself off the wall he was leaning against and stumbled backwards away from the masked figure. He didn’t remember taking his eyes off of them, but he eventually made it outside. He blinked and then he was at his car, ripping open the front door with shaky hands and nearly collapsing into the front seat.
He wrapped his arms around himself, hugging himself tightly. He curled in on himself, trying to comfort himself in any way he could. He couldn’t see from the tears blurring his vision and his body was shaking violently. His hands were numb and tingling and he could barely feel the way his nails dug into the skin on his arms. He could just slightly hear his own heaving breaths over the pounding of his heart in his ears.
He couldn’t do this.
What would he tell Jessica? He couldn’t lie to her again but he didn’t think he’d be able to stomach the telling her the truth. Would she still expect him to help her? Would he even be able to? He owed it to her to try.
At the very least he had to try and protect her, try and prevent what happened to the others happening to her. If there was one thing he could do it had to be that. He could throw himself in the way of danger in a way she couldn’t—he had absolutely nothing to lose. He wasn’t even sure he would still want to be around if he decided not to help her.
He could help her still. He had to.
Tim sat in his car next to the house as his rapid breathing turned into quiet sobbing as he tried to pull himself together enough to drive. He didn’t bother wiping the tears from his face anymore as they flowed too fast for it to matter.
The masked person never came outside, even as he finally drove away.