Thursday, October 13th, 2016

Davy’s POV

In the past couple of days, all of us spent every second of free time in the library to do research about Baywick and his sudden death.

So far, we found out there had been 12 people who got prosecuted for his death and they all have been sentenced to death by hanging.

Annika focused on finding their offspring, and she managed to connect 12 kids to them, so far. Some seem to be collateral damage. Kids who just happened to be in the wrong spot, in the wrong time. Those kids all disappeared in the same time as one of the offspring of the 12 men and woman who murdered Baywick and we assume they went missing together, to not leave any witnesses.

I located Baywick’s cabin, and it had been in the spot where Hunter’s Lodge is now located. They rebuild the cabin about five years after he was killed and made it publicly accessible for hunters to take a break, while the cabins who originally were build for them burned down in a wildfire in the summer following Baywick’s death.

We managed to locate them in the Pits, all surrounding the main pit where we found the signs, and where most satanic worshipping took place.

Everything we find, is somehow connected to the information we already found, and it’s starting to form one solid picture.

I’m pretty sure Baywick is responsible for the missing kids, the deaths, and all other dark activities in the woods.

Quite honest, I can’t even blame him for going evil after being burned alive. We found short pieces of information in which it is stated Baywick claimed to be innocent, but nobody believed him since he threatened those who died in the accidents.

If Baywick was indeed innocent, he was murdered, tortured by those he provided with a place to live, work, hunt for food, for all the wrong reasons.

He was betrayed by those he gave everything, despite being socially awkward. Despite the fact he preferred his privacy, rather staying in the woods alone then move to a place where he would only have to live and work like regular people.

But Baywick was ambitious, and thanks to his generosity, Miller Town was founded.

But today, I couldn’t drag myself to the library, for Sid’s parents called that he was finally showing signs of consciousness. He started moving his fingers late last night, and throughout the night, he started fighting the breathing machine more and more, up until a point that they decided they will remove the machine to offer him a chance to breath on his own.

And we wanted to stop them, but we didn’t know how to persuade them into not waking Sid up.

And then his father explained that Sid has a pneumonia and the antibiotics aren’t helping him enough. He needs to breath on his own to get his coughing reflexes to start working again, so that he can get rid of the fluids caused by the pneumonia. If they don’t, the infection might be the end of him.

I’m currently nervously fiddling with the hem of my sweater, Annika and mom seated next to me, while we are waiting in the waiting room until they allow us in.

It’s been half an hour since they removed the breathing tube.

It’s been half an hour since Annika and I know Sid is doomed, one way or another.

We saw a doctor hurry in the direction of his room shortly after, we saw nurses, and I didn’t miss the sounds of Mrs. Hayes crying as if her life just ended.

It’s all calm now, and Angie informed us that Sid, after they removed the tube, started breathing on his own for about five minutes, then stopped over all, only to start breathing with a huge grasp for air right before they wanted to intubate him again.

It’s exactly how Angie said it would be. Stop breathing, shortly die in some way – his heart did stop for a couple of seconds – only to revive and appear fine.

And now it’s just a waiting game to find out whether or not Sid has to finish the last cycle or will be responsible for the next.

Either way, we need to stop him.

But I’m not sure if any of us can really stop him. I don’t know if I would be capable of killing my best friend in order to save another six innocent kids. I’m not even sure if we would be capable of killing him if he’s indeed possessed by the dark entity that seems a remnant of Thomason Baywick.

It’s nerve breaking while waiting, but eventually, Mr. Hayes enters the waiting room with a small smile on his face.

“Sid’s still asleep, but he’s breathing on his own. You can see him now.” He gestures for us to follow and we reluctantly do so. I practically have to force Annika forwards.

“I can’t do it, Dave…” She whines softly, not wanting to alarm Mr. Hayes. “You don’t know what it feels like… it’s like wading through mud, or quicksand. It gets harder to walk towards him each step and the feeling is so much stronger then it was last week…”

“You have to. You have to try.” I mutter, grabbing her hand. “Just hold on to me and I’ll pull you through.”

She visibly relaxes as soon as I grabbed her hand, smiling unsurely. “Do you think I’m Sid’s guardian angel, and you might be mine?”

“No, I think I’m your other half and together we are invincible.” I smirk. “I get to touch him, be around him… you don’t. But maybe I can be the strength you need right now.”

She nods, and together we walk further, and eventually into the room.

Sid’s still in the same position in the bed, but he is breathing on his own.

And for someone who is possessed, he seems so peaceful it’s hard to think there’s something that took over his body and mind that is about to make him kill.

It even gives me a spark of hope that we’re all wrong and Sid isn’t possessed at all. Maybe this isn’t as bad as it seems.

But as soon as Annika steps closer to the bed, forced by me, Sid starts stirring in his bed, pulling a painful face. His heartbeat rises, his breathing quickens.

His parents both frown, and Annika is on the brim of tears, while I nervously bite my lip.

“Dave…” Annika addresses me, barely above a whisper. “It’s me…”

“No… he’s just… waking up?” I try to explain his sudden activity, and then he does open his eyes. At once, without any further warning, surprising all four of us.

“Sid!” His mother calls out in surprise, already crying happy tears, hurrying forwards to hug him and peck kisses all over his face.

Sid stares around confused, and then his eyes find Annika, shielding half behind me. He stares at her in horror, and I’m glad his mother’s hug prevents her and his father from noticing the horrified look.

Annika steps back, but I hold her close to me by grabbing her wrist. “Hey, dude…” I greet him insecurely. “How ehm… are you feeling?”

“Get her out.” His voice is cold, and his eyes remain focused on Annika. The horrified look made place for anger, hatred.

“What? Sid?” His mother pulls back to look at him, pushing hair out of his face while staring confused. “Don’t you want to see Anni?”

“Get her out.” He repeats, pointing to the door. “Both, out. Now.”

“Sid, what’s wrong?” His mother sounds as if she lost it, confused and shocked because he’s not only sending his girlfriend out, but me as his best friend too.

“Want me to leave too?” I ask confused. I did not see this coming. Him sending Annika away doesn’t really surprise me. Not since Annika clearly explained there’s something between her and Sid that is forcing her to keep a bit of distance. But me?

“Yes. Get. Out.” He snaps, scooting away from us, further into his mother’s arms.

“Right… okay…” I nod, squeezing Annika shortly to reassure her I’m on her side. “I’ll… come back later.”

Friday, October 14th, 2016

“Mrs. Hayes called.” Mom looks at me as I slide into my seat to have breakfast. “She told me Sid didn’t want to see you or Annika. What happened?”

“I’m not sure… He woke up and told us to leave.” I mutter sadly, feeling defeated because he told me to leave too, and I shortly spoke to his sister in the supermarket, who told me he didn’t want Annika or me to visit him in hospital anymore.

It confused me because apparently, he doesn’t want to see me either.

And then there’s the fact Angie went over to see him now that he’s finally awake, to see if she could connect to him again.

She failed.

She couldn’t talk to him, he didn’t hear her, he didn’t see her. She lost her attachment and she warned me it’s a sign that there’s something more powerful that is shielding his mind away from her.

She stayed, despite the fact she felt unhappy and scared in his presence, to see how he’s behaving to others.

He seems to act like his regular self, so there’s a bit of hope we have another 11 years to solve this before the entity will force him to kill or sacrifice six kids.

I’m not even sure how things work now that the last streak hasn’t ended, and now that the forest is off limits to everybody.

All I know is that the need to go back into the woods grows by the minute because I’m getting impatient, wanting to solve all of this.

“Can we not talk about Sid right now? It’s putting me in a bad mood and Annika will be down any second and I don’t want her to cry again…”

“Okay, fair enough.” Mom nods, putting pancakes for breakfast in front of me. “Did you finish your paper for history?”

“It’s a rough draft.” I shrug. “We need to finish it in two weeks, but I’m sure Mr. Brightwaters will be pleased with my start.”

I’ll be damned if he won’t be pleased. With all the research we did on Baywick and the early years of Miller Town, I think writing a paper about the history of Miller Town will be a piece of cake.

I think all six of us will ace the paper.

I don’t think any other student our age knows as much about Baywick as we do now. I’m just not sure if he will be pleased about the fact both Annika and Cory decided on questioning Baywick’s guilt in their papers, while the rest of us decided to stick with the known story.

Annika is known for her rebellious papers, always questioning facts and history aloud. But so far, she always concluded those facts to be real facts instead of made up facts.

I’m not sure she will do the same now that it’s becoming clear Baywick’s death was unnecessary.

We found witness reports that claim Baywick wasn’t near three out of six accidents. We found out Baywick was out of town during one accident, and he was publicly seen in town during two others.

Baywick was probably innocent until they decided on slaughtering him in a fire.

More and more evidence seem to point towards the fact no devil worshipping ritual has awoken an evil spirit. Grieving, sad family members of those who died in what really seem to be accidents have caused the evil force to take over the woods.

And if you think about that possibility, those 12 people are guilty on more then one charge of murder, for they caused the malicious entity to murder at least 25 others. And by the looks of it, a lot more in the years before the cycle in which Angie went missing took place.

Because we found reported deaths in several of the other years in which we believe a cycle of sacrifice or murder took place.

It’s difficult to dig up those files, because the further we go back, the smaller the fountain full of information gets.

Simply stated, in the late sixteen-hundredths they didn’t really keep track of missing people or deaths as well as they do now.

The filings about cases similar to those we found already start to become organized somewhere late eighteen-hundredths.

Mom soon leaves for work, while Annika joins me for breakfast. Angie, I think, is with Cory right now, so we’re with the two of us for the first time in a long time.

“I found something.” Annika sighs, handing me some papers. “These are all people who died of natural causes that didn’t match their age, shortly after a cycle ended. They all had been in hospital shortly beforethe cycles started.”

“There’s three…”

“It’s hard to dig up medical information about people when you can’t access their personal medical files. I had to dig deep into news articles and whatnot. These three, I think, are responsible for the cycles in 1975, 1987 and 2014.”

“2014? Cody Laru was responsible for the 2014 cycle?”

“Not sure, but we should ask both Angie and Cory about this. Cory still hasn’t told us what happened to him in the woods. We still don’t know if he was abducted in the first place, and managed to escape, or that he managed to stay out of the hands of the possessed guy who tried to kill him.”

“So, Cory needs to open up.”

“And so does Angie. If she has a name of the person responsible for her death, we might be able to dig up that information too.”

I nod in agreement. “So, ask Cory and Angie about this after school?”

“Yes.”

“And then back to the library to find more?”

“Is there really more we can find?” Annika sighs, looking at a shoulder bag full of files that she dragged down with her. “We have tons of evidence that it happened even before 1962, we have evidence that Baywick was innocent. We just need to find out how to kill his entity, or at least get it out of Sid’s body. I’ve been trying to find an explanation for my situation, but that’s really unclear.”

“So, we’ll research what it could possibly be that you can’t touch him, and if you are a key into solving this or not. We need to look into exorcism and people who can help us. It’s time to call in people who believe in this stuff, that have a greater knowledge of things.”

“But we need to make sure they won’t harm Angie in any way until she showed us where her body is.”

“Anni, she doesn’t exactly know where her body is. She’s been showing mostly Sid, and me lately, where she went missing and what she remembers. She showed Sid over and over how to get from Hunter’s Lodge towards certain spots so that he wouldn’t get lost and lose valuable time. But that’s it. She doesn’t know exactly where her body is.”

“Oh, I thought she knew.”

“If she knew, she would’ve guided Sid there, explained how to get there, how to retrieve her body, and tell him to keep you close as a guard for the dark entity. But things got a bit more difficult now that Sid is possessed and the dark entity possibly knows what he and Angie had been up to.”

“You think he’s going to try and stop us from finding Angie’s body? They did retrieve multiple bodies before without trouble.”

“During day, with the army present and all. In official searches with tons of people searching the woods, dogs, helicopters, whatnot. I think that’s a bit different from six kids and a ghost going into the woods secretly to find a body that we haven’t located yet.”

“So, that’s what you kids have been up to?” Mom sounds… calm. But her voice made both Annika and me jump up in surprise, shocked because she overheard our conversation.

“Mom!” Annika stares at her with wide eyes. “What are you doing here?”

“I had a feeling none of you kids would explain the truth to any of us, while Olivia,” – Sid’s mother, – “and I already figured something… weird was going on. But weird doesn’t cover the load, does it?” She looks serious, sitting down at the table in front of us with a deep sigh. “You both need to tell me everything. And don’t think you’ll be able to surprise me, because I’ve been your age too, and I grew up in this town too. I know the stories, I know the rumours. So, spill it.”