Thunder crashed and branches snapped as the storm outside continued its assault on the town of Oakside, sending many unsuspecting residents into a blind panic as the ruckus jolted them awake. While her fellow townspeople found the downpour to be an annoyance at best, the sound of heavy rain pelting the roof of her house while relentless wind swept through the trees was rather soothing to the now twenty-three-year-old Katelyn Milens. The distracting racket was a nice change of pace from the silence that usually allowed her mind to run wild whenever she indulged in her unusual habit; sketching those strange illustrations of cryptic phrases and tall trees accompanied by the suited specter… not unlike the very same notes she'd been forced to retrieve eight years ago. A compulsion like this was one that had formed over almost a decade of being dogged by paranormal entities, and as much as she hated to admit it, she couldn't deny the fact that her self-isolation from society had helped to fuel the fires of the addiction. With each passing day, more and more of her time was taken up by this fixation, but Kate had decided long ago that this way was better for everyone; The fewer people she came into contact with, the lower the risk of them getting involved in her predicament was. Sadly, this particular strategy came with the price of loneliness, but it was a price she was willing to pay if it meant stopping the plague from spreading to more people. The walls of her room were plastered with these sketches, the floor was littered with the ones she hadn't strung up, and even bare sections of the walls had been used as a canvas when a project became too large for paper alone to handle. However, no amount of rain, thunder, or artistic expression could hope to block out the young woman's memories of what she'd been through in RiverView Park, let alone the horrors from mere hours ago that were still fresh in her mind. Even so, she tried her best not to think about it too much; an effort that was made futile by the content of her drawings. Kate let out a sigh of defeat as the memories finally proved to be too much to keep at bay and found herself thinking about how simple and carefree things had once been, reminiscing in the days of her childhood that weren't tainted with black suits and night terrors. She remembered how quickly everything had happened after that night in the woods, how she'd been so excited about moving to Oakside to start a new life, and how slowly but surely her dreams of ever being normal again were crushed by an eldritch horror who reveled in her misery. "God forgive me, but sometimes I wish He would've just finished the job back then instead of making me suffer for so long," she pondered, thinking back to the events that transpired shortly after RiverView;
(X)
As he was finally nearing the end of his long drive over to Crystal Falls, Carl Ross noticed something peculiar out of the corner of his eye; the familiar brown suburban that belonged to Beth Hayes was parked far down the driveway of the abandoned RiverView Park. Immediately growing suspicious, he pulled up behind the suburban and stepped out of the car, making his way toward the other vehicle and peering through a window. "What the hell?" he muttered after peering through a window and seeing a baseball bat lying in the back seat. "Kate, where are you?" the man called out, dread building up inside of him when no response came. "Oh shit… Kate! Beth! Somebody answer me!" he shouted, sprinting down the driveway while doing his best not to imagine the worst-case scenario. "Oh god…" Carl groaned upon catching sight of his surrogate sister laying unconscious in the tall grass. "Kate, wake up! Hey, can you hear me? Wake up!" he pleaded, attempting to rouse her from the coma. Blood still dripped steadily from her nose and ears, and her ice-cold body trembled violently on the ground as her face contorted in pain. "Son of a bitch," he muttered, picking up the wounded girl and cradling her in his arms as he rushed her back to his car, where he laid her down in the back seat and cranked up the heater. "Just hang in there, I'm gonna get you some help," he instructed, hoping that his friend could still hear him. He started to shut the door but stopped dead in his tracks when he noticed the damaged camcorder still clutched in her frigid hand. Carl took hold of the camera and gently pried it from her grasp, taking a look at its cracked screen. A sharp burst of static nearly caused him to drop the device when it first turned on, and the heavy video distortion that plagued the screen, accompanied by near-constant white noise and an all but dead battery told him all that he needed to know. "No… not this, please not this," he begged, reaching into the girl's pockets to search for more evidence. Unfortunately, his suspicions were confirmed when he looked over the things she'd been carrying; a busted flashlight and eight scraps of tattered paper, all of them featuring cryptic, ominous messages.
However, what really made his blood run cold were the frequent illustrations of the same tall, suited, faceless man that Carl himself had come face-to-face with two years prior at the Matheson Farm. A burning rage suddenly erupted inside of him, and throwing all caution to the wind, he stowed Kate's equipment and the pages she'd collected in his glovebox and marched over to her car. With one well-placed elbow to the glass, the suburban's window shattered, allowing him to retrieve the baseball bat from the back seat and carve a very particular symbol into it with a shard of glass. "You think you're all big and bad picking on some poor kid, well come on then! Show me what you're made of!" he shouted into the trees, gripping the weapon tightly in the hopes of The Administrator accepting his challenge. "What are you waiting for? You've been waiting two years for a rematch, right? Why don't you stop hiding in the woods and show yourself you FUCKING COWARD!" he roared, more furious at the beast than he'd ever been before. However, the demon he was awaiting never showed its face, and as Carl stood there waiting, his anger was quickly overshadowed by a sudden realization; "Damn you, Großmann," he fumed, remembering the dire situation that his friend was in. "Hold on!" he yelled to her, running back to the car and jumping in, throwing the bat into the passenger's side and flooring it out of the driveway, going well over the speed limit on the way to North Cross Hospital.
Kate awoke in a hospital bed several days later, groggy and confused with tubes and needles sticking out of her arms. Her mother was there by her side, and so was Lauren, both of whom were ecstatic to see her awake after so many days of hopelessness. The battered girl couldn't remember very much of the hell she'd been through, only bits and pieces, and as a result had almost managed to convince herself that the entire thing was just a really bad dream, but her hopes were extinguished as soon as she saw the grave look on Carl's face when he walked through the door. It was painfully obvious that he'd watched the videotape while she was comatose, and she hoped dearly that he hadn't mentioned it to anybody else. Not wanting to sound insane to everyone but Carl, Kate decided to remain silent about the supernatural horrors she'd been forced to endure, and instead feigned amnesia of the whole event. She learned that Carl had called Lauren about the situation shortly after getting their friend to the emergency room, and when she'd agreed to come over and help take care of Kate's mom while the girl was in recovery, Carl contacted Beth and brought her to the hospital, as she was adamant about wanting to see her daughter. While Kate greatly appreciated all of the concern that her loved ones were showing her, she knew that there were more important things to attend to and told Carl everything the moment she got the chance, even apologizing for not believing him about the Matheson Farm. Carl couldn't help but chuckle at her apology and told her not to worry about it, stating that he too would've been skeptical if their roles had been reversed. "Just remember, we're in this together now," he'd told the injured teen; "And I'm going to do everything I can to keep you safe."
The ensuing investigation into the incident accomplished very little, mainly due to Kate proving to be a natural at concealing the truth. "I was just doing some ghost hunting," she'd told the detectives who asked her why she'd been trespassing in the park. Her explanation wasn't exactly untrue, but she didn't go into much more detail than that and even insinuated that she'd been doing it for fun before she was attacked. As much as she hated lying to the doctors and police who were trying their best to help her, she hated the idea of being sent to a mental ward even more. That combined with Carl's efforts in hiding the footage of the event from prying eyes culminated in the police ruling the event an attempted homicide, with their only physical description of the perpetrator consisting of; "He was really pale and wore a black suit, but I can't remember what He looked like," courtesy of Kate. The whole ordeal was eventually declared an open investigation, and there were even theories being thrown around about how this new development could be connected to the original batch of murders. Eventually, Kate was released from the hospital and the detectives stopped harassing her at every turn, but any hope of returning to normal life was gone. Crystal Falls was one of those towns where everybody in the community knew each other in one way or another, and it didn't take long for word of what had happened to spread. She hated the way everybody looked at her now; like she was a victim. They tried to treat her like she was still the same happy girl they'd known for so many years, but she could see the pity in their eyes whenever they spoke to her. High school became a nightmare as well, with those who didn't feel sorry for her deciding that it would be fun to pick on the poor teen. She quickly became isolated on both fronts, and soon could focus on nothing but the monsters she constantly saw lurking in the shadows or hiding in her peripheral vision; the monsters that nobody else could see when she tried pointing them out. The Tall Man was especially cruel in that regard; He would allow her to see Him standing there motionlessly, always watching, but would never reveal Himself to anyone else. She started seeing Him more and more as her memory healed, and eventually the school counselors heard about her so-called delusions and recommended her to a psychiatrist, who surprisingly turned out to be quite helpful. Over the course of these visits, she was prescribed several types of medication, most of which didn't really do much for her mental health, but a couple of them worked wonders, particularly the ones for anxiety and paranoia. Perhaps her only real victory was managing to get a Preaxin prescription, something she thanked Firebrand for tipping her off about every time she took one of those little white capsules. She never really stopped seeing The Administrator, not to mention the flunkies of His who would occasionally tag along, but they never attempted to harm her; They simply watched from a distance, studying their newest lab rat as she tried to go about her life like a normal person. As time went on, things started changing faster than Kate ever could've anticipated, and before she knew it she was an adult signing lease papers and paying bills. She eventually managed to save up enough money to buy a house of her own, and with nothing left for her in her hometown, purchased some property in Oakside and moved away, where she lived as normally as she could for several years. Up until a short while ago, everything had been just fine.
(X)
The longer the storm went on, the more she enjoyed listening to it. The howling wind and buckets of rain helped clear her head, and the metallic creaking of the swingset outside accompanied by the sound of groaning trees only added to the soothing atmosphere. Perhaps the reason she could hear it so well was that earlier in the day, she'd opened all of the windows and doors in her house, hoping to counteract the unusual heat wave that came just before the storm. Part of her knew that she should've shut them, but at this point, she simply didn't care; It was an unusually warm night, the breeze felt good, and the sound and smell of the rain helped ease her conscience. However, as the hours passed the storm steadily grew worse, and Kate was debating whether or not she wanted to get up and stop the inside of her house from being drenched. It was late in the night now, around 3:30 AM, and the only light in her room came from the flashlight laying on her bed, as the storm had knocked out the power hours ago. She'd set up her new camcorder next to the flashlight and was using it to record herself, another habit that stemmed from dealing with entities that nobody else could see. Suddenly, a strong gust of wind blew through the open window, sweeping through the scattered papers and knocking a few from the walls. Then, lightning flashed across the sky accompanied by an earsplitting crack of thunder and Kate froze on the spot, feeling an all-too-familiar chill creep up her spine. She turned to face the camera, her terrified eyes beginning to water, and whispered; "He's here…"