Chapter 2

Hypothesis

Clyde couldn't believe what he was seeing. He mulled over the page, refreshing time and time again, but the results didn't change.

Of the five criminals whose names he wrote down, only one died. He researched into further detail, but the results he got were pretty vague. He assumed it was a heart attack, but the exact details were out of his reach. Which left only one question to debate.

Why did only one die? It seemed like there was a pattern, but as far as Clyde could tell he only had King, Bieber, and this one. There was very little connection between them socially or occupationally. If he hadn't performed this experiment he would have assumed it was celebrities that was the key, but that was stupid. The real question was: what about celebrities would make them susceptible to the notebook that also applied to this guy? He decided to look on the victim's social media one more time to be sure, and then he saw it.

Photos. The other two that had photographs strangely didn't have actual pictures of their face. In fact, one of them had a full body picture with the face concealed. But the third guy had pictures of his face. Clyde switched back to the site and fiddled around with it, looking for other rosters. He found that he could toggle it to show faces. He decided to do this right. He chose two people with the original setting to kill, and two other people to kill using pictures. The next update would be in one hour. It was time to test his conjecture.

While waiting for the update, Clyde sifted through the internet, looking for some sort of confirmation of the notebook. It seemed dumb, but if Clyde was right, then someone else had to have used the note. The ripped pages indicated something, and that something was that another person wanted to erase evidence that the notebook worked. But that raised the contradiction of the note. Why would someone so proficient in hiding their tracks leave such a big piece of evidence? It didn't matter either way though. Conjecture alone was pointless in it couldn't be tested. But that was beside the point. Clyde scoured the far reaches of Google, but found that it knew about just as much as Clyde, minus the notebook. In any case, Clyde did manage to waste about an hour, which was his original intention to begin with, so something was accomplished.

He checked back on the site, and found that the two people with their pictures revealed were removed from the page, but the other two were still there. This confirmed Clyde's hypothesis. To use the notebook, a face and a name was needed. But was that it?

Suddenly, another thought sent a chill down his spine. The people running this prison aren't stupid. They would notice that a number of their prisoners are dying of heart attacks, and at around similar times or clumps. Then an even more disturbing thought hit Clyde.

He was currently the murderer of around five people. Three were prisoners, but did he have the right to judge. The sudden weight of the crime that he had committed finally sunk in. In disgust, he felt bile rise from his mouth, but he held it in. He picked up a trash can on the side of his desk and vomited into it. He breathed heavily, the sour tang stained on his teeth. He shook from the sudden panic attack. Then, he gained a slight bit of clarity.

First things first, clean up the mess. His mother was downstairs, but the door would have kept the sound in. He needed to hide the evidence of what he had done. First, he scoured his bathroom cabinets for any supplies. He came out with some decent cleaning tools, and got to work. He flushed down the contents of the trash can, cleaning the plastic bin thoroughly. He then checked around the area, washing down and wiping any traces left. He then washed out his mouth, brushing his teeth with a spare brush and rinsing with enough water to drown a grown man. He then looked in the mirror at himself, trying to come to terms with what he had done. Could he continue, knowing that it led to people's deaths? Clyde didn't even know the answer to his question, and an outsider could clearly tell how detached Clyde's actions were from his perception. If someone could summarize his feelings, it would most likely include all the things he wasn't thinking, and all the connections he hadn't made. Desensitization isn't easy to facilitate, but when the murders are just faces on a screen, names and actions of people you don't know? Who knows if Clyde understood exactly the weight of what had occurred thanks to him. He reasoned off his crimes, brushing them off slowly, and convincingly. He moved on to other matters, hiding his disgust in a dark corner.

He resumed his activities with his computer, searching through the site one more time before closing the tab. He searched up on Google other sites with up to date rosters on prisoners. He found a fairly decent site, not as good as the first one though. Only some criminals had photos released, and the site only updated once a week. Despite this, Clyde was thankful that e at least had a working site again. He shut his computer down, and put up the notebook for the day.

Steven couldn't shake some foreboding feeling inside of him. It gnawed at him, like a beast born of anxiety and paranoia. He didn't have any major assessments on his schedule, so he wasn't sure why he felt this way. He rummaged through his bookshelf, perhaps looking for a book that might put his mind off of this terrible feeling, but he came up empty handed. He sat down at a chair, trying to find what set him on edge like he was, but nothing came to mind. He pondered it for a while, but decided it was pointless. He almost called up Sarah, but hesitated. Why did he? Did he just not feel social today? Nothing made sense, least of all how he felt. Steven turned on the television, and slowly waited for his panic attack to cease.

It didn't, and maybe that was what was so strange. Either way, Steven slept uneasily that night.

"Are you sure you chose this boy by chance?"

"…Maybe it had something to do with that last note,"

"Do you mean the note you didn't remove?"

"Yeah. Maybe, using him, I'll find out why that notes in there. But more importantly, are you sure that you don't know who had this before me?"

"Yes. The person must have forfeited ownership, and I happened to pick it up,"

"But doesn't that mean the original's dead?"

"It seems that way, but why this person left it after killing the Shinigami I'll never know,"