I Found A Flash Drive Documenting A Bizarre Psychology Experiment In 2009. This Was What Was Inside. (Part 7)
Part seven of a series.
Day 6
10/22/2009
1:10am
Maxwell is gone. I’ve been up for two hours now and he is nowhere to be seen. Garett and Edward are fast asleep in their bedroom. They left sticky notes for me all over the monitor, but none of them mention Maxwell having departed. And we don’t even have the capacity to go over old footage anymore. Every day I lose more and more control over everything that is happening here.
I need to start getting things back in order. But this cannot begin unless I find Maxwell and get him back into the house. I can’t even imagine that he would have gone far from Aspen. There is one sticky note here in particular that Garett left.
“At least the Sexperiment is a success,” it read.
I looked up into the monitor and found Elija spooning with Tabitha in their own bedroom. Down on floor one of the eastern wing I found Aspen alone in a very large bed, cuddling with a pillow. Maxwell’s luggage was in the room with her. If he didn’t take his belongings, then it is highly unlikely that he has skipped out on the experiment.
Having decided that this was indeed an emergency situation, I called their cell phone, hoping to wake them up. It just rang on and on. Nothing seemed strange at first, because the ringing seemed to be coming through the monitor speakers. But something was off. I turned the speakers down and called again. I could still hear the ringing. Their cell phone is in the woods outside our shack.
8:30am
Edward woke up first, so I sent him outside to find the source of the ringing while I called it. Having found the cell, he stole into the mansion while the others were just waking up. I watched him make his way stealthily through the house, placing the phone on the kitchen counter before returning to the shack.
Garett is up. Him and Edward are acting very weird around each other. There is an obvious tension here. It needs to be resolved if we are to start taking proper steps to salvaging this experiment. From just a cursory glance at the monitors I can also see that the participants (if they can still be called that at this point) are utterly devoid of spirit. It seems that a chilly disposition has blanketed everything within the reaches of Rosewood Manor.
Aspen has taken to looking out the windows every so often. She seems utterly obsessed by something out there. Was it Maxwell? When Tabitha came into her room, they sat together and talked a little.
“Has it come again?” Tabitha asked quietly.
“No.”
“I know you’re scared,” she pet Aspen’s head a little. “I am too. I’ve never been a big sister to anyone, but I can tell you need one right now. Whatever has been terrorizing us the past day and half may have just been some local teenagers. A lot of people know about this house. Maxwell didn’t have to…”
Tabitha broke off, looking directly into the cameras. Taking Aspen by the hands, she led her out of the room and only faint whisperings could be heard now from some unknown location.
As I look back over my entries I realize that up until this point, my notes have been quite off-topic. I don’t know where my direction has gone, but it seems to be penetrating inward rather than out to my experiments. Of course I was sick, but I have to wonder did I have direction before, or was this whole trip a mistake? I need to find out what my “assistants” know about Maxwell and the other participants. What has been terrorizing them while I was out cold?
12:05pm
All three of us have sat down to get back to zero. It turns out that Edward had gone outside while I was asleep. He claims that it was only because he was concerned about one of the girls, but from the look Garett is giving me, I don’t believe he is giving us the whole story.
“You failed to mention this sooner,” I scolded Edward.
He did not seem phased. Garett and I have recently taken to wondering quietly amongst ourselves just how much Edward has been failing to mention; or how much has been slipping by him. “So I’m guessing those are your footprints in camera 23?”
He stared into the monitor for a long time before quietly saying that they were not. Camera 23 was pointing down the back-side of the west wing, whereas he had made his way around the east. But there weren’t just a few footprints. The place was covered in them.
“I’m going to have to go check this out myself now,” I said, grabbing my jacket.
The thought did not altogether please me, but I felt as though I had reached a position of no other recourse.
Garett looked hard at Edward. The latter shifted uncomfortably. It was enough to draw my attention. I was getting frustrated. I demanded to know what really has been happening while I was asleep.
“Those are my footprints,” said Edward. “But not from this morning, and not from just one trip. I was just trying to keep the original spirit of our experiment alive… you know. The fear.”
Now highly interested, I sat back
[From the author: That was all that was contained in the file for that day. It has obviously been tampered with or deleted. Below it is a folder entitled: 22 Auxiliary Edward. This folder contains four documents, all fragmented themselves. One in particular contains only a single word. They give little evidence about the time they cover, but from the name of the folder it may be safe to say that what is left therein covers the rest of Day 6.
I do not want to deprive those interested of anything I have access to, so I suppose I will just post the respective fragments down a line, as they appeared in the folder.]
22 Auxiliary Edward:
- W
- Edward’s biggest mistake was not his seizing the initiative,
- symptomatic of an emerging sociop
- Denial evident in
Read part eight here. (Part 8 will be up 1/6, 10PM)