Closure - Part II

Hello again.

I'm sorry about last time. I thought I could get through this in one go but everything is still so fresh in my mind. Sometimes I dream that I'm still there. But I know I have to finish telling the story no matter how much it hurts, so here we go.

I woke up alone in my old classroom, sitting at a desk in the front row. I had no idea how much time had passed or how I got there, but there was a message waiting for me on the blackboard, barely visible in the moonlight.

"You missed the best part.
Meet me in the gym!
                      - Will"

I got up and checked my pockets for my cellphone. It was gone. Then I tried the lights but there was no power. A part of me wanted to believe that I'd been in some kind of accident and hallucinated everything I'd seen at Will's house, but the coppery stench of blood coming from the hallway suggested that the nightmare was just beginning.

I stumbled out of the classroom expecting to see a mountain of corpses, but there was no one there. Just endless trails of blood that seemed to lead down the hall towards the main stairway. There was nowhere else to go, so I followed the red path in silence, eventually noticing claw marks on the floors, walls and ceiling.

All of the classrooms, bathrooms and exits on the ground floor were chained up and locked, and the blood trails converged at the entrance of the only lit room in the building: the gym. I could hear some kind of commotion coming from there, so I headed towards what was supposed to have been my first High School dance.

I had to cover my eyes as I inched forward, blinded by the bright doorway ahead of me. With each step I could hear a new note in a growing choir of muffled sobs and moans. As my vision adjusted, I saw something that will have me reaching for prescription bottles for years to come. The indoor soccer field / basketball court was peppered with drink stands, cheap Halloween decorations and a writhing trail of mutilated bodies leading up to a makeshift stage. Students, chaperones, members of the faculty - dozens of victims missing arms and legs and moaning in collective pain as freshly cauterized wounds filled the air with a scent not unlike burnt barbecue. I instinctively knew that the amputees should have been dead by now, but the hands responsible for their suffering didn't play by human rules. 

Gustave had just been practice.

Then I looked towards the stage and realized what the carnage was for. The victims were in the process of being stitched together like gory puzzle pieces forming a gigantic effigy of Julami itself. Whatever couldn't be created out of living flesh appeared to be improvised from random scraps of furniture broken and bent into the necessary shapes and surgically attached to a still-living patchwork of bodies roughly the size of a small bus.

The sculpture was incomplete, though. A moon-horned head, a pair of arms ending in three-taloned hands and about half a torso were all that adorned the stage as Will sat on the ground in front of it, surrounded by a massive palette of blood-soaked raw material. He was hard at work nailing two arms together and bending them into something that looked like feet.

I did my best to contain a scream, but I couldn't hold it in anymore once I realized that Will wasn't alone up there. Completely nude and drenched in blood, Mari sat on her knees next to him, holding up a toolbox like a brainwashed Igor to Will's Doctor Frankenstein. The bright lights also revealed a third member of the infernal party, its familiar outline projected as a horned shadow towards the back of the stage. Its oversized hands appeared to be resting on Mari's shoulders.

Will turned and grinned, probably having been alerted to my presence by his pet. His clothes were completely stained red and he still held a severed arm in his left hand as he got up to show off his work.

"Had a nice nap? Neat little trick I learned when the nightmares kept me from sleeping properly. Now get over here and help yourself to your gift. Just remember that we gotta haul this thing to the roof before the cops get here."

He spoke like I'd just shown up late to art class. As if I didn't have to strain to hear him over the sobbing and moaning echoing throughout the gym. I remember stepping over familiar heads as I approached, doing my best to avoid looking at their faces or the hideous sculpture so I could focus on deescalating things. For Mari's sake.

"Will, it wasn't supposed to be like this."

He chuckled.

"You mean the bitch? Don't worry, she's completely untouched. And I know this isn't as clean as using guns like we'd always hoped, but the media is gonna go wild when they get here. Think of the view they'll get from the helicopters."

I kept moving forward against my better judgement.

"We were just messing around back then, Will. You know it wasn't ever supposed to be serious."

Will let out a frustrated sigh.

"I don't know, Robby. Shooting up schoolmates always sounded pretty serious to me. But I should have known you'd pussy out on me again. I didn't want to believe it, but you really changed, man."

"Will, please."

"Please what? 'Please stop, it's not too late'? Or maybe 'please go back to your shitty life as a nobody in a world that hates you'? Do you honestly think I'm stupid enough to think that either of us can still walk out of here and carry on like nothing happened? Fuck you, man. Ju is the best thing that ever happened to us and you walked out on all of our plans. I wanted to trust you, but Ju is all I got. Well, fuck it. Now you're never gonna know what it looks like when it's finished. At least not the from the outside."

He dropped the severed arm and reached for his pocket. Scared shitless or not, this was my only chance.

I made a run for it and fully intended to tackle Will to the ground and finish what I'd started on my birthday, but before I could reach him he'd already pulled out a notebook and pen and quickly scribbled something inside. I realize now that he probably kept some drawings half-finished in case of emergencies.

I stopped dead in my tracks as the statue groaned to life and began to leak an assortment of bodily fluids. The people who served as the Julami-Thing's muscles - most of them teenagers like myself - wept as fleshy arms dragged them off the stage with impossible strength. Seeing hell itself charging towards me, I changed directions and ran out of the gym as fast as my legs could carry me. 

I remember nearly slipping over a body as I scrambled towards the hallway. I'm pretty sure that was the last time I saw Vic.

The thing lunged towards me with a pained growl, and I could hear wind whistling between its makeshift claws as it tore through the air. I've never been a particularly fit person, but the threat of a fate worse than death can turn anyone into an athlete.

I barely remember making it upstairs, backtracking to the only door I knew I could close. I remember the pain perfectly well, though. The Julami-Thing swiped off a chunk of my right Achilles tendon just as I reached the classroom. It took all of my strength to shut that door without passing out, but the insistent banging assured me that it wouldn't keep the thing out for long. Both hands still pulling back on the door handle, I used my good leg to drag a chair over to my side. Then I began kicking it into the ground until the flimsy metal frame was warped and twisted enough to act as a wedge between the handle and the doorframe. Letting go of the handle, I quickly linked more bent chairs into a makeshift barricade.

The banging only got worse, and the door was beginning to buckle as Julami pushed with the weight of countless mutilated kids. It was going to break through in a matter of seconds and I was already feeling woozy from the blood loss. My only thought was to jump out one of the windows and hope that the fall killed me. Anything was better than letting it touch me again.

My mind raced in search of options and I remembered our Will's notes and our original tests. Julami was clearly a lot stronger now, but there were still rules, right? It couldn't kill me and I couldn't kill It, but maybe I could override its current task somehow. Then I realized where I was. I had a minute at best before it broke through, so I limped towards the chalkboard.

My hands shook and my vision blurred, but I had practiced enough times with Will to mostly know what I was doing as I focused on the familiar sound of chalk gliding across dark slate. The characters were only marginally better than stick figures, but I managed to sketch out a rough facsimile of Julami forcing Will to draw an even cruder sketch of Julami forcing Will to draw another sketch, and so on and so forth until the door burst open and I finally passed out.

I came to at the hospital a couple of days later.

From what I heard, the authorities chalked everything up to a school shooting and explained that there were no bodies because Will set fire to the gym once he was done piling up his victims. I knew better than to contradict them, and I hope enough time has passed that they won't mind it if I talk about what really happened on an abandoned blog that no one even visits anymore. Besides, I hear that some of the first responders are finally being released from the psychiatric ward and going back to work now.

Will was sent to an specialized institution in another state. I'm not allowed to visit him given our history, but last I heard he's still trying to draw on every surface using whatever he can get his hands on. There's even a rumor that he smashed a window and used the glass to start scratching out artwork on his own body. I feel so bad for him. Not just because this is just as much my fault as it is his (or because I still can't come up with a better solution to the Julami issue), but because I know it could just as easily be me in there instead of him. Had the dice fallen just a little bit differently, I'd be the one trying to make comic-books out of my own shit right now.

The police still investigated my part in all this, though. Marianne must have told them that I was involved, and they obviously knew about my past, but nothing ever came of it. I get the feeling that they know exposing the situation would just make things worse. Besides, they probably figure that between the permanent limp and the metric fuck-ton of antidepressants, I've already been through enough. Though, to be honest, I think I could have benefited from the meds before all of this Julami business.

When I was finally sent home from the hospital, I immediately made sure to delete all of the image files on the blog so no one could ever reproduce our experiments. But I decided to leave the blog itself online as a warning so that this sort of thing never happens again. I even went through some of Will's old accounts and deleted any scanned or photographed artwork. I hear that the cops destroyed the originals after their investigation over at his house, and that means only Will and I still know how to summon Julami. I intend to keep it that way.

In case you were wondering, Vic had a pretty nice funeral, all things considered. It was obviously a closed casket ceremony, but his little brother came up to me and gave me a hug. I've been in touch with him since then. He's a nice kid, reminds me of his brother.

That was also the last time I saw Mari. She blocked me on everything and her family moved to another city during Christmas break. I tried forwarding her a letter through our principal but I never heard back. In case she's reading this: I'm still very sorry, and I hope we can speak again one day.

These days I'm just trying to catch up with my studies and save up some money at my new job (the rental store manager didn't want to take me back after what happened. I'm sure he had his reasons). My parents enrolled me in another school, but I can still hear whispers about how I'm the "cursed boy". I don't mind it, though. At least the rumors keep people away. I just want to graduate so I can put this hell behind me.

With any luck, this will be the last time I talk about Julami. It took a while to go through the archives, but as long as there are no more images out there, I think we're safe.

I guess Vic was right about one thing: no one hates teenagers more than other teenagers.

I really miss you, man. And Will, too.

Thank you all for reading, and please don't believe everything you see on the internet. It's safer that way.

Chainsaw cheers,

- Robby

Closure - Part I

Hey, Internet.

You're probably surprised to see me here after such a long time, but my therapist says that closure is the first step to healing and I'll never heal if I don't put an end to this story. These days, it hurts to remember what happened (in more ways than one), but I feel like I have an obligation to share my experience even if no one else believes me.

So... Let's start from the beginning. The night of the Birthday Bash.

I had just punched my best friend in the face and embarrassed myself in front of the first girl I ever loved. Enough time has passed that I'm okay with admitting that. Besides, what happened later makes more sense if you keep that in mind. Anyway, my parents came home to find me bawling my eyes out next to a half-eaten birthday cake. Not exactly my finest moment.

The next morning I logged onto MSN and there was a really long message from Vic waiting for me. I think it's easier if I just post the entire thing here:

(06:41)#: Hey man.

                I had some time to think about it and I don't know if we can still be friends.
                I'm not mad at you, but how can I trust you after finding out what you were hiding from us?
                Besides, you really scared Marianne, and I don't know if I can forgive that.
                I'd prefer it if you didn't message either of us again, but I still wish you the best and hope both you and Will get the help you need.

This is why I made that last post trying to explain myself. And once I realized that neither Vic or Mari was ever going to message me again, I spent some time doing a little soul-searching. Everyday I'd go straight from school to work to my room, and then I'd sit with my thoughts and listen to music.

I felt a lot of stuff back then. Anger, sadness, regret. But I think the main thing was embarrassment. I was ashamed of the person I'd been, and I didn't want to be that hateful little shit anymore. A part of me blamed Will, but deep down I knew I'd always been the source of my own problems. So I began throwing stuff out. Old notebooks filled with violent fantasies and stupid poems, RPG notes and random doodles I'd made with Will. I eventually got to the box under my bed that had all of the Julami "research". Mari was right, I never should have messed with that sort of thing in the first place. So I decided that, from now on, things would be different. I would be different, and I wouldn't need a pet demon to get shit done.

It didn't happen overnight, but I started to feel better. I tried speaking to new people at school and even decided that I would still go to the Halloween dance by myself if I had to. Vic must have noticed a difference because he started saying hi to me whenever we met in the hallways. We even had a chat about Mrs. Borges' plans for the dance committee at one point. Sure, Mari was still avoiding me, but it felt like the worst was behind me.

Then Will showed up at my door.

I'm not proud of how I acted then, and I wish more than anything that I could go back in time and find some way to help him. But I can't and I didn't. Will reached out and I turned him away because he was a reminder of everything that was wrong with me, and my mistake will haunt me for the rest of my life. I swear I didn't ignore him out of malice. I would have done something if I'd known how bad he was hurting, but I was still sore about what happened with Mari, and I hadn't read his "diary" at that point.

And then it was Halloween. That morning, I get a message from Vic explaining that he still considers me a friend and he wants to tell me something important at the dance. The idea of hanging out with my friends again got me all nostalgic, so I decided to check the blog before leaving the house. You know, for old time's sake That's when I found Will's additions to Doodle Doods. I don't think I need to tell you that I was worried - though not as much as I should have been. Even after everything that had happened, I didn't think things could be that bad. I had grown up with this kid. Love him or hate him, he was still my brother, you know?

I was already wearing my best shoes and a neatly-pressed dress shirt (complete with the first tie I had ever tied by myself) when I finally decided to check in on Will before heading to the dance. It seemed simple enough: I'd take the bike, talk things over with him for about half an hour before going home and begging my parents for a ride to school. If everything went well, I'd be at the dance before sundown.

Of course, I was blinded by the unjustified optimism that often fogs the minds of young people anticipating a fun night. Real life is never that simple, and I knew thing were much worse than I thought as soon as Will opened the door. His clothes were stained a brownish color and he stank like a rancid meat locker, but it was his grin that immediately convinced me something was off.

"I'm so glad you're here!" He sounded exactly like that Christmas his mom had bought him Monopoly.

I tried to come up with some semblance of an apology, but Will just pulled me inside and locked the door behind us. The house was even dirtier than his clothes. Pizza boxes all over the place and air so stale that it felt like I was walking into a grotto. I didn't have time to take a good look around, though, as Will eagerly led the way to our usual hangout while mumbling about how he'd been breaking new ground and that things would be so much easier now that I was there to help him. Rationally, I knew that following him downstairs was a stupid idea, but I didn't have the heart to leave after how I'd acted the last time I'd seen him.

The stench was so much worse down there, and I froze at the bottom of the stairs once I saw the source. The kid was spread out on the floor like a mangled piece of half-finished taxidermy, naked except for rags stuffed into his mouth and boxers stained with caked layers of human waste. His arms and legs had been reduced to charred stumps, and he lay on a carpet of discarded drawings - each a crude depiction of Julami removing limbs from an agonizing victim. I identified the boy as Gustave, Will's old tormentor. Realizing that he had company, the broken body began to convulse on the floor.

Will spoke up so I could hear him over Gustave's muffled screams for help.

"It took a while, but I finally realized that Ju doesn't actually have to to kill anyone in order to send a message. I just needed to figure out the limits of what he can do. Shit's right out of Hellraiser, man. And after we hit the school, he'll be strong enough to do anything." Will pointed to the basement walls, nearly every square centimetre tattooed with intricate variations of the Julami sigil as well as blueprints for some kind of statue.

The screaming grew worse as Gustave began to piss himself, and when I looked at his reflection on Will's old TV set I swear I could just barely make out the outline of a horned figure hunched over his body. It appeared to be licking the wounds on the kid's contorted face.

Will looked at me expecting approval but I had none to give.

I'd like to say that I ran so I could call for help, but the truth is that I'd never been so scared in my entire fucking life. All I knew was that I had to get out of that house, and I'd given up on helping my oldest friend.

The next few seconds are a blur in my memory. I remember racing to the front door, fumbling over the locks, giving up, and then heading towards the kitchen so I could escape out the back door. That's when I ran into Will's decaying mom still hunched over the dining room table. Behind her, a large mirror revealed that Julami had already caught up to me. A translucent shadow with burning eyes reached out towards me before I could turn around.

The last thing I saw before blacking out was Will looking disappointed. He was holding a sketchpad in one hand and petting something that wasn't there with the other.

I'm sorry, that's as much as I can handle today.

- Robby