Oz's Journal

Session 07.03.14

Typical day until some junkie came in to sell off his crap. Amongst said crap was what would have been a splendid antique rifle if it hadn't likely been sitting in a basement corner for generations. I decided it was worth the risk to buy and try to repair and restore. Rob also dropped by to invite me to Mrs. Danford's place for a cookout he was throwing. Ran by Joex2's to get a second opinion on the worthwhile of rescuing the old gun. She-Joe agreed that it'd be worth it, so I left it with her.

Saw a variety of people I knew at the cookout. Becca...she brought fucking taco bell as her contribution. Ugh. Although I'm a hypocrite since I ate three of the burritos she brought.

So then things got very weird very fast. So James, a guy I marginally know from the War Room, and Daniel Frost, the courier that both Joe and I use for work, were talking about James' sister having been kidnapped the night before (she's apparently also a friend of She-Joe).

We all went inside and I'm pretty sure someone spiked our drinks, but all of a sudden Rob walks in and the kidnapper was indicated as being a vampire. Really. I'm serious. Rob was adamant and James and Daniel were biting. They actually believed that James' sister was kidnapped by a child of the fucking night vampire, like real Dracula. Then suddenly Mrs. Danford shows up with some of her husband’s journals about vampires. At least she was still retaining her senses, though I think she was reeling in the sudden knowledge that her husband was apparently a madman. Unfortunately, this drove She-Joe onto the looney bus with the others.

So....then they all start talking about tracking down this guy and KILLING HIM!?!? I was...horrified. Shocked. WTF was happening? Oh, he's a vampire, not a person, lets FUCKING KILL HIM???

Okay. So, yes, his sister needed rescuing. I'd be tearing the world apart if someone grabbed Becca and ran off with her. I'm down for some civilian justice. God knows the cops are next to useless these days in Detroit. So I'm down for that. But there are no such things as vampires. I tried to interject some sanity. Perhaps it's some sort of coked up druggie goth cultist. Who knows.

They were determined. I didn't want my friends to get themselves hurt or do something stupid (LIKE KILL PEOPLE!!), so I (I'm so fucking stupid) agreed to go with. Mrs. Danford volunteered to drive and be ready to call 911. At least someone with an ounce of sanity would be alone with us.

Session 07.16.14

So. Off to the club we go to try and pick up the kidnappers trail. On the way there, James was able to nab a picture of the kidnapper off of one of the club's social media sites. Good, at least now we have a visual.

Mrs. Danford and I waited below with the car as the others clamored up to the roof top where Daniel had lost track of the guy. So, I've heard Daniel is some sort of parkour free-runner guy, and now that I've seen him in action, daaaaaaaaaaaamn. The boy is apparently part monkey and part cheetah. I'm impressed.

While we waited, I got a new high score in Candy Crush Saga.

They have to check out a couple more rooftops before their roofing trail goes cold when Daniel tramples one of the scenes. I could hear She-Joe yelling at him from street level.

The others started talking to people in the area, asking if they've seen the guy in the image. Mrs. Danford and I were checking out buildings to see if any were likely candidates for someone pretending to be a vampire with hostages to hide out in. Instead we found this really cute shop that sold antique china and tea sets. There was this one really cute set with fantastic indigo detailing that my grandmother would love. There was another that Mrs. Danford was telling me about, very similar to a set she once owned until her daughter broke one of the pieces. I actually remember that set. And the breaking. She was quite upset about it at the time. I didn't say anything, because I remember her selling that set to my uncle back when he ran the antique shop.

Mrs. Danford gets a new idea on how to encourage people to be more helpful and like a foolish rich white woman; she breaks out her purse and starts doling out cash for information. I was overcome with images of mobs swarming over her like ants, so I tried to puff up (they hate that) and look intimidating. I'm pretty sure any chances of that being successful failed when all I did was cause two of my shirt buttons to pop and fly off.

So She-Joe finds this kid who recognizes the guy in the picture. Confirming what Daniel had to say about the guy, the kid called him "super-whitey" because of his absurd athletic ability. Well, he was able to point the way out to a boarded up apartment building, stating that it was where "super-whitey" lived. Mrs. Danford and She-Joe paid him for the information and we were on our way.

I didn't want to go in. Ladders and I are not on close, personal speaking terms. But Mrs. Danford was waiting in the car and stressed that they needed at least one person who was still holding onto some bit of sanity to go with them. So up four floors on a rickety fire escape (although I think Daniel climbed the entire way in like three swings).

We crawled into the building through a lose bit of plywood that was boarding up a broken window. It was pretty much what one would expect from an abandoned, boarded up building in Detroit: dust, crumbling drywall & suspended ceilings, old broken furniture remnants, signs of squatters, old and recent. Oddly, no sign of current inhabitants. I expected the place to have a swarm of crack heads and meth addicts scurrying about like rats.

Well, like a well-designed classic dungeon crawl, we continued ever downward until we found ourselves facing a door to the basement that had been secured with a chain from the other side. A quick bit of work with the Leatherman tool, and we popped the hinge bolts out and were able to remove the door. We proceeded cautiously into the basement.

So. I've had time to think on this. I'm still not sure what happened. I'm not sure where my world has gone. What it has become. I'm not even really sure how to grasp with this new reality. I wish I were delusional, but it wasn't just me.

Rob was right. The others were right.

Monsters are real.

I'm not saying it was a vampire, like classic blah I want to suck your blood vampire. But it was no fucking human.

It tried to sneak up on us. Everything happened in just a few seconds. It was there trying to attack us with a baseball bat. It knocked Daniel halfway across the room with the thing, I'm pretty sure I heard his ribs crack and he spit up blood. She-Joe shot the thing, but the bullet wounds started to heal and James burned it with the raid and lighter. I smacked it across the head with my baton and it replied with a blow to my arm that nearly dislocated it. Daniel tossed his raid can at the creature as Joe shot it and set the thing on fire. Its face had melted off, it was screaming inhumanly and kept moving. Then James decapitated it.

That was the end for me. My nerves had had too much and my body decided it was an excellent time for me to check out. I collapsed into unconsciousness.

Downtime (Post-7.16.14)

I have spent the past two weeks holed up in the backroom of the store reading everything I can find on the internet about vampires and watching every vampire movie I could get my hands on from Nosferatu and Dracula (so many versions of Dracula) to Lost Boys and Monster Squad to Blade and Twilight. I'm ashamed to admit, I really liked Twilight. It was so enchanting and romantic. I will never admit this to another soul. Ever. Actually I may need to burn this journal now.

The backroom has become my bunker. I've got the little narrow ceiling windows in the back lined with stakes and it looks like someone decorated for Christmas with garland made from garlic cloves, which actually smells quite nice...although it makes me hungry. I think I've already put on some extra weight in the past week from garlic bread cravings. I know Mrs. Danford's husband said garlic doesn't work, but hey - he could have been wrong. It can't hurt. I've moved some of the mirrors from the shop into the back into strategic locations as well. My employees are a little worried. They're used to me being a little peculiar, but I think the strands of garlic has tipped them off that maybe my therapist isn't doing her job very well anymore.

I tried to get some holy water from the local Catholic church, but they apparently don't let people just waltz in to fill up canteens. They also wont sell it and asked me to leave. So I've ordered some online from a guy in Dallas that was selling it, he even posted a video of a priest blessing it.

I've called and talked with Mrs. Danford a few times about her husbands journal. She shared a few of his insights, but it seems that particular book is just one of several and more of a workbook than any sort of definitive survival guide. We need more information. She said she's planning on going down into his old workshop that's been locked up as long as I can remember. I told her I'd be there, as moral support, I'm sure going in there is going to be hell on her nerves, as well as to help her start digging through the books to find the truth.

I'm at a bit of a loss. I may have fortified myself in the backroom, but is it really any safer than standing on a street corner at night? I don't know enough. And I'm not really sure what to do with what I do know. Should I do something? Do I hide? Make myself as safe as I can and hope these things never notice me, or can't reach me? But what about my family? My grandmother is all alone without me. And Becca practically dresses in a manner than is likely to scream to vampires "FREE & WILLING"... Do I fight back? The others seem so capable and ready to fight. I'm just some fat guy who likes to pretend fight with other nerds.

Hopefully Mr. Danford's books will give us some more insight. Regardless of what any of us do, the more we know about this, the better off we will be.

I don't know what to do and I'm terrified.

Session 07.31.14

Everyone headed over to Mrs. Danford's place for dinner. I headed over early to help out. Well, that's why excuse. I just wanted to make really, really sure that nothing would prevent me from being there before the sun started going down. Better to be early than eaten by vampires. We had a lovely dinner, somewhat diminished by our attempts at keeping the conversation steered away from the very reason we were all there, but Mrs. Danford had requested that we do so. Also, there are too many fucking windows in that house. I could just FEEL hateful, hungry eyes on us all. I wonder if vampires can actually turn into bats.

....Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck..... I really shouldn't have gone there. Well so much for ever sleeping again.

<Two Hours Later>
Well that was sad. Apparently I fell asleep just after writing that last sentence.

I'm back in my basement apartment. We recently learned that the whole, "must be invited in" threshold thing IS true. But it only applies to HOMES. Places where people live and have lived and built up some sort of "I live here" energy. Well, that likely doesn't apply to the shop. So I've relocated back home. I wont be working late anymore, that's for sure.

So, after dinner, we all went downstairs and cracked open her husbands old lair. And I do mean LAIR. Like Monster Hunter HQ. He had a photo with She-Joe and James' dads and some other guy and a lady holding a hand cannon. More monster hunters. The lair was decked out in all sorts of weapons and weird shit. There was also a heavily picked over library. Looked like the place had been once, twice and thrice-overed. Likely by some of their other buddies after Mrs. Danford and the Dad's had gotten killed. She-Joe seemed really agitated by the weird ammo we found. Like mistletoe filled shotgun shells and stuff. She took one and left. Daniel grabbed a crossbow from the wall and went after her. Good. We should always travel in at least pairs if we go outside at night. James was investigating the other people in the photo and discussing the circumstances that connected Rob with this crew. Apparently he fulfilled weird work requests for them, but they otherwise kept him in the dark. His wife, Rebecca, Mrs. Danford's daughter, was apparently also aware of all of this crap.

So Mrs. Danford and I hit the books. She was also hitting the bottle a little as well and she quickly faded out. I kept up and read on through the night. We compared notes later when she woke back up and had compiled a considerable amount of useful notes about vampires. She was focusing on history and lore, specifically on how vampires make more of themselves and I focused primarily on how to kill the fuckers. Silver seems to be the big deal. Staking them paralyzes them, sunlight torches them. Crosses don't really work unless you're like the Pope or something. And the home threshold thing I mentioned earlier, but once you invite them in, you're fucked for good. Mrs. Danford found a passage about how they are made, apparently just feeding on someone introduces the threat of them dying and returning as a monster. The more they feed off someone, the more likely they are to turn into a vampire.

And guess what, of the three girls we rescued, the one who had died - her body was *stolen* from the morgue. Yeah. Right. So now we got another one of these monsters wandering around.

I did a little more digging around and found....and this is just fucking fantastic - it's not just vampires. Ghosts, and "cryptid's" are real as well. I wasn't really sure what the second one was, so I pulled it up on Wikipedia. So get this. Yeti, Loch Ness Monster and fucking chupacabras are what the fuck cryptid's are.

Well...at least this knowledge will make my cousin Sawyer who believes in Big Foot happy. Well, until Big Foot shows up and eats his fucking face.

So. It's all real. Monsters are real. The world fucking sucks. More than it already did.

And you know what. Yeah. These things need to be stopped. They've been operating in shadows, remaining myths nobody believes in. And these people who hunt them, they have chosen to remain just as hidden and shadowy.

I think everyone should know. I think the world needs to know the truth, so that the world can arm itself and defend itself against these horrors. I'm going to drag these fucking night terrors out of their obscurity and into the scrutiny of the public eye.

I've still got a lot of Aidan's cameras and recording gear from the last reenactment. I'm strapping that shit on and taking it when the gang heads out again. If they're intent on hunting these fuckers down, I'm going to help them as best I can. But I'm also going to film all this shit. Start a website and post it, and all the stuff we find in the books - the real stuff that works. I know, a lot of people will think it's a hoax and will laugh at it, but it'll be real and it'll be an archive for those who discover it. And it may make people who are on the fence realize the truth, bring them to our side of a secret war that I'm willing to bet has been going for ages.

Oh yeah. I need to get the website for the store finished up as well while I'm at it. And a tennis racket in case I need to fend off bats. Also I need to buy new shoes. I can't imagine running from monsters in these. They're too worn on the inside of my arch.

I need to pick up new deodorant too. Terror makes me sweat like woah.