Bad.

Okay, first things first.

I did not post the entry previous to this one.

In fact, I have no idea how it got there. I got maybe an hour of sleep last night—maybe. When that failed, Rose and I basically spent the rest of the night curled up in her bed, staring at each other.

We both needed to be at our respective works at eight, so when about seven in the morning rolled around, we agreed that we needed to get going. She seemed very sure about not needing me to call in sick and going to work on her own. She said she knew what was what now, and she wasn’t worried because he couldn’t come near her in a public place. She hugged me, told me she loved me as her own soul, and thanked me for sticking with her all this time.

Still unsure, I left for work. I watched her do the same. I watched her.

I got off at three. My boss doesn’t allow us to keep our phones on during work hours, so as soon as I got out, I turned mine on. The first thing that happened was that it buzzed to tell me I had a voicemail. I checked it.

It was Rose’s mother telling me she didn’t show up for work this morning, and asking if I knew where she was. I called right afterward and told her no, to my knowledge she’d left for work. She was on her house phone, so she used the three-way calling to get Violet on the line. Vi hadn’t heard a word from Rose since she left last night, before the incident. It was at that point that we collectively decided to call the police.

I drove straight there, and from about 3:30 to about five, I’ve been at Rose’s house with her mother and a few of the deputies. I couldn’t bring myself to tell them about Slender Man; what use was it telling them about something that, by all rational thought, shouldn’t exist? They already knew she was being followed from our report.

There was something else about this. Rose’s room. Nothing was touched, except for the bed. Long slashes in the bed went all the way down through the mattress like somebody went at it with a machete. Rose’s side was untouched; the place torn up was where I usually slept.

And her notebook. It hadn’t been there when we left, but Rose’s class notebook—the one I told you about once—was sitting on her dresser with a note. It was addressed to me. It read:

Celie-

I undeRstand PerFectlY wELl WhaT’s happEning to mE noW. TAke this. iT wiLl help yOu Find them and bring tHem togetheR.

the witness wiLL bring them together.

ROSE

It certainly sounds like some of her rambling. I’ve brought the notebook home. I’m still deliberating whether to even open it. The part that worries me the most is that the note that was on the notebook on the dresser wasn’t in her handwriting.

It was in mine.