Stated for the Anomalous Records Department of the Quentin Egbert Foundation's Personnel Files, June 2023, Recording monitored by S.T.T recording software, edited by Roger McCrae, newly appointed chief of said department.
Greetings to agents, subordinates, predecessors, future replacements, and those with access to this electronic records system. My name is Roger McCrae, and I am the architect of this stated system.
For background purposes, I am currently 29 years of age with a bachelor's degree in information sciences and a minor in coding, appointed by the Board of Directors of the foundation following the dismissal of my predecessor Holland Smythe: for destruction of property. As of writing this read me file within the code base I have been employed for approximately 6 months, all of which have been spent getting the archival process up to date with modern standards. It's been a painful process and one that I've found little funding or interest in with the other teams of the Department, but I've managed to mostly achieve an easy to read and navigable format for the many, many case files that are in need of transcribing.
I've had little chance to categorize or read through the files of this archive, and I expect my job in the following months to be a grueling, monotonous process of separating the many false tales from the truth. The QED seems to have had an incredibly lax information gathering policy in the past, punctuated by the aforementioned dismissal of key staff: who randomly began destroying the records of every file on hand citing "falsity" as the reason. While recovering these lost files is another beast entirely, readers should note that it remains within my purview to do so. Crackpot fantasy, though false, still falls within the bounds of our record keeping policy; and the tales of outright liars and pranksters that dog our institution of "paranormal investigators" leads to the occasional insight into the human psyche. (On a personal note the "Reefer Beast" from last week's call in was quite unfunny, but highly imaginative).
As for the rest of the files, I will be sorting them into the archetypal tales that follow humanities' prodding into the unknown and strange, as both a researcher, and survivor of such an event. I imagine there will be some that defy our current understanding of the world, but not so much that a plausible explanation cannot be uncovered by digging deep enough. Follow up notes will be attached to each case in brackets where further investigation was deemed to be warranted, but the Department only has so much funding and time, and I imagine it'll take more than rumors to inspire my new unruly subordinate Bill to actually chase leads. With all that said, welcome aboard fellow knowledge seekers. I hope I've left enough behind to make your jobs easier.
Categories are as follows; all primary categories are preceded by a capital 'A' to represent Anomaly/Anomalous. Case Numbers refer to several information key points that are used by the system to sort files.
E: Entity
F: False (Disproven Events/Ficticious)
L: Location
R: Ritual/Momentary Event
O: Object
W: Weather
Subcategories exist on a case by case basis and can be searched through the system to give a drop-down list.
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Case Number: 2700-AW, Subcategory: Disappearance/Suicide
Incident date: June 7th-June 28th, 2019
Victim/Affected Individual: Thomas Fairbanks of Tulip's Hollow, Iowa. Age 27
Materials/Evidence Logged: Waterlogged Diary, soil samples 1-3
Edited and Catalogued by Roger McCrae, Chief Record Keeper
Data in case file limited to relevance of event, extra material logged in Additionals.
Incident Begins:
June 7th
Dear Diary,
It's been a few months since I last wrote, but it's mainly because life's not been going great. Well, it's been going great in some ways, but not in others.
For the good news, I managed to move out finally, all the way to Tulip's Hollow for that job with the server farm. The town is just as nice as when I decided to tour the house: real cozy, forested hills, an old-timey square with a concrete fountain. Lots of those Christmas pine trees. When I first breathed it in, the smell was the freshest I've ever tasted in my life. I took a walk by the lake and almost thought I was in a movie. The boardwalks, the little shops give you this feeling that you're in a completely different world, everything feels lived in, deep in history and built up. I got one of those really good crullers from the bakery I visited last time. Golden crispy, just like before.
The climate's a bit different from New Mexico, but the wetter the better honestly. It looks like rain on the horizon all next week, and good, I'm tired of my skin cracking. I never want to go back to the desert again, heatstroke is way worse than people let on.
Mom and Dad were sad to see me go, but it was time and they were proud of me, and that feeling was something I've been chasing forever. I'll have to bring them up here sometime, me and dad can finally plan out that fishing trip we always dreamed of. Mom would adore the lake too, she loves the water.
The house is awesome, two bathrooms, one floor, but big, lots of gardening space, and the woods are all around. My nearest neighbor isn't close, but not so far either that I'd worry about wolves or something silly like that. It's a little bit of a drive into town, but the view of the trees surrounding the road makes up for it.
As for furniture, a few months ago my buddy Niles got me on these surplus sale websites to prepare for the move. They're filled with companies or the military trying to offload stuff before they liquidate it, you know: dressers, file cabinets, tools. Most of it is still wrapped up or even brand new, they just don't have any use for it; so it ends up dirt cheap, or even free. I got a bunch of really nice pieces shipped out, so I saved a bunch of money.
All in all, this house is the perfect place for settling down with someone. Which brings me to the other stuff.
In the bad news, Mellie broke up with me. She just wasn't ready to live together and didn't want to leave town, all the stuff that we were fighting about for the last few months. Looking back through the old entries here, writing this stuff about how we'd "be together forever" was wishful thinking. We both just want different things from life, and I guess we'll just have to find them apart. I was in love with her since we were ten, but- (scribbling indecipherable)
I'll write again soon, I think this helped to get my mind off her, if only for a bit.
June 11th
Dear Diary,
I can't lie to you, diary. I'm hurting. I'm hurting real bad.
Everything reminds me of her. You know that thing where you forget people's faces? Well, I have some kind of sick version of that where instead I see nothing but Mellie's face. That stupid smile with the little gap in her teeth, the freckles and curls. It's everywhere. I tried talking to the barista in town today and almost cried when she handed me my coffee. Part of me wants to beat myself up for making this jump; what the fuck am I doing out here? This community is small, how am I supposed to make a life here when everyone has known each other since childhood?
The weather station wasn't kidding about this rain either, it started last night and hasn't been dry since. I even heard it in my sleep. I dreamed about, you guessed it, Mellie. It was the day we broke up, at sunset back in Santa Fe. She was holding me tight and I was crying, and that was when it started raining. Like my tears were coming down on my head, even as the sun was sinking. It started to get hot, like I was getting angry and sad all over again.
I'm not proud to say I wept when I woke up. Crybaby Tom, right?
Maybe this move was a bad idea but I can't back out now, or ever really. I'd never pull myself out of debt if I turned around and sold this house. I just gotta stick with it.
I've never really been alone until now, but now I'm alone every day. Maybe I should get a pet? I've heard cats are pretty chill, but I wouldn't want to let a little killer outside to harass the birds and rabbits.
The weather seems to agree with my mood at least. It's supposed to keep raining all month, and the grey, wet air feels right for this kind of big sadness.
I think I'll order a pizza tonight. I don't feel like writing any more.
June 12th
Dear Diary,
Something really weird happened today, and I really, really don't want to forget the details. It's unbelievable, something that I never thought possible, and when I say it out loud, it makes no sense. Rain can't talk. It just can't, but it might have sent me a message today, and I don't know what to think. I guess I should start with the keyboard.
So those old surplus sites, right? I was browsing through them way back towards the beginning of the month, looking for kitchen stuff, and I saw this unbelievable deal.
It was a custom mechanical pc keyboard, with all the bells and whistles: rgb lights, nifty little shortcut buttons, even a pull out track pad. A piece of machinery probably worth hundreds of dollars, selling for nearly less than five (ten with shipping). I should have known it was a scam I guess, or I should have been suspicious, but hey; you literally couldn't beat a price like that for something so cool! So I bought it, and was waiting for it to come to my new house. I found a downside to living out here: stuff takes so long to arrive from the post office. Another thing I'll have to adjust to I guess.
I will say though, when I plugged that sucker in, I was just happy to have it. It was really cool…for like the five minutes I had it set up. Then I went to test it out and immediately knew why it was so cheap, whoever made it had screwed up the design. The keys were loose, and by loose, I mean, LOOSE! Like every time I'd hit one the force of my finger would shake two more keys down. So every word I typed came out garbled, and sometimes the keys would just naturally settle into being pressed, and only shaking the whole board would reset them. It was completely unusable, but for some reason, I decided to try it out anyway. I guess I just wanted it to work.
It's been, you guessed it, raining, so it was a good excuse to play some games online to pass the time. Worst mistake of my life with this busted piece of garbage, especially with any team game ever. I'm also embarrassed to say it, cause my Mom was always right about it, but I just don't have the temperament for competition, even games. Put that together with another Mellie dream last night, and you get an embarrassing, stupid meltdown. I unplugged that worthless plastic board, threw open my front door, and frisbee threw it out into the mud with both hands.
Childish, I know, but it just pissed me off so bad! And in the moment, it did in fact calm me down to toss it.
Afterwards, I decided to retrieve it, even if it was broken and probably water damaged; it would look trashy to just have a random keyboard in my driveway. That's when I heard it. The rain had softened down to a drizzle, and there was a sound inside of it, a clacking that was very much not rain.
It was the keyboard, sitting out in the mud. It had landed face up, and I could see the rain coming down on the keys. It was getting dark out, but the sky above was light grey, like the sun wanted to peek through the clouds for dusk but just couldn't, so it was easy to see the letters.
The keys were loose enough to be pressed down by the drops, but that wasn't what made me pause out there, soaking my ass off. It was that they were pressing down in a very deliberate sequence, repeating in a slow, methodical rhythm. Like it was a person typing. It took a minute for me to actually register the whole thing, but I was genuinely in shock.
It read out: I L O V E Y O U , D O Y O U L O V E M E ? Just over and over and over again. It even hit the shift key to denote the question mark.
By this point, I was convinced it wasn't the rain, but rather some extra function for the original buyer, like a pass phrase for a personal program. It was an elaborate keyboard already, and with the clacking it was making now, it made me wonder if I'd missed something, that the loose keys were just a feature, or a lock.
So, I picked it up, and I answered: Y E S. It seemed like the response to use. And who doesn't need a little love in life, right? I certainly could.
Well, nothing happened. In fact, the instant I moved it from the ground, the keys stopped of their own accord, and THAT freaked me out more than anything else. There must be a reason for it, but it was like the rain really was talking to me. I wasn't expecting anything from answering either, maybe a secret compartment to open, but nah. It was worth a shot I guess.
Anyways, I brought it back inside, I'm going to try and dry it out, maybe put it in some rice. I hope I didn't break it, it was out in the rain for a good 20 minutes.
June 13th
Dear Diary,
I think something might be wrong with me. I hope I'm not catching a cold, but I was out in the rain. I'm running a bit of a fever; we never got humidity like this out in the desert so I guess I wasn't prepared for it. I've had a couple really bad dreams too, not a healthy sign. Especially since they were both the same dream.
In both of them I was in my house, and it was still raining. I was typing with that damn keyboard, just random words into a black monitor at my desk. The rain starts to get worse, it's beating on the walls, no wind, just these fat drops smashing against the wood and stone. My fingers start sticking to the keys. I'm sweating like a dog, and I go to pull them up, but my hands are stuck. Like my skin is gum melting on a dashboard. It starts getting hotter, clouds of steam billowing off my roof, the trees and ferns wilting outside. Like the worst part of summer times a million. My A/C kicks out and starts steaming, blowing hot air out of the vents instead. I try to stand up, but my back is fused to the chair, like, I can't see where flesh ends and chair starts. I'm completely stuck, I can't even move my head or neck, and my sweat starts steaming, running over my eyes until I can barely see. The rain is getting heavier, and hotter.
That's when it starts flooding; the water is so heavy in the clouds that it's all just emptying at the same time on the earth around me. The floorboards begin to crack, the windows press in as water pushes against them. The ceiling creaks and buckles; the water outside is crushing the house, an alligator crunching on a turtle's shell. There's these scratching, desperate hands outside and they're beating on the windows, trying to get in, but all that does is crack the glass and bring the water inside, like a pressure hose in a sauna. And when the water touches me, it's boiling. It's cooking my legs as it rises up. I can feel it seeping inside, like I'm a lobster in a pot, there's a hiss of steam and it's my own body wheezing out as my skin and organs begin to broil. My heart slides down through my rib cage and into my lower gut, mixing into a hot slurry as the nerves cook and soften. I only wake up when the water hits my eyes. I can still feel the sensation of them bubbling.
It freaked me out real bad, like really bad. But I guess on the bright side, no Mellie in the dream. Somehow, seeing her felt worse.
I've been at the screens too long maybe, too little sleep. I think I'll turn in early and just rest in bed, maybe finish up a book or something.
June 14th
I need to go to the hospital. I know that I need to go to the hospital, but the rain. I can't go out there in the rain, I can't. It'll kill me, I know it will, but, I-(unintelligible)
My hand is melting. My hand. Is melting. There's no other way to describe it, I don't understand. My palm and fingers are thinning out like snow in summer, and it hurts. I had to hold a belt to my teeth and I thought I was on fire for a full hour, but it was just my flesh dripping. Droplets of skin and fat, and blood, puddling on my floor. I can't stop it. Am I having a delusion? I had to take a painkiller just to write this!
I stuck my hand outside before trying to get to my car, and it was like bullets erupting on my flesh! The pain is up my arm now, I think I can see holes inside, there are veins poking through. The blood, it's not running like I've seen before, it's ballooning around my hand, pouring out of my fingers like a rubber glove with holes poked through. I have to be dying, but all I feel is pain. It's everywhere, in my skin, my muscles, a sunburn but a million, million times hotter. Why is this happening to me? I tried calling the hospital, but there's no landline, the rain has kicked my cell service, and the internet went out with it. I'm trapped. I'm fucking trapped in this house! God, please let the rain stop. Please.
(Editor note: Page breaks here signifying a lapse in time. Water damage increases.)
I had that dream again last night, only this time, the water didn't stop at my eyes. It was dark, and cloudy, and boiling, but I could still see inside it. The hands were ripping at my body now, the cooked meat tearing away, floating like beef in broth. I was screaming, but the water was boiling out my lungs, I could feel them shriveling up like raisins, my teeth cracking and popping like popcorn. Blisters on my skin were filling up with fluid, but they were bursting immediately as I cooked and cooked and cooked. I've never yearned so much to be dry again in my life.
Then there was a woman, I saw her. It wasn't Mellie, it was some woman I've never seen before. She was swimming down from above, blocking out the sun through the roof of my dissolving house. The boiling water was stretching all the way up to the sky, like the sun was a boiler plate against my skin. She came down through the cloud of my cooking fluids and touched my face; her flesh sagging and hair streaming out like trails of liquid metal, and the pain was so intense that when I woke up, I screamed. The echo of the heat was still there against my body, and I went to wash my face, to feel actual cool water while I was sweating my ass off from the nightmare.
But when my hand touched the spigot, it was like I was still in the dream! It boiled at the touch, and I screamed again for real this time as I shook it away. My water shouldn't be that hot, and I had definitely set it cold!
Then I looked at my hand, and its melting, its fucking melting! My flesh is coming off the bone, and it's not like flesh is supposed to be, what's happening to me- (Another break due to water damage) My eye is melting. (The remaining page is rendered unreadable.)
June 15th
I'm so scared right now, but I feel like if I cry that more of my body will start sloughing off like my hand or eye. I tried putting the eye on ice, forcing it to freeze, but it didn't work, it made it melt faster; how the fuck does that make sense?! I vomited on the ground and it was red and black, all full of lumps of something like meat. Surely by this point I should be dead but I'm not. I still feel it boiling and I can't cool off. I think that I can feel the slurry on my floor, I stepped on it and felt it, like nails in flesh as it started bubbling. When I close my eye, I can still see through the other one: it's a mess of red and white and crystal and it. hurts. I can't take this!
If I hadn't recoiled yesterday, if I'd let the water touch my face, would I still be able to speak? Or would that dream come true, would my other eye have boiled out of my skull, peeling like tomatoes, my tongue liquefying into red and brown? The nightmare happened again last night, but I only slept an hour because I was frozen with panic.
But she was there. I saw her again, that awful woman with the red eyes and the burning. The rain, it was her tears. She was smiling at me while I boiled, this crackling grin of liquefying teeth, and there was an ocean of melting, bubbling flesh behind her. It was screaming, clawing, and my fluids were being eaten by its mouths and orifices as it cried. She kissed me on the mouth and blew the water inside me, and it was like magma had been poured in my veins. It blew through my body and melted me away, until only the pain was there. I could not even scream as the flesh slurped me up.
The rain isn't stopping, every time it gets thin enough to chance a break for it another torrent follows, and the water flooding my yard is ankle deep. What could I have possibly done to deserve this? All I did was type "yes" on a fucking keyboard!
Why didn't I buy a rain coat, you fucking idiot Thomas.
June 16th
(Handwriting has visibly degraded, words change in color, later shown in lab analysis to now consist of blood plasma, slurred words present in over 90% of material, reconstructed from forensic analysis based on possibility of major stroke)
She isn't in my dreams anymore. She's coming here soon. Mellie I should have never left you I love you. Mom and Dad I want to see you one last time and hug you, I don't want to leave you both alone.
Hands gone, writing with blood in stumps. Pain indescribable. Tried knife, no good. Popped neck like balloon, pus keeps flowing. Feel it still on floor. Tried burning, no good. Stays liquid. Eye floated up, feel like glass shards scraping in sky.
Raincoat wouldn't help. It isn't water. None of this is water. Trees are dead. There are holes in my ceiling. The woods are smoking with no fire. God help me I'm so sorry, please save me.
June 17th
I got keyboard again. Will beg for death. I'm floating in Hell. I love you Mellie.
Editor Note: End of Journal Entries, remaining pages destroyed by rain.
Investigation and aftermath:
Thomas Fairbanks was declared missing on June 26th, 2019, after a delivery man with the postal service brought a package to his house in Tulips Hollow and discovered it had burned down during a storm. Mr. Fairbank's employment at the Tulips Hollow Data Exchange Center began the following Monday.
The kitchen and bedroom were completely destroyed by the fire, with significant damage to other portions of the house; spreading to surrounding trees in abnormal fashion to wildfires mid rainfall. Efforts to notice or contain the fire were hindered by the storm, as well as the remote location of the house being too far from emergency services.
Neighbors were contacted regarding the death, but none were able to report on any strange conditions that appeared in the time frame of the diary entries. The parents likewise assumed their son to be moving furniture and getting comfortable, and did not wish to be overbearing.
He was declared dead on June 28th, presumably committing suicide by self-immolation, the diary discovered by investigators that same day.
The fire in question was ruled to be caused by a chemical agent yet to be identified; but shares similarities to phosgene gas in residue samples 1-3 taken from the site. It is possible that the gas had a hallucinatory effect on the victim, and the chemical was strong enough to fully consume the body once ignited. Though how it was delivered or activated remains speculation. Foul play is not suspected, as Fairbanks was new to the community, with no notable enemies and no reports of murders of any similarity.
The mechanical keyboard recovered from the site remains in the Tulips Hollow police evidence locker and no organization has claimed it due to ongoing investigations. Dismantling it led to no significant leads, and pictures are available upon request. The site through which Mr. Fairbanks purchased the keyboard was shut down weeks after the incident occurred; due to unrelated faulty merchandise sales. Likewise, one Niles Phillipe had no knowledge of the purchase itself, but was struck by the death of Fairbanks severely. Mellie Williams could not be reached for comment, as she is still in mourning.
Fairbanks had no known history of mental illness, though it is assumed that events in his personal life leading up to the chemical exposure exacerbated the condition.
It should also be noted where the majority of recovered materials were discovered: outside the house, nearly 20 yards away from the site of the fire and against the far wall, covered by a set of soiled clothing matching the victim's size at the time; alongside the broken mechanical keyboard, and the diary that sat beneath.
Updated as of 2023: This case: Case 2700-AW, Subcategory: Missing Person/Disappearance, dubbed "Chlorine Naiad" by my co-worker Bill Donahue, was one of the first that I transcribed into the database in my tenure as Record Keeper at the Question Everything Department. Before this, there was no digital footprint of these cases at all, and much of the information was a hodge-podge of unsorted papers, half-rotten audio logs, and ramblings of "lunatics" dismissed by the police and other institutions.
As such, the filing and ease of access has afforded a development in this case, in no small part by Bill. Though I find him abrasive, obnoxious, and horrible in any and all office space and make no small effort in trying to get my superiors to notice this fact, his field work is impeccable, and he proved it here today.
He managed to track down the delivery man that discovered the burned remains of the home, and apparently he was the one to find the keyboard initially. When questioned, he claimed that the keyboard exhibited the phenomena recorded by Fairbank's diary, though it was dismissed by police and investigators as shock at the discovery of the site. Quoted: "It was still drizzling that day, and when I heard the thing making that racket, I thought it might have been someone trying to pull free of rubble or something."
He claimed to have seen the words repeated over and over by the keys:
I L O V E Y O U
Further inquiry revealed no further insight. Case declared closed until acquisition of keyboard deemed possible.
Editor's note: I myself am very happy we are currently amid a drought.
End File.