u/Roland_Quincy1999

Part 1: https://www.reddit.com/user/Roland_Quincy1999/comments/1vlq8yc/i_found_my_greatgrandfathers_journal_what_i_read/

Part 2: https://www.reddit.com/user/Roland_Quincy1999/comments/1vlqhgp/i_found_my_greatgrandfathers_journal_what_i_read/

Welcome back followers of the story! I will do the routine of apologizing for the delay in posts. Recently, I have been blessed with the news that my wife is pregnant! With that, on-top of the fear that artificial intelligence will steal my finance job, it’s been a struggle to get back to this story and continue my great-grandfather’s journal. 

So, yes, I found my great-grandfather’s journal with a camera taped to it. It was a real fix up job. By the time I got it, the worn leatherbound journal was holding on for dear life to that camera. But where did I find the camera-journal moshpot? 

To be real with you, I left out the mention of where I found it because I thought it may discredit the realness of my story. Once I tell you, you may think this whole ordeal is some fairy-tale. Anyhoo, I will tell you. 

My great-grandfather, Killian Stonebrook, who is the author of this journal, is not my biological great-grandfather. Killian’s only son by blood with Melendra Stonebrook was James Stonebrook, while his two other adoptive sons and single oldest daughter were just that: Adopted. Not official paperwork or anything, not from anything I have found through my research. But he was basically their father in kinship. 

My grandmother was Lucille Stonebrook, the girl who calmed her younger brothers in the previous journal entry. It was a heartwarming experience to come to know that my grandmother had always been a kind and caring person, even from a young age. 

Lucille passed away six months ago in an assisted living nursing home type of situation. After my siblings and other relatives got their pick at what to keep, there was an estate sale for her home. It was strange no one wanted the house. I am sure grandma would have handed it down no questions asked. 

My mother rejected the idea. She said the home was haunted, and you couldn’t pay her enough to live there. After reading these journals, I understand her point of view. 

Anyways, I actually attended the sale. I wasn’t interested in anything. I kinda just wanted to see my grandma’s house one last time. 

While I was there I also checked out what used to be the thick patch of woods where some of Killian’s journal entries take place. I found a silo, an overturned, rusted truck, and most importantly, this small outdoor bathroom. 

I don’t know why it was there. I had wandered pretty far, so there was a good chance I had gone off the property. I didn’t remember it being there from the times my siblings and I played in the woods as kids. This was the reason I entered that shabby thing in the first place. 

The plaster walls were lined with so many cracks I thought it might cave in or crumble on itself. The sinks were filthy and so much had grown over in this bathroom that it was basically a man-sized terrarium. 

I entered each of the three stalls. All shared the same stench, discolored water, and filthy rims. There was one, though, where the lid on the tank was skewed. 

To this day I can’t say what compelled me to lift that lid and look into the tank, but when I did, I found the journal and camera. No water was in the tank. Just the camera and journal, wedged tightly between the cistern walls. 

I’ll cut it short there not to steal the spotlight from Killian too much. I am doing this for him, after all. Here is part 3 of my great-grandfather’s journal. It goes as follows: 

March 25th, 1923, 

Once again, I have returned to this journal over an extended hiatus separated from it. There is an explanation for my absence, albeit an abstract one. 

There is that fantastical, superstitious side of me that has clawed for prevalence in my mind, and it tells me that this journal is cursed. My life has only seemed to spiral downward since its manifestation into reality, that being, of course, my writing into it. Four months have passed since my last entry, and they have been some of the most trying on my mental fortitude, comparing to my time on the front. 

Let me retell the events of the past four months in chronological order to you, Reader. 

First, there was the diagnosis five days before Christmas. Influenza. Once I started to cough up blood, Melendra insisted that I go to the doctor. The physicians are unsure of its menace this early on. They have seen patients live years with it, overcome it, and others live no more than a nickel’s worth of months. This revelation of my deteriorating health would damper me entirely if it weren’t for the more pressing issue of my son James. 

Second, I must discuss the Christmas Eve party of last year. My family decided to join the Butcher’s for the special occasion. I came to the party with unease and an overall distressed mood. You see, Reader, the Butchers are a historied family, their wealth dating back to our nation’s declaration of independence.

The Stonebrook family, on the other hand, is one of a newly acquired status. You see, I am the owner of an automotive dealership, one I created upon returning home. There was a boom in the automotive industry, and I soared way above my rank by hitting the market at the best time possible. Before me, Stonebrooks were labourers at best, and street urchins at worst. 

This is important to note because it created a tension between us and the Butchers. While Melendra and Mrs. Butcher are quite honest and authentic to one another, I can sense that the rest of the family looked at us with prejudice and distaste. 

This was fine, though. I had been behind enemy lines plenty of times before. 

It was James that truly became the catalyst of a fire eager to burn. 

The evening was progressing as usual. Melendra and Mrs. Butcher were laughing and perusing through her closet of dresses while the housemaids prepared dinner. All the children were running around in the front lawn of the massive river-side home, playing a game of cowboys and indians. Deacon Butcher and myself were leaning upon the balustrade of the balcony overlooking the lawn, him pretending to accept my presence, me pretending not to notice this fact. 

“They’re good kids,” he had said, nodding in the direction of my older children who were pretending to ride horses and garnish revolvers. “I guess not your kids, really, but what’s the difference, right?” There was a sarcastic edge in his tone that was almost undetectable. 
My kid, the one of my blood, was nowhere to be seen, per usual. The last I saw of James he had been heading toward the small chicken coup the Butchers had on their expansive property. 

“It’s all the same to me, sir,” I had replied. That was when I saw it. I remember specifically the moment my tongue came to its place to pronounce the snake-like rattle of the s in the word sir. The word came out weak, barely finished. Mr. Butcher probably thought it was a sarcastic retort to his high-brow jeering of my adoptive kids. 

But there was no malice in the word. Only despair. Despair. 

My hand shakes as I write down this recalling. 

Farther along the bank of the river there was a patch of trees, distant but close enough to still be within the Butchers’ property. I saw it. I swear by the great grace of God and his mother Mary I saw it. James’s friend. The Tall. 

There was not a single birch in the collection of trees: Maple, hickory, oak, nothing with a whitish bark. Except one, far enough back in the treeline not to stick out too far to completely reveal itself. Certainly close enough for me to see it, though. 

It moved. Yes, it moved. Two pairs of thin legs carried it further into the patch, then it was shielded from view. My vision blurred. A terrible hangover came over me, despite my lack of drinking anything alcoholic since we arrived. I rubbed my forehead to ease the pain. 

“Did you-” I started, but couldn’t finish. Mr. Butcher turned to face me. 

“What is it, Killian?” 

“Did you-” again I couldn’t finish, but this time it was not the fault of my own hammered conscience. It was the shrill scream that caused a great pause between everyone in ears’ distance. The children in the lawn stopped in their tracks, the game concluded in an instant, no winners or losers. Mr. Butcher’s eyes widened to the extremities the flabby skin would allow. 

“Tabby,” His wife’s name came out, strangled. The man rushed past me while I was still stuck in my stupor of The Thing, but I was fortunately able to get a hold of myself and follow suit. 

Our quickened steps slowed to a leisure when we arrived at the chicken coop, although there was no leisure to decipher in anyone’s body language. Melendra was stiff, very stiff, with one rigid arm around the weeping Mrs. Butcher. I watched as Mr. Butcher’s hand curled into a fist. 

At the centre of it all was James. In his hand he held the crushed form of a newly born chick, naked without feathers, scarlet splotches of wetness around its disfigured body. 

The static returned. I felt my senses begin to blur, lose focus, once more. The sickness reminded me of being at sea with the most devastating of waves throwing you around. Just behind the frame of the coop stood The Tall, staring down upon me with a wicked grin that came from the smallest impression of a mouth. Then it was a birch tree. 

Had there always been a tree there? I wanted to ask desperately, but my mouth produced another question instead. 

“Why, James?” 

The boy was groaning. It was almost a squeal, high in pitch but a low volume, like a distorted mewling, if that is comprehensible. I apologize for my lack of knowledge in the field of music and sound to properly articulate the noise he was making, but it felt inhuman. 

He held the crushed babe as far as he could from his body, his little arm fully-extended. The boy looked as if he held the most indomitable mush the human mind could conjure by the way his face twisted and squirmed. 

“It was naked Daddy! It had no clothes on. It was disgusting! It needs clothes. Proper clothes.” 

Feathers. The boy had killed the chick for its featherless appearance. 

Mr. Butcher clenched both fists, ready to squash the unsavory invaders of his class. Mrs. Butcher continued to weep away a river’s worth of tears. Melendra had the unease of an animal wary of nearby predators. 

And I looked at the birch tree. For the most minute of a moment, no longer than a second, I saw a ridiculous bowtie on that damned tree, tied around the upper shelf of the bark, like It knew how to wear it. 

Then, as sudden as it arrived, it was gone. 

Gone. Gone. Gone. Gone. Gone. Gone. 

(Editor note: rest of entry will be completed in next post. Ya boy is tired.) 

Part 1: https://www.reddit.com/user/Roland_Quincy1999/comments/1vlq8yc/i_found_my_greatgrandfathers_journal_what_i_read/

Hello readers. I apologize for not getting this story pushed out quicker. Working the traditional nine-to-five has a way of making time slip by. I feel like as soon as I get home, after a workout and cooking dinner, it’s basically time to go to bed and start the process all over again. Depressing, right?

Some of you may have been wondering where I got my great-grandfather’s journal. Good question, and it is a bit of a long story. I do not want to take up most of the post with it, so I’ll keep it short and leave a more in-depth talk about it to later posts if readers are interested. 

I found my great-grandfather’s journal taped to the backside of a camera. The camera wasn’t an old model, definitely not something from the Roaring Twenties or whatever the hell they called it. I only half-way paid attention in history class. 

Anyways, here is part two of my great-grandfather’s journal. It goes as follows:

November 13th, 1922, 

Much time has passed since I last picked up this fountain-point pen and put words between the lines of this leather-bound journal. Life had been somewhat regular for a time after James’s excursion to the woods and his irregular drawing. For the remainder of that summer, James would return to that stump with his pocket journal, sketching away his darker imagination. 

My last entry ended with me pondering over a return to the woods myself to seek out this tall Thing. I am not talented at expressing the intricacies of human emotion, so it is hard for me to put into words why exactly I decided to search for my son’s imaginary friend, but I will try to. 

Seeing that drawing had unlocked this sort of curiosity that was similar to that of my youth, struck a chord that had long been unstrung. I had to account for James’s strangeness too, of course. This brew of my son’s inhumanity–I say that sourly and not lightly by any means–and this creature’s suitable camouflage to the woodland it inhabited, and I was convinced that it was something worth pursuing, confirming. 

I feel the need to explain my reasoning because, in the vein of honesty I try to commit to in this journal, I felt quite dumb when I searched the woods and found nothing.

I searched for tracks, disruptions in the natural landscape of nature, and while I found fox tracks, deer droppings, and other such things, I failed to find any signs of this towering beast. Binoculars and all, no sign of anything like James had drawn. 

It is necessary to add that in the Great War I was a scout in a reconnaissance squadron, attached to an infantry company. Often I was the lead charge of field operations before a promotion to lieutenant then later to captain. 

Reader, you may be wondering what specifically occurred to ignite my writing into this intimate journal of mine. My search for The Tall, as it will be referred to from now on for the sake of consistency, eluded me in the physical world, but I found It in another. 

I was sitting at my makeshift work-desk, nothing quite exquisite like I have seen from others but nice enough for a typewriter to sit upon. The candle beside my typewriter flickered as a cool breeze of night air wafted into the room. My manuscript, a stage play centered around those of us who came home from the war and found themselves lost, was almost complete, but the weight of exhaustion overtook me. My insistence upon this project is another reason for my lack of writing in this journal. 

I called it a day’s work done and headed to the bedroom. It did not take me long to find sleep. After brushing and changing into night clothes, by the time my head touched the pillow I was almost nearly asleep. 

The walls of a corner store surrounded me. What kind of store I was unsure of at first. There were shelves on every wall, all four of them total, and there was no door to enter or leave the store-like building. A thin layer of water filled the floor just high enough to wet the leather above the outsole of my boots. Little rusted trinkets sat on the shelves. 

Often in dreams we come to them with a preface of understanding that seems illogical in the real world, but in the realm of sleeping makes perfect sense. When one dreams of flying or spitting out loosened teeth, they do not question how it is possible, rather they consider the consequences. 

I saw all the pieces and I knew that, put together, they would make something grand. Dream logic.

My head swung from left to right. I started to trek through the slowly rising water toward one of these walls, but I never seemed to make any ground or progress. I walked until the water was up to my knees, then the wall finally came into arms length. 

I stood before one of the shelved walls; it reached upward so far that I could not discern where it ended. The ceiling was a darkened night sky with no stars to bare. A void. With the water soiling the knees of my workpants that I wore in this dreamworld, I stared upward to such an extreme my neck ached from the craning. I failed to feel the cold touch of the water rising up my pant leg while examining this otherworldly landscape.

My captivation was struck down by the crackling tear of wood from the shelves before me. It was such a stark rumble in the wake of a serene silence of wading water that I jumped backward, crouching, the water coming up to my chest. 

I steadied myself and continued to watch as the entire fabric of the wall ripped, splitting down the middle to reveal an endless black behind it. A daemon portal to another realm. 

Something was approaching in the darkness behind the now splitting wall. 

There was a lightish brown blur steadily coming into view. At first it appeared an impressionable dot in the distance, but quickly it became something much larger, and when it stopped rolling forward, halting within the widened slit between the two store walls, it was the size of a redwood. 

It was a grandfather clock. A grandfather clock the size of one of my world’s largest trees. 

My hands covered my ears to shield them from the chime, like a church amplified to multiple degrees. Throom. Throom. Throom. Every tune churned out was a handful of hair fallen from my scalp. They clung together like a water-insectile, floating atop the swishing current. My fingernails yellowed, and I could look down the bridge of my nose and see it growing droopier. 

Peeking from behind the clock was The Tall. James’s friend. It was as if the creature from James’s drawing was ripped from the page and put into this reality. White, silvery-tinted skin ran taut over The Tall’s wiry frame, and along this thin body were brownish, blackish bumps that resembled the protruding bark on birch trees. 

In a great coordination, one after another like the tumbling of dominos, each of these blackish-brown bumps opened to reveal a great eye beneath its bumpy exterior, a pupil and light blue iris staring into my own green ones. All of the eyes opened in a matter of seconds after each other, taking no longer than a minute for them all to open. 

The Tall shrieked. It overwhelmed the booming chime of the massive grandfather clock. I also screamed. 

Then I awoke, screaming into the dead of night. 

Melendra wasn’t a fan of the midnight terror, but she is a lovely woman and made no great hassle of the situation. My children were excessively spooked, and rightfully so, so maybe excessive isn’t the proper term. 

I have completed this entire entry after getting my children to settle down again. Lucille, my eldest, was very easy to reassure. Darvin and Benjamin, less so. 

The easiest of them all to calm was James. Apathetic James. Odd James

While the rest of my children huddled in the living room, Lucille rubbing their shoulders and patting their little heads, James remained in the bedroom he shared with his other two brothers. 

“It was James, wasn’t it, Pop?” Ben asked me, his voice a whisper and unsteady. I simply shook my head, and fluffed his popcorn hair. I left them in the living room to check their bedroom.

There was James on his tiny mattress, eyes open, staring through the single window in their room that looked out on that thicketed forest of birch trees across the ford. Upon further inspection, I realized that it was not through the window he was looking, for that would only give him a view of the night sky from the angle where his bed lay. No, his eyes were locked on to a spot just below the frame of the windowsill. If I were to remove the wall that blocked his vision, he would be staring straight at the treeline. 

“You okay, James?”

“Yes, Daddy, I am. Are you okay? He did not scare you, did he?” 

I stumbled over the words. From the dismay of the nightmare, and the task of getting the family unit back into normal routine, my mind was too preoccupied to consider the implications of what James had told me. It wasn’t something I truly mulled over until this moment of grace from the hectic atmosphere of the past hour. 

There must have been a failure of the ear. Yes, I do have a strong ringing that never ceases; Artillery ear was the word one of my peers called it. That must be the cause. A mishearing. 

This must be true, yes? How could James know of The Tall’s appearance in my nightmare? Coincidence?

Must be coincidence. He had crafted an imaginary fantasy in his childish mind to understand why Daddy was in terror, or to enrich a rather benign tale of his father’s simple bad dream. 

I have to admit to you, reader, that I still considered the alternate, unlikely possibility. You may say I am just as childish as my boy, and maybe you would be correct in that assertion. 

I will have to set aside my feelings for now, though. I am getting quite drowsy, and I have a meeting with a publishing house interested in my stageplay script tomorrow afternoon. I will finish the manuscript, then head to bed, praying to the Lord that my son’s sympathetic Boogeyman does not meet me again. 

Until the next entry, farewell. 

Part 1: https://www.reddit.com/user/Roland_Quincy1999/comments/1vlq8yc/i_found_my_greatgrandfathers_journal_what_i_read/

Hello readers. I apologize for not getting this story pushed out quicker. Working the traditional nine-to-five has a way of making time slip by. I feel like as soon as I get home, after a workout and cooking dinner, it’s basically time to go to bed and start the process all over again. Depressing, right?

Some of you may have been wondering where I got my great-grandfather’s journal. Good question, and it is a bit of a long story. I do not want to take up most of the post with it, so I’ll keep it short and leave a more in-depth talk about it to later posts if readers are interested. 

I found my great-grandfather’s journal taped to the backside of a camera. The camera wasn’t an old model, definitely not something from the Roaring Twenties or whatever the hell they called it. I only half-way paid attention in history class. 

Anyways, here is part two of my great-grandfather’s journal. It goes as follows:

November 13th, 1922, 

Much time has passed since I last picked up this fountain-point pen and put words between the lines of this leather-bound journal. Life had been somewhat regular for a time after James’s excursion to the woods and his irregular drawing. For the remainder of that summer, James would return to that stump with his pocket journal, sketching away his darker imagination. 

My last entry ended with me pondering over a return to the woods myself to seek out this tall Thing. I am not talented at expressing the intricacies of human emotion, so it is hard for me to put into words why exactly I decided to search for my son’s imaginary friend, but I will try to. 

Seeing that drawing had unlocked this sort of curiosity that was similar to that of my youth, struck a chord that had long been unstrung. I had to account for James’s strangeness too, of course. This brew of my son’s inhumanity–I say that sourly and not lightly by any means–and this creature’s suitable camouflage to the woodland it inhabited, and I was convinced that it was something worth pursuing, confirming. 

I feel the need to explain my reasoning because, in the vein of honesty I try to commit to in this journal, I felt quite dumb when I searched the woods and found nothing.

I searched for tracks, disruptions in the natural landscape of nature, and while I found fox tracks, deer droppings, and other such things, I failed to find any signs of this towering beast. Binoculars and all, no sign of anything like James had drawn. 

It is necessary to add that in the Great War I was a scout in a reconnaissance squadron, attached to an infantry company. Often I was the lead charge of field operations before a promotion to lieutenant then later to captain. 

Reader, you may be wondering what specifically occurred to ignite my writing into this intimate journal of mine. My search for The Tall, as it will be referred to from now on for the sake of consistency, eluded me in the physical world, but I found It in another. 

I was sitting at my makeshift work-desk, nothing quite exquisite like I have seen from others but nice enough for a typewriter to sit upon. The candle beside my typewriter flickered as a cool breeze of night air wafted into the room. My manuscript, a stage play centered around those of us who came home from the war and found themselves lost, was almost complete, but the weight of exhaustion overtook me. My insistence upon this project is another reason for my lack of writing in this journal. 

I called it a day’s work done and headed to the bedroom. It did not take me long to find sleep. After brushing and changing into night clothes, by the time my head touched the pillow I was almost nearly asleep. 

The walls of a corner store surrounded me. What kind of store I was unsure of at first. There were shelves on every wall, all four of them total, and there was no door to enter or leave the store-like building. A thin layer of water filled the floor just high enough to wet the leather above the outsole of my boots. Little rusted trinkets sat on the shelves. 

Often in dreams we come to them with a preface of understanding that seems illogical in the real world, but in the realm of sleeping makes perfect sense. When one dreams of flying or spitting out loosened teeth, they do not question how it is possible, rather they consider the consequences. 

I saw all the pieces and I knew that, put together, they would make something grand. Dream logic.

My head swung from left to right. I started to trek through the slowly rising water toward one of these walls, but I never seemed to make any ground or progress. I walked until the water was up to my knees, then the wall finally came into arms length. 

I stood before one of the shelved walls; it reached upward so far that I could not discern where it ended. The ceiling was a darkened night sky with no stars to bare. A void. With the water soiling the knees of my workpants that I wore in this dreamworld, I stared upward to such an extreme my neck ached from the craning. I failed to feel the cold touch of the water rising up my pant leg while examining this otherworldly landscape.

My captivation was struck down by the crackling tear of wood from the shelves before me. It was such a stark rumble in the wake of a serene silence of wading water that I jumped backward, crouching, the water coming up to my chest. 

I steadied myself and continued to watch as the entire fabric of the wall ripped, splitting down the middle to reveal an endless black behind it. A daemon portal to another realm. 

Something was approaching in the darkness behind the now splitting wall. 

There was a lightish brown blur steadily coming into view. At first it appeared an impressionable dot in the distance, but quickly it became something much larger, and when it stopped rolling forward, halting within the widened slit between the two store walls, it was the size of a redwood. 

It was a grandfather clock. A grandfather clock the size of one of my world’s largest trees. 

My hands covered my ears to shield them from the chime, like a church amplified to multiple degrees. Throom. Throom. Throom. Every tune churned out was a handful of hair fallen from my scalp. They clung together like a water-insectile, floating atop the swishing current. My fingernails yellowed, and I could look down the bridge of my nose and see it growing droopier. 

Peeking from behind the clock was The Tall. James’s friend. It was as if the creature from James’s drawing was ripped from the page and put into this reality. White, silvery-tinted skin ran taut over The Tall’s wiry frame, and along this thin body were brownish, blackish bumps that resembled the protruding bark on birch trees. 

In a great coordination, one after another like the tumbling of dominos, each of these blackish-brown bumps opened to reveal a great eye beneath its bumpy exterior, a pupil and light blue iris staring into my own green ones. All of the eyes opened in a matter of seconds after each other, taking no longer than a minute for them all to open. 

The Tall shrieked. It overwhelmed the booming chime of the massive grandfather clock. I also screamed. 

Then I awoke, screaming into the dead of night. 

Melendra wasn’t a fan of the midnight terror, but she is a lovely woman and made no great hassle of the situation. My children were excessively spooked, and rightfully so, so maybe excessive isn’t the proper term. 

I have completed this entire entry after getting my children to settle down again. Lucille, my eldest, was very easy to reassure. Darvin and Benjamin, less so. 

The easiest of them all to calm was James. Apathetic James. Odd James

While the rest of my children huddled in the living room, Lucille rubbing their shoulders and patting their little heads, James remained in the bedroom he shared with his other two brothers. 

“It was James, wasn’t it, Pop?” Ben asked me, his voice a whisper and unsteady. I simply shook my head, and fluffed his popcorn hair. I left them in the living room to check their bedroom.

There was James on his tiny mattress, eyes open, staring through the single window in their room that looked out on that thicketed forest of birch trees across the ford. Upon further inspection, I realized that it was not through the window he was looking, for that would only give him a view of the night sky from the angle where his bed lay. No, his eyes were locked on to a spot just below the frame of the windowsill. If I were to remove the wall that blocked his vision, he would be staring straight at the treeline. 

“You okay, James?”

“Yes, Daddy, I am. Are you okay? He did not scare you, did he?” 

I stumbled over the words. From the dismay of the nightmare, and the task of getting the family unit back into normal routine, my mind was too preoccupied to consider the implications of what James had told me. It wasn’t something I truly mulled over until this moment of grace from the hectic atmosphere of the past hour. 

There must have been a failure of the ear. Yes, I do have a strong ringing that never ceases; Artillery ear was the word one of my peers called it. That must be the cause. A mishearing. 

This must be true, yes? How could James know of The Tall’s appearance in my nightmare? Coincidence?

Must be coincidence. He had crafted an imaginary fantasy in his childish mind to understand why Daddy was in terror, or to enrich a rather benign tale of his father’s simple bad dream. 

I have to admit to you, reader, that I still considered the alternate, unlikely possibility. You may say I am just as childish as my boy, and maybe you would be correct in that assertion. 

I will have to set aside my feelings for now, though. I am getting quite drowsy, and I have a meeting with a publishing house interested in my stageplay script tomorrow afternoon. I will finish the manuscript, then head to bed, praying to the Lord that my son’s sympathetic Boogeyman does not meet me again. 

Until the next entry, farewell. 

My story would’ve never had a stage without our good ole internet. It is a tale of the mythical, unimaginable, one you may tell around a campfire and be too embarrassed to claim as true because how could such a thing be? 

I read stories online that told of otherworldly beings, immensely tall, faceless, well-dressed, and my stomach got that sunken, dreadful feeling. Others had faced them. Lived to tell their story. To find a community that might understand my story brought me so much solace and relief. Maybe I’m not crazy to believe. 

This story is not my own, though. I am not the protagonist but rather a narrator, if you will. This story is my great grandfather’s, told through a journal left behind after his death. He faced what seems to me to be a familiar demon, and I would like to relay his story like I have seen many others do in this space. For what purpose, I am not sure. Awareness. To commemorate him, if he even deserved it. For the simple allure of telling such a story. To get the monkey off my back.

I believe it is some combination of all these things. 

I am not sure how much I can fit into this single post alone. Life has given me time constraints that I struggle to meet, upload or no upload, but today I promise you the first piece of the entries, or what I call part 1. It goes as follows: 

June 28th, 1922, 

This journal will serve me multiple purposes. The primary reason will be to document the strange case of my son, James Barclay. I also plan to use this journal to hone my writing prowess, as I aspire to be a writer comparable to the likes of Fitzgerald or Woolf. A silly dream, of course, but it will explain my flowery wordiness, for whoever stumbles upon this journal by chance or fate. 

My youngest son, James, worries me dearly. I am afraid of sharing my findings with any kind of shrink because I fear they will drive a stake through his brain or perform some other dastardly procedure to cure his strangeness, so I will document everything here for now. 

James has always been an odd child. From an early age he was different from the ordinary boy. I was not present for his birth, as I was called to the German front to end The Great War, but from what my wife Melendra tells me, it was a brutal process, and almost ended in a trading of his life for hers. 

He was a sickly grey baby. The doctor beat against his back, trying to pry air from his infantile lungs. He did eventually breathe. During the whole process, he never cried. 
Reader, since his welcoming to the world, I nor anyone else has ever seen James cry. Whether it is a scrape of the knee, a tumble from a bike, or a stern word from mother or father, all children cry. 

But not James. 

The peculiarity was something I had grown accustomed to. I sat with my feelings whirling into a torment, and after bracing that storm I was finding better grounds. I was okay with playgroups where I’d find James in a corner, not socializing with the other children, fiddling with some toy. His muteness, utter reluctance to speak, was something I could overlook if tutoring could not aid in its development. 

There was a solid parameter being built, one I was fortified to protect. He was my son and I would love him for all the unusual qualities he possessed. Then the nice, comprehensible lines I had drawn were dusted, crossed, surmised. 

It was just yonder the bridge that forded a small creek on my property. The idea of this journal materialized after what I saw that day.

Melendra was overwrought with worry. My three eldest children were clueless to James’s whereabouts. This alone was not a devastating revelation. It was the thorough household inspection undertaken by my wife along with myself that planted a seed of fright within us all. 

James could not be found. 

Melendra circled back around the house a second time while I ventured around our property to see where our youngest boy may have stumbled off to. I crossed the narrow stone bridge and went over the rushing creek to a patch of densely thicketed woods. The trees were thin, tall, and plentiful. 

This was a section of my property that I had not spent much time in with the exception of an occasional walk, looking for solitude. There was not much in the way of infrastructure, not like the meadow around the house, where chairs, a patio, and other constructions of leisure were placed. The only leisure found here was what nature could offer, which was of a kind I enjoyed.

So, too, my son James, apparently. 

Reclined against the stump of a fallen tree was little James, his wispy blonde hair fluttering in the pre-storm breeze that was stirring. He was trying his hardest to keep the paper in his pocket journal steady as he scribbled away with a charcoal pen.

“What are you doing, James?” I asked him. 

He turned to me and met my eyes. It has been hard to admit this, even to this journal that sees only my hand, but there is something in my son’s eyes that disturbs me; his gaze is very off-putting. I hate to say such a thing about my own child, but it is undeniably true. Only these pages know of this revelation. I could never tell Melendra, or my other children, but part of me senses that they feel it too: I can see it in the way my boys avoid him, the way my girls pat his head as if they were petting an uncaged beast, the way my own wife looks when she feeds him his bottle. 

James is six years of age. 

The boy looked up to me with his dark, empty eyes. Again, it is terrible to say this, but I get the same expression from looking into James’s eyes as I do when staring into a cow’s or another kind of cattle. There is nothing behind his deep irises like a pool of the abyss, the water shaded the same inscrutable black as the pen he used to draw in his small notebook.

“I am drawing a picture, Daddy.” 

“I get that, boy, but why are you out here?” I waved in the direction of the darkening sky. A harrowing bolt of lightning painted the grey sky. The thunder rolled in after, muffling James’s response. He repeated himself. 

“A friend of mine is out here, Daddy. We meet at this spot sometimes.” 

I scanned the near distance, my view largely obstructed by the plentiful thin trees and thick underbrush. I did not find any sign of a “friend.” 

“Well, you should come with me, and your friend should do the same.” I squatted down to the little boy’s height and went to grab his wrist to help him up from the ground. While reaching down I got to truly inspect the drawing my son had crafted, something deeper than the glimpses I took in the churning wind. 

It was a tall, thin, beastly figure, very akin to the many trees that surrounded that section of the property. The limbs were dangly, elongated, the fingertips scratching at where I supposed would be the knee caps. I saw eyes all over the thing, up and down its torso, legs, and arms. It was a fantastical creature from a children’s fairy tale, but with a more disturbing edge, something to threaten a naughty child with who refused to brush their teeth or do their chores. This was the creature who came knocking on your window. 

As he rose from his lounging against the stump, I asked him about the drawing. 

“That’s him, Daddy. My friend. Do you not see him?” 

What a foolish notion it was to look, but I did. I scanned the area once more and twice over for this mythical friend my strange son spoke of, but I could not find him. James pointed over to our far left, telling me he was over there. Again, I looked, but found nothing that resembled the fictional creature except the trees to some regard. 

“He must be shy,” I said, partly to quell the unease that was flooding through me. 

“Yes, he is very shy.” 

That will conclude my first entry into this journal of mine. I am unsure at the moment what I will do with this new information, this drawing, or my son James. I thought perhaps going through the process of writing everything down would help to steer me in some direction, or open my mind to a solution I could not put together before. Alas, I am dumbfounded. 
Stranger yet? I may venture back into those woods in search of that tall Thing. 

With work and aspirations of writing my time has been constrained, and I am by no means a young man, but this situation with my son has piqued a morbid interest within me. 

My story would’ve never had a stage without our good ole internet. It is a tale of the mythical, unimaginable, one you may tell around a campfire and be too embarrassed to claim as true because how could such a thing be? 

I read stories online that told of otherworldly beings, immensely tall, faceless, well-dressed, and my stomach got that sunken, dreadful feeling. Others had faced them. Lived to tell their story. To find a community that might understand my story brought me so much solace and relief. Maybe I’m not crazy to believe. 

This story is not my own, though. I am not the protagonist but rather a narrator, if you will. This story is my great grandfather’s, told through a journal left behind after his death. He faced what seems to me to be a familiar demon, and I would like to relay his story like I have seen many others do in this space. For what purpose, I am not sure. Awareness. To commemorate him, if he even deserved it. For the simple allure of telling such a story. To get the monkey off my back.

I believe it is some combination of all these things. 

I am not sure how much I can fit into this single post alone. Life has given me time constraints that I struggle to meet, upload or no upload, but today I promise you the first piece of the entries, or what I call part 1. It goes as follows: 

June 28th, 1922, 

This journal will serve me multiple purposes. The primary reason will be to document the strange case of my son, James Barclay. I also plan to use this journal to hone my writing prowess, as I aspire to be a writer comparable to the likes of Fitzgerald or Woolf. A silly dream, of course, but it will explain my flowery wordiness, for whoever stumbles upon this journal by chance or fate. 

My youngest son, James, worries me dearly. I am afraid of sharing my findings with any kind of shrink because I fear they will drive a stake through his brain or perform some other dastardly procedure to cure his strangeness, so I will document everything here for now. 

James has always been an odd child. From an early age he was different from the ordinary boy. I was not present for his birth, as I was called to the German front to end The Great War, but from what my wife Melendra tells me, it was a brutal process, and almost ended in a trading of his life for hers. 

He was a sickly grey baby. The doctor beat against his back, trying to pry air from his infantile lungs. He did eventually breathe. During the whole process, he never cried. 
Reader, since his welcoming to the world, I nor anyone else has ever seen James cry. Whether it is a scrape of the knee, a tumble from a bike, or a stern word from mother or father, all children cry. 

But not James. 

The peculiarity was something I had grown accustomed to. I sat with my feelings whirling into a torment, and after bracing that storm I was finding better grounds. I was okay with playgroups where I’d find James in a corner, not socializing with the other children, fiddling with some toy. His muteness, utter reluctance to speak, was something I could overlook if tutoring could not aid in its development. 

There was a solid parameter being built, one I was fortified to protect. He was my son and I would love him for all the unusual qualities he possessed. Then the nice, comprehensible lines I had drawn were dusted, crossed, surmised. 

It was just yonder the bridge that forded a small creek on my property. The idea of this journal materialized after what I saw that day.

Melendra was overwrought with worry. My three eldest children were clueless to James’s whereabouts. This alone was not a devastating revelation. It was the thorough household inspection undertaken by my wife along with myself that planted a seed of fright within us all. 

James could not be found. 

Melendra circled back around the house a second time while I ventured around our property to see where our youngest boy may have stumbled off to. I crossed the narrow stone bridge and went over the rushing creek to a patch of densely thicketed woods. The trees were thin, tall, and plentiful. 

This was a section of my property that I had not spent much time in with the exception of an occasional walk, looking for solitude. There was not much in the way of infrastructure, not like the meadow around the house, where chairs, a patio, and other constructions of leisure were placed. The only leisure found here was what nature could offer, which was of a kind I enjoyed.

So, too, my son James, apparently. 

Reclined against the stump of a fallen tree was little James, his wispy blonde hair fluttering in the pre-storm breeze that was stirring. He was trying his hardest to keep the paper in his pocket journal steady as he scribbled away with a charcoal pen.

“What are you doing, James?” I asked him. 

He turned to me and met my eyes. It has been hard to admit this, even to this journal that sees only my hand, but there is something in my son’s eyes that disturbs me; his gaze is very off-putting. I hate to say such a thing about my own child, but it is undeniably true. Only these pages know of this revelation. I could never tell Melendra, or my other children, but part of me senses that they feel it too: I can see it in the way my boys avoid him, the way my girls pat his head as if they were petting an uncaged beast, the way my own wife looks when she feeds him his bottle. 

James is six years of age. 

The boy looked up to me with his dark, empty eyes. Again, it is terrible to say this, but I get the same expression from looking into James’s eyes as I do when staring into a cow’s or another kind of cattle. There is nothing behind his deep irises like a pool of the abyss, the water shaded the same inscrutable black as the pen he used to draw in his small notebook.

“I am drawing a picture, Daddy.” 

“I get that, boy, but why are you out here?” I waved in the direction of the darkening sky. A harrowing bolt of lightning painted the grey sky. The thunder rolled in after, muffling James’s response. He repeated himself. 

“A friend of mine is out here, Daddy. We meet at this spot sometimes.” 

I scanned the near distance, my view largely obstructed by the plentiful thin trees and thick underbrush. I did not find any sign of a “friend.” 

“Well, you should come with me, and your friend should do the same.” I squatted down to the little boy’s height and went to grab his wrist to help him up from the ground. While reaching down I got to truly inspect the drawing my son had crafted, something deeper than the glimpses I took in the churning wind. 

It was a tall, thin, beastly figure, very akin to the many trees that surrounded that section of the property. The limbs were dangly, elongated, the fingertips scratching at where I supposed would be the knee caps. I saw eyes all over the thing, up and down its torso, legs, and arms. It was a fantastical creature from a children’s fairy tale, but with a more disturbing edge, something to threaten a naughty child with who refused to brush their teeth or do their chores. This was the creature who came knocking on your window. 

As he rose from his lounging against the stump, I asked him about the drawing. 

“That’s him, Daddy. My friend. Do you not see him?” 

What a foolish notion it was to look, but I did. I scanned the area once more and twice over for this mythical friend my strange son spoke of, but I could not find him. James pointed over to our far left, telling me he was over there. Again, I looked, but found nothing that resembled the fictional creature except the trees to some regard. 

“He must be shy,” I said, partly to quell the unease that was flooding through me. 

“Yes, he is very shy.” 

That will conclude my first entry into this journal of mine. I am unsure at the moment what I will do with this new information, this drawing, or my son James. I thought perhaps going through the process of writing everything down would help to steer me in some direction, or open my mind to a solution I could not put together before. Alas, I am dumbfounded. 
Stranger yet? I may venture back into those woods in search of that tall Thing. 

With work and aspirations of writing my time has been constrained, and I am by no means a young man, but this situation with my son has piqued a morbid interest within me. 

My story would’ve never had a stage without our good ole internet. It is a tale of the mythical, unimaginable, one you may tell around a campfire and be too embarrassed to claim as true because how could such a thing be? 

I read stories online that told of otherworldly beings, immensely tall, faceless, well-dressed, and my stomach got that sunken, dreadful feeling. Others had faced them. Lived to tell their story. To find a community that might understand my story brought me so much solace and relief. Maybe I’m not crazy to believe. 

This story is not my own, though. I am not the protagonist but rather a narrator, if you will. This story is my great grandfather’s, told through a journal left behind after his death. He faced what seems to me to be a familiar demon, and I would like to relay his story like I have seen many others do in this space. For what purpose, I am not sure. Awareness. To commemorate him, if he even deserved it. For the simple allure of telling such a story. To get the monkey off my back.

I believe it is some combination of all these things. 

I am not sure how much I can fit into this single post alone. Life has given me time constraints that I struggle to meet, upload or no upload, but today I promise you the first piece of the entries, or what I call part 1. It goes as follows: 

June 28th, 1922, 

This journal will serve me multiple purposes. The primary reason will be to document the strange case of my son, James Barclay. I also plan to use this journal to hone my writing prowess, as I aspire to be a writer comparable to the likes of Fitzgerald or Woolf. A silly dream, of course, but it will explain my flowery wordiness, for whoever stumbles upon this journal by chance or fate. 

My youngest son, James, worries me dearly. I am afraid of sharing my findings with any kind of shrink because I fear they will drive a stake through his brain or perform some other dastardly procedure to cure his strangeness, so I will document everything here for now. 

James has always been an odd child. From an early age he was different from the ordinary boy. I was not present for his birth, as I was called to the German front to end The Great War, but from what my wife Melendra tells me, it was a brutal process, and almost ended in a trading of his life for hers. 

He was a sickly grey baby. The doctor beat against his back, trying to pry air from his infantile lungs. He did eventually breathe. During the whole process, he never cried. 
Reader, since his welcoming to the world, I nor anyone else has ever seen James cry. Whether it is a scrape of the knee, a tumble from a bike, or a stern word from mother or father, all children cry. 

But not James. 

The peculiarity was something I had grown accustomed to. I sat with my feelings whirling into a torment, and after bracing that storm I was finding better grounds. I was okay with playgroups where I’d find James in a corner, not socializing with the other children, fiddling with some toy. His muteness, utter reluctance to speak, was something I could overlook if tutoring could not aid in its development. 

There was a solid parameter being built, one I was fortified to protect. He was my son and I would love him for all the unusual qualities he possessed. Then the nice, comprehensible lines I had drawn were dusted, crossed, surmised. 

It was just yonder the bridge that forded a small creek on my property. The idea of this journal materialized after what I saw that day.

Melendra was overwrought with worry. My three eldest children were clueless to James’s whereabouts. This alone was not a devastating revelation. It was the thorough household inspection undertaken by my wife along with myself that planted a seed of fright within us all. 

James could not be found. 

Melendra circled back around the house a second time while I ventured around our property to see where our youngest boy may have stumbled off to. I crossed the narrow stone bridge and went over the rushing creek to a patch of densely thicketed woods. The trees were thin, tall, and plentiful. 

This was a section of my property that I had not spent much time in with the exception of an occasional walk, looking for solitude. There was not much in the way of infrastructure, not like the meadow around the house, where chairs, a patio, and other constructions of leisure were placed. The only leisure found here was what nature could offer, which was of a kind I enjoyed.

So, too, my son James, apparently. 

Reclined against the stump of a fallen tree was little James, his wispy blonde hair fluttering in the pre-storm breeze that was stirring. He was trying his hardest to keep the paper in his pocket journal steady as he scribbled away with a charcoal pen.

“What are you doing, James?” I asked him. 

He turned to me and met my eyes. It has been hard to admit this, even to this journal that sees only my hand, but there is something in my son’s eyes that disturbs me; his gaze is very off-putting. I hate to say such a thing about my own child, but it is undeniably true. Only these pages know of this revelation. I could never tell Melendra, or my other children, but part of me senses that they feel it too: I can see it in the way my boys avoid him, the way my girls pat his head as if they were petting an uncaged beast, the way my own wife looks when she feeds him his bottle. 

James is six years of age. 

The boy looked up to me with his dark, empty eyes. Again, it is terrible to say this, but I get the same expression from looking into James’s eyes as I do when staring into a cow’s or another kind of cattle. There is nothing behind his deep irises like a pool of the abyss, the water shaded the same inscrutable black as the pen he used to draw in his small notebook.

“I am drawing a picture, Daddy.” 

“I get that, boy, but why are you out here?” I waved in the direction of the darkening sky. A harrowing bolt of lightning painted the grey sky. The thunder rolled in after, muffling James’s response. He repeated himself. 

“A friend of mine is out here, Daddy. We meet at this spot sometimes.” 

I scanned the near distance, my view largely obstructed by the plentiful thin trees and thick underbrush. I did not find any sign of a “friend.” 

“Well, you should come with me, and your friend should do the same.” I squatted down to the little boy’s height and went to grab his wrist to help him up from the ground. While reaching down I got to truly inspect the drawing my son had crafted, something deeper than the glimpses I took in the churning wind. 

It was a tall, thin, beastly figure, very akin to the many trees that surrounded that section of the property. The limbs were dangly, elongated, the fingertips scratching at where I supposed would be the knee caps. I saw eyes all over the thing, up and down its torso, legs, and arms. It was a fantastical creature from a children’s fairy tale, but with a more disturbing edge, something to threaten a naughty child with who refused to brush their teeth or do their chores. This was the creature who came knocking on your window. 

As he rose from his lounging against the stump, I asked him about the drawing. 

“That’s him, Daddy. My friend. Do you not see him?” 

What a foolish notion it was to look, but I did. I scanned the area once more and twice over for this mythical friend my strange son spoke of, but I could not find him. James pointed over to our far left, telling me he was over there. Again, I looked, but found nothing that resembled the fictional creature except the trees to some regard. 

“He must be shy,” I said, partly to quell the unease that was flooding through me. 

“Yes, he is very shy.” 

That will conclude my first entry into this journal of mine. I am unsure at the moment what I will do with this new information, this drawing, or my son James. I thought perhaps going through the process of writing everything down would help to steer me in some direction, or open my mind to a solution I could not put together before. Alas, I am dumbfounded. 
Stranger yet? I may venture back into those woods in search of that tall Thing. 

With work and aspirations of writing my time has been constrained, and I am by no means a young man, but this situation with my son has piqued a morbid interest within me. 

My story would’ve never had a stage without our good ole internet. It is a tale of the mythical, unimaginable, one you may tell around a campfire and be too embarrassed to claim as true because how could such a thing be? 

I read stories online that told of otherworldly beings, immensely tall, faceless, well-dressed, and my stomach got that sunken, dreadful feeling. Others had faced them. Lived to tell their story. To find a community that might understand my story brought me so much solace and relief. Maybe I’m not crazy to believe. 

This story is not my own, though. I am not the protagonist but rather a narrator, if you will. This story is my great grandfather’s, told through a journal left behind after his death. He faced what seems to me to be a familiar demon, and I would like to relay his story like I have seen many others do in this space. For what purpose, I am not sure. Awareness. To commemorate him, if he even deserved it. For the simple allure of telling such a story. To get the monkey off my back.

I believe it is some combination of all these things. 

I am not sure how much I can fit into this single post alone. Life has given me time constraints that I struggle to meet, upload or no upload, but today I promise you the first piece of the entries, or what I call part 1. It goes as follows: 

June 28th, 1922, 

This journal will serve me multiple purposes. The primary reason will be to document the strange case of my son, James Barclay. I also plan to use this journal to hone my writing prowess, as I aspire to be a writer comparable to the likes of Fitzgerald or Woolf. A silly dream, of course, but it will explain my flowery wordiness, for whoever stumbles upon this journal by chance or fate. 

My youngest son, James, worries me dearly. I am afraid of sharing my findings with any kind of shrink because I fear they will drive a stake through his brain or perform some other dastardly procedure to cure his strangeness, so I will document everything here for now. 

James has always been an odd child. From an early age he was different from the ordinary boy. I was not present for his birth, as I was called to the German front to end The Great War, but from what my wife Melendra tells me, it was a brutal process, and almost ended in a trading of his life for hers. 

He was a sickly grey baby. The doctor beat against his back, trying to pry air from his infantile lungs. He did eventually breathe. During the whole process, he never cried. 
Reader, since his welcoming to the world, I nor anyone else has ever seen James cry. Whether it is a scrape of the knee, a tumble from a bike, or a stern word from mother or father, all children cry. 

But not James. 

The peculiarity was something I had grown accustomed to. I sat with my feelings whirling into a torment, and after bracing that storm I was finding better grounds. I was okay with playgroups where I’d find James in a corner, not socializing with the other children, fiddling with some toy. His muteness, utter reluctance to speak, was something I could overlook if tutoring could not aid in its development. 

There was a solid parameter being built, one I was fortified to protect. He was my son and I would love him for all the unusual qualities he possessed. Then the nice, comprehensible lines I had drawn were dusted, crossed, surmised. 

It was just yonder the bridge that forded a small creek on my property. The idea of this journal materialized after what I saw that day.

Melendra was overwrought with worry. My three eldest children were clueless to James’s whereabouts. This alone was not a devastating revelation. It was the thorough household inspection undertaken by my wife along with myself that planted a seed of fright within us all. 

James could not be found. 

Melendra circled back around the house a second time while I ventured around our property to see where our youngest boy may have stumbled off to. I crossed the narrow stone bridge and went over the rushing creek to a patch of densely thicketed woods. The trees were thin, tall, and plentiful. 

This was a section of my property that I had not spent much time in with the exception of an occasional walk, looking for solitude. There was not much in the way of infrastructure, not like the meadow around the house, where chairs, a patio, and other constructions of leisure were placed. The only leisure found here was what nature could offer, which was of a kind I enjoyed.

So, too, my son James, apparently. 

Reclined against the stump of a fallen tree was little James, his wispy blonde hair fluttering in the pre-storm breeze that was stirring. He was trying his hardest to keep the paper in his pocket journal steady as he scribbled away with a charcoal pen.

“What are you doing, James?” I asked him. 

He turned to me and met my eyes. It has been hard to admit this, even to this journal that sees only my hand, but there is something in my son’s eyes that disturbs me; his gaze is very off-putting. I hate to say such a thing about my own child, but it is undeniably true. Only these pages know of this revelation. I could never tell Melendra, or my other children, but part of me senses that they feel it too: I can see it in the way my boys avoid him, the way my girls pat his head as if they were petting an uncaged beast, the way my own wife looks when she feeds him his bottle. 

James is six years of age. 

The boy looked up to me with his dark, empty eyes. Again, it is terrible to say this, but I get the same expression from looking into James’s eyes as I do when staring into a cow’s or another kind of cattle. There is nothing behind his deep irises like a pool of the abyss, the water shaded the same inscrutable black as the pen he used to draw in his small notebook.

“I am drawing a picture, Daddy.” 

“I get that, boy, but why are you out here?” I waved in the direction of the darkening sky. A harrowing bolt of lightning painted the grey sky. The thunder rolled in after, muffling James’s response. He repeated himself. 

“A friend of mine is out here, Daddy. We meet at this spot sometimes.” 

I scanned the near distance, my view largely obstructed by the plentiful thin trees and thick underbrush. I did not find any sign of a “friend.” 

“Well, you should come with me, and your friend should do the same.” I squatted down to the little boy’s height and went to grab his wrist to help him up from the ground. While reaching down I got to truly inspect the drawing my son had crafted, something deeper than the glimpses I took in the churning wind. 

It was a tall, thin, beastly figure, very akin to the many trees that surrounded that section of the property. The limbs were dangly, elongated, the fingertips scratching at where I supposed would be the knee caps. I saw eyes all over the thing, up and down its torso, legs, and arms. It was a fantastical creature from a children’s fairy tale, but with a more disturbing edge, something to threaten a naughty child with who refused to brush their teeth or do their chores. This was the creature who came knocking on your window. 

As he rose from his lounging against the stump, I asked him about the drawing. 

“That’s him, Daddy. My friend. Do you not see him?” 

What a foolish notion it was to look, but I did. I scanned the area once more and twice over for this mythical friend my strange son spoke of, but I could not find him. James pointed over to our far left, telling me he was over there. Again, I looked, but found nothing that resembled the fictional creature except the trees to some regard. 

“He must be shy,” I said, partly to quell the unease that was flooding through me. 

“Yes, he is very shy.” 

That will conclude my first entry into this journal of mine. I am unsure at the moment what I will do with this new information, this drawing, or my son James. I thought perhaps going through the process of writing everything down would help to steer me in some direction, or open my mind to a solution I could not put together before. Alas, I am dumbfounded. 
Stranger yet? I may venture back into those woods in search of that tall Thing. 

With work and aspirations of writing my time has been constrained, and I am by no means a young man, but this situation with my son has piqued a morbid interest within me.