Answers Recieved

I'm back. She opened the curtains and was looking outside the- ...just... my God. It was terrible. But... no... I'm not going to talk about it. Answers. I was going to talk about the answers. Yes. Answers first, ... that nightmare outside later... honestly... I didn't get any clear-cut answers, but I think I have the jist.

Jacob Mills (Me): "Hey. What's your name?"

Blood (Her): "I need no name."

Jacob Mills: "Oh that's silly, everyone needs a name."

Blood: "The names of the suffered past are banished in the brighter present."

(Okay, honestly, what she said came off as serious cult shit and... I worried. This little girl has suffered so much that... this must be the cause of some emotional trauma.)

Jacob Mills: "Okay then... can I call you Blood?"

Blood: "Blood?"

Jacob Mills: "Yeah, Blood."

Blood: "Call me what you wish, just do not call me a sufferer's name."

Jacob Mills: "Got it... so... do you know... well... anything about what's going on out there?"

Blood: "A war of ideas and pain is being unleashed upon your town, conceived by the Pallid Horseman."

Jacob Mills: "...a war of ideas?"

Blood: "Apathy and cruelty versus... empathy... and compassion... and..."

(She looked close to faltering, if not breaking down. I changed the subject.)

Jacob Mills: "So... those two guys back a day or two ago... who were carried off by the... by the doll thing... did you know them?"

Blood: "As much as I know all my brothers and sisters under the Willow's care."

Jacob Mills: "...what happened to them?"

Blood: "They've been taken to a place of suffering for all eternity."

Jacob Mills: "...so there's no way they can be saved?"

(The way she said it creeped me the fuck out. It was so final- it sounded like she calmly doomed two colleagues to painful searing death.)
 
Jacob Mills: "... do you know what's behind the weeping?"

Blood: "Mother."

Jacob Mills: "Mother?"

Blood: "Mother."

Jacob Mills: "Do you mean the Willow?"

Blood: "Yes. She is my mother now."

Jacob Mills: "What about your real mother?"

(Blood looked at me... and there was a mix of hatrid and... something else in her face.)

Blood: "The Willow is my real mother. The one with the sufferer's name was an illusion of pain and misery that has long since p-passed."

At that point, I knew I was hitting a raw nerve, so I asked her if she wanted some water or orange juice and let her sit down. And now here I am, typing. ...I guess I got the jist of it. The poor girl must have been hurt in some way... maybe by the doll thing or maybe by her family or even by both... and the eldritch tree lady... the Willow... she took the girl into her (cult?) (family!?) (army?) gathering and brainwashed her with the black blood. The doll thing works differently than the Willow and the two are at odds somehow. That much I got from the landscape-

oh God the landscape... how do I describe it. I imagine a blank canvas. Imagine one side of the canvas is black and the other is white and they meet perfectly at the center. No overlap. No grey. Just one side of the town was perfectly sterile and clean and so fake as to seem like a fine china sculpture. Everything seemed fake and toylike and surreal. The other side was hyperrealistic and natural, but so dark and foreboding that it chilled me to the core. Covered in weeds and trees that weren't there before. Roots covered and overtook almost all the houses and the sidewalk, with only a small stretch of road in the middle visible. On the porcelain side were... people... perfect white figurines stuck in natural and unnatural poses. Some were contorted into horrible shapes with the anguish tattooed on their sleek white faces, and some were calmly going down the road midstride. I thought it was beautiful at first but then I saw a man trip over from what I assumed was the Willow's side and into the doll thing's side.

I saw the man get covered in a bubbling white substance and I realized with a sickening horror what was under that porcelain shell. And then I heard them all moaning form under their form-fitted coffins. Oh God...

hang on I have to check on Blood. She's calling for me.

...half of the trees in the Willow's side are gone... and the sound of weeping is at my door.