"If They're Not an Enemy, They're a Friend."

The first thing I did yesterday was call Ryan. A Reddit user commented on an earlier update something to the effect of "If they're not an enemy, they're a friend," and that's certainly been true of both Nicole and Ryan. Working for the police, he was obviously aware of my mysterious appearance in the lake two days ago. I hate that I've had to drag him into this, but he doesn't seem to mind. Setting aside my own questions, Ryan was the one who started raising flags about a trend of mysterious disappearances in the town before I even came into all this. In a way, I'm just the latest (and maybe most resilient) person to go down this path.

Ryan helped me stage my exodus from the town. Just as before, he was asked to follow me as I left the next day, and followed me in his squad car all the way to the next small town, about 15 minutes away. For my own part, I stayed in public places the whole day and made sure to talk to anyone I knew about how I "had to get out of here" and "couldn't wait to get home." It was maybe the one time in my life that I'd been thankful for how quick gossip spreads in a small town like this.

I drove all the way to the largest city in the area (barely over an hour away), turned in my rental car and acted like I was heading to the airport. I doubt anyone there has any idea of who I am, but I figured it's best to cover my tracks. I picked up a spray painted, beat up, old Volkswagen Rabbit from a Craigslist ad titled, "She's Ugly but Still Runs" and headed back West.

I pulled the Rabbit into Nicole's driveway at almost 11:00 pm to see that she still had most of the lights in the house on as well as the huge, old tube television in the living room. Inside, I found her on her couch, entranced by her laptop. Nicole works at the hospital (the "new" one), taking care of the disproportionate number of elderly retirees who live in the area, though she's getting up there in age as well. I guess it's just in her nature to help people - after all, she's saved my life twice now. She's not from this town. I guess there's some kind of circuit as a seasonal employee in the hottest parts of Arizona, where you can stay and work when it's cool enough to keep your sanity, and then move somewhere else during the summers. She did that for 18 years, moving twice a year. After resolving to settle down with her new husband, they bought up a piece of secluded lakefront property and a "fixer-upper." He'd gotten to about 90% of the fixing before he'd passed away. That was about three years ago.

Working at the hospital, she'd seen things that made her think something might not be right with this town. For one thing, medical records for local families were kept under a higher level of security than other patients, which restricted access to only a few senior members of the supervisory staff. The reason she said she was given was that the digitization of medical records, which had occurred in the early 1990's, was a messy process, with vestigial bugs still being found over the years. Bugs which remained unfixed even as they turned up in 2014.

Another thing that had raised Nicole's suspicions were the multiple areas of the hospital which she, as a senior nurse, hired to be put in charge of scheduling and supervising, was not allowed to enter. On Google Maps, she pointed out a section the size of a house which she said she'd never seen the inside of.

She also actually still reads the local newspaper, which is kind of an asset.

Ryan's shift ended at 12:00, and at about 12:45, I saw headlights coming up the gravel driveway. He looked a lot different wearing his civilian clothes than he had the last time I'd seen him. His black police uniform hugged his ample belly, badly exaggerating his lack of fitness. He looked a lot more comfortable in his baggy, black hoodie and jeans, though the way his eyes were darting showed that he was anything but relaxed.

We'd made up our minds to check out the old hospital first. According to Ryan, something about Marissa's death had brought about the construction of the "new" hospital in the late 1980's. Notably absent since coming back to this town is her ghost, which I saw regularly while I was at home out-of-state. The child's spirit had always appeared with a vicious scar running the length of its head. A small hospital serving a town of only a few thousand would not normally have had an operating room outfitted for invasive brain surgery. If what her apparition had told me was correct, Dr. Philippe K. Menser was the one who had been performing the surgeries on her, as well as prescribing something she called "Monster Medicine."

We weren't prepared for what we actually found.