Raincoat

Shadows

                                                                 chapter nine

Things haven't gotten any better when it comes to business. The guests are only getting worse, the doctor from the city is still working on our new janitor, and the children have been freaking out lately.

All the children claim to be having nightmares about dying or zooming in on some strange person who they had never seen before. One child even said they saw a woman with short brown hair, a dirty white button up shirt, a skirt, some doll tights and Mary Jane shoes. That almost perfectly describes someone else I have encountered from Pale City. She was currently training to be a teacher, although I don't understand why. She had very little tolerance for children's misbehavior and misbehavior is very common in schools. I never asked her about it because we aren't that close, we just sat next to each other in highschool and occasionally spoke to each other. Even then, we never really talked. The only reason I know she's in college now is because she was being trained by the same company that I now work for. Unfortunately her past experience in her previous college didn't matter in the one she was currently in, so she had to start over from the beginning. Oh the sad reality that our lives are eventually going to have to go through the same things over, and over again, as we slowly throw away the little years we have left.

Six had been making drawings about nightmares almost exactly like that, but unlike the other children they weren't about the same person.

One drawing was of Vanity wearing the mask, black scribbles surrounding her childishly drawn form.

Another drawing was difficult to decipher, due to the only colour being used was black. Eventually I was able to make out a young girl in a poofy dress, long hair and...a ponytail...

Veronica...

The third drawing was what I had seen the most and had even been drawn before this epidemic had hit the children in the Maw.

It was that same strange drawing of what I assume to be a child, although it just looks like a triangle with a body and legs.

The boy's drawings were just as concerning, constantly drawing Vanity's grandmother getting a tight hold of him, however her hands are very large and her face seems to be even more wrinkled than when I first met her. I assume this is just a typical nine year old's disproportionate anatomy, but I can't shake the feeling that these drawings are almost photographs of what these children have experienced in their nightmares.

A couple weeks later, and these drawings began to have the eye logo for the company drawn in the background. The boy never made these symbols in his drawings, but Six did. She only drew this eye in two of her drawings. The one of Vanity, and the one of who I assume to be Veronica.

I don't understand what is going on...

But it isn't good...

Entry Number 16

I think I might be insane...

There is...no way that this is possible...

The lifeforce I had been researching--or meant to begin tomorrow morning--seems to have grown some kind of consciousness?

Or maybe Vanity had learned to harness and manipulate it into--

No this isn't that...

If that were the case then it wouldn't look like her

If Vanity had learned how to harness and control it...

How did Six learn to do something so similar.