The Jaybird Flies Free | MH Rewrite

Chapter 1

     The introduction video had just been posted to YouTube and Jay had realized he had no idea where to start. When he decided to do this, he hadn't thought about how he was going to do this. Barely any of the tapes had been labeled or even dated. Jay reached into the bag and pulled out the first tape he touched. Since there was no order to the tapes, it seemed he would have to watch at random.

Jay connected his camcorder to his laptop and put the tape in. It was regular footage from the Marble Hornets set. Jay popped that tape out, put in a new one, and pressed play. The new tape show almost the same thing as the last one. Finally, after starting a new tape that continued the previous pattern, Jay found a clip that appeared very out of place. It was taken inside Alex's house, not the set of Marble Hornets.

Alex ran up to his window and peeked outside to see what looked like a tall, faceless, white man in a black suit. The man just stood there for a second before he slowly turned to face Alex. The camera shifts to darkness and then returns to normal.

The strangest thing about the clip seemed to be that there was no audio. Either the mic was turned off or the audio was removed afterwards. While it was odd, this was the only out of the ordinary thing on the tapes so far. Jay decided to make a mental note of it and move on.

One of the next few tapes had a clip of Alex driving down a road talking to the camera. Alex explained how he was out with his dog, Rocky, on a walk and they saw this guy in a suit. He had been standing under a streetlight and this triggered Rocky for some reason. The dog started tugging on the leash to go home. Alex drove back to the place they saw the man, but nobody had been there. The tape cut off abruptly. Jay put the tape into video format and put it on the channel.

The next few tapes sparked confusion in Jay's mind. Most of the tapes were Alex filming himself exclusively in his day to day life. Since it seemed noteworthy, Jay gathered a few of the clips, putting them in a video, and posted it to the channel. Jay checked the time, realizing he had been watching the tapes for too long. Unplugging the camcorder from the laptop, Jay closed it, laying down on his bed. It was quickly becoming apparent to him how attached he would get to this. He fell asleep, wondering what happened to Alex.

The next day, Jay found himself thinking back to the tapes all day. It took all his self control not to drop everything to go through the tapes. When Jay was done with his work, he immediately went to look at the tapes. He set up the camcorder and laptop, then put a tape in. Nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary. Jay replaced the tape with a different one. This one didn't have any audio again. The tape was of Alex walking around an old playground, seeming frantic. The swings were swaying on their own, the seesaw moved without prompting. Alex swings the camera around and a figure is seen moving out of frame before the tape cuts.

Just like the times previously, Jay found it significant enough to post to the channel. He continued to go through the tapes until he found one from before the production of Marble Hornets. It was when Jay had gone location scouting with Alex and recorded him talking about locations he wanted to use. As Jay started to watch, he noticed severe audio distortion at some point. The two went through all the locations in detail, including the gazebo, red tower, and other smaller places. Finding the audio distortion unusual, Jay uploaded the tape to Youtube in video format.

The rest of the week went on about the same way. Jay would spend all his time thinking about the tapes, drop everything as soon as he got home to watch the tapes, and then post anything interesting to the channel. This went on, even while he posted Entry #6, which was a likely continuation of the clip from Entry #1. He posted Entry #7, where Alex and Brian were rehearsing lines in Alex's car. In the background, half behind a building, was the same man who had apparently been stalking Alex. He ended early and drove off. Then, Jay posted Entry #8, a clip of Alex scribbling pages of nonsense and the audio cuts out, too.

     Jay slept less and less the more he went through the tapes. Despite this, he soldiered on, hoping for a hint of where Alex went. He posted Entry #9, which was footage from the set featuring Tim, Sarah, Seth and Alex. Alex had been extra irritable that time, yelling at Tim and Sarah for their acting, then Seth for not recording during a break. Some days passed when Jay could not find anything to post. Soon he was alerted to a video response from “totheark” and had to take a look. Although it was near impossible to figure out what it was trying to say.

Over the next couple of days, Jay stayed home with a fever, but still went through the tapes. In his search he found a clip of Alex running, most likely through the woods, without any audio. Jay compiled the tape to video form and posted it as Entry #10. Soon after posting, Jay got another video response from totheark. It was titled “Operator” and it was a code with what seemed to be the missing audio from Entry #10. Jay had tried to figure out the code, however he just didn’t have it in him to. Whoever totheark was, it unnerved Jay that they were doing this.