The 616 Diaries: Entry 18

October 12th, 2019, 12:29 PM

First off, I should mention that “they” contacted Ravenseer, too. I’ve been putting off this journal entry for a few days now because I’ve been so paranoid, but I’m glad I did. I needed to have the perspective that today offered me. Without it, this all would have seemed chaotic and misinformed and like I was grasping at straws. Now… now I can talk about it clearly, to explain why I’ve made the decision I’ve made.

We should talk about this email, though. They talked about details they couldn’t possibly have known; the only way they could have gotten parts of it was by using a keylogger on my computer, which—I guess—is possible. I just don’t see why they would do that for someone as unimportant as me, but I think I was mistaken about all of my assumptions. One, it’s not a keylogger—they really do know more about me—but more importantly, I realize that I really do have a place in their world.

When I finally read Ravenseer’s message, however, I wasn’t in that mindset at all. I thought that someone from the House of Orphans or Catalytics had found us, our correspondence on the site; had found some way to hack our emails or something like that. He was definitely thinking the same thing, because he was freaking the fuck out when he chatted with me. In fact, the chat was just a few lines of instruction telling me how to get in touch with him through something like six proxies. He set them all up just to talk to me about the emails.

Any pretense I had at him being a fake melted away. The guy was genuinely concerned, panicking that someone had found him, but he did his best to convince me—and himself, I think—that we were safe. Told me that his initial contact with me was through a whole bunch of firewalls and whatnot. This was when he confessed to me that he had been hacking through the systems for a while, searching for any mention of 616 or anything related to the Ars Goetia for years now.

This was when he confessed that he had already known about my blog before I ever posted on that site. In fact, he was the one to email me in the first place.

I was pissed, at first, but over the course of the following conversation, I really did believe him. He hadn’t known about the connections between Catalytics and the House of Orphans before I did—he had only started looking into them once I had mentioned it—but he had a lot more knowledge than I thought he did. Most of the week I spent waiting for him to reply to my initial batch of notes was spent watching my online behavior. He wanted to make sure that I was “normal,” that this was a real phenomenon happening to me.

Mostly it was just to make sure I wasn’t some sort of plant put there by one of the nefarious organizations attached to 616, but he also let on that he was trying to see if I was legitimate, that I was actually seeing everything I was claiming to see. Apparently, he hacked into my network to see my notes; compared them to stoplight cameras and satellite footage and tried to corroborate my sightings to reality.

I was ultra pissed at that—though impressed and worried, too—but that was mitigated when he said that I wasn’t seeing things, that it was real.

Ravenseer might be a stranger who hacked into my life and spied on me, but he’s also the only person who believes me.

Well, that we know of. Apparently, there is this whole shadow organization that follows 616 and has enough resources to not just find me—who has been rather public about everything—but to find Ravenseer. That’s why he was panicking; he felt like he had been hiding his tracks very well. Claims to be a very active member of the darkweb, going to the extent that he’s wiped every trace of his existence that he could, which is almost everything. Even though he still hasn’t told me his name, he was confident enough to tell me the nature of his existence.

It’s something, I think. We might even become friends.

But that’s what makes all of this so frightening. For them to find Ravenseer, these guys have crazy amounts of power and access that we hadn’t anticipated. I mean, we thought it was some sort of corporate espionage kind of thing before—spies in the shadows tasked with finding and destroying anyone who finds out the wrong kind of information—but these guys, whoever they are, seem to be even more effective than that. They seem to know what we’re thinking.

Well, me, in any case.

For a few days, I just let the email sit there. I read it probably a hundred times trying to find out something hidden between the lines, some sort of clue as to who sent it. I found nothing but the obvious correlation to 616. If you hadn’t guessed, that was exactly how many words were in the body of the email. They hadn’t said much, but they had said it exactly the way they had meant to, exactly the way they had meant for me to find and interpret it. Oddly enough, Ravenseer hadn’t caught onto it for his own email, which was different, but once he checked it out, it was 616 words as well.

Eerie, at the very least. Afraid for my life? More than just a little bit. Whatever we’re messing with, they have resources and abilities far beyond what he had considered. Truth be told, if things hadn’t changed in the last few hours, I would have just ignored the email and waited for my door to get busted-in. However, things did change in the last few hours.

Just a half hour ago, I wrapped up the dream conversation I had with Andrew a week ago.

And it’s not just some vague recollection or some extreme déjà vu. This leaves no room for debate. Because of the Clarity that was in my system, I remembered every single detail of that conversation. I remember how he looked, how he reacted, how I reacted… even our body language. Each word and syllable is burned into my memory and I’ll never forget it.

Today was like watching it again, except I was only stuck in my own perspective, and this time I was saying the words.

It wasn’t just some vague paraphrase. I remembered exactly how the conversation went, how I felt when I said each word, and I repeated the entire thing and played my part, responding to Andrew every time.

I even looked at where my mental projection had been and “made eye contact.”

It may have been a subconscious pull—or it may have just been my ability to predict what I would do in those situations—but I couldn’t even stop myself once I was saying those very leading, very meaningful turns of phrase. It wasn’t just wordplay; it was me playing the part already written. It felt appropriate, destined, and I really did feel like I was talking to both Andrew and who I had been in the dream.

It was like I knew I was stuck in a temporal loop and that I had to relive it exactly as it was, or my past self would not have realized, would not have felt that instinctual knowledge that I was seeing a future. It may not have been the future, but it was the one that was supposed to happen.

I don’t think the Clarity didn’t work anymore; not because I didn’t see demons and Hell. It worked exactly how it was supposed to, gave me exactly what it was supposed to. In my dreams I can see the future, and that doesn’t seem to be a debate anymore. I just relived yet another conversation, and this one was packed with meaning and subtext. Now I know, now I’m certain, and even if I lose my sanity and they ridicule me for the rest of my life, I know that I’m on the right path. Whether or not I see more 616s, I will not doubt, for I know that here, now, that I am connected to something outside of time.

And I think that’s why I called the number that “they” put in that email. Whoever they were, they had the answers I was looking for, the clarification to my purpose. After all, the phone number started with 616, so it was the next step on my path no matter what. They may hurt me, threaten me, kill me, but I have to confront them. Running away scared would make losing Renee, Andrew, everything… it would make all of that useless and futile.

When they answered, it was actually a woman. Not the kind of woman I would expect to hear from; it wasn’t some sort of secretary or HR rep. This woman seemed powerful, confident, dangerous…

But somehow, at the same time, she seemed familiar, like someone I had known before I had even been born.

The conversation was short—she wouldn’t give me any answers—but she was pleasant enough. Even though it felt like she could command someone to kill me at any moment, it didn’t seem like she wanted to. After a few minutes she told me she could reveal who I had been seeing in my dreams, so I had no reservations left. If I was going to die by this woman’s hands, I figured I may as well get it over with.

I asked her what the next step was, and she said that she would send two of her agents to talk to me three days from now. I agreed, but when she described how they would introduce themselves, who they all worked for, I’ll admit I got nervous. I didn’t tell her why—even though she recognized my change in tone—but she didn’t need to know why I reacted that way.

She didn’t need to know that I hadn’t expected them to work for Catalytics.

I guess we’ll just see what happens three days from now.

-R