This sucks

What you people do is no fun. Just thought I'd point that out.

For anybody interested, we're holed up for the night at some random roadway services. We don't really have them in Australia like they did over in Europe (or, at least, they're not called roadway services), but we do tend to have petrol stations with McDonalds or a crappy restaurant or something attached, so this is about as close as we get. Fortunately it's a twenty-four hour place and filled with truckers who look like they'd kill anybody who started a fight, so Drew figures we're probably safer here than we've ever been lately.

We haven't seen much of anything because Drew's refused to stop in one place longer than is strictly necessary to get a night's sleep so I guess that's a plus. He's still babbling incessantly about a million and one possible situations we might find ourselves in sometime in the future, what we need to do to be prepared for them and how to act once we're in them so as to increase our 'survival chances'. "Get the hell out of there and remove whatever obstacles are in your way in as time efficient a manner as you can possibly think of" about sums up every plan he's laid out. I just don't know if I'll be able to deal once one of those obstacles becomes a person. I'm not keen on facing a 'servant' of any description, though I'm less keen for a proper run-in.

I'll be honest - I'm terrified. Drew's being so matter-of-fact about how to defend yourself from somebody trying to kill you (not to mention being matter of fact about incapacitating or killing somebody), and acting like somebody trying to kill us in our sleep one day is just something we have to accept. It's not even the 'top brass' that scares me so much as it is the fact that his first rule is 'assume everybody is trying or planning to kill you all the time and act accordingly'. His second is 'if you see him get out and leave me behind if you have to so much as pause for me, just make sure you leave as fast and to as far away as possible', so that doesn't help much.

I don't know how he does it. We're being followed - of that I'm sure. I haven't seen anybody, but I just know that if we stop somewhere too long they'll catch up. Drew keeps assuring me of the fact, but he wouldn't even have to say it for me to know it's true. It's like staying in one place for too long just lets whatever is watching us grow and grow until that thing shows back up. A part of me wants to stay, though. We've discussed it at length, about the way it makes you curious and tries to terrify you into inaction, so I know any desire to stand and fight, or to investigate or to sacrifice myself for my brother's safety or just give up is just mind tricks designed to make me stay in place long enough to lose my mind, but regardless of all that I still know we need to run as sure as I know the Sun will rise tomorrow.

I can still feel what it was like to have it watching me, and that's enough to keep me firmly in the 'run away' camp. It was only for the briefest few seconds as Andrew dragged me back to the car screaming "Now do you believe me?" in my ear the whole time that I saw it, but it was still the sickest, wrongest and most terrifying experience of my life. He says I'm talking in my sleep now too, crying out for help and demanding something get away from me (three guesses what). He says I'm calling for Mum, telling her not to go into the closet, begging her to ignore what Andrew says.

I don't blame him or anything. I would've done the same in his place. It's all too long ago to remember what really happened, but I know enough now to be sure whatever it is killed her when Andrew begged her to make it stop watching him at night. I never saw the dark man with the teeth, but I do remember Andrew telling me about him out on the crown lands around the corner from our old house and how he made him scared of the house, scared of the closet and most importantly too scared to sleep. I know for a fact I never 'met' him until Drew showed up just like I never knew my neighbour over the road used to take photographs of me while I slept. That still creeps the hell out of me by the way.

It's not like he ever has trouble sleeping anymore. He's been having the most peaceful fricken sleep ever lately, while I'm tossing and turning all night and day watching him sleep with that damned smile on his face.

I may want to smack him one, but I guess that's what happens when you force two brother's who haven't seen each other in forever to sleep in a car right next to each other most nights when only one can drive. This rant's kinda helped a little though, which is nice. All this blogging is kinda therapeutic, especially through the nice blur of sleep deprivation. All this driving has torn my sleeping patterns to shreds, but Andrew says that doesn't really matter, because you can either have proper well structured sleep that's easier for him to get into but harder to corrupt, or fitful, unsatisfying and uncomfortable sleep that's never enough, which makes it harder for him to get into but easier to corrupt so that it all evens out in the end. But the coffee's starting to wear off now after that rant so I'm going to wake Drew back up where he's slumped over the table and head back to the car for the night. At least it's a station wagon with enough space to lie down.

Anyway, until the next time I'm angry at Drew for snoring so loudly and sleeping so well while I can't but am unable to take it out on him by ribbing him about how cars always make him fall asleep, I guess I hope you all stay safe and should thank you for the well-wishes. (Drew's on my back to be polite, but really, thank you.)

I'll make him do the next update the next time we find some wireless. It's absolutely shit here, but the password was just 'password' and Drew got it first try, so that's alright even if he did hog the laptop until he decided it was bedtime and did absolutely nothing with it.