The Hidden Webpage(Jared Roberts)Part-2

When I got back, u47284u had sent me a message: "Where'd you go? Hope nothing strange happened."

That was a little eerie. But I was focused on getting answers, so I ignored it and asked what it was HolyMoses did. He said, "Fine, I'll tell you."

And this is what he said happened. In 1999, at 5AM CST on November 21st, HolyMoses joined the channel #ornithology and made a series of short statements. First, "Deceive them" at 7AM, "Empty it" at 9AM, "Abandon them" at 6PM. "Turn back" at 9PM. And "Have it your way" just before midnight. Then it went offline until January 5th. "Why?" he asked. Why be silent and useless for years, do that, and then never do anything after? Sometimes, when he really thought about it, he said, it gave him the serious heebie-jeebies.

That was all he knew. Or anyone knew. And he reiterated that I really shouldn't be looking into this and to just drop it. I thanked him for his help.

I remembered a little more of what commands mIRC had after getting into the groove some. So I tried a WhoIs on HolyMoses, to see if he was out there. He was! Or it was. It was on one channel only, #stilllife. It'd been signed on for 16 days and idle for 3. Its IP was showing only the letter 'Y'.

I was thinking about going to the channel and messaging him. To see what would happen. But I suddenly got another message from u47284u, "I TOLD YOU TO DROP IT!"

I know it's just text, but it freaked me out. I closed out of mIRC immediately and walked away. I figured it was just a nut trying to psyche me out. And y'know what, it worked.

I continued to argue with my mother the next few days about what she'd said. Telling her she confused reality with a Lifetime movie. But she assured me there was no internet in her house while I lived there. She said I had my floppy disks that I'd take home with me, but that was it.

We went on arguing for a while before it occurred to me to ask, "Take home from where?"

She said she didn't know. I'd go out at times and I'd come home with disks. I had a Sterilite tub full of them in my closet. None of them were labeled, so she didn't know how I had any idea what was on each one. But I seemed to know. She remembered how I'd dive into my bin and dig around through all the black disks and pop up with just the one I wanted. Generally she didn't intrude on my privacy, she said, she just saw me do it a few times.

Of course, I didn't remember any floppy disks. Either my mother was becoming senile, or I was losing my mind. Both possibilities were upsetting. My Mom's a really good person. She'd had a rough time since my dad died a few years ago. But she was super caring. She didn't like to see anyone hurt. And she could see I was truly upset, not just trying to be right. So, she gave me a big hug. And she told me I should ask Ricky.

Ricky. I hadn't thought of him. Ricky was an old high school buddy of mine. Well, we were friends from Grade 2 until we left for college. We just drifted apart after. I had him friended on Facebook and we never talked. You know how it goes. She said when I'd go out to wherever it was I went, I usually had Ricky with me. We'd walk all the way across the bridge into town to pass our weekends.

I decided to take her advice. I sent Ricky a message on Facebook. He wrote back really fast. I was surprised, because I never see status updates or any activity from him. I asked him if he was free for a phone call. I was scared about having another internet-only conversation, frankly. Facebook said he was typing a reply for about five minutes without anything happening. I was wondering what the hell novel he was typing. Then my phone rang. I didn't recognize the number. I know I never gave my number to Ricky, so there's no way it could be him, I though. While I waited, looking at my phone, Ricky started typing out periods over and over. I answered.

The voice on the other end sorta sounded like Ricky. As much as I could remember. But like he was really far away on a beat-up CB. I don't know why, but it made me feel weird and uneasy. I said I think we have a bad connection. He said it's the best possible and that he knows. I was about to ask what he knows when he said, "alt dot rec dot birdwatch" and hung up. I got a message on Facebook saying, "Nice catching up." He wouldn't answer anything I said after that.

I asked folks I knew if Ricky was okay. Apparently he was in a car accident years back and was mostly bedridden. I made a note to try visit him someday…

Anyway, alt dot rec dot birdwatch, is of course a UseNet newsgroup. I used to browse newsgroups all the time as a teen. Mostly for the porn. I was surprised they still existed. Now I had to look up how to get to them. I remembered being able to do it through my email software. But apparently that's not a feature of Outlook anymore. So I looked up newsgroup readers and found one I'd used back in the day. Then I found some servers and started looking for alt.rec.birdwatch.

When I finally found it, it turned out to be mostly British up-skirt photography. I didn't understand why Ricky wanted me there. Until I saw a post with the header, "Remember the dog?" and instantly felt clammy and cold. I didn't know why, but there was something to it. Something I couldn't put my finger on.

This is what the post read:

"Everyone remember how sometimes you'd go in there and it'd be all dusty and no-one was there like it was abandoned years ago but you could still go sit at a computer and get online? And remember how sometimes you'd go in and there'd be these people there and they were really weird and they'd just watch you like you were a rat in a maze and sometimes they were in costumes? Anyone remember the dog? Sometimes there were no people and there was just this dog at the counter. I think it was a golden retriever. It never panted. But it watched. And sometimes it'd make you do things."

That was it. And that was enough. I was trembling and I didn't know why. It didn't look like anyone had replied to the message and it had been posted 3 years ago. It seemed so out of place.

I kind of started to remember. I remembered at least that there was an internet café in town. It didn't last long. Like most internet cafes, it popped up around '96/'97 to take advantage of the internet craze and let people who didn't own computers experience the wonder. When personal computers became more common, they died a quick death.

This café was popular with the teens in '96. It got stale after that. That's when something happened to it. It changed management or something. It changed. We tried going back just to hang out. But most kids didn't want to be there anymore. I had some friends who just wouldn't go. Or say why. But Ricky and I would hang out there all the time. Why couldn't I remember that before? Maybe Mom was right all along. Maybe that's where I was on the internet.

I replied to the newsgroup message with, "Why wasn't I able to remember?" It was a long shot, since the post was so old. Then I started looking through the other posts, to see if there were others like it.

There were others. They were all vague. But I knew what they were about. I knew.

Someone posted:

"Sometimes when we were hanging out, we thought we were there for just an hour or so. But when we came out, the whole day had passed. And when we talked about what we did there, we had completely different stories. Even though we were together the whole time. It was like an acid trip. And we were stupid kids, so we kept going."

The Egypt. That's what the place was called. None of these people would say its name. But I remembered it then, suddenly. That strange, little internet café, just behind the post-office, where I didn't even realize there was commercial space before. The Egypt.

Someone else posted:

"There was this one time when my friend dragged me along and I didn't feel like being there. The owners or staff or whatever weren't there that day. It was the dog. I don't like to think about it. Remember how it never panted? Somehow that sticks out after all this time.

"We were just goofing off. Nothing special. When I looked over at my friend's screen, he was watching a live webcam of my bedroom. Just staring at it. I'm thinking this is a dumb joke, but it pisses me off. So I told him that was weird and I was not okay with a webcam in my room. He just said, 'Something's going to happen.' Gave me the heebie-jeebies. He wasn't joking. And it didn't even sound like him.

"Here's the thing that gets me most. I decided to leave, but need to piss first. On the way out, I go over to my buddy and he's still watching the webcam. That annoys me. But worse, when I look at the screen, someone's in my bedroom ransacking the place. Under the mattress, in drawers. I'm ready to go home and get one of dad's golf clubs. Then the guy looks right at the camera and starts taking it down. I saw that dude's face. It was me! No doubt about it. That was my face. How is that possible?

"You're thinking the webcam wasn't live. But it was…"

Someone replied to that post with:

"When you were in the bathroom, did you try knocking on the wall? Someone knocks back."

Someone replied to that with:

"I did. He said he'd let me in, but there's no door."

In the sea of birdwatching photos and up-skirts dating back to '95, that was all I could find. Took me all night. I closed it down. It was too much. I was psyching myself out. The next day, I had a reply to my post asking why I couldn't remember. It read, "You weren't meant to."

I felt it then. That something really wrong would happen in that place, the Egypt.

So I started doing some research into local records to see if I could find who owned it. They're public records, so it wasn't hard. I'd expected to find some change in management in the '90s. Or where the place got sold in the 2000s. I expected wrong. It was purchased in 1980 and had had the same owner ever since. A company or organization called 'The New Way.' It sounded like a cult. The weird thing is, that place was never used before the Egypt, as far as I know. In 1980 there wasn't really an internet. So… who would buy a place and do nothing with it for 15 years, just waiting for the internet to happen? It all seemed too mysterious. Plus there was nothing about this company anywhere.

It's hard to describe how alone I started to feel at this time. I talked to some people in my life about what was going on, but their help was limited. That's why I decided to try to go back to alt.rec.birdwatch, if it was still there. At least there someone might be having a similar experience. So I made my post. I asked if anyone else had heard of The New Way.

Then I waited. To my surprise, I got a call from Ben right after. He asked me if I'd "done anything" recently. I asked him to be more specific.

"You must have done something, because something happened," he said.

I still had no idea what he meant. He sounded strange. His words were just slightly slurred and there was no accent anywhere in his sentences. Just a string of words. Almost like a robot, but not quite. And it had that distant quality Ricky's call had.

"Something's happening right now," he told me. "I booted it up again."

Ben was just the most rational, bland guy. Something was definitely wrong for him to be acting like this. I asked him if he was ok. He said that I needed to check my messages. I asked what messages.

He insisted, "Listen. You have to check your messages. They've been waiting for you."

The whole thing didn't feel right at all. I asked him again what messages he meant. All I heard was little whispering sounds, like pst-pst-pst. I thought I was losing him. But when I listened carefully and turned up the volume, I heard it. He was saying "please" over and over and over. I felt a pit in my stomach. I asked if he needed help, if there was anything I could do. He went silent for several seconds.

"Ben?"

Still silence.

"PLEASE!" he shouted so loud I dropped my phone.

I scrambled to put the battery back in with shaking hands. And then I called in a wellness check on him. I called the Guelph campus, too, just in case. I didn't know what else to do. I'd never experienced anything like that. I checked my email right after to see if I had anything from him. But I didn't.

I had no voicemails. The only other 'messages' I could think of was ICQ. So I powered up the old computer again to check on my ICQ account. It's possible there was nothing. I just had to make sure. It took forever to load up. But there was a message waiting. It wasn't from anyone I recognized. The name on the account was "Bernie Busch." The message said, "Heaven." There was a link to an mp4 video. I clicked it. The download box said it would take 30 hours to complete. So I just let it go.

I tried replying to "Bernie," too, but ICQ alerted me that the account was disabled. I also couldn't find any results on any search for such a person. I don't think Ben would ever make a fake account like that. But how did Ben know about the message?

I got contacted by someone from Guelph University's campus security later that day. They asked me when I'd last spoken to Ben. I told them he'd just called. They said he hadn't been to work in a few days and has not been answering the phone. I was apparently the last one to hear from him. They recommended I file a missing person's report. I asked if his family shouldn't do that, but the dude just snorted. So I made the report, over the phone, to the Guelph PD. I was pretty worried about the guy. I hoped he was ok. I also hoped his disappearing had nothing to do with anything I got him involved in.

The next day, I got an email replying to my post newsgroup post. I recognized the address. It was the same person who posted about the dog. She said I needed to call her urgently and provided a 1-800 number followed by what looked like a license plate number, 472BMT. When I called, I got an interactive menu system for a tanning supplies company. When I listened to the options, I got the idea that 472BMT might be how to navigate the menu. So I pressed each of the numbers in the order she said. The system said I was being transferred to an "Account Specialist."

I heard someone pick up the line.

"You're starting to remember, aren't you?" a voice said.

I think I gasped. She said she couldn't talk long, so I had to just listen. She wanted to tell me something that might help me. She said she started remembering about a year ago. She remembered the 'sessions' in the Egypt. They preyed on vulnerable, misfit kids. Whoever came there got introduced gradually to this website called The Hole. Once they showed it to us, we had to sit there and study it. Solve its puzzles. But it'd change us. That's what they always said. She didn't know if they built it or not. But it's what they were all about.

"I think we're still in the Hole," she said.

I tried to ask her what that even meant. What she was talking about. She had already hung up before I got the chance. I tried calling her back, but the menu options didn't work anymore. I was more confused than ever. I felt like I didn't know what was real anymore. That's a terrible place to be. Trust me. All I was sure of was that I'd come into something very wrong when I was a teen and it was coming back. I didn't know why it took a vacation or what it wanted. I just wanted my life back to normal.

After that, I suddenly remembered the video file I left downloading on my old computer. I checked and it had completely downloaded. I wasn't sure I wanted to know what it was, but I played it anyway.

I knew what I was looking at as soon as the video started. It was footage of inside the Egypt. It'd been a long time. But it hit me fast. There was no timestamp, the footage was grainy and the tracking was off, but I knew it. It looked like it was from a corner security cam. There we all were, sitting at our computers. Strangely enough, our backs were to the monitors. We were staring at a wall. I spotted myself in the group. We just sat there, staring ahead. Nobody was moving or saying anything. I couldn't make out what the computers were doing behind us, but we weren't touching them. What were we staring at? What were we doing? Why would I do this? I couldn't remember these events at all.

I was the only one that ever looked away from the wall. I kept glancing over behind the bar. It was hard to tell, but I think I was afraid of something. I looked frightened. I tried to make out what I was looking at, but the tracking lines were in the way. When they faded a little and I was able to make it out. Someone was standing there in the shadows. Whoever it was, at just that moment turned to look right at the camera. It's like they knew I was watching. I know that's crazy. But it creeped the heck out of me. I shut the video down there. And I don't plan to open it again.

After that, I kept researching the New Way. 'cause there had to be something to it. I was able find a record that mentioned the owner's name, Bernard K. Busch. The same name as on the ICQ message. I looked for obituaries, white pages, anything that could lead me to him. I didn't think to look for missing person's cases, but I stumbled on one anyway. An old homepage asking to, "Help us find Uncle Bern." I emailed his niece (presumably) from the address listed asking for more information. The page was made in the year 2000, so I didn't expect the email to work. But it did. I got a reply the same day asking me how I knew Uncle Bern.

I wasn't sure how to answer, but I decided to go with honesty. I told her more or less what was going on, leaving out the parts that would make me sound delusional. This is what I got back.

"I'm going to put this all in one message because I don't want us to have to talk again. Uncle Bern was a good man. He used to be a rabbi. He raised me after my parents died in an accident. He was good with electronics. He thought computers were the future. That's why he called his company The New Way. He bought up all the commercial space he could afford with his inheritance. All over the country. It was more than he could handle. So he just rented it out.

"Life was good. He kept selling computers in his little shop. I helped when I got home from school and on weekends. He kept bees and I helped with that, too. Really, life was good. Until he married Connie in 1994. He met her during a visit to Europe. He said she worked in the same orphanage she'd been raised in and nobody knew much else about her. She was a strange woman. She didn't like me. She was into things that scared me. I saw her make a homeless man cry by staring at him. Animals would go quiet when she was around. Sometimes she'd hide under my bed for hours, waiting for me to go to bed at night. When I did, she'd slide out and grab me. I'd scream and scream. She'd walk away like nothing happened. She didn't laugh or say anything. It wasn't a prank or joke. It was something else. I didn't understand. I still don't. I started sleeping on a beanbag chair in the basement after that.

"She'd often go into a corner of the room and whisper to someone. There was nobody there. No phone or nothing. She'd even get mad at whoever it was. Then she'd go back to knitting. She was always knitting something, but the things she'd knit were useless. Gloves with three fingers. Socks, but she'd seal up the ends, so you couldn't wear them. I didn't hate her. I was scared to death of her. I don't know why she made Uncle Bern so happy.

"I remember the day she started pressuring him to turn his rental spaces into internet cafes. She told him the internet was the real future and would outlast computers. She'd say, 'We are the internet.' She made him get it at home, even though it was really expensive then. She had him go to this website she said didn't really exist. I remember that, because it always made me nervous when she talked about it. Uncle Bern asked her who made it. She said she had no idea. Nobody did. She found it already made, just like everyone else. She told him it called to her. It called to everyone like her. At the time, I thought that sounded flakey. Now it just gives me creeps.

"Uncle Bern changed after that. They spent a lot of time on that website. I don't understand it. There was nothing there. I looked over their shoulders and it was all blank. But they saw all sorts of things. And when the internet cafes started opening, more people were involved. It was strange. They would sit and stare into space. And strange things would happen. Like I could swear I heard a voice in my modem when I'd dial up and when I listened, it was saying, "it hurts." I decided it was all in my head. Another time I got an email asking, 'Why wasn't I able to remember?' I don't know why that message upset me so much. Twenty years ago, but I remember it so vividly.

"One night when I was alone with Uncle Bern for once, I told him I wished things would be like they used to be. He said that's what everyone wants. But it can't be. He leaned in close and whispered, 'It talks. Tells us things.' He told me about how—this is strange and I didn't understand it, but I'll try—how human beings are set to be obsolete and they need to upgrade for the new era. He said Y2K—if you remember that—wasn't going to affect computers like everyone thought. They'd be fine. It was going to change people. Either you evolved or you wouldn't like what's coming.

"I didn't dare tell my Uncle Bern that this was crazy. I couldn't hurt his feelings like that. But I knew something bad was going to happen. He and Connie went off to open their internet cafes all over and I left home for college. Uncle Bern kept in contact until 1999. Then he just disappeared. Connie, too.

"I know some bad things happened around those internet cafes. But it���s not Uncle Bern's fault. Please don't blame him."

I had plenty more questions and I sent them to her. I never heard back. That's getting to be a real motif in my life. But at least she gave me some answers. And it all led right back to the Hole. It had to be the same mysterious website. Just had to be. I figured if I ever wanted to know what was going on, I'd have to go to the Hole myself.

I pulled up the instructions 'Angelica' sent me on how to get there. I can't say I felt like I was doing the right thing. I didn't. It felt ass over tea kettle wrong. Like there was something really terrible just off-screen in my memories. I knew it was there, but I couldn't see it. So I welcomed the interruption when my phone rang.

My neighbor was calling to tell me the man in the bee costume was back. He said the man was standing in my front yard. I walked over to the window and peeped out. It was nice and toasty inside, but I felt my whole body breaking into goosebumps. He was there, under the streetlight. Looking right at the window with his insectoid eyes.

I asked my neighbor how long he'd been there. He said he called me as soon as he saw it and that I should hang up and call the police. I started to do that. But there was no point calling the police. As soon as I hung up, he walked across the road and into the woods.

When hanging up, I received a notification on my phone of an email from Ben. There was no text, just a video file. I played it right away. It started with him speaking to the camera. He looked scared and like he hadn't had sleep in about two days.

"I went into hiding," he said, his voice shaking. "Things just got too weird. Little stuff at first. Then one night, like 3am, a group of people I've never seen before knock on my door I didn't answer. I watched them through the peephole. They didn't move. They didn't knock again. They didn't try to look in the peephole. They just stood there, staring at the door. They didn't look homeless or crazy. Just people. Normal, everyday people. I called through the door that they had the wrong address. They started laughing, loud, fake guffaws. Then they silently walked away.

"Then I start getting calls where all I can hear is a man growling like a dog on the other end. And a few growly words, like, 'why,' and 'abracadabra.'

"It must have really gotten to me, man, because I started having fits. I don't know what I do during these fits. I know I upset a lady at the grocery store. Whatever you got me into, it's bad juju. Like KGB. Illuminati bad."

He pointed the camera away from himself to a computer monitor. When he was turning, I recognized the notepad on the desk. The same one from his description. He was in that basement storage locker. With the gopher site. I'd thought he'd shut that thing down. There was an image on the screen, updating every few seconds. But this one wasn't pointing at my house like before. It was inside.

"Watch," he whispered.

With each frame update, I saw a new shot of the inside of my house. First the kitchen. Update, the hallway. Update, my office door. Update, the door slightly ajar. Update, the door opened more. Update, entering my room. Update, me sitting at the computer. I could hardly breathe. I turned around slowly, expecting to see someone there. But the video wasn't live, of course. When I turned around, the webcam was just a black screen. Because of that, I was able to make out the timestamp. It was tomorrow's date. I'm sure someone just fiddled with the date, but that only made it creepier, if that's even possible.

Now I had video evidence of breaking and entering. Except nothing to say who did it or why. I was losing confidence in police altogether.

The last thing Ben said on the video is that he went ahead and traced that link I gave him to "The Hole." He was able to get a specific address. I knew the address he gave me very well. Because it's duplex apartment I grew up in. That didn't make any sense. Still, I knew if I wanted to know what was happening, that's where I'd have to go.

My hometown isn't too far from where I live now. I moved to go to college. It's about a four hour drive away. My Mom moved to be close to me after Dad died, so I rarely have a reason to go there. I heard from Mom when they decided to abandon the duplexes. For whatever reason, they couldn't sell or rent them anymore and didn't have the budget to renovate, so the town government is just letting them rot.

When I first heard that news, I didn't care much. I try not to get sentimental. But preparing to see the place again, where I had so many memories—it got to me. The days of watching He-Man in my fuzzy Star Wars pajamas. The days of watching The X-Files with Mom. The days of lying in bed all summer reading UFO books. Of course I realized it'd just be empty space now, nothing in common with those memories other than a floor plan.

Those feelings vanished soon after I arrived. I was able to sneak in through living room window in the back, just like I used to do when I'd get home from school and realize I forgot my keys. The moment feet hit the linoleum floor, the music started. It was low and distorted at first, so I couldn't make out what it was. It didn't matter. Someone had to be in there. And that someone knew I was there…

I waited for a sound other than the music. Nothing. I felt a little more courage. So I started walking toward the stairs. The music got louder, but no less distorted. The tune was familiar, though. I went up the stairs slowly. That's where my old room was. By the time I got to the top, I knew what I was listening to. "Early in the Morning" by Vanity Fare. An oldie. And it was coming from a grimy old radio propped in front of my bedroom door. That was odd, because the same song started playing again when it reached the end. What radio station plays the same song twice in a row? I switched the radio off.

Doing that, I realized, telegraphed my exact location. I broke out into a cold sweat for a moment waiting for something to happen. But all I heard now was a buzzing from in the room. Like a beehive. I noticed my name placard was still on the door. Other people had lived there after Mom left, I'm sure of that. Either those people chose to leave my name on a door in their home, or someone had put it back. Either way was weird.

I opened it. I didn't and still don't know how to react to what I saw inside. The room had been set up to look exactly like it did when I was a teen. Not like it did after I left for college or even just before. Like it did in 1999. Down to the details. The Halloween lights around the desktop. Fangoria posters on the walls. My old Mr. T pillow on the bed. Someone had to have known my room in intimate detail to have done this. It was insane. Me, my Mom, and Ricky are about the only ones…

But there were some details that were off. At first, that was comforting. Then the more I thought about it, they seemed intentional. Like on the Candyman poster, it said it starred Tiny Lister instead of Tony Todd. And the wall was painted with the same style of stucco, but the color was a shade or two off. Things like that. They were everywhere. That was more troubling to me than the recreation itself. It's like it was recreated in a bad dream. Or it all meant something.

I found where the buzzing was coming from, at any rate. It was the computer. It was running. I sat down and activated the screen. Like the rest of the room, the desktop was a faithful snapshot of 1999. Every icon just as I remembered. I couldn't find anything running out of the ordinary. It was like being transported to the past.

That's when I noticed the one thing out of order with my desktop. An icon way in the corner, almost off the screen, called "Milk and Honey". I never had any such file. I'm sure of that. I started moving the mouse up to it. I felt strangely afraid to open it. Before I could, the radio started blasting "Early in the Morning" again. My heart almost stopped.

I looked behind me expecting the worst. Nobody was there. I got up to switch the radio off. But it was still off. I checked the batteries and there were none. That's when I realized the music wasn't coming from the radio. I don't think it ever was.

I wanted to get out of there. I've felt fear before. I don't think I've ever known what dread feels like before then. Not really. But I had to find out what "Milk and Honey" was. It loaded a Telnet connection. I hadn't seen one of those in a while. The connection worked, because in a few seconds an ASCII mountain filled the window.

I waited and waited for something to happen. But nothing did. Just the mountain. I tried submitting some inputs. I even wondered if the connection died. I was going to retry, but I got a phone call from Det. Thereault just then.

"Are you alone?" he asked.

I thought that was strange. But I told him I believed I was. But I wasn't sure. He asked where I was. I told him. He said I needed to get out of that house slowly and calmly, get in my car, and drive back to him. His voice—I knew that sound. It was controlled panic. Something was definitely wrong.

I was ready to listen. But I told him I wanted to know what's going on. He said he had a gut feeling about something and decided to check back with Angelica to make sure everything was OK. Everything was not. He said that girl he'd put me in contact with two weeks ago was not Angelica. They had no idea who that woman was, because no-one's been able to find her. The home she was in was apparently between renters. Nobody lived there at the time. All they found left behind was a script detailing what she was supposed to say when she spoke to me.

I was speechless. And confused. I'd just readjusted my thinking to believe everything with Angelica was a lie. And now that the truth about the lie was also a lie, did that make the lie true? But it got worse. Det. Thereault said he contacted Angelica's family again and asked more questions. A lot more. She had every message I ever sent her printed out. Pictures of me. A map of my hometown. A doll. He said in some of the pictures I was clearly sleeping. Did I know of any such pictures? I couldn't speak. He took my silence for a 'No.' And he was right.

"There's more," he said. "But you have to get back here now. Calmly."

I thanked him and prepared to do just what he said. That's when I noticed more had happened on the telnet screen. There was a question up. "Are you alone?"

"Is that you?" I asked, but the Detective had already hung up. I didn't really think it was him anyway. I'd just hoped.

I responded in the Telnet client that I believed I was alone.

As soon as I did, sound started coming from the computer speakers. It came out slow and garbled. "This message is a warning transmitted by dilatons after after 21 hundred, break this device, shut it all down, get out, save yourself."

I had no idea what it meant, really. I only remember it because it kept repeating, so I was able to record it. Other than that, I couldn't find anything strange on the computer. I unplugged it from everything anyway, just in case.

I got up, ready to calmly exit like the detective said. I would've been ok, I think. But I saw something. Something that froze me in place. There were strands of dark hair flowing from under the bed. I just kept staring at them. Mentally, I needed to make sure I was seeing right, that it wasn't just threads. It was dark in that area, after all. My eyes adjusted slowly and I realized I wasn't just looking at hair. I had been looking right into someone's eye for half a minute. And whoever it was had just been staring right back the whole time.

I screamed. And I ran, jumping several steps at a time, out the front door. Sure, it wasn't my proudest moment. What matters is I lived.

I don't know who that was. I didn't want to find out. Knowing I was being watched that whole time. It still felt like that eye was on me. That's pretty much ruined my memories of that place forever.

There was just one other thing to do in town while I was there. The Egypt. I don't know if I disconnected "The Hole" by unplugging that computer. But I still had to face the Egypt again.

When I got there, the parking lot of the post office was completely empty. I parked in back, in front of the filthy, old windows of what used to be an internet café. I didn't even have to break in. The glass in the door had already been busted. I just had to reach in and unlock. My hand started tingling as soon as I reached in. I kept expecting someone or something to grab my hand.

When I got in, I was shocked to see it hadn't really changed at all. Computers everywhere. A sign-up sheet on the counter. And no-one there. I started hearing some low voices. As soon as I did, I looked around for a place to hide. The voices continued, distant and muffled. It took me a moment to recognize my own voice. It was the conversation I'd had with Angelica. The part where she told me about being seen in places she'd never been. It was coming from one of the computers. I got closer to it and I could see someone was up on the screen. I knew what it was right away. The animated skeleton gifs and links to conspiracy theories and Heaven's Gate. Yeah, it was my homepage. The one that was deleted almost two decades ago. I never thought I'd see it again. But why? Who put it there?

On another computer, I saw a video of a middle-aged couple staring into the camera. Like they were watching me. And a little girl peeking over their shoulder. The woman said, "It chose you" and the man was shaking his head slightly. He looked frightened.

Then another computer started playing a song. I recognized the sound of Vanity Fare again. "Hitchin' a Ride." That made it click. I'd just walked into a trap. I had to get out.

But I couldn't. These people started coming inside. I hadn't even heard them approaching. A middle-aged woman with long, black hair, well-dressed. An older businessman, it looked like. A rough-looking homeless guy. More and more people crowded in without saying anything. They were moving toward me. I tried talking to them, but their faces were blank, emotionless. They didn't seem to hear. I ran into the bathroom and closed the door behind me. It had a simple turn-the-bolt lock, so I locked it.

I pulled out my phone to see if I could get the police, but there was no signal. I started hyperventilating and had to catch myself against the wall. That's when I remembered the story about the guy knocking on the wall. Maybe there weren't bricks on the other side. I knocked for a hollow spot and when I found one I started kicking a hole in the drywall. I tore the rest of the hole open with my hands. There was space back there. I used my phone's flashlight to look inside. The space was about two feet in width to the brick wall. I stepped inside. There were tons of floppy disks stashed in there. It was crazy.

I heard those people breathing outside the door. They weren't trying to open it or beat it down. They were breathing heavily against it. Then I saw something moving under the door frame. I thought it was a finger slipping under, maybe trying to grab a shoelace or something. But it was too pink. Too wet. It was a tongue. One of them was licking under the door.

That scared me enough to go deeper into the space, stumbling over pieces of sheetrock. But there was nowhere to go. While I waited for something, anything to happen, I noticed two things. One, written above the hole I just made, on the inside, "The Hole" had been painted. The other, it wasn't sheetrock I was stumbling over. It was bones. I don't know how long I sat there. Suddenly the breathing sounds stopped. A few minutes later, Detective Thereault burst into the bathroom. The door splintered at the first thrust. Those people could've gotten to me if they'd wanted to.

The detective said no-one was out there when he arrived. While he escorted me out, I saw all the computers were gone, the guestbook, all of it. But the bones and floppy disks were there and very real. He said we'd have a lot to discuss.

After I got away from the police station, I came home and settled down to try and relax. Anything to rest my nerves. Just as I settled, I got an email notification on my phone that said, "please look" and provided a link. I didn't recognize the number. But since the link was to a Guelph University page, I figured it was Ben.

The link brought me to the webcam that Ben found weeks ago on the Gopher server. I was regretting my decision to trust it already. Why couldn't they just leave me alone? The frames kept updating, but nothing was happening. Until, with one update, I saw the trunk of my car was opening. When the frame updated 4 seconds later, the trunk was fully open and someone was hanging half out. I guess I was mesmerized, because I just kept watching, waiting for the next frame update. Whoever it was, he was standing at my door.

I went to my front door and looked out the peephole. No-one was there. I looked at my phone again to check the webcam. Someone was—or should be—standing right in front of it. Maybe it was something that happened in the past. I looked through the peephole again and it was blocked. It took a moment to realize I was looking right into someone's face. An awful, hate-filled face.

I took my phone with me to my office and locked the door. I heard my front door knob rattling and then open. I knew I'd locked it. Whoever it was walked in purposefully right to the office, like they already knew where I was going. I didn't have much confidence in the lock. I expected the door to fly open immediately. Instead, I heard a weird, distant voice, just like when I spoke to Ricky. It was like the weather radio tuned to the wrong frequency.

"Why did you leave?" it asked.

I called 911. I heard the operator pick up, but I couldn't speak. The door opened and this person walked in. His face was hazy. But it was familiar. He had some kind of weapon. He forced me to get on my computer and go to the Hole. He walked me through each step. I didn't have a choice. I did it. After all those years, there it was. The same, bland page that seemed to do nothing. But I could feel it like fingers poking in my brain.

It was like I was still in my office. But that guy was gone. So were other things. I could see things that were always there but weren't really there. It was all the same, but just a little different.

I was still on the phone with 911, I realized. I tried to tell the operator that the man was gone. Nothing I said was coming out right. I kept telling the operator that I saw tot I saw a putty cat. And the operator was telling me, "That's the Captain. He's a jackal. And he's not happy with you."

"You ever heard of phreaking?" someone asked. It was disorienting, but I knew right away I was looking at Ben. And I wasn't in my home. There was a guy standing with Ben that I didn't recognize. I asked if I was in Guelph and how I got there.

He assured me I was in a motel in my hometown. He didn't trust technologically facilitated communication anymore, so he came all the way to talk to me. And he introduced his associate as 'Milky.' He'd found him holed up in a Catholic commune in rural Ontario. They said I was in serious danger.

Milky spoke then. His voice was slurred. He was aware of it, because he apologized for it. He went on to tell me what happened to him. He said he'd been a part of this hacking community for years. Nothing for profit. Just good ol' fashioned mischief. They especially liked dicking with fringe and religious groups. They started on IRC. When the WWW became the thing, they migrated to a web forum. One day a hidden link appears on the forum. Other members try to scrub it and insist that no-one touch it.

One of the guys on the forum, one of their oldest members who fled the Soviet Union back in the '70s, said he knew what it was. It was studied before and it was never, ever supposed to be available to the public. He'd seen what Stalin could do, what murderers could do, and he wasn't scared. That was life. This thing scared him.

It sounded like a put on. Milky said this guy had a healthy sense of humor. But the guy swore it was real. He said it started way back when the first computers were being networked. The electrons and other particles that are brought together and herded about in making these connections leave empty spaces of nothing where they were. It's like an "antinet." And the more and more we connect all over the world, the more this emptiness grows.

And what's so scary about that? someone on the forum asked. And he replied, "Just because it's empty space doesn't mean there's nothing in it." He wouldn't elaborate on that. No matter how much they tried. He'd only tell them he'd seen it for himself.

Milky figured the guy didn't want to make them curious about it. That failed. He was very curious about it. More than ever. So he clicked the link. He remembered being disappointed by it. Because it was just a blank page. But after clicking it, he started to notice strange things happening. He lost track of time. He'd be told by acquaintances that he'd done things he had no memory of doing. Or even that he couldn't have done, because he was doing something else.

This one time, he heard his dog barking. It was 3AM. He got up to see what was going on. The dog was standing in the entrance to his living room just barking nonstop. He expects to find a mouse cornered in there. But he said he remembers being so startled, he tried to scream but no sound would come out. Two men in business suits were sitting on his couch.

He immediately thought of a mob hit. But it's Canada. What mob? He turned on the light. They didn't flinch. They looked like normal businessmen. They were staring at the floor, drinking Capri Sun. He told them to get out of his house or he'd call the police. They just got up and left. On the way out, one of them said, "You asked us to come and sit here." He never saw those men again in his life.

Another time, he called his brother in Vancouver to wish him a happy birthday. They had a pleasant chat and he hung up the phone, went about his business. About an hour later, it hit him like a punch in the gut. His brother died two years ago. He always called him on his birthday. He just did it so reflexively, and when he got an answer, it was like old times.

"Who the hell was I talking to, man?" he asked.

His stories sounded a lot like the ones the fake/real Angelica told me about when I talked to her weeks ago. So either I was speaking to the real Angelica then, or maybe this wasn't the real Ben and Melke. I guess I couldn't be sure about anything anymore. At least it was less scary to believe they were real.

During that time, he said, he kept checking the Hole. He wanted to figure it out. He thought it was controlling him. He didn't remember the things he saw when he visited. But he said the old Soviet was right. It wasn't empty. What he saw in there—his brain wouldn't let him remember.

I just wanted to know why all this was happening. Ben stepped in. He said there's only one way he can think of for this 'site,' if it can be called that, to influence a mind that way. It has to be electromagnetic emissions. It must somehow be able to read them off of us and produce them as well. It's a technique that was experimented with as a form of phreaking. But never with biological systems.

As to why, he didn't think there was any purpose. It was just there and did what it did. It was the antinet. It introduces emptiness, division, and chaos instead of connection. That's just a byproduct of its existence. And its existence is a byproduct of the internet. Like angry Facebook arguments are a byproduct of the internet. It was never supposed to be something you could just navigate to. It was theoretical. A thing a few computer scientists knew about. Somehow someone leaked it out there. It was all over. It was buried on the Heaven's Gate website. Hacking forums. Occult sites. The fringe of the internet is where it moved.

That was a lot to take in. And I'm not sure how much of it I really believe. On top of that, apparently several hours had passed since the man made me click to the Hole.

I suddenly remembered what the 911 operator said to me.

"Who's the Captain?" I asked.

Milky was shaving when I asked him. His hand stopped moving. I saw in the mirror tears forming in his eyes. He was visibly shaking.

"Captain Meat. From the Hole. It looks kinda like a dog."

Then he went back to shaving like nothing happened.

Later I thanked Ben and Milky for saving me. For risking so much, really. Especially Ben. And for trying to warn me with the link to the webcam. But both of them denied ever sending that text. They asked to see it. They couldn't figure out where it came from. They checked the link to the webcam, too. It still worked. There was the front of my home. My car, with the trunk still open. We watched it for a few frame updates before Ben noticed. Someone was in the trunk. It was dark and grainy. But that was definitely someone in there. And I shuddered when we all agreed that whoever that person was, they were looking right at the camera. Or us. We turned it off.

I woke up in the middle of the night a few nights later. We���d decided we didn't want to keep paying for the motel, so we were crashing with my Mom by then. She was happy for the company. And she was obviously worried about me. She said I had to get a grip and not let my life slip away.

"Just solve this thing," she said.

It was weird. It wasn't the sort of thing my Mom would say.

Anyway, I woke up. Because I was hearing whispering sounds. You'd think louder sounds would wake you. But no. The whispers are the worst. I listened carefully. I tried not to move. I wanted to hear where they were coming from. It was a two-way conversation. I couldn't make out any of the content, though. Just a word here and there.

I got up slowly and looked toward the corner of the room. That's where I thought the sounds were. It took a while for my eyes to adjust. When they did, I saw Milky kneeling in front of one of the electrical sockets. He'd whisper something into it, then turn his head and wait. And whispers came back. He saw me looking and said, "Some trick, huh?"

I guess it was ventriloquism. But why do that alone in the middle of the night? 'cause he was crazy. I got out of bed and went out to the kitchen for water. I could see someone standing out on the front porch through the kitchen window. Figuring Ben couldn't sleep either, I went out to ask him if Milky was really ok. Because he didn't seem to be. I flicked on the outdoor light and stepped out. But it wasn't Ben out there. It was Milky again. He tried to tell me something about constellations, but I walked back in. Something wasn't making sense. There was no way he could've gotten out that fast. Some trick, huh?

I went into the living room. The TV was on. It was the episode of Seinfeld where George finds a doll that looks like his mother. That made me uncomfortable, so I changed to another channel. The program guide said The Ninth Gate would be showing. I always liked that one. But instead of The Ninth Gate, it was The Ten Commandments. Very different movies. Only one number off, though.

Seeing Hesston's Moses posturing with the Egyptians struck me. I never did get to speak to HolyMoses. I let myself be distracted, chased off, or both. And everything happening just seemed to be getting more and more filled with coincidences and connections that weren't adding up. Or added up too well. Which is the same thing, if you ask me.

I started up Mom's computer. It still ran Windows XP. It was Dad's computer and she didn't like change. I had to download mIRC. As soon as I did, I connected to EFnet. This time I was going to talk to him. He wasn't hard to find. Just a WhoIs and there he was, in @H1N1. He was the only one in there, besides me. Not a lot of bird flu fans, I guess.

Before I could send him a message, an email notification appeared on screen. I guess Mom had it on auto-start. The notification caught my eye, because it said it was from Det. Thereault, subject "Information Requested." I shouldn't have, but since it was from the detective, I felt it had to concern my situation. I clicked on it and read,

"As we discussed, here is the documentation on the dental records with the doctor's signature."

The attached document was about the skeletal remains found in the Egypt. I felt a sudden wave of horror, because I thought I knew what was coming. Dad's bones somehow got in there. But I was wrong. They matched the skeleton up to my dental records. Mine!

"I don't know who that man is," he went on, "but he is not your son."

That was just absurd. I knew my own mother, for Pete's sake! I thought about deleting the email, but that wouldn't do any good. Then I started piecing things together. Wondering if maybe I really was dead. Or maybe I was an imposter, and that's why I had memory lapses.

Then I remembered I was just about to message HolyMoses. Why did something always happen when I was about to message him? It had to be a trick. I went back to IRC and sent HolyMoses a message.

"Who are you?"

No response. I got a sudden message from u47284u, "Do you know where your mother is?"

I ignored him. I sent another message to HolyMoses.

"Do you know what's going on?"

No response.

u47284u messaged me again, "Are you sure she's okay?"

I took a chance on what I remembered from Angelica's story. I sent HolyMoses a short message.

The letter "M."

This immediately triggered a file transmission, which I accepted. It was a video file. It downloaded in about 5 minutes. If HolyMoses was as old as they claimed, this video would've taken a day or two back then. The video was called, "Freedom.mov"

Milky came in from outside, stood a few feet away from me, and stared at me. That was unnerving enough. Then the pantry door started to open. Ben stepped out. He had to have been sitting cramped in there all that time. He also stood still and just stared at me. My Mom came in from outdoors—why was she outdoors and where? She joined Milky and Ben.

"What's going on?" I asked them.

They didn't speak. I felt the tension in the air and the assurance that something would happen. The suspense and stillness was getting worse than anything they could do to me. My heart was beating so fast.

And I had been hearing a dripping sound for a minute or two without paying attention. Too much was going on. Now I looked to where the sound was coming from. I saw fat beetles crawling out from Milky's sleeves, over his hands, and dropping to the floor. What was going on?

I think I was so afraid I couldn't feel it anymore. Slowly, I grabbed a loose USB dongle, attached it to my phone, and to the computer. I'm surprised that old computer could read the phone, but it did. While they stared at me, I transferred the video file to my phone. I unplugged the dongle, took my phone, and ran to the bathroom, where I locked myself in.

I heard feet shuffle up to the door and stop there. I turned on the shower to drown out sound and then started watching the video. The webcam being used was severely damaged, by the looks of it. But I could make out a very sickly looking older man. The audio was distorted. And I had the shower running. So I had to start it over and up the volume. The man said he'd been trying to warn me. The dilaton distortion from the Hole allows him to send messages during brief windows. If I am listening to this, he said, I am in the Hole and have been for a while. Other things are also in here. While he spoke, I kept hearing screams in the background of the recording, some sounded closer than others. He said these things don't want me going anywhere. I need to get out before it's too late. He knows, he said, because he's me. The last thing he said before the video ended abruptly was "the birds and the bees."

I couldn't leave through the door, so I pulled up the blind to leave through the bathroom window. I almost shrieked when I saw my mother's face pressed up against the window. I was trapped. I thought about pushing through anyway. But I couldn't hit my mother. I could hit Ben or Milky if I had to, but not my mother. So I took the door. Nobody was there. That just made me worry about where they really were.

I stepped outside and still, nobody there. I hurried to my car before Mom could come around from the back. Then I heard rapid footsteps. Ben was running right toward me from way down the street.

"Stop hurting me!" he shouted.

But he didn't look in pain. He looked in a rage. I got in my car and started backing up. When he got to me, he was pounding on the windows, still screaming.

I drove straight back to my home, leaving them all behind. The only explanation could be that I'm "in the Hole," whatever that means. Because there was no other way Ben and my Mom would act like that. But when did that happen? And what does that even mean, anyway?

Before I even stepped inside my home, I knew something was wrong. Waves of something—just bad, pure bad—were hitting me. I opened my front door. Everything looked normal. I started turning on all the lights. And I grabbed a knife from the kitchen drawer. Then I saw them. Two men in bee costumes sitting on my treadmill. Looking at the floor. Not moving. Almost like they were stuffed. Or forgot where they were.

"What do you people want from me?" I said.

I kept a tight grip on the knife.

They stood up. Then they both looked down the hall toward my office. I followed their gaze, but saw nothing down there. After a few seconds of wondering what they saw, I heard the song start. "Early in the Morning." While I was looking down the hall, they were already heading out the door.

I decided to follow them. Because whatever started that music gave me a worse feeling than them. As I stepped out the door, I'm sure I heard a dog growling behind me.

I followed them across the road and into the woods. I turned my phone flashlight on to be able to follow them. It's like they could see in the dark, the way they navigated the woods. The deeper we went, the more uneasy I became. They just seemed to keep going and going.

But the deeper we went, the more I started to hear birds. I never even thought of it before, but I hadn't heard any birds for a long time. Weeks at least. Or locusts or any normal springtime sounds. The more I followed the bees, the more I heard the birds, until they got loud enough I figured we must be under a massive collection of nests. I kept following them until it got too loud to bear and then it sounded like machinery, like elevators. There was a machine. Hidden out in the middle of nowhere. I followed them inside and then…

And then I was back in my office, sitting at my desk, slumped over my keyboard. The corner of my mouth was wet. I must've blacked out. I picked myself up. It felt like I was just waking up from a deep sleep. The room was bright with sunlight. I could hear birds chirping up a frenzy outside. My screensaver was on. When I shifted the mouse, just to see what time it was, there was an email from the globetrotter.net Angelica.

It read, "Pretty intense, huh? You can spend the rest of your life in there."

I sat disoriented for a while, before realizing I had to urinate, eat and drink. When I had done those things, I looked around my home for clues. The knife I'd taken was back where it belonged. My old computer was put up in its box. I called my Mom to ask if she was OK. She didn't remember any of the events from the previous night.

That's when I remembered the video on my phone. From HolyMoses. I checked and it was still there. I knew I wasn't dreaming. I played it back. Here would be my evidence. The video was 2 minutes of distorted audio and video. In all the distortions, no recognizable sounds or images.

That was a few weeks ago. It's taken me some time to get calibrated to reality. Nothing strange has happened since. I can't explain what happened. Maybe I had a psychotic break. I was under a lot of stress at work. Maybe someone was gaslighting the hell out of me. Maybe there really is a secret website that uses electromagnetic waves to mess with your mind.

I'm just glad it's over. I'm glad to be going back to work like a regular person. Making banana smoothies. Not thinking about sinister internet cafes. I really do remember the Egypt and the Hole and—it's like reality all twisted. I'll just end by saying I don't think I'll be feeling any nostalgia for the old days of internet for a good, long while. The only problem I'm having is, whenever I'm trying to sleep, I keep remembering the whole nightmare and asking myself, "Am I still inside?" But, then, what difference would it make?

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Credit: Jared Roberts (Facebook • Twitter • Reddit)