Translation

I was able to find someone to translate Alice's discovery, and it is much more clear than the Google version. Sadly, with it translated, I only fear for Alice's psyche more. The text of the entry is disturbing enough on its own, and I know it could not have helped Alice at all to have found it.



[...] if there had been something then they would not have returned, so it was just an illusion, a phantom which their worn out heads, their poor minds, had created. Why then is it, that mine and their days are so long, so filled with fear, this because of something that does not exist?
But I feel compelled to write this down, for there are signs that He truly exists. I admit this only because we, me and the men, have had similar dreams – all unique, apart from a few details, these details that makes us walk around on edge. He has a white, empty face, completely without eyes or mouth or nose. Several meters tall. More than two. Three, four, five… sometimes ten. Sometimes with more than two arms, sometimes with what one of the men describes as “tentacles”. He always wears black clothes. But even beyond the dreams He has appeared.
To me He came with a black cylinder on his bald head. I walked on the path on my way to the village after having been on a short walk, and there He stood on the top of the hill. Even if His face were naked, I could make out that He was looking out over the forest. He had noticed me, but it took a while before He would give me a look (I have just described how He doesn’t have any eyes, but how else am I supposed to describe it…?), and when He finally did it I had enough time to wish that He had continued to stare out over the forest as I fell backwards while the world grew dark. All the while I heard a ringing in my ear.
Soon enough I awoke in my home. My uncle had come walking down the road – I never asked him if he had seen the same man on the hill, he does not know anything about this, and I will keep him and as many others as possible away from this – when he saw me lie unconscious on the gravel. He said that he had inspected me, to make sure that I hadn’t been hurt, but according to him I was as fit as a fiddle. I gave him a bad excuse, said that I had worked too much recently, and he bought it.
But not everyone have the same luck as I. One of us have lost his life, two are gone. Before they disappeared, Erik began to slowly loose his ability to write and instead began to write down codes, and above all else he preferred to communicate through Morse code. He wrote down the codes or knocked in whatever he had to knock on. I still remember what he said one day when I sat in the outhouse. “The trees are coming, the trees are coming, trees, trees, they are coming, trees are coming.” He kept on like this for several minutes, and I had to hurry up in order to stop him from hitting the wall and bloodying his fist.
Karl tells me that the codes are the only way in which they can communicate in. I wondered why, and he said that they had gone mad. I understand that, we all understand that.
Yet I am confused.

Concerning Alice

Alice's behavior is becoming increasingly alarming these last few days. As her posts have been showing, she has lapsed into talking only in third person, and I would like to note that she always stays in third person. Most of our contact is through e-mail, and even though she understands everything I write to her, she insists on staying in third person. This makes conversing with her increasingly difficult, as well as making sure she is not falling into any other harms. A first person account of something being wrong is a lot easier to understand than a vague retelling in third. I'm becoming very concerned, as staying in third person isn't healthy nor easy to maintain.

If Alice was joking, she would have made a slip up long ago, but instead she's locked in this way of talking. I have never heard of Schizophrenia causing this to happen, let alone many other mental illnesses in general. Something is wrong and I'm unable to come up with an answer in order to help my friend. Looking over both my posts and Alice's, I know very well I'm partly to blame for driving her into this madness. I know she understands what I'm writing here, so I'll say it; I'm sorry I acted like I did. Being unable to be in any closer contact with her other than through the internet makes it extremely hard for me to moderate what exactly is going on with her. The best I can do is wait and hope, but it is hard to wait and watch for any improvement.

Postponed

The last few days I have been trying to gather up the needed things in order to venture into the forest. I haven't been looking forward to it, I can honestly say. Still, I need to find whatever answers are in the forest, if any. There has to be a logical explanation as to why I lost my memory, but in order for me to find the reason, I'd need a witness. If I lost my memory again, I'd need someone to at least tell me what happened. No one is better suited for this than Robbie, but he refuses to venture into the forest again. He says he doesn't want the owls to come and hurt me again, and the fact I don't remember what happened is a good enough reason to stay out. For now, then, I am forced to stay out of the forest or risk going in alone and not making any progress. I do not know if Robbie will ever want to go into the forest, but I know eventually we may need too. I only hope that we don't wait too long and everything returns to normal without an answer.

Research on Memory

In order to explain what could have happened to my brain during the two weeks of my absence, I've been running through more details on how the brain works with memory, and how that can be interrupted. Basically, memory works following this pattern;

Sensory Memory > Short Term Memory > Long Term Memory

Most of the time we don't encode or remember all of our sensory memory, which consists of what we see, hear, smell etc. Depending on how important that memory is, or if we take steps in order to store the memory, it can be put into short term memory or long term. The more emotional a memory it is, the easier it is to remember. If what happened to me was traumatic, it should have easily been stored in my Long Term Memory, and if that is so-why can't I retrieve this information?

I have no disorders that would have caused me to forget everything, even though nothing was physically done to my head, which would support that something developed or occurred during those two weeks. This makes me believe I had some sort of amnesia, more specifically a form of Retrograde Amnesia. Whatever happened in the forest distressed me to the point my brain wishes to avoid it. Perhaps the stress of this event caused my mood change, as I did not forget any information about myself, I do not have a more severe disorder. I tried to ask Robbie how I looked or acted when I came home, but he could provide no information, either. The only thing he could remember was that the days I had vanished were foggy, not just in the morning but through most of the day. After I came home, the birds had vanished, and they still remain absent. Something terrible had happened to me, or I had witnessed something terrible occurring. What distresses me more is that the event was not psychically harming me. Whatever happened destroyed me emotionally and mentally, which makes it harder to determine its source. I need to know what it was, I can't simply believe that two weeks of my life being gone is normal.

My conclusion leads me to think that in order to help me remember what I had forgotten, I will have to go back to the forest. This time with Robbie, and I have to try to recreate the night I had left. It is drastic, and I hardly feel safe doing so, but I will have to do something. I'm not going to venture into the forest until I am sure I can come out with answers; not more questions. I'll have to run the idea past Robbie, but I'm sure he will be up for it. If nothing else he'll be able to defend me from any of the owls that decide to appear. I am afraid I can't explain why they appeared as I can with what happened to my memory.

Contemplation

I have been so very troubled, looking over the last month's posts-I mean both Alice's posts and my own-and the drastic change occurred that I just..don't understand. My posts are full of hostility, and anger, while Alice's Schizophrenia becomes more and more severe. I don't know what caused my anger, even when I think back through the month, nothing about me was different. I had no headaches, no other injury other than the owls attacking me. The only parts I have no memory on are the two weeks I was searching for Roc. I remember walking through the forest, I remember hearing the birds and other normal sounds, but how could I have been wandering in a forest for two weeks? It is impossible. Robbie tells me about how he worried he was when I was missing, so I know I could not have come home without knowing. If something had happened to me, I would have remembered. The human brain simply doesn't just forget things, especially traumatic things, unless some injury occurs. No scars were on me after I arrived home, nothing until the owl attack. If I did suffer from some sort of amnesia, what could have caused it? Memory doesn't just blank out, and it's concerning me that something in my own head has gone awry. My personality change only supports this, and no doubt it has had a negative effect on Alice. I'm just as confused as she is, simply without the severity of her disorder. I'll have to spend more time looking into what could have possibly caused this, maybe by doing so I'll be able to help both myself and Alice.