Saturday November 8 at 4 pm EST

I'm only on my second beer, so I should be pretty coherant. On the other hand, I'm on my laptop, which always negatively impacts my typing.

The laptop is because we're not at home tonight. When we first bought the Gin Palace we got a washer and dryer, and what with never getting around to dealing with the gas line feed and figuring out where to vent it, we just never hooked it up. After 10 years of not being used I ended up giving away to a neighbour. The neighbour just happens to own a cottage on Lake Erie and offered to let us have the use of it for a weekend.

We drove in late last night down black winding roads surrounded by trees. I was worried about us getting lost at several points when we lost phone signal and the GPS stopped working, but when we passed over the decrepit wooden bridge I remembered from our neighbour's directions we knew we were going the right way. The cottage is right on the lake and there about a billion stairs to get up to the front door. Once we got inside we turned on the heat, made a massive pot of pasta and sat up drinking wine and looking out the windows at the full moon and listening to the sound of the wind through the trees.

It's gorgeous here. The southern wall is a huge bank of windows overlooking the lake behind the lashing tree branches. We ended up bundling up and taking a long walk along the beach this afternoon. It's freezing outside and the sound of the wind is loud and constant. But the cottage itself is cozy and warm and full of beer and it feels like we are a million miles from civilization.


( cut for images )

Saturday November 8 at 6 pm EST

I just finished my... forth beer, I think. I have Darrell making me a rye & ginger.

There is a tradition in Canadian cottages of using them as a place to drop off all the old furniture and stuff you don't want in your house any more. Any gaps are filled in by local yard sales. This cottage is no exception so it's full of vintage 70's furniture and appliances. There is a pic here of Axel making breakfast and you can check out the electric mixer he's using.

( cottage pics )

Axel and Saabs are curled up on the couch watching a movie (on VHS!), so Darrell and I got bored and decided to do a bit more exploring around the property. The wind was getting really powerful and I could see black clouds on the horizon across the water so I think a storm is rolling in. I'm hoping will get lightening - it would be incredible to watch an electrical storm through those enormous windows.

When we were walking back to the house a fierce gust of wind nearly knocked us down the stairs. It sent a small door in the base of the cottage flying open - a door none of us had noticed before. So of course we stuck our heads in to see what was in there. Mostly rusted deck chairs and old pillows with the stuffing frothing out. There were also some really ancient looking apothecary bottles and some pottery that was really beautiful once we had it cleaned up. We also found an old tape recorder and a book bound is some kind of suede that smelled horrendously of mold. The book in particular was kind of neat, it's written in red ink in some kind of script and full of fascinating line drawings of devils and demons.

By the time we got back inside Axel and Saabs were passed out cold. Too much wine last night I guess. I spent some time clearing the dirt and leaf mold off the bottles until they were nice and shiny and set them up on one of the shelves where I figured our host would appreciate them. When I got back from setting them up Saabs was awake and playing with the tape recorder.

( the storage room )

Saturday November 8 at 7:30 pm EST

Six beers and one rye & ginger. The movie is over and the four of us converged on teh kitchen to make dinner. We originally planned to BBQ our dinner, but the rain has finally hit and nobody particularly wants to grill in teh wet, so insteadwe're speading tinfoil on the oven racks and putting skewers of veggies and meat and marinated tofu in the oven. It was like an assembly line of vegetables, marinade and olive oil. It smells amazing.

Now I'm just ducking around online while we wait for the food - as I do - and Axel & Sabz are playing with the tape recorder. It's kind of odd - apparently somebody was trying to translate the book we found, so we can occasoinally leaf through the pages looking for the images taht are being described. It's fascinating stuff, all about old Persian demons and how they intersect with local indigenous legends. It also describes local petroglyphs and how they bear similarities to the drawings in the book. A quick google search suggests taht some of the rock drawings are close by so we've made plans to go check them out in the daylight before we head home.

The part that boggles my mind about all this is that the book was found in what was basicaaly the cellar. Obviously the owners didn't have any idea of it's historical significance. By rights it should be in a museum somewhere.




Food is done! Back later

Saturday November 8 at 9 pm EST

Oh My God that was amazing. I am soooo full. The rain stopped at some point during our meal so we started talking about taking a walk on the beach just to work off some of that food. It's hard to believe it's only just after 9 pm, it's pitch black out there.

We tried listening to more of the tape but the machine started fucking up. It just kept repeating the same four words over and over again, a passage where the guy who made it is trying to read the out the words from one of the pages of the book in the original language. After turning the machine off and on a half-dozen times, trying to advance the tape manually and even taking it out and flipping it over, we just gave up.

One odd thing that happened as we were getting changed to go for our walk, there was a sudden gust of wind that blew all the windows and doors open. It stopped immediately but we had to run around and seal everything back up before we could leave for our walk. It even blew out the fireplace. Crazy, man. It's not even all that windy out any more.

Saturday November 8 at 10:20 pm EST

The walk in the dark may not have been the smartest idea I've ever had.

It started off being really nice. It's still windy on the beach but not as cold as it was the afternoon. The moon is hidden behind the clouds but still casts enough ambient light that we could see where we were going. The silhouettes of the trees above us, adn the blinking lights of lighthouses in teh distance looked really cool and atmospheric.

Eventually Axel got cold and we decided to start heading back. We've all been drinking tonight - not just me - and Sabz declared at that point that she had to pee. So she nipped into the bush while we waited for her.

She wasn't gone for more than a minute when we heard her scream. And not a, "Oops, I slipped and landed butt-first in my own pee" squeal, but a full-throated shriek of terror. My first thought was that she had run into a bear or something and we ran into the bushes yelling at the top of lungs in the hopes of chasing off whatever was scaring her. But she was nowhere to be found. We searched hte same stretch of forest over and over again and just could not find her.

We were frantic. We called her phone half a dozen times but it kept going straight to voicemail. Axel in particular was really starting to panic and I finally told him to head back to the cottage. There was a slight chance she had somehow gotten past us and headed back there alone, and if we had to call 911 that was the best place for them to meet up with us. Darrell & I continued searching and calling until I got a text from Axel, he was back at the cottage adn Sabz was there with him. We headed back.

Saturday November 8 at 11:20 pm EST

Holy fucksticks, I need another drink. I don't care if it's number um, I forget.

When we got back to the cabin Sabz was there but obviously worse for the experience. Her clothes were torn to ratshit adn there were twigs and leaves sticking out of her hair. She didn't seem to know how she had gotten back to the cabin or what had happened to her. We ended up just plying her with alcohol until she had calmed down enough that we could put her to bed in the hope that she would be more coherant after a good sleep. Then the rest of us cracked a drink, took a deep breath and tried to calm the hell down.

None of us was particularly in a party mood, at the same time none of us really wanted to go to bed right away. We ended up mostly just sitting quietly lost in our own thoughts. So when one of the floorboards creaked it sounded like a gunshot in the silence. We all jumped about a foot out of our seats and whipped around to see Sabz in the doorway. She looked like absolute hell - paper-white and soaking wet, her hair hanging in strings in her face. Her eyes had sunken back in her face and were so puffy and bruised looking it looked like somebody had punched her. She looked like a kitten that had fallen into the toilet.

I still don't know what the fuck happened - or how the hell she managed to get so soaked - but it's a testament to how traumatised she was that when Axel went over to comfort her she tried to bite him. Of course he recoiled and the two of them fell on teh floor together. Darrell and I rushed over to help and her grip on Axel was shockingly strong. We finally got them apart and as she flailed around on teh ground she grabbed a pencil off a nearby table and drove the entire length of it into Darrell's leg.

Sabz could not be calmed, consoled or controlled. We finally just ended up throwing her back into her bedroom and slapping a broom handle through the door handle so that she couldn't open from the inside. Then we propped Darrell's foot up on the table and wrapped it up as tight as we could. He bled like a fountain, but weirdly it all had soacked through the floorboards by the time we were done bandaging him up.

With Sabz in hysterics and Darrell seroiusly injured, it was obvious we needed to get out of there. Because my luck is bullshit the rain had started up again and now I could see the flashes of lightening I had once looked forward to shattering the sky over the lake. Possibly because of the storm, none of us had phone signal any more - probably becaues of the storm - so 911 was out of the question.

The only solution was to drive into the closest town for help. Axel had drunk less than me, so we helped Darrell hobble to the car and the two of them drove off to get help. I went back to the cabin and sat in the living room watching the bedroom door while it shook and shuddered and Sabz screeched threats behind it. This was not turning out to be the relaxing weekend we had all hoped for.

Saturday November 8 at 11:40 pm EST

Axel and Darrell are back. They didn't make it into town. The bridge is completely washed out in the storm.

I keep checking the phones, but we haven't gotten any signal yet. We've talked about maybe walking out across the beach, but there is no way that's going to happen before daybreak. Trying to go anywhere in that storm in the pitch black would be suicide.

I'm wondering if Sabz got bitten by a rabid animal or soemthing. The raving adn screaming from the bedroom is non-stop. She seems to know a hell of a lot more about us than I ever imagined, some of the shit she has yelled at me includes details about some fo the most humiliating and embarrasing incidents of my life. I've seen Axel flush in reaction to a number of things she's yelled at him too.

I don't know if Darrell is even aware of some fo the shit she's saying about him. I think his wound must be infected. He's running a fever and slipping in and out of conciousness. when he manages to sleep he mutters things I dno't understand.

Seven more hours until dawn. This is horrible.

Sunday November 9 at 1 am EST

I think I just killed Darrell.

Wait, let me explain.

After what felt like hours of raving Sabz suddenly got real quiet. We hoped that meant she had finally passed out. With her trapped in one room and Darrell convalescing in the other, Axel & I ended up throwing some extra blankets on the couches in the living room. One thing about this place, you could probably sleep about a dozen people with all the furniture.

I was completely wiped out and I had just starting to nod off when Axel woke me by yelling. I sat up and Darrell was leaning over Axel and grappling with him - it looked like he was trying to bite him. Darrell looked awful, pasty white and soaking wet. And there was somegthing really fucked up about his face - like his lips wrapped way too far around his head, and he had extra teeth or something.

Anyway after the whole incident with Sabz attacking Axel I just completely freaked the fuck out. I grabbed the closest object, which just happened to be a really heavy lamp and smashed it across the back of Darrell's head.

Now he's lying on the floor and not moving. Axel is bleeding from teh neck and shoulder. We still don't have cell signal and the weather sounds like the freaking apocalyupse is going on outside my door. I have no idea what the fuck to do.