Hi

It’s me I’m back

I am the most obedient cryptid hunter apprentice on earth (lmfao) and I didn’t start posting again until we made it to the island.

That’s right folks. I’m on the island. I’m officially at Palefish. Mr Buskirk, the ferry captain, made a special trip just for us. I stood on the front of the boat with the wind in my (still very short) hair, and watched as the island slowly came into focus.

Last time I was here I didn’t pay particularly close attention. Of course, last time this place was just another place in a long list of places we went.

This time I studied every rock: the craggy cliffs, and the cluster of old buildings perched on top; the tangle of trees on the far side of the island; the slowly approaching bay with it’s sliver of beach. It’s still more or less summer, but seasons are less certain of themselves the closer you get to the ocean, ya know? I was cold in Neal’s sweatshirt. I watched the island get bigger and bigger, felt the dread start to set in.

We got off the ferry like an hour ago. Lily met us at the docks personally.

“This all you brought?” she asked, eyeing the backpack I had slung over my shoulder as we came down the ramp onto the docks.

“We travel light, Lily, you know that,” Julian said, clapping her shoulder on the way by.

She offered an awkward smile. “Right, of course. Life on the road and all that!”

It might have been in my head but I think Lily is sort of nervous to have us here. She asked us like three times how our summer was, and at least twice about how Beverly was holding up with her new responsibilities as we trudged up the path towards the campus.

She dropped us off in the low, stone visitors building.

We’re ‘getting comfortable’ now.

“But don’t get too comfortable! You’ll be over in Minnow House with the rest of the freshmen on Wednesday,” Lily told me as she took her leave. When I didn’t even attempt to meet her enthusiastic energy, she glanced uncertainly at Neal, who stone-faced at her, and then at Julian, who smiled sympathetically.

“Don’t worry,” Julian said. “She’s used to being on the move.”

And now I’m sitting in this same little monk-like room as last time we were here. But of course, last time I spent the whole time obsessing about Rook, and not even remotely worried about the fact that I was about to go to Fog Town.

Wow this is really strange, I’m not really sure what to say. I’ve been missing this little journal for months but now it’s time to actually say something to it — and all of you — I don’t really know where to start.

The last few months have been… boring? Hahahaha like, genuinely I don’t think there’s really anything to report. We didn’t run any cases. We didn’t find any trouble, and more impressively, no trouble found us.

I’ve been — dare I say it??? — bored. Which was the entire point of this whole expedition. But this blog has been, thus far, a way to track my progress in finding Madelyn, or a way to record all my fun (terrifying) cryptid hunts, and by those standards I genuinely have nothing to report.

I guess I’ll just employ a good old fashioned list? Those have proved affective in the past, lol.

1. Where we went:

I can’t tell you exact coordinates or anything, lol, obviously, that would 100% destroy the purpose of a safehouse, but I can tell you this: it was on a mountain near a river and it was off the grid. Like, we had electricity and running water, but it was an outdoor pit toilet situation. It looked like the kind of place a man would hang a beaver fur cap. There was almost no cell phone service and zero internet.

Literally, it was a nightmare.

2. What we did:

And by nightmare, unfortunately I mean it was a dream. Remember last year when I accidentally joined a burgeoning coven for a weekend and we discovered that I actually do really well with lots of structure and fewer distractions?

Well, we spent about 3 days out there just recovering before all three of us were about crawling out of our skin with boredom and then Neal decided we were going to have a garden.

I was lying on the rug in front of the cast iron stove staring at the ceiling when Neal burst through the cabin doors, upturned a whole basket of seed packets on my face and announced that we were going to grow a garden,

Julian, who was sitting in the armchair, closed his book and said, “Okay, sure.”

And that was that. We grew a garden. Tomatoes, potatoes, snap peas, corn, cucumbers, zucchini, carrots, lettuce.

Beyond that, Julian couldn’t resist learning about local edible plants, and made a whole thing out of learning to forage. I cannot tell you how many hours I spent tramping around that stupid mountain carrying a basket for Julian. Mostly it was various kinds of bitter leaf that took half an hour to chew, but there were berries too, first huckleberries then blackberries.

Neal taught me to fish in the river, and set about befriending the local wildlife.

I admit it. It was idyllic. I spent the whole summer exhausted but satisfied.

3. Updates:

I don’t really know what’s been happening in the outside world, what with the being in hiding, but I can tell you a few basic things:

They found Billy Ace. And by find I don’t so much mean find because he’s not hiding. No no, he’s not hiding. Instead, he very publicly went into business with fucking Carlo “i-love-capitalism-and-think-narcissist-is-a-compliment” Bolt. He’s not going by Billy anymore either, he’s back to William Ace now. No idea what they’re doing — all the reporting is very vague about what they’re actually up to — but he’s not in hiding anymore. Julian says that was smart of him because now that the press is all interested in him, we’re much more limited in how we can handle him if we don’t want to risk exposure.

Annoying.

But according to Beverly, it doesn’t matter. She’s been our only real point of contact with the outside world these last few months. Well, okay, mostly it’s been Jasper on speaker phone with Beverly interjecting in the background.

They’ve been busy, but we weren’t called out for any emergency hunts all summer, so if that’s any indication of how their new system of organization is going, I’d say they’re doing pretty well.

Apart from that… I mean I haven’t spoken to anyone but my mom in the last five months. Wait that’s a lie, I talked to Bass on the phone yesterday. He’s set to arrive with the rest of the students on the ferry on September 1st. Two days from now.

Apparently the arrival of all the students on September 1st is like… a whole thing around here. The Hawthornes tried to convince me to wait until the first and get on the ferry with everyone else, do the pomp and circumstance. But the thought of getting on a boat and watching them wave to me from shore is absolutely unbearable so we came early instead.

I still have not spoken to Rook. I sorta expected a message from him at least, but literally nothing. Devastating.

Do I know that I have no one to blame but myself? Yes absolutely.

Am I still wrecked? 100% yes I am.

I’ll see him in a few days, I guess.

In the meantime, it’s hot out and Julian wants to go down to the boat house. We saw little sailboats out in the bay on our way in, and Julian wants to try it. I’ve spent so much time stressed about getting here and being here that I just wanna hide in the room for a while, but I think Neal’s looking for an excuse to dump us in the ocean cuz he’s all excited.

So. Here goes.

…is someone reading this? Lol I feel weirdly awkward!!!! I hope your summer was good I’ll see you Wednesday