I waited for what felt like ten minutes before I realized how much of an idiot I had been. I had a fucking clock this entire time. All laptops, including mine, had a clock built into them.

Yep, there it was. Right there in the taskbar was the time. It turned out, I still had twenty minutes left. That meant I had just enough time to do something before they came to get me.

There wasn't going to be a better time than now to check out one of Alex's videos. I scanned down the list until a video caught my attention, titled "WhyMakeAGuide.mov." I clicked the video. it might not be the most helpful, but it fit in my time parameters, and I had to admit, I was curious.

Alex appeared on the screen. The background had changed. He wasn’t in his room. Instead, he appeared to be in the hospital. Was that Ravenwood medical? It had the same dated furniture and stained ceiling tiles. Of course, my knowledge of hospitals was pretty limited. Maybe they all looked like that.

Wherever hospital he was in, he was in rough shape. Bandages covered up his right arm and torso. His face was also all scraped up.

I turned the volume down. I didn't want any outsiders to hear. Then I pressed play.

###

What’s up, future me. Sorry for the new location. They’ve had me cooped up in here for a few days. Gotta admit, It’s been a bit lonely and made me a bit moody. Plus, I absolutely hate hospitals. This place was full of dead people. But let's be real, you don’t care about any of that. You’re here for today's video, aren't you. Don’t worry, I’m not offended.

Okay then, let’s get to it. I’m assuming you’ve already read at least some passages from the readme file. If not, then go do that first.

Seriously, this video won’t be of any help until after you’ve at least glanced over it. I'm definitely in no rush, so go check it out now. I’ll wait.

...

Ok, let's get started. This whole section is going to be a little bit of a freestyle, but I wanted to talk to you about previous us. Wait, that sounded stupid, but you know what I meant. People that had this power before us. How about we call them Seers. Yeah, that sounds better.

While it’s true that some of the Seers left relatively useful information behind in that file. A lot of the file was filled up with some pretty useless crap. There was one section that literally was a single entry that just said, this fucking sucks. Ok fine. I added that one. I won't lie, I was pretty proud of it.

Anyway, up until yesterday, I thought they had all the answers. I religiously studied that file hoping it would tell me what to do. So much so that sometimes I started putting the file ahead of my own intuition. I’m here today to tell you that was a mistake.

The readme file can be severely unreliable. I mean for fucks sake, if you go far enough back, they talk about monsters. Although I assume that's some sort of old people slang they put in there that got lost in translation.

I don’t know. What I do know is people are extremely unreliable narrators. That’s not a dig on them, It’s just human nature. We all remember things differently, and in the heat of a mission it’s easy to fuck up details in your head. Hell, you know how it goes.

One of the worst things you can do in this role, is assume these passages are gospel. It's a quick way to get burned. In my case, I mean that literally. I mean look what it did to me. I trusted something someone posted in the guide and almost burnt myself alive. Luckily it was just part of my arm and side, but I gotta tell you, this shit is no fun.

Anyway, you’ve got more than enough ghost stories to keep you occupied at night. They certainly made for great distractions during chemo sessions. But they were just that. Stories mixed with occasional tidbits of useful information.

Most of the Seers treated this thing like a diary. They logged all these things that happened to them and then used that same information to try and solve their problems. And you know what? It didn’t help them.

If you look at the average length of time from start to finish of the names in this book, it’s less than five years. That's barely longer than my diagnosis.

That leads me to the point of this video. You want to know why i made this guide, instead of carrying on the tradition. That's fair. The truth is, I'm not entirely sure why I did it. It just felt like something I wished someone would have done for me and now that this thing was a laptop, I had the opportunity to do it.

I think part of me felt that because I already had one foot in the dirt, that I wanted to do something to help others to not share my same death sentence. There was nothing to save me, but if I helped you, maybe that'd make it all worth it somehow.

Or maybe it's partially because I spent too many nights watching reruns of “Ned’s Declassified School Survival Guide” while stoned. Honestly, that was probably part of it too.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

It doesn't really matter why, my only goal was to make something to help you break the five-year curse. And maybe, if we build it up, we can help the next person after you, too.

For now though, you just need to trust yourself. This thing chose you for a reason. I'm positive about that.

Oh, that reminds me. Are you from the middle of the US?

I found a pattern in that file. All of the Seers, every single one I checked, had a hometown in one of like six states surrounding the middle of the country. It's possible that it was a coincidence, but some people were in other countries when they last posted. Why did the guide come back to this same region?

It's possible there are others like us out there. I’ve reached out on some forms in an effort to find more of us, but no luck yet.

If you are from here, you should look online to see if anyone ever replied.

Ok, that’s all for now. Stay safe. And remember: don’t be a statistic. You’re better than that. I believe in you future me. Please, for me, live a long and happy life.

###

I shut the video and I leaned back in my chair, staring at nothing for a moment.

“So he didn’t know monsters were real,” I muttered to myself. “Lucky guy.”

I looked around, realizing what I had just said. I just said a teenager with cancer that he was the lucky one.

Thank God no one was around to hear that. Well, no one except my ghost friend. But he didn’t know Alex, so my little outburst wouldn’t hurt anyone’s feelings. At least I hoped not.

Still, Alex had a point. I wasn’t ready to die. Not yet. Not even close. But if I was going to put my life on the line like this, I had to do it my way.

The real question was how had I survived so far? I mean, it was mostly from my friends saving my ass. Great, so mostly dumb luck.

Ok, that wasn't entirely fair, It wasn't all luck. I messaged Murph before I snuck into that house. I brought Naomi with me to that warehouse, knowing the situation. Hell, I even told Nicole to help me, when her dad had me tied up.

One thing I learned from playing board games, was that you needed backup plans. You had to think multiple steps ahead of your opponent.

Technically, i had used my friends as backups to my original plan. Leaving trails in case something bad happened. Unlike the people I had read entries on so far, I had something they didn't. Companions.

That was my best bet. While there was no easy way out in this scenario, that didn’t mean I had to risk my life without a backup plan.

Luckily, I had this laptop. I needed to leave a trail for Murph. Something he could use, whether I lived or not.

I opened the file I’d sent to Murph’s computer. A sudden sense of relief washed over me when I saw the p2p server was still active. Honestly, it felt weird writing about your own potential death, but I had to do it.

I started typing.

> “PS:

>

> Murph,

>

> I’m about to do something colossally stupid. I know exactly what you’d say if you were here, don’t do it, don’t be an idiot. Well, guess what? You’re not here, and I’m doing it anyway.

>

> If something happens to me, and I mean if, tell Naomi that Dr. Klanderman is behind all of it. He’s hiding drugs in a secret room on the property and using them to mess with the patients. Sodium is in the name, but I can’t remember the entire thing. He tried to use it on me. It’s awful stuff.

>

> Tell her to get a warrant. Then, have her check one of the janitor closets. There’s a hidden button in there that opens a secret door. Behind that door, there’s a storage room. Inside, she’ll find a cell phone, some drugs, and a notebook that lays it all out. It’s everything she’ll need to take this place down.

>

> I’m sorry, my friend. I never should’ve dragged you into this, but you stayed anyway. And I can’t tell you how much that means to me. You’re the best friend I could’ve asked for.

>

> Take care of yourself,

>

> - Joe.”

I hit upload, and watched as the progress bar creeped across the screen. Once it finished, I closed the file and sat there for a moment. That might’ve been the last message I’d ever send to my best friend. This was starting to feel too real.

A sudden realization hit me. For fucks sake, the cell phone in that secret room. Naomi’s number was on this laptop. If the phone was still there, I could use it. I could send her a text. Maybe she could track it or run the number through the police database. Maybe it would lead her to Wyatt. Or at the very least, give her enough to get a warrant to take this place down.

How had I not thought of this before? I checked the clock. Ten minutes. That’s all I had. But it was enough. It had to be.

I froze, then looked at my ghost friend. I still had the cream. That plan hadn't changed. At this point, I had to take the doctor down. I couldn't let these ghosts down. Not after what they had done for me. I tried to convince myself that this was simply another backup. It wouldn't hurt to have multiple of them, right?

The plan was simple, grab the laptop, text Naomi from this number and have her go run it through the police database. I grabbed the number, then snapped the laptop shut and grabbed the cream, just in case. Then I headed for the secret room.

###

Everything in this room was exactly as I’d left it. Although, last time I was in here I was pretty stressed. Alex was right, it was hard to be sure about things when you were under stress.

I reached for the drawer, the one I knew held the phone, and let my hand hover over the handle. Technically, I still had a plan with or without the phone being here. Still, I wanted to reach out to her. To help in whatever way I could.

“Please be here,” I muttered.

The drawer slid open with a slight creak, and there it was: the Razr phone.

“Hell yes,” I whispered, flipping it open. I didn't own a cell phone yet. I had been begging my parents for months, but they told me to go buy one if I wanted it. Instead, I burned my money on the laptop.

The battery was at twenty-five percent. That was more than I could have asked for.

I scrolled to the messages app, which took longer than I cared to admit. These things were surprisingly painful to use, and no one told me how hard texting was.

Letter by painstaking letter, I typed out the message:

“Hey, it’s Joe. This is bad guys phone. Track call. Don't reply. Murph explain.”

That was going to have to be good enough. I was out of time. I clicked send, waiting for the confirmation.

A loud noise echoed through the halls, right as the "message sent" notification popped up. Damnit, the bell rang early. I had to get out of here.

I needed to delete the message. I had to make sure I left no trace that I was here. Unfortunately, navigating the options menu on this thing was like solving a Rubik’s cube blindfolded.

The intercom cut through the silence, freezing me in place.

“Code blue! We have a code blue. Lock the doors down.”

The words pierced through me. My stomach sank.

I didn’t have to wonder who the code was for. I already knew. I was in trouble.

Shit.