The Field Journal of Robert Folke

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NOVEMBER 20th, 2011

To begin, I will lay down the groundwork of what I expect to achieve with this journal. Throughout my time at the various universities I have attended and the research positions I held, I explored the work of other specialists. Account after account of secondhand sightings, made even more vague after being channeled through a third party. It was what we had to work with, everything that was available and as close to fact as possible. I am not out to prove or disprove any of these ideas: that is not the point of this research. I am not interested in proving that alien abductions are more than delusions or that werewolves exist. What I am interested in, however, are the connections between supernatural folklore, the occult and the psychology of man. I wish to make my own investigations and come to my own conclusions, separate from the study of modern folklore as a whole.

This field journal is where I will record my thoughts, experiences and interviews as I conduct my research. While it is technically informal and will most likely never be well-received by my colleagues or even authenticated, that is beside the point. I have developed an interested in an asylum situated in Los Angeles, California, around which an unprecedented amount of urban legend has begun to form. Instead of flying there directly, which would be technically more convenient, I have chosen instead to load up my car and take a road trip across North America. I will not be touching on every single state, but instead following where local rumors lead and proceeding along those threads of investigation.

Keeping a first hand journal is something I have never been particularly successful at, and I expect that my first few entries will read awkwardly. As I never expect this to be read by anyone else, that is hardly an issue.

This whole thing is beginning to sound horribly self conscious. I'm going to go research something.

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NOVEMBER 26th, 2011

Still in Massachusetts. I thought I might be in New York by now, but there are still a few things to wrap up. It seems like it would be easy to just drop everything and go somewhere else, but somehow it isn't. Maybe I'm stuck on the old, romantic idea of the nomad. I don't think any of the wandering heroes of epics had to break their lease or grab their car from the impound lot.

Yesterday I visited my mother. She brewed me that smoky Russian tea my grandmother liked so much and we sat next to the double windows, eating gingerbread. It was the most time we've spent together in years; I'm not sure, really, why we haven't spoken more. We just fell out of habit, I suppose. It was difficult to be at their home when my grandmother was still alive; I could never quite handle the way she acted toward me. Once my father left we put a little whiskey in our tea and things were much more comfortable. We were talking and laughing and trading stories about Nadia. It felt a little like rediscovering an old friend.

I will admit, at least to myself, that it gave me second thoughts about leaving. I think that maybe, now, we could have a real relationship in a way we couldn't before. We could spend more afternoons like that, with our whiskey and tea. We could've gone to art galleries or lectures together, I could have told her about my research.

But, I think not. I can't help but look at her and remember all of the things I haven't done yet, all of the pieces of my life that are waiting to be picked up and sewn on. All those stories I haven't been told yet.

I had no idea I was so sentimental. Hmm. Tomorrow, I drive toward New York.

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DECEMBER 4th, 2011

Finally in New York state. I got the car fully packed and ready to go on the 2nd, but I had to spend a few extra days saying goodbye to my family and letting my colleagues, few of them that there are, know how to contact me. Now, I'm on my way.

It feels... good.

Yesterday night I stopped in a small town called Turnwater. Originally it was just a pit-stop, someplace to park for the evening and get something to eat. I pulled over on what I thought was a residential street and leaned my seat back to take a nap, only to have an officer knock on my window a few minutes later. Apparently he had received calls about a suspicious, hygienically challenged man in an old Volvo; I guess I had parked across the street from an elementary school and the parents were concerned. How mortifying.

So I moved my car and went into a diner. Late night coffee, hash browns and eggs; sometimes crappy diner food tastes like the best thing in the world. While I was eating one of the locals, an overly chatty man with an impressive beard, came over and started showing me pictures of his family and telling me all about how his wife was leaving him. I was about to get up and leave when he started asking what I did, and as soon as I told him I was interested in folklore he began telling me all about the town myth.

Apparently every seven years or so all the new growth of flora in the area comes up red. The flowers, the leaves, the stalks, all different shades of red. The soil smells like copper and if you dig down deep enough there's a thick, red substance mixed in that most people assume is some sort of sap. Most of the locals think its a cyclical disease that effects the plant life, but a minority believes that the red substance is, in fact, blood. The man, Arthur, told me that he believes the whole town was built on a mass grave.

I admit, the drama of this story left me a little perplexed. While this sort of story is immensely entertaining, it also feels like the plot to a very bad movie. Obviously there would be ghost, new murders, and probably a government conspiracy.

This tale, in and of itself, could be the study of a person's life. I could set up shop here, do research, get scientists involved and run tests, but I won't. I plan on documenting this story from several different perspectives, and collecting samples. It seems I have managed to show up at the beginning of the next "red cycle".

As of yet I have collections of the soil, clippings from several plants, and an entire potted orchid. The orchid is interesting, not just because it is foreign, but because it is red even though the soil in its pot has not been changed recently. This plant is the one thing that makes me take any part of this seriously, as I cannot begin to speculate on what has caused it to turn red. For the moment, I shall afford it a place of honor: it gets to be belted into the passenger seat on my drive to the next town.

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FEBRUARY 20th, 2012

Well. These last two months have been a bit of an adventure. The sort of adventure a person wants to avoid at all costs, but sometimes cannot. It was a case of ending up in the wrong place at a very, very bad time. I don't want to document it too closely, because I'd like to forget it, but I think I should write down the basics so I don't blow them out of proportion later.

I had just left Turnwater and was heading toward New York City; I'd heard some stories about a man with a violent-looking pyramid instead of a head from a couple of kids in a roadside burger place. It was late, and my headlights were getting a little dim (I'll need to remember to get those changed, I didn't get a chance before I was arrested) but I saw something off the road by a few feet: it looked like a man. I hit the brakes pretty hard, since I didn't want to risk him stumbling into the road and getting hit, and the man approached the car. He was about my age, maybe a few years younger, and he was handsome; the sort of handsome that doesn't need to wait at the side of the road to ask some old guy to give him a ride. He could have been in any car on the highway, and yet he was sitting in the ditch. I usually pride myself on having a good radar, but this guy didn't set it off. I couldn't tell anyone why, but he just didn't seem wrong the way he should have.

Anyway, he came over and asked for a ride, because he was heading to NYC as well. I said sure, just set the plant in the back. He did, got in, and we drove in silence for a long time before he started talking. Just making conversation, being pleasant. I liked him. That was the worst part.

We pulled into the next town and decided to split the cost on a hotel room. Things were fine, but when I woke up the next morning he wasn't there. I waited for awhile, then I asked the front desk if they knew where he was. They said he hadn't returned his hotel key, but they hadn't seen him. I was about to go on without him but he showed up at the last minute and apologized. We kept driving, and this repeated in two other towns before I started to feel like something was wrong. In the fourth town, someone else figured it out too.

I was asleep when the police came. At first I thought they were arresting me over something like that time I worried parents by parking in front of an elementary school. They impounded my car and took me to the station; after a little while someone finally told me why I was there. Apparently my passenger, Tobias Wilson, was wanted in three states. Those nights he'd gone missing from the room he was still in the motel, just in someone else's room. He killed people in a particularly gruesome way that I'd prefer not to explain.

In the beginning I was held on suspicion of being an accomplice or knowing where he was headed next, but I didn't know anything. After that it was partially some confusion about certain documentation and even after I was released they asked me to stick around in case Tobias tried to contact me. He didn't. I spent the next several weeks not sure what to do with myself; I went to a couple of therapy sessions and watched a lot of bad TV.

I feel like a fool. I'm going to put my orchid back in the front seat and keep it there.

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FEBRUARY 21st, 2012

I had a realization this morning, some time before six am, just as I was merging onto the freeway. While I didn't know Tobias Wilson's name until the very end, it suddenly struck me that the reason I liked him so much was that he reminded me of my brother, Toby. I am now glad that I may not see him for several months, if not longer depending on how successful I am on this trip. Maybe it will give me enough time to set those associations aside; after all, they're hardly his fault.

I've pulled over at a little coffee and doughnut shop to write this. Somehow it seemed very important to document that thought, though I suppose I could have just allowed myself to forget it. I am also considering the eventual health problems my new lifestyle may have, if I spend all day sitting in a car and eating doughnuts and diner food.

I think I'll try to pull over every few hours to get out and move around. Walk, jog, maybe just stretch. I'm not sure what I'll do about the food yet.

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