The Madness Within ✓

IX.

I took a step closer to the statue and picked it up again, inspecting it closely. The statue had initials and a number carved into the bottom of it.
J.E. 02

Was this statue handmade? It included many small details of the creature, almost every. single. one.
Its thin fingers showed each curve and bone that peeked out from its skin. The eyes peeked from its head, almost as if they forcefully dug through the skin to see the world around them. Its ribs also stuck out through the skin, almost ready to cut through it and break free.
I felt sick at the sight of the statue.

After seeing the creature myself and then seeing it here, as a statue, I had no clue what to believe anymore. I was finding it hard to believe that it could be real and that it could actually exist, but at the same time, that was the only explanation I had for this. If it really were my imagination, how could I imagine the exact copy of something I've never seen before?
My legs felt weak, unable to keep my body standing any longer. I dropped to my knees, slowly putting the statue back in the snow, then covering my face. I felt my breathing get faster, and eventually I began hyperventilating. My whole body couldn't stop shaking, and I couldn't tell whether it was from the cold snow slowly paralyzing all my body parts, or if it was the fear that I felt at that moment. Or maybe both.
While I do love horror, I never would've imagined that I'd end up living in one. This whole situation felt like a nightmare. And I was sure that it was only about to get worse.

I tried to calm myself down by focusing on the cold instead of my thoughts. I began taking deep breaths, slowly breathing in with my nose, then out with my mouth.
After a few minutes of weeping, I was finally calm enough to stand back up.

As much as I hated doing this, I couldn't just throw this statue away or leave it here. If I really want to confirm what I think, I should take it with me and maybe ask someone in the village. If they'd be even willing to cooperate with me, since they clearly despise me.
I took the wooden statue and put it in the big pocket in my coat, then took another deep breath and continued walking around, clearing out more of the litter.
But as I walked further around the area, I saw something else that was wooden and slightly buried in the snow. My heart stopped at the sight of it. I slowly approached it, my heartbeat getting faster. I was really hoping that it's not what I thought it was.

But unfortunately, my assumption was correct.

In the snow was yet another statue of the same creature, almost identical to this one. Everything about it was exactly the same, except for the initials, followed by another number.
A.M. 07

My hands began trembling again. I grabbed the other statue from my pocket and compared them next to each other. Other than a few scratches that were carved differently, everything else was identical. They were definitely handmade, but why did they have to be this identical? And who made these?
I decided to take them both with me. If they are both labeled and one has a bigger number than the other, that could mean that there might be more statues than just two.
I put them both in my pocket and continued what I was doing. Except this time, other than cleaning everything up I was also searching for more statues.

•

After at least two hours, I searched the area around the whole house and cleaned up everything I could, then placed the plastic bag by the bin, since I couldn't fit it all inside. I also found more statues, of course. I found eleven in total. All of them had a number from 01 to 12.
And of course, since I only had eleven, that must mean that I was missing one. To be specific, I didn't have one with a number 03 on it. I looked everywhere for it, but I found nothing.
All statues looked identical, as expected. I was able to put them all into my pockets; six into one, five into the other.

After putting the plastic bag by the bin, I returned back inside. I took off my boots and slipped on my slippers, then looked around for a place where I could put these statues. I have to keep them somewhere where I can see them, so I get reminded to look for some information about them, but I also don't want to see them all the time. No matter how many times I looked at them, they terrified me just the same as they did the first time. It wasn't so long that I first saw them after all, and I still wasn't used to the fact that something like this even exists.
I decided to put them in the library. The library must have at least something about them there. I mean, it's huge! There's no way it only includes things like cooking books and things like that. Maybe I could also find out more about the history of this house, this forest, or maybe the village. But my main focus at the moment were the statues. Did the numbers on them mean something? And what about the initials?

I put them all on the table that stood in the middle of the room, then sorted them out next to each other by number, but also leaving the place where 03 should belong empty.
Now that I have them all in one place, I should be able to get reminded of them anytime I forget that I have to do research on them.
Since I had nothing else to do though, I decided to begin searching right away. I started by looking through the books. I walked to the bookshelf on the left side of the room and started there. I brought the ladder where I needed it and climbed up, then began reading through the titles of the books in the hopes of finding what I needed.

After endless hours of searching, I still found nothing. I was very close to giving up for the day and trying again tomorrow, after all I still had lots of time to find out more, but my curiosity wouldn't let me give up. I continued searching.
After a few minutes, I was able to thank my own stubbornness. While I did not find anything specifically related to the creatures on the status, I did find something related to the statues themselves.
I took the book out from the bookshelf and climbed down the ladder, then put the book on the table.

'The Wood Carving Club of Willowlake Village' was the title of the book and there were multiple beautiful wooden carvings and statues shown on the cover of the book. I opened the book and began scrolling through the pages, trying to find anything I could about the creatures. While I couldn't find anything inside that would mention the creatures, the book itself included many carving techniques and photos of the club working together happily. There were also many of their statues and one of the statues had similar initials on them. Identical to one of the initials on one of the statues that I had.
I scrolled through the pages more and found contact information at the end of the book. Since the book was already a few years old, the contact information must be pretty old. So the phone numbers were completely useless. But there was one thing that could help me out.

At the very bottom of the page was an address.