Lady Luck

12

Marble Hornets, Entry 80—Transcript

[0:00] Video opens with Tim lowering his hand and backing away from camera, having obviously just turned it on. Based on the bed visible in the background he appears to be in a hotel room of some sort, though the location is unknown. He sits in a chair in front of the camera and sighs, pressing his fingers together and leaning his forehead against them. He sits in silence for several moments.
[0:12] Tim: "They... They're dead." He pauses, unfolding his hands to rub his forehead before continuing. "Jay died. Happened right in front of me. One second he was alive, and the next... he wasn't. And the hooded man, too... He's gone. I finally saw his face, and I saw... I saw it was him." He shuts his eyes and mutters something incomprehensible under his breath.
[1:13] Tim: "I... I don't know how things ended up like this... how he got to be this way... And I don't want to talk about it, but... It was him. Now he's gone too. They're both gone. Both of them."
[1:45] Tim pauses to take a few deep breaths and shakes his head.
[1:49] Tim: "The only good thing is that now, Alex is gone too. We got him in the end. Now I'm the only one left. I just wish I knew if that was good or not." He pauses again to press a hand against his forehead. "I'm not uploading it. Any of it I can't. It's not right. I'm done with this. I'm done. So I'll just tell you guys now... that they're gone. Everyone's gone now. And it's all my fault."
[2:44] Tim reaches towards the camera, and the screen goes black. Video ends.

~*~

I stared at the computer screen in silence, just quietly taking it all in. Tim sat at the table across from me, picking at what little remained of his lunch with his fork but not actually eating any of it. Only when I removed the headphones did he finally look at me. "Done?" he asked quietly. I didn't respond right away—or rather, I couldn't. I didn't know what to say, my mind was just blank.

"...I'm sorry," I finally whispered, bowing my head. Tim just sighed and set down his fork.

"Yeah, me too. I wish none of that stuff ever happened. But it did, and I can't change anything. Only look back on it with regret. The only consolation I have is that it's over."

"Except it isn't," I said quietly, my head still bowed. "Because Hoody's still alive." I could feel Tim's gaze on my head, staring at me in silence for a long while.

"...You keep saying that, but I just can't really believe he's still alive." Leaning back in his chair, he closed his eyes and started massaging his forehead. "I never posted the tapes online, but it happened right in front of me. I know what I saw." I frowned, raising my head to look at him.

"How'd he die? I mean, you said he was shot, but are you sure he was really dead?" Once again I got no immediate response, Tim just tilting his head back and staring at the ceiling. It seemed that delayed responses would be a recurring theme with this conversation.

"...The head," he finally said. "Alex shot him in the head after getting his mask off. Bullet went right out the back of his skull and into the wall." Squeezing his eyes shut, he sighed as he added, "Right after that I got teleported somewhere else, so I couldn't actually check his body, but, come on. A bullet to the head... That tends to be fatal." I looked at him in surprise, and then frowned.

"...Yeah, it does," I admitted. Could someone really survive a bullet to the brain without immediate treatment? At the very least, it'd probably leave you with some lasting brain damage. As far as I could tell, though, Hoody was pretty mentally sound. Well, as mentally sound as a murderer could be. On that note...

"As far as I know, he never actually killed anyone before," Tim mused aloud, as if reading my thoughts. "He threatened us with stuff like pipes before, sure, but it always felt more like empty threats to scare us off. The only person he really wanted to kill—any of us, actually—was Alex."

"Maybe he got brain damage that made him more aggressive?" I suggested, shrugging. "Brain injuries can change people's personalities."

"Maybe," Tim muttered, but still sounded uncertain. A rueful smirk suddenly crossed his face, a hollow chuckle escaping him. "...I can't believe we're actually talking about this. I mean, I got away... I escaped... But now here I am, a hundred miles away and back to talking about it all over again."

"...Sorry." Ducking my head guiltily, I averted my gaze from Tim and instead glanced at the laptop. Rather than look at him, I opened a new tab and started typing. "I didn't mean to bring this up... If I'd known you were the Tim from the series, I'd, well, uh..."

"You'd hide that you knew it from me until you needed to confront me," he finished for me when I trailed off. "Or you'd keep it secret, and eventually I'd get pulled back into it just by being around you." I quickly raised my head to look at him, surprised by his response.

"...Pessimistic, aren't you," I muttered as I slowly turned my attention back to the screen.

"Yeah, well, wouldn't be the first time it happened." I just sighed and shook my head, knowing he had a point. From the summaries I'd read, I knew he'd managed to get back to a normal life for a while until Jay found him again. All it took to get pulled in was to meet another person who was part of it. What really disturbed me, though, was the realization that now I was a part of it, too. My chance meetings with Hoody and the "Tall Man", brief as they were, were all it took to get me pulled into this mess.

Trying to shake off the thought, I searched for "ToTheArk"'s account and started browsing through the uploads. According to Tim, they were most likely uploaded by Hoody, so I wanted to take a look at them. Maybe then I might be able to understand what goes through his mind, at least a little bit. I randomly clicked on an early one and found myself looking at Jay sitting with a dazed look on his face, dark marks under his eyes. I vaguely recalled reading about this one earlier, it was linked to a video of Jay waking up in the middle of night and leaving, only to have no memory of what he did.

"...So by 'kind of' sleepwalking, you meant when you'd do stuff at night with no memory, right?" I asked softly, and Tim sighed as he nodded.

"Yeah... That and the whole thing with, well..." He trailed off, but I knew what he was thinking about: his split personality experiences with Masky. I couldn't blame him for not wanting to talk about it, it seemed pretty messed up.

"You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to."

"...Right. Thanks." Nodding, he then added, "Not sure if what's going on with you qualifies as any of that though. Hopefully it's just plain-old sleepwalking."

"Hopefully," I muttered, though even I wasn't sure at this point. Exiting the video, I browsed through the upload list only to freeze as something caught my eye. "...Hey, Tim? What was the last video by 'ToTheArk'?"

"Huh? Oh, uh, I don't know, it's been a while... 'Quadrant', I think...? Why?"

"Quadrant..." Tim frowned at me as I stared at the screen, and got up to walk over.

"Okay, what's going on..." He trailed off as he glanced at the screen over my shoulder, his eyes widening. There at the top of the upload list was a video simply titled "WAITING", uploaded less than a month ago. For a long moment we just stared at it in silence, neither of us moving a muscle. Then, quietly, he whispered, "Play it." Nodding, I clicked the video and we held our breaths as we waited for it to start.

The video started with grainy old footage of one of those human-shaped target at a shooting range. Bullets fired at it from off-screen and pierced the bull's-eye on the head, at which point the footage distorted and flashed to a black screen with the message "WHEREAREYOU". Jerky clips of Tim from various angles flashed across the screen next, running for about fifteen seconds, before abruptly cutting to an image of Hoody sitting in a tunnel staring at the camera. The total stillness of it compared to the rest of the video was off-putting, and five seconds later, the screen cut to black, and a single message appeared:

"IMSTILLHERE"

With that the video ended and for a long while neither of us spoke, just staring at the screen in shock. What could we say about it? It was just so sudden and unexpected, it was hard just wrapping my mind around it. Eventually, Tim slowly shook his head, muttering under his breath. "No, no, no... It can't be, this is just a prank... Someone must've gotten into his account, yeah, that's gotta be it..."

As Tim kept muttering to himself I barely paid attention to his rambling, my mind stuck on the montage of footage of him. Throughout it I'd noticed something seemed to flash between each of the clips, blinking in and out too fast to fully see it but lasting long enough for my mind to register that it was there. Replaying the video, I skipped to the montage and waited for the right moment before pausing it.

What I saw made my heart skip a beat.

"...No way," I whispered, my eyes widening. Interrupted in his self-mumbling, Tim looked at me in surprise and frowned.

"What is it?" In response I just pointed to the screen, the video showing a still image of a large pile of rubble surrounded by bright yellow tape.

"That's the building where I met Hoody." Tim stared at me in disbelief, taking a few moments to comprehend what I said.

"W-what? Are... are you sure? I mean, uh... It looks like a pile of rubble." However, I was already shaking my head, my eyes still glued to the screen.

"Tim, that building collapsed less than twenty-four hours after I left it. I watched the local news coverage so much that all of the images and footage of it are permanently burned into my mind. That's where this picture came from, I know it." Tim remained silent for a few moments, probably still doubtful, but eventually he slowly nodded.

"So then... he's confirming it in the video," he said. "That all that stuff happened there, and he survived." I just nodded in silent agreement. It certainly seemed fitting. The old shooting range footage was obviously a reference to Tim's claim that Hoody was shot in the head, and the building's collapse was just another thing he survived. Mulling over it silently, after a while I looked at Tim.

"So, what are you going to do now?" I asked softly. He didn't respond right away, just pressed his fingers to his forehead and frowned as he fell deep into thought.

"...Do you know how to use Windows Movie Maker?" I looked at him in surprise.

"Uh, a little bit, but it's been a while... Why?"

"I want you to make a response."