Blame

It's Worse

"Charlie!"

Charlie looked up, straightening out her poor posture.

She waited until Elizabeth was a bit closer before saying anything. "You decided to come early," she pointed out. "And you've got a look on your face that's making me a little nervous. Something happen?"

"Y-yes."

"You had another encounter with the demon? Someone else got attacked?"

"Y-y-yes."

"Yes to which one?"

"Both."

"Ah... Well, do you think you tell me about the details of both of those events?"

The roller coaster whizzed past them, carrying the screams of its passengers with it.

"...I c-can't."

"You can't?" Charlie repeated. "...What do you mean when you say you that? Are you uncomfortable talking about it out loud, or—?"

"I physically can't. Whenever I t-try to g-give any sort of details about that th-thing, or wh-what it's done, the w-words refuse to come out."

Charlie's expression changed to something indecipherable.

"Oh... that's interesting. That might change things." She reached into one of her numerous coat pockets and pulled out a pen, holding it out Elizabeth. "Do what you did last time. Steal some napkins or something and write down everything that happened tonight. I also wanna know exactly what the other attack victims said and did before the attacks happened, all that you know about how they played out, what you were up to around that general time frame, stuff like that."

"Alright." Elizabeth awkwardly took the pen and walked off to write everything down.

When she returned, Charlie was in the middle of sending off another group of people. She waited until she was done before handing the pen and a small stack of napkins to her.

Charlie read through everything way faster than Elizabeth expected her to.

"Oh boy, I'm an idiot," she mumbled to herself. "I should've— I think that whole nearly getting cut into ribbons thing scrambled my thoughts around. I wasn't thinking as straight as I should've been. Maybe I'm wrong, though. It'd be even weirder that it got all attached if I'm right. They care less about people than all of the other kinds do..."

Seemingly remembering that Elizabeth was standing there, Charlie began to actually speak to her again.

"Okay, listen, I don't wanna...really freak you out and tell you something that I'm unsure of, but I will tell you to really stick by that friend of yours...Jenny?"

"Jesse."

"Yeah, that one. And uh, maybe try not to talk with too many people," Charlie paused for a moment and went to release the lap bars so that people could get off the ride, "I've got... Okay, I feel horrible for pushing stuff back again, but I really can't tell you unless I know that my suspicions are true."

"Why not?"

"Because if it finds out that you know, and we don't already have a plan to get rid of it, things will... Let's just say that things'll go in a direction that you really won't like. Well, actually, you probably wouldn't even be able to realize at that point, but... yeah."

"Things are w-worse than y-you thought, aren't they?"

"Um...it...might be?" Charlie answered awkwardly. "Again, I don't know for sure yet. If I'm right, I've got the wrong documents. I need to go back and find a completely different file folder to see if I have to give you a different solution to your problem... I hate to say it, but could you maybe come back again tomorrow night?"