The Diary of an Echo

The Liberation, Part 1

I gave you my word that I would tell you how I wound up gatecrashing at Ellie's and making friends with the best crowd ever. I always keep my promises, mortals.

I'm not sure how far back to go. For now, just know I've been stuck in a nasty pit for many months, and that I will be avenged in the blood of the perverse. I haven't been completely idle, though. I've been singing songs and working out to pass the time, which gets harder and harder as fatal starvation gets closer and closer. But hard work always pays off. I also began communing with a problem child, and as I later learned, a sadistic degenerate. His name is Sam Lesser. I first popped out of a portrait of Keyhouse Manor -- don't ask, I have means -- and called out to him, hoping to help him in return for his own assistance. Rendell couldn't help his mental problems, and I might finally have the means to escape.

A few days later, he told Rendell he and Tyler had been hanging out, prompting me to finally approach him. He has paperwork of him on Rendell's desk, surely full of secrets he is hiding.

"Sam? You don't have to be afraid."

"What are you?"

"I'm your friend. I... or at least I want to be. Look on the desk, Sam." He just stared blankly, hesitant to sift through Rendell's paperwork. "Just look."

"They're not your real friends, Sam. They lie to you. You're nothing but a virus to them. But me? I would never lie to you, Sam. 'Cuz I know how special you are."

"Stop!" Sam bellowed. "This isn't real!"

"Yes, it is, Sam. And I know how to get you what you want. You just have to listen to me, okay? Just listen."

Sam ran outside the room, just as a distressed Rendell came back in.

As you can guess, things declined from there. He sadistically murdered Rendell.

Before long, the entire family moved to Keyhouse. And it wasn't long before Bode came into the Wellhouse, slipping in through the doorway. He began looking around before attempting to take a picture of the inside of my confinement. But his shout of irritation, from a photo landing on my head, woke me up. I have not been sleeping very well at all as of late. I immediately made it rematerialize at the top.

He peered his head inside. "Hello?" he called, his voice echoing down here. "Hello? Are you my... echo?"

"Yes," I replied, my own voice echoing up to him. "I am, Bode."

Gasping and panting, Bode ran for it. Okay. Now you can leave me alone to die. Mold ingestion, starvation, worst outfit for a generation inside a freezing prison that She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named so charitably bestowed upon me (not the outfit, obviously, I had that on right before my imprisonment), you get the picture. And then of course there's the paranoia that the old-ass roof may collapse any day now.

So yeah the well's contaminated with sea water, that's why no one's been here in so long. And there's tetanus, and bats, and...

Anyway I woke up when Bode called my name, making me realize he'd been hearing mystical whispering and had made this his first destination.

"I know that someone's down there!" he hollered. "Echo?"

"I'm here, Bode."

"Who are you?"

"I'm an echo. Your echo. You woke me up."

Bode sighed. "Why are you down there?"

"Echoes can come to life in this place."

"No way," Bode stammered.

"Have you found any keys yet?"

"What keys?"