Escaped.

Oh my God my hands are shaking so bad.

It's close, still so damn close... Maybe even right behind me, lurking just outside my field of vision... but still so very, very nearby.

It was right there.

When I went to leave the barn, It was waiting for me right outside the double doors. Oh my God, It wasn't even three feet away from me.

I swear the nausea was so bad I almost fainted from it. But the fear was so, so much worse…

It almost got me.

It almost got me, and I had no idea that It was even there.

I shouldn't even be writing right now. I should be running until I find somewhere safer, somewhere to lie low that It doesn't know about yet. Until I get out of Its territory. But I had to hide just long enough to stop and tell you how I got away, because I found something out about It while trying to escape. Something incredibly, deeply important.

Something that anyone reading this, anyone being hunted by It, must know.

See, It almost got me because of where I was standing when I left the barn. It had managed to corner me when I tried to run out of shock, trapping me between Itself and the barn wall. The woodpile for my fire pit was blocking my path on one side and was far too tall to safely climb over. Even if I did manage it, I surely would have twisted or broken something on the way down. I was almost on my knees. I thought for sure I was dead. Oh God, Its arms… So long, and so thin as they reached for me… I kept wanting to walk towards It, into Its awful embrace, and only my nausea was holding me back. If I hadn't been that insanely ill from Its influence…

I would be dead and impaled on a tree somewhere by now had it not been for the scrap of tree bark in the ashes of my nearby fire pit, the bark with Its half-burnt symbol still etched into it. I had never been so grateful to see something related to It in my entire life.

I picked it up and threw it at the thing, that awful, slender thing in front of me, as hard as I could. I had hoped that doing so would distract It for a second, just long enough so I could make a break for the nearby tree line. What happened instead surprised and amazed me.

When that chunk of bark collided with Its mockery of a shoulder, glancing off of the black, fabric-like skin over it, It visibly shook. But not in shock. It was almost more like It winced.

It... winced?

The thing stared at me a second, as if taken aback at what had just happened, and It brought Its pale and broad-palmed, abnormal hand up to Its shoulder. Something slick, oily, and pitch black dripped from between its skeletal fingers, smelling faintly of leaf rot and iron ore. It seemed confused and startled at what had happened, because It stepped back, just a bit.

And then roughly five or six tentacles sprouted from Its back, clearly an expression of anger at my attack.

Its distraction with Its injury lasted just long enough for me to bolt for it, and I had to have been too far away for It to grab by the time It finally recovered from Its shock and anger, because It began to chase me. I didn't hear It, mind you; that thing makes absolutely no noise when It moves. But I knew It was after me. I could feel It after me. When I finally got the courage to look behind me, It was nowhere to be found. But I still didn't dare stop running. Not for a second.

And it's only now, now that I've finally gotten a chance to rest and write, that I realize what that sick black liquid was, and why It shuddered when It got hit.

That piece of carved-up bark, marked with the strange symbol, was just sharp enough to cut It, and that black fluid was Its blood. It was cringing because I'd hurt It, and It was bleeding.

It can bleed.

If It bleeds, I can kill It. And that symbol must be key to defeating It somehow. So if a single piece of sharp bark with that symbol on it was enough to cut It…

Just imagine what an arrowhead with that symbol on it could do.