12:00AM - STOP!

Gothor here.

You shouldn't be reading this. Not because I'm holding back on ya -- Live Journal just won't let me post in chronological order. So rather than ruin everything for yourself...

Go here and read Project Nightshade in order.

Gothor out.




























































































What the hell is the matter with you? I said to go here and read Project Nightshade in order!

4:10PM - Project Nightshade: Message #20.

As far as plans go, mine was fucking brilliant: Hide at Samantha’s farm, cowering out of sight for as long as humanly possible.

Things were fine until the phone rang yesterday. Which was weird, because Samantha stopped paying her phone bill a couple of years ago and never bothered to get it turned back on.

I started at the phone for a minute and picked it up. “Hello?” I said.

“You disappoint me, Gothor.”

“Doc?”

“Ah, so you do remember me. I thought you’d forgotten, along with my strict instructions to get to Blackfoot, ASAP.” He pronounced it, Ay-Sap.

”Um, yeah. Doc, about that. We checked out Blackfoot, but there wasn’t anything there. Just some factories and zombies.”

I heard a weary sigh on the other end. “And it didn’t occur to you to see what was in those factories? Are you doing anything at all to prepare to save the world?”

“Well, um, not really. Right now I’m playing Vice City. Trying to get past this one mission, but Leon’s a real moron.”

“Yes,” he said. “That seems to be going around lately. Listen, you’ve got to get out of there. They’ve spared you only because they needed all their energy to raise –“ the phone line burst with static. The only words I could make out were “queen” and “box”. Then the phone went dead. I looked up, out the large windows, and saw a cloud of dust charging down the long dirt road.

“Shit,” I said. “Samantha, get out here! There’s trouble.”

She stepped out of her bedroom, holding a double barrel shotgun. “Way ahead of you,” she said.

We stood on the porch, watching the cloud grow closer. “I feel like this is it,” I said.

”Hush,” she said.

”Samantha, I want you to know –“

She looked at me and voice died in my throat. “Hush. It can be said later.” I met her gaze and before I knew what I was doing, I kissed her, long and fierce with the possibility that it would be our last.

I broke away, fully expecting her to sock me in the face. Instead she grinned. “Mmm, my sweet Gothor. It looks like you’re a bold boy after all. Come on, let’s give these sons of bitches a warm welcome.”

I nodded and looked around for a weapon. I spotted a two by four spiked with rusty nails. It would have to do.

Together, we made our stand.

Two black SUVs skidded to a halt. Out of each stepped two agents dressed in crisp black suits. One identical to the others stepped forward and said, “Greetings, Sir or Sir or Madame. We are the Avon calling. Would you be interested in some collectible bottles and collectible bottles and accessories? Our hand lotion is creamy soft.” They held out their hands, as if they were trying to shove us away from a distance. The skin on their palms bubbled and burst and roots shot out towards us like tentacles.

Samantha fired once, twice. The agents on the left burst into a cloud of dirt and roots. I swung at one tangle of roots and batted it away. The other wrapped around Samantha’s ankles and pulled her towards them, her head banging down the stairs. “Gothor, help! Give ‘em a puck in the gob!”

I grabbed her shotgun and fired randomly at the remaining agents, who exploded, scattering bits and pieces everywhere.

”Nice,” she said with a grin.

”Yeah, well,” I said. “I didn’t know where their gobs were, so I just kept shooting.”

“So what now?”

”Blackfoot,” I said. “The doc wants us to check out those factories.”

That night we checked into a hotel, ignoring the managers’ lunatic pleas that we eat one of the dozens of potatoes arranged on his counter. As we lay cuddled up in bed, Samantha asked what I was going to say on the porch.

I could feel my face redden in the darkness. ”Nothing,” I said.

“Oh,” she said, and laid her head on my chest.

That night, I woke up from a nightmare (Doc holding a humungous pocket watch and screaming, “Oh my ears and whiskers, you’re late you’re late YOU’RE TOO LATE!”) Samantha was gone. I bolted upright, then my common sense woke up and instead of calling out, I went to look for her.

I found her kneeling in the hotel kitchen, holding a candle and facing away from me. She was nude and her long red hair, like flames in the candlelight, flowed down over her back. I watched, transfixed.

“Yes,” she said. “We’re going to search the factory tomorrow. No, he doesn’t suspect a thing. Yes. Yes I will.”

I stumbled backwards, crashing into an end table, but she didn’t seem to notice. I got dressed in a hurry, grabbed my wallet and ran into the night, wandering the streets of Blackfoot, the belly of the beast.

I’d deal with my broken heart later. For now, there was still a world to save.

Previous \ Project Nightshade \ To Be Continued...

11:50AM - Project Nightshade. Message #19.

Gothor here.

This past month has been a blur. I know you're probably expecting heroic tales of how I saved the world, but the truth is I've been laying low, hanging with Samantha, playing Vice City and learning my way around the farm. Hard work is great at distracting me from my real problems, which until now I've successfully avoided. I just got tired of running, you know? It was too dangerous. And my feet were starting to kill me.

Eventually Samantha cornered me against the wall (literally, one hand on either side of my head) and demanded I tell her how a "grown boy gets to be afraid of a vegetable." I thought about lying (some story about my uncle tormenting me on Halloween with jack-o-potatoes came to mind) but when I looked in her green eyes, I just couldn't bring myself to lie.

That, and the uncle thing was pretty fucking stupid.

So I told her. About the agents, how they got my father, and about the crazy Doc ("Bet you can't eat just one!"). I told her about everything -- except the mysterious silver box that Doc gave me. Something made me leave that detail out... just in case.

"So?" I said.

"I believe you," she said.

I blinked. "Really?"

"No! Of course I don't! That's the craziest thing I've ever heard."

"Hey!" I said, a little too loudly. "Yeah, well, just because you don't believe me doesn't mean I'm lying. And I'm not crazy, either." I ducked out from under her arms and stomped off.

"Hang on then, don't go off in a tiff. I don't think you're crazy, but can you blame me? It's all a bit of a horse's hoof, I think."

"No," I said. "Nothing was exaggerated."

Samantha raised an eyebrow.

"Well fine, so there was only one shark... and I guess I didn't really kick anyone's ass with Karate. But the rest of it is true. Here, I can prove it."

So I showed her the webpage, titled "Reinterpreting the Great Famine". It wasn't very impressive, the sort of drab mid-nineties web design you'd expect from an academic named Simon J. Quinn. It suggested the Potato Famine may have actually saved the Irish, that the British-enforced potato diet was a rudimentary form of mind-control. There was more, newspaper reports of potatoes come alive. But scariest was a drawing of a woman stabbing at one of the alien potatoes, "Finishing the job that the blight started."

"I dunno," Samantha said, peering at the screen. "It looks to me like she's fighting a toad."

"That's it!" I said, dragging her by the wrist. "How far away is Blackfoot?"

"Twenty miles," she said, allowing me to drag her along. (She wasn't kidding when she said she could take me. Sam didn't look it, but she was freakishly strong.) "Hang on then, let me grab my purse. If we're going into town, we might as well do some shopping."

The closer we got to Blackfoot, the more uneasy I became. It was like, spook central. Potato crops as far as the eye could see. Huge factories billowing black smoke that smelled like something dead.

We stopped at the first store we saw, one of those gas station/general store/hospital/funeral parlor deals. On the front porch sat a middle-aged man with a close cropped haircut. He was hunched over, muttering, and even though it was 90 degrees outside, he was rubbing his hands together, as if for warmth. We walked as far from him as humanly possible and entered the store.

"I still don't know what you thought you'd find here," Samantha said as we walked down aisles crammed with cereal boxes and bags of chips (which I also avoided).

"I don't know. Just something out of the ordinary. Like, what about those smoke stacks? What would farmers need with factories?"

"To mass-produce an army of invincible tayter warriors, naturally," she said, smiling crookedly.

"Har-har. I'm thirsty, let's grab a soda."

The soda fountain was behind the counter, one of those paranoid, cheap bastard deals, where you had to ask the clerk to get you a cup. Above the machine was a sign: "ABSOLOUTELY NO REFILLS."

"Hi," I said. "Do you guys give refills?"

The clerk, a huge woman who looked like someone shoved an overfed pug dog in an ugly dress, stared at me with beedy eyes.

"Um... yeah." I said. "Two cokes, large."

Instead of going to the soda fountain, she ducked under the counter, rummaged around, and returned with the cups. Each was now filled to the brim with a rotting potato.

Me and Samantha exchanged glances.

The woman shook her doggy face as if confused. Then she lit up with an idiot grin. "This is soooooo much better," she slurred.

This time, Samantha did the dragging. She pulled me outside, all but running towards her van. Being Irish, she normally looked pale, but now she looked dead white.

As we passed the man on the porch, he looked up and called after us, "I like them french-fried potaters, ayup!"

Samantha slammed her door and fired up the truck. "Fine," she muttered. "So maybe you aren't a header after all. Let's get the hell outta 'ere."

(By the way, I moved Project Nightshade to Live Journal so people could comment on my adventures and share their own paranormal experiences with the Potato Conspiracy. Feel free to say whatever's on your mind -- there is no censorship here. Truth is a weapon. Wield it wrecklessly.)


Gothor out.

Previous \ Project Nightshade \ Next