I’ll admit that, for at least several nights after reading this account. I was unsettled. I had nightmares of that little boy, along with Tommy and even Gina, all crying out to me, scowling at me, screaming “YOU DID THIS! THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT!”

Their voices wouldn’t be theirs, though. They’d all have deep pitched voices, similar to the way Gina’s was the day she had attacked me, only far deeper and smoother sounding in a way. They all sounded like this and they all were in sync with each other.

The nurses were starting to get concerned thanks to the obvious exhaustion and irritability. I was prescribed heavy sleeping pills for a few days after, which actually managed to get me to be able to sleep again. Anytime I was asked about why I was having so much trouble sleeping, I would always reply that I was just having a nightmare. Of course I wouldn’t tell them about the journal or the kids. I was after all trying NOT to end up in the floor above me — a.k.a the “looney bin”.

That being said, meds or no, I was still hesitant to go to go to sleep. Aside from the nightmares alone, I also kept seeing the kid outside my door, staring in at me. Guess the nurses didn’t set him straight after all.

I could tell it was different from before, though. To start, the kid just lingered here outside my door. Instead of the demented looking grin he had on his face before, he now looked at me with pure venom in his eyes. He hated me, I could see it.

Why, though? What had I done, huh? In the back of my head, all I could hear was his voice lashing out at me,”You’re trying to take us away from him, aren’t you?”

I couldn’t help but find this curious. The way he said it, that I was trying to “take him away” from Mr. Needle-nose. Thinking back to the diary, I realized that this was the same thing told to the little boy there. Mr. Needle-nose, or “Herr Nadelnase”, was a real person. Now whether or not he had half the capabilities the boy in the journal described, well that was still up for debate at the time.

I spent another few days then searching online for the news article included with the journal. I probably could’ve found it a lot sooner if I had my computer and somewhere with a halfway decent internet connection, but I had neither. I had my phone and barely any WiFi.

When I found it, though, it in of itself led to a dead end. The article was there, but ONLY detailed the discovery of the boy’s body, no real educated guesses as to how he got that way. Though, contradictory to what I said about it being a “dead end”, there was a detail that caught my attention. The article makes mention of a strange red substance foaming at and around the boy’s mouth when they found him.

For a moment, the image of Tommy convulsing on the floor of my office assaulted me. More and more, the similarities started to stand out to me between all three cases. That's when I went on the search for the performer group that was mentioned in the boy's diary, the "Erstaunlicher Beliar und die Illusionisten".

Like the news article, despite how well known the group was according to the boy, there was absolutely no real information available outside of a few very old poster prints of events from the mid to late 30s and early 40s. Each one showed a picture of the trio, “die Illusionisten”, with the supposed ringmaster in the center and the other two at each side striking some manner of strange pose. No matter the event or the year, their poses were all the same on each poster.

What stuck out to me about them, though, was just how bizarre “die Illusionisten” looked. Their ringmaster was this bizarre clown looking man with black crosses painted over his eyes and a jester’s hat with two “horns” curving backward and in his hand was a small black book. Another was an overweight looking man wearing what looked to be a papier mache pig mask and an old-timey black and white striped prison suit. Then, of course, there was Herr Nadelnase himself, standing tall and stiff like a statue.

Their names weren’t listed in the poster, but the one web article I found with the posters themselves had them each listed by name, translating to English as “The Amazing Beliar and the Illusionists: featuring The Amazing Beliar, The Man-Pig, and Mr. Needle-nose.” While there was no real information available there, this had me hooked. This, coupled with the boy’s account from the journal, made me all the more determined to search for and determine just who — maybe what — Mr. Needle-nose really was.

Without the aid of internet surfing, though, there was only one way I could pull this off. I would have to talk to the kid again. Obviously I was hesitant, frankly quite scared if we’re being honest, but I knew I needed to. Aside from curiosity, something inside me urged me on to find a way of stopping this trend with these children, all of whom only have him in common and suffer all the more for it.

One morning, after yet another, moderately successful physical therapy session, I went into the common area again and found the boy reading the book again. Steeling myself, I approached him and sat down across from him. “Hello.”

He looked up from the book with a blank sort of glare before returning to the book. “You know, I never did catch your name the last time we spoke.”

“Eric.” He blurted harshly.

“Well hello there, Eric. It’s nice to meet you. You know who I am, apparently...” I let this linger for a moment. He continued burying his face in his book. “You know, it’s quite rude to ignore someone when they’re talking to you.”

“I don’t want to talk to you.”

“Why not?”

“What do you want from me?”

“I just want to talk to you, Eric. I want to help you.”

“Help me with what?”

“Having a friend, someone you can talk to.”

“I don’t need you as a friend. I’ve got a friend already. I don’t want you.”

“Mr. Needle-nose?” He didn’t reply to this. “You talk to him often?” No response.

“He told you about the other kids, right?” He glared at me again from the book. “You know, I’ll bet that makes you special to him. More so than the other two.” He lowered the book. Exposing his face to me. I had his attention.

“Yeah, you see, Gina thought she was the only one, did he ever tell you that?” His teeth clenched and his eyes narrowed at me. “Does he ever ask you to play any games with him, say ‘Pigs in a bucket’?”

His eyebrows raised and he asked, “What?”

“What about telling spooky stories, he ever do that?” He started shaking his head.

“Look, I don’t know what you’re talking about, just leave me—“

“Alone?” His body began trembling “You mean like you have been for all this time now? That’s why he found you, isn’t it?”

“What are you—“

“So maybe you aren’t that special to him. See, I’ve been noticing a pattern here. The others were lonely, too. Other kids wouldn’t play or talk to them, and sometimes grownups weren’t too nice to them, either. They had no one to talk to... except, of course, for Mr. Needlenose.”

He turned in his seat away from me. “Stop it.” He demanded anxiously. His body was shaking more and more violently by the second, even causing the chair to shake as well. “You don’t know anything.”

“Do I not? I know that the others were afraid of him, did you know that?” The mounting look of confusion and panic building on his face gave me my answer. “I know more than you might think I do, Eric.”

“Shut up, you don’t know anything about me.” He clutched the sides of his head and began shaking it frantically. “Just leave me alone, okay? You’re confusing me, just go away!”

“Is that what he tells you to say? Does Mr. Needlenose tell you to say that to me and everyone else?”

“Shut up!” His eyes were squeezed shut. His head swung violently with his hands pressed against his ears. I could hear him start muttering, “He doesn’t know anything, he doesn’t know anything...” over and over again.

“I know that it’s been rough for you lately.” He looked at me, fearful.

“What’re you talking about?”

“You don’t like getting up in the mornings, do you? I know that you don’t have long, and I know that, at least since I’ve been here, you’ve never had any friends or family come to visit.” He turned and slouched in his chair. I leaned in closer. “I think that’s why he’s chosen you. You need someone, a friend, and he needs someone, I think, as a tool.”

“Shut up, okay? Just shut up, you’re a liar, you don’t know anything.”

“I’m a liar?” I asked. “Eric, has he ever taken you to the dreamland, with all the candy? Has he promised you that he’d always come back for you?”

He sprang up from the chair, attempting to leave. “When you wake up again, do you wonder where you are? Are people then afraid of you?”

“I said shut up!” he grabbed a nearby object, a stapler, I believe, and hurled it in my direction. He missed my head by about five inches he then crumpled to his knees on the floor, hyperventilating. In between breaths, I could hear him muttering “Leave me alone, just leave me alone.”

A couple of the nearby nurses rushed into the room to him. “What happened?” One of them asked. I didn’t have the chance to answer before the other nurse made the mistake of placing her hand on his arm. This provoked a violent reaction from him, where he backhanded the nurse with such force that the poor woman was actually thrown backwards an inch or two.

“FUCK OFF, PIGS!” he roared. The other nurse and I retreated a few steps away and he stood up again. The room was silent around us, everyone present watching in terror at the scene in the middle of the commons area.

Eric glared at us, seething rage causing saliva to run from his bottom lip the way a hungry wolf does when it’s cornered its prey. “Get away from us! You won’t take him away!” He grabbed a nearby pair of scissors from the craft table and raised it in the air, angling it downward.

One of them. The nurse that was backhanded, ran out, presumably to call for security. Eric lunged toward her, intent on stabbing her before she could make it out of the room. He managed to tackle her to the floor before raising up to stab her.

Thinking quickly, I was able to rush over, despite my difficulty in walking, and grab Eric from overtop the nurse and pin him to the ground. The challenge then was trying to hold him down. In spite of his sickly appearance, he was strong. Trying to keep him on the floor at that moment was like trying to hold onto a wild dog.

He started screaming in German like Gina had, “Runter von mir, verdammtes Schwein!” His arms flailed harder and I was losing strength to keep him down. “ICH WERDE DICH TÖTEN! ICH WERDE EUCH ALLE TÖTEN! ER GEHÖRT MIR, DER JUNGE GEHÖRT MIR!"

“Eric!” I cried. He was just about to the point of being able to throw me back off of him. “Eric, listen to me, you don’t have to let him do this. He isn’t your friend.”

“I’M HIS ONLY FRIEND!” he roared, jerking his arms so hard that I was finally thrown from overtop of him. I was sent rolling on the floor almost two feet from where I’d; been holding him down. He stood up again, once more raising the scissors, starting towards me. “You... I should’ve finished you back at the office!”

“Eric!” I groaned.

“Eric’s not here, pig.” he spat. “He’s somewhere where he can be happy, where all my friends can be happy.”

“Until you’re done with them, right?” He stopped suddenly, two inches away from my body. “Then you throw ‘em to the buzzards, right?”

His body began twitching furiously. His eyes bugged more and more with rage. “You’re a pimp.” I said, straining. “You find kids like Tommy, Gina, and all the others and you get inside their heads, make them happy and safe while you use their bodies to fit your whim.”

I looked into his eyes. He was enraged, but even more than that, I swore I could see something else. Anxiety.

He was struggling, likely for control. I had a brief flashback to the incident with Tommy, realizing that that must’ve been what happened to him. Same with the boy from the journal. They were both afraid of Mr. Needlenose, both must’ve tried fighting back but failed. But when they couldn’t drive him out, he must’ve took them with him before deciding to find another.

And here it was now with Eric. Eric was fighting back now. A small, triumphant, grin of defiance spread across my face when I looked into his eyes and I said, chuckling, “I know what you are now. You’re a leech that uses children. You’re not their friend. You’re their drug!”

His body spasmed. Simultaneously, his arms and shoulders jerked in all directions. “N-No!” He grunted. “He’s mine! MINE! I won’t...” he convulsed again, yelping in pain. “Won’t let you take another one away from me!”

His body stiffened again and he delivered a sharp, stinging kick to my rib cage, forcing me to roll over onto my stomach. “You’ve cost me the lives of two children. My life and spirit! No more.” Instantly, I felt something burrow into the point on my back where I’d been stabbed.

I’ll say right now that, outside of the pain I felt the first time back at the office, being jabbed in the back like that was, bar none, the absolute worst pain I have ever endured. I could feel whatever it was dig deeper and deeper, twisting the further it dug. My throat quickly tore from how much I was screaming in sheer agony.

“I will make you suffer!” I then felt something sharp get plunged straight down before being hammered repeatedly further in. That’s when I actually lost my voice with my screams. Eventually, I realized I couldn’t feel my legs anymore.

I looked up to see Eric standing up, trying to leer over me again with the now bloodied pair of scissors in his hand. I was fading from consciousness, slipping rapidly into shock. Eric’s eyes were as wild and furious as ever. This was it, I was a dead man.

I closed my eyes and silently began to pray. I opened my eyes again though when I realized nothing was happening. Eric was standing right there, leering directly over me, stiff with his arms and neck jerking. He started clawing frantically at his temples, crying out in pain.

That’s it, come on, Eric... With one hand still clutching his temples, Eric started blindly swinging the scissors around in the air with the other.

“No, stop this!” he shouted. “You can’t do this.” I realized this wasn’t Mr. Needlenose talking anymore. No, this was his voice shining through. “I don’t wanna do this anymore.”

His convulsions got more and more aggressive, more and more painful for him. Behind me, coming from the hallway into the commons room, elephantine footsteps were heard pounding on the tile floor. Eric let out a scream that was dangerously close to stopping my heart completely.

“No, I won’t let you hurt them. Go away!” I heard the footsteps entering the room. Eric fell to his knees, screaming, “Stop it, I don’t wanna be friends with you anymore!”

“He’s got a weapon!” I turned back to find two security guards behind me standing in the opening of the commons area. Eric shrieked again and the men made to move toward him when I struggled to shoot out my hand.

“W-Wait...” I groaned. The men paused, eyes still trained on Eric. Eric was now rolling on his back in the floor, shrieking in pure agony. I started slowly slug-dragging myself closer to him. I could hear one of the men attempting to come closer but I stopped him again before dragging myself the rest of the way to Eric.

When I was close enough, I took hold of the hand he held the scissors in. “It-It’s okay... I’m he-here, Eric.” His body slowly began to relax. “It’s okay, I’m here. I’ve got you.”

The more his body relaxed, the louder and louder I could hear distant sounds of a struggle. One of the sounds I recognized as Eric’s screaming while the other was something else altogether, something I’m not even really sure was human.

Soon I started hearing Eric screaming “No!” and the other screaming back to “Let me in!” Though I couldn’t actually see anything in the real world, I somehow began visualizing the two in the back of my mind. Eric was seen wrestling with a tall, dark, shadow-like figure with two large white dots for eyes and a large white line stretched across his face.

Hang in there, Eric... As if hearing my internal dialogue, I saw the shadow figure turn from Eric to me.

“You...” I heard him growl. Chills instantly shot all throughout my body. "This is your fault!"

I had no idea what to do. I wasn't even sure what the hell was going on. "You think I'm going to let you take another one away from me?" Something akin to a burning feeling then flared up in my head. It was small at first, quickly escalating from the type of pain you'd feel from a mild sunburn until it felt like my brain was being jabbed with 10 to 20 fire pokers in the same place at the same time.

Aside from this, I felt something being forced inside of me, an invisible 10-ton brick being shoved into my brain. Then the world started to turn to fuzz. All feeling in my limbs -- of course meaning just my arms -- slipped away from me as well. I still don't quite understand what it was I experienced next, but I guess it may be what you'd call a "Possession" of some sort.

I could feel the shadow's presence override every function of both my mind and body, but at the same time, I was still mostly conscious and aware of the real world around me. I could hear the figure's thoughts, but I still had the most control over my own. My heartbeat started to slow way down and darkness started to overtake the fuzz in my vision. I realized then that he wasn't attempting to take control of my body at all.

He was destroying it from the inside!

With each beat, my heart took almost twice as long to palpitate. Breathing was quickly becoming more and more impossible by the second. I started choking, gasping and wheezing like a dehydrated fish. My sight was nearly gone when I saw Eric's body start twitching.

From the back of my head, where the voices were coming from, I heard the shadow let out a horrifying roar. I could sense urgency in it, panic. In its attempt to destroy me for good, it must've lost the grip it had over Eric. In seconds, both my sight, senses, and heart rate started to return to normal.

I could see Eric’s body jerk rapidly. By this point, the security personnel had gathered around the two of us. One of them was kneeling over me, shaking me, with the other doing the same with Eric.

I came to fully to see his body finally relax. He was unmoving, eyes wide open and mouth gaping. Oh God, no, no, please, not again!

"E-Er-Eric..." I groaned, reaching out to him. The guard over him shook him gently again before pressing his fingers against his throat, shouting to his partner to get help. The one over me then got up and ran out of the commons area while the other continued checking Eri for a sign of life. I tried to pull myself over to him, but it was no use. I had absolutely no strength left in my arms.

"Eric..."

Nothing.

The guard shook him one last time.

Nothing.

About ten seconds later, the commons room flooded with doctors and nurses wheeling stretchers in. I was carefully lifted up onto one, still reaching my arm out pitifully for the boy. He hung limply in their arms as his body was then also lifted onto the stretcher. We were being wheeled out, however, when all of a sudden, Eric snaps upward in his stretcher, eyes wide and gasping for breath.

"Wh-where..." he panted, throwing his head in every direction around the room. "What's going on?"

If I would've had the energy, I'd have shrieked with joy. He'd done it. He was able to free himself. He looked at me and I could see this same realization wash over him. Mr. Needle-nose had been defeated.

After that, things went through a bit of a long, drawn out sequence. Following the incident itself, while Police were called and a report was made, no criminal charges were filed with the hospital, the boy, or myself. Eric never again exhibited any strange behaviors, sleepwalking, talking to people that weren't there, etc. Instead, he would come to visit me, to talk about the things he liked and what he wanted to be when he grew up.

He wanted to be a biologist, he told me once. Said he wanted to find and put a stop to whatever it was that caused cancer in the body. I told him I was sure he'd make an excellent biologist one day. I meant that, too. He was extremely knowledgeable on the subject, far beyond anything I would've expected from a 14 year old.

Whether I meant it or not, though, this dream wasn't meant to be. It was only another week or two when I heard that his condition had taken a turn for the worse. He was bedridden and was unable to keep anything down, even intravenously. I remember seeing him the night right before they took him off life support.

He looked like only a shell of the boy named Eric. He could just barely stay awake. I was granted permission to be wheeled into the room to visit him one last time. That night, not much was said, not that I could remember. One thing I will always remember, though, is the last thing he ever said to me before falling asleep.

"Thank you for being my friend."

After that night, I'd spend another month in the hospital before finally being able to return home. I would of course be wheelchair bound for the rest of my life, but it didn't matter to me. In the end, we still won. Mr. Needle-nose hadn't ever reared his ugly head since. Not since Eric was able to break himself free, because he had a friend.

For this reason, and because I suspect that he IS still out there, even if only dormant, I still work as a child psychologist. This ordeal has taught me that, no matter what, everyone needs a friend, someone they can talk to, run with, and simply just listen. That is also why I record this here, my most disturbing case. Now, you all can read and know of the evil some will go to simply to spread their own misery around and of the innocent victims they create because of it.

Like they always say, "Misery loves company."