Dexter Morgenstern - The Slender Man

He looks at me for an explanation. I think of an overused lie.

“There was huge spider. It was like a tarantula except, evil looking,” I lie. My Dad purses his lips and exits the room.

“Are you alright?” Mom asks politely, but even she doesn’t want to wait for a full answer. I give her a quick little nod before turning to face my knees. The entity is still here. It followed me to my house, and now he wants me. I hear the door close and look up in fright, but it’s just Bubbe. She’s closed the door with us inside.

“Hey,” I muster, not sure what this is about. She makes her way through the mess on my floor and sits on my vanity bench and looks at me with a serious look on her face.

“You don’t scream bloody murder for a spider,” she says. I shrug a bit, not quite sure what to tell her.

“Don’t play dumb with me. There’s no need for that. I know what’s going on,” she says.

“You… do?” I ask. “You’re seeing things, aren’t you?” she asks. I’m not sure whether or not I should trust that she and I are on the same page.

“You won’t think I’m crazy?” I ask. She bows her head at me.

“Just because you aren’t blind to what’s going on doesn’t mean you’re crazy,” she says.

“So you’ve… seen him? The static monster thing I mean?” I ask.

“That’s… one way of describing him,” she says.

“What causes it? What is it?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “He’s something I hoped I’d never see again,” she answers.

“Again?”

“Back when I was little girl in Poland, during the invasion… you couldn’t go an hour without seeing him,” she starts. “It’s easy to just disappear unnoticed when everyone around you is disappearing anyway, don’t you agree?” she continues.

“He took people during the Holocaust?” I ask.

“He took children ,” she corrects.

“So, didn’t people notice? Didn’t the Gestapo think they ran away or something and punish the parents?”

“Sweetie, those were the same men that threw kids on the streets while shipping their parents off to camps. Those kids were left to die, and many of the ghettos became feeding grounds for the monster.”

“So did he follow you?”

She shakes her head. “When I finally got away from there, I never saw him, at least not until now. Not until the accident.”

“So he came and caused the accident?” I ask. That would make sense.

She shakes her head.

“I may be wrong, but I’m pretty sure the accident is what drew him here. If he was here before, children would have been missing a lot sooner.”

“Why would the accident draw the fiend here though?”

“I only know what my old Rabbi told us about him when kids began disappearing in my neighborhood. We had taken to gathering together as much as we were allowed, to gain safety in numbers. I don’t know much about him, but I know that he thrives on human misery. The Rabbi said that there were Jewish tales of the creature; that it loosely mimicked the form of a man, and always appeared in times of suffering-which you know our people have had our share of. Maybe it was the death of so many children at once, or the despair the survivors felt and the way their families worried about their safety that drew him here.”

“What about Mario? He’s an adult. Do you think he—”

“I think the fiend has something to do with the driver’s disappearance yes. I’ve never- seen him take an adult, but with the amount of guilt someone like Mario would suffer when he recovered, I think the monster wouldn’t have been able to resist. It always claims the physically and emotionally weak, and those who have been worn down by some prolonged strong negative emotion.”

I look at the ground. He takes the weakest. Jason was strong, but he was so focused on his anger and making everyone around him pay, that the anger had pretty much become his entire existence. Lionel wasn’t involved with the crash, but he only turned five today, and he’d been ill, so he’d be weak as well. Shana was always paranoid, and felt doomed for the worst as soon as she heard about the accident. Leanne was consumed with jealousy and hatred for me just because Adam survived. Plus the others I don’t know about. They were all vulnerable in some way. They could be led or taken-

“So what does he do when he’s chosen someone? I’ve seen something watching us, but so do all the people it has taken. Except from what I know they have seen it in the form of their deceased siblings.”

“That’s what I mean by weakened. If it can get you to come to it by using your own pain against you, it will. Once it’s chosen someone, it marks them for its own. I don’t understand how, but according to what the Rabbi said and what I observed many times in Poland, and what is now happening here, I think he somehow attaches himself to those he wants and functions as a parasite. Those he’s marked to take become ill, they begin to weaken physically and… they always have nose bleeds. He uses their fear to keep them from sleeping and wear them down more, keeping a constant stream of negative emotion. That’s why he appears to certain people.”

I think about that. The static and vibration in my bones I feel when he’s near…maybe that’s his energy interfering with mine-like the way some types of electronics interfere with a television or radio and cause static. I wonder if once he has locked onto you as his next target, the static becomes constant. The thought of that fills me with an even bigger sense of dread.

“But he’s everywhere. He was just outside my window. He’s in my dreams, He’s-

“The Rabbi said he’s not from this world, but from… ha’olam tsil, a shadow world, and that his interaction with our world is limited. To think of it in modern terms that you can understand, imagine its world as being another dimension, parallel to ours. Pockets of human misery creates thin areas in the veil between the two dimensions, allowing him to leak through… just as a shadow at first, insubstantial. It’s very difficult for him to pass through in corporeal form.

“As he appears in his shadow form and generates fear, getting people to focus their thoughts on him, his connection with this world becomes stronger, and he’s able to draw people through the veil into the shadow world. Once he’s drawn a child through, he establishes a solid physical totem somewhere that allows him easy passage from his own world to his newfound hunting ground. The totem is a physical representation of him. The more children he takes, the stronger his foothold in that area. I don’t know if the totem is always the same, but in Poland, that totem was a tall, strange tree that appeared overnight.”

“The tree!” I shout. Bubbe looks at me quizzically. “There’s a dark tree in the middle of the woods on that route I jog. I never saw it until people started going missing. Would that be it?” I ask.

Bubbe leans back. “How far away is it?”

“It’s almost two miles into the woods,” I say. “And Shana said that Denise needed her help in the woods, and Adam, when we found him the other day it’s like he was heading right for it. It’s—”

A look of horror appears on her face.

“I can’t have this. Not this close to my grandchildren,” she says to herself.

“Well, how do we fight him?” I ask.

She shakes her head.

“You don’t. You run from him.”

“Won’t he follow us?”

“I think he won’t stray too far from his tree till he’s ready to set up another one. That’s why none of the kids from the neighboring cities are gone, but if he’s got this many children, and he’s this close to us…You children need to stay with your aunt and uncle.” Our Aunt Kendra and Uncle Dan live in Michigan though.