Dexter Morgenstern - The Slender Man

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know that he would come.”

“Where were you going?” she asks.

“I don’t know. I thought you were—”

“I need you to help me,” she repeats. She sounds like a broken record, but she’s communicating more than she was able to right before she disappeared, so maybe she is recovering. I’m surprised she has recovered even this small amount of her personality in this realm. She forces me off of her. Apparently hug time is over, and the sudden loss of her support causes me to nearly fall over. She resumes walking and I follow.

“Shana. Shana you need to talk to me. I don’t know how I can help you. I don’t know what to do,” I say.

“You have to follow me,” she says without so much as turning her gaze toward me.

“Where are we going?” I ask. She stops and looks at me, her body still distorting in places. She points, and I follow her finger up to the ever so familiar entrance to the forest.

“Into the forest?” I ask. She nods and keeps walking. This doesn’t feel right. Shana would give me more information- that is, if she could. Her screaming drew me back, but now that I’m following her again I recall the reason I tried to run in the first place. This may not be the fiend per se, but this just doesn’t seem like Shana. Maybe he has some sort of mind control over her.

Whatever it is, I can’t just go into the woods, because if Bubbe is right, then that tree is the monster’s physical totem and entrance to our world, and the closer I get to it, the less likely it will be that I get back. When we get to the edge of the woods I stop again. I can already tell something is awry. The forest has the same black-light pall cast over it, and just being this close to it makes my body vibrate with fright. It feels like a different, darker place. If what I am in now is some nightmarish dream-world, then whatever is in the forest must be the full-fledged shadow world.

My heart begins racing and I feel the howling static swell into an angry crescendo. Shana turns to me and gestures for me to come on.

“I can’t. If I do I won’t be able to help you,” I reason. Shana’s mouth begins wobbling, and I can almost see what looks like a tear falling down her face, but the distortion makes it nearly impossible to discern.

“Please Alyssa, we don’t have to go far—”

“…just close enough to him,” I finish for her.

“I can’t do it. I won’t. There’s got to be some other way, I can come when we’re in the real world and I,” but I stop. Would I come if I wasn’t in some nightmarish realm? I see the darkness from the woods creeping closer and then the black static figure emerges. Shana looks at me with sorrow as he rises up behind her. He looms over her, coming on like a giant black wave. As it approaches my eyes burn and I avert my gaze, but I look up just in time to see her hand lash out and forcibly grab my arm. She pulls hard, and with my already low level of control over my own body I come forward easily. I do my best to resist, but she seems stronger than she normally is. She has merged with the shadowy darkness from the woods, as if it is sucking her in, and as it absorbs her, I get pulled closer into it. He’s attacking ! I look Shana in the eye and I see her look of sadness distort into a glare. She pulls me closer, and now I’m terror stricken. This is not my Shana.

I’m almost past the tree line, which I am convinced that in this dream-world is the point of no return. If I allow myself to be pulled into the forest, he will have me. Her face distorts again and this time it’s as if she has no face, just a head. Her features are gone. I feel blood pouring from my nose in a steady flow. Her grip is weakening me! I dig my feet into the ground and pull back. She distorts one more time, and I can clearly see her for the first time, as terror stricken as I am. She’s disappearing into the darkness, but she’s mouthing something. It’s inaudible, but just as she releases her grip from my arm, I catch it. She’s saying, “…now! You have to wake up, run!” and then she disappears into the woods.

I see a spectral hand form, identical to the one that touched me in my sleep the night Shana disappeared. I’m ten feet away from it before it grabs me. I take off. I have no idea where to run, but I don’t stop to think. I just move. I can’t tell if he’s following me, but if he is then he has the advantage as long as we’re in this realm. I keep stumbling, tripping, and falling. Sometimes I catch myself, and sometimes I fall flat on my face, but I keep getting back up and running. I pass my house and enter the section of the neighborhood that isn’t illuminated for me.

I can hear Shana’s scream again, and I close my eyes to keep tears from flying out. I’m losing Shana again. There’s no way this is some illusion. He has her. He’s making her scream as a punishment. I pass another house and turn onto the next street, and then suddenly the environment begins blacking out. It’s not the dark shadowy blackness of the monster though. It’s freedom, its escape, it’s a fence. I collide with the fence, but being so experienced in falls and collisions lately I catch myself before I fall all the way.

I am about to resume my flight when I notice something. I see the moon. It’s illuminating the street, and I hear crickets. Their chirping wasn’t present five seconds ago. This means that I escaped. I’m awake, and I’m free, but I’m on the same street I fled to in the dream world. On top of that, the numb feeling slowly fades from my body, leaving me full of a feeling of pins and needles so intense that it is painful. Due to all the falls in the other world, I ache with pain in so many places. Whatever just happened, it was no dream.

I rush back to my house with the pain pulsing with every step. My palms, elbows, knees, and face have all taken blows from my multiple collisions. I can imagine I’m pretty bruised up too. I reach my house and see that the door is wide open like I left it. So the dream must have been some nightmarish trance then. If that’s true, then why did no one wake up when I fell down the stairs? It must have been loud. I don’t know the exact time, but the sky is a purplish hue of impending sunrise, so it must be sometime after four at the earliest.

I climb upstairs and peek into Adam’s room to see that he is still lying in bed, breathing. I can hear Shana’s screams echoing in my mind. It may not have been the real Shana, but there’s definitely still some of her in there. She must have fought to tell me to run. Maybe he’s using her like a marionette, or impersonating her. Either way, her screams were terrifying, and every time it plays through in my mind my body feels heavier, like I’m ready to collapse. You can imagine how someone would scream if they were being axe-murdered by a psychopath, but this scream is worse. When someone is about to be murdered, they’re afraid that they’re going to die painfully, but this scream was filled with the knowledge that the escape of death isn’t coming.

I don’t want to leave Shana like that, but what can I do? I go into the bathroom and rinse the blood and sweat from my face. As I do this I repeat the question in my mind. What can I do? I’ve always wanted to help Shana, and I was almost positive that the shadow monster is what has her, and now it’s been confirmed. Now that I hear- now that I am aware of her fear and pain, I don’t know what I can do, but I do know that I can’t just leave her. There’s got to be something I can at least try. It’s the tree he wants me to go to, but if I go to the tree in this state, in the real world, will he be able to hurt me? Maybe if I burn the tree? Dad keeps a spare can of gas in the garage, and I’m sure there are matches around here somewhere for the Shabbat candles. No, I can’t do that. That would cause a forest fire that I probably wouldn’t be able to escape, and even if I do, I’ll be jailed for arson.