Could Have Avoided This

It was at this point that I noticed that he and I were the only people in the coffee shop. I decided that I had heard enough. I got up and ran for the door. He didn’t follow.

When I opened the door, I immediately noticed a tall man with a piercing glare staring right at me from across the street; a man who could only be Dirk Rossman. Our eyes met, and I instantly felt his consciousness invading my own. I struggled to remain on my feet, to break eye contact, to do anything to get out of this situation.

I heard the door behind me, which was enough grab my attention away from Dirk Rossman. I turned to look behind me, and the guy who I was speaking to was now exiting the coffee shop. I turned and ran back to my apartment.

After several minutes of running, I arrived at the apartment complex. Instead of going inside, I got in my car and started to drive. I didn’t have any particular destination in mind; I just wanted to get away from this town. A thick fog fell on the road as I started to drive. I could barely see in front of me.

As I drove, I saw through the fog a figure, presumably Dirk Rossman, standing by a streetlight on the right side of the road. Then I saw him again. And again. And again. I didn’t know if my eyes were just playing tricks on me, or if I was somehow going over the same ground over and over again. This went on for what felt like hours; I wondered if this madness would ever end.

I Know Enough Not to Hope to Know

I showed up at the coffee shop at around noon, and, sure enough, the guy from before was in the same spot as when I first noticed him. I ordered a drink, then went to the corner where the guy was after picking up my order.

“Good day, Liz. I’m so glad you could join me today,” he greeted me with a smile that I didn’t return.

“I’m not here to socialize,” I replied. “Just tell me whatever it is you’re gonna tell me.”

“Straight to the point, I see,” he said, then paused for a moment. “All right, here’s what I know: I’m sure you’ve heard the name ‘Slender Man’ before, correct?” I nodded, and he continued, “I thought so; you have the aura of someone who watched that video, the one said to summon him. You were made to watch it by someone who had, theirself, watched it, someone who was eventually taken by him.”

While he talked, I couldn’t help but feel unnerved at how much he knew, and could only wonder how it was he knew all this.

“Your sister also watched it with this person, yes? Along with two others?”

I didn’t know for certain how many people were with my sister when she watched it, so I didn’t answer.

“Something like that; the specifics aren’t important. The important part is that they were all taken. Specifically, taken to the forest where you ended up during your journey to the park, by that lonesome iron gate. In fact, you ended up pretty close to where your sister is.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I mean, I knew that my sister had been taken; I’ve known that for years. But I couldn’t believe that I had ended up in the same spot where she had disappeared. I grew pale as my mind raced, trying frantically to recall if I had noticed anything that might have been a clue as to her whereabouts while I ran to escape that accursed forest.

The guy across from me had stopped talking by then, and was waiting for me to regain my composure. After a few moments, I had recovered enough to ask the most pressing question I had: “And how, exactly, do you know all that?”

A faint hint of a smile crept onto his face, which made me somewhat uncomfortable. “Well, you see, I had a similar encounter. Not with the creature known as the Slender Man, mind you; that creature doesn’t actually exist. No, I became the target of a man called Dirk Rossman, who lives in the old house next to the park. I know you saw it; it’s impossible to miss when you’re at that park. Dirk, you see, is actually who was pursuing your sister and her friends, and now is after the two of us. You saw him in that horrid clearing. He is of an ancient family, and is possessed of strange powers; closer to a vampire than anything else, if I had to compare him to a mythological figure.”

This was almost comical. My sister and her friends were taken not by an internet urban legend creature, but an honest-to-God vampire? A vampire that was now pursuing me? I could barely stifle a laugh.

“It is kind of amusing, in some twisted way, isn’t it?” he stopped to ask. “Anyway, to answer your question, I know this because he told me. You see, I was a student at the university that this town is centered around, much like yourself, and during my time there I once visited the park, saw the old house there, and went to investigate it. When I looked into one of the front windows, I saw him, and he saw me. After that, he kept sending me the same nightmare over-and-over for I don’t even remember how long. Then, he forced me to go to him. I don’t know how I survived.”

I interrupted him. “If that’s true, then how do I know I can trust you?” I asked.

The hint of a smile on his face faltered, then he spoke with a voice that wasn’t his own: “You can’t.”

All I Want Is

 After what felt like hours of running, we eventually made it out of the forest and back to the park where I started. It had gotten dark, the moon above being the only source of light. I was frustrated; after all that time spent in those woods, I was no closer to finding my sister. That frustration gave way to fear shortly after, however, because now I was alone at night with a strange man in an area I was still mostly unfamiliar with.

“I’m leaving,” I said, trying to calm my nerves. “Don’t follow me.”

“I understand, that had to have been harrowing for you. If you still want to find your sister, meet me at the coffee shop tomorrow, and I’ll tell you what I know. Just show up whenever’s convenient for you, and I’ll be there.”

On the walk back to my apartment, I was assailed by a relentless sense of paranoia that I was being watched by the figure from the clearing. For the first few minutes I would look back over my shoulder, but it was dark enough that I couldn’t see more than a few feet around me, so I decided to not waste the effort, and kept walking. To my relief, the walk back home turned out to be pretty uneventful.

When I got back to the apartment, I went straight to bed. I couldn’t sleep. I kept having nightmares, about the disappearances of my sister and her friends, about my journey into that forest a few hours prior, about that house. I ended up going through everything I had that was even tangentially related to my past, now present again, circumstances. There wasn’t a whole lot, just a video of me in the woods the night I summoned the creature, chat logs taken from my sister’s computer, notes about various works of fiction that feature entities similar to the one that haunted my sister and her friends, things like that. I’d looked through all this material before, of course, but I thought it might be helpful to have something of a better understanding of what was happening for when I meet up with the guy from the coffee shop.

And There was No One There to Know

When I entered the forest, I was immediately caught off guard by how dark it was, especially since I came to the park in the middle of the day. Once I had adjusted to the darkness of the forest, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of familiarity for the trees around me; I then realized that I had somehow been transported back to the forest where I first encountered the creature that haunted my sister and her friends.

I turned to leave, and behind me stood an open iron gate in the middle of a small clearing. I knew it well; it appeared in the video that supposedly summoned the creature to pursue any who watch it. As I approached the gate I could feel an intense energy radiating from it, the same energy I felt the moment I woke up in the hospital when my sister disappeared. Because of that, I figured that the only place my sister could possibly be was through the gate, so I braced myself and prepared to enter.

When I stepped through the gate, I found myself in a different area, in a large open field littered with corpses. In the center of the field stood a tall man biting the neck of some other person. He was far enough away that I couldn’t tell if he was the creature that we summoned; I started to walk towards him to get a better look, when I felt a hand on my shoulder.

“You really shouldn’t be here, Liz.” It was the man who told me to come to the park. “Come back with me, and I’ll tell you everything.”

The tall man had thrown aside the now-dead body he was feeding from and was now looking straight at me, so I decided that leaving was my only option. “Okay, fine. Let’s get out of here,” I said, and we turned and ran, him leading the way and me following. As we ran, it seemed to me like the branches on the trees around us were moving to apprehend us. I thought noticed something strange, though: it seemed to me like the branches would hesitate as they closed in on us, particularly when they got close to the guy I was following. But that could have been just my eyes playing tricks on me as we ran through the dark forest.

Caught at a Distance from Myself

I waited a few days before going to the park, in an attempt to avoid encountering the guy from the coffee shop on my way there. The walk there was tense; I kept looking over my shoulder every few moments to make sure I wasn’t being followed, and as far as I could tell, I wasn’t, which brought some semblance of relief to me as I walked. After about fifteen agonizing minutes of looking over my shoulder, I found myself standing at a gate leading into the park.

When I arrived, the first thing I noticed was the massive forest that goes on for miles along one of the edges of the park; when I saw it, I instantly remembered being led into the forest by Hallie's friend to find the creature that took my sister. I was almost paralyzed with fear, something that hasn’t happened in years, but I knew that I couldn’t let it get the better of me if I was going to look for her.

Soon after, I noticed a large, run-down house at the other side of the park. It looked like it could easily have been a hundred years old or more. I couldn’t really tell you what, but there was something about the house that didn’t sit well with me, like the house had an unholy energy to it that seemed to suggest that going there would be incredibly dangerous.

There weren’t many people at the park when I arrived, which was fine by me. The fewer people around, the less chance that the guy who told me to come here would be around. Before attempting to enter the forest, I decided to look around in the more open fields between the entrances to the park and the forest, because clues could be anywhere. Unfortunately, there weren’t any out in the open, which meant that I would have to instead search either the forest or the house, and neither seemed like a good option to me.

I decided to attempt to search the house first, because I thought it would be quicker to search due to the absolutely huge size of the forest. However, as I walked towards the house, I heard footsteps running towards me; I turned to see a woman approaching me rapidly with a worried look on her face.

“I wouldn’t go there if I were you, miss. The last person who went there hasn’t been seen for almost three years now,” she told me while breathing heavily from running to catch up to me. I was so glad that she wasn’t the man from before that I almost didn’t comprehend what she was saying, but I when I did I thanked her and walked away from the house.

After a few minutes of walking, I was standing at the edge of the forest. I took a deep breath, trying to swallow my fear, and stepped inside.

The Present in Splinters on the Ground

 I moved to a new area for school a week ago, a small town across the state from my home town. I was trying to escape the pain of my sister's disappearance, to escape the presence of that demon. And I was successful, for a while; I found the process of getting settled into my new life distracting enough.

It didn't last, however. Earlier today, when I was getting coffee, I had a strange encounter with a dour man. After the barista called my name and I got my drink and stepped outside, I noticed that a guy who had been sitting in a corner in the coffee shop was approaching me.

"Hello, Liz," he said to me; I didn't respond. "I don't think I've seen you around here before. Are you new here?"

I didn't know this man, didn't want to talk to him. "Leave me alone. I don't know you, and I don't care to know you." I turned and kept walking.

"Aw, don't be like that. I know how hard it can be to move to a new place, and I just want to make it a little easier for you, is all."

"I'm serious, leave me alone. I'll call the police if you keep following me," I replied, and again turned to keep walking.

"Fine, I'll get right to the point. I know what happened to your sister."

I stopped. I had never seen this guy before, so how did he know, not only that I once had a sister, but also that something happened to her? I turned to face him, and I could tell from the look on his face that he wasn't lying. We stood in an uncomfortable silence for a while until he continued.

"I can take you to her, if you'd like."

"I don't know you. I don't trust you. I'm not going anywhere with you."

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded note card. "I understand. If you want to find her, I can at least show you where to find her. Here's where you should look." He handed me the note card and turned to walk away.

When I got inside the apartment and went into my room, I sat at my desk and unfolded the note card. There was an address written on it, and nothing else. I went on the internet and searched for the address, and found that it was the address of a park in the center of town. Just looking at pictures of it on the internet was enough to fill me with dread, but what was even worse was that the park wasn’t too far from the apartment, which meant that that man could easily find where I live if he ever saw me there.

But I have to know what happened to Hallie. I don’t know what I’ll find there, but I’m going to the park soon.