Slenderman, Slenderman, Take this Child

by McGeorge, Lee

  “I can’t,” Helen said ruefully. “Because the girl who said that is now one of the missing.”

  ----- X -----

  Helen went to the school first. There were police cars everywhere, the whole place sealed off. Blue and white tape read, ‘Crime Scene - Do Not Cross’. There were adults at the school gate shouting questions to the police woman on the inside. Helen showed her identification and was allowed in. “What’s with the crowd?”

  “Parents. Some of the kids called home to say there was a murder. With three girls already missing a lot of parents want their kids home and safe.”

  Helen went into the school and found the place deserted. “Hello?” she called. A female receptionist appeared at the administration office door. “Hi. I’m looking for Miss Hoxton.”

  “She’s with the other officers talking to children.”

  “Maybe you can help me,” she said showing her police I.D. “I need to visit the home of Hugh Wilfred and need his address. I also need his personnel files if they’re kept here.”

  ----- X -----

  John Henry took a seat in the interview room. William Warwick sat opposite, his hair mussed and damp from showering. He was wearing a pale blue paper suit. His father was with him, a tall, well-dressed man in a three piece suit. The solicitor wore a shirt and jeans. On first appearance one would have imagined the father to be the solicitor and vice versa.

  “William, can you describe what happened this morning, in your own words. Tell me from when you arrived at school.”

  “I arrived early with my friends, Christopher and Owen. We planned to do some rugby practice. We didn’t want to put our coats on the wet grass so went inside to hang them up and that’s when we heard Mr Wilfred crying out. We went to his room and found him bleeding. There was blood spurting out of his neck and chest so we all tried to stem the flow. Christopher went to get help and came back with Miss Woods… That’s what happened.”

  ----- X -----

  Helen was parked outside the home of Hugh Wilfred reading the personnel file. Fifty five years old, he had a glowing record. He’d been with the school for fifteen years and there was nothing but perfect appraisals from Headmistress Hoxton. She flicked through the performance reviews. Almost identical. Hoxton appreciated his adherence to strict discipline. Nothing wrong. Nothing out of place. No bad comments, no letters from parents or disciplinary actions. On his joining the school he had listed his next of kin as ‘None’.

  It began to rain gently as a police van approached. She could see the driver looking at the house numbers as the vehicle crawled forward. She flashed her lights and the driver waved back.

  Helen showed her, I.D. They walked to the home, a small, terraced house with a tiny garden yard. The locksmith opened the door to allow her entry and remained there to place a sticker on the window asking people not to enter. Helen pulled on rubber gloves.

  The house felt old. Bare, stripped floorboards and a wooden reception table in the hallway. There was a dark mahogany grandfather clock ticking with slow swings of a pendulum. Nothing much to see. Helen went into the lounge to find a two seater sofa aimed at a television, a painting of a countryside vista hung above the mantelpiece, but beyond that it was empty. She checked the kitchen. A table with two chairs, the surfaces fastidiously clean. Wilfred certainly kept a neat and tidy house. The locksmith passed her to fix a ‘Do Not Enter’ notice by the back door.

  She went upstairs. There were two bedrooms and a bathroom. The bathroom was simple; soap and shaving accoutrements laid out neatly. The bedroom as old fashioned as everything else with a steel framed bed. Then there was the second bedroom with a lock on the door.

  Helen looked at the lock closer. “Now what kind of a bachelor needs to lock a room in his own house?” she whispered. She knew the answer already. A man living alone with a locked door meant he had secrets.

  When the locksmith came upstairs he took one look at the door and exchanged a glance with Helen, perhaps thinking the same thing she was. He picked the pin-tumbler in seconds and Helen pushed the door open to a blacked out room. “Is there no window in there?” the locksmith asked.

  Helen clicked the light switch and the room was cast in red light from a crazy light fitting of hanging spokes and frosted baubles. It looked like it came from the nineteen seventies. In the centre of the room was a black leather chair with a matching footstool and above it was a shelf containing a projector. Helen followed the cable with her eyes to see it connect to a computer beside the chair.

  “It’s his private cinema,” the locksmith said. “He’s sitting here and his projector is throwing movies onto that wall over there.”

  Helen went to the far side of the room. A handmade cabinet up the side of the wall was filled with small plastic boxes. There were over a hundred, probably closer to two hundred. Identical and carefully organised into this custom built storage unit. Beside them was a bookcase filled with identical and neatly arranged photo-albums and a small reading table with a desk lamp. She turned on the lamp and pulled out one of the photo albums. “Oh, Jesus!”

  “What is it?” The locksmith looked over her shoulder. A photograph of a schoolgirl on the left hand page, an official school photograph; she was perhaps eleven years old. On the right hand page was a photograph taken up the skirt of a girl and beside that the same girl in a swimming costume. Helen turned the page to find a similar layout. An official school portrait on the left, then a photo taken up the skirt of a young girl on the right. The next page had a schoolgirl then a shot of her taken in a changing room. The girl was stepping out of her swimwear in a way that made the slit of her vagina plain to see. She was a pretty girl, full of life, laughing with her half naked friends, her dark shoulder length hair soaking wet. All the while unaware she was being photographed. Beside the image was her name: Wendy Sewell, #128

  “Number one two eight.” Helen whispered.

  “I bet that’s what he does with his projector,” the locksmith mumbled. “I bet he has the same stuff projected on the wall… Did you notice this?” He pointed to a box of tissues beside the chair. “The guy is ready to have some happy alone-time.”

  Helen looked back to the plastic boxes, now noticing they were all carefully numbered. She took box #128. Hugh Wilfred was collecting; and this room was where he kept his trophies. She opened the lid almost dreading what she was going to find. Inside, the box contained a school photograph of the same young girl and something wrapped in cotton. She lifted the picture. The girl smiled to the camera in her school uniform. Dark hair, thick full lips in a smile. On the back of the image it read, ‘Wendy Sewell, Age 14, #128’.

  She put the photograph down and took the material from the box to unwrap, the sense of foreboding so powerful she almost didn’t want to know what artefact Hugh Wilfred had collected from Wendy Sewell, aged fourteen. “Good God!” She cried out.

  “What is it?” the locksmith asked. “What’s in the fabric?”

  “It’s not in the fabric,” she turned it to show. “It is the fabric.” In her gloved hands she unfurled the cotton underwear. She held the pants of a fourteen year old schoolgirl. All perfectly sealed in a plastic box with her photograph and name. Wendy Sewell, aged fourteen, photographed up her skirt, with her genitals on display in a changing room and then archived as girl number one hundred and twenty eight in a sick man’s pleasure room.

  ----- X -----

  The Nuremberg dial twitched. Tomaz sat at Heathrow airport staring at the artefact, the brass dial and needle making the tiniest tremble but not turning the way it should. Out of range. The Slenderman could only be detected within a few thousand meters.

  He called Germany.

  “Hallo. It is Tomaz.”

  “Where are you?” It was Oksana who answered.

  “I need to send something to Anke’s husband. I am at the post office but can’t remember his address.” It sounded like a convincing lie, but he was sure they would be able to hear the sound of the airport.

 
Oksana talked to Steffi, then to Fritz. They talked in the background until Fritz came on the telephone. “Tomaz, where are you?”

  “I need the address of Anke’s husband. Can you give me?”

  “Tomaz, you know you should not go into town alone. Are you coming home or do you want me to come and get you?”

  “Give me the address, Fritz. Then I am coming home.”

  In the airport, Tomaz wrote the address for Steven and Jemima’s home then hung up and went for a taxi.

  ----- X -----

  John Henry suspended his interview with William Warwick and moved on to Christopher Howell. The boy was also with his father and a family legal representative. He went through the formalities of recording the time and date and asked the school boy to explain in his own words what had happened.

  “I arrived early with my friends, William and Owen,” he began. “We planned to do some rugby practice. We didn’t want to put our coats on the wet grass so went inside to hang them up and that’s when we heard Mr Wilfred crying out. We went to his room and found him bleeding. There was blood spurting out of his neck and chest so we all tried to stem the flow. I went to get help and came back with Miss Woods… That’s what happened.”

  John Henry leaned back in his chair and stared at the kid for a moment. “Say that again,” he said.

  “I arrived early with my friends, William and Owen. We planned to do some rugby practice. We didn’t want to put our coats on the wet grass so went inside to hang them up and that’s when we heard Mr Wilfred crying out. We went to his room and found him bleeding. There was blood spurting out of his neck and chest so we all tried to stem the flow. I went to get help and came back with Miss Woods… That’s what happened.”

  It was precise. The same words, the same manner, the same self-satisfied and barely disguised grin on his face. Henry took a piece of paper used for taking statements and asked him again. “Say that one more time. I want to write it down.”

  Christopher said the words again. He said them exactly the same.

  Henry stared at him for a moment then suspended the interview. “Excuse me for a moment.”

  He left the room and walked back to the cells. “I want to speak with the first kid, Warwick,” he said to the gaoler, “I don’t need him in an interview room, just a quick question.” The gaoler walked Henry to the cell and opened the hatch. “William,” he called. The boy was stretched out on the bench as though sleeping.

  “Yes?”

  “Can you tell me once more what happened? You got to school, then what?

  William Warwick turned himself to a seated position. “I told you already. I arrived early with my friends, Christopher and Owen. We planned to do some rugby practice. We didn’t want to put our coats on the wet grass so went inside to hang them up and that’s when we heard Mr Wilfred crying out. We went to his room and found him bleeding. There was blood spurting out of his neck and chest so we all tried to stem the flow. Christopher went to get help and came back with Miss Woods… That’s what happened.”

  John Henry looked at the statement from Christopher as William spoke. It was the same words. It was verbatim. They were saying the same prepared and rehearsed words. This wasn’t just a murder, they’d rehearsed their alibi so well they were speaking it like song lyrics. Their crime had planning and preparation. It was premeditated, a joint enterprise.

  As Henry walked back to the interview with Christopher the gaoler stopped him. “There’s a message for you. The CEOP woman wants you to call her. She says it’s urgent.”

  John Henry went back to the detective's office and pulled up her number. “Helen, it’s John Henry.”

  “John,” she said. “I’m at Hugh Wilson’s house… We’ve found something.”

  ----- X -----

  “Another computer?” Martin said. Helen awkwardly handed the desktop machine. It was wrapped in a clear evidence bag. She handed over a second bag filled with DVD archive discs. “Not another missing girl, I hope?”

  “No. This is worse.” She left without elaborating and headed straight to Donovan’s office. His P.A. was sitting outside. “I need to speak with the Super,” Helen said as she took a seat. “And it’s urgent.”

  “He’s in a meeting right now. How urgent is it?”

  “It could end up on the six o’clock news.” Donovan’s office had a glass wall with blinds that were pulled closed, but inside she could see the shape of a big man sitting opposite the desk. “Is that John Henry in there?” The P.A. nodded. “Then they’re probably talking about the same thing. Could you interrupt him to let him know I’m here, please?”

  The P.A. called through. “You can go in,” she said.

  “Helen,” Donovan motioned her to a seat beside Henry. “John said you found a pervert stash.”

  “I went to the home of Hugh Wilfred and found hundreds of indecent images of schoolgirls along with their underwear. The photographs are from fixed positions that I suspect were taken from concealed cameras in a classroom and the sports changing room.”

  John Henry swivelled in his chair. “Concealed cameras?”

  “Yes. At least two positions in his class and one in the wall of the changing room. He has literally hundreds of images in photographic albums and each one is meticulously dated and appears beside an official school photograph… It’s… unbelievable… A school photo book that contains the headshot of the girl, an upskirt shot, plus any he has in the changing room… and there are hundreds of victims going back years… then there are hundreds of little plastic boxes containing underwear, labelled and catalogued to the album images.”

  Donovan held a stoic deadpan expression for a few seconds. “This will turn into a firestorm… The press already say we were too slow to investigate the disappearances.”

  “We were on it within hours,” Helen said defensively. “We had the timeline but without any physical clues we did the only thing we could do which is talk to her friends and look at the online footprint.”

  Donovan raised a hand, signifying that he knew and understood the argument. “I’ll need to craft a press release. We have a lot of people working on this now which is what the public will want to hear. We’ve also got the three boys who we’re trying to decide whether should go into remand.” He paused to muse something for a moment then spoke to John Henry. “Sexual revenge,” he said. “This guy Wilfred is secretly photographing young kids or messing with children. The boys feel violated, driven to rage.”

  “There is nothing with boys,” Helen said. “The photographs are exclusively young girls, not boys.”

  “These boys are off the scale weird anyway,” John Henry said. “There is clear evidence of collusion… You said there were hidden cameras in the class. Are they static or video?”

  “I’ve only seen printed photographs so far.”

  “What do you want to do with the boys?” Donovan asked.

  “Release on bail and put under surveillance,” Henry replied. “Let’s see if they telephone or communicate with one another.” He turned to Helen. “I’m keen to look at the crime scene. Do you think it’s possible to identify the location of the cameras?”

  “Yes,” Helen said. “It would be.”

  ----- X -----

  The school was now swamped by press vehicles and police vehicles. John Henry led Helen to the forensics changing tent to put on white disposable suits, shoe covers and rubber gloves. Helen had brought one of the photo albums.

  “You don’t need a mask,” the lead forensic officer said as they approached the room. “But make sure your hood is up to cover your hair.”

  “There are hundreds of kids at this school,” Henry mumbled to Helen. “Good luck identifying loose hair.”

  They entered the room to see a wide patch of blood that had dried to a brown crusty stain. “That’s a lot of blood,” Helen said. It was splashed across the desks. Although the body had been removed, the remaining stains made her feel queasy.

  “It’s even on the ceiling,” Henry s
aid pointing. “That’s cast off. He was stabbed so fast the blood was thrown up in the air.”

  Helen broke the seal on the evidence bag to take the photo album out and noticed that her hands were shaking. “This is what he was collecting,” she said thinly. She showed the photos of smiling young girls in their school uniforms. Oblivious. Cheesy grins to the camera then beside them other photographs up their skirts. From cotton pants to silk thongs and those wearing nothing. Camel toes, pubic hair, the wings of panty liners for those on their period. Some images were seated, some were standing as though the girls straddled the camera. Nobody could know that a man was collecting them into a pleasure collection.

  “Oh, you are kidding me…” Henry said. “Oh, Jesus Christ in heaven… What the hell?”

  Helen scrutinised John Henry’s body language. He stepped his weight onto the back foot, he raised a hand across his mouth. He could look at the blood stains from a man whose eyes were gouged out with chisels, but the thought of that man looking up girl’s skirts repulsed him. “Look at the camera angle on these,” she said pointing to the seated pictures. The girl’s legs could be seen as could the classroom.

  Henry scrutinised the images for a second then looked around the room. He walked to the front of the class with his back to the blackboard then dropped to his knees. Putting himself at the level of the camera. His eyes rolled to the left to look at Hugh Wilfred’s school desk. Big and heavy, hand crafted. “It’s in the desk,” he said. He practically tossed the chair aside. “The picture was taken from here.”

  There were drawers on one side of the desk, a cupboard on the other. Helen opened the drawers and took them out of the unit whilst Henry opened the cupboard and began emptying it of books. The drawers contained pens and pencils. Paperwork. The books were on woodworking techniques. “Do you see anything?” She asked.