Slenderman, Slenderman, Take this Child

by McGeorge, Lee

  Helen typed quickly. Balfour read the message. “How do we find Slenderman?”

  Jemima’s hand continued in a circle as though she hadn’t heard the question. Balfour asked again and the result was the same.

  “Is Max, Slenderman?”

  Jemima’s scrawl went jagged. “Sometimes.”

  “Does Slenderman have another name?”

  Jemima’s answer was, “Yes.”

  “And what is his name?”

  The girl breathed deeply as her eyes fluttered closed. Her hand broke the swirl to write a new name.

  Balfour read the name aloud. “Jacob.”

  ----- X -----

  Balfour was probing Jemima with simple questions that validated what they knew from the crime scene. She repeated her own statement, that she had murdered her father, removed his heart with the knife and gave it to Slenderman, but nothing illuminated the mystery. All they had was the ramblings of a young girl that made little sense.

  “Where are the boys?” Balfour asked. “William, Owen and Christopher?”

  ‘In the forest,’ she wrote.

  “Which forest?”

  ‘Slenderman’s forest,’ her reply.

  It was the same impenetrable story, but over time it became clear that the narrative made perfect sense to Jemima. She really believed what she was communicating.

  Helen typed a question to Balfour. ‘Ask her about Max. Try and get some history.’

  “I’d like to ask you about Max,” Balfour said. “You said he was dead, but when did he die?”

  Jemima wrote, ‘1929’

  “And where did he live?”

  Her answer was, ‘Berlin.’

  “How did he die?” Jemima’s hand drawing the circle slowed as though in deep thought, then began to scratch out an answer. Balfour removed the page from under her pen and read the note several times as he deciphered the scrawl of writing. “Sacrifice to Jacob,” he said as he looked to the window.

  Helen typed another message.

  Balfour read it aloud. “Jemima, can you tell me about the Eye of Satan?”

  She scrawled something rapidly, her hand jerking fiercely. Balfour took the page and turned to the window again as he read it out. “Jacob is Eye.”

  Helen typed another message. ‘Ask her if Max killed himself with the Eye of Satan called Jacob.’

  Balfour glanced to the window, his expression quizzical, but he read it verbatim and Jemima scrawled the answer, ‘Yes’.

  Helen typed another message. ‘Ask what happened to Max after he killed himself. Ask where he is now.’

  Jemima wrote her answer and Balfour read it aloud. “He joined with Jacob.” Balfour paused for a second then asked his own question. “Jemima, are Max and Jacob together as one person?” She scrawled on the page the word, ‘Yes’, then of her own accord her hand started writing further, importing some other nugget of information. Balfour turned the page around and read the words. “Together they are Slenderman.”

  Helen typed the message, ‘Show her the Nuremberg dial’.

  “Jemima, I want you to open your eyes just a little to look at what I’m holding. Do you know what this is?”

  Jemima’s hand gripped the pencil fiercely until it snapped, her eyes widening, her breathing increasing as her body began shifting straighter. From somewhere deep within her a voice growled up. Dark and resonant, the voice came through the speakers in Helen’s room like they were crackling and distorting. “Give this to Helen…” she growled. “Give this to Helen…”

  “And what does Helen do with it?”

  Jemima’s back arched as she squirmed in the chair, the tray falling from her lap, the blank pages falling to the floor. “Helen… Hellllllllen… Give to her.”

  “Jemima, why is this important. Tell me what this is for?”

  Suddenly Jemima rocked forward, her head bowing down to her knees then raising up to show a girl under incredible strain. Her face was red, her throat tight. Her breathing strained as she gasped for air. “It points to Slenderman, to the children” Jemima yelled. “Give it to Helen… She can find Slenderman at my school.” Then she screamed loudly and shrilly, her right hand grabbing over her mouth whilst her left hand wrapped around her right wrist as though trying to pull it away.

  Balfour leapt out of his chair towards her and yelled, “Stand up,” and pulled her forward. Jemima was halfway to standing when he yelled, “SLEEP!” and pushed her head down. Jemima collapsed into the chair and went silent. Balfour looked to the window and said, “That’s enough for today. I’m going to need some time to relax her and make sure she’s fine.”

  Helen was about to type then realised it would be faster now to simply go next door. She entered the room with Balfour and the nurse. Jemima was sitting in the chair serenely, showing no trace of the scream from only a moment ago.

  “I need the dial,” Helen said. “I need the Nuremberg dial.”

  ----- X -----

  Helen drove to Highgate as the rain began. Her windscreen wipers squeaked and the headlights cut beams through the weather until she became trapped in slow traffic around Archway. She listened to the radio news as her car inched forward.

  “Police in North London are seeking three schoolboys wanted in connection with the murders of three men,” the newsreader said. “The boys were all students of Highgate Collegiate School where a teacher, Hugh Wilfred, was found dead yesterday.”

  The story cut away to the familiar voice of Donovan giving a press conference. “The boys, William Warwick, Owen McNally and Christopher Howell should not be approached. If you see these boys, you should dial nine-nine-nine and report their location.”

  The news switched to another story about an aide to the Deputy Prime Minister being arrested for having child pornography on his official government computer.

  “Is that it?” Helen mused on the lead story. “Twenty seconds? Is that all it’s worth?” The news had moved on again to sport and weather. Radio news was a sixty second recap.

  The car came to a traffic standstill on Highgate Hill and Helen used the break to get the Nuremberg dial from her handbag. What Jemima Collins had said sounded strange, but the instruction was clear. ‘Give it to Helen.’ It felt personal.

  Helen opened the dial and noticed the needle pointing roughly in the direction of the school.

  Could it be true? Could what Jemima Collins said have an element of truth about it? If not one hundred percent true, could it have some elements of honesty? She said this dial pointed to Slenderman and the children. She said she could find Slenderman at her school. It should have sounded crazy, but right now the crazy was just the surface. Underneath it all there had to be logic. There had to be some kind of twisted reality below the theatrics.

  The traffic started to move and Helen laid the dial on the seat beside her. A car behind beeped its horn when she failed to move with the traffic flow. It barely mattered. She drove only another ten meters before the traffic stopped her again.

  The school. She would go to the school now just to eliminate the possibility. Just because Jemima Collins said the children were there didn’t mean they were. Just because she said the dial pointed to Slenderman didn’t mean that it did… After all, was there even such persons as Slenderman, Jacob and Max? Eventually Helen knew the truth would be unveiled and they’d find some ordinary criminal hiding behind mystery. Just because this case involved occult knives and antique Nuremberg dials didn’t make it supernatural… did it?

  At the top of the hill, Helen turned off the main road and entered the leafy suburbs of Highgate Village. The wind was picking up, the weather turning blustery and wet. She stopped the car by the gates of the school and picked up the dial. The needle pointed straight towards the front door.

  ‘It points to Slenderman and the children,’ Jemima had said. ‘Give it to Helen,’ she had said. ‘She can find Slenderman at my school.’

  Helen put the dial in her pocket and took her mobile phone from her handbag in case she needed
to use the flashlight. She got out of the car feeling the wind and rain lash at her and walked towards the school gates. On the other side she saw the ground floor of the school had been boarded up. They said they would mothball the school and had done so quickly. All of the ground floor windows were covered in wood to stop anyone breaking in. Helen opened the Nuremberg dial and checked it again. The needle pointed directly at the school. It swayed a little.

  “Are you looking for the children?” asked a woman’s voice.

  Helen almost shrieked as a shrouded figure came up to the other side of the railings. “Jesus,” she yelped, catching her breath.

  “He has them… I have seen him.”

  Helen looked at the figure on the other side of the railings. It was the vagrant woman. The one she’d met on the day she arrested Jemima. The woman wore a black dress with a shroud over her head, her clothes visibly soaked through. “Are you alright?” Helen called. “You’ll end up sick if you stay out in this weather.”

  The woman lifted the shroud to reveal a face wrinkled prematurely. “He has the children. I have seen him.”

  “Who has the children?” Helen asked.

  “The tall one. He is tall and thin and he brings three girls into the school… I can show you where, but you must come now.”

  Deeper and deeper. Into the rabbit hole we go.

  This couldn’t be a coincidence, could it? Jemima screaming that she would find the children at her school, a strange occult compass that points the way and now a creepy vagrant woman saying a tall man has the children.

  “Tell me,” Helen said firmly, “what did you see?”

  “See?” the vagrant said. “I see the tall man. Come now and see him yourself. I will show you.” The woman backed away from the iron railings and began beckoning with a hooked finger. “Come. Come and see.”

  Helen tried the gate. Locked. The woman was still backing away and beckoning her. “I can’t get in,” Helen said. She looked up at the school and at precisely the right moment a flash of lightning turned the black sky to a weak grey and illuminated the school. For a split second she would have sworn she saw three children pressed against the windows of the top floor. “Hey! Hey, come back,” Helen called to the woman. “Are the children there now? Are they up there?”

  The vagrant woman was stepping backwards slowly, the rain pouring around her, her hand still pressed out from under her shawl with a curled finger beckoning Helen.

  “Ah, crap.” She gripped the soaking wet railings and raised her foot to the first crossbar, climbing onto the gates. They swung under her weight, rocking backwards and forwards as she tried to climb them. Her suit was soaking through quickly as she pressed against the metal and her hands felt instantly dirty. Swinging her leg over the top was difficult and unladylike, but she managed and climbed down on the other side feeling the rain running through her hair and into the back of her collar.

  The vagrant lady was still stepping backwards.

  “Come here,” Helen said as she approached. “Come and talk to me.”

  “I show you,” the woman said. “I will show you where the tall man has the children.” The vagrant didn’t look at Helen but waited for her to catch up then turned on her heels and led the way. “He brings three girls here. He has them here… I hear them crying… I hear them screaming for help.” The woman took Helen around the side of the building and to a small stone staircase that dipped down to a basement fire door. Beside it was a small thin window that had been broken. Unseen by the mothball crew, this entryway into the building hadn’t been covered, or if it had, someone else had opened it. “He is in there,” she said. “Listen… I can hear them…” She was pointing at the broken window. “Can you hear them? Listen...”

  Between the rush of wind Helen heard something. A voice. A young girl’s voice. She climbed onto the stone window ledge in the staircase and poked her head through the broken window. It was pitch black. She took her phone and turned on the light. A basement plant room of some kind. Boilers and pipes. “Hello?” she yelled.

  Then it came… tiny… imperceptible… a voice back from somewhere inside the school. “Hello,” it cried out frightened. “Hello, help me… Help me!” There was a girl in there. There was a young girl somewhere in the building.

  “Do you hear it?” the vagrant woman asked. “He brought the children here.”

  ----- X -----

  Helen climbed through the window head first, reaching her hands down to place her mobile phone onto a work surface. The basement had huge boilers and pumping equipment. It was silent and dark except for the light coming from her phone.

  Helen fell through the window and landed awkwardly onto a bench below but managed to roll off and get to her feet. The vagrant woman stared in through the opening above, her head covered in the shroud. “Some more police are going to be coming,” Helen said to her. “I want you to show them where I am.”

  The woman didn’t respond. She stood in the rain getting wet, her head covered, her body unmoving.

  Helen looked around the basement and spotted the exit. It was a fire door with a ‘push-to-open’ bar. She pressed it and found it led into the school by the end of a corridor. With all of the windows boarded the place was pitch black except for an emergency exit light further down the corridor. As Helen moved inside the door slammed closed behind her. Immediately she saw her mistake. The door could open from the other side by pushing the bar, but from this side it needed a key. At first she thought she had nothing to worry about as the glowing green exit sign ahead pointed to a fire door that would open to outside, except when she got there she found it chained shut and the windows boarded over. “Oh, brilliant,” she cursed. “It’s Okay, Helen. Call it in, let them know where you are.”

  She looked at her phone screen.

  No signal.

  “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding.” She looked at the pitch black corridor ahead and shone her light. There were stairs heading up. Of course, she was in a basement, no wonder her phone had no signal. Head along the corridor, up the stairs and make the call.

  She walked the corridor with the light shining ahead and her shoes making a clicking sound on the stone floor until a sudden noise startled her. It sounded like machinery, perhaps an elevator. Did this school have an elevator?

  Then another sound, something breathy… It said her name… It said, ‘Helen’ or perhaps ‘hello’.

  She stopped and listened carefully. All she could hear was the sound of her own blood in her ears and for the first time in a very long time she felt genuinely scared. What the hell was she doing? She’d locked herself in a boarded up building without letting her colleagues know where she was and now she was hearing things moving in the dark.

  Idiot.

  She moved as silently as she could, listening to her surroundings. She pointed the phone light towards the end of the corridor and started walking faster.

  Another sound… Close by… The sound of a chair being moved, the legs scraping along the floor. It was followed by a peel of low laughter…

  Helen spun the light but saw nothing either way in the corridor. Her heart suddenly pounding in fight or flight mode. She jogged towards the stairs, rushing up them quickly but quietly and finding herself in a place that looked like the back of a theatre stage. Ropes and pulleys went up to the ceiling and vanished into blackness that the phone light couldn’t penetrate. There were pieces of wood painted with waves as though to make stage scenery.

  She checked her phone again. For a moment it had one bar of strength then the screen changed to the words ‘no signal’.

  Carefully she made her way through the scenery to find herself standing on a stage looking out over an assembly hall. Hundreds of chairs in neat rows below her as far as the light could reach.

  She must have been confused, she realised now. She thought she’d heard somebody calling help, but that could only have been from the basement room. There was no way a voice could have carried all the way from here, back along
that corridor and through the fire door. Had she imagined it? Never mind. She would get higher, go up a level, get a phone signal and call for help. She should have never come inside here alone.

  At the front of the stage she sat on the apron to get down. It was too creepy being here alone. In a pitch black assembly hall with boarded up windows. Surrounded by hundreds of empty seats and…

  ...“Help me!” a voice called.

  That was real. She hadn’t imagined that. It came from further ahead. She moved quickly through the hall to the doors at the other end and was just pushing the big glass swinging doors when a crash came from behind her, startling, terrifying. She jumped out of her skin as the noise jarred her bones. She turned and swung the light in time to see…

  Oh, my God…

  There was something there, at the stage. Something black and tall, moving in a fluid way as though waving blackened arms across the width of the room. It was black on black but it was there and as it moved it brought the unmistakable sound of chairs being pushed aside as it began to cross the hall towards her. “Helen…” it called in a breath.

  ----- X -----

  Helen ran as fast and hard as she could into another corridor, this one lined with classroom doors. Midway along the corridor she saw a staircase, a wide square of stairs with a central drop. She worked the phone, seeing the number for John Henry first.

  She ran as fast as her feet would take her, pressing the dial button the moment she saw her phone change from ‘no signal’ to two bars of strength. She grabbed the banister on the corners as she charged up the staircase.

  The telephone connected and began a slow ringing as a low growling sound came from the bottom of the stairs behind her.

  Ring, ring… Ring, ring…

  Then from above came a sudden cry of human voice. “Help us!” The voice of children. Helen spun her phone to point up and saw three children looking over the railing at the top of the staircase. Three girls, two white and one black. It was the girls, her girls. Sabina, Kerry and Danesha.