“Stay there,” Helen tried to cry out but it came as a gasp.
“Hello, John Henry, speaking.”
“JOHN!” Helen yelled into the phone. “HELP. It’s Helen. I’m at the girl’s school in Highgate… Can you hear me?”
The low growl from behind grew in intensity whilst the children looking over the railings suddenly withdrew, their faces turning pale and serious. Danesha reached an arm over the railings to point. “He’s behind you,” she said.
Helen continued rushing up the stairs but noticed the stairwell filling with mist and a strange otherworldly light. “JOHN!” She yelled into the phone. “JESUS CHRIST, JOHN. HELP ME!”
“Where are you?” John Henry’s voice came back. “Did you say you were at the school?”
“YES… I’m trapped in the school with…” Then Helen fell silent as the phone was ripped from her hand by an icy cold whip of mist. Blackness moved up the stairwell. It didn’t follow the stairs, rather it floated up in the space between them, with dark tendrils reaching out to grab at the railings and raise the mass of a body. It climbed the space like an octopus, reaching out to grab the higher railings and pull itself up until it passed Helen on the staircase. Then with the fluidity of smoke spun itself around and across the bannister to face her on the staircase. It was a man… It was the Slenderman.
----- X -----
John Henry listened to the phone. He heard Helen screaming, then perhaps she was laughing, then screaming again. For a moment it sounded like all the action had stopped until she screamed again, the shriek becoming so high pitched that no sound registered. Then the phone went to deep breathing.
Breaths… in… and out…
“Helen?” Henry asked.
“Noooo,” the voice on the other end whispered.
“Who is this?” Henry demanded.
“Jaaaaacob,” came the whisper.
“Is Helen safe? She is a police officer. If you harm her you will…”
“...I have her,” the voice whispered.
John Henry swallowed hard. “And what do you want?” he asked.
The voice on the other end breathed heavily for a few breaths then whispered. “I want your soul.”
And then the line went dead.
----- X -----
John Henry flew down the stairs and was into his car within sixty seconds. He drove hard, his phone on hands-free as he called the control room. “Officer needs urgent assistance at Highgate Collegiate School. Highgate Village!” His car fishtailed on a corner and clipped the wing mirror of a stationary vehicle.
He saw a woman in a black dress with a dark shawl over her head walking through the rain. He saw the school and hit the brakes, skidding the car to a halt. Helen had said she was inside the school but the building looked like it was boarded up.
Henry climbed the gates and began circling the building, looking up at the structure, the rain stinging his eyes. Surely she wasn’t inside as she had said; it was boarded and locked. There was no way that…
“John!”
He turned to the sound. Helen held herself against the wall with one hand. Her clothes were ripped to shreds, the skirt to her suit was missing and she clung to her blouse and jacket across her breasts. “Jooooohn!” she screamed with a wail.
He ran to her… she was bleeding from her mouth and a cut above her eye. He caught her as the last of her strength failed and she toppled forward. “Okay, I got you Helen… Where is he, where’s the guy?”
“He… he… he...,” she whispered.
“He, what? Helen, where is he?”
“It’s Slenderman,” she gasped. “He’s in the school… and he has the girls with him.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
The preparation for suicide is laid out over several months of diary entries. The Circle of the Eyes granted Adalbert an Eye and he writes in his diary he was allowed to choose from the twelve. There is no explanation as to why he chose Jacob. In one of his final entries, Adalbert writes, “I have passed my instructions to the Circle that they shall inherit everything of value. I shall leave behind my all to them with gratitude that they gift me the means to reunite with Silke.”
The final entry to his diary is a single line dated November 22nd, 1929. It reads, “Tonight is my last in this realm, for tomorrow I search the netherworld for my love.”
Excerpt from The Dark Handshake
by Tomaz Karner
--- CHAPTER EIGHT ---
Jonathan Granville was walking his dog, Ivan, along the nature trail of Parkland Walk. It had turned into a mud bath after last night’s downpour and this early in the morning the sky was as miserable as the ground underfoot. Ivan the dog carried a tennis ball in his mouth for the inevitable game of fetch once they reached the park, but this morning they wouldn’t get there.
At the old railway platforms, a disused footbridge had a grisly addition.
“Oh, my Jesus, mother and Mary,” Granville exclaimed. He stopped and rooted to the spot. Ivan the dog dropped the tennis ball by his feet, perhaps expecting it to be thrown.
There was a body hanging from the bridge. It looked like a woman in a black dress. Her head was covered in a shawl and her neck was cinched to only a few inches in width. Granville stared, unsure what to do. He knew he should call the police or the ambulance or someone… but… Good, God, there was a body hanging from the footbridge.
He heard a sound from behind. Splashes through puddles as a cyclist came closer. He turned to see a man on a mountain bike. Somebody else. Somebody else to share the scene with.
Granville waved his arms. “Help… Can you stop, please?”
The cyclist saw Granville, then the body a moment later. “Is that a person?” the man on the bike shouted.
“I think so.”
The man rode his bike up to the side of the pathway then ran and climbed into the abandoned footbridge as though he was going to release the noose and let the body drop. Granville hadn’t thought of that. He hadn’t thought that the person could still be alive. That they might be saved if first-aid was administered quickly enough.
The cyclist stopped when he got a closer look. He retreated slightly and in a softer voice called down from the bridge, “Have you called the police?”
“Not yet. I arrived a moment before you did.”
“Call them,” the man said weakly.
“Is she dead?”
The cyclist climbed down from the footbridge and carefully circled the body to look at her back. He clasped two hands over his mouth as he stared. Granville called the police and spoke to the control room. “Hello,” he said thinly into the phone. “I’d like to report a suicide.” As he walked around the suspended body he realised he was wrong. This wasn’t a suicide. It was murder. The back of the woman’s dress was split and into her ashen grey skin, words had been cut with a sharp tool. Her hands, he saw, were not hanging limply by her side, but were tied with rope around the wrists, the rope then looped around her waist to fix her hands by her side.
Before she was hanged, somebody had bound this woman’s hands and cut a message into her flesh.
----- X -----
“So how serious were Helen’s injuries?” Donovan was nursing a coffee. John Henry was leaning forward in the chair with his elbows rested on his knees. He was tired. “Physically her injuries looked superficial, bruising, facial swelling, but she was terrified… She was terrified beyond belief.”
“Terrified of what?”
“Slenderman… she said Slenderman raped her…”
“So what happened with the ambulance crew?”
Henry raised his hands. “She became hysterical, Sir. The ambulance took her to Whittington and they transferred her to St. Ann’s directly. She was screaming and fighting with the paramedics. Once we had people at the scene she wanted to go back into the school to find the girls.”
“But you didn’t find anything, no?”
“Nothing,” Henry said. “I’ve been there all night with twelve uniform and the s
chool caretaker. The building was searched top to bottom. It’s a big place. It’s taken all night, but there’s not a trace of the children or anybody else.”
“But you spoke to somebody on the phone?”
“I did,” Henry said. “I could hear Helen screaming in the background and a man spoke with me on the phone. He said his name was Jacob.”
----- X -----
Henry was pulling on his coat. He should have finished yesterday evening and gone home. He’d worked all night and needed rest.
“John,” one of the clerks working on deep-background called out to him. “I think you need to take this call.” The officer held out the handset.
“What is it?”
“The Coroner at Whittington. An old woman was found murdered this morning. The coroner says her body has names carved into her skin… It’s the names of our missing children.”
----- X -----
The cadaver was stretched out on a steel table under bright white lights. “How old is she?” Henry asked. The room had a strong, clinical smell. He was glad. He suspected it masked the smell of the corpse.
“Hard to say.” The Coroner, a black lady with a crisp English accent worked the body methodically. “From her skin she looks almost sixty, but I’m guessing she could be younger. You see these red marks on her? They’re flea bites. Her clothes were infested with them. Her skin is aged and weathered from rough living. When I open, I can look at the erosion where the ribs meet the sternum; that will give us a more accurate age than what we see in the skin.”
The coroner got to work with a camera, photographing the scars and cuts to the woman. Her physical condition was appalling. Dirt was ground into her skin and her ankles had peeling flesh where they had been scratched raw. Her legs had a fine layer of hair and her toenails were yellowed and ingrown. Henry felt queasy just looking at her feet.
At the other end of the body her neck was pinched so tightly it looked as though he would be able to wrap his finger and thumb around it. Her lips had turned blue on an ashen face and her right eyeball had popped in a bloody starburst around the pupil. The Coroner looked through the woman’s hair on her head, then moved down to pick apart and examine her pubic hair. “She has a terrible lice infestation. She is practically crawling with them.”
Henry took a step back and hummed an acknowledgement whilst taking his eyes away for a moment.
The coroner called for assistance and with the help of a male nurse rolled the body over to look at her back. The woman’s buttocks were bony and crusted with dried blood. Henry thought he saw a flea jump. “I think this is what you want to see,” the Coroner said.
Henry took a deep inhalation then held his breath as he stepped forward. Words were cut deeply into the vagrant’s back. King. Powell. Pierce. “Ahhh, Jesus.” He looked away from the words and noticed the vertebrae of the neck at the pinch point. “Is her neck broken?” he asked.
The coroner felt along the neck. “I don’t think so. She was hung slowly so as not to break the neck. I would say she slowly choked and asphyxiated.”
“And what about the words? Were they scored into her after death or before?”
The coroner examined the wounds more closely and pulled one apart, looking for some medical clue. “I would say before death. If you notice the blood stains are all below the injury. This woman was probably in an upright position when cut. The blood has run down her body. Judging by the level of blood loss, her heart was still beating whilst it happened.”
Henry took a deep breath. “What if we imagine she was in the noose, but perhaps still standing on the floor. Someone cut these names into her back whilst she was still standing, then hoisted her to choke and die… Could that be right?”
The coroner nodded. “That matches the injuries, yes.”
----- X -----
John Henry took a coffee in the public cafeteria of Whittington Hospital. He was exhausted. He’d been at work almost twenty four hours.
He wanted to call Chantelle, his daughter. He wanted to see if she was alright. She’d hung up on him the last time. A stupid girl in love with the wrong man. A girl whose mother was poisoning her affection towards him.
Helen was on his mind. He kept seeing her staggering from the school, her hair soaked through, her bare feet walking through puddles as she clung to shreds of clothing. Helen said Slenderman attacked her. Then a woman was slowly murdered. Choked in a noose whilst her skin was sliced to spell the names of the children.
He would need to speak with Helen but she was sectioned. A frightening coincidence that young Jemima Collins was sectioned under the Mental Health Act, then Helen Mayhew straight after.
There was a crazy pattern to these illogical things. Somehow. Underneath the veneer there had to be some kind of horrible secret to explain the irrational he was seeing. Helen and Jemima were shouting about a monster called Slenderman and both had been deemed crazy and locked away. Nobody believed them. They were screaming it and then told to be quiet, locked away and branded insane. That’s what happens when you speak out… they lock you up.
He took out his phone and made the call. The voice mail answered, “Hey, this is Chan, leave me message, ya gets me?”
He paused for a few seconds after the beep, trying to find the words. “Hi Chantelle, it’s your father. I just wanted to check in and make sure you’re okay.” God, this was hard. Would she play it back or just delete the message? Would she just delete him from her life? “I know you might still be upset with me, but… Ahh, I don’t know. Look, I’m still your dad and I still love you. If you want to talk, or if you need anything just give me a call… I love you, Chantelle… Bye.”
To hell with it all.
Seriously… to hell.
Antique knives of the occult. Missing children. Creepy men talking on Helen’s phone… Her phone. Her Phone… What happened to her telephone? He spoke to a man last night. A man had the phone, not Helen. So where was that phone now? He began making a list of leads in his notebook.
Where is Helen’s phone?
Speak to Helen.
Speak to Jemima Collins.
Have the books of Tomaz Karner translated.
Identify the hanged woman.
He called Helen’s mobile. It rang and rang, then went to voicemail. He ended the call and dialled the incident room. “Hi, this is John Henry. Do we know what happened to Helen’s telephone? Was it found?”
“I don’t think so,” the officer said. “One moment.” There was the sound of the phone being passed.
“John? It’s Donovan.”
“Yes, Sir.” Henry shook his head to wake up.
“We think we’ve identified your body. She is well known around Highgate Village as a vagrant called Erin. We don’t know much more than that, but can you head up to Highgate and ask around, see if anybody knew her background? I appreciate you’ve been on this all night; but as you’re there?”
Henry shook his head as though saying, no, but then said. “Yes, Sir. I’ll do that now… Oh, by the way, do we know what happened to Helen’s telephone?”
“Her phone?”
“We didn’t find it at the school… Phones are traceable, right?”
“Yes,” Donovan affirmed. “So long as it’s turned on. Why?”
“Because the last person using it wasn’t Helen.”
----- X -----
John Henry didn’t have to ask very far to pick up details on the Highgate Vagrant. “Oh, we call her The Witch,” the ladies in the hair salon said. “She always wears black and has a shawl over her head. Has she done something wrong?”
“I think her name is Erin,” said a waiter outside the bistro. “We sometimes find her looking through our rubbish for food but I’ve been told she’s a millionaire who lost her mind.”
Another store, another story. “I’ve had this newsagents for almost twenty years and she’s been around for as long as I have. When she was younger she used to drive a white Mercedes convertible. She used to fashion herself
like Audrey Hepburn and was a good looking woman. God only knows what happened to her. I think her name is Erin.”
The pub landlord said, “She started to change some years ago. She owned a beautiful home near St. Michael’s Church on South Grove. She might even still bed down in the area because you always see her ‘round there.”
John Henry walked the short distance from the village to St. Michael’s Church but found that part of the road lacking shops or even anybody to ask. The front door to the church was open and tradesmen in white overalls were carrying scaffold inside. Henry looked in to see the men assembling scaffold on one side of the pews.
“Can I help you,” came a voice. An older man, a reverend with white hair at the temples and bald on top stepped forward. He was an English cliché. The parish vicar of a quaint country village hidden in North London.
“Yes. Perhaps you can,” Henry said as he showed his credentials. “I’m trying to trace a lady who is seen often in these parts. I believe her name is Erin and she is a homeless, street person who…”
“I know, Erin,” The vicar said. “I know her well. But she isn’t homeless. Goodness knows, she dresses it, poor girl, but she’s not without means.”
“Do you know where she lived?”
“She lives next door. Or at least in the out building. A very strange situation. She owns the whole building and rents it out, but chooses to live in the garage rather than the home itself… Is there some trouble?”
Slenderman, Slenderman, Take this Child Page 21