Slenderman, Slenderman, Take this Child

by McGeorge, Lee

  Henry made it to his feet and kicked the fuel can with all his might towards Slenderman. Jemima yelled, “Max!” as the can exploded. The effect was dramatic but short range, sending a huge ball of fire into the staircase and burning fuel falling to the ground floor, the plastic fuel can melting in mid-air and exploding into liquid fire.

  Henry heard Balfour scream. He was below, caught in the rain of heat, but so too was the Slenderman. His tendrils lashed out, reaching higher and pulling him up the stairwell.

  Jemima Collins made it to Henry’s level and leapt across a pool of burning fuel as the first of the smoke and fumes hit them. Choking, acrid gas burned Henry’s lungs and he dove to the floor for air and crawled as the girl dashed past him. He reached out to stop her, his hand brushing past her ankle.

  Henry made it back to his feet and climbed higher on the staircase. A raging heat billowed up through the stairwell as the second fuel can, left on the ground floor, was ignited and exploded in a huge fireball that rolled up the staircase.

  There was a scream. A terrible, sickening human scream of agony. With his hands held to shield his face, Henry looked across the edge to see Balfour in flames. The man was engulfed as his clothes trapped him in a searing heat that would flay his skin in moments. Amongst the flames he saw the man run, his shoulders and hair dragging fire as he moved.

  Then from above came another scream, but this time it was from a girl.

  Jemima perhaps, but it sounded different, more frightened.

  John Henry rushed up the staircase hoping against hope. Willing his body to move that the scream he’d heard was from the missing. “Help,” a voice called out. “Help us.”

  It was easier to see as he ascended. The darkness from outside was replaced by the burning of the central staircase which shone red and golden illumination along each corridor. The fire had taken hold solidly and the ceilings were thick with smoke. The fire was total. The building would be engulfed soon if not brought under control.

  The screams again. Closer. Above.

  Henry had to pull his jacket about his ears to protect himself from the heat. Then on the top floor, he saw it. He saw it all. But it was too hard to explain.

  Part of the corridor had given way to a forest. Doorframes had become tree trunks. Everything was in mist or smoke. His feet began splashing through mud and moisture. Pools of water up to his knees.

  Hallucination. It must be. The smoke, something in it, a chemical to twist his mind.

  Then through the trees he saw the outlined figure of the Slenderman, his foul stench hitting first before a tendril smashed at his chest and knocked him backwards onto solid ground. He was on the edge of a netherworld, his back on the concrete floor of the school whilst his feet were in a swampy puddle of a forest.

  The thing was moving between trees. Henry stood and staggered a few steps deeper into the forest to escape the heat of the burning school. The creature, three metres tall and striding on stilt-like legs rushed in with a tendril whip to the side of Henry’s head that knocked him face down into shallow water. It hit again, pressing his face to the surface, a foul stench of drains or decay surrounding him as the Slenderman’s blackened and bony fingers wrapped around his skull and pushed his face beneath the muddy swamp-water.

  Drowning.

  Bubbles rushed from his mouth and nose as weight crushed onto his back, collapsing his lungs, forcing the breath from him.

  He would drown if he didn’t fight back, but it was hopeless. The monster was strong. Powerful. It had killed Jemima’s father and uncle as they attempted to burn him… burn him… Burn Him!

  He was holding the gas lighter still.

  With his face submerged, Henry clicked the gas lighter and held it beside his ear where the Slenderman’s talon like grip had him. He couldn’t know whether the flame ignited but after a second the weight lifted as though it was sprung off and his face burst from the water.

  He found his feet. He circled in a stooped position with the lighter held ahead of him, a tiny flame no bigger than his thumbnail his only defence.

  The fire. The school. It was fading back in. This twilight neverworld of misted swamp faded away as the roaring flames rushed towards him but in a moment of waking nightmare, the tree trunks in the forest revealed themselves by fire to be screaming children. This forest was a graveyard of souls. The children had become tormented and twisted trees. Mute. Helpless. Poor little children. With each lick of fire the tree trunks appeared transparent with children trapped inside their glassy case. Locked for years, unable to speak about their torment until the fire revealed the crying and screaming.

  “Kill him!” Jemima yelled. “Kill him, Max. Do it now.”

  John Henry turned and ran, stumbling through mud and puddles towards the invisible line that split the forest of souls with the burning school. Jemima was on the precipice and Henry in rage, in fear and in fury, lashed out at her with an almighty punch that smashed her back into the school. “Come here you little bitch!”

  Now Jemima looked scared, stumbling backwards, her hands still in cuffs, her nose bleeding. Henry grabbed her and yanked the girl to her feet as he sensed the Slenderman rushing behind him; but the creature stopped short. Henry held Jemima by her hair and the collar of her dress as she shrieked and resisted, but the cuffed girl was no match for his strength.

  The Slenderman stood at the boundary of his world as Henry pushed Jemima back into the flaming corridor. The heat was too much. Too intense. The girl screamed as flames licked close to her. “Max… Hilf mir. Ich brenne.”

  The Slenderman reached out his arms towards her, but withdrew with the heat. He reached helplessly towards the girl, too afraid of the fire to step forward.

  “You want her?” Henry screamed. “Or shall I let her burn?” He pushed Jemima back towards the corridor feeling his hands burning. The fire singeing his hair. Blistering heat scorching them both, but it was Jemima who was taking the worst of it.”

  The Slenderman reached out his arms again to try and reach her, he stepped forward, then back, then forward… too afraid to leave his forest to save the girl.

  Jemima screamed and screamed. “Bitte Max. Hilf mir!”

  “Do you want her? Do you want her to burn?”

  The Slenderman turned his attention to Henry.

  “Give me back the girls. Give them to me now or she burns.” Jemima screamed again as a whoosh of heat made Henry duck and hold Jemima as a shield to cover him from the scorch. “Give me the girls or she dies in this fire.” Then Jemima went limp, fainting and falling to the floor as the corridor filled with smoke.

  The monster turned his gaze from Henry to Jemima then slowly stepped backwards into the forest, the scene becoming darker and clouded. Then out of the mist ran three naked girls. Sabina, Kerry and Danesha. John Henry dropped Jemima to run at the girls. He scooped them in his arms and pushed them to the side, away from the heat.

  The three girls cuddled together, crouched against the floor, backed into a corner, their arms entwined as the flames from the central staircase starting licking across the ceiling.

  The forest began fading into fire, but then through the smoke burst the Slenderman. It ran past him and the girls and into the corridor to rescue Jemima. Its body stooped over, its spindly arms reaching into the flames to drag her out. Long legs as thin as a broom handle, black tentacles of snake-like mist flowing about him. He lifted Jemima to his chest and cradled the unconscious girl, then turned and ran back to the forest. The monster looked over his shoulder once. He had Jemima held tightly against his chest. His head wrapped in a cloth bag. Then with a swirl of smoke, the forest disappeared and closed the portal to his otherworld.

  John Henry was alone in the burning school with the three girls.

  “Come with me.” He reached for the girls. He reached for the hand of Danesha but the girls were too frightened to stand or try to escape. They huddled tighter and screamed as smoke rose from their hair. He saw the ends of their hair frizzle and singe. He
watched as the outer dermis of Danesha’s face blister as she wailed in agony. Then Henry realised that his own coat was on fire.

  “Girls. Get up! NOW!”

  But they sat there.

  Smoke chugged into the space. It swirled around them, covering them for a moment, then blowing past in a way that made them seem to vanish as he dove for the floor to try and breathe.

  He looked again for the children, swinging his arms through the smoke, hoping to feel them, find them by touch. He could hear them screaming but the heat was too intense, the smoke stung his eyes and suffocated him. When he tried to open his eyes he saw both of his coat sleeves on fire.

  There was nothing he could do. Nothing. He couldn’t even see.

  Worse still, there was no way out of the inferno.

  He crawled along the floor to find the door of the last classroom. He stood and shouldered the door, breaking the lock. It was a science laboratory. He slammed the door behind him to create a fire break and pulled a desk over the door to seal the room inhaling a ragged breath of cleaner air as he brushed his sleeves to extinguish the flames on his clothing. His hands had gone a pinkish colour, the top layer of black skin burned away to the raw flesh beneath, but he didn’t feel any pain. There was too much adrenalin to feel the wound.

  Henry rushed to the window. The old iron frames didn’t open. He looked around and saw a model skeleton hanging from a metal frame. He lifted it and smashed it against the window, breaking the glass. He put his head through the window to look, gasping a breath of cool outside air. Four floors up. There was smoke billowing from cracks in the building. Flames came from a window on the first floor.

  A voice… “Would you leave your own daughter like that?” Henry spun expecting to see Jemima Collins but there was nothing. He was alone in the classroom… but it was her voice… the little bitch was alive somewhere… watching him...

  “Ignore her,” he whispered to himself.

  He had to get out, but how?

  There was a drainpipe. It was too far from this window, but there was a solid iron drainpipe by the last window. He grabbed the skeleton model and rushed to the other side of the class to smash it against the glass, sending splinters down to the playground. Henry reached out, his arms swinging in the air as he tried to make purchase but it was just too far away. He would have to jump for it.

  Jesus. What if it gave way? What if he missed?

  He climbed onto the nearest desk and kicked shards of glass away from the window frame then edged out of the building. He balanced on the tiny ledge and poised himself for the jump. If he missed his jump, death was certain.

  “Come on, John,” he whispered. “Come on, come on, you can do this…”

  He jumped. He tried to go straight for the drainpipe but being so tight against the wall he dragged his hands across the brickwork for the fraction of a second he was in mid-air. He jammed one hand behind the pipe and felt his bodyweight suddenly drag him down with a ferocious pull as he slapped his other palm against the pipe. His legs hit the drainpipe as well and he tried to grip the tube between his knees but the structure gave way and the pipe fractured, breaking under his weight, bending out from the top of the building.

  Henry half dropped and half slid down the pipe to the floor below as the top of the pipe came completely off the wall and leaned out over the building. The screws and fixings began to pop as the top heavy pipe buckled under his weight. He had to drop. He had to fall. He had to slide down the pipe in a roughly controlled descent. Not using the drainpipe to climb down, but rather using it to break his fall by letting it collapse as he hugged it.

  At halfway up the second floor the pipe changed to a horrible greasy and oily texture. Anti-climb paint. The hideous grease put on pipes to stop them being climbed. Henry felt his hands slip. He felt a fingernail snap off against a fixture and then lost his grip entirely.

  He hit the playground hard. The wind knocked from him, the back of his head smacking the concrete… but he was alive and he was out of the building.

  ----- X -----

  John Henry could hear the first sirens approaching. He rolled onto his front and staggered to his feet. The building was ablaze on all floors and the sky was illuminated from the roof. It must have burned through quickly and now shone orange and golden hues onto the clouds.

  The first blue flashing light was a police car. He staggered towards it, still looking up to the roof until he noticed the burned and smouldering corpse of Doctor Balfour by the entranceway. He wasn’t moving. He wasn’t breathing. He was face down on the playground with most of his clothes burned away and his skin underneath peeled and red. Henry didn’t have to look further to know he hadn’t survived.

  “Jesus, get on the floor!” shouted a uniformed constable who started patting him down and pulling his coat off him. Was he on fire? The policeman was treating him like he was on fire. Henry staggered forward another step then dropped to his knees.

  “Is there anybody inside the building? Can you hear me? Is there anybody else inside?”

  There were three girls… perhaps… or was it an illusion? He wouldn’t say anything. Somehow he knew not to say anything, to get his story straight first… but what was his story?

  Jemima Collins said the children were at the school. He and Balfour had come to investigate. Don’t mention the monster. Pretend that didn’t happen. Institutions like theirs didn’t understand monsters.

  The door was open, they went inside, then the building caught fire but he didn’t know how. He was upstairs in the building looking to see if anybody was there when it went up in flames.

  It was a good story. A safe story. It didn’t open the can of worms that telling the truth would open. That was the right thing to do. Brush the truth under the carpet and carry on as normal. Just pretend it hadn’t happened. Just tell yourself it’s nonsense. Just ignore it and hope it goes away.

  EPILOGUE

  Adalbert’s wealth bequeathed to the Circle of the Eyes was lost to Weimar hyperinflation. Their group was shattered by the Second World War. The Eyes of Satan secreted away by members of the Circle. It would have appeared that Maximilian Adalbert and the Circle of the Eyes had been forgotten until Adalbert’s diary and the Eye of Elijah were discovered in a trove of occult materials by Italian forces in 1946. It was believed that the Eye of Elijah was given to the Vatican, however the diary itself was handed to a library in Domodossola, a small town on the Italian Swiss border. It remained here for many years and would have remained of little interest had it not been for the sudden disappearance of many children and sightings of a tall and thin man.

  One eyewitness account comes from the librarian of the time who claims to have spoken with the tall man. Matteo Barnardo wrote a letter to the Chief of Police saying he had seen an impossibly tall and thin man by the library and challenged him to identify himself. He claims the tall man said, “I am Jacob with Maximilian. Together we have made the dark handshake.”

  The diary of Maximilian Adalbert was stolen from the library of Domodossola in 1959. Its current whereabouts are unknown.

  Excerpt from The Dark Handshake

  by Tomaz Karner

  --- EPILOGUE ---

  Mary Hoxton was alone in her sitting room when the doorbell rang. She was wearing her tennis whites. Short skirt, white trainers, white tennis shirt. She was watching her favourite collection of Wimbledon moments. A tennis racket was close by on the sofa.

  She didn’t play very well. Not now that she was old; but she still enjoyed watching pretty young girls in their prime. White girls, of course. Not the black ones.

  The doorbell rang again.

  She was in little mood to be disturbed. Her future was still undecided. She was a few years from retirement. Perhaps too close to be taken on by another school. Maybe they would offer her early retirement.

  She got out of her chair. Irritated. Who on earth could be calling at this hour?

  She unlocked the door and swung it open with a stern call to her voic
e. “Yes. Hello?”

  For a moment she thought there was nobody there. Then she was hit in the chest with such force it knocked her to her back and slid her across the floor. There was a man at her door, huge in height, his knees bending and his back hunching over so he could squeeze through the tiny doorway.

  Hoxton was on her feet faster than a woman her age had any right to be and she ran back into the home, heading for the kitchen and the back door of the house, but something grabbed her. Dark tendrils of smoky energy wrapped around her ankles to trip her, smashing her face against the floor then dragging her backwards as her fingernails scrambled and clawed at the floor to stop the drag. It was too much, too powerful. The man behind had her. He dragged her backwards and somehow squeezed her back to the lounge, throwing her to a seated position on the sofa.

  The Slenderman stood behind the chair and grabbed her wrists with blackened bony fingers.

  Hoxton tipped her head back to look up at the thing behind the chair. The man wore some kind of sacking over his face. His arms were long and wiry, his fingers coiled like snakes. She would have screamed if not for the sight of a young girl stepping into the room. “Who are you?” she managed to say.

  “Who am I?” the girl whispered. “I’m the one you bullied and tormented.”

  “Who?” Hoxton demanded, perhaps grasping at the vague recognition. “Tell me who you are.”

  “I used to be Jemima Collins. I was at your school… and you were a bully to me.”

  “Jemima…” Hoxton recognised the name before she recognised the face. She looked back up to the Slenderman gripping her wrists and tears began streaming from her eyes. “Please…” she said it almost begging. “What do you want?”