Title Page
SLENDERMAN, SLENDERMAN
And Other Terrifying Tales
by
Jack Goldstein
Publisher Information
Published in 2012 by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
The right of Jack Goldstein to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998
Copyright © 2012 Jack Goldstein
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Any person who does so may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
Disclaimer: The author and the publisher can accept no responsibility for heart conditions or any other medical issue caused by the reading of these stories
Author’s Note
When I was around six or seven years old, I remember reading a book by Jan Mark called Nothing To Be Afraid Of. It had a huge impact on me - and not just because it kept me from sleeping well for at least a couple of weeks.
Despite the fact that I first read that book many, many years ago, I can still remember the story that scared me the most almost word for word. I’m not going to tell you more as I don’t want to spoil the surprise, but I highly recommend you get hold of a copy of it. I read it again as an adult, and it still made me scared to look down the staircase from my landing...
As for my writings - well, if I can give just one person the same kind of pleasure - and horror - that I got from that book all that time ago, then I am happy with that.
So thank you for buying this collection - I hope you enjoy it!
Daniel’s Dark Stories
I
“Mum, Daniel’s teasing me again!”
“What is it this time, Matthew?”
“He says Slenderman’s going to get me!”
“You know darling that there’s no such thing as Slenderman, he’s just being silly. Isn’t that right, Daniel?”
“There IS such a thing as Slenderman, and his slender arms are going to catch Matthew and...”
“ENOUGH! Matthew, there is NO such thing as Slenderman, and Daniel you can go to your room for telling tales.”
Now Daniel was pretty sure there was no such thing as Slenderman, and he didn’t really mind going to his room. He had achieved what he wanted to - in that his little brother would not be sleeping well tonight - and anyway, his room was where his Playstation was, and that suited him just fine.
You see, Daniel wasn’t a very nice boy. What he enjoyed most of all was teasing and scaring other people. Oh, his little brother was easy enough, but he had a hundred-and-one tales that he knew about, enough to scare even the most sceptical children at school. And, believe me, he did just that on a daily basis.
Daniel didn’t really have friends, but people listened to him when he told stories - a strange fascination with the macabre perhaps, or maybe to laugh at another child who was scared by one of his tall tales. But when they went home, they wouldn’t peek out of the curtain on a dark night for fear of seeing just what they’d been told about.
Slenderman was Daniel’s current dish of the day, however this was just the latest in a long list of favourites. Take, perhaps, last week when he scared Bethany Jones (one of the most sensible girls at school) witless with the story of Jenny Greenteeth.
Have you ever seen algae or weed on the surface of a pond, making it look like a nicely kept lawn? Well, some people call that Jenny Greenteeth. However, the truth - according to Daniel - was much darker than that. You see, if an unsuspecting child crept up to the water’s edge to take a closer look, a hideous hag with jagged green teeth and decomposing limbs would jump out and pull the unfortunate soul underneath the surface until they succumbed to the ultimate fate.
Now, we all know Jenny Greenteeth isn’t real. And neither is Slenderman. At least, that’s what we tell ourselves. After all, if these two nightmarish creatures could exist, what else could be out there?
And that’s how Daniel could tell these stories without getting scared himself. All he did was remind himself that there was no possible way that monsters were hiding under the bed, witches and werewolves lurking in the shadows, or fetid putridness lying in wait beneath the surface of the village pond.
II
“Tell us more about Slenderman, Daniel.”
“You sure you want to hear more?”
“Yes!” the class said in chorus. Jimmy Russell was a little more hesitant, but joined in anyway. He was certain that when he had walked home the other night, a really tall guy had been walking silently behind him, so he had made a run for it. There was nothing more than that, but it was disconcerting enough. But he didn’t want to seem to be the odd one out, so he joined in with the rest of the children’s pleading to hear more. After all, what else was there to do whilst Mr Malinko had gone to get a laptop from the IT department after his had broken down (of course, a teacher couldn’t conduct a lesson without having the answers in front of him, could he?).
“OK then. Now you know he is about two or three times as tall as a normal man?”
“Yeeees.”
“and his arms and legs are long and thin, like branches on a tree?”
“Yeeees.”
“Well, he doesn’t just kill you. He... well... he does things to you.”
“Oh my god! What like?” Jimmy said.
“Jimmy’s scared!” said one boy.
“Baby, baby!” a girl said, quite childishly - maybe because she was pretty frightened as well.
“Well, he cuts you open..”
“Euuurgh!”
“and he takes your organs out...”
“Yuck!”
“And then he wraps them in moleskin and puts them back into your body.”
“That’s horrible!”
“But the worst thing is... you’re still alive when he’s doing this to you. You feel everything!”
It was too much for Jimmy. He started to cry and ran towards the classroom door, which - as he was approaching it - creaked open.
“Oh no, it’s the Slenderman!” shouted Daniel.
Thankfully however, it wasn’t. It was Mr Malinko, returning with his laptop. Not that this made any difference to Jimmy, who had at this point passed out from fear.
“What’s this all about?” asked the teacher.
“No idea, sir.” Said Daniel, with a big smile on his face.
III
It was just Paula who walked home with Daniel. It may have been that everyone else had had enough of the scary stories for one day, or perhaps that they would get in trouble for encouraging the tall tales if the truth about Jimmy’s scare got out.
But Daniel was on form.
“Have you ever heard of a will-o’-the-wisp?” he asked Paula.
“I don’t think so, no, what’s that?” she asked with some trepidation.
“Well, they’re pretty rare now - what with most people living in towns rather than the countryside, but in days gone by they were quite common.”
“OK...”
“You see, it was very easy to get bogged down in marshy ground, and with no mobile phones back in the olden days, once you were stuck, that’s where you’d stay - until you died of sta
rvation and completely sunk into the marsh.”
“That’s horrid!”
“Ah, but that’s not the scary bit.”
“It’s not?”
“No. You see, on marshy ground you would sometimes get little lights floating above particularly deep patches. Now, some people would say these were pockets of gas which would spontaneously ignite, and burn for a while. But the truth is a lot stranger.”
“It is?”
“Yes. Because whether that was true or not, if someone did lose their way in the marshes and meet a sticky end, the very next day there would be an extra light!”
Paula let out a gasp. “So, the souls of dead people manifest themselves as sort of floating orbs of light?”
“Something like that, yes, that’s what the old folk thought.”
It was too much for Paula. “Oh, look at the time, I’m late for my music lesson” she said. “Gotta run, see you tomorrow” and took off like a rocket.
Of course, Daniel knew she didn’t have a music lesson, a fact which meant his story had taken effect perfectly. And with glee he ambled home.
IV
Although Daniel had chalked up dozens of ‘successes’ on his belt, they had all been with other children of his age. To be a true storyteller, he thought, perhaps he should try scaring an adult. Yes, that was it. They had a particularly timid teaching assistant at school. If he could engineer things so he could get some time with her, ideally in a quiet corner of the classroom, well, then the game was truly on.
But which story to use?
At first he thought he should tell her about Mari Lwyd - an absolutely terrifying sight - a horse skull on an upright body with glaring bejewelled eyes, which on the darkest night of the year would knock on people’s doors with a rotten hoof. If the resident dared to answer the knock, they skeletal jaws of the awful figure would snap their heads off at the neck and take it away to a nest, deep in a cave in Wales.
But that was a ‘trump card’, a story he would only use if all else failed. There would be no reason to pull that one out of the bag if something else worked first, so let’s just save that one for a rainy day, Daniel thought.
How about Reynardine the werefox? He would attract beautiful women with his charm, then take them away to his castle of bones for a fate worse than death. But somehow he got the feeling that the teaching assistant would not run with this one, perhaps because the story only applied to beautiful women, and Daniel didn’t think she fell into that category.
No, it would have to be something in between the two. Something creepy, something haunting - something that chilled her to the bone even in broad daylight.
Perhaps, yes, perhaps it could be something that happened at the school...
V
“Miss, I’m having quite a bit of trouble with this worksheet.”
“Are you, Daniel?”
“Yes, I can get the hang of these sums here...” he pointed to one side of the sheet, “but these ones are truly vexing.”
“Julie,” said Miss Taylor to her assistant, “could you take Daniel to the corner and go through the theory with him again?”
“Of course”
And Daniel had his wish.
After a few minutes, he said “I think I get the hang of it, but can you tell me one more time?”
“What’s the matter with you today?” asked Julie, “you seem a little distracted.”
“Well, I’m a bit worried, that’s all.”
“Worried about what?”
“Well, someone told me something that I didn’t like the sound of.
“What’s that?”
“Well, apparently, there was once a class of children, a little younger than me, and they couldn’t go outside at break time because it was raining - raining worse than it had ever done before.”
“Daniel, is this really...”
“No, please, let me continue. It’s good to talk about it. Now these children decided to sing some songs to pass the time. But as they started singing, they noticed that rain was getting in through the windows. So they called for the janitor, who duly came and sealed up the surroundings of the window with putty and tape. They started singing again, but then one noticed that rain was seeping in around the door frame, so the janitor came back and sealed that up as well.”
“This doesn’t sound very likely Daniel - I’ve never known a janitor to do a repair that quickly...”
“No, I promise, it’s true! They went back to their singing, then another boy noticed that rain was coming through the ceiling. Now, luckily, the janitor had left the tape there, so the whole class got to work with taping up the ceiling. As soon as they’d finished, they started to sing again.”
“Well, Daniel, I can assure you that there’s only light rain outside today; nothing that’s going to leak in through the windows I’m sure. Is that what’s troubling you?”
“Not exactly.”
“Well, what is it then?”
“I don’t know if I can bring myself to say it. Because they’d sealed the leaks up so tight, when they started singing again, they used up all of the oxygen that was left in the room, and they all died.”
“Daniel, really, that’s quite nasty.”
“I know! And they say that on a rainy day, if you’re in that room, you can still hear the sound of children singing.”
“I don’t like that story, Daniel, so please stop now.”
“But it’s true, I promise. And the worst thing is...”
“Enough!”
“It was this very classroom.”
Daniel was sure he could see the assistant shiver. He knew his plan was working. Now, if he had timed this right...
And there it was. He put his hand to his ear, and said “Listen!”
Would you believe it, there was a muffled sound of young voices, singing away.
“Half a pound of tuppeny rice,
and half a pound of treacle...”
All the colour disappeared from Julie’s face, she put one hand up to her mouth, and then - after a few seconds - stood up. “I have to go” she said, taking very shallow breaths, and ran towards the classroom door.
“Medical emergency” she said as she ran out of the room, with her demeanour clearly suggesting that she would never to return.
“Daniel, what happened to Julie?”
“I’ve got no idea, miss” he said, making a mental note to return after school to get the mp3 player and speakers back from the stationery cupboard.
VI
All in all, it had been a pretty good day for Daniel. Nothing had come of the Jimmy Russell incident, he had taken his first steps as a true professional in scaring his first adult victim, and he had some real gems lined up for Matthew tonight.
Now his last lesson of the day had finished, he just needed to get back to the ‘haunted classroom’ and retrieve his equipment. It had been a real masterstroke, one worthy of a professional prankster.
The lights in the block were off - obviously on a cold, rainy night such as this, the teachers had wanted to get home as quickly as possible. Well, that made his job easier. As long as he didn’t bump into the cleaning staff, it should be pretty easy to use his pen-knife on the cupboard lock, just as he had done earlier.
Daniel approached the classroom, and thought for a minute he saw a flickering light inside - but when he got closer it seemed as dark as a cellar. Using the light on his phone (no reason to put the main one on and alert anyone to his presence), he navigated his way amongst the empty desks.
But what was that? There was, just for a second, the hint of voices (That’s the way the money goes). For a minute he was startled, but then remembered why he was here in the first place. But hadn’t he had the great idea of using batteries that were almost flat, so that the noise hadn�
�t continued throughout the afternoon? Well, maybe he’d misjudged it.
As he opened the cupboard, the voices came back, louder than before. That made sense, he would of course hear it better as he got closer to the speakers.
Pop! Goes the weasel
For the first time in his life, Daniel felt a little unease. Unease that was compounded when he reached for the mp3 player and noticed the screen was blank. The battery was totally dead. Must have just gone he thought to himself. Maybe my timing just needs a little refinement.
But wait - what’s that? The singing started again.
Every night when I get home...
“Hello?” Daniel shouted as a cloud of fear descended over him.
The Monkey’s on the table...
“Who’s there?” Now panicking, realising that the sound was coming from the classroom behind him.
Take a stick and knock it off...
He turned around. The singing ceased.
Daniel was now truly scared. Where were the voices coming from? Had the teaching assistant been aware of his intent to scare her and turned the tables on him? No, he hadn’t boasted of his plan to anyone else.
Then, fifteen orbs started rising up from the floor. At first there was perhaps only the luminosity of a single candle between all of them, but as they rose up towards head height, they became brighter, vibrating gently.
Daniel breathed in sharply.
Pop! Goes the weasel
Although he wasn’t a particularly athletic child, Daniel ran out of the classroom with the speed of an Olympic sprinter. He didn’t stop to retrieve his equipment, oh no, that could wait for another day - if he ever dared to come back to the school at all.
His mind was racing (as well as his legs). What could it mean? It was just a story he’d made up after all, how could it be true?
No, it was just his mind playing tricks on him. Subconsciously he had imagined the singing, influenced by the story he’d told earlier. The lights must have been reflections through the window from a car or van. Idiot he thought. Why had he taken fright so easily?
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