10 Amazing Slenderman Stories

by Jack Goldstein

Sadly, not a single one of the multitude of gods were listening that day.

  As Luis was drilling with cautious optimism, his equipment suddenly fused. He swore. Calling for his second-in-command, Mario Avalos, to bring a bright light, he went to investigate. On closer inspection it appeared that he had drilled into something a great deal tougher than he had been anticipating. Sometimes this would indicate that wonderfully dense veins of mineral ore were close; other times it could be an indication that it was time to end this shaft and start construction on another one.

  But Luis had his feeling.

  There was a method to coping with these harder portions of rock. One should drill and chip away at the softer rock around it, prop the shaft ceiling up with numerous steel poles, and then use explosives to crack and shatter the harder rock face. Of course, each explosion would carry with it a risk of tunnel collapse - but the owners of the mind were struggling financially, and if Luis didn’t take that risk, he would be disciplined, maybe even fired.

  So with this in mind, Luis and Mario together, using the backup drill, attacked the softer rock.

  ***

  It was strange. A few hours later they had drilled to the left, to the right and even above what appeared to be a lozenge of hard rock some fifteen feet tall, yet just three feet wide and four feet deep. What was stranger was that it was not made of anything native to the geology of Chile. It was immensely dark in colour, a black so deep that it seemed to swallow the light from Luis and Mario’s rig.

  They could of course now just move their equipment around it and continue with the rock behind. But Luis was a miner, and miners are always curious where strange rock is concerned.

  Knowing there were men in his team with great experience, Luis called every single one over. Thirty-two men were now closely examining this tall, thin structure. One, Yonni Henriquez, suddenly called out.

  “Ey, Luis - here! There’s writing!”

  Luis walked over and inspected what Yonni had seen. It was clearly writing, but not like any Luis had seen before in his life. It had been etched into the rock, perhaps once quite deeply, but it had now been smoothed over by the ravages of time - and maybe the recent drilling and scraping.

  But no-one could figure out what it said. It was more akin to hieroglyphics than a written language of today. The most repeated picture was one of a thin skeletal figure, always followed by a circle with a cross going through it.

  “Perhaps it’s a warning” said Mario.

  “Against what?” Luis answered.

  “Against trying to find out what is inside. I don’t like anything about this. I think there’s something inside, and if someone has gone to this much trouble to seal it up in this rock which none of us have seen anything like before... well, I think it should stay there.”

  “Ha! Scared of the bogeyman, Mario?” asked Yonni.

  “Don’t be stupid man, I’m just saying you know, when you come from a mining family, you hear stories from the old folk.”

  “What like?”

  “Well in the old days there was no automated machinery. There was just men with pickaxes. Each man would be responsible for a tunnel of their own, barely big enough for them to crawl through. My grandfather said that sometimes - especially if he was one of the last to finish of a day - he would hear noises coming from within the rock. Cries, screams, whatever. He said it was ghosts from the dawn of human evolution.”

  “Oh Mario, you don’t believe in that kind of thing, do you?”

  “Don’t we all? Do you pray at the start of every day, and give thanks at the end of it?”

  “Well yes, but...”

  “All I am saying is that we should be cautious.”

  But caution was not on the mind of Ariel Barrios. He was a huge, bear of a man. Yet in certain areas he could be extremely delicate. One of these was explosives.

  “Let’s blow it open” said Ariel.

  “You think you can?” asked Luis.

  “Of course, I’ve never been beaten by an explosives challenge yet. Let’s crack that mother right down the middle.”

  ***

  And so, after surprisingly little debate, Ariel placed his explosives. The men retreated to a safe distance, and all that was left for him to do was activate the electronic fuse.

  He did so.

  And that was when the disaster began.

  The blast reverberated around the shaft, and - by a million-to-one chance - was at the exact frequency that was required to set off a chain reaction of small but significant rock movements which ended with the collapse of the main access shaft.

  The thirty-two men were now trapped seven hundred metres below the surface of the earth, with no way to return.

  At least one thing had gone right however - the large block of dark matter was cleft cleanly in two. Whatever had been inside what turned out to have been a hollow block however was no longer there.

  Luis radioed up to the control room almost a kilometre above him.

  “Guys, we’re trapped”.

  ***

  It did not take long for the news story to go global. The men had enough provisions to keep them alive for a number of weeks, but how would they get out? Many governments came together to offer a variety of theories for rescue attempts.

  News channels across the world showed countless CGI reconstructions of the blast and how the various rescue proposals stacked up against each other. In the end it was decided to dig a new shaft, just wide enough for a one-man capsule to be sent down and back up - the men being brought back up one by one.

  The project however would take time. The 32 men had enough food and drink to last them 3 months - but would they remain sane trapped underground for that long?

  ***

  After 69 days, the men were brought to the surface. The event was televised across the world. The miners’ friends and family were there to greet them at the surface. As each man surfaced, loved ones hugged and kissed him, glad that he had made it back to safety.

  However, one man - a tall, thin gentleman, surprisingly well dressed having been stuck underground for so long - met with no happy relatives. Hunched over, he stepped out of the capsule, walked away from the crowds and disappeared into a nearby forest. It almost went unnoticed, such was the clamour and joy from the others.

  One man however, Lawrence Fenix had noticed. Lawrence was the man who had masterminded the rescue attempt. The disappearance of the man greatly disturbed him. And so, after the jubilant celebrations, he replayed and replayed the video of the event, sitting in his dark office.

  On the fifth time he had watched the whole thing through, hairs began to rise on the back of his neck. He picked up the phone to the Chilean minister for mining.

  “Sir, I think we may have a problem.”

  “How can there be a problem?” said the minister. “Everything went as expected!”.

  “Not everything.” replied Lawrence. “Watch the footage again. You remember how many men were trapped down there?”

  “Of course - thirty two.”

  “Well, thirty-three came up.”

  From Scotland Yard

  This letter was found in the package Jack sent to Jimmy

  From the desk of Detective Chief Inspector D.G. Rossman

  Scotland Yard, London

  Dear Mr Goldstein,

  I write to you with two requests. The first is that you stop your publishers from selling your book 101 Amazing Slenderman Facts. The second is that you cease any investigations you are currently conducting into the being you call Slenderman.

  As an officer of the law I should not need to justify my requests, however I have learned from my colleagues that previous requests from more junior policemen have gone unheeded and therefore I shall explain myself. Take note however: this information is confident
ial and I stress that you are not to share it with others.

  I wish you to stop sales of your book because I believe it has led to the deaths of no fewer than thirty-six individuals. They include people from all walks of life - an eleven year old girl is the youngest victim, a seventy-two year old man the oldest. I also demand you stop your investigations into this being for your own safety.

  In each case of death I have identified as part of a certain pattern (and I have travelled the world to do so), there are certain common factors. You will see as I describe some of the cases what these links are.

  A thirteen year old boy was found by his parents with his throat slit in his bath. The water he was sitting in was claret in colour; a massive contrast with the pallid skin of the child. No surprise as almost all of the blood in his body had drained into the tub. He had a number of other cuts on his body - one under each of his armpits, one deep into his left calf, and a further one on his right eyeball. There may have been one on his left, however we could not find it - the socket was empty. The pathologist was certain that the wound to the throat was the first incision made. The child had placed his father’s shaving mirror in front of him, and held in his hand a copy of the book 101 Amazing Slenderman Facts. It was open at a page which claims a certain verse, read whilst looking into a mirror, will summon this ‘Slenderman’. A series of symbols were etched deeply into the glass of the mirror, none of which have yet been deciphered. When the child’s father lifted him out of the bath (having broken down the locked door after realising that three hours was a long time for bathing), the boy let out a final scream - until that point he had miraculously been alive. But that scream proved to be his final action in this mortal world.

  As the investigating officer, I concluded that a madman had entered - and left - the bathroom by the window. Soon afterwards however, I was called to another case in the area.

  A twenty-one year old female student was found by her classmates in her room at university. The girl’s head was slumped onto her desk, in front of a laptop. The friends who found her lifted her head up and were shocked to see that her mouth was wide open in a silent scream - yet her tongue was missing. More worryingly, the poor girl’s teeth had been replaced with fingernails and toenails. When the terrified attendees checked her hands and feet, teeth had been crudely wedged into the tender skin where the nails should have been. Next to the girl was a Kindle, which when re-awakened was open at the page of your book 101 Amazing Slenderman Facts at the point whereby the reader is informed how to summon Slenderman. When her closest friend accidentally brushed a key on her laptop, the screensaver disappeared and the student’s room could be seen - it was quite simply a live webcam view, the camera on the laptop pointing to where the poor girl was slumped dead. At the top of the window displaying the webcam feed was a number of symbols which our computer experts confirm are not ASCII characters and our language experts do not know what they mean.

  Entering the details of these two heinous crimes onto the police database, the system confirmed that there were other cases which had similar factors.

  I therefore travelled to Oxford, where I met with a senior figure from Thames Valley police. He told me of a recent case he had been involved in.

  A Sixteen year old boy had been found dead in his girlfriend’s bedroom. Technically he was sitting facing the window, although this was only because his head had been removed and placed backwards on his neck. The body was facing his girlfriend’s mirrored wardrobe. The paramedics who attended the scene accidentally knocked the boy’s head off the torso as it was not secured by any means other than dry, encrusted blood. Looking into the gaping neck cavity, they noticed something unusual - the body was filled entirely with marbles and sand. On opening the wardrobe, all the clothes had been removed, save for a number of stockings which were left hanging. In each stocking was a body part - but where the body has two of some vital organs, only one was found - one kidney, one lung and so on. Scrawled in blood on the shelf below the dripping packages were a number of symbols, none of which were recognised as being part of a known language either modern or ancient. In the boy’s hand was a book - 101 Amazing Slenderman Facts, open at a page which detailed how one might summon Slenderman.

  I am sure you are now getting the picture. However I shall describe one more of these terrible crime scenes to you. The officer in Oxford told me he had spoken with an officer McKinnon in New York. I thus flew out to meet our friends across the Atlantic. This is what I was subsequently told...

  A forty-three year old woman was found dead in a hideous state in her upmarket New York apartment. She was sitting at her make-up counter - or at least most of her was. Her husband (who found her sitting rigidly and was trying to revive her) grabbed her hand, which turned out to be not an entire hand - each finger had been replaced with lipstick. Dreading the inevitable, the man opened the top drawer, but was surprised to that in the lipstick tubes sitting there find (after trembling terribly whilst twisting one clockwise) was what appeared to be thin strips of tender, bloodied steak. His mind back to the task of saving his wife, he laid her on the floor, deciding to give the kiss of life. As he opened her mouth however, an awful sight presented itself. The lady’s four fingers had been crudely stitched together and fashioned into a tongue. This did of course explain what was in the lipstick tubes. Nothing could save her sadly, she was already dead. Written on her mirror - in a fetching deep ruby shade - was a series of strange symbols which even trips by the local investigator to the national library did not explain. Of course, next to where the woman had been sitting was an eBook app on her iPad, displaying a page of your book 101 Amazing Slenderman Facts which explained how one could summon the entity known as Slenderman.

  I cannot explain these events. I have described four of them to you however, and I am sure you will agree that this series of tragedies must stop. I do not believe in the paranormal, and I cannot accept the notion that if I look into a mirror - such as the one here in my office - and say the words “Slenderman, Slenderman, give me a man to slender” out loud (as I just have to prove it is nothing but a silly game) then some twisted being will appear and

  So I stress to you, dear sir, that you must continue your investigations, and ensure more people read your book. It would be a terrible tragedy if the ancient knowledge contained within its pages was not appreciated by a wider audience.

  Yours in eternity,

  D. Grossman

  Hearts are Filled with Blood

  Solomon Rosenblatt was a good cop. Sure, he was often too rough but he grew up on the Lower East Side and to survive there you had to be tough. Being tough was what got Sol into the police force in the first place, and being tough earned him his promotion to Detective after he brought down Irving “Boss” Angel back in ’92. In those days Sol’s strong hands and keen determination earned him a strong respect with his brothers on the force and an equally important fear amongst the criminal fraternity.

  These days Officer Rosenblatt was working undercover, infiltrating the Hester Street Assembly’s drug-trafficking organisation. Rosenblatt had spent eighteen months infiltrating the gang’s infrastructure; starting at the lowest level, working odd-jobs for the street pushers Sol had worked his way up the organisation and had now secured a job working in the main drug factory on the south end of Hester Street, a building known as The Ballroom. Within three weeks Rosenblatt had identified the four top-ranking officials within the Hester Street Assembly and had even glimpsed their leader once or twice - an impeccably-dressed gangster who everyone on the street referred to as “The Baker”, most likely due to the vast quantities of drugs that his organisation had been cooking up over the years.

  The Baker was a man whose movements were hard to predict. Often and without warning he would descend onto the drug facility to check how production was going or to call a mob meeting with his four lieutenants. A few times Sol had been lucky enough to eavesdrop on some of th
eir conversations and had passed the snippets of information he’d gleaned onto his partner in the force and together they were making headway into fighting the war against these organised criminals. The Baker’s movements were starting to become more regular, the organisations methods were becoming clear and due to his involvement within it, Sol Rosenblatt was close to breaking the case of his life.

  One afternoon not three weeks ago Sol was called into the office of Eddie Russ, one of the Baker’s highest-ranking officers. Russ was a sweaty, obese man; his skin was yellow and greasy which reminded Sol of the wallpaper inside a ratty Chinese takeaway.

  “Good to see you, Dicky” rumbled Eddie. Rosenblatt was using a fake name - too many criminals know the name Sol Rosenblatt, so instead he chose the name Richard Beekman.

  “How do you do, Mr. Russ” replied Sol.

  “Dicky, please - call me Eddie” said Russ, leaning forward and offering Sol a chair with his enormous, sweaty hand. As Sol sat down he could see Eddie’s forehead was wet with beads of sweat and his shirt was displaying hallmark sweat patches round the neck and under Russ’ flabby arms.

  “We got a job for you tonight, Dicky. The Boss wants two truckloads delivered to the docks at midnight tonight. We’re loadin’ up a boat to deliver our goods up North. I chose you to manage the job - The Baker has been watching you and he thinks you’re showing real potential.”

  After the meeting, Sol quietly rang his partner and tipped him off to the late-night delivery. This would be a good bust - the police would raid the docks, confiscate the drugs and arrest all the gang-members present. Sol would “escape” the scene and report back to Eddie Russ that the cops were tipped off. The raid would set the Hester Street operation back months and would cost thousands of dollars - something which would hurt the entire underworld.

  Midnight. As the trucks rolled lazily into the moonlit docks a sharp chill in the air made Sol shudder. He’d never much been a night-owl but tonight the darkness lay especially heavily on him. The night was especially quiet; not a sound of movement from anywhere. Even the sea and the wind seemed to want to keep quiet, which disturbed him no end. Sol and the various members of the Hester Street Assembly began to open the trucks and make a start at offloading the cargo. No dock staff approached, no smugglers appeared from anywhere. The grim stillness was starting to frighten Sol; his criminal companions seemed to be preternaturally quiet themselves, offloading their crates in almost silence. No seagulls cawing, no dock bells ringing and even the idling trucks themselves seemed noiseless. With no sign of either smugglers or his backup unit Rosenblatt began to feel his heart beating with anticipation. As the unnatural muteness and near pitch-black atmosphere surrounded him, Rosenblatt was convinced he could hear his heart pumping in his chest. At first he heard a low swelling as his heart pushed blood languidly around his body but as the quiet grew and the light faded the sound built to a thumping noise, a thunderous clump ringing in his ears with each successive beat. Sol began to fade, to feel faint beyond compare. As the thudding swell of his heartbeat filled his ears, his vision began to fade to the purest black. At the edges of his eyesight Sol experienced the blackness of infinite nothingness - blacker than the blackest night times negative infinity. Blind and deafened by the sickening sound of his roaring heartbeat Sol passed out, perhaps for hours.