10 Amazing Slenderman Stories
Page 5
As he, Gu Jincan poisoned others, so he himself was poisoned. The Gu which he took into himself changed his body immensely; his limbs became distended like those of a spider, his fingers mutated into long talons resembling the claws of a salamander and his body loosened and became lithe, reminiscent of a great python; his back began to sprout poisonous protuberances which enabled him to surround himself with an aura of purest virulence.
As his power grew so did the terror he spread to his country. His influence and frightening reputation even reached foreign shores and many countries still have deep superstition about sickness and specifically the word “Gu” which stem from the reign of this wicked sorcerer. Finally the terrified people of China fought back. After a century of his evil rule and a great many heroes slain the forces of good struck a defiant blow to Gu Jincan.
A dozen brave soldiers brazenly attacked Gu Jincan’s home in the center of the poisoned forest and although they were all killed by dark magics, they managed to assault Gu Jincan at his weakest. Gu’s body was riddled with white arrows crafted from blessed bones, their tips the scales of Holy fishes. His head was rent from his body; the enchanted sword which delivered this fatal attack was immediately scorched into ash and the soldier responsible choked to death on the fetid cloud of poison expunged by the burning sword. Many men died in the battle, the rest died weeks later, the poison filling their bodies with twisting agony and their minds wracked with nightmares. Each of the survivors suffered the worst serpent sickness ever seen, their bodies dropping into violent comas, their skin slick with sweat but their bodies deathly cold. Finally one by one they passed away, the Twelve Stars forever to be upheld in legend.
Of the men to survive the initial battle, they described Gu Jincan’s final moments:
“As the sorcerer fell, his body fell open like a sack of grain. No bones, no fibers and no flesh lay within; only Gu. Great volumes of bubbling black slime and writhing larvae teemed from the opening where his head once was. Dark acid and bile streamed from welts on his front and back, the blessed arrows performed their job perfectly. We watched as his body emptied of its wickedness; the infected liquid poured from his body into the long well he had dug decades ago. The great irony of the slender channel which gave him his power was now filled with his death.”
Gu Jincan’s leering head was impaled on a spike outside his forest hideaway, a warning to sorcerers and jubilation for all those who feared him. A powerful spell was cast on the head, that it would never be able to leave that spike, that it would fester and dissolve and the earth would lay claim to Gu Jincan’s face.
By royal decree the forest hideaway was torched to the ground, its dark secrets to be destroyed and the bubbling, fetid poison to be destroyed. The building was demolished, the books were all burned but the poison was never recovered. The long pit was found empty, the boiling slime had vanished. The Emperor of China ordered his men to search for it, issuing a pain of death penalty for anyone who may have taken the Gu. After a while the search was called off, in the interests of all it was decided that the Gu could not simply have “grown legs and walked away”.
Jimmy had added a note to this ancient text:
Until of course the accounts of Chinese farmers spotting a black, faceless killer stalking them through the woods at night. Early Spanish traders adopted the superstition after trading with the Chinese, often claiming that their sailors had spotted a tall, dark creature - “taller than any man” staring at them silently from the shore at night. This led to the Spanish tradition which spread to South America of the Caballero Delgado, The man who brings sickness.
Endnote
After sending his package to Jimmy Russell (who had already met his tragic end), and with his publishers not having heard from him for two months, friends paid a visit to Jack Goldstein’s house.
He was found at his computer with his hands still at the keyboard. His veins and arteries had all been pulled out of his body, plaited together and made into a noose around his neck. His lungs had been pulled out through his mouth and inflated somehow with helium so they floated above his head like ghastly balloons.
Scratched into his monitor were a number of symbols that none of his friends recognised.
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