by Hector, Jr
I put my plate aside, some egg and sausage left over. “I will join you,” I respond. She smiles. “Alright, let us head there right now. Hector and Javana are waiting for us.”
I cannot help but be surprised. She smirks at me.
“What?! You thought I would actually return there by myself, or worse, with another person who barely knows what is going on?”
She shakes her head as she stands and begins to walk towards the entrance, leaving me behind to catch up to her. I leave the money on the table.
We both are standing on the sidewalk, Detective Ariel trying to signal a cab. Five minutes pass, until at last one of them parks before us. She gets in, me following close behind.
“To the Saxon Hotel please,” she says.
“Where?” the cab driver responds.
“To The Saxon Hotel,” she says with a more firm tone.
“Lady, that hotel has been closed for almost ten years. It lies in the outskirts of New-York, in the middle of nowhere,” the cab driver responds.
“You want to get paid or not,” she says.
The cab driver just gave her a nasty look through the rear view mirror, before pulling out. For a few minutes as the cab fights traffic and the passing pedestrians, Ariel and I just sit there looking out the window. I do not think she was seeing what I was seeing. New-York is the apple of the western civilization, much like California. Everyone wants to come or dreams of coming. They fill themselves with products, clothing, and one-night stands, never once realizing that they walk besides dead people and demons. Hector and Javana seemed to have embraced their abilities.
I look at Ariel, her red hair reaching her shoulders, for the first time giving her a womanly air.
I do not know where she stands. Is she like us? Or is she a unsuspecting normal human being who just had the misfortune of witnessing something supernatural? Whatever the case may be, I am glad she is joining this little group of whatever we were becoming. Not like guns will be useful, but a logical view will come in handy. Unlike Hector and Javana, I never took the time to ascertain my abilities. I have always compared them to having an extra key that you knew sometimes worked and sometimes did not. Yet I had this lingering suspicion that we were overseeing something, something important. Something that Slenderman was trying to hide within his random attacks and brutal display of power. It was obvious by the way these visions appeared to me.
“Are you sure you want me to leave you here?” asks the cab driver.
“We are sure. See, our friends are waiting for us…” she says, pointing out through my window as the cab slowly parked in the middle of what used to be a parking lot. The yellow lines had faded long ago. Weeds had cracked the payment and taken much of the building. I open the door, sensing Ariel behind me.
“You came,” Hector says as he walks towards us, Javana close behind.
“Hey! Lady!! My money?!”
I turn to look at Ariel. She rolls her eyes as she takes out a wad of cash from her left pocket. She picks out a few twenties and hands them to the driver. “Much obliged,” he says before driving off. I turn towards Hector and Javana, listening to Ariel behind me as we begin to close in on the old building’s entrance. It takes all of us to open the old automatic doors. I hesitate to go in. Everything is exactly like in my visions, except it is dirty and full of leaves. The check-in desk in which the old lady and the old man stood behind was falling apart. Old computer parts lay on the ground. The walls are cracked and lost their color, even their natural earthen color long ago. The floor, which in my vision was a squeaky clean checkered pattern, was unrecognizable.
“Erick?”
I try to reassure Hector as I step into the lobby, but this feeling I have just intensifies. This feeling of forbidding and knowing that something is amiss. No matter how much thought I put into it, the answer eludes me.
“Why do we not separate, to cover more ground?” says Ariel.
“No, being alone in this place is asking for death, or a worse fate than death,” responds Hector. “While we are here, we stay together. Whatever we experience, we do so together.”
Javana nods. Detective Ariel reluctantly nods as well. We all begin to head towards the working elevator, but when we get there we find it unworkable. For some reason that is a surprise to us.
“Let us go up the old fashion way: stairs,” says Hector with a hint of annoyance.
The emergency stairs are alight with a few flickering bulbs. One after another, we climb the stairs. The murders only happened about two weeks ago. I know this place is as old as ten years, but Hector, Javana, and Detective Ariel have experience this place when it was brimming with customers and life itself. From my visions, it was a relic that was trying to survive in an evolving world of technology and new business. Now, as we pass the exit entrance to the second floor, everything around is decrypt, the metal is barely holding on to its weight, and the very air is stale with mold and dead things. Even if they were living in an illusion, how could they have not noticed this place for what it really was?
“What floor is this?” I ask, as Hector goes through the door. “It is the third floor, where I supposedly stayed, and where Charles was killed,” he responds. The hallway’s walls is riddled with holes and some are completely bare but the infrastructure of the building itself that is seen through the holes and cracks. Detective Ariel has to take out a small flashlight, along with her gun.
“Is that really necessary?” I ask.
“Yes, because the last time I faced this thing it almost killed me,” she says. “I will not be taken off my guard again.”
“This thing cannot be harmed by guns Detective…” says Hector.
I am inclined to agree. It can exist in several places at once. What chances does anything of the material realm have of harming Slenderman.
We stop before an open room. We slowly enter. I know exactly where everything is, because this is the room I stayed in within my vision. It cannot be a coincidence that it is Hector’s previous room. The stand right next to the entrance is exactly where I expected it to be. As we walk down the hall, the kitchen is to my left, like in my vision. We come before the living room, the three couches squaring around a low-to-the-ground table. The two lamps are settled in the corners of the living room. The window on my left, like in my vision, is still there. The painting hanging on the wall is still there, untouched.
“I am having serious deja-vu here,” I say.
“Me too--”
We all turn as a door that was not there when we came in slammed behind us. We all turn to look at the window as it also closes. In real time, not a vision or some illusion, but in real time we watch the apartment transform into what it used to be: a livable habitat. It is like a scene out of Harry Potter.
“What the hell just happened?” Detective Ariel asks.
“We have crossed into the spiritual realm,” says Hector. We all turn towards the person that suddenly sprang from the room at the end of the hall, from the right. He fell onto the ground, and when he tried to get up, we call can see that something tugged at his foot. He looks up, something morphing from the shadows.
“That is Slenderman?!” I exclaim. Hector and Javana just nod. There is no reaction from Detective Ariel.
Slenderman picks the person into the air by his ankle alone. We watch, transfixed as something begins to appear on Slenderman’s blank face. It takes me a while to understand that it is smiling as its opening its mouth. Suddenly, we see someone’s hand pierce its chest. The person is dropped into the floor as we listen to Slenderman howl, it was like listening to several people scratch the chalkboard with their nails. The stranger wastes no time. He quickly gains momentum and is almost out the door, but Slenderman appears before him. Yet again, we see someone’s hand pierce through Slenderman’s long abdomen, his arms that reached the ground rise mid-way as it howled. It flickers out of existence just for a few seconds, but long enough for the person to make a run for it. We all follow the stranger, our surroun
dings taking in the characteristics of what it once was. We watch as a shadow sweeps by us, the only thing betraying it was the tentacles swaying throughout the walls and floor. We follow the individual as it is running down the stairs. Slenderman tries to knock the person down, but somehow this person avoids the tentacles. This person passes the second floor and is so close to reaching the first floor, but Slenderman knocks him against the wall. It rises from beneath, wrapping the individual’s throat with one of its tentacles and slamming its body against the wall.
“So this is how Charles died…” Detective Ariel mutters under her breath.
Charles legs thrash while he tries with all his strength to unhinge the tentacle around his throat, but instead it seems, Slenderman tightens its grasp. Javana turns away. I cannot look away as one of Slenderman’s tentacles violently pierces his chest. We all can hear the bone break, and we can see the blood spill onto the floor. Charles stops shaking and fighting. We all watch in horror as Slenderman lets go of him, right after ripping his heart from his chest. We see it open its mouth and eat it. I shudder as I hear Charles heart beat one last time. The scene dies away, and everything around us is like how it was when we came in.
“What was Charles doing in your apartment, Hector?” asks Ariel.
“On that night that I witnessed Slenderman kill that woman at the processing facility, it noticed me. On my way home, on a lonely dark corner as I waited for the bus, it attacked me. I ran for so long, or it seemed at the time,” he says as he hunched over the old dried spot of blood. “Now, I am wondering whether I ever ran at all. What I experienced in that room, was it real? Or was it something fabricated by Slenderman as he was controlling me, possessing me?”
“That does not answer my question, Hector,” says Ariel.
“No it does not, because you have not realized something. Charles does not exist,” he responds. “What bullshit are you saying now?! Of course he exists!” Detective Ariel exclaims. “I read his file, with a whole history of all his life.”
“Then tell me, what does he look like?” he asks.
She rummages through her pocket and takes out her iPhone. She quickly unlocks it and begins moving her fingers over the screen. That determined look she has slowly fades. “It is not--” she mutters. “Where is it?” She looks at Hector, then at Javana, then at me. She continues to look through her phone.
I look at Hector as he lightly touched the old blood stain with his fingers. I hear Ariel gasp. Javana looks around her, as do I. It is like being in one of those sci-fi shows when you are present as time flows by, the past and future colliding within the present. We watch Hector run up the stairs. Slenderman is literally using the walls as anchors to jump floor to floor. He runs down the hallway and slams through the apartment’s front entrance. He closes the door behind him as he enters the same room in which Charles ran out from. He quickly sits before the computer, the screen coming alight. Hector feverishly begins to type, as something is banging against the door with immense strength, and yet somehow the door is holding. It is just a minute or two before Hector stands as the door burst open, or more like it was ripped apart, scattering throughout the room. Its hands reach its knees, its arms hanging that low towards the ground. Its tentacles sway behind its back, somehow passing through the wall and yet be in a solid state. It had no face, just a blank resemblance to one. It was tall, almost reaching the roof. It had a suit on, the irony.
Hector slowly backed up. Slenderman stops right in the middle of the room, before its tentacles dive towards Hector. He puts up his hands, the dark tentacles slamming against something invisible. His feet skid against the carpeted floor, as Slenderman takes a step forward with a smile literally appearing on its blank face. It gives a slight nudge with its tentacles, sending Hector against the wall. He tries to protect himself again, but Slenderman is faster, wrapping several of its tentacles around his body and lifting him up into the air. It brings him closer and closer, until it is hugging Hector tightly against its own body. We watch in horror and despair as Slenderman incorporates him into its body, swallowing him up.
Time fast forwards, slowing down to a man in a coat pointing a gun towards Slenderman as its tentacles ripped a police officer apart. We can see body parts strewn all over the floor, with blood everywhere. “Who are you?” this person said, before Slenderman violently bites his head off, and then spits it out.
The scene changes again. We watch as Detective Ariel and Javana are running down the emergency stairs, with Slenderman right at their heels. Like with Charles, they only get to the first floor emergency exit, before Slenderman slammed the Detective against the wall and knocked Javana over the railing. She lands on the floor. Slenderman wraps one of its tentacles around the Detective’s throat and lifted her into the air. It slammed her against the wall. She struggled as Slenderman slowly strangled her. Suddenly it lets her go and in a blink of an eye appeared before Javana. It lifts her up into the air, but we can tell something is wrong. I am in shock as Slenderman begins to fall onto the floor as a pile of black sludge, revealing Hector within. It tries to stop Javana, but it is too late. Slenderman is defeated and disappears into the wall as a pile of sludge. Detective Ariel is unconscious, and Javana follows suit.
“So that is what happened to you, Hector,” Detective Ariel says as she looks at Hector. He nods. “I honestly thought I was going to die, so believe me when I say I was quite shocked when it swallowed me, possessing me.”
“But why?” asks Javana.
“Because it has no purpose, no meaning. It is not dead. It is not alive. It is a thing that manifests upon this world, called by violence, greed, evil,” responds Hector. “And it is looking for another host.”
“Do you know who?” she asks. Hector shakes his head.
“Why does it need a host, if it can do and go where it wants?” Detective Ariel asks.
“I do not know,” Hector responds. “But ever since I have been investigating this, I have this feeling in my gut that I am missing something. Something important. I do not know what, and no matter how many times I go over it and how many times I come here. I do not know…”
“Me too,” I say. Hector, Javana, and Detective Ariel look at me. “I have been having these visions of this hotel and of Charles. From these visions and from Charles, I get the same thing. We are missing something.”
“We need the complete history of this place,” Javana says. Hector nods. “I am a detective, not a historian,” says Ariel. “On a different note, were we not in front of the first floor’s emergency exit?”
We all look around, all of us aware that we were in what used to be Hector’s apartment. It is strange, because we ran out of that place to follow the (as it weird it might sound) the ravages of time. What are we doing back here in this place?
Javana walks over to the door and tries to open it, but it is locked. Hector tries to lift the window but it is barred.
“People, what is happening?” Detective Ariel asks.
“I do not know,” respond Hector and Javana at the same time.
“Help them…”
We all turn to look at the hall before us, as we watch something appear from the murky darkness.
“Help them…escape,” said Charles. “Free them…”
I hear Javana exclaim as the door slams open, while I watch the window violently open and a gush of wind flow through the torn curtain. I look around me. We all look around us. We have returned to the material realm.
“I think we should take this chance and get out of here,” says Ariel.
“I agree,” responds Hector. Javana just looks at us from the entrance and nods. We all, while carefully watching our surroundings, head out the apartment. We make our way through the decrepit hallway and exit out the emergency stairs. Floor by floor we descend, careful where we step, for the metal under us is weak and corroded. The emergency exit to the first floor creaks open as we enter the lobby. We stop, as the moldy, run-down lobby is full of life and people passing by.
“How can we help you?”
In front of us is the old woman. The woman always typing away in her PDA is looking this way, as is everyone in this lobby. They all are looking towards us.
“Yes, I am Detective Ariel, and we are here investigati--”
Hector and Javana elbow Ariel, forcing her to shut up.
“Who are you?” asks Hector.
“My name is Hana,” she responds. “We all have been waiting for a group like yours, Hector.” We all are taken aback as spirit after spirit appears behind Hana. The entire lobby is filled with people of different cultures, race, generation, and even of different times. There are so many of them, that they crowd out beyond the lobby's doors and up the emergency stairs.
“We all are like you, psychics and mediums. People who could peer into the supernatural realm. Our lives were taken, all violently and without mercy,” she says. “We have all struggled to find this small entry way that peers into the material realm. Through the very tunnels of time, we meet. Help us. Free us. Stop the faceless man.”
“What is his goal?” Detective Ariel asks.
“To enter the material realm…”
In a big gust of wind they all disappear, and as we all look around us, the lobby back again to its decrypted self-- we are speechless.
“I think we really should leave, before something more sinister appears…,” says Detective Ariel, breaking the silence. We all say nothing. We all just head for the lobby's entrance, but just as we all breathe in the fresh air, do we notice something strange.
“Where are we?” Detective Ariel asks.
“We are back in our world, but it seems the location of the hotel changed again,” says Hector. What used to be the electric double doors, now it is just one door that lies in one of the hotel’s corner. The hotel itself is in the corner.
“The police station that I was working for is just two blocks from here,” says Hector. We are close to a four way stop, actually on the corner of one. On the other corner across us to our right, is a bus stop. People are looking at us strangely as they pass us by.