1: The Man in the Woods
What scares you? Is it the moan of an unknown voice? The darkness of the night? The eerie figure of an unknown species? Sometimes it's silly things like not being popular or being embarrassed in front of your peers, but no one knows true fear, no one except me. I know the true form of fear, the forms it takes, and how it seeps into people's sanity and slowly kills people. So let's start shall we? It all started one Thursday afternoon, when I was on a bus heading to my house, on a sunny evening in Ohio, my usual commute. The bus was the usual white, with usual posters and ads and maps covering its bland walls, and it's usual, run of the mill insane asylum escapees. The whole scene was pretty boring, so I was attempting to attach my attention painfully small attention span onto a book. I say attempting because of this one asshole next to me snoring and swaying back and forth, warning me that he could fall onto me, forcing me to go insane and rip off one of the handle bars attached to the seats and slice him open like a thanksgiving turkey. I don't like people very much, what can I say? So, while I was reading, some strange looking, and freakishly tall guy came and sat next to me. When I say he was weird looking, I'm really not exaggerating. He was extremely tall, about 7 feet, and had a suit on, if you ask me, if he was rich enough to buy a suit he shouldn't be riding the bus in the first place, but whatever. He also had an odd habit of completely hiding his face, poor guy probably had some nasty growth on his face, either that or he's insane just like about 78% of the people of this damn bus. When the bus was reaching my stop however, he stood up, and calmly walked toward the front of the bus, when he reached the driver, who nicely asked him to sit down, he released hell. Weird, pitch black tentacles came roaring from his back, almost like an octopus, grabbing the helpless driver who looked like he was going to both piss and shit his pants, and so was everyone else on this bus, including me. He then took the driver and squeezed him until he….well, popped. He literally popped. His head exploded from all the pressure, and was gushing blood, getting all over the windshield, driver window, driver seat, and his dapper little uniform. It wasn't a very pretty sight. He then, creepily calmly, got into the driver's seat, and stopped the bus to a halt, causing cars behind us crash into us, and ultimately causes a ruckus outside this blood-stained bus. Then, he, again calmly, gets up, and walks over to guess who? Me. Yep, I'm the lucky contestant on "Get Your Head Popped off from a 7 Foot Tall Creepy Serial Killer." I know it's a long name. When he gets to me, he just stands there for a solid 5 seconds. After those 5 tedious seconds, he finally speaks. "You. You are the one. Vincent Charles. Correct?" I hesitatingly nod. All of a sudden, he picks me up with his tentacles, and carries me out of the bus and deep into the near forest, with me screaming bloody murder in the process. Finally, we get to a remote place, deep in the forest, it was foggy, there was nothing around us, not a house, a lake, anything that would remind you of civilization in any way, there were just tall pine trees. He put me down; put still holding a firm grip on around my waist. "Who are you!? Do-don't hurt me!" I plea. "Don't be so naïve. I haven't brought you here to kill you; I brought you here because you're the boy we've been looking for. You're the Deity." He says, expressionless….mostly because he doesn't have a face. "Th-the Deity?" I ask, confused as to what the hell is going on. "Yes, let me explain. You've heard of Creepypasta, correct?" I spit out a yes as he lessens his grip on me. "Well, those stories are, in a way, true." I stepped back. All those gruesome stories of brutal murder, possessions, people going insane, and poltergeists? Those were…all true? "Wait a minute….you're….Slenderman?!" I ask. He then chuckles. "Why yes I am. To be honest I'm surprised you didn't figure that one out." He says in a sarcastic tone as he finally lets me go. "Well sorry that when an 8 foot tall guy with tentacles coming out of his back appears on a bus and starts murdering people, I don't think of a story from the internet." He chuckles again. "Well, back onto more important matters. All the Creepypasta protagonists are joined together in a cult of sorts. It is an organization that is dedicated to keeping our work a secret. If anyone finds this secret out, we would be forced to come out of hiding, and wreak havoc on the world. The reason we need you, is so you can help us keep this secret. You can live life as an insider, and make it easier for us not to be spotted. Any questions?" Of course I can think of hundreds of questions to ask, but I ask the most important ones. "Well why me? Why am I the 'Deity?' I ask Slenderman. "Well, because you're who the last Deity led us to. Whenever a Deity dies, his last goal is to find a young boy or girl to replace him for the next generation. If he dies unexpectedly, it's up to the Organizations leader, me, to find us a new Deity." "So someone picked me as a Deity?" I say, astonished that someone would pick me to do such an important job. "Yes. Someone either saw you on the streets or felt you were fit to be our Deity, or maybe it was someone you knew. We can't tell you who it was, that's extremely disrespectful to the former Deity." I then backtracked to wonder if anyone I knew had died recently, but no one really came to mind. There was my grandfather, but that was a couple years back. I then remember my last question. "One last thing, what is your 'job?'" He starts chuckling again. Ugh, it's such a creepy chuckle. "Well what do we do in the stories?" I gulped. "….Kill?" "Precisely." He said. My eyes widened. "Yo-you mean. You HAVE been killing people this whole time?" "Well, quite frankly, yes, I mean, we must do it discretely, and make it look like a suicide. It's pretty simple actually; we're surprised you humans haven't figured it out yet." I started to freak out. "You mean this whole time, I could have been murdered by…you!? What happened to the bus driver and those people? That wasn't exactly 'discrete!'" "Ahhhh good question. Well, what you saw, of course, was me murdering those people, but those people saw something else. They saw some drunken guy shooting the bus driver in the face and attempting to drive the bus, why do you think there are so many pointless crimes everywhere?" I just stood there in complete awe. He then spoke again. "Now, ever since the last Deity died, the whole organization was split up, and I haven't been able to find any of the members. The previous Deity…" Slenderman paused. "He was a good man, it's a shame he passed away…the members, they loved him so much, that when he died, we basically turned on each other. I was the only one who stayed true to the organization, but the rest of them had different plans." He paused again, and turned around and started to walk away from me. "Now, there are many members, 6, including me, to be exact. The first one we need to find is a boy." "A boy?!" I repeat, being astonished that a child could be part of such a gruesome organization. "Yes, 14 years old to be exact. He joined the organization after his terrible accident. He usually resides in Oregon, so we must go there now. I hope you're ready to say goodbye to your friends and family." I was shocked by the proposal, or I should say demand. Before I could respond, he starts walking out of the forest. "Wait a minute! I don't want to leave home forever!" I yell. "You're not leaving forever per say, you're just going to be traveling a lot to find the other 5 members. When we find everyone, we shall reside wherever you wish." I was shocked by how much the situation shifted from being such a drastic change to….well it's still a pretty big change, but at least I get to stay in my hometown. "But wait!" I said, tugging on his rather expensive looking tux as he began to lead me out of the forest. "…how can you….talk?" He then chuckled that evil chuckle, and then simply said; "Looks can be deceiving." Of course, I had no idea what the hell this meant; it made no sense to me, at least at the time. "We will meant at this same place, at this same time." He said after a short pause, then disappeared into the fog. "How am I supposed to know how to get here!?" I shout in dismay, but it was no use, he was gone. I then check my crappy $2 phone to at least find out what time I'm supposed to meet him. 4:34, great, my parents are probably home by now, and I get to get yelled at for being kidnapped by an urban legend. Fantastic. I then proceed to make an attempt to find my way out of the maze of trees, finally making it out. I check my phone and, great, 5:17; this damn forest is going to get me in even more trouble. As I'm walking down the long, now scarcely populated sidewalk, a feel a light tap banging against my lower back. I quickly swing my hand at the feeling to find...a doll. Yes, a damn doll. No, not an evil spirit, not some kind of "mystical item", no, a fucking. Doll. But I must admit, the doll was pretty creepy looking, it had no face, or clothes, of real body for that matter, it was just a figure, a white, long figure. I'm assuming Slenderman left this on my backpack as a souvenir of me getting my life put into complete danger, because I totally want to remember that moment for the rest of my life. Nonetheless, I keep it in a safe place in my backpack, just in case Slenderman wants it back or something. And, as expected, when I get home I'm lectured by my parents for being an hour and a half late, being that I was to be home by 4:00, and it was now 5:30. Then I went to my room, did my homework, and lay on my bed until I fell asleep. I woke up the next morning with a text message. At 6 in the morning. Why. Why oh why. Anyway, I read it and it's a long, seemingly random sequence of numbers: 9567554367235, from an unknown number. I think we all know who this is, but just for the hell of it, I ask who it is. I then get the reply: "The Man In The Woods." Well that solves that, but what about the numbers? I ask that but without a response. Great. So I just assume he wants to meet a little early, and I pull my jacket on and put on some jeans. I make my way to the entry of the forest, only to find it much foggier and quieter than before. Disregarding these changes, I walk into the fog and start to walk forward, only to find that, even after 30 minutes of walking, I had no idea where the hell I was! Then I start to think about the numbers, they couldn't be a time, there were to many, maybe it was some kind of destination. But what kind of destination is composed of 13 numbers? Then it hits me, they're coordinates! Really scrambled, unorganized ones, but still have a shot at being coordinates! So I punch in the numbers into my phone's "handy" gps, to find that my hunch was right...and that I've been walking in the wrong direction for about 15 minutes. "Thanks Slenderman, way to go on the vagueness." I say to myself, groaning before I went onto the correct direction. Finally, after what seemed like hours of walking, which ended up to be just a tedious 30 more minutes, I got to the exact location Slenderman wanted me to be. But all there was was just a huge circle with a big X going through it. "I swear to God if I just traveled for an hour for nothing I'm going to burn this damn forest down.." I mutter to myself before my thoughts are interrupted by a voice behind me. "I don't think I would appreciate that very much Vincent." The voice, even though familiar, still sent chills down my already freezing back. "Heheh..sorry…" I weakly mutter to him. But he didn't pay attention to my attempt to make this encounter any less awkward. "I decided to leave a little earlier than expected…I hope you don't mind." Slenderman said. "Oh sure, it's not like I have a life or anything." I sarcastically responded. "Good. Now, if we want to get to Oregon without getting spotted, we're going to have to get there my way." Even though I had an idea that it had something to do with that circle, I asked: "How is that?" He then grabbed me by the arm, and guided me to the circle, where it immediately started glowing this dark, musky aura when Slenderman stepped on it. "Wh-whats this thing gonna do?" I spoke out of paranoia. But, like usual, Slenderman just sta-..well, faced his head, into the distance, leaving me clueless. Not for long though, because before I knew it, we were both in a very similar, but still noticeably different forest. The circle stopped glowing, and I checked my gps to see that we were indeed, in Oregon. It seems that my journey it about to begin.