Prologue - or, "The Pre-Story"
The old, creaky house doesn't look like much. It's surrounded by the woods near the Lara Cross Park, where most kids have no reason to go, but typically will if feeling particularly headstrong (or reckless… whichever you prefer).
I hear rumors about it all the time at school. Some kids think that some murder or other was committed there. I think one of the most ridiculous speculations I ever heard was one from a Harry Potter fanatic. I could tell they were a Harry Potter fanatic because they referred to the place as "the Shrieking Shack."
Okay, yeah, I also know how to recognize an HP fanatic because I was one – at one point. For only like a couple weeks. That was ages ago, though… or it seems like it.
Whispers and murmurs and giggles and scoffs, all about this one rickety little "shack".
This shack that I am proud to call my home.
Nobody actually knows it's my home, of course. Not anybody at school. They're all caught up in their typical Hardy Boys daydreams, thinking up these magnificent investigations that they'll never actually initiate in reference to my house. Nah. As brave as they might be in their heads, they're flat out wusses in reality. You should see the way the students at my school freak out about the dumbest legends. The whole "bath salts will cause Armageddon" theory spread like wildfire through Henderson High. Seriously, I heard some guy actually started up a zombie defense club – it only had a few members, but evidently some people were convinced enough that they felt the need to prep for the apocalypse. Or once, some of the nerds in our school (that said without offense, as I consider myself one) found a story about a Pokémon game that went by the name Black Version. It was supposedly a demented rendition of the first Pokémon games created with a reasonably creepy idea behind it. I heard some of them swear that they'd go insane if they ever heard the Lavender Town theme again.
I would too. But only because the song gets stuck in my head and drives me nuts all on its own. I don't need to hear a spooky story about a game for that song to drive me up a wall.
And then there are these stories about Slender Man going around. The game Slender went viral a long time ago, but apparently my high school was left out of the loop until the past few months. People all over school have been raving to each other about how many pages they found and how they totally freaked when they turned around and found Slender Man behind them. And of course everybody's been cracking up at the crazy reaction videos up on YouTube and whatnot.
But all this time, I haven't been cracking up at the videos. I've been cracking up at them. They have absolutely no idea what the Slender Man is really like. They've let their childish minds run wild in search of another freaky story to spook the nation and get the most views or likes or comments, or whatever. I'm sure it's never even occurred to them that all of it is fake, this business about Slender Man kidnapping and killing and all that fun stuff. Sure, some of them have been persuaded into believing in his existence. They believe in a man with long arms, tentacles, and no face, that's keen on seizing and murdering innocent little children that have somehow made their way into a dark forest with nothing but a flashlight to keep them company. The story that everybody knows, that everyone was spoon-fed through the wonders of the World Wide Web – that's what they believe.
Well, those believers have got some of it right.
The Slender Man does exist. He does have long arms and tentacles, and he does lack any trace of a facial feature. But kidnapping? Please. The Slender Man has a life outside of being the subject of people's myths. And I would know.
I mean, I do live with him, after all.
Unfortunately, the way in which I met the Slender Man somewhat lines up with the urban legends. I met him in the woods in the middle of the night, and if you want me to be completely honest, yes, I psyched out when I first saw him. But there's a story before that story.
And this pre-story, shall we say, concerns what I'm sad to call my first few years on this earth.
I was technically an orphan. My parents were dead by the time I was old enough to remember anything. They died in a plane accident. Flight 13 on Fine Euro Airlines had a seagull fly into one of the turbines, and then nosedived into the Atlantic Ocean. It just figures my parents went for the Flight of the Unlucky Number, or so I've come to call it. Just goes to show that they were rich and reckless.
Adding on to the recklessness, mommy and daddy dearest decided to leave me with my uncle, of all people. My drunk, irresponsible uncle, who wouldn't have cared if I threw my one-year-old self off the roof while I was under his "care." And I was stuck under said "care" for two and a half more years than planned. My uncle didn't so much as flinch when he got the phone call concerning my parents' deaths.
I was almost two by the time he actually got the call. Evidently my uncle was so drunk he didn't even give another thought to the fact that I was still in his musty old house after so many months… let alone to the fact that these were my parents he was being called about. I remember seeing him pick up the phone, grumbling about how he wondered why he even bothered paying for the thing. He answered it with a blunt "Yeah?"
I was sitting on the floor not too far from him, doodling on an old newspaper with a stubby pencil. But my uncle didn't get phone calls very often. So my attention was all on him and that phone.
"Yeah, she's my sister," my uncle slurred into the receiver. "Why?"
Being so young, I didn't yet understand that if someone was your uncle, it meant they were related to one of your parents. He was talking about my mom, and I had no idea.
Yet.
The person on the other end must have talked for a little while, because it was a couple of minutes before my uncle finally snorted. "Is that so," he mumbled. He paused for a moment, and then said into the phone, "Well that's just great. She's hauled off and died, then."
I recognized that word. Died? Who? Who died? I dropped my pencil, filled with curiosity. Straining to hear the other half of the conversation, I only picked up a few mechanical tones. My uncle shot a glance at me. I was starting to wonder if I had done something wrong – usually that's why he'd give me such a look – until he said loudly into the phone, "Well, she left her kid here at my place. What am I supposed to do about that?"
He was recognizing my presence for once. That was different. But at the same time, a light bulb clicked on in my little brain. He was talking about me now. And "me" was someone's kid… a "she"—Mom? He was talking about my mom? I rewound to what my uncle had uttered earlier.
She's hauled off and died, then. "She" was Mommy. And Mommy was dead.
Using a toddler's logic, I came to the conclusion that if Mommy was dead, so was Daddy.
Someone give a prize to the little girl on the floor.
Sadly, the only thing left to do – as the government or whoever saw it – was to leave me in my uncle's custody. My grandparents on my mother's side never approved of her marriage to my father, let alone to her having a daughter with him. I found that out during one of my uncle's insane rants. Usually they weren't about anything in particular. He'd begin by ranting about anything that he might trip over in his typical drunk state of being, and from there he'd find a reason to holler about anything else within range of his blurred vision. But just this one time, he decided to rant about my mother.
"Wernt off 'n got erlupped, tha' gurl!" he blurted to no one in particular, but being a toddler, I was easily entertained by the way his voice wavered and squeaked and burbled from his mouth. It sounded like his tongue was doing somersaults as he ranted on, "Juss like muh sister to do suh-mm like tha'… Mom ne'er rully liked the guy, but thur she went, like the rubble she ahlweys was."
Looking back, I can translate my uncle's drunken speech. In saying that she, a "rubble" likely to do "suh-mm" like get "erlupped," he meant that my mother was a rebel bound to do something like get eloped. At the time, I didn't understand the words, but it sounded so funny coming out of my uncle's liquor-coated lips, how could I forget it?
And of course my mother's parents weren't keeping in contact with their son,my wasted uncle – I guess I can't blame them. What would there be to communicate with him about, other than putting up with his unintelligible raging (or, heaven forbid, trying to convince him to go into rehab)? Regardless, whoever was determining my future home didn't have much luck talking to them. I can't say I mind that much. I never met them in the one year I might have had a chance to, and even then I might not remember it.
On my father's side, my grandparents were both dead already when this home-determiner person searched my family tree for other guardians. (I guess I should give them credit for at least doing that… trying to put an end to my misery with my uncle and all.) My father was their only child, and they bore him at an older age than most parents do. I've never tried to find out how they died, so I've come to assume that some disease or other found its way into their elderly bodies and took over from there.
I had absolutely nowhere else where I could be legally taken care of, and since my uncle was a blood relative that was still alive, I couldn't be sent to foster care or an orphanage. To be blatantly honest, I don't think staying at any orphanage could have been half as bad as living with my uncle. The closest thing to a hug from him was being picked up by a bony, hairy arm around the waist to be tossed onto my bed (a battered mattress and a tattered blanket). There were no bedtime stories or lullabies or goodnight kisses from my uncle. In their place, I received the scratch of a five-o-clock shadow at my ear as my uncle teased, "Don't let the bed bugs bite."
That phrase was never preceded by "goodnight." Ever.
Come to think of it, I guess it wouldn't have surprised me if that bed did have bugs in it.
Thankfully, it didn't…