Slender
"Where am I?" The little girl inquired to herself scanning her perimeter. Looking around at the dark sky and the many trees, she proceeds to infer that she is in a forest at night time. A light fog is starting to set in and she begins to wonder where her mommy is. "Mommy?!" she yells. Looking around she assumes that it's only her in the dark forest-like area. Her name is Mariah Wyman, she is seven and a half and her mother is deathly ill. Also, it is a cold Spring night in Billings, Montana, early 2001. Mariah stands up off of the ground and dusts herself off, "How did I get here?" she thought aloud starting to walk in a sort of eastern direction. Off in the distance she sees a fence and begins to walk towards it. Suddenly she hears a loud THUD behind her. Immediately, she spins around scanning the area that was once behind her. "Hello," she calls, "is anyone there? My name is Mariah, can you help me get home?" No answer, but looking closer her eyes fixed onto a shiny object not four feet away from her. She picks it up finding a switch, she flips it, realizing it's a flashlight. "Well atleast now I can kinda see..."Walking on she finds a huge rusted metal object. 'It looks like it touches the sky' she thinks to herself, 'I think it's called a...' she pauses and then exclaims aloud, "...a silo." She approaches it slowly, circling its circumference but stopping half way. "What's this?" she says plucking a page off of the silo. "Trees... but that one looks different, almost like a man..." 'So slender and tall' she thought. The fog was a bit thicker now so she decided to keep going, stuffing the page in her pajama pocket. Not long after, Mariah happens to stumble upon some large rocks. "Maybe there's more pages here." Circling the mass, she finds nothing but as she's about to leave her light flashes on another sheet of paper. "Follows," it says
"This time I'm sure it's a man. What does it mean by follows though? Do I..." she paused considering her options then exhaled a questioning, "Do I follow him?" She decides that's her only option, and continues looking for pages and the slender man.
Mariah walks quite a while longer before finding another possible harbor for the elusive pages. It was a large multi-bathroom with open doors. Walking inside, there are four rooms that she explored finding a page in the last, frightening her to her young core.
"D-don't look... or it takes you... What does?!" she quietly yells to herself slowly panicking. She notices the slender man is drawn on this paper too and takes her idea of searching for him into consideration. "Maybe... maybe he's the one following me and..." she gulps, "and if I look for him he'll t-take me...?" Her heart starts beating softly like a drum, gradually getting louder as her vision starts to blur. 'She could be in danger.' she thinks frantically, running out of the bathroom, back towards the more heavily wooded area but tripping and falling after her vision started to become incomprehensible and a static-like sound erupts in her ears. Looking up she notices what looks like a man in the distance but her vision is too blurry to tell.
"Please," she whispered, "help..me..." Looking up into where the face of a man should have been. She screams and, ignoring the dizzy, blurry, static in her head; got up and ran. The small girl ran as far as she could, stopping in an above ground tunnel gasping for breath. Then when she finally caught her breath she looked up seeing another page to add to her collection. Looking at the pages she sees that none of the drawings of the slender man have a face drawn in, "Maybe... he doesn't have one? Yeah, that's gotta be it. He was definitely the one i saw just then. He's the slender man from the pictures.." She quietly gasped as she read the newest page. Plucking it off of the wall she read, "Help me" it's in all caps. Gulping down her fright she exits the tunnel, her heart still beating that slow drum beat, ever so slowly speeding up. She had to get out of here, and soon.
It's been so long since the child had awoken; at least an hour or two ago. Also, almost twenty minutes since the last page she had found.
"M-my flashlight!" she gasped noticing just how dim the light was. She had been so scared that she hadn't noticed the batteries in her only light source were dying. Worse yet, she hadn't come across any batteries or alternative light sources. In the dim light she could make out the shape of some rusted continued walking, scanning every inch of the tankers until finally she found her fifth page. She wasn't as surprised or frightened by what this page said. It showed the slender man surrounded by many NO's. 'This man must be dangerous if all these other kids were so scared of him' she thought. Walking on, she then came upon some cut woods. The fog was really thick now, as thick as molasses one might say. It was hard for her to see and the wind was gradually picking up. With her dying flashlight's beam, she picked up the sixth not and read it.
"LEAVE ME ALONE, I feel bad for whoever wrote these." frowning she continued, "I wonder what happened to them...?" She began to hear the static in her head again along with her vision becoming blurry. "Is this because of him?!" she exclaimed to herself in fear. Not wanting to find out she started running. She ran until her lungs felt like lead, and collapsed in front of two vehicles that were near a small yellow shack. With what little light remained she flashed the light at the vehicles then the shack finding just what she was looking for. A seventh note. Her heartbeat was racing and she was still out of breath but with what little energy she had, she manages to crawl over to the shack and snatch the note off of its side.
"Always watches... no eyes. Then i guess hiding wouldn't work." she stood up, "How many more pages are there?" she asked herself continuing her search. She turned off the flashlight to save what little power remained for an emergency.
The trees and brush are starting to lighten up a bit and Mariah soon finds herself in a clearing with one lone tree. Its branches are bare, and it is taller than the other trees in the forest. It also has one scrap of paper that is facing her as if it were meant for her to read. She feels that this is the last one. Walking up to it then turning on her flashlight whose beam shines directly at the paper it's dim light source making it just barely light enough to read it. Walking closer her eyes scan the two lone words on the page written in all caps. Her rapidly beating heart stops making the wind the only sound in this isolate woodland. The wind whispered loudly almost hissed at her, as if trying to warn fog is so thick now that she can barely see her fee. She hears the static again but does not care anymore, it's no feels like some unseen force is turning her around.
Mariah drops the flashlight, which dies on impact, and the note she had been holding. She opened her eyes staring at the slender man, studying his being, frozen in fear by just the sight of him. He had no face and glowing white skin, a black suit and tie, and many black tentacle-like arms that were pulling her towards him. As she blacked out she thought of the page and its message.
CAN'T RUN
Her scream cut through the air like a steak knife through softened butter. When she awoke the white sky did not indicate a time of day and there was a white mist all around her. The pages she had collected were all gone and in their place a blank piece of notebook paper and a black pen. With shaky hands she left a message, a warning for victims who might someday get lost in the fog and in the trees to let them know he's watching. She stuck the paper to a lone tree, bare of leaves then walked on into the midst joining her mother. A news report a fews days later reports that the mother of the missing girl died suddenly in her sleep at a local hospital. Her illness proving still incurable.