I don't remember a time before Him.
My first memory of Him, my first clear memory of anything, is worn smooth by time and repeat handling. The night was a riot of half-familiar shapes, shadows and muted color. I had just begun to tackle the stairs, an awkward affair yet, when I glanced up and up and saw Him. It was just a look, a thoughtless gaze to measure distance I had to travel. In that moment, He was there. Tall and thin and silent, He wore dark clothes. I remember Him as a shape that burned through my eyes and buried itself inside my head.
I feared Him, at first, in the same way I feared other imagined haunts. His visits were sporadic but left me with screaming nightmares. As His visits increased, I changed. He was real. He was real and he was hunting. Hunting me.
I feared every window, every corner and, most of all, the trees. He likes them. I don't know why but it was where I would most often see Him. The tall, perfectly still form that drew the eye, too long arms that sometimes seemed to multiply but, mostly, the smooth blank stretch of his staring face.
I call it a face but it was no such thing really, there are no eyes, no mouth, just smooth skin stretched over bones. But I could still feel Him watching, feel Him listening, feel Him everywhere and all around me.
At night when the darkness seemed to stretch on for eternity He would come to me. Some night He would be no more than a vague shadow among shadows at the edges of my room. Other times he was a looming figure at the foot of my bed and, on the bad nights, He was beside me. Close enough to touch. I don't remember the words He spoke though I know there were words. They glimmered like a promise.
From pictures I know I was a small dark child. Slight of frame and wide of eye. I remember my mother assuring those who asked after my cringing silence that it was nothing but a phase. I would grow out of it. And, funnily enough, she was right.
I grew out of him. I was ten, too old to fear the dark. I tucked away my fears and lied. Lied until I believed. There was nothing to fear in the dark and, just like that, He was gone. There were no more glimpse of Him in corners or out windows. Ironically, it was there, in that long stretch of nothing that the real terror began.
No longer distracted by peering into shadows, knowing and dreading what I would see. I turned my attention to family, to people. I wanted to form a connection with someone. Something easy, something sweet, something I could hang in my mind like strings of lights. Something that would chase away the gleam of forgotten words and disperse lingering shadows.
Even so, I was free, or near enough, from my nightmares, free from the fear that had stalked my childhood. I began making my first clumsy overtures, I reached out to people, I tried, for all the good it did me.
It was as though there were a wall, a pit, a cavern too wide to cross between me and everyone else. Surrounded by people, I had no one. Hands offered in friendship, in love were insubstantial as morning mist. I told myself it would pass, that I had been too long peering into darkness, knowing and fearing. It would pass. It had to pass.
I waited, I lied and I hoped. I hoped and hoped and hoped until I could hope no more. It would not pass, the realization was devastating. My hope for light, for sunshine and a warmth that I could bask in died. I knew it would not pass.
Time had dimmed Him to a long ago nightmare, no longer a weight I willfully ignored. I was completely alone and I learned how empty I am. A vast dark nothingness where thoughts died and left no echo. Dark years followed, I screamed against an emptiness that never answered and searched for a hand that would not vanish. My worst years or, perhaps, my best. Even miserable I was myself and mostly sane.
A dream of victory existed then, in my war against the emptiness. I would fight, I thought, and I would win. A stupid hope but comforting for the short period it lasted. Only twenty years old and I was already a veteran in my war. Battle after failed battle had ground me down. Ten years of fighting and I was tired. I wanted to lay down and die. Still do, sometimes.
Tired and too weak to care, the knowledge I had been willfully ignoring for years returned. A tide of cool recollection that brought with it all my memories of Him. So, of course, this was when He reappeared in earnest.
At first He was no more than shadow, a figure at the foot of my bed, a blank face in my window. And yet, He was everywhere I looked. As if He had never vanished. He burned my eyes and haunted my dreams and filled the empty places inside me.
Terrifying?
Oh yes.
But so, so wonderful.
The war stopped, there was no point in fighting, no chance at victory. Wonder of wonders and almost like peace the feel of Him pressing against the edges of me. He filled up the emptiness and overflowed it.
I love Him a little, for that.
Funny, then, that He is the reason I am like this. He hollowed me out to make room for Himself all those years ago. I should hate Him for that... but, in the end, He is here and He fills the emptiness. The frantic scramble of my thoughts slow when He is near. He muffles me, I never get lost on thorny paths of logic or trapped with clawed imaginings. No point when there is something real to fear and focus on.
It's soothing.
Grateful as I was, wonderful and terrifying as His looming shape is, I still wondered at him. What was He? Who was He? Why does He come to me? Does He have a purpose? And sometimes, in despair: Is He even real?
He didn't have a name, not for a long, long time. He was Himself. The monster that watches me. My buffer and, in some sense, my protector. I worship and fear Him. A quaking disciple to a vengeful god.
It's twisted.
I'm twisted and so empty without Him.
He's evil. I know He is. I knew that long before I learned that other people see Him too. Strange to think He is known. That people speak of Him and fear Him and flee from Him. They gave him a name: Slenderman, a monster that kidnaps little children and rips people apart.
It's oddly right, that He does such horrible things. Even as a small child, I had some notion of the horrors He represented but I don't think I can bring myself to care. I need Him. I need Him more than anything. Danger or even death is better than nothing. Better than being alone.
It's like a disease, loneliness, it eats you up inside. When He leaves, and He does leave, for days or weeks or months ... or years. It's worse then. I want to rip out of my skin to escape it. To rip and claw and scream until there is nothing left of me. Death may be a blessing, a dreamless sleep I will not wake from.
It's one of the few hopes I have left.
However, doubt always stills my hand. If such a thing as He exists then what else might lurk in the darkness beyond life? No, better to wait for His return, to take what comfort I can. I'm only sure of one thing that there is no righteous god and no bright shining heaven.
I have only Him.
And so, when He, finally, finally, returns I am always at my most needy. The feverish thoughts and fears born from his absence boil inside me until they spill over and pool at his feet like a blood offering, a sacrifice. My fervent prayer that He will stay.
Please, please, don't leave me alone in the emptiness.
When words run dry and I have nothing to offer, no more sad broken bits of myself, I curl as close to Him as I can. Animal instinct cares for nothing but survival. My body chokes on a thick miasma I cannot detect, heaves against the thick evil that pours into me from Him. I don't care, I can't care. I need Him.
He hasn't taken me, hasn't sliced me open. When I learned of His usual methods, learned He was more than my personal demon. My savior. I asked why. He didn't answer, He never answers me. I hear Him in my dreams, though, whispers and croons and secrets I can never remember when I wake.
He will destroy me eventually, I imagine, one way or another. Maybe He thinks I'm an odd little human. Interesting, for the moment. Maybe He likes that He can torture me simply by leaving. Maybe it is amusing. I don't know. I don't understand Him and I don't care to. I just don't want Him to leave me to my true demons.
Late at night, when He has been gone for days or weeks or hours or minutes, I think He will one day. That He will decide there can be no greater act against me than His absence. It is that, beyond anything and everything, that haunts my nightmares.