Slenderman went along with Amy Pond into the village. "Prisoner Zero will vacate the human residence or the human residence will be incinerated. Repeat."

"No, no, no, come on. What? We're being staked out by an ice-cream van." The message was coming from the ice cream van speakers. The ice cream man says that it's supposed to be Claire De Lune playing but Amy pays him no attention. The ice cream man notices the Slenderman but says nothing about it, only muttering something about strange things happening today.

"Why is it playing on the radio too?" Amy was asking questions that Slenderman had no answers to. She kept on walking until she spotted a strange sight in Mrs. Angelo's home through the window. There was a big eyeball on the television and Mrs. Angelo was in front of it, jabbing at the remote control to change the channel. "Come on."

Amy knocks on the door and looks behind her with a small smile. It was strange and a bit awkward, seeing him follow her around like he was some normal person. Mrs. Angelo finally answers the door and lets them in. "Oh, hello, Amy dear. Are you a policewoman now?"

"Well, sometimes."

"I thought you were a nurse."

"I can be a nurse."

"Or actually a nun?"

"I dabble." Amy gives a huff of frustration, crossing her arms.

"Amy, who is your friend?" Mrs. Angelo didn't appear frightened by his appearance so far.

"Amy? Your name was Amelia," Slenderman asks in order to deflect the question Mrs. Angelo asked.

"Yeah? Now I'm Amy." When her answer didn't appear to satisfy him, Amy clarifies, "Amelia Pond. Bit fairytale."

"I know you, don't I? I've seen you somewhere before," Mrs. Angelo chimes in again.

"Doubtful." Amy could've sworn she heard a tone of amusement in his voice. She saw him turn his attention towards her. "Kissogram?"

"I go to parties and I kiss people. With outfits. It's a laugh," Amy defends her job, although she felt odd talking to Slenderman about it.

"Amy dear, it only feels like you were just a little girl five minutes ago." Amy gives Mrs. Angelo an incredulous look, ignoring the stare Slenderman was giving her.

"You're worse than my aunt," Amy frowns, hearing the Prisoner Zero broadcast in Spanish now. "It's in every language now. Great." The message changed to include that the human residence only has twenty minutes left. "Twenty minutes to what?"

A young man enters the room and instantly freezes in place when he sees the tall man. "Are you the Slenderman?"

The light bulb goes off in Mrs. Angelo's head and she says, "He is, isn't he? He's the Slenderman! All those cartoons you did when you were little. The Operator. It's him."

"Shut up," Amy shushes the others, not looking at Slenderman all the while.

"Cartoons?" Now she could definitely feel the silent laughter rolling off of him. Amy's face starts to turn red in response.

"Gran, it's him, isn't it? It's really him!"

"Jeff, shut up. Twenty minutes to what?" Amy glances up at Slenderman to see he was still staring at her.

"The human residence. Not your house. The planet." He turns to exit the house with Amy close on his heels. "There's a spaceship. It's going to incinerate the planet."

The two walk down the middle of the small road until the sky suddenly starts to go dark. A blank disc covers the sun, appearing to be a total eclipse. "What's happening, why is it going dark?" He doesn't respond. "So what's wrong with the sun?"

"Nothing." He doesn't say more than that so Amy goes to punch him in the arm until she spots people in the distance. They're all outside, taking pictures and videos of the sun. Slenderman sees what catches her interest and a sound of derision emanates from him.

"This isn't real, is it? This is some kind of big wind up." Amy shakes her head, hands clutched together tightly. She notices his head tilt and with a sigh, she says, "You told me you could travel around the world in five minutes."

"You believed me," he replies, a hint of surprise hidden beneath the statement.

"But then I grew up," she says nothing more and opts for staring at his tie instead of his blank face.

He doesn't say anything back but remembers something he saw earlier in the crowd. There was the man with his dog and a nurse taking pictures of him and not of the sun. He turns toward Amy. "Come with me."

"No."

His tentacles threaten to appear but he hides them, facing Amy fully now. "What?"

"No!" A car pulls up behind them so Amy drags Slenderman by his arm and slams his red tie in the car door then takes the car keys from the driver and locks it. Slenderman surprisingly finds himself going along with Amy's actions, knowing he could teleport away or stop her at any moment but he does nothing. "Who are you?"

"You know who I am, child." His voice sounds neither threatening or patronizing but Amy gets angry regardless.

"No, really. Who are you?" Her face is up close to his and she can see outlines of where his features should be but aren't. His height has gone down to match her's at six feet.

"Twenty minutes." His mouth appears and she can count how many sharp teeth he has. "End of the world."

"Well, better talk quickly, then." The owner of the car, Henderson, comes around but keeps his distance.

"Amy, I am going to need my car back." His timidness doesn't sway Amy from her small interrogation.

"Yes, in a bit. Now go and have coffee." She doesn't spare him a look and places the car keys on the hood.

"Right, yes." Mr. Henderson disappears and does what he's told without another word.

"Twelve years ago, I traveled around the world for you. I am real. Everything is ending. I know how to stop the ending from happening." He speaks with self-assurance and Amy wants to believe but...

"I don't believe you." Amy feels his cold hand wrap around her wrist as he raises her arm in the air in between them, as if to signify how real his touch was. He was so cold and she wonders if there is even blood pumping through his veins.

"Yes, you do." Slenderman drops her arm and Amy unlocks the car, letting him free.

"What do we do?" Amy follows him as he approaches the nurse onto the village green. He grabs his phone but only static appears on the screen so he hands it to Amy to hold.

"You were photographing a man and a dog. Why?" Slenderman got straight to the point but Rory was only looking at Amy.

"Amy." She stands next to his side, holding his phone while going through the photos.

"Hi! Oh, this is Rory, he's a friend." If Slenderman noticed the way she said friend, he didn't show a reaction.

"Boyfriend," Rory corrects.

"Kind of boyfriend," Amy corrects again.

"Amy." Rory looks to her, down at his phone, then up at Slenderman who was watching them carefully. "Oh my God, it's him."

"Just answer his question, please," she pleads, starting to look exasperated.

"It's him, though. The Slenderman. The Operator."

"Yeah, he came back."

"But he was a story. He was a game." At this, Slenderman turns to Amy who was avoiding his stare again.

"Man and dog, Rory." Amy prods her 'kind of boyfriend' for answers.

"Sorry. Because he can't be there. Because he's in a hospital, in a coma." The answer clicks in his head and Slenderman starts to connect the dots.

"It disguises itself as anything. But it needs a life feed with a living but dormant mind." Slenderman was no stranger to odd beings such as this but this was starting to get a bit beyond him. But he knows the basics thanks to the trip around the world and that is all he needs right now.

An eyeball spaceship comes soaring down, scanning the nearby area. The three watch as the ship passes by them without a second glance and goes back up into the sky. Prisoner Zero turns into goo and disappears down the drain cover before they could go after it.

"So that thing, that hid in my house for twelve years?" Amy inwardly shudders at the thought until she realizes something. "So how come you show up again on the same day that lot do? The same minute!"

"The crack in your wall. They saw me. They followed me. They're only late because I am."

"What's he on about?" Rory takes his phone from Amy but she grabs it back. She flicks through the photos on his iPhone. "How can he be real? He was never real." Amy ignores him and shows the eight images of coma patients to Slenderman which only confirmed his suspicions. There was eight comas, which meant eight disguises for Prisoner Zero. It appeared Amy caught on. "He was just a game. We were kids. You made me dress up as him."

This makes Slenderman stop looking at the images and turn his gaze back on Amy. She only shakes her head and gives the iPhone to the Slenderman instead of to Rory. "Get to the hospital. I'll be back." He teleports away, leaving Rory to stare at the blank space where he once stood.

"Your car. Come on." Amy was already leaving to get into his Mini across the street.

"But how can he be here? How can the Slenderman be here?" His questions only made Amy come back to drag him along to the car.


Slenderman returns to his forest to meet with Masky and Hoodie. He explains the entire situation to them, giving them the short version, and Masky is the one to come up the idea to expose Prisoner Zero to the aliens above. His proxies weren't experts on aliens or anything that deal with the extraterrestrial but they knew that they should make sure these aliens shouldn't bother them again. Slenderman says that he'll have a plan for that when it comes up later. His travels around the world have helped him with that.

Masky says while typing on Rory's iPhone, "A chain mail message that includes photos of the eight coma patients, the eclipsed sun, and a blurry one of you. It will say that if you don't send or forward this to everyone on your contact list in the next five minutes, the tall man will visit them. Your typical threatening scary story chain mail text. People can't help but pass it on. Especially with what's going on right now."

"How?" Hoodie asks Masky, head tilted in a manner close to Slender's. Hoodie was quiet and spoke rarely but when he did, Masky and Slender were able to understand what he means behind his short sentences.

"The mass texting will attract their attention. It sounds like they're trying to find Prisoner Zero through various means, including technology. They'll see the photos and the multiple zeroes I'll include throughout the text and trace the original source behind the text to this phone."

Slenderman praises Masky on his help and takes the iPhone from him. He says a quick farewell to his proxies and teleports back to Amy and Rory.


"Something's happened up there. We can't get through." Rory points to the mass of people standing outside the doors to the coma ward.

"Yes, but what's happened?" Amy hides around the corner with Rory, thinking of ways to get past them.

"I don't know. No one knows. You should phone him." He was a bit miffed that Amy gave away his phone to Slenderman.

"I can't phone him. He doesn't go well with electronic devices or something." She notices her appearance in the mirror in the hall and pulls her hair up into a bun. "Police uniform!" She says excitedly as she grabs Rory's hand to get them through the doors.

Past the doors and up the stairs into the coma ward, Amy and Rory nearly trip over the mess on the floor. "Oh god."

A woman with two girls beside her meet them in the corridor. "Officer," the mother calls out.

"What happened?" Amy questions them.

"There was a man. A man with a dog. I think Doctor Ramsden's dead. And the nurses." She notices there's something not right about the three and slowly starts to back away, taking Rory with her. "He was so angry. He kept shouting and shouting. And that dog. The size of that dog." Except it's not the mother who's speaking. The voice of the mother belongs to the little girl who was now talking. "I, swear it was rabid. And he just went mad, attacking everyone."

Amy and Rory back away even further. "Oh, I'm getting it wrong again, aren't I? I'm always doing that. So many mouths." Her mouth opens up to reveal needle teeth, different from Slender's own teeth.

"Oh my God!" Rory shouts in surprise. Amy grabs his arm and leads them away from Prisoner Zero. They run into the ward and bar the doors with a broom through the handles. They watch helplessly as Prisoner Zero tries to get in. Eventually, the broom gives up and the mother with her two children come through the doors.

"Oh, dear little Amelia Pond. I've watched you grow up. Twelve years, and you never even knew I was there. Little Amelia Pond, waiting for her Tall Man to return. But not this time, Amelia."

"This time, I shall." The Slenderman enters the room, having teleported in with three minutes to spare.

"You have no power here, Tall Man," the mother spats.

"Take the disguise off." Slenderman grew back to his original 8 ft, his head barely touching the ceiling. The mass of tentacles appears behind his back, moving about sporadically. "Let them find you. Nobody dies."

"The Atraxi will kill me this time. If I am to die, let there be fire," the mother threatens.

"You came into this world through a crack. Open another one. Leave." His booming voice echoes throughout the room.

"I did not open the crack," Prisoner Zero responds.

"Who did?" Slenderman didn't change his stance.

"The cracks in the skin of the universe, don't you know where they came from? You don't, do you?" Her voice changes to that of the little girl. "The Tall Man in his forest doesn't know. Doesn't know. Doesn't know!" It reverts back to the mother's voice. "The universe is cracked. The Pandorica will open. Silence will fall."

A ticking sound vibrates in his pocket and Slenderman pulls out the iPhone. Masky's plan worked. The Atraxi were tracing the phone and honed its tracking signal on it. "Here they are." Bright lights appear outside the windows.

"The Atraxi are limited. While I'm in this form, they'll still be unable to detect me. They've tracked a phone, not me."

"And this phone has pictures of you. Every form." Slenderman says curtly, knowing Prisoner Zero knows what he's talking about.

"Then I shall take a new form," the mother counters.

"Forming new psychic links takes months," Slenderman explains, drawing nearer to Prisoner Zero.

"And I've had years." Behind him, Amy collapses, falling into a deep sleep.

"Amy?" The sound of slight concern in his voice troubles him but he puts it aside for now as he goes to her side next to Rory. "Don't sleep, child. Stay awake."

"Slenderman." Rory draws his attention to Prisoner Zero. He had transformed into him, minus the tentacles and tall height, only appearing at six feet.

"You've linked with her. Why are you copying me?" Slenderman questions, standing back up to face himself.

"I'm not." A little girl comes from behind him and holds his hand. It's Amelia Pond at age seven, looking exactly as she did twelve years ago. "Poor Amy Pond. Still such a child inside. Dreaming of the Tall Man she knows will return to save her. What a disappointment you've been."

Slenderman knows she's dreaming of him because she can hear him. He needs to make her listen so he goes back to her side. "Remember the room. The one you can't see. Corner of your eye. Dream about what you saw."

Prisoner Zero transforms into the perfect impersonation of himself, now back in his original form.

"Prisoner Zero is located. Prisoner Zero is restrained." A bright light shines down on him.

"Silence, Tall Man. Silence will fall." He disappears in a rush of wind.

"The sun. It's back to normal, right? That's, that's good, yeah? That means it's over." Rory sees Amy wake up and addresses her before waiting for a response from Slenderman. "Amy. Are you okay? Are you with us?"

"What happened?" She grumbles, rubbing the spot where her head hit the floor when she collapsed.

"He did it. Slenderman did it," Rory sees him return back down to six feet.

"No. They are still here." Slenderman exits the coma ward, Amy and Rory right behind him in a flash.

"Where are you going?" Amy asks, taking the phone from him to hand back to Rory.

"The roof." With that, he puts a hand on both their shoulders and teleports them to the roof where the Atraxi are hovering overhead.

"But they were leaving," Amy protests, seeing the giant eyeball face them. Rory looks ready to faint from the teleporting.

"I'd rather if they never came back." Slenderman gestures for the Atraxi to come down and the eyeball drops onto the roof and scans him.

"You are not of this world," it stated.

"I am not human. But I am of this world," Slenderman corrects, straightening his tie.

The Atraxi scans him again and confirms this new information. "Is this world important?"

"Is this world a threat to you?" He asks instead, watching as the Atraxi analyzed a projection of the Earth.

"No."

"The humans are not a threat to you. But I am. Do you know why?"

"No."

"There are others like me on this world. It is us you should fear." The Atraxi goes through a projection that shows Slenderman, a few similar beings, and other unknowns, their appearances terrifying like images out of a horror movie. Static starts to interrupt the projection as Slenderman's voice drops dangerously. "Do not threaten to destroy this world. We know who you are. You know who we are. Leave. Never return."

The eyeball zooms back to its ship and leaves very fast, disappearing from view. "Is that it? Are they gone for good? Who were they?" Amy asks but Slenderman was nowhere to be seen. She shuts her eyes for a moment, refusing to move until Rory makes his presence known.

"Amy...let's go," he says quietly. The two leave the hospital and return to Rory's car. On the drive back home, Amy contemplates everything she's seen. It was bizarre and freaky. Those were the only two words she could think of. And Amy was usually good with words. It's why she made short stories about her and Slenderman when she was a kid.

After all was said and done, Amy starts getting ready for bed. Before she climbs under the covers, Amy takes a moment to look over her drawings. There were lots from when she was seven but over the years the drawings grew fewer and fewer in number. Most of them were in pencil but Amy liked to experiment with watercolor or painting or pastel chalks. Her room was littered with her childhood obsession. Amy never thought the images were creepy or scary. Her Aunt Sharon and others thought differently.

Sighing heavily, she shifts the papers around on her desk until she sees the stories she used to write. With a small laugh, Amy begins to read them. There was one where Amy and Slenderman visited outerspace and touched the cosmos. The planets bend between them, a hundred million stars and suns greeting them. Another one has them visiting Vincent Van Gogh in the past, helping him inspire new paintings.

There's one familiar factor in all of her stories, Amy notices. Slenderman doesn't act ominous or menacing. Amy realizes that this may not be true anymore. His appearance was meant to entice fear. He had used his ability to cause fear to drive away the aliens to make sure they never came back again. And yet Amy wasn't afraid of him. Amy was tiring herself out with these thoughts so she places the papers back on her cluttered desk and climbs into bed.

There was no sound to wake her, only silence, but Amy flies out of bed to run toward the window. She was dreaming and whatever happened in that dream woke her up. The dream was fading away and Amy was sure it was nothing important. She only remembers a voice now. It was speaking, its words reverberating in her skull. "Have you dreamed of the fall of the universe, stars falling and leaving you breathless and dying and in love with the broken universe?"

The sight that greets her at the window is Slenderman. Amy runs outside to meet him, the cold air blowing across her bare skin. Goosebumps raise on her legs and arms and she shudders and blinks her eyes rapidly to make sure she still wasn't dreaming. The haziness of her vision retreats and Amy can see him clearly now. "It's you. You came back."

"Of course I came back, child." Slenderman was six feet tall to match her height so she wouldn't have to strain to look up at him.

Amy blurts out without thinking, "Are you from another planet?"

"No. This is my planet too. You heard me earlier," Slenderman answers in her head.

"But you're not..." Amy trails off, giving him an inspection. Her eyes roam his tall form, committing the details to memory. His black suit and red tie fit like a second skin on him, his dress shoes shine a perfect gleaming black, his arms and legs long and gangly, his torso was impossibly thin...his proportions were all wrong.

"-Human," he finishes, head tilting at her staring. Amy stops immediately.

"Okay." Amy could ask all her questions now but she was squandering the opportunity with her monosyllabic mouth. "What are you then?"

"Some call me a demon. An evil spirit. A human from a past life. A myth, a legend, a campfire story. The man who steals children's souls." Slenderman lets his arms hang loosely at his sides while he keeps talking. "Fables say that I am a fairy, a mythical creature used to scare children into behaving. People that are trying to chronicle my existence today say that I am part of the supernatural or the paranormal. Others argue that I'm merely a fictional being, a story in your head."

"But you're real."

"This has been established. But what do you believe, child?" There was a long stretch of silence before Amy said anything more.

"I believe..." Amy gazes down at his shoes before drifting back up his frame to meet his blank face. "I believe you are all of that. You are what people think you are. Your existence depends on what others know of you. But none of it matters in the end. You're just...you." With a shrug, Amy could only base her response on what she knows so far which isn't much.

Her mind wanders back to the moment she first met Slenderman in her garden at age seven. He wasn't helpful at first until he was. In fact, she was pretty sure he was trying to scare her. She only thought he was funny and weird. Pretty soon, he turned into an almost friend. But when Amy explained everything to Aunt Sharon the following day, she only had one thing to say.

"Slenderman is a monster."

"I believe in you," Amy gives him her final answer, a smile accompanying it.

The silence was growing louder. Moments tick by slowly. The cold night air was chilling her to the bone. Finally, he responds. Slenderman holds out his hand for her to take. "Come with me."

"Where?" Amy asks, her breath appears in the air from the cold.

"Wherever," he cryptically replies back.

The word 'no' forms on her lips but instead she answers, "I grew up."

"I doubt that." As he speaks, Amy holds his hand as he teleports them. What awaits them is a forest. Above them, the night sky twinkles with stars and the moon is shining brighter than ever. The trees sway and bend in the wind. The leaves that fall to the ground around them are gold, green, red, and pink. It's like seeing the end of a rainbow. And it's breathtaking. "What do you think?"

"I'm in my nightie," Amy laughs as her robe tries to fly away from her. She could've sworn she heard a chuckle from him but it could've been the wind. Swirling around to face the tall man, Amy asks with seriousness, "Why me?"

His head tilts and Amy asks the question another way. "You are asking me to run away with you in the middle of the night. It's a fair question. Why me?"

"Does there have to be a reason, child?" Slenderman starts to walk away. Amy stays close beside him.

"People always have a reason," she states defensively.

"I am not people." His words echo their previous conversation twelve years prior.

"Okay," Amy concedes. She turns her attention back to the colorful forest. There is little darkness despite the time of night. "It's just, there's a whole world out here. You could get lost and nobody would ever know."

"I won't lose you in the dark, Amelia." It sounds like a promise and Amy decides to trust him.

"Can you make sure I make it back tomorrow morning?" At seeing he was questioning why without voicing it, Amy replies, "We can do these trips nightly. Or even during the day. It's just that there's people that would wonder where I've gone. Mainly Rory or maybe my aunt but...we can be gone for a week or two sometimes. I'm pretty good with excuses."

"Very well," Slenderman agrees.

After several minutes of silence, Amy smiles to herself and says quietly, "I was starting to think maybe you were just like a tall man in a forest."

"Amelia Pond." He takes her hand and just before he teleports them to another location, he replies, "I really am just a tall man in a forest."

Upon seeing their new destination, Amy looks behind her as if she could still see her house from wherever they are. "Goodbye Leadworth, hello everything."