She was up over the fence and twenty feet in before she turned on the flashlight.
Slender; The 8 Pages
The cool breeze that blew through the park chilled Taylor to the core. She'd once again let her stubborn attitude block out her better judgement. She wasn't supposed to be there, but she couldn't go back. That thick skulled jock would think that she'd chickened out. She had metaphorically and literally crossed the line.
She'd hoped the fence lining the park, she done what she had told herself she wouldn't do, and now with the flashlight throwing shadows around she was pretty sure that she'd crossed the fine line between rational and completely nuts.
"Only eight pages," She muttered under her breath, "only eight."
Taylor squinted, to no avail, in an attempt to see farther. Fog was rolling in obscuring almost everything from view. Her flashlight just wasn't strong enough to light up more than a few paces ahead of her. Taylor took in a long, deep breath and started walking.
The first paper she found was taped to a thick tree where the path skirted around it on both sides. trees were scribbled on the crumpled paper. It only took a few moments to realize that this page was outside much longer than just that night. It was torn, sun bleached tan, and water had dried on it discoloring the surface.
"No, this isn't real," Taylor told herself, "it's just old parchment paper, that jock spilled some water on it and rubbed it on the tree to crinkle it."
It was the best rational explanation she could muster. Not even a good one, simply the only and best one she could come up with.
"One page of eight, seven left." Taylor said.
Even though it was supposed to be encouraging it came out sounding more like a countdown. Like the minutes ticking away on a bomb; foreboding and final.
It wasn't long before she found another, this one barely sticking to the metal of a shipping crate. It had the same sun faded tone, dark scribbles, and was weather worn. Her doubts and rationalizations being brought down one by one.
The third page finally did her in. Taylor found it stuck up inside of a bathroom complex. It wasn't in as bad a shape as the first two but clearly had been there for a long time. It was evident from the way it cracked at her touch. Like a dam bursting, all of her theories were washed away. There wasn't a way to get a piece of paper to look like that artificially.
Taylor didn't even attempt to search for reasons that the page could be in that condition. The page had been there for a year or longer.
She left the bathroom facility with a new goal. She no longer wanted to shrug off the jock, now all she wanted was to find the last five pages. If she got them, it could give her an explanation. But she also knew what the video games' ending was. Even if you got all eight pages, you still died.
Now, with that grim thought fresh in her mind, she began to jog. The fourth page was taped to a rock. She tore it from the rocks and continued her search, heart racing as she went. She uncovered the fifth page not too far from the last.
The flashlight's beam flickered and she froze in her tracks.
I can't be out of battery now! She thought.
Taylor swiveled to take in her surroundings. Nothing. She began to walk again but couldn't shake the feeling that she was being watched.
Slenderman isn't real, he's just a legend. She thought, but she couldn't bring herself to believe it. Like the battery life in the flashlight, her confidence waned. Three more pages to find.
Out of the corner of her eye she thought she saw movement and began to speak, "I don't believe in you, you're not real and you can't hurt me."
After that she continued moving. Several more times she saw movement in the corners of her vision. While she couldn't get a good view of the thing she felt it's presence. It was like it wanted her to know it was there.
She stumbled upon the next page not long after she spoke to the thing in the woods. When she picked it up he flashlight went dead. A new wave of panic washed over her. the darkness was overpowering, like a vice grip closing in on her from all sides. So she ran. She got only a few steps before slamming into a solid object. It wasn't a tree.
In the dim light she could barely make out the shape. Clearly it was almost seven feet tall. Mostly black with small splotches of white. Immediately she sprang to her feet and ran but tripped before she could even get out of the clearing. She never felt herself hit the ground.