The Slender Man

Chapter One

I laid in bed in total darkness. I had my eyes squeezed shut with my blanket over my head as I tightly clutched my bear close to my chest. My heart was racing. I couldn’t be sure but I was certain he was here. I don’t know who, but he’s here. In my room. Watching me.

It was like this last night, only I was certain I was safe inside the walls of my home as he was outside looking threw the window, even with the curtains drawn he was peeking threw the cracks.

I finally got up the courage to take a look. Here goes nothing, I thought as I lifted the covers….

I sat up in my bed startled, although I wasn’t sure what I was scared about. My heart was racing. I could hear Danny crying on the baby monitor. Maybe that’s what woke me up. I looked over at the space next to me in the bed. Like most nights, it was empty. It seems Nate’s been travailing for work constantly ever since Danny was born.

I nervously swung my legs off the side of the bed. I wasn’t sure why the dream had startled me so much, especially when I never got to see what was in the room. Perhaps it was only frightening because I had taken the form of a small child.

“Stupid.” I mumbled as I walked into the hall. It’s stupid to ponder over a silly little dream and get myself worked up. I checked the time on the grandfather clock as I walked by it. It was four thirty a.m. Wow, Danny usually woke me up well before then.

“Hey Mr sleepy head.” I said as I entered the nursery and picked him up from the crib.

-*-

I managed to get Danny back to sleep fairly easy. Considering I’d probably be back up again in an hour or to I didn’t see much point in going back to sleep.

I went down to the kitchen and dialled my older sister Isabella’s number after taking the phone off the receiver. To anyone else calling someone at this time would probably seem like madness, but Isabella is an insomniac, so she is most likely awake right now, and I know how bored she gets at night.

“Hey sis.” she answered.

“Hey, did I wake you?”

“Of course not.” she said. “What’s up?

“Nothing, I just got Danny back to sleep.”

“How is the little man?”

“He’s great.”

“Let me guess, Nate’s not home?”

“No, he’s working.”

“Kendra, you both have a kid now, don’t you think he should be home a bit more often to see him?”

“I know, but like you said, we have a kid now, so that means one more mouth to feed.”

I saw my coat on the couch. Didn’t I put that away earlier? I probably took it off and threw it there when I got home in a hurry to start on dinner. I picked it up and proceeded to the hallway closet. I put it on a coat hanger and when I was putting it away I noticed a box on the top shelf. “Hang on Isabella I need to put the phone down for a minute.” I took the box down and took a look inside. It was full of tapes. I suddenly remembered they were home videos I had stored away. Wow, how long has it been since I’ve watched these? I picked up the phone. “Are you there?”

“Yeah.”

“I just found some home videos.”

“Oh cool.” I went to the living room and started watching them. The first one was a copy of our parents wedding video. Once that was finished I put another on. None of them were labelled so I was picking them out at random.

“New tape.” I said as I put it in the VCR.

“What’s on it?”

“Oh my gosh this is my first day of school.” I said. I remembered this day, it was the day after we got our new car, I could tell because my dad kept filming it.

“Daddy look at me!” I said in a cheerful voice. My dad panned the camera around to record me with my lunch box and hat ready for school. But as soon as the camera was on me the footage got slightly distorted with parts of it skipping at the bottom of the screen.

“Are you excited for your first day of school?” my dad said. His voice was weird, deeper, slower and it almost sounded like a slight auto-tune had been added. After that the rest of the tape was impossible to watch, so I put another on.

This one was even more messed up than the other. It was pixelated like crazy, the colours seemed inverted and the sound was so messed up it was impossible to make out anything.

“Wow, was mom and dad walking around with a defective camera our whole childhood?” I said.

“Maybe.” Isabella laughed.

The only thing I could see in the video was a man in a suit, but the quality was to poor for me to see his face and know who he was.

I didn't understand why the first tape was so clear and had such good detail and the others could be so terrible.