Eyes Open

With Nate looking nervously out of the back window every few seconds, Jeff steered the car forward, every so often turning sharply into another road at the last minute. These side roads were usually bumpier than the better cared for main roads, causing Troy much discomfort. Every time they went over a bump he felt as though someone were stabbing him through the chest with a red-hot poker, and his stomach churned unpleasantly.

"How’s your friend looking?" Jeff asked, and Nate glanced at him.

"Not good," he replied.

"We need to keep driving until he’s improving," Jeff explained. "The sicker he is, the closer the Slender Man will be. It might be a while yet – that thing seemed pretty damn determined to chase us."

Nate nodded, looking back at Troy worriedly.

"Hold on, man," he told him. "You’ll start feeling better soon, I promise."

The car sped over the uneven road, screeching back out onto a main road and hitting one hundred miles an hour.

"Are you sure this is safe?" Nate asked worriedly. "He jumped right out in front of us, if we crashed –"

"It’s because he knows you don’t know how he works," Jeff said. "You call his bluff. He’ll move if you don’t stop, he’s not stupid. He just knew that you didn’t know that."

"So it was all intentional? He knew we’d crash?"

"I guess he had an idea. Like I said, he isn’t stupid. Unfortunately he appears to be quite smart."

There was a slight pause during which the only sound was that of Troy’s weak coughing and the tyres on the road beneath them. After a few minutes of nothing but these sounds, Nate spoke up again, still a little nervous.

"Are you sure we’ll be OK driving this fast?" he asked. He didn’t really fancy the idea of being in a second car accident that day.

"It’s either this, or bad news for your friend," Jeff said casually. Nate glanced back at Troy, who appeared to be in a daze by this point.

"What do you mean?" he asked, though he was afraid that he already knew the answer.

"If he stays so close to Slender Man like this?" Jeff replied, raising an eyebrow. "He’ll die."

There was a stunned silence. Luckily, Troy seemed unaware of the conversation currently occurring in the front of the vehicle.

"It can kill him?" Nate spluttered, his voice a soft whisper to make absolutely sure he didn’t alarm Troy further.

"It’s been known to," Jeff said grimly. "Come on, man. Have you ever seen someone cough up that much blood and be OK about it?"

Nate glanced back at Troy again. Blood was splattered down the front of his T-shirt and it stained some of his teeth. It was certainly a grim sight. The uncomfortable silence
continued until it reached the unbearable stage of awkwardness, and then another voice joined the noise in the car, much to Jeff and Nate’s surprise.

"Where are we going?"

Troy’s voice was weak and scratchy, but it was still a relieving sign.

"I’m not sure yet, man," Nate told his friend. "How are you feeling?"

"A bit better," Troy said weakly, and ironically gave a couple of weak coughs. However, this time no fresh blood splattered his hands, which was an incredibly reassuring sign. He looked over his shoulder, out of the back window to the lightening landscape behind them. "Why are we going so damn fast?"

"To stop your new friend from finding you," Jeff said from the front, and for the first time it seemed to dawn on Troy that Nate wasn’t the one driving.

"This is Jeff," Nate said quickly, knowing Troy could come across as rather rude when he was confused. "He’s the guy I told you about, remember? The one who knew about Slender Man."

"I vaguely remember," Troy muttered, rubbing his head. "Slender Man, eh? Is that what the kids are calling him nowadays?"

Jeff let out a light laugh.

"Yeah," he said. "Not very inventive, I know. But it sums him up."

"I suppose he is slender and manly," Troy replied. His headache was finally starting to recede, and he was finding he could breathe easier. Although still terrified over the events of the last several hours, the fact that he was finally feeling close to human made him feel like cracking a few jokes, lame though he knew they were.

The journey remained silent for a while. During this time, Troy started feeling a lot better, and he realized how much he had missed feeling well. It was only now that he looked back that he realized he had been sick for a while.

"You know this is the best I’ve felt in week, right?" he pointed out. "I’ve felt like crap ever since I started seeing that thing."

"That’s what happens," Jeff said knowingly. "I thought I had a permanent cold when I first started seeing him. To be honest, I think that’s part of his plan. I think it helps him deceive you."

"Oh?"

"Yeah, think about it. When you’re sick, you’re not really yourself. You feel different, and everything is affected – eating, sleeping, things like that. So you take medication to help yourself – flu pills, cough syrup, anything like that. Well, if you’re taking medication that you don’t usually take, what are you going to think if something strange happens?"

"That it’s a side effect of the medication?" Troy guessed.

"Exactly," Jeff nodded. "You’d think it was causing really vivid dreams, hallucinations, sleepwalking. Slender Man unfortunately understands humans a lot more than we humans understand him. He knows that it’s in our nature to try and explain things which freak us out. He also understands that when we can’t explain such events, we try to ignore them. So, I think he causes this sickness to buy time. The longer he stalks you ... well, let’s just say the harder it is to get away."

"What does he want, though?" Nate asked. "I mean, I saw him as a child. Troy’s seeing him now. When I looked him up, it said that he was mostly involved with the disappearance of children, though adults had been known to vanish from time to time, too."

"No one really knows why he chooses to stalk who he stalks," Jeff sighed. "Like I said, he knows so much about us and here we are knowing next to nothing about him. Perhaps he stalks adults because they pose a threat to him? But I don’t know what threat I could possibly pose, and I’m sure you don’t, either, Troy."

"Not a clue," Troy muttered. "When it comes to freakishly strong supernatural entities, or beings, or whatever he calls himself, I’m probably the least threatening person you’ll ever meet. But sometimes ... recently ... I’ve wondered if it’s something to do with my sister."

Nate turned to look at his friend, confusion etched into his features.

"Troy, you don’t have a sister. You’re an only child."

"I thought that too," Troy sighed. He had just realized that he hadn’t had time to tell Nate what he had discovered in the earlier talk from his parents, and it was hard to believe that everything had occurred in a time span of less than twenty four hours.

"What happened?" Nate asked curiously, and Troy paused, wondering where he should begin. Eventually, he just jumped straight in.

"When I went around to speak to my mom and dad about whether I’d seen this ... this Slender Man when I was younger, it turned out that I had. However, it also turned out that I have an older sister who saw him too. She was called Rosie and she vanished without a trace when she was three, a few weeks before I was born. Mom and Dad said she vanished straight from her room, and there was snow on the ground but only a set of footprints leading towards the house, that were much bigger than a normal human’s. They told me that there were no tracks leading away from the house, but that Rosie was just gone, like she had vanished into mid-air."

"And you never knew about her?" Nate asked, and he looked as shocked as Troy had felt to find out that Troy had had an older sister.

"No. Well, if I did, I don’t recall it. Apparently I wrote this poem about a girl called Rosie, and the tall man, and the lack of footprints. Something like, Rosie, Rosie, where’d you go? You left no footprints in the snow. In your eyes there was no light, when you said ‘The tall man visits at night’. I was like ... three? When I wrote that ... it doesn’t sound like something a three year old would write, does it?"

"You’re damn right it doesn’t," Nate muttered, running his hand through his hair as he stayed deep in thought.

"You think that’s got something to do with why this Slender Man is after me?" Troy asked Jeff, who glanced at the younger man in the rear view mirror and gave a half shrug.

"It could be," he said. "But then again it could be a number of things. Slender Man likes to fuck with our minds, and, regrettably, he’s good at it. It could be that he knows about your sister and knows that you’ll consider her as a link, when it could be something completely different, or nothing at all. Like I say, very, very little is known about Slender Man’s motives. Sometimes I think that the bastard is just one giant dick who likes messing with people for no other reason aside from sadistic pleasure."

"That’s ... reassuring," Troy muttered, and Jeff gave a thin smile.

"I wish I could say something that was more decided, man. But I’m afraid I can’t. I’m just telling you the facts. There’s no point in trying to bullshit you when I know that there’s a lot of uncertainty and danger involved. I would rather tell you the harsh truth and have you be prepared than to feed you a load of shit to make you feel better and have you go into a situation as dangerous as this one with a false sense of security."

"I suppose no good would really come of that," Troy sighed. "It’s just incredibly disheartening when you know you’re in some serious shit and there’s no real way you can get out of it."

"Tell me about it," Jeff muttered. "Anyway, there’s a motel up here that’s pretty cheap. I know it’s getting to be daytime, but I think we could all do with some rest. Especially you, Troy."

"I could do with a shower and a change of clothes," Troy said, frowning down at his muddy, blood-soaked clothes. "I guess one out of two will have to do."

The sun was just creeping up over the horizon as the car slowed and turned off of the road, bumping along the less looked after track up to the motel. It was an unremarkable little building, in the shape of an L, with several cars parked around the small parking lot.

"These places always look so dodgy," Nate muttered, and Troy laughed lightly. It felt good to laugh.

"Seems you two look like you’ve gone and murdered someone, I’ll check us in," Jeff grinned.

"In my defence, it was me who nearly got murdered," Troy shot back, and Jeff chuckled.

"Try explaining that to rural cops," he winked, before he jumped out of the car and headed to the reception building.

"I can’t leave you alone for five minutes," Troy told Nate. "I spend a few hours in a dazed trance and you run around meeting people off of the internet."

"Oh, shut your face," Nate laughed. "So, you’re feeling better, yeah?"

"As good as I can," Troy shrugged. "These bruises are really fucking sore, though. Sometimes ... it feels like he’s still got those ... those things wrapped round me."

Troy absent-mindedly reached up and lightly touched the dark welts across his throat, frowning.

"At least that’s all he did to you," Nate said softly, and Troy nodded. They both didn’t need to be told how differently the situation could have played out. For now, they were going to have to make the most of what they knew would only be temporary safety, and try to work out what they were going to do next.