Eyes Open

For a brief few seconds, the Slender Man turned and faced Troy, who stared back at him in horror, and then the creature let out that horrible screeching noise again, and simply vanished into thin air. Troy wasn’t bothered by this fact, however – he was too busy running to Jeff’s side.

"Oh, Jesus!" he yelled. "Jeff!"

Jeff was lying on his side near the truck of the tree, his hands clasped over part of his stomach. He was completely pale and his hands were covered in blood, as was the ground around him. Troy dropped to his knees beside the injured man.

"It’s all right, man," he told him. "Come on, let me see it. I need to see what’s happened, Jeff."

Jeff looked up at Troy, still trying to catch his breath. Troy could see that there was a thin trickle of blood coming from the corner of Jeff’s mouth.

"It’s no good," Jeff croaked.

"You don’t know that," Troy said firmly. "Let me see, Jeff."

Jeff slowly and painfully moved his hands away from his stomach, and Troy instantly saw that it was bad. The front of Jeff’s T-shirt was already soaked in blood, and where his hands had been, there was a ragged hole in the material, and Troy could make out that, jutting out of this gap, was the bloodied bark of a tree branch. He felt himself pale, but said nothing, so as not to panic Jeff. Instead, he edged closer slightly, where he could see that the branch had indeed gone straight through Jeff – more of the branch jutting out of his back, ending in a jagged break where Jeff’s weight had snapped it off of the tree.

"I’m screwed, aren’t I?" Jeff asked softly.

"No, man," Troy told him. "It’ll be fine, yeah? You’ve got to think positively."

"Come on," Jeff muttered, but he managed a small, weak smile. "You know as well as I do that this is pretty fucking bad."

"Well, yeah," Troy replied. "I’m not trying to say it’s a bundle of laughs. But you can’t think the worst, either. We’ll get you help, man. I’m not sure exactly how we’ll explain it, but we’ll get you help."

There was the sound of rustling and branches cracking then, and Troy tensed up, turning to face the direction the noise was coming from, moving himself protectively in front of Jeff. There was a tense moment where the noise suddenly stopped, and then Nate, covered in leaves and mud, staggered out from between several trees.

"Jesus Christ, that thing can run fast," he gasped. All of a sudden, it registered with him that something was terribly wrong – Troy saw the realization dawn on his friend’s face.

"Jeff’s hurt," Troy said, as calmly and casually as possible. "Slender Man threw him against the tree. He’s bleeding."

Troy was trying his best to avoid saying the word "impaled", though he knew that both he and Jeff realized what the injury meant. Nate cautiously came forward, and paled even further when he saw Jeff’s injury.

"Jesus," he whispered, and he looked at Troy with wide eyes. "What are we going to do?"

"We need to get him back to the house," Troy replied. "Just briefly, at least."

"We can’t move him like that, Troy," Nate said. "We’ll do him even more damage. What if the branch like ... you know?"

"Guys, I know there’s a damn branch stuck through me," Jeff suddenly piped up. "Can we stop pussyfooting around the fact like little girls?"

There was a pause, and then Nate chuckled softly.

"Fine," he said. "We don’t want it to dislodge. It’ll make the wound bleed more."

"We can’t stay here, either," Troy replied. "What if he comes back?"

"He does know where the house is, remember?" Nate reminded his friend. "What if he’s waiting for us to go back there?"

"Jeff injured him," Troy told him. "I think we’ve got some time, at least. I don’t quite know how he works when it comes to injuries, but I’m confident it’ll buy us about half an hour."

"Perhaps a little shorter," Jeff muttered, from his curled position on the ground. "He heals himself pretty fast, so it seems."

"Then we’ve got to move," Troy said firmly. "No one will find us out here, Nate. Jeff needs a hospital, and we don’t even know where we are. We need to find that house’s address – hunt for letters or something – or we need to get Jeff in the car and drive until we find a road sign. We can’t afford to sit here and wait to be found – that won’t happen."

"He’s right," Jeff said. "Out here I don’t stand a chance. I’m not saying I do anyway –"

"Jeff, don’t say things like that."

"- but it would be best to get back to the house at least. It’s not far."

"It’ll take longer carrying you," Nate said. "The ground’s uneven and it’s quite tight in some places."

"You don’t have to carry me," Jeff muttered. "Just make sure I don’t fall over, that’s all I ask."

"You’re not seriously going to try and get up in that condition, are you?" Troy asked in disbelief, but he was cut off at that point by Jeff managing to get onto his hands and knees, and then, rather unsteadily, into a crouching position.

"You’re fucking mental, Jeff," Nate muttered, but he and Troy still helped pull the injured man into a standing position. Jeff’s face grew slightly paler, and for a brief moment he swayed on the spot, before he finally regained some balance.

"Careful, dude," Nate said, as they slowly made their way back to the small opening where Nate had previously emerged from.

"Can you even remember which way it was?" Troy asked him.

"Yeah," Nate replied. "I broke as many branches on my way down as possible. There should hopefully be some sort of trail. If not, I know the general direction."

For a long while, the walk was silent, all apart from Jeff’s occasional muttered swearwords. Troy couldn’t believe how strong the other man was being – he could only imagine the agony he was in, and yet Jeff was putting one foot in front of the other with no more fuss than the occasional swearword. One the one hand, Troy was confused as to how Jeff was managing it, but on the other it gave him hope – Jeff was obviously a strong guy. This would work out fine, as long as they got him to a hospital soon. Troy didn’t exactly know how he was going to explain the injury away to doctors, but right now that was pretty irrelevant. Questions and excuses would come later. Right now, they just had to focus on what was going on now.

Some parts of the journey felt like they were lasting for forever, whereas other parts of the journey flew by. Eventually, they stumbled into the clearing, where the flickering light from the house’s kitchen signalled that they had made it.

"Damn, forgot about the candles," Troy muttered. "We’re lucky the place hasn’t burnt down."

"I think candles were the least of our worries at the time," Nate replied. He and Troy were now having to support Jeff, who was now a lot paler, and had stopped cracking light-hearted jokes about the situation a while ago. This was more unnerving than Troy had thought it would have been, and he and Nate’s moods had become increasingly tense as a result.

Nate shouldered the door open and the two men heaved Jeff over the doorstep and into the house. They managed to get him down the hallways and then onto the couch, laying him on his side again. He was still pale and silent, and his eyes were closing for longer periods of time. Nate went to search through drawers and cupboards to see if anything with an address on it remained, while Troy stayed with Jeff, willing the injured man to stay conscious.

"It’ll be fine now, man," Troy told him, from where he was sitting on the floor at Jeff’s head. "Nate’s looking for an address. If we can’t find one, it’s no worries. We’ll get you into the car and we’ll find somewhere that they know of. You just have to hold on a little longer, yeah?"

Jeff forced his eyes open, watching Troy closely. The normally bright blue of his eyes had dulled slightly, and Troy could see that they were full of pain. The sight made a lump form in his throat, and he had the overwhelming urge to take all the pain away from Jeff, even if it meant taking it on himself.

"I don’t think I’m gonna make it, kid," Jeff said softly.

"Don’t be stupid, Jeff. Of course you are. You’re just getting tired, yeah? That walk probably really took it out of you."

Troy refused to believe that the very man who had been laughing and joking about the whole situation earlier was now admitting that he was dying.

"I’m being serious," Jeff said, and now there was a hint of urgency in his weak voice. "I think I’m going to die, Troy. In fact I’m pretty certain of it."

"Jeff –"

"Listen," Jeff said firmly, and with a lot of effort he pulled himself up slightly, his breaths coming in short, jagged rasps, and wincing, he reached behind him into one of his back pockets, pulling out a battered black notebook. He flopped weakly back down onto the couch, taking several more raspy breaths, before he pressed the little battered book into Troy’s hand.

"It’s not much," Jeff admitted, and Troy looked at it curiously. "But I’m hoping it might make sense to someone with a fresh mind."

Troy quickly flicked through its crumpled and slightly yellowed pages. On each page, front and back, dozens of notes were scribbled, taking up whole pages in some cases, or just written square in the centre, bolded and underlined, on others.

"It’s about Slender Man," Troy said softly, knowing even before he saw the rough sketches on some of the pages.

"I’ve had that book for years," Jeff muttered. His voice was definitely becoming weaker, and that fact terrified Troy. "I’ve written down every single point of interest. Sightings, news stories, places, times, dates, what he’s been doing when I’ve seen him. I was hoping I’d work out a pattern to his movements but so far I can’t see one. I’m hoping that someone with a fresh look at it, like you, might be able to make sense of what he might be up to. Don’t panic if you can’t, though – I don’t really think this guy, or whatever he is, does really have a pattern, if I’m honest. I guess it just made me feel like I was doing something."

"Jeff, you can’t be being serious," Troy said softly, as he looked down at the little black book clutched in his hand. Jeff sighed, his breath getting wheezier, and grabbed something from his jacket pocket.

"Take these," he said, holding out his car keys. "Take my car and just do whatever you can. Please. If you believe you can work this out, then go for it. I believe in you, yeah? But even if it’s just warning people ... please, man. Do something."

"I will," Troy said quietly, before bringing his eyes up to look at Jeff. "You’re serious, aren’t you?" he asked, and he found his voice was choking up.

"Yeah," Jeff replied, and there was now sadness in his voice. "I am. Keep calm and carry on, yeah?"

"All right," Troy said, and the lump in his throat suddenly became hard to fight. He heard soft footsteps behind him and Nate was there, and he crouched down next to Troy, and they sat with Jeff long after he fell unconscious, and even longer after he finally stopped breathing, and was still.

The silence in the room seemed to deepen, and Troy became aware of the fact that he was gripping the notebook and keys so hard that he was shaking, and the keys were digging into his palm.

Quite suddenly, he jumped up, and left the room. Nate let him go. They both needed time to think.