Slender Man

Copyright

HarperVoyager

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

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www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018

Copyright © Mythology Entertainment, LLC 2018

Cover images © Shutterstock.com

Cover design by Mike Topping © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018

Mythology Entertainment, LLC 2018 asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780008174064

Ebook Edition © August 2018 ISBN: 9780008174088

Version: 2018-08-22

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Welcome

About the Publisher

welcome

Don’t take this personally, but I don’t like you very much.

I don’t see the point of you, I resent the time I’m being forced to spend on you, and – to be honest – I just see you as an obligation, as something that I have to put up with until I can get rid of you.

But that’s not going to be for a while yet, so to hell with it.

Here we go.

— — — —

March 12th

Dear Diary …

You see, that’s just stupid. Why would you address a diary like it’s the grandparent you only see a couple of times a year? I get that this is risky territory under the circumstances, but it seems to me that when you start talking to inanimate objects like they’re people then you’ve reached the point where you need to check that all your screws are fully tightened. But maybe that’s just me.

Either way, let’s try that again.

— — — —

March 12th

Journal entry 1

Better. Much better. When I hear the word diary, I think of a bright pink book with a felt cover and a little lock and a keyhole that lives under the pillow of some twelve-year-old girl whose heart is just so very full of hopes and dreams and secrets. Not a Word document on the desktop of a MacBook Pro that only exists because your therapist told you it had to.

She thinks the act of writing this will be good for me, that it will help me keep things ordered and she thinks I might surprise myself. I guess there’s always a chance that she’s right, but I’m really not going to be holding my breath.

It’s been a long time since I surprised myself.

I have to see Dr. Casemiro once a week, on Tuesday evenings after school. My parents are making me do it. I’ve been having nightmares for a little while now, and my mom says I’ve been crying out in my sleep, although part of me thinks they just got tired of being one of the only couples they know who doesn’t have at least one child in therapy. I asked them why – if they’re worried about me sleeping properly – they didn’t just get me referred to an actual sleep therapist, and Mom told me that she thinks – and I’ll quote her now – That it’s always better to get to the root of what’s going on, and that it never hurts to give yourself an emotional roadworthiness test.

I’m still not sure what she expected me to say in response to that.

Anyway.

I asked Dr. Casemiro what she wanted me to write about, whether I was supposed to keep an actual diary where I write down everything I do each day and every place I go and everyone I talk to, and she said that she wanted it to be an outlet for personal reflection, so what I put in it was entirely up to me.

Which was really helpful, obviously.

It must be such a weird balancing act, being a therapist. I get that the whole point is to try and lead people to realize things about themselves, rather than just tell them what’s wrong, but that relies on people being brave enough to look as hard at themselves as they do at other people, and I don’t know how many people are really, actually, that brave. People want easy answers, and they want pills that make them feel better.

It must be especially weird these days, where you know that if you give a patient advice that turns out to be unhelpful, they’ll almost certainly sue you. That must really sharpen your professional focus, although I wonder if it makes you reluctant to actually take a position on anything. I wonder if that’s why she says “Let’s explore that a little further” about fifteen times every hour.

In the end, I managed to get her to at least suggest a few things that she thought it might be helpful for me to write about: family, friends, school, how I spend my spare time. Nothing that I couldn’t have guessed myself, but you take what you can get, I guess.

So fine. I’ll do what she says.

You know how in movies and stories, the hero usually has some destiny that they aren’t aware of? Like how Luke Skywalker is destined to be a great Jedi and lead the Rebel Alliance to victory but he doesn’t know it because he’s living on Tattooine, or that Frodo is destined to destroy the One Ring in Mount Doom but he thinks he’s going to live his entire life in The Shire?

There’s a whole academic theory about it: it’s called The Hero’s Journey. People who go from small lives to some great grand thing, where they become part of something bigger and more important than they could ever have imagined.

I guess it’s why those stories work so well, because everyone wants to believe they’re more important than they really are, that any moment now some incredible thing is going to happen that turns everything upside down and they’ll breathe a massive sigh of relief because they always knew they were special, deep down they always knew it, and all the disappointments and bullshit and trudging through dead-end days will have been worthwhile.

Me? I’m destined to be a lawyer.

Glamorous, right? World-changing. I can’t wait.

I explained this to Dr. Casemiro during our first session, when we were still in the getting-to-know-you part of the process, and she told me I was wrong, that I can do anything with my life that I put my mind to, but all that proved is something I already knew, that a person can be really intelligent and really stupid at the same time.

Of course I can technically do whatever I want with my life. America’s still just about a free country, and I’m white and male and my parents are wealthy and I go to a good school, so I have about as many advantages as it’s possible for a person to have. But my options – like everyone else’s – are limited by stuff that people don’t like to talk about, because it doesn’t fit with the all-American ideal of a meritocracy, that the only thing standing between you and your wildest dreams is hard work and a good attitude.

Which, frankly, is an absolute crock of shit.

My dad is a lawyer. Three of my four grandparents were lawyers. It runs in the family. It’s in our blood.

My mom isn’t a lawyer, but that’s only because she got pregnant with me and never finished law school. By the time I was born my dad was the youngest partner at his firm, and I guess neither of them ever saw the point in her going back to work. I barely see her any more than I see my dad, though: she’s on the boards of about a dozen charities and non-profits, and a lot of the time it seems like she works longer hours than he does.

I don’t think Dad will try to tell me what major I pick when I go to college next fall, because that doesn’t really effect the path he has got laid out for his only son, a path that was set in stone when I was still swimming around in his balls. But if I suggest not going to law school after I graduate? That’s going to be a really awkward conversation.

Think of it this way:

There are things that live at the bottom of the ocean, down where only the strongest submarines can go, the ones with windows that are six inches thick. Things that are much weirder than anything in movies or novels, things that look like the guy who designed the creature out of Alien took a whole bunch of acid and just went nuts on a sketchpad. The pressure at the bottom of the ocean would crush a person to death in about a nanosecond, but the creatures I’m talking about thrive on it. They’re used to it, because they’ve never known anything else.

So. Anyway.

Dr. Casemiro likes talking about my parents. LOVES talking about them, to be honest, even though I’m still scratching my head to understand how whether or not I think my mother loves me relates to me having the occasional bad dream.

I mean, I could lie and say that they neglect me, or beat me, or that dad sexually abused me when I was little, but Dr. Casemiro has met them and I don’t think there’s any way she would buy it. They’re just too boring to have that kind of darkness inside them, even hidden away deep down where nobody else can see it.

The – equally boring – truth is that my mom and dad are kind, decent, upstanding members of the community. They probably both work more than is totally healthy, and there are times when it doesn’t really feel like they’re very interested in me, but find me a teenager in America who doesn’t feel like that some of the time. If you can, it’ll be because you’ve found someone who doesn’t have any parents, which is a whole different thing altogether.

Jamie always tells me that I’m lucky that my mom and dad are so busy, that they always have so much stuff going on. His dad’s a lot older than mine – he retired last fall, and him and Jamie’s mom decided to go full super-parent for the last couple of years before their son flies the nest. Homework at the kitchen table, both of them helping out. Parent governors at Riley, both of them going along on every college visit. His mom holding the stopwatch while he does practice SAT papers. Jamie says it feels like being smothered.

Calling Jamie my best friend seems a little bit pre-pubescent girl, and calling him my bro would mean I was the kind of douchebag who actually uses the word bro. I’ve always liked mate, which is the British word for friend, but I don’t think you can pull it off out loud unless you’re Jason Statham.

He’s my closest friend. That’ll do.

We don’t hang out all the time, because nobody ever really does that. And there have been times where we barely saw each other for weeks, or even months. There was the time Jamie broke his ankle playing lacrosse and I got really into World of Warcraft. There was the period when he was dating Lucie Goldman and just wandered around every day with this big goofy grin on his face, like he was the first person in history to ever get to third base.

But most of the time, we’re pretty tight. He forwards me every dumb thing he finds on the internet, and I text him the movies he should have seen but hasn’t, and we swap comics, and records, and we gossip about things that happened at school, sometimes barely minutes earlier. Because things happening aren’t enough: the important part is hyper-analysing them afterwards. Obviously.

I do a lot of the same things with Lauren too, although hardly anyone knows that. She’s probably my oldest friend, although it’s not the same as it used to be, at least in public. I’m not sure most people at Riley even know that we know each other, and the weird thing is that I think both of us have sort of come to enjoy that fact. Our parents are friends, and we were super-tight until we were about eight, as stupid as that sounds now. We went to different middle schools, and when we got to Riley we lived in different worlds. But we still text all the time, and she gets to show someone every weird bit of creepypasta and the horrendous gore photos she always finds weirdly hilarious without freaking her friends out and I get to indulge my mild obsession with Riverdale without Jamie wondering if I’ve lost my mind.

It works, is what I’m saying. At school, we barely acknowledge each other. And that’s OK. Because – and I’m not being hyperbolic here – Riley is a judgemental cesspit. And that’s putting it mildly. It’s mostly the same drama that happens in every school, the who-fucked-who, who-said-what, who-did-what stuff that seems so unbelievably important for about five minutes. Although Riley being Riley, there are times when the shit hits the fan from a slightly different direction.

There was the time one of the girls in my class had to go to the emergency room and get her stomach pumped because she had been out celebrating her mom winning a Tony.

About a quarter of the class of 2010 went from being THE OFFICIAL KINGS AND QUEENS OF THE SCHOOL to applying for bursaries and free lunches when Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers went under.

Last semester two kids from the class below mine disappeared after there was a coup in the Democratic Republic of Congo and their father fled to Switzerland, taking about half the country’s GDP with him. One day they were there, the next they were on a plane.

So it goes. It’s a cliché to say that nobody knows what the future holds, but it’s also the truth.

Nobody has a fucking clue.

— — — —

Excerpt of police interview transcript.

APRIL 22ND 2018, 20TH POLICE PRECINCT STATIONHOUSE, MANHATTAN, NY

Participants:

Detective John Staglione

Detective Mia Ramirez

Jamie Reynolds

Donald McArthur (Attorney-at-Law)

DET. STAGLIONE. OK. Everyone set?

JAMIE REYNOLDS. Fine.

DET. RAMIREZ. You know you’re not in any trouble, Jamie. That’s been made clear to you?

JAMIE REYNOLDS. Yeah.

DET. STAGLIONE. We get that this is difficult.

DET. RAMIREZ. We really do.

DONALD MCARTHUR. Could we dispense with the “we’re all friends here” act?

DET. STALGIONE. Your attorney’s a cynic.

DONALD MCARTHUR. Detectives.

DET. RAMIREZ. Fine. No problem.

DET. STAGLIONE. How long have you known Matthew Barker, Jamie?

JAMIE REYNOLDS. Since second grade.

DET. RAMIREZ. So more than ten years?

JAMIE REYNOLDS. I guess so.

DET. STAGLIONE. Where was that?

JAMIE REYNOLDS. Sorry?

DET. STAGLIONE. Where did the two of you attend second grade?

JAMIE REYNOLDS. Don’t you know that already?

DET. RAMIREZ. Just answer the question, Jamie.

DONALD MCARTHUR. I’m going to ask you to take a less combative tone with my client, Detective. Mister Reynolds is not under arrest, and is cooperating fully with your investigation.

DET. STAGLIONE. Of course. Sorry about that. So can you tell us where you met Matthew Barker?

JAMIE REYNOLDS. At Sacred Heart.

DET. RAMIREZ. Sacred Heart Preparatory School? On West 75th?

JAMIE REYNOLDS. So you did know. Why ask me?

DET. STAGLIONE. We’re interested in your recollection of events, Jamie. In what you can and can’t remember. We’re not trying to trick you.

JAMIE REYNOLDS. I met Matt at Sacred Heart. Like I said.

DET. RAMIREZ. OK. Do you remember what you thought of him?

JAMIE REYNOLDS. What do you mean?

DET. RAMIREZ. Your initial impression.

JAMIE REYNOLDS. I was seven.

DET. STAGLIONE. So that’s a no?

JAMIE REYNOLDS. We were kids. I don’t remember any more than that.

DET. RAMIREZ. Was he popular?

JAMIE REYNOLDS. Matt?

DET. RAMIREZ. Yes.

JAMIE REYNOLDS. I don’t know. I mean … I guess so. Yeah. People liked him.

DET. STAGLIONE. What about later on? At Riley?

JAMIE REYNOLDS. He was quiet. He always has been, I guess. So he wasn’t exactly the most popular kid in school. He didn’t play football, and he wasn’t into the kind of activities that Riley kids care about.

DET. RAMIREZ. Which activities are those?

JAMIE REYNOLDS. Usual shit. Debate. Band. Model UN.

DET. STAGLIONE. And Matt wasn’t into any of those?

JAMIE REYNOLDS. No.

DET. STAGLIONE. So what was he into?

JAMIE REYNOLDS. Usual stuff, I guess. He liked movies, liked TV, liked games. He read a lot. He wrote stuff, too, although he never let me read any of it.

DET. RAMIREZ. What sort of stuff?

JAMIE REYNOLDS. Stories. Comics too, I think. I know he used to draw a lot, when we were younger.

DET. STAGLIONE. But he wasn’t unpopular?

JAMIE REYNOLDS. No.

DET. RAMIREZ. Did he seem happy to you?

JAMIE REYNOLDS. What does that look like?

DET. STAGLIONE. I don’t know, Jamie. You were his friend.

JAMIE REYNOLDS. Yeah. He seemed happy enough.

March 14th

Journal entry 2

I went to Whole Foods with Jamie after school let out, because he read somewhere that you burn more calories drinking wheatgrass juice than there are calories in wheatgrass juice. Which is really, obviously bullshit, but he says he wants to lose ten pounds before the summer because apparently he’s turned into the kind of person who thinks you are supposed to weigh a certain amount at a certain time of the year and I just didn’t have the energy to call him out on it. He bought two litres of the stuff and all I could think about was how green his piss is going to be before he goes to bed tonight.

We walked back through the park and he was talking about how Steve Allison has been talking shit about Lauren to anyone who will listen since she dumped him while apparently texting her about a hundred times a day asking her to take him back. I didn’t really say much, even though I knew more about it than he did. He knows that we’re friends – or at least, that we used to be – but he doesn’t know we text all the time, because I’ve never told him. Like I said, it’s nice to have at least one secret.

Like most of the boys at Riley, Jamie is at least a little bit in love with Lauren. I sometimes think I’m the only person who could put their hand on their heart and honestly say that they’re not. It’s not like I blame them – she’s pretty and funny and smart and popular – but that’s just not how I see her. I think I’ve known her too long for that. And it’s hard to crush on someone who sends you videos of people walking across railway crossings and getting splattered by trains.

Anyway.

She’s not the hottest girl at school. Last year there was a senior at Riley called Erin whose older sister is a Victoria’s Secret Angel, and she was just about the best-looking person I’ve ever seen in real life. It sort of hurt to look at her, if that makes any sense. The school email server almost burned down two Septembers ago when she “accidentally” sent a folder of photos of herself in about a dozen different bikinis on the beach at Cabo San Lucas to everyone in the cheerleading squad and the athletics programs. I don’t think there’s ever been a link that was forwarded and downloaded more quickly in the history of the internet.

Lauren isn’t as pretty as Erin was. But Lauren would also never send a folder of photos of herself in swimwear to half the senior class and claim it was an accident, so she’s got that going for her.

Lauren’s mom doesn’t work, because her dad is this insanely sought-after gynecologist. He’s clearly an asshole – he’s tall and handsome and loud and is one of those guys who really pride themselves on being CHARMING – but he’s funny, if nothing else. I was talking to him once at a parent–teacher event at Riley and he told me he’s the only man in the world who has seen more supermodel vaginas than Leonardo DiCaprio. Lauren looked like she was going to die from embarrassment, but I just about fell over laughing.

I actually ran into her on Central Park West this morning and we walked to school through the park together. That happens maybe once or twice a week, and it’s a good start to the day. We talked and we walked and we got coffee at one of the little carts in the park and about ten minutes later we got to Riley and told each to have a good day.

It was nice, like it always is.

In all honesty, I was glad to see her this morning because I was in a shitty mood by the time I left our apartment. I told my mom over breakfast that I wanted to stop seeing Dr. Casemiro, that it was making me feel awkward and that I clearly wasn’t getting anything out of it because I’d had a nightmare two nights before, but she wasn’t having any of it. She loves to really lean into that parental hypocrisy of telling me I’m an adult when she wants me to take more responsibility or stop doing something she doesn’t like but refuses to actually let me make anything resembling an important decision for myself. She said the same stuff she always says: that when I’m eighteen – a legal, court-authorized adult, which is an unbelievably stupid concept if you take even a second to think about it – I can do whatever I want, including refusing to see Dr. Casemiro anymore.

Until then, I basically have to eat shit and smile about it. My words, not hers.

I told her thanks very much, but I don’t think I managed to fill it with as much sarcasm as I intended, because she just nodded her head and told me to have a good day.

In fairness, it actually was a pretty good day, but there was no way I was going to tell her that when I got home. She got the noncommittal grunt she deserved before I came in here to my room and slammed the door. Because two can play at being unreasonable, if that’s the game she wants.

No problem at all.

AP Math was painfully boring, but English was OK. We’re studying Tender Is the Night and today we were talking about the treatment of Nicole’s mental illness, about how Fitzgerald lets the reader know via flashback what’s actually happening although Dick Diver keeps it a secret from the other characters for as long as he can. It carries a lot more weight when you know that Nicole is really Zelda Fitzgerald and Fitzgerald is basically telling the real story of their life together in the novel. It’s clever, in a sort of meta way. I hated The Great Gatsby, but I’m quite enjoying this one.