Slenderman’s Always There (Oh, god, always!)

By

Mark Andrew Holmes

 

 

Student’s death ruled suicide

Written by Armando Olivas on April 12, 2023

By ARMANDO OLIVAS

Daily Press Staff

 

The death of a WNMU student found dead in her dorm room last week has been ruled a suicide.

 

Lauren Jackson, 19, of Truth-Or-Consequences was found dead in her room in Regents Hall on Friday morning by her roommate. The cause of death was apparently a single gunshot to the mouth from a .50 caliber Magnum handgun.

 

….

 

****

“Goodbye, Lauren,” Perla said as Lauren turned toward the entrance to Regents  Hall.

“Good night,” Lauren managed to say, trying to keep her eyes away from something on her left.

Perla walked on through the breezeway as Lauren took out her ID card, trying to ignore the apparition that stood on the sidewalk to her left.

She swiped her card, hearing the beep and seeing the green flash, and reached for the door handle—but now the apparition was reflected in the glass door, directly behind her.

She hesitated for just a second, then reached for the door handle and yanked it.

“Good night,” said the girl at the front desk.

“Good night,” Lauren said, and headed for the elevators. Why can’t Hope see this thing that’s been haunting me?

She took the elevator up to the fourth floor where her dorm room was, in a cold sweat, trying to ignore the thing that had materialized in the elevator right after the doors had closed and was lounging against the far wall.

It was impossibly tall and thin, about eight feet in height, wearing an old-fashioned business suit with a black sports jacket, black slacks and a black tie with a white dress shirt, shined black shoes and black socks, and a black derby hat. It was totally bald. Worst of all, its face, turned toward her, was a complete blank.  No eyes, no nose, no mouth, no eyebrows, no nothing.

It had been following her around all day, in class, in the commons, in the parking lot; not doing anything, just standing there gazing at her with its eerie blank face, if you could call it gazing. The day before she’d been shopping in Las Cruces with Perla and Kamryn and it had been there everywhere she’d gone, the stores, the gas stations, the bathroom. When Perla had stopped in Deming to get gas and use the bathroom, the thing had been standing in the parking lot, standing out by the gas pumps, standing in the bathroom watching Lauren pee. It had materialized as if by magic every single place where she’d gone. It had stood at a railroad crossing in Bayard next to the passenger-side window like that Asian guy in the original Twilight Zone episode “The Hitchhiker” as they waited for a train to go by. (Well, he hadn’t actually been Asian, he was a white guy who looked vaguely Asian and had played a lot of Asian roles in the 1950s to 1970s, but whatever.) The faceless horror had stood in front of the windshield of Perla’s car every time they stopped at a red light, staring eyelessly at Lauren, and everyone else around it was totally oblivious to it, except for one little boy about five at the crosswalk on Silver Heights Boulevard at 32^nd Street who’d stared at it in horror and burst into tears, to his mom’s utter bewilderment, and a little girl about ten riding her bike down the street in front of the Silver City WalMart who’d seen it, taken a spill onto the pavement, and then had to scramble to get herself and her pink sparkle-covered bike out of the way of an oncoming Corre Caminos intercity bus.

Lauren didn’t dare open her mouth to anyone about this. She had no desire to find herself in a rubber room, but she really didn’t know what she was going to do about this hallucination, haunting, whatever the fuck it was. She just wanted it to go the fuck away. How could she make that happen?

Lauren almost darted out of the elevator into the mercifully empty hallway and had to force herself to walk casually to her room five doors down on the left. The faceless horror in the Mad Men-style suit was now standing next to the door to the room two doors down from hers.

She used her card to open her door and had to fight herself to keep from slamming it behind her.

The creature was now standing in the living room next to the sofa.

She was about to scream Who are you and what do you want with me? But then her roommate Kamryn came out of the second door on the right, butt-naked, with a giggle.

“You’re back,” she said.

“Yeah. I’m going to bed,” Lauren said. “Having fun?”

Kamryn laughed as she opened the fridge.

“The lights are on, the butter’s getting hard,” Lauren said and entered her room.

Now the attenuated faceless thing in the business suit was standing by her bed.

“Look, I don’t know what you want with me, but I wish you’d go away. I’m just going about my business.”

The apparition just stood there.

“Please go away.”

The apparition just stood there.

Lauren shrugged, making an effort to appear unconcerned; kicked her shoes off, wriggled out of her trousers, and climbed into bed.

But it was a long time before she fell asleep—a sleep haunted by nightmares of wandering through an atom-bomb-blasted city, of endless nosebleeds and wriggling inside a sweat-soaked straitjacket —and she couldn’t wake up.

***

When she finally woke up the following morning, not feeling rested, the sheets were soaked with sweat, and the first thing she saw when she opened her eyes was the tall, thin faceless monstrosity in a Fifties business suit that looked like it had grown up on the moon standing at the foot of her bed, facing in her direction. She felt a wave of vertigo and nausea.

“Go away,” she said, her voice trembling slightly.

The creature didn’t move.

“Go away,” she repeated, louder.

Nothing doing. The thing just continued to stand there regarding her with its blank creepy face.

She was not going to quit showering because of this thing. She got up and stalked into the bathroom, making an effort not to slam the door and not quite succeeding. The creature immediately reappeared, standing next to the closed door.

She stepped into the shower stall, stripped off, and put her clothes on the toilet lid, hoping that thing didn’t steal them. That it didn’t try to get into the shower with her. Thankfully, it did neither one.

But when she got out, it was still standing in the bathroom by the door.

She sighed, trembling, and walked by it into her bedroom to get dressed.

….