Return of The Slender Man Ch. 01

"Bart is a factory worker at BigPharmaCorp." continued Myron. "No issues with them that I could find, and he was on their Safety Advisory Board until last year. No criminal record, other than a couple of speeding tickets."

"Financial issues?" I asked.

"None, really." said Myron. "Makes pretty good money at BigPharmaCorp, spending habits reasonable, pays off his credit card every month."

"Social issues?" Cindy asked.

"Bart's wife has a Facebook account." said Myron. "She was pretty active on it before she left him, and she was always posting pictures of her, Bart, and Tommy. Some of those pictures were removed, and I found an order from the judge in the divorce decree requiring her to remove all pictures of Bart and Tommy from all social apps. That was one of Bart's biggest demands in the settlement. By the way, Mrs. Tomlin chronicled her leaving Bart and now shows pictures of her with her new man. That's one reason Bart was able to get any custody for his wife denied."

"So much for the double standard in divorce law." Cindy quipped, remembering our freshly solved Tylenol Bottle case.

"It's still a double standard." I said. "I strongly suspect she willingly gave up any custody of Tommy. Tommy's grades show that he was not happy about that, at all."

"So Bart is not a social butterfly?" Cindy asked Myron.

"No ma'am." said Myron. "No social clubs, no church memberships that I've found yet. Fairly active in Union activities, though. I got into his cellphone easily enough, but the only texts were work- or Union-related. No social interactions with women, no one-time texts that could be considered threats to or from him. We'll have to do further investigating."

"I'll have Joanne talk to the neighbors, work associates, stuff like that." Cindy said.

"That's be fine, but as to Tommy, we're up against a serious time issue." I said. "I'm less interested in the 'why' of his disappearance than in just finding him, and in a timely manner."

Just then, Detective Joanne Warner knocked on the door and I called out for her to come in.

"We've wrapped up at the scene, sir, ma'am." said Joanne. "None of the neighbors adjoining the Tomlin house saw anything at all, nor heard anything until they heard Mr. Tomlin screaming."

"Did you happen to talk to these neighbors about the Tomlins?" I asked. "What kind of people they are?"

"Yes sir, we did." said Joanne. "The Officers are writing their reports, which should give more details. From what I gathered, Bart Tomlin was not unfriendly but not outgoing, either. He became a bit more reclusive after his wife left him. No one could ever remember him yelling abusively at Tommy or seeing any signs of physical abuse on Tommy. We probably should call Tommy's school to get more on that, if there is anything."

"And if the wife didn't try to get custody of Tommy," I reasoned, "then she didn't have any fears that Bart would harm their son. And nothing else at first glance that suggests his father would do away with him, or want to. So, Detective Warner, did you stop by the Hospital?"

"Yes sir." said Joanne. "Your wife was there, with Dr. Yates and Dr. Morgan. They had to sedate Mr. Tomlin; he was raving and losing muscle control of his body. They took blood tests for drugs in his system, but the preliminary tests came up negative for anything."

"Damn." I muttered. "He's going mad. Literally."

Part 4 - Slender in Police Headquarters

2:05am, Friday, April 20th. I was sitting at my desk, poring over Police reports as they came in, looking for any clue that any person saw that could help us see where to look to find the missing boys. I leaned my head back, letting my body relax into my all-too-comfortable 'Command Chair'. I closed my eyes for a second...

I was surrounded by a strange vortex, with flashes of light and sparkling energy all around me, the energy running through me. There was nothing to suggest this was a room or a confined space, only the swirling vortex surrounding me like a sphere. Which way to go to get out? I wondered. And then, there he was.

Facing me, 75 feet away, was the Slender Man.

I had my red crowbar, and I felt the irresistible urge to attack him. I ran at him, seemingly as fast as The Flash from my daughter Carole and her friend Marie's favorite TV show. But the Slender Man seemed to be gliding away just as fast, and I could never quite reach him to land a blow...

*QURK* *SNZZ*

I was in my office again. Had I fallen asleep? The noise had been from my Police Radio.

"This is Culver!" said the radio. Patrolman Culver was on duty at the guardhouse at the gated parking lot entrance. "Someone is in the parking lot! He's wearing a suit and tie! He's... AUUUGH!"

"This is the Duty Desk. All available personnel at Headquarters to the employees parking lot!" I whirled around in my chair and looked out the window. Standing in the middle of the parking lot, facing the front guardhouse, was the Slender Man!

"Don!" shouted Cindy, running in. "He's out there!"

"Stay here!" I ordered as I grabbed my crowbar. "Keep your eyes on him!" I ran out of the office and down the hall, joining a number of Officers that were rushing out the side entrance. As I ran, I noticed that my crowbar felt very warm in my hand. No time to think about that, though...

When we got outside, the Slender Man was gone. Nowhere to be seen. Officers fanned out, looking behind and under every car in the lot. A few went to the guardhouse.

"Commander!" someone shouted. "Over here!" I scurried over to the guardhouse. Patrolman Culver was lying on the floor, unconscious.

The Duty Desk Sergeant was checking for a pulse. Then Culver groaned as he began recovering consciousness, and was helped into a sitting position. "Uhhh, what happened?"

"What do you remember?" I asked, kneeling in front of him.

"I..." said Culver, "I... saw a man... in a suit... I called in on the radio... only heard static... he had on some kind of mask because he had no facial features that I could see, but it felt like he was looking right at me... and... the next thing I remember is you guys standing over me now."

"Okay, Abram, Johnson," I said, "take Culver to the Hospital to make sure he's okay. Have them take some blood for tests, as well."

*SQWK!* went the radio. "Alert! Alert! A man in a suit is walking down the hallway! I say again, intruder inside Headquarters!"

We all rushed inside. I instinctively ran towards my office as others fanned out and went down both hallways, then scoured the building. No intruder would be found. But when I got to my office, I found Cindy Ross in my Command Chair... seemingly sound asleep.

Going in, I went to check her pulse. She woke up instantly. "Wha... what happened?"

"You tell me." I said. "You were watching Slender Man in the parking lot. What happened next?"

"Uhh..." Cindy said. "I... I don't know. I was watching him, I saw him right there, looking towards the guardhouse. Then it seemed like he turned his head and looked right at me... and that's all I remember until I woke up in this chair with you checking my pulse."

I looked around. My safe was open. "Did you open my safe?" I asked.

"No sir." said Cindy. "I don't have the combination." I looked inside. The disc golf bag was missing.

"Ah, shit." I said. I hurried into MCD, Cindy following. Everyone had run outside when the alert had been raised, and had not yet come back. In the empty room I saw that the pages were still on the whiteboard. And sitting on the desk nearest the back hall entrance to MCD... was the disc golf bag, still full of glowing discs.

"Now why in the hell did someone do that?" I asked, in a manner of thinking out loud...

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

At 4:00am, Friday, April 20th, Captain Teresa Croyle came into Headquarters and to my office.

"We ran search and rescue sweeps through the entire subdivision." she reported. "We went through front yards, and back yards if they weren't fenced in. Some people were pissed that Police were in their yards, even when they were told we were looking for a missing child. But I'm not worried about that. The bottom line is that there is no trace of Tommy Tomlin, and no trace of Alton Taylor."

I nodded. "Everyone must be exhausted. Have them stand down, get some rest."

"You okay, sir?" asked Teresa.

"Yeah... yeah." I said. "We had a Slender Man sighting here. Several Officers saw him. Culver was taken to the Hospital to be checked out, but he seems to be okay. Cindy was found unconscious in my chair, the one I'm sitting in now. She refused to go to the Hospital, and I have Joanne keeping an eye on her. I think they're in MCD."

"We heard there was a sighting here." Teresa said. "Anyway, I sent the volunteer S&R teams home at midnight. Police Officers and Fire Department teams did the search for Tommy. Want me to bring some of them here? Search the Fairgrounds?"

"No, we had six guys here look around. They found nothing." I said. "Oh... and let's make sure to send the TCFD our thanks for their help."

"Yes sir." Teresa said, then continued: "Sir, I know you respect the Constitution, but I don't think the Founding Fathers wrote it to help kidnappers escape. I had checkpoints set up on all roads leading out of the County, especially over any point that crosses a State Line. We're making people open the trunks of their cars, or we're looking into the backs of their SUVs. Anyone that refuses gets pulled over and sits there until we get a warrant, which we've done six times now."

"We're going to catch hell for that." I said. "But I'll take the arrows on it. You're getting warrants, so Constitutional rights are being protected----"

And then there was a loud knock on my door, followed by the Duty Desk Sergeant practically bursting into the office. "Sir!" he said, almost as a gasp "We just got calls that two more children are missing!"

Part 5 - Mounting Losses

5:30am, Friday, April 20th. The whiteboards in MCD had four children's pictures on the left-hand side, and now five drawings on the right.

"Rachel Fourier." said Joanne, as she put up Rachel's school photo. "She was one of the children, along with Alton Taylor, that Commander Troy rescued from his nephew Ned at Ward Harvester. She just turned 11 years old."

"Captain Croyle!" I called out as I listened to Joanne. When Teresa came up, I said "Katie Gibson is the third child I rescued at Ward Harvester. She's 13 or 14 years old now. Send a Patrol cruiser to the Gibson home, explain to the family what's going on, and have that Patrol stay there with them, or bring them all here. Might help if at least one of the Officers is female." Teresa stalked out of the room to implement my orders. She then went to organize new search and rescue teams.

"The fourth child is Marie Pressman." said Joanne. "She was the child that disappeared and was 'conveniently' found by Leonard Sharples." (Author's note: 'Cold As Ice', Ch. 02.) "Both sets of parents thought they heard noises in their daughter's bedrooms, went to investigate, found their children missing, and called us immediately. Windows to the bedrooms were closed and locked, and Marie Pressman's room is on the second floor, well above the yard. It'd take Spider Man to climb the wall."

"Or Slender Man, who allegedly can climb walls like a spider." I said. "Okay, these drawings were found on the girls's beds?"

"Yes sir." Joanne said. I looked at them. One said "Always Watches. No Eyes" and had a round circle meant to be a head with 'X' marks where eyes should've been. In the upper right hand corner was a small '3'. The next one said "Can't Run" and some scribbling on the bottom. In the upper right hand corner was a tiny '4'.

"Where are the parents?" I asked.

"Alton Taylor's parents are in the Pastor's Room still." said Theo Washington. "Rachel's parents are in the breakroom next to the gym doors, and Marie's are in the Press Interview Room next to the Public Relations Officer's office. We didn't know if we should keep them separated or let them be in one room."

"If this keeps up," said Cindy, "we won't have any one room big enough for them, except the gym itself."

"You know," I said, "that's not a bad idea. Put some chairs in there, lay down some mats, then Father Romano can bring them in there. See how they react to each other's presences, see if anything strange occurs... though I doubt it will. They can get some sleep on the mats, too." Cindy stalked out of MCD to implement my orders.

"Okay," I said, "Let's feed Myron the information on these families so he can start doing workups of them."

"Already did, sir." said Jerome Davis. I nodded, glad to see the Detectives were ahead of me on that.

Chief Moynahan came into MCD. He'd been getting some sleep in his office, as he was going to be the face of the TCPD in the eyes and camera lenses of the Press. "Sooooooo, anything new?"

"No sir." I said. "But I'm worried that we're going to get as many as three more reports of missing children. This Slender Man wannabee is going to want us to have the complete set of eight pages."

"Maybe he'll send us another disc golf bag instead of kidnapping children." said the Chief. "The good news is that it's going to be daylight sooooon."

"That might not do us any good, sir." said Cindy. "The Slender Man operates in daylight as well as during the night."

"You are not making my day any better, Captain Rosssss..." admonished the Chief.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

5:50am, Friday, April 20th.

"Ohhhhh, yesssss..."

Patricia Ridley moaned as she descended upon the man's cock beneath her, enveloping his very average five inches of hard flesh inside the velvety warm wetness of her tight cunt. She grinded her hips and ass to secure him deep inside her, using his shaft to stir her aching channel, then began riding him, her hips and ass rising and falling in a slow, gentle rhythm.

Burt West was the Editor-In-Chief of KXTC. He had met Patricia during interviews with her about the Tylenol bottle poisoning case. She had suggested that he take her out for a drink, and things went from there.

With her husband out of the picture, Patricia could bring other men into her home for sex. Zack didn't seem to care about his new 'uncle'; he just went on playing that video game of his.

She began riding him harder, faster, enjoying the feeling of a man's hands on her hips, pushing her down onto his shaft. Oh, what I wouldn't give for a big cock, a huge cock, driving up into me right now! she thought to herself. She thought of that Police Commander tall and broad-shouldered, and reputed to have an iron-hard crowbar between his legs.

Her nasty thoughts of the Iron Crowbar had Patricia's juices flowing. She groaned as she felt her orgasm building, fantasizing of a real man behind her in a doggy-style spoon position, roughly fondling her breasts as he deeply fucked her. When she felt a pair of hands squeezing her breasts, pinching her hard nipples, her orgasm crashed into her like a lightning bold.

"Ahh! Uhhh!" she gasped out as her cunt clutched down on her lover's cock. She did not feel his dick throb as it began squirting his semen into her, spraying her vaginal walls with his cock cream...

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

As they lay together, cuddling in the afterglow of sex, they heard a creak downstairs.

"What was that?" asked Patricia as her head flung up.

"I don't know." whispered Burt. "I'll check it out." He got up and put on his pants as Patricia put on a robe. They went out into the hallway to the stairway landing, and looked down into the main room. The front door was closed, but standing in the foyer was the Slender Man!

"Oh my God!" shouted Burt West as Patricia screamed. Burt ran to Patricia's bedroom to get his cell phone as Patricia ran for her son Zack's room, expecting the door to be unlocked. But when she tried the knob, it refused to budge!

"Oh God!" she screamed as she lunged for her room. Just as she got there, seeing West in the doorway calling 9-1-1, she saw him look up in horror, and she turned her head to see that the Slender Man was coming up to the stairs and onto the landing!

"Nine-one-one, what's your emergency?" came a voice from the cell phone. All the operator heard were screams of horror...

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"Didn't think we'd be dealing with Patricia Ridley again this soon." said Captain Cindy Ross as she and Detective Theo Washington came up to the home at 6:14am. Two Patrol cruisers were already there. A Patrolman standing guard at the front door let Ross and Washington in.

Inside, sitting on the sofa and sobbing was Patricia Ridley. Next to her was Burt West, his shirt haphazardly on him and not tucked into his pants, looking totally stunned.

"Mrs. Ridley," said Cindy, "I'm Captain Ross, and you may remember Detective Washington. What happened?"

"We... heard a noise downstairs..." Patricia began intoning in an eerie, broken voice. "We came out to look, and there was a man... tall man..." Her voice drifted off as she stared sightlessly forward.

"How was he dressed?" asked Theo quietly.

"Suit. Suit and tie." said Burt West, his voice also eerie, denoting his shock.

"What did his face look like?" asked Cindy.

"That... that's just it... it was like he had on some kind of white mask on his head." said Patricia. "He had no features... no mouth or eyes, or nose..."

"Where's Zack?" asked Cindy.

"Zack... oh my God, Zack!" Patricia screamed out, beginning to get hysterical. "I... I ran for his bedroom, but the door was locked. It's normally not locked! Then I ran to get a phone, and Burt was already calling 9-1-1, and then... and then..." Patricia began sobbing.

"What happened Mrs. Ridley?" asked Cindy.

"I... don't remember!" Patricia almost shouted. "I woke up on the floor, and Burt was lying on the floor. We got up, and the door to Zack's room was open, but he wasn't there... he wasn't there!"

"Okay." Cindy said. "Mrs. Ridley, let's you and me go upstairs and get you some clothes to wear. Then Mr. West here can finish dressing. Then we'll take you to the Hospital to make sure you're okay."

"I... I tried to film him." said Burt West. He held up his cell phone, which was unlocked. Cindy and Theo watched the video. It showed the Slender Man just coming into view on the landing, as if he'd just come up the stairs. Then the interference began, and the screen went gray with static.

"We're going to have to hold this cellphone, Mr. West." said Theo. He called up a CSI tech, who bagged the cellphone. Cindy took Patricia up to her room to get dressed, then Theo supervised Burt West doing the same.

"We found this on the kid's bed." said Christina Cho as Cindy was about to leave. She looked at it the piece of paper in the plastic sleeve. It was a drawing, which said only "Leave Me Alone" and a skinny cedar tree.

"And the number '5' in the right hand corner." Cindy said. "Christina, get this to MCD right away..."

Part 6 - Break Of Day

"This is Bettina Wurtzburg, KXTC Fox Two News!" shouted the lovely redheaded reporterette at 7:00am, Friday, April 20th, from the corner of Courthouse Square with Police Headquarters in the background at an angle. "Fox Two News is bringing you continuing coverage of the disappearances of five children in a fourteen-hour span!"

"Five children," started Bettina, "identified as Alton Taylor, Tommy Tomlin, Rachel Fourier, Marie Pressman, and Zack Ridley, were reported as missing or kidnapped beginning yesterday afternoon and continuing through the night. Bart Tomlin, father of Tommy, was admitted to University Hospital in deep shock after his son was abducted right in front of him."

"According to Police reports obtained by Fox Two News," continued Bettina, "the assailant is described as a very tall man wearing a black suit, white shirt, and black tie, and either wearing a white mask over his head, or his head having no facial features. This description is consistent with that of The Slender Man, a legendary Internet horror character, and just over a year ago Police arrested Larry Lance, who used the Slender Man outfit to abduct several children."