A thin column of coffee poured from the machine’s spout into my mug, spilling fresh-roast smell into the air. I set the mug down next to the laptop.
I stared at the Google logo some more.
Slowly, I typed in “stalker man.”
Just a bunch of articles on stalkers.
I thought a bit more.
“Stalker man glowing eyes.”
Two results came up. They were all from the same site: something called Creepy Pasta Wiki. Each of the Google items came from a conversation about one article, called “The Slender Man.”
I clicked it.
Creepy Pasta Wiki was a standard Wikipedia-model. The site seemed to be dedicated to internet horror stories. The site had a blood-red background, and a lot of... interesting images. I saw a German Sheppard, grinning at me with a healthy set of human teeth.
The article I’d clicked was about something called The Slender Man—a fictional monster reportedly created as part of a contest on the Somethingawful forums. The Slender Man appeared as a freakishly tall man in a black suit and tie.
There were pictures: black and white images of children playing in playgrounds and parks where, in the background, a tall silhouette stood and watched. According to the article, The Slender Man hunted children.
I clicked the article history, and found the reference to the stalker man.
5 months ago (Nov 06)
MrSparkle (contributor)
Edits: added alternate names for slender man: man in black, stalker man, the rake
5 months ago (Nov 08)
JerJer (Admin)
Edits: deleted alternate names: men in black is for alien stories and stalker man are from the labyrinth mythos. just because they’re similar doesn’t mean it’s an alias. stalker men have glowing eyes, no suits. And the rake is dog-like.
And that was it.
I googled just “stalker men” again. I scrolled through about twenty pages about relationships and psychos.
My coffee was lukewarm now. I chugged half the mug and spilled the rest in the sink.
I went back to the Creepy Pasta discussion.
I googled “labyrinth mythos stalker men.”
The first result was a TVTropes article called The Adjectival Man
I knew about TV Tropes; another wiki-style website, it was dedicated to documenting recurring themes and tropes in movies and literature. It had taught me more about fiction than four years studying English at UTM.
This article described the naming formula “the+adjective+man” to come up with a generic scary name.
I scanned down the article to a list of works that used it.
Pan’s Labyrinth’s Pale Man uses this trope.
The Slender Man Mythos, featuring the Slender Man!
The Stalker Men from the Labyrinth stories.
I went into a Google freefall for another hour.
I bit my lip. I made another cup of coffee and drank it while I checked my email. There was one from Tanya and one from Rohit. I didn’t open either of them.
It was eight o’clock now. My eyes felt sore and my brain was flickering on and off.
I created an account on the Creepy Pasta Wiki, found the forums, and started a topic.
Flautist
I’m looking for information on the labyrinth mythos and stalker men. Anyone have any links?
I hit the enter key and looked at the floor. The off-white tiles looked sort of comfortable.
#
“He’s moving.”
“We still have time. Block the gate.”
I woke up, cold and stiff. My neck hurt. I saw nothing but white blurs.
The blurs became kitchen appliances. Had they finally rebelled from their human masters? What did they want from me?
Then I remembered I’d fallen asleep on the kitchen tiles.
Then again, that’s what the appliances would want me to believe.
I rolled over. My nose left a shiny, oily blot on the tiles.
Afternoon light pierced through the blinds and filled the room. The little clock on the stove read 3:04. I blinked from the light, and tasted stale coffee on my tongue.
But my mind was clearer now. I remembered that the square root of 164 was 14, and that Christopher Marlowe wrote the Tragical Historie of Doctor Faustus around 1592.
I planted both hands on the shiny white tiles and pushed up. My balance was back. I shook my head around a bit. My headache was gone.
Greg’s computer sat where I’d left it on the kitchen table. The screen was black, covered with a thin skein of dust. I’d clean it carefully before I put it away; Greg got weird about his computer.
I patted my shoulders and found a hard, painful ball of muscle between my shoulder and neck. I massaged the knot with my good hand, sat down at the table, and went back online.
The message I’d left in the Creepypasta forum had gotten some comments.
Yorik: Yeah good luck with that
Anon101: the labyrinth mythos is closed. it had a little buzz about a year ago but all the links and stories vanished.
Mr. Sparkle: I heard that it was a viral campaign for a website or a shoe or something. most of the posts and stories have been deleted (legal trouble or something). but the original is still lurking around. i copypastad it on my hard disk. i’ll pm you.
I checked the Wiki’s message system, there was indeed a message from Mr. Sparkle.
There were no greetings, no personal comments, just a wall of text.
I scanned the text. I saw the words “stalker man,” I saw “glowing eyes.”
This might be it. This might teach me exactly what the fuck was happening.
So I started at the top, carefully reading every word. But as I read, my chest grew cold. My stomach tightened. My breath ran cold and shallow.
This story was obviously written by a moron.
I write of THE LABYRINTH not to encourage the foolish to conduct this ritual. I write this not to make fame or fortune for myself. I write this as a warning: because the labyrinth is real. And if you discover it, you’d better know what to do instead of running in blind.
So pay attention.
In a city, you will find a small cave. Maybe it’ll be inside the earth, maybe it’ll be on the edge of a cliff, and maybe it’ll be on the rocks by a lake. You’ll know this is the cave because, even though it’ll be shallow and small, once you step into it the sky will darken outside, even at the hight of noon.
There will be a stone in the cave. It will be standing upright, and will look completely normal.
Now, don’t stare at the stone. If you do, you’ll be calling the labyrinth open.
If you do stare at the stone, you’ll start to feel odd. The air will turn warm and toasty, and the colors in the room will go haywire. Your vision will blur and your eyes will feel weird, like when you’re staring at an optical illusion.
If you break eye contact with the stone, everything will go back to normal.
But if you stare into the stone long enough, it’ll turn black.
The stone has become an entrance to the labyrinth now. If you don’t break eye contact with the stone, and if you move slowly into it, you will enter the labyrinth. But if you do, you will be unable to get out unless you have someone on the other end to help you.
If you see two blue lights in the stone, you should run. That means a stalker man has found you.
The stalker man can’t hurt you as long as you don’t step into the stone. If you do however, you’ll be in danger. Your eyes will turn bright blue, and then...
It’ll be too late.
There was a note from MrSparkle at the bottom of the message.
—yeah I know it’s sort of sucky compared to the really good pastas out there. the spinoffs were great though. too bad no one can find them now. anyway hope this helps. look into the Theta-Pi series if you like the idea of this one, or this book called Arena, it’s sorta a similar concept.
I took a deep breath. I calmly and quickly wrote
a reply to MrSparkle thanking him for the story. I assured him it had been helpful.
I shut off the laptop, unplugged it, and looped the power cord around my elbow. I closed the laptop and put it and the cord back in the box under Greg’s bed.
Then, I slowly entered my room, locked the door, and screamed at the wall for a few minutes.
The story was real.
The writing was crap but it was real. The glowing eyes, the air, the darkened sky, I’d seen all of those.
But that story made the whole thing sound like fucking Bloody Mary.
My throat got sore so I stopped screaming. Screaming was useless anyway. I wasn’t some horror-movie chick. I collapsed onto a pile of clothes next to the bed.
The door to my closet has a mirror on it. I looked sideways at it. My eyes were still blue.
Fuck it.
I got up and slid the closet door open. Unlike the rest of my room, the inside was bare of junk. The entire thing was empty, except for a blue toolbox at the bottom.
The toolbox was a heavy, Craftsman model, built like a small tank. It was the same kind my dad owned back home. He bought me the toolbox when I moved out, and presented it to me as a gift of one man to another. It was a thoughtful gesture from a person I loved, but Dad forgot I didn’t even know how to use a screwdriver.
That was why I’d stuck a label on the box with the heading “emergency journalism equipment.”
I thumbed the latches off and opened up the box. A set of compartments fanned open with oiled, mechanical silence. I lifted the compartments out. Most of them held bolts, screws, and tools. But at the very bottom...
I lifted out six containers of small, rattly stuff, and two trays of screwdrivers, wrenches and ratchets. When the last tray was lifted out, it revealed the bottom of the box: all the tools of my trade as a blogger.
Okay, most of it was crap: fake moustaches, hair dye, a broken voice-recorder for interviews. But there was something I could use: an ancient, silver Motorolla flip phone.
The phone was banged up, the plastic scuffed grey. The SD card was gone. But when I powered it on, the battery was full—and there was a camera in it.
I also found four TTC tokens, a roll of quarters, a flashlight, and a red spiral notebook with half the pages ripped out. I grabbed a blue hoodie draped across my desk and tucked all the equipment in various pouches.
Last of all, I tore a scrap of paper from my notebook and scratched out a note.
Greg—off to find monsters. Not back by midnight call 911. For serious.
—Sam
I left the note on the kitchen table.
Outside, the afternoon waned. By the time I reached my destination, it’d be near dusk.
That didn’t bother me; I wasn’t afraid of night.
Just stars that ran in perfect lines.
#
“It’s getting worse. We can’t save him.”
The sun set on Lake Ontario. Wind blew through my hair and ruffled the sleeves of my dark red hoodie. I held my phone up to the sky, and the departing clouds. I clicked the camera.
No stars.
I snapped the phone shut. I wanted to toss it. I wanted to give up and go home. Instead, I looked around the park to see if I’d missed something.
The park was one of those small, no-name ones. It stretched about half a kilometer—starting at some tennis cages and going up to a parking lot north of here. On one side of the park, traffic surged over the aging, high-flying Gardiner. On the other, dirty water quietly lapped at dirty sand.
The park was mostly just flat turf, with brown grass turning green. There were picnic-benches on one side, gouged with names and swear-words, and a swingset with two of the four swings falling off their rusted chains.
It was aggravating.
I stood in thought. The wind blew harder. The swings creaked in their rusty chains. On the shore, a flock of seagulls screeched. Their white wings flapped. Yellow stick-legs stepped out a quick, complicated dance for food.
It was so aggravating.
I pocketed the phone in my hoodie, and my fingers hit the earring I brought with me. I rubbed the metal absently. My legs ached and I’d gone too long without Advil for my hand.
I'd do one more kilometre.
Along the shore, a man in bright red running shorts sprinted down the waves. His feet made wet slaps on the sand.
My hunch for searching the lakeshore had come from the labyrinth story. The story mentioned cliffs, underground, and caves near lakes. Not counting the subway system, the GTA only had the shore of a lake.
But for eight kilometres, I’d walked along the shore. At every kilometre, I raised my phone to the sky. I never saw stars.
I walked north, keeping a distance from the lake. The seagulls followed me a few meters away.
I couldn’t search the entire lakeshore, I realized. Not in a human lifetime at least. I had to go back to work tomorrow.
I smirked.
My eyes had changed colour with no explanation. And I had to go to work tomorrow.
I laughed. There was a little too much crazy in it; the seagulls shrieked. They pumped their wings and coasted the wind back to the swing sets.
I’d landed in some sort of interdimensional conspiracy involving monsters and computer geeks. And I had to go to work tomorrow.
“Oh boy!” I cackled. “Oh man!”
Maybe the monsters would wait for me. Maybe I could negotiate a weekend-only plan with them. Maybe I could get a doctor’s note exempting me from supernatural activities. It worked for swim class in junior high.
I wiped my eyes and kept walking. As I walked, I checked the phone.
Every time I’d hold it up, squint in the light of the setting sun, and hold the camera button until it made the chick-chock shutter sound.
Every time the photo showed a normal, pixelated sky.
Maybe using two-year old internet legends as a guide wasn’t the practical idea I needed.
I snapped the pictures anyway.
I passed the parking lot marking the end of the no-name park. I continued on unowned, untamed lakefront. Near the end of the kilometre, I found a ream of rocks.
The rocks included all sizes from thumb-sized pebbles to boulders bigger than my oven. They cut across my path, rising to about the height of my waist.
They came from a small cliff about thirty meters up. The cliff was artificial, probably raised to accommodate the small street passing across it.
It looked like the city had tried to keep the cliff stable by putting up some concrete barriers and wrapping black mesh around it to prevent erosion. But the mesh had torn. I saw frayed black strands where the flow of rocks began. From there, the stones spilled across my path, and into the lake.
“He’s not coming around.”
Something silver glinted at the head of the rocks.
I squinted. The object was square, but it didn’t look like paper or a poster. It looked solid.
I took a few steps forward.
“Give him another.”
I planted a foot on the rocks and pushed myself onto them. They shifted beneath my weight. My legs shook as I rose.
I took another good look at the square thing.
It looked a lot like a laptop.
My laptop.
I wobbled closer and closer. The stones creaked.
I couldn’t believe it.
I looked at the sky. It seemed normal. I held up my phone and took a picture—still normal sky.
I took a few steps further. It was definitely my laptop. I saw the crappy Type R sticker I’d pasted to the front—joking that it made the computer go faster.
Strange.
Almost like a trap.
I shook my head.
“It’s coming. We have to go. Now.”
It was a beautiful thing. A divine coincidence.
I wandered over the rocks. I don’t know why but I was grinning. I took a big breath of fresh spring air. The pain bled out my legs. Even my hand felt fine
.
“We’re not leaving.”
I chuckled a bit. I felt good. I turned around and gave a long, sweeping gaze at the world that seemed so beautiful.
“He’s right. We have to go.”
But why was the sky like that?
“Try again.”
The sky was black. Completely black.
Except...
I looked up.
No moon, no stars, but there were two glowing lights, glimmering like candle flames.
They were bright blue.
“Fine. Here goes.”
#
I screamed. My throat stretched, strained, tore.
“Hit it again.” Lena said.
Laurent smashed an aluminum baseball bat on the cold, concrete floor. Blue sparks flew up. They fell, fizzling on dark asphalt.
The floor shook beneath me. A cry like tortured whale-song sang from the stone ceiling.
Pain. Pain like my bones would burst. Pain like drilled teeth. Pain like injections, muscles swelling tissues bloating gonna die gonna tear gonna burst.
“Get the knife,” she said. Her hands pinned my chest.
Couldn’t take it.
“No!” Josh shouted. Thunder rolled over his voice. “Separation will kill him.”
My back arched. Eyes prickled, went warm. Saw red in the long fluorescent lights. Fuck fuck fuck.
“Get the knife!” Lena screamed.
“Shut up!” Amrith shouted. The noise of thunder, rolling metal, screaming stone, reached a crescendo.
The thunder subsided. The pain yanked itself out my body. I gasped. Coughed out vomit.
Silence.
“It’s already here,” he whispered.
#
The lights flickered. My consciousness blurred.
An empty parking garage, a cold one.
“He’s coming to.” Laurent said. He sported a bright yellow sack hat on his head. Did he really think that looked cool?
“Josh, get a gate ready,” Lena said.
“Already working on it,” Josh said from the wall.
“What’s going on?” I asked. It came out as a muffled whimper. I shifted. My clothes hung heavy with sweat.
“You okay?” Lena asked.
“I’m fine,” I tried to say. Except what came out was just a wail. Spit gurgled in my throat. I coughed.
Pain. Still so much pain echoing in my limbs. And so much cold.
“Can you move?” Amrith asked.
My fingers curled like a dead man’s. I hadn’t told them to. My breath sped up and spots burst in my eyes. Heartbeat rose. My jugular throbbed against my neck. I tasted blood.