Kyungsoo was already dreading this phone call because he really didn't want to lie to Junmyeon.

He'd been pacing across his kitchen for half an hour, his phone in his hand as he tried to work up the courage to dial the number. Kim Junmyeon was eight years older than Minseok and for the last decade, he’d had a life of his own. After he'd gotten married to a tall, Chinese lawyer named Kris Wu, Junmyeon moved to Manhattan where Kris had been offered a job at a top law firm.

Since then, they'd had three kids (twins Jae and Seung and a little girl named Ji-Woo) and a dog named Reptar. Kyungsoo knew this because he’d known Junmyeon all his life and they two had kept in touch, but the fact that he was staring right at the Wu-Kim family Christmas card on his fridge helped, too.

He'd gotten home from Minseok's a little after 4 PM, right after he realized, however unconsciously, that he needed a shower, a sandwich and a nap or else he was going to be utterly useless at getting to the bottom of anything. If he went too hard too soon, he'd burn himself out and there was still a ton of ground to cover.

Kyungsoo has spent hours in Minseok's room, going over each picture, phrase and scribble with a mindful eye. He wanted to search the rest of the house for clues, not to mention Shelia and the garage, but there just wasn’t enough time in the day. Besides, it would be dark soon and Kyungsoo really didn't want to be alone in his friend’s house after sundown.

Still, wanting to spend the rest of the night doing something productive, Kyungsoo has swiped Xiumin's laptop from his desk, sure that his friend's internet history would be a goldmine of clues and information. He’d taken a small stack of photos from Xiumin’s bedroom walls, too, intending to scan them onto his own computer and maybe figure out some of the locations of the parks and trails.

Despite the fact that he had no appetite, Kyungsoo made himself some dinner and scarfed it down while watching a rerun of some 90s sitcom to try and soothe his fraying nerves and when that didn’t work, he took a long, hot shower. He knew it was all in his mind but he could still feel the chill of Minseok’s house and the smell rotten fruit. Goosebumps still coated his body but the warm water against his skin did a lot to calm him down and lift his spirits.

Once he was warm and full, Kyungsoo brewed a pot of coffee and accepted that he had to call Junmyeon.

Kyungsoo thought of Junmyeon as fondly as he did his actual older brother, perhaps even more so since Junmyeon had never given him a wedgie or embarrassed him in front of a girl he liked, and because of all the respect and affection he felt for him, he really didn’t want to lie. But Junmyeon was two-hundred miles away and had three kids to look after. Burdening him with whatever this was (and it was not wasted on Kyungsoo that he still had no idea what that was or how long it would be until he knew) was irresponsible and downright cruel. Why torture Junmyeon and worry him when Kyungsoo didn’t even know what was really going on himself?

He’d managed to dial the first three numbers when Kyungsoo decided that he wouldn’t lie outright. He wouldn’t tell Junmyeon that Xiumin was sitting on the couch, playing PlayStation. No, that would be wrong. Instead, Kyungsoo would put his community college psychology skills to the test and pick Junmyeon’s brain without letting Junmyeon know that was what he was doing.

Yeah, that was a lot better than lying, right?

Junmyeon answered on the second ring and Kyungsoo would’ve hung up if the older boy hadn’t spoken first.

“Kyungsoo!” Junmyeon greeted brightly. “How the hell are you?”

“Long time no see, hyung. Do you have time to talk?”

“Not really,” Junmyeon said, his smile somehow audible from so many miles away. “But for you, I’ll make time. What’s up?”

Kyungsoo could hear the kids in the background and something that sounded like the clattering of pots and pans.

“I’m not interrupting dinner?”

“Nope,” said Junmyeon. “I’m cooking and the kids are supposed to be cleaning but I think they’re playing cops and robbers.” Junmyeon yelled for one of the kids to stop running and then laughed at someone the child had said in response. Last time he’d seen them, the kids seemed to have inherited Kris’ wit. “Anyway, Soo, what can I do you for?”

Exhaling, Kyungsoo ran a hand through his wet hair, forgetting nearly every word he’d planned to say.

“I wanted to talk to you about Minseok,” Kyungsoo said finally, sure to keep his tone light and breezy. This wasn’t a Minseok-has-been-in-an-accident-and-we-need-you-to-donate-a-kidney-or-ID-the-body talk. No, this was just an old friend reaching out to a loving older brother. That was how Kyungsoo needed to play it off. That was the part he needed to play.

Junmyeon snorted.

“What trouble has my little brother gotten into now?” he asked.

“No trouble at all,” Kyungsoo said, biting his lip. He was crouched alongside the counter watching as every sweet, sweet drop of caffeine dripped from the machine to the carafe. “For once, your brother is being a perfect angel.”

Laughing out loud, Junmyeon asked, “So what exactly do you want to discuss?”

“Have you talked to him at all recently?” Kyungsoo eventually choked, feeling more awkward and ridiculous with every passing second. “Has he seemed off at all? Or has been acting distant? Maybe even strange?”

“Minseok has always been a little strange,” Junmyeon said. “But honestly, Soo, I haven’t talked to my brother in a few weeks.” There was a pause and then Junmyeon added, almost defensively, “I mean we text every now and again about football scores and TV shows and what’s going on with our parents but we’re busy, you know? Ji-Woo was the angel in her school’s Christmas pageant and the twins just both got over double ear infections. Double ear infections! Can you believe that? That’s four ears! Four infected ears!”

“Hyung, hyung, relax,” Kyungsoo interrupted, already feeling a headache forming behind his temples and under the bridge of his nose. “I’m not judging and you don’t need to explain yourself. I was just wondering if you’d noticed anything weird.”

“Weird how?”

The coffee finished brewing and Kyungsoo filled the biggest, deepest mug in his cupboard, just barely talking himself out of drinking it directly from the pot.

“It’s a little hard to explain,” Kyungsoo lied. , he hadn’t wanted to lie. But it wasn’t hard to explain. It was hard to understand, sure, but it was a piece of cake to explain. Xiumin had gone bonkers and plastered his bedroom walls with cryptic warnings and bland photography before up and going AWOL. That was easy to explain. But it wouldn’t be easy for Junmyeon to hear and so Kyungsoo tried a different approach. “He seems distracted lately. He left my birthday party early and–”

“Your birthday!” Junmyeon interjected. “I forgot to send you a card!”

“Don’t worry about it. Like I was saying, though, he left my party early and was hardly eating anything and you know he loves greasy bar food. I guess I was just wondering if…” Kyungsoo’s voice trailed off and he knew he had about three seconds to say something before his silence became suspicious. “I was wondering if maybe he’d gotten girlfriend and didn’t’ say anything or he’d gotten his heart broken or something.”

“Beats the hell out of me, Soo. He’d tell you something like that before he ever told me.”

, that was true. That was a bad a cover. God, he at lying.

“Yeah, maybe,” Kyungsoo said wistfully, feigning thought. “So nothing is happening family-wise, then? Nothing that might be weighing on him?”

“As far as I know, there is no Kim family drama happening right now. Sorry, Soo, I wish I could be more helpful. Do you want me to have a chat with him?”

Kyungsoo almost choked on his coffee.

“Nah, he’d be pissed that I said anything to you,” Kyungsoo said, struggling to keep his voice soft and level. “You know how he is, all macho and private.” He pause for exactly two-and-a-half Mississippis before adding, “It’s probably just a girl and I’m reading too much into it.”

“You know Minseok was always a hopeless romantic,” Junmyeon said. “Take him out, get a few beers in him and everything will be fine.”

Kyungsoo’s eyes wandered to the living room and fell to rest on his coffee table where Xiumin’s laptop sat beside a pile of inexplicable nature photos and terrified scribblings.

“Yeah,” he said, swallowing hard. “You’re totally right, hyung. Sorry to bother you.”

“It’s never a bother,” Junmyeon insisted. “I’ve always loved how sensitive you are and how much you care for Minseok. But listen, Soo, I gotta go. Jae is currently trying to ride the dog like a pony. I’ll talk to you soon. Happy belated birthday!”

Junmyeon hung up and Kyungsoo suddenly felt all alone again.

It was a ty feeling but Kyungsoo pushed through it, reminding himself that whatever Xiumin was going through was a hundred times worse than feeling alone inside a warm, safe apartment building in the suburbs. He took a seat on the couch, setting the photos aside so that he could focus on the computer. He kept the TV on while he worked, trying to keep himself calm and level-headed as he began his journey into a world he wasn’t sure he’d understand.

The first obstacle was guessing Xiumin’s password but that ended up not being much of an obstacle at all. After trying “password” and “1234”, Kyungsoo rolled his eyes and typed “steelers1993”, completely unsurprised when he was suddenly granted access to Xiumin’s desktop.

“You have got to configure better privacy settings,” Kyungsoo mumbled to nobody, taking in Xiumin’s wallpaper (a scantily-clad woman on a dirt bike) as he tried to figure out where to begin.

Xiumin didn’t have many icons on his desktop – nothing but his browser, a few generic social applications and a handful of RPG games – and for a minute, Kyungsoo wondered if this search would even do any good. Xiumin was a gamer and a big fan of most popular TV shows but he wasn’t much of a techie. Kyungsoo had had to show him, more than once, how to do things like unlock his new phone or forward an email. Would Minseok even have used his computer to research or archive his new, dark obsession?

Kyungsoo figured it was still worth a shot and if anything, Xiumin’s complete lack of tech-savvy could come in handy. The man still had trouble operating Facebook; if there was anything on his computer even worth finding, Xiumin wouldn’t have known how to hide it. (Besides, Xiumin wouldn’t have even thought to hide it. Who ever went on is computer besides him?)

After firing up Google Chrome and pounding ctrl + h, Kyungsoo half expected to see sites, fantasy football stats and a slew of online casinos. But Minseok’s internet history, a spotty timeline of his online comings and goings over the last few months, was not at all what Kyungsoo was expecting.

There was no , no football and no online poker. There were no anime sites, no Game of Thrones conspiracy blogs and nothing about local Russian singles wanting to meet. Kyungsoo didn’t see any Yelp reviews or YouTube videos or gaming websites offering hacks and cheat codes.

It seemed like every single link in Xiumin’s history had to do with someone, or something, called the Slender Man.

Kyungsoo wondered idly if it was a band or a rapper or some sort of new cult movie he’d never heard of but in his gut, he knew it couldn’t be anything so innocent. Whatever this was, it had completely taken over Xiumin’s life and Kyungsoo tensed up as he clicked on the first link, a website called Dark Squad that seemed to be, largely in part, a chatroom.

Xiumin was logged in under the username SteelersFan12 and he was communicating with someone using the moniker Lucky777. Xiumin’s avatar was a picture of a football and Lucky777’s was a skull and crossbones. From what Kyungsoo could tell, it was a public forum but only Xiumin and this Lucky777 kid seemed to be corresponding.

And with every post Kyungsoo read, the knot in his stomach tightened until he was nearly doubled over.

Lucky777: Any updates today?

SteelersFan12: Nothing’s changed. Everything’s bolted, just like you said. I covered my windows. I’m worried about the garage door.

Lucky777: Don’t be. I really don’t think He can get in that way. You’re always safer inside than you are out. Just remember to never leave the house after dark.

SteelersFan12: I usually work evenings. I haven’t been to work in a week. I’m going to get fired.

Lucky777: Ask for a different shift. Or quit. You’re better off unemployed than with Him.

SteelersFan12: I know you’re right… I’d rather be poor than dead.

Lucky777: SF, if you end up with Him, you’re going to wish you’re dead.

Kyungsoo swallowed hard.

Okay, so definitely not a rapper, then.

He navigated away from the chat room, ignoring all of the other links to Dark Squad in Xiumin’s history, and clicked on a website called Shadow Lurkers. This site seemed less for communication and more for information and rather than a chatroom, Kyungsoo found a Wikipedia-style homepage that branched off into various individual articles.

The article for the Slender Man was longer than anything Kyungsoo had read in a long time (work and school had gotten in the way of his old science fiction habit) but he read it slowly and carefully to make sure he didn’t miss a single word.

The article, as far as he could tell, was a collaborative effort from multiple sources. The writing style varied from passage to passage and each paragraph was punctuated with initials within a set of parenthesis. Some bits were formal and clinical and others were sloppier and more frantic, but after nearly a half hour of reading, Kyungsoo was beginning to understand what it was his friend feared.

It read like a grade school myth. The Slender Man was something people saw in the shadows. He was the monster under their beds and the boogeyman under his closet. From various (and alleged) eyewitness accounts, the Slender Man was unnaturally tall and unnaturally thin with long, spindly appendages. Weirdly, the number of limbs varied from story to story with some people reporting just two unusually long arms and others claiming to see tentacle-like extremities protruding from his back. Reports of his height fluctuated between six and eight feet but it didn’t seem like anyone had ever gotten close enough to the Slender Man to really get a good idea of how tall he was.

Specific sightings of the Slender Man dated back to the early 60s but according to one of the webmasters with the initials LH, people were spotting this creature (Was it a creature? Or a person? Or some sort of alien life form?) all the way back in the 19th century. LH had included links to old paintings and historical literature that (loosely) appeared to hint at the same creature they were describing and someone else called HZ claimed that there were even cave paintings and hieroglyphics that pointed to the Slender Man.

Though everyone’s story was different, there were tons of overlapping similarities. More often than not, the Slender Man was spotted at night. A lot of people reported that their very first spotting had happened during the day and that all subsequent sightings were after the sun had set. People were usually alone when they encountered him (in his head, Kyungsoo refused to capitalize the creature’s pronoun – he wasn’t a god and Kyungsoo wouldn’t treat him like one) and from then it, it was like they were haunted.

People saw him in their peripheral vision, a blur of vision out of the corner of their eye. They heard him rustling around in the trees and bushes, heard him scratching at their backdoors or making laps in their yards. They saw him out of their windows, lurking in alleys or under streetlights. They saw him in the woods or hiding in plain sight on the side of the street when they drove. Wherever he was, they couldn’t seem to shake him and most people resorted to boarding up their windows to try and avoid his sight.

But that was one of the things Kyungsoo didn’t understand. Most of the physical descriptions of the Slender Man all matched up. He was tall, thin and usually shrouded in fog or shadows. He was easy to spot and hard to avoid. But this man, myth or monster, always dressed in all black and almost always unmoving, didn’t have a face. Everyone reported his head to be white and completely smooth, entirely missing all of his features.

This thing, whatever it was, didn’t have any eyes.

Kyungsoo thought back to one of Xiumin’s frenzied messages – “Always watches. No eyes.”

Kyungsoo wasn’t even sure how a paradox like that was possible but then, he thought, maybe he didn’t want to understand anyway.

Weirdly, though, the idea of people other than Xiumin going through this made Kyungsoo feel a lot better. Knowing that it wasn’t just Minseok, knowing that this wasn’t just one unlucky instance of his best friend’s psyche cracking like a walnut made Kyungsoo breathe a little easier. Xiumin wasn’t crazy and neither were these people. They were just misguided and swept up in a hysterical, paranoid case of mob mentality. One person had thought they’d seen something awful and it spread like a virus, growing and reproducing in the dark corners of the internet until it was a full-blown pandemic.

Kyungsoo didn’t really believe in anything. Not in God or the Devil or heaven or hell or ghosts or the supernatural. No part of him had ever been spooked by ghost stories or a stray bump in the night. He was too practical, too level-headed, too serious and stoic to be roped into Ouija boards and psychic readings. Spirits didn’t linger or lurk after they’d left their original bodies, there was no such thing as monsters or demons and the lines of his palms didn’t say anything about his future. Everything could be explained by science and reason and the more he read about the Slender Man, the more he realized that his best friend had gotten pulled into a sea of troubling beliefs and fears by a strong riptide and someone needed to brave the currents and drag him out.

Less shaken than he’d been before (Kyungsoo really had feared that someone might have hurt or even murdered his best friend but knowing that Minseok had just gotten caught up in a spooky internet hoax made him feel infinitely less terrified), Kyungsoo continued to pick through Xiumin’s internet activities. Nearly every page he’d visited in the last two months was related to the Slender Man, causing Kyungsoo to wonder when it was that Xiumin had had his first “sighting”.

Truth be told, it made his heart hurt to picture Xiumin living in fear and obsession for the last sixty-days and Kyungsoo had to wonder why Xiumin hadn’t reached out to him about it. Kyungsoo was cynical and sarcastic but it wasn’t like he would have mocked or teased Xiumin if he’d come to him about it. He would’ve done whatever he could to comfort and help his friend and maybe he would’ve been able to do something to stop whatever was happening now.

Swallowing a wave of guilt, Kyungsoo clicked to the last unique website in the browser history, something by the name of Forever Feared.

This site was definitely different from the rest. It was entirely submission-based, a long list of people’s detailed accounts following their run-ins with the Slender Man. While the other sites focused on the Slender Man’s behavior and the ways he seemed to stalk them, Forever Feared was dedicated to the aftermath.

People who’d seen the Slender Man (or, more accurately, people who claimed that the Slender Man had seen them) reported suffering from a whole slew of physical and mental symptoms and absurdities. People recounted nosebleeds, vomiting, migraine headaches, blurred vision, nightmares, hallucinations, blackouts and even trouble breathing. People had lost chunks of times, sometimes hours, sometimes days. They woke up in foreign places with no memory of how they got there. They had bruises and scratches that they couldn’t remember getting. They’d left strange voicemails and sent weird text messages causing concerned love ones to reach out and ask why. On top of these strange physical deviations, it seemed like their entire personalities had changed and it was all because of a tall, dark figure with no face and no eyes.

Kyungsoo figured it was psychosomatic. These people were stressing themselves out so severely that they were making themselves sick. He remembered back to his birthday party when Xiumin was pale and clammy and realized that Minseok must have been feeling the physical effects of his anxiety. That type of mental strain was bound to take its toll on the body and Kyungsoo sighed the tiniest breath of relief when it felt like all these explanations were starting to click into place.

Still, all the information in the world didn’t help if it didn’t lead him to Xiumin. He felt a hell of a lot more optimistic knowing that his friend probably hadn’t been killed or maimed but wherever he was, Minseok was in some trouble. Kyungsoo needed to take all of these clues and string them together so that he had some sort of solid path that could lead him to Xiumin.

And to do that, he needed some time to himself.

The problem was that Kyungsoo was a grown man with responsibilities. He had work and school and social obligations that seemed to take up all of his time and he had no idea how to carve out a big enough chunk to make a difference.

He sat in silence for a while, scratching his head while Forever Feared sat idly on the screen of Xiumin’s laptop. Social obligations would be easy enough to blow off. He could make up any number of excuses that would give him as long of a free pass as he needed. Work would be harder. Kyuhyun was already down a man and he wouldn’t be thrilled to lose one of his best cooks. But Kyungsoo never called out sick and so he’d accumulated a -ton of free days and if he told Kyuhyun that it was to help get Xiumin back in the game, it wouldn’t be much of a problem at all.

That just left school.

It was community college and so, technically, Kyungsoo wasn’t at really risk of facing disciplinary action if he blew it off. But he’d paid for those classes up front and Kyungsoo wasn’t one who often wasted his money. If he was going to be gone for an indeterminate amount of time, he needed someone to keep him alive at school and get him a copy of the material.

With a sigh (it was going to be dangerous as hell owing this guy a favor), Kyungsoo reached for his phone and scrolled until he found the contact that he needed. He squirmed impatiently in his seat, each ring causing his heart to skip a bit.

“Hello?” said Byun Baekhyun, his voice sleepy and distant. He’d probably been napping. The guy was always napping.

“Hey, Baekhyun,” he said. “It’s Kyungsoo.”

“Oh, hey, hyung,” the younger boy yawned and Kyungsoo heard a distinct rustling that sounded an awful lot like bedsheets. “How ‘bout them Patriots lately?”

“Yeah, Patriots, totally. Look, man, I’m gonna cut right to chase, okay?”

“Sure, Soo,” Baekhyun said sweetly. “What’s on your mind?”

Kyungsoo exhaled roughly, aiming his lips to blow the fringe from his eyes.

“I need your help, Baekhyun.”