A Dark Place

The history of Ireland is dotted and, in some cases, smeared with darkness. The atrocities committed during the Cromwellian invasion of Ireland, the horrors of the Black Death, whose effects in Ireland are ridiculously underdocumented, the Great Famine, a name so infamous that I needn't even explain it to an audience mainly made up of Americans.

As tiny European nations go, Ireland has suffered an extraordinary amount of darkness and I don't think it's a coincidence given that the Revenant base of operations, the quarry, as well as the secret that lies within it, are located here. In Irish, a black man is called "fear gorm", which means "blue man". This is because the actual Irish for black man, "Fear Dubh" referred to, throughout various parts of Irish history, a malevolent faerie, a brutal foreign overlord and the Devil himself. It is somewhat curious that this particular figure would keep reoccurring throughout the myths and legends of my fair homeland, or it would be, if similar figures did not appear the world over, and if such figures were not consistent with our very own Slender Man.

The reason I tell you this is to explain what I was thinking about when epiphany struck. There's a place in Ireland, which I will not name or identify because I fear that it may be under the same curse as the quarry, where archaeologists discovered the site of the most horrific mass child sacrifice in Ireland's long history. The archaeologists who discovered it were so disturbed by what they found that they referred to it only as "a dark place"; it was a little bit of passing information that my Junior Cert history teacher gave but for some reason it always stuck with me. Given my own experiences with Slender Man and my full awareness of his interest in children, I got a hunch that the dark place was the site of a sacrifice to him. However, when I went to look for this place's location, all I could find were references to it as "a dark place" and co-ordinates; no names. That got me worried it was under the same curse as the quarry, which only further convinced me that I was on to something.

So I put the co-ordinates into Ava's GPS, raced to the café to pick her up and explained my idea to her on the way. She was a bit annoyed that I'd come up with a theory about Irish myth and Slender Man that she hadn't thought of but she agreed it was a lead nonetheless. When we arrived, we discovered that the site was on top of a rather steep hill, so we made our way up and arrived at the dark place. The second that Ava stepped on it, something happened. Specifically, Slate happened.

I knew he'd arrived because of the flicker. Sometimes, rarely enough, mind you, Revenants use Slender Man's world as a shortcut. When we do, we usually open the "door" to Slendercock's world in an existing doorway, to prevent the flicker. The flicker is caused by the difference of light in Slendershit's world and our world, the photonic discrepancy, if you'll allow me to use a bullshit makey-uppy pseudoscientific term. The flicker gives a warning that we're about to arrive and in the situations where we use that shortcut, it's usually against a foe so threatening that we don't even want to give them a seconds notice.

Anyway, Slate appeared out of fucking nowhere and, for some reason, totally ignored me and lunged at Ava. I shoved Ava down the hill (again, sorry about that) and Slate bowled into me, sending us both rolling down the hill, which fucking hurt, let me tell you. We started fighting at the bottom of the hill, he kicked me in the face, I snapped his wrist, he punched me in the stomach, I kicked him in the balls, he broke my leg, I headbutted him in the throat, really, I could go on, but it was just the same stuff over and over. Healing factors make fights take forever.

Luckily, Ava remembered the taser. She got Slate on the back of the neck. Christ, the things she was saying to him. I mean, I'm a fucking murderer but I never taunted anyone like that. Slate ripped off the shock thingies but by then I'd remembered that I had one too and I shot mine right in his face. The bastard roared in pain, started flailing around trying to rip the shock thingies off, managed to slap them off his face, then disappeared back into the Slenderworld. Ava helped me limp back to the car and we came back here to our hotel.

To be honest, I'm not sure what to think of all this. I've spent the last few hours just getting it together in my head and posting it here. I asked Ava not to talk about anything yet either, I wanted to tell you guys what happened before she gave her own analysis. She's glaring at me, so I'm guessing she's bursting with something to say, so I'll just finish this up and let her start blabbing over on her own blog.

Reach out.