Luring

Ava and I got out of our hotel before Slate could cause trouble. I tried to insist on a single room so there wouldn't be a communications delay but Ava likes her privacy and I like my peace and quiet, so I let the argument go before it happened.

I've been thinking about the dark place a lot, pondering why what happened played out how it did. Ava was the trigger, I'm sure of that. It happened the second that she stepped on the site of the sacrifice. And then, Slate attacked Ava first, not me. I'm not even 100% sure he realised I was there until we were tumbling down the hill together.

Hang on, room service is here. I'll continue this once I've finished getting my grub on.

...

Ugh, fuck. Monkey-buggering donkeycock shitcock flaming donkeycocks of shitting donkey-buggerers. Cock.

I, uh, I decided to try eating something other than crackers. I want to try and build myself up a little in case I end up in another fight with Slate. I know I made it out to be a very even fight in my last post, but, actually, if Ava hadn't got him with the taser, I'd have been a goner. Slate was one of the very few in the quarry who ate anything other than the blandest food. He always had Chinese and Indian and shit. Meaty, spicey stuff. He built up his muscles and his resistance to his hypersensitivity at the same time. I ordered a pork satay.

Shit, that was painful. I've been drinking loads of slightly-cold water to try and stop the burning. Oh, fuck me. Bad idea. Bad fucking trip. Flaming donkeycocks.

Right, flagrant abuse of the English language aside, I had an idea. Ava was trying to work out what changed in the 70s that caused appearances of Slendershit to suddenly disappear from the records. Well, the dark place was discovered in the 70s, actually. And the dark place is the site of a mass child sacrifice to Slendercock. And when Ava stepped on to the site of sacrifice, Slate appeared and attacked her. Okay, maybe I'm overthinking this but...what if the dark place...how do I explain this?

What if the dark place was a pact between the ancient people of Ireland and Slender Man? He agreed to leave them alone if they gave him, well, children. So they marked that place with blood and bone and every year, or some other arbitrarily defined period of time, they'd send a child up there to the dark place. Slender Man would sense the presence of the child in the dark place, he'd go and get the child and be appeased for another year, or some other arbitrarily defined period of time, allowing the ancient Irish to flourish. But after a while, people forgot about the dark place and the sacrifices stopped, except for the occasional child who went to climb the hill and got kidnapped by Slender Man. Slender Man gets pissed off by the agreement being broken and Ireland finds itself in for a shit few thousand years. Then, 40 years ago, the dark place is rediscovered and somebody, possibly even someone like me, who was getting stalked by Slender Man starts making the sacrifices again to try and keep Slender Man happy. Things in Ireland start to steadily improve and Slender Man's hand is seen less and less. By the time I've defected and started running, there's no one for my to help here in Ireland; of course there's not, Slender is perfectly willing to leave this place alone in exchange for the odd kid. The odd kid like Ava.

But here's the thing; if I'm right, what makes Ireland so special? Why does he have his elite minion headquarters here, why does he have the secret here and why is he willing to let this place flourish in exchange for child sacrifices, something he doesn't seem willing to do anywhere else?

I think there's something there, but I can't see it. I need to think about this more. And go puke. That satay was both delicious and fucking disgusting.

Reach out.