45

Hunter, Don't Shoot My Friend

Chapter 45: Someone Disappeared Part 3

My name is Hallie Knudsen, and my not-so-great world went to hell the moment I decided to follow a stupid joke that I still remember as something silly and harmless.

It all started that night when we watched that video and followed the steps to summon Slenderman. Since that day, we've been having nightmares about strange things that end up being related to Slenderman.

I don’t know if I’m the only one. I decided not to talk about it because I didn’t want to seem silly in front of my friends.

But the dreams became more vivid. Night after night, I would find myself in a vast forest, being chased by something I couldn’t see.

These dreams have worn down my mental stability. Each day has become more irritating than the last, and everything seems to be getting worse.

“Am I the only one who’s been having nightmares about Slenderman?” Hallie finally asked her friends, who seemed perfectly fine.

“You too? I thought I was the only one,” said Katie Jensen, who looked just as exhausted as Hallie.

Chloe, a girl with fluffy hair, said, “I didn’t want to scare you guys, but I’ve also been having weird dreams.”

“Forget about it. It’s just a logical reaction to doing something that could change our lives. But nothing happened. We didn’t summon anything, girls,” said Lizzie, who was also part of the group.

They were all gathered for a school field trip that was supposed to be for social studies. A pointless activity, if you ask me, but as long as the classes weren’t behind a desk, no one would complain.

Hallie didn’t have time for these silly jokes. She believed that the less she talked about it, the faster it would go away.

“Come on, are you still talking to that lacrosse guy?”

“Yeah, the guy won’t stop calling me.”

Katie, who had lagged behind the group, watched her friends walk away. She was halfway down a path that connected to the forest.

A sensation of being pulled by something filled her body.

She wanted to walk somewhere completely different from where she was supposed to go.

That’s why she didn’t continue on the path; that feeling of being called told her that something important lay beyond the path she was on.

And so she walked.

The wind howled fiercely, it seemed like it would rain any moment, and the trees swayed violently, making noises everywhere she went.

When Hallie wanted to talk about those dreams and looked back, her friend Katie had disappeared.

“Katie?” Hallie’s call to her friend caught the attention of the other girls, who realized their friend was gone.

And that’s when they called the police, because Katie Jensen had disappeared.

…

“That’s crazy. Do you think she ran away?”

“Maybe. She didn’t live in a structured family that would really care about her disappearance.”

Stiles was sitting in the back seat of the bus full of students and murmured, “I think the girls were the ones who summoned Slenderman, not the boys.”

Scott, trying to appear concerned, said, “I think the whole hunters and summoning thing is clouding your judgment. It would be impossible for us not to notice if something was wrong.”

“We’ll see about that.”