39

Hunter, Don't Shoot My Friend

Chapter 39: An Invocation?

"Do you know the girls who are supposedly going to summon Slenderman?" Ethan asked while enjoying his lunch in the courtyard, with Stiles sitting beside him.

"Tom and his friends. Alison and Lydia said that those idiots plan to summon Slenderman tonight, so I’m just passing on the information." Stiles had started investigating, and if the legends were true, this needed to be stopped before anything happened.

However, things wouldn't turn out that way because there was nothing to investigate. This wasn’t how hunters operated, and Stiles didn’t know that.

Ethan wouldn’t interfere beforehand and certainly wouldn’t start now. He preferred to kill Slenderman if it were successfully summoned.

"Want to hear the horror story they tell on the internet?" Stiles opened the soda Ethan was about to drink, and after a big gulp, he continued: "According to the most well-known sources on the internet, Slenderman was conceived on June 8, 2009, by Victor Surge on the Something Awful forums during a Photoshop contest. He’s identified as a creature that stalks children."

"In connection to that, a topic related to Slenderman started on a forum: A user posted some old drawings that the creator of the character had probably digitally manipulated. For example, in the doctored images of 'The Danse Macabre,' where you can clearly see figures similar to Slenderman, stretching his arms and body to extraordinary lengths,"

Stiles knew what the Winchesters were capable of if they were anything like the ones from those fantasy stories, so he hoped Ethan would act immediately to stop this.

"Yeah, that's a good story, but things don’t work the way you think." Ethan took the soda back from Stiles and focused on the bird fight happening in the tree above them.

"What do you mean, Professor?" Stiles asked directly.

"I can't initiate an operation without apparent evidence. We don’t have that privilege because we undertake so many missions daily that the staff isn’t sufficient. That's why I hired you—you’re very smart and conduct good investigations, like this one." Ethan recognized Stiles’ skills when he began researching werewolves to save his friend.

Ethan's unexpected response surprised Stiles, who thought those students would be stopped. "It doesn’t work like the police."

"Not at all. We kill the dark entity only after it causes problems for humans. Just sit back and wait; don’t get involved directly until you know how to use a weapon." Ethan pointed to the seat next to him, inviting Stiles to watch the bird fight too.

This was the reality—they, as hunters, always arrived late.

Besides, this supposed enemy they wanted to summon was an exorcist’s problem, not that of a hunter like him.

It was known that the Grossman was a terrifyingly tall humanoid who lived in the woods and took away children who misbehaved. The legend was of German origin, and either it was false or no reliable information could be found about it on the web, not even in German.

Its connection with Slenderman involves some engravings made in 1540 by Hans Freckenberg: one depicts a medieval knight fighting a skeleton with unusually long limbs; another shows a similar skeleton taking away some children.

It is believed that the skeleton represents Grossman. Supposedly, Hans disappeared—believed to have been taken by The Grossman for no apparent reason—in 1543, and the engravings were found in Halstberg Castle in 1883.

"If you say everything exists, why don’t they erase those legends from the internet?"

Ethan looked at Stiles and said, "Because there's a deep root of origin; everything stems from that root and can never be erased."

"How’s that possible?" Stiles was even more intrigued.

"We have the Noppera-bō. This is a type of ghost in Japanese mythology. It generally appears in human form, often as a beautiful woman. It’s harmless but terrifying because its features slowly fade until its face becomes a bright white, like Slenderman’s. This entity is plural, meaning we’re talking about a species, whereas Slenderman is an individual creature, unique in its class."

"And then there’s the Alû: It has no face, is half-human and half-demon, and its origin goes back to ancient Akkadian, Sumerian, and Babylonian beliefs. It torments humans while they sleep and can paralyze them with its gaze, stealing their speech and even their consciousness."

Ethan paused before continuing: "In Sumerian mythology, it’s a type of spirit or demon, so its generic nature makes it pointless to compare it to Slenderman. Meanwhile, in Akkadian mythology, it’s one of the seven utukku demons, children of Anu. In this case, the comparison to Slenderman makes no sense because it’s purely mythological, whereas Slenderman belongs to the realm of legend."

"Are those impossible connections real?"

"In most cases, they are. If it’s corporeal, I can kill it—even if it’s a ghost—but I don’t like doing other people’s jobs." Ethan said, taking out his cellphone.

"Other people?"

"The exorcists. I haven’t worked with them in a long time." Ethan thought of some past grievances.

Stiles didn’t know what to say, so he decided to leave and conduct more private research on this incident, which could end very badly.