Nevermore Academy
Enid kept thinking deeply about what had happened that night with the hunter and the monster. The truth was, it had been a traumatic experience.
"Tell me, what happened with what you said you would investigate?" Wednesday approached Enid, trying to find a reason to keep digging.
"Nothing yet." Enid seemed discouraged; she had hoped to find something truly important to score points with the hunter.
But no matter who she talked to, she found nothing.
"That doesn't matter, I mean have you looked into what the hunters are doing?" Wednesday didn't care what Enid found to give Jonathan; she was interested in following the hunters' trail.
"I don't know anything about that."
"Nothing?"
"Of course not, I don't dare get close to the hunters being a werewolf." Enid was a bit upset saying this, she really didn't understand why Wednesday didn't seem to care.
Wednesday thought for a moment and then said: "Since you're looking for information to hand over to the hunters, I overheard some guys in the town cafeteria talking about wanting to take on a challenge."
"What challenge, what are you talking about?" As Jonathan's new agent, Enid became curious about other people's mysteries.
"They say the boys tonight will try to summon Slenderman, that sort of thing." Wednesday grabbed her books and walked away.
But before she got too far, Enid caught up with her and asked: "Who?"
"It's important, I need to know." Enid appeared on the other side of Wednesday, very interested.
Wednesday gave a sarcastic look of surprise and asked: "You don't believe those weird rumors, do you?"
"No, I don't know, anything is useful."
"That's reassuring. A cursed spirit or demon doesn't just appear out of nowhere," Wednesday said, not paying much attention to the boys' words who had tried to bother her earlier in town.
"So, just to know, who are they?"
"The sheriff's son. Those guys believe in anything, they're not very smart."
Silently, Enid watched Wednesday walk away, and before she got too far, she caught up with her. "I need you to come with me."
…
"Do you know the guys who are supposedly going to summon Slenderman?" Jonathan was enjoying his lunch in the courtyard, with Enid sitting beside him.
"The sheriff's son and his friends. Wednesday said those idiots would try to summon Slenderman tonight, so I'm just passing along the information." Enid had started investigating, and if all the legends were true, this had to be stopped before it happened.
But things wouldn't turn out that way, since there was nothing to investigate. That wasn't how hunters worked, and Enid didn't know that.
Jonathan wouldn't intervene before, and he wouldn't start now. He'd rather kill Slenderman if the summoning was actually successful.
"Want to hear about the horror story they tell on the internet?" Enid opened the soda Jonathan was about to drink and after a big sip, said: "According to the most well-known internet sources, he was conceived on June 8th, 1983, by Victor Surge on the Something Awful forums during a Photoshop contest, identified as a creature that stalks children."
"By the way, in one forum a topic related to Slenderman was started: a user posted some old drawings that the character's creator had surely manipulated digitally—like the doctored images of The Danse Macabre, in which you could clearly see figures very similar to Slenderman in many ways, stretching his arms and body to extraordinary limits."
Enid knew what the Belmonts were capable of, if they were anything like those fantasy stories, so she expected Jonathan to act immediately to stop this.
"Yes, that's a good story, but things don't work the way you're thinking." Jonathan took the soda from Enid's hands and focused on the bird fight happening up in a tree.
"What do you mean?" Wednesday asked directly, having appeared beside Jonathan without making a sound.
"I can't start an operation without apparent proof, we don't have that privilege since the number of missions we do each day is so high that we don't have enough personnel. That's why I plan to expand my group and I needed Wednesday's help. I need very intelligent people who can do solid investigations like this one." Jonathan had already seen Enid's and Wednesday's skills back when he started investigating the werewolves to save his friend.
Jonathan's unexpected response was a surprise for Enid, who had thought those students would be stopped. "Doesn't it work like the police?"
"Not at all. We kill the dark entity after it causes problems for humans. Just sit and wait, don't get directly involved until I decide your role." Jonathan pointed to the seat so she could also watch the bird fight.
This was the reality: hunters always arrived late.
Besides, this supposed enemy they wanted to summon was truly powerful.
It was said that The Grossman was a towering, terrifying humanoid who lived in the woods and took away misbehaving children. The legend was of German origin and, either it was false, or no reliable information about it could be found on the web, not even in German.
Its relation to Slenderman involved engravings made in 1540 by Hans Freckenberg: in one, a medieval knight is shown fighting a skeleton with abnormally long limbs; in another, a similar skeleton is shown carrying children away.
It was believed that the skeleton was a representation of The Grossman. Supposedly, Hans disappeared—they believed The Grossman had taken him without 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?"
Jonathan looked at Enid and said: "Because there's a thick root of origin, everything derives from that root and it can never be erased."
"How's that?" Enid became even more interested.
"We have the Noppera-bō: this is a kind of ghost from Japanese mythology. Generally, it appears in human form, often as a beautiful woman. It's harmless, but frightening, because its features gradually fade until its face is covered by a bright white surface, just like Slenderman. This entity is plural—that is, we're talking about a species—while Slenderman is an individual creature, unique in its kind."
"The Alû: it has no face, it's half-human and half-demon, and its origin goes back to the very ancient Akkadian, Sumerian, and Babylonian beliefs. It also torments humans while they sleep, and can paralyze them with its gaze, taking away their speech and even their consciousness."
Jonathan paused and continued: "In Sumerian mythology, it's a type of spirit or demon, so its generic nature makes it meaningless to compare it with Slenderman. Meanwhile, in Akkadian mythology, it's one of the seven utukku-demons, children of Anu. In that case, the comparison to Slenderman makes no sense because it's a purely mythological being, while Slenderman belongs to the realm of legend."
"Could those impossible connections actually be real?"
"In most cases, yes. If it's corporeal, I can kill it—even if it's a ghost. But I don't like doing other people's work," Jonathan said while pulling out his cell phone.
"Other people?"
"I'm more of a hunter than an exorcist. I think I'm one of the few Belmonts who fights in a mixed way against dark entities. But I'm still far from the skills of my ancestor, Trevor Belmont." The strongest human according to family records, the man who defeated Death.
Enid didn't know what to say, so she decided to leave and do more private research on this incident, which could turn out very badly.