The Tall Slender Man

It's short story Thursday again. I know I haven't posted a story in awhile. This is a story from when my brother and I were children. A true story, or the overactive imagination of two children? I'll leave that up to you.

My brother and I used to live in a small town in California. We used to play in an area we called the Canyons, a bunch of trails in the woods, all covered with what seemed to be a massive amount of red clay, which was always staining our clothes. We often played there into late in the night. It could be very scary, there was often prints in the mud from mountain lions. My brother and I were very brave, and even this couldn't scare us. This night, however, there was something that did scare us.

We were walking along one of the darker paths. The sun had already gone down and the only light was from the stars and the moon. It was then that it got deathly quiet, as if all the sound had been sucked out the air. I could swear that I couldn't even hear my own heartbeat. We then saw a shape emerging from the woods.

It was too dark to see well, but he appeared to be a man. An abnormally tall slender man, whose limbs seemed as if they were way too long. I couldn't see his face, it was too dark. My brother and I stood transfixed, afraid to move or run away. The man beckoned to my brother, and my brother started to move closer to him. As I was watching, the man seemed to grow even taller, his arms becoming too long to even be considered human. I grabbed my brothers arm and dragged him away from the man, whose arms seem to be getting closer and closer to us. As we ran, sound returned in a crashing boom.

That night I couldn't sleep. I kept thinking I could hear the sound of something tapping at my window, but I was too afraid to get up to look.

Later on, one of the other children in the neighborhood went missing. I'm not sure what happened to him, as we moved to Pennsylvania shortly afterward. I sometimes still think I can hear something tapping at my window. I'm still too scared to look.