To Live without Fear [Jeff the KillerxReader]

25

A rush of heavy, damp air hit your face as soon as you passed between the trees, starkly different from the crisp forest air you'd felt before. You now looked around in astonished silence at a completely different forest.

You were surrounded by tall lodgepole pines, which stood like pillars, reaching into the overcast sky and vanishing into the clouds. The fog and dim light prevented you from seeing too far into the woods, as if keeping you isolated from the rest of the world. You looked over your shoulder at the direction you'd come from, but saw no trace of your old location. Without the sound of search parties or even any animals, this forest was silent as the grave. The only sounds were you and Jeff catching your breath and crunching the forest floor beneath you.

"Where are we?" You asked. You'd started to accept that there was bizarre shit out there back when you first met BEN, but this was on a whole new level. Something in your gut was telling you that this place...it wasn't even on Earth.

"The Slender realm." Jeff answered. The wiped more blood from his nose and scanned the surrounding area carefully.

"The what?" You replied. He said that as if it was supposed to make sense to you.

"Best if you don't know." Jeff shook his head, then took your hand and started pulling you along. "C'mon. The sooner we get out of here, the better."

"Can't you just do the tree thing again?" You asked as you walked. His secrecy was really starting to get on your nerves- this wasn't exactly how you had pictured your reunion.

"That's not how it works." Jeff was staring intently at the surrounding woods, looking for something. All you could see were pine trees. "It's a game. We need to find the eight pages to get out."

"Eight pages?" This was completely foreign to you, but Jeff didn't seem to care. He kept his eyes forward, presumably looking for these 'pages'. "What happens if we don't find them?"

At this Jeff paused, pondered for a few moments, then answered, "If it comes down to that, we should probably just kill ourselves. Before it gets to us."

"It?" You asked, feeling that this was the most important question out of the millions swimming around in your head.

"The Slenderman." Was all Jeff said before letting the eerie silence take over. You got the feeling that you shouldn't ask any more questions, because he wouldn't be answering them. So you settled with searching for pages with Jeff in silence.

You had luck on your side. It didn't seem like much time had passed at all before you had collected six pages. Each slip of water-stained paper had a different drawing scribbled on it, and sometimes words scratched on with a heavy hand. Most of them had that symbol that Jeff had carved into the trees earlier. Others had pictures of a stick-figure thing, with no facial features at all. Another thing you noticed was that, with every page you collected, Jeff grew increasingly more tense, his iron grip eventually numbing your hand entirely. You had no idea why he was so worked up. Shouldn't having more pages be a good thing?

You found the seventh page stuck to a broken-down truck that had been claimed by nature long ago. Jeff reached out to grab it, but abruptly froze in his place. "Augh...." He groaned and pressed his free hand to the side of his head, looking like he was in great pain.

"Jeff? Jeff, are you alright?" You asked, but he clearly wasn't. You could feel his palms turning clammy with sweat, and see his legs trembling. It looked like he was having a really, really bad headache.

"Page." He forced out, wincing at the sound of his own voice. You nodded and grabbed the page off the truck for him. Immediately his headache seemed to vanish. He dropped his hand from his head and took a few deep breaths. He took a quick glance over his shoulder, than tugged at your hand. "Let's go. One page left. Are you alright?"

"Am I alright?? Are you?" You replied, dumbfounded by the question. He's the one who just had some kind of episode, not you.

"Yeah, it's just the headaches it causes..." Jeff trailed off and studied you for a moment. "...You haven't gotten any, have you?"

You shook your head. Not a single headache this entire time, even though the rest of you was aching pretty bad.

Jeff looked to be deep in thought for a moment, then snapped himself out of it. "Nevermind. Let's keep moving."

"Can't we take a break or something? I don't know how much longer I can-" You began to speak, but Jeff cut you off.

"No!" He snapped, more frantic than angry. He calmed himself down then repeated, "No. It's way too close by now. If he stop, we're goners."

"...Okay?" You still didn't get what he was so afraid of, but you had no choice but to accept it. Jeff obviously knew a lot of things that you didn't.

You wandered around for another ten to twenty minutes without finding the last page. Every now and then Jeff would wince and abruptly dart in a different direction, which kept you from having any sort of organization in your search. He was quieter and paler than you'd ever seen him. You kept a tight grip on the seven pages, and he kept a tight grip on you.

Before you the dense trees made way to a small clearing, which housed a rather run-down shack that you hadn't come across yet. Jeff looked at it nervously, but he took a breath, steeled himself, and led you towards the shack. The inside was littered with dry leaves and twigs, which made every step you took into a loud crunch. You could feel sharp edges poking into your raw feet, and started stepping as carefully as you could to avoid the pain. You saw no sign of the last note, and you were about to turn and leave when you heard leaves crackling behind you. Jeff froze, but not in the same way he had before. Also unlike before, you could sense that there was most definitely someone behind you right now. As Jeff reached for his shattered glass blade, a familiar feminine voice spoke up.

"Looking for this?"