Dreams In Darkness

Dreams In Darkness begins convincingly as the personal blog of Damien O'Connor, who is living an average life. His job is a drag, but he finally has a date with his cute coworker Amelia, and his flirty roommate Ted keeps him on his toes. Things begin to change after Ted convinces Damien to watch Marble Hornets. Damien is instantly enthralled. He engages in some theory crafting and roleplays some blog interactions with Ted before starting his own Slenderblog, called Watch This City Burn.

In Watch This City Burn, after being introduced to Slender Man by his younger brother, the protagonist is tormented by disturbing dreams where he is stalked and chased by Slender Man and a female counterpart referred to only as "she."

Meanwhile, back on his personal blog, Damien reveals some darker aspects of his life, such as the fact that he takes antipsychotics, and that his mother was institutionalized after killing his father. He also begins to receive cryptic, threatening messages from a stalker, who eventually breaks into his apartment. Shortly thereafter, it is revealed that the stalking was just part of a prank being pulled by Ted. However, Ted has now gone missing for real.

Several days later, Ted is found murdered in classic Slender Man fashion, strung up in a tree with his organs removed and bagged. Damien is distraught and declares that he is finished with both blogs, only to return a week later after Watch This City Burn is hacked and cryptic messages are posted urging Damien to take action before more people are killed. Damien tries to ignore the hacker and get on with his life, only for two more close friends to die under mysterious circumstances.

After some difficult reflection, Damien concludes that he has developed a split personality, and that his other personality has been writing the posts on Watch This City Burn. Damien further concludes that he must have murdered his own friends, and he attempts to commit suicide. He is interrupted by a text from Amelia, who complains about being followed by a "really tall guy." She dies in a car accident shortly thereafter, proving to Damien that Slender Man was the culprit after all, and that Damien is innocent.

Having heard a theory that Slender Man attacks adults who escaped him as kids, Damien sorts through a bunch of his childhood possessions to look for clues. He discovers a disturbing video recording of a ritual orgy and a child sacrifice in which his father and mother took part. The video ends when a shadow enters the ritual room, causing the congregation to gasp and the tape to fall into screeching distortion.

Looking for answers, Damien locates the building where the ritual was filmed and descends into the basement. He becomes lost in a maze of spatial disruptions. Staircases disappear, rooms loop back into themselves, hallways change shape behind his back. When Damien reaches the room with the altar, Slender Man appears, and a mad chase ensues. Damien then wakes up back in his own house.

Slender Man proceeds to intensely stalk Damien, standing outside his house at all hours and even following him through the supermarket. No one but Damien can see him. Damien becomes increasingly fearful as the encounters become more confusing and frightening. In his final entry, he is once again contemplating suicide. The blog stops there, implying that this time he was successful.

Damien's brother Rick comments on the final post, confirming that Damien committed suicide and providing additional pieces of information that contradict many details of Damien's own story. In the end, it's implied that Damien committed some or all of the murders himself, and that Slender Man was only an invention of his deteriorating mental state— that is, if Rick can be trusted.

Slender Man primarily exists in this story as a placeholder for Damien's guilt. Damien can't accept that he is responsible for the deaths of his closest friends, so he invents Slender Man as the true culprit to obsess over. In that sense, Slender Man may not truly exist within this story, but from Damien's perspective, he has several defined characteristics.

At first Slender Man's presence in the story is very minimal. Damien experiences the brutal, inexplicable deaths of several close friends without a single sighting. Then, after Damien visits the cult building, he experiences acute stalking behavior. Slender Man stands outside Damien's house for hours and follows him through the supermarket, staying about 20 feet away at all times. No one else can see him, except perhaps for young children.

Slender Man is pinned with several murders over the course of the story. The classic methods are seen. Ted is hung high up in a tree and gutted, and his organs are placed in a bag nearby. Slender Man stalks Amelia and causes the car accident that leads to her death. Other victims are gruesomely dismembered or simply frightened to death.

Slender Man appears to be the central figure of a cult which Damien's parents were part of. The cult performed ritualistic orgies and child sacrifices in Slender Man's honor in exchange for salvation.

Slender Man is closely connected with children in this story. Damien believes the current murders are linked to events from his childhood, directly referencing the theory from Seeking Truth. A tall, thin man abducts three children from a park near Damien's house. Damien's mother describes the abductions as being "in his nature." In the ritual orgy tape that Damien discovers, a little girl is tied to an alter as a sacrifice to Slender Man. The cult members allegedly believe that Slender takes the children to heaven, but Damien believes he just mutilates them in his typical fashion. While Slender Man is stalking Damien towards the end of the story, he attempts to hypnotize and abduct a child at the supermarket where Damien is shopping.

Slender Man is also linked to spiders in this story. Young Damien expresses a strong fear of spiders, describes running from giant spiders in the woods, and speculates that his mother "must have had a spider in her brain that took control of her and made her do it" in reference to the murder of his father.

Slender Man is depicted with tentacles in this story, and his limbs are able to stretch and elongate, making him larger. He can teleport and he disrupts electronics. He is not aggressive from the start, but becomes aggressive when provoked. He also expresses curiosity and/or confusion at multiple points, characterized by the classic inhuman head-tilt. He does not talk. He may have the ability to manipulate space in this story, creating impossible spaces such as the labyrinth under the cult building. That or he is simply connected with these spaces.

It's implied that Slender Man started the fire that burned down the house of Matthew Wilcox, the leader of the cult. When Damien enters the ritual room under the cult building, he smells sulfur, possibly implying that Slender Man is a type of demon. When Damien goes to settle his mother's affairs after her mysterious death, he finds some of her possessions inexplicably burned.

In the fictional portions of Watch This City Burn (Damien's in-game blog), Slender Man stalks and chases the protagonist and has the power to teleport. Slender is also described as "screaming" at the protagonist during their dream chase, and possibly laughing at another point. Encountering Slender Man seems to drive the witness mad, as shown when the protagonist scribbles a page full of the words, "I HAVE SEEN HIM." Notably, Slender Man is depicted with a female counterpart, referred to only as "she." This character may be a fictional representation of Damien's mother. Slender Man and "she" are describing as having a master/pet relationship.