A hand raised up, slowly. "Uh, dudes," Max began, all eyes turning to him, "I've got something to say."

    "I didn't mean it," responded Jack.

"I know, but hear me out," said Max, giving each one of his friends a glance, the look in his eyes trying to convince them to listen. "Trust me, it's important."

Jack nodded. "A'ight. Spill."

"Those guys we saw last night, I've seen other guys like them before. They didn't look like Slender Man, though—they weren't tall and pale like those guys from last night. They were shorter, brown skin, black hair . . . kinda like Damien. No offense," said Max, raising up both hands toward Damien.

Damien shrugged, leaned back. "None taken."

"And they had the same, um, air, vibe—the dark, creepy, dangerous kind of vibe. And they dressed the same way, too. Dark clothes, sunglasses—even at night."

Jack flitted his eyes over to Damien, who was looking right at him, brown eyes under thick eyebrows telling Jack, Yeah. I'm thinking about that night, too.

Lyn bit her lip. "What happened?"

"When did you see them?" asked Sander, remembering his own first encounter. "Where?"

"Months ago. March this year. Back in Florida." Max paused, sipped some hot chocolate, and went on to say, "The night of the talent show back in my old high school. We took a cab home because the car wouldn't start. Dad left it with his mechanic friend that night. And we didn't think—" Max breathed in, preparing himself to say this out loud. He hadn't thought this through. But they needed this. They had to know. "They were waiting all this time," he went on. "Both of them standing right at our front door, waiting for us to get home. It was all planned out, and we didn't know—I didn't know."

"Max," said Sander, seriously concerned, "what happened?"

"Because by the sound of it, I can tell this isn't going to be good," added Jack.

"Because it isn't," replied Max. "But we're trying to get to the truth, right?"

Jack nodded. "Go on."

"That night," continued Max. But then he took another pause, another deep breath. "That night, one of them had a gun, and he started shooting—first, the tires; then a bullet straight to the cab driver's head. I tried to tell them even before it happened. I told Mom and Dad that there were a bunch of guys right in front of our house, and that we needed to get away from there. But they said they don't see anyone, that I shouldn't be joking about things like that. So I told the cab driver the same thing, but he just chuckled—until we heard the gun shots, until we saw the cab driver die before our eyes. That's when Dad told us to duck and stay low.

"They stopped shooting, though. So it was quiet for a while, until we heard footsteps coming our way. So Dad told us to sneak out the doors, quietly. And we did."

"Then you made a run for it?" guessed Lyn. "You and your family escaped unharmed?"

Max shook his head. "No. Because the second we got out, someone was there to stop us. And it was that guy we met last night, the dude who helped us. He told us to be quiet. 'Don't be afraid. I'm here to help,' that's what he said. But we could still hear the other guys  making their way to us, and this guy said—Hang on, let's give him a name, just to make things clear and a lot less confusing. So Mister Brighteyes said—"

"Mister Brighteyes?" questioned Jack, his face screwing up. "You serious about that?"

"His eyes are pretty bright when you see them up close," explained Sander. "Bright blue, like really-really-hot-fire-in-the-dark kind of blue."

"Exactly," said Max, stretching an arm out to the bespectacled, blond boy. "Thank you, Sander."

"Kinda like The Killers' song 'Mr. Brightside'," commented Lyn, "just Mister Bright-eyes."

"Yes, Mister Brighteyes. And as I was saying," Max resumed, "that's what Mister Brighteyes said: stay put on the ground, don't make a sound or anything that might draw their attention. He told us he'll take care of this, that we shouldn't be afraid."

Sander nodded. "Sounds like him."

"So we sat there, on the ground, pressed against the cab, when one of the bad guys walked over to where we were. And Mister Brighteyes—he just disappeared, without telling us, without . . . anything. And, dude, that left us scared as heck.

"And it was weird, really weird. The bad guy didn't seem to notice us at all, didn't seem to see us even when he looked down right in our direction. He kept looking, talking to himself. Then he yelled at his friend, told him that we escaped. But we were just there, right there frozen on the spot."

"That's weird, hella weird," interjected Jack. "Sounds like he—um, Mister Brighteyes—Man, it's weird saying that out loud. So it kinda sounds like he made you and your family invisible. What the freak am I saying? Yo, Damien's right. They'll think we're making this crap up."

Damien chuckled. "Told you."

"Sounds weird to me, too," commented Sander. "But what he did to my wound last night was the same weird as well."

"Yeah." Max nodded. "Sounds like we're making stupid lies up."

Lyn bit her lip, in thought. "Then," she said, "what happened?"

"Then Mister Brighteyes—he appeared again, out of nowhere. And he walked up to the bad guy and asked him what he was looking for. So creepy guy, being the bad guy, lied right up to Mister Brighteyes's face, told him that he saw a family in trouble, that he just came to see what happened, that he rushed over to help. But Mister Brighteyes saw through the lie, and said to him, 'So why are you holding a gun behind you?' Or something like that. And my sister, Brienne—" Max took a breath, and muttered, "Mom should've covered her eyes," and went on to say, "She saw the gun in his hand, and she got so scared that she couldn't help but start sobbing then and there."

"But Mister Brighteyes told you to be quiet, didn't he?" said Sander. "And if your sister started sobbing, that would mean—"

"He heard her," confirmed Max. "And the second he did, he pointed his gun in our direction, straight at my sister. Then he pulled the trigger, and we heard the shot, loud and clear, and my mom threw herself over my sister, held her close—a human shield." He took a breath, deep deep deep, a sudden immense weight dropping into his chest. "That night scared the heck out of me. I thought I was going to lose my mom. I thought I was going to lose my sister.

"But Mister Brighteyes," he said, the memory so vivid to him. "Mister Brighteyes saved us that night. He saved my mom. He saved my sister. He took the bullet for them, straight into his hand. And it must have hurt like heck. He was bleeding, really bad."

"He's no Superman, huh?" said Damien.

"No, he's not bulletproof," replied Max. "I saw the scar in his hand last night. He showed it to me."

Jack sipped his drink. "Then?"

"Then the weirdest thing happened," said Max. "I know, the whole semi-invisible thing was weird enough. And what he did to Sander's leg last night, that was weird, too. But this, this just freaked me out. And I mean mind-blowing—"

"Max."

"Jack?"

"Get to the point."

"Yeah, a'ight. Sooo—so what happened next was, Mister Brighteyes placed his bloody hand on the bad guy's face, and the bad guy just, well, fell, and then he . . . died . . ."

No one spoke for a while, the noise of the cafe filling their ears. Then Sander said, "So was it his hand or his blood that killed him?"

Max shrugged. "Dunno. After that, Mister Brighteyes disappeared, leaving the bad guy dead on the road. I remember the bad guy had another friend with him, though. He ran off. Probably still alive. But we never saw him again."

Jack leaned back, whistled out a breath of air, and said, "We're in one helluva mess, aren't we?"

Damien chuckled to himself, humorlessly. "It was time for Damien to leave. He has seen—and heard—everything."

"We'll be honest with you," said Jack. "Damien and I have seen those guys before. Those freaks last night. It happened late August. They chased us through downtown that night. Couldn't tell if they wanted to kill us or mug us. We escaped on Damien's car. That's how we started hanging out."

"That's how we became friends," added Damien. "Bonded over being chased down by psychos on the loose."

"I've seen them before, too," said Sander, all eyes turning to him. "They were in the auditorium when the flare incident happened. I saw them through the smoke."

"And something's telling me they might've been behind it," said Damien. "Flares don't burn the way Schmidt's did."

"Lyn and I felt something in the auditorium," said Max, looking over at his raven-haired friend. "Like—" He pressed his middle and thumb finger together, slid flesh across flesh, a snap. "Just like that."

"A snap?" questioned Sander, confused.

"No," said Lyn. "It was a spark, intangible, unseen but felt. A flicker beat in the heart. Dreamlike. But it was nothing exciting, or euphoric. It felt more like—"

"A bad dream?" said Damien. "A bad memory?"

"Exactly," exclaimed Max. "That's it. Dude, how'd you—"

"I felt it, too."

"Like that bad memory that comes out of nowhere and makes you feel sick?" Jack said. "Yeah, felt that, too."

"I did, too," said Sander. "I just didn't understand what Max meant by—" Middle finger and thumb pressed together, slide, click. "Lyn explained it better."

Lyn's mouth curved into a wry smile. "At least I did something right for once."

"So what did you call us here for?" Jack asked, turning to Damien. "Just to talk things up over breakfast? Because if we're done here, I'd like to get some more sleep. Last night did me in, bad."

"Not my idea," responded Damien. "Sander?"

Sander looked around, giving each of them a glance, and breathed in, then said, "I called this meeting to agree on, um, what we do after what happened last night."

"And that is?" asked Damien, raising an eyebrow.

"I think we have to pay Mister Brighteyes a visit."

Lyn flitted her sights over to Sander, her eyes wide in fear.

"What? You're thinking of—" Jack paused a second, fighting the urge to grab Sander by the shoulders and shake some sense into him. "Bruh, no!"

Then Damien said, "We're trying to get out of this mess, not dig ourselves deeper into our freakin' graves."

"He's the only one who knows what's going on," said Sander, his eyes on Jack. Then he turned to Damien, and said, "If he didn't give us a place to stay for the night, those guys would've had us already. Like it or not, without his help, we wouldn't have made it out of there alive. Fact is, we're stuck in this mess, Damien. We don't know why. We don't know how. And I don't think we could pull ourselves out of this—not on our own. He's the only one who can help us."

"Sander's got a point," said Max, shifting his sight from Sander to Damien. "You said it yourself, no one's going to believe us. But we need someone who does, someone who knows what's really going on. And maybe he's the only one we can trust."

"But how we can be so sure that we can trust him?" piped up Lyn.

"He saved me and my family the night the men came. He healed Sander's wound like it was nothing. He gave us a place to stay while the bad guys were out there. He said it himself, don't be afraid, he's here to help. Isn't that enough to prove that we can trust him?"

"There's no other option," said Sander. "If we want to get out of this, we need answers from someone who knows."

"And someone we can trust," added Max.

"Look, the best we have right now is Mister Brighteyes. And, yes, I know," Sander said, catching sight of the looks of quiet trepidation on Damien, Jack, and Lyn's faces, "you don't trust him completely yet. And I've got to admit, neither do I. But he's our best shot at getting out of this. So, what d'you—"

"Hey, peeps," said a voice, the tall form casting a long shadow on the table.

All eyes looked up, at a green-haired boy standing close, this time without his usual black apron and white collared shirt. He wore a navy hoodie over a black tee and had a backpack slung over his shoulder and a beanie and a small envelope in hand.

"TJ! 'Sup, man?" said Jack, smiling a friendly smile, a little too quickly. Everyone else was quiet, managing to act like two men weren't out to kidnap—or perhaps kill—them last night.

TJ shrugged. "Nothing. Just going to head over to the mall for a movie date with my girlfriend."

"Looks like you wrote her a love letter," said Damien, with a smirk.

"Oh, this. Not mine. Not hers." TJ placed the envelope down on the table. "I came over to give this to you before I leave. Someone left it on the counter. It's addressed to you five." He pulled out his phone, checked the time on the screen. "I better get going. Don't want to be late for my date."

"TJ," Sander called, before the tall young man could take another step farther. "Do you know who left this?"

TJ shrugged. "Sorry. No idea. Just found it on the counter."

Then Max asked, "Or do you remember how he looked like, a face maybe?"

TJ shook his head. "Nope. Just that envelope with your names on it. Nothing more. It was too early in the morning—seven-ish—and no one else was around. I'm thinking someone must have left it last night." He glanced down at his phone screen again. "Sorry, guys. I've got to go," he said, taking a few steps back, pocketing his phone. He waved a hand. "See ya." And with that, he sped off, past the tables, out the door.

"TJ boy's whipped," remarked Jack, smiling in the direction the green-haired boy took off.

Damien chuckled. "You don't say."

Sander transferred his glance from the door to the envelope TJ had left on the table. He picked it up, read what was written at the back:

To Sander, Lyn, Damien, Jack, and Max

He turned the envelope over to the other side. His fingers reached for the seal flap, peeled it up and off the center. Inside was a piece of paper—a letter.

Max noticed. "What does it say?" he asked, causing Damien, Jack, and Lyn to turn their attention to Sander and the letter in his hands.

Sander then pulled it out, unfolded it. " 'Dear Sander, Lyn, Damien, Jack, and Max," he began to read, " 'I know perfectly well of your troubles this morning—your questions, your fear, your confusion, your doubts. I think it best that we meet today right after breakfast. I'll be waiting outside The Raven's Nest, on the porch. We will then head over to my cabin and discuss matters over tea. I hope our talk will make things a little more clearer to you. See you all in a while. The Teacher.' "

"The Teacher?" questioned Jack.

"I think we could all guess who he is," said Lyn. "It's obvious. Doesn't say Slender Men, does it?"

"Yeah, real obvious," said Max, looking at something in particular, "especially that I can see him just outside, looking straight at us."

The other four turned their gazes away from the letter, following Max's line of sight. Right outside the window, looking right in, was a man with olive skin and dark hair, smiling at the youths with his bright blue eyes.

Jack swore under his breath. "Man, we're screwed."