Morgan started calling Anissa “the Scorpion,” on account of her fierceness. In return, she wanted Anissa to call her “Kitty.” Sometimes Anissa obliged and stroked Morgan like a cat. But more often, she called Morgan “Child” and herself “Alpha.”
At home, Morgan, who wanted to be a cat, drew pictures of Slenderman with his tendrils wrapped around a kitten.
In her locker, Morgan kept what police would later call a “purple paper craft” bordered in lace. Purple used to be Morgan’s and Bella’s favorite color. But printed in the center of the purple paper craft, in Morgan’s handwriting, were the words:
Morgan
And
Anissa*
* = If you can, MAKE HER DO HER THINGS.
At first glance, it read like a standard declaration of friendship. But what made it unusual was the asterisk after Anissa’s name. Whose voice was speaking? Did Morgan mean that she had power over Anissa, or that the relationship had power over them both?
Both things would turn out to be true: Morgan’s voices and visions increased her credibility in Anissa’s eyes. But as her grip on reality continued to loosen, Morgan relied on Anissa more and more to tell her what to do.
On the back of the purple paper craft, also in Morgan’s handwriting, were the following instructions: “Morgan, cause no trouble at all, give me a full play by play of what I missed. Eat your sandwich, all of it, make sure she does.”
Later, Anissa’s attorneys would reference the paper craft in court, asking one of the detectives on Morgan and Anissa’s case for his interpretation of its wording. “Anissa’s supposed to look after Morgan, make her eat her sandwich, keep her out of trouble?”
“Or is it Morgan looking after Anissa?” the detective countered.
“Hard to say.”
“I’m not sure.”
In his closing argument at the infamous Leopold and Loeb trial, then known as the “crime of the century,” American defense lawyer Clarence Darrow cited Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb’s toxic friendship as the real culprit behind their murder plot: “These boys, neither one of them, could possibly have committed this act excepting by coming together. It was not the act for one; it was the act of two. It was the act of their planning, their conniving, their believing in each other; their thinking themselves supermen. Without it they could not have done it. It would not have happened—some sort of chemical alchemy operated so that they cared for each other, and poor Bobby Franks’s dead body was found in the culvert as a result. Neither of them could have done it alone.”
Morgan and Anissa were fantasists with big and dark imaginations, interested, as Anissa later put it, in “trying to explain the unexplainable.” Morgan needed a caretaker. Anissa liked science experiments. She enjoyed seeing what happened “when different elements combined,” which she described as “sort of like alchemy.”
In late November 2013, shortly after Anissa’s twelfth birthday, around six hundred fifty thousand deer hunters across the state hauled their guns and crossbows into the woods and climbed into tree stands. Some coated their jackets with doe urine to attract bucks. On Thanksgiving, schoolchildren brought home construction paper tracings of their hands turned into turkeys—a thumb for a head, four fingers for feathers.
Anissa dutifully recorded the passage of time in her Spanish notebook: “Weekend = fin de semana. Winter = invierno. ‘It’s snowing’ (está nevando).” As Christmas break approached, she and Morgan waited at the bus stop with boogers frozen against their top lips, unable to feel their toes. Subzero temperatures vacuumed moisture out of people’s faces. Noses ran and eyes cried automatically, creating an overall appearance of mourning. Even nature looked upset. The skeletal remains of bushes lunged from ditches, as if reaching for help.
When Morgan felt lonely or scared, she used Vulcan mind control to numb her emotions. She had developed the technique earlier that year, after seeing a Star Trek movie with her cousins. Now she could turn off her emotions entirely.
Anissa could feel Morgan’s powers seeping into her. Like the Pied Piper of Hamelin, Slenderman frightened and enticed her. She longed to meet him and to prove the skeptics wrong.
But she also wanted to run away with Morgan, to live with her and Slenderman forever. On the bus, where Morgan sometimes trembled as a result of what some creepypastas called “Slender Sickness,” Anissa tried to impress Morgan by seeing Slenderman more and more and letting her hands shake, too.
But Morgan did not know if she could trust Anissa. Bella had pretended to see things. Maybe Anissa was pretending, too.
Morgan started faking Slenderman sightings to test Anissa. When Anissa took the bait, Morgan confronted her. When Anissa admitted that she did not see Slenderman “every single time.” Morgan felt tricked, prompting an email apology from Anissa:
I will not lie about anything unless in front of others.
And I will not betray you. I have never done that to a friend, let alone someone who I am going to spend the rest of my life with (I swear to god if you laugh or show any sign of a dirty mind I will know!) But I won’t betray you, and I will not twitch unless I get a chill down my spine.
Morgan emailed back immediately:
It’s fine … Stop feeling like shit. It was hurtful what you did because it reminded me of what Bella and girls who have in the past betrayed me have done. But honestly, I used Vulcan mind tricks so I didn’t feel upset at all. Just promise not to fake anything from now on. This involves your “stuttering and twitching” that you keep up for about a minute every three weeks. Trust me. I can tell the difference. Physical and mental disabilities are no joke.
Anissa wrote back: “I did that because I didn’t want you to feel insane because you saw something and I didn’t.”
After Morgan caught Anissa pretending, everything started making sense. Slenderman chose to show himself to Morgan because Morgan was a proxy. Anissa wanted to be a proxy, too. Morgan was her closest friend. If Morgan had to be a proxy and kill for Slenderman, Anissa wanted to help. Things were getting dangerous. Morgan could barely finish a sentence without getting distracted, much less plan and carry out a murder. She needed Anissa. Slenderman was evil, and if they didn’t do his bidding he would murder them—he would kill everyone they loved.
The only thing left to do, as far as Anissa could tell, was to find out who needed to die.