#wacem scribbles

He took one moment to regard the humongous wooden beam used to barricade the door back to the tunnel and just scoffed. He was too tired and in too much pain to even try to lift that heavy thing with one hand. The door being closed would just have to be barrier enough. 

No, it’s not, the Voice of Ashley Judgment whispered. You know that.

Sighing, he manhandled the thing awkwardly until it was leaned against the door like a pathetic brace. “There,” he huffed. “Nailed it.” If Ashley had been there, he knew she’d be staring at him with lips pursed and eyebrows raised, arms folded across her chest, and fingers drumming disapprovingly on her biceps. “It’s the best I can do!” he protested, his voice cracking ridiculously.

He shuffled across the hallway into a large room he immediately recognized. The rusty saws hanging from the ceiling were a dead give away. The dimmer light was a welcome reprieve to his aching eyes, but the memories that came with it slammed the breath out of his lungs. 

Wait! Stop! You can’t do it, Chris. It should be me!

The saws were hanging silent and still in the shadows above him, but he could hear the shrill, metallic whir of them spinning as clearly now as he could then. The ligature burns on his wrist twinged when he saw the ties that had bound him and Ashley still lying on the floor where the others had left them. And the burns on his face….The sacrifice he’d made that had ultimately turned out to be meaningless.

No. He couldn’t stay here. Fresh grief surged up his throat like bile, and he swallowed hard to keep it down. The cold light of Josh's command center filtered through a door far to his right, blinding but safe, and he hurried towards it, skipping with his good leg to get there faster. As he turned to close the door behind him, he could have sworn he saw movement out of the corner of his eye. Ashley sitting where she’d been during Josh’s fucked up game, struggling for freedom. He could hear her screams in his head, her pleas begging him not to kill himself.

You chose to save me before. Let me choose this time! Let me choose to save you!!

But when his eyes snapped into focus, there was nobody there. Of course not. That was a lifetime ago, when Ashley had still been alive. She was dead now. A pile of charcoal down in the mines. She wasn’t here. But logic had no place on Blackwood Pines tonight, and he found he couldn’t close the door on her. The apparition, whether supernatural or psychological… he didn’t even know anymore… still gave him some piece of Ashley to hang onto, and he just couldn’t lock her out like that. Keeping his eyes glued to the chair where she’d been, he backed into the safe room until his butt knocked against one of the desks, forcing him to break his gaze and turn it directly at… 

A bloody eye socket. 

A hoarse yelp exploded out of his chest, and he skittered away from the desk, backing into a wall of metal grating with a clang. Emily! His blood whooshed through his veins, making him feel like he’d explode, filling his ears with a dull roar too powerful for even the tinnitus to overcome. The pile of grave dirt he’d heaped atop his emotions, to bury them until they could safely be processed, exploded into a million pieces, and the horror of tonight all crawled out, muddy and bloody, to stare him directly in the face with one-eyed crystal clarity. Something in his gut broke loose, sending loud scream-sobs racking through his chest and swollen throat. His legs turned to jelly beneath him, and he slid down the wall into a fetal position, rocking and weeping, delicately covering his mouth, and utterly incapable of tearing his eyes from Emily’s horrified face.

Wasn’t your fault, Chris. None of this was your fault.

But it was. He could have done more to stop it. Could have said something helpful. Could have taken the gun from Mike, could have…

Taken the gun from Mike? Seriously? Ashley’s voice laughed incredulously, sending a wave of self-consciousness coursing from Chris' pelvis to the tips of his ears. You know I care about you, Chris, but there’s absolutely no way you would have won that. Mike would have flattened you-- maybe even shot you-- if you’d tried. You saw how worked up he was. Mike killed Emily. Not you.

Chris took the deepest breath his ribs would allow and held it until the pain forced him to let it go in a wavering sigh. He did it again and again until his hands stopped shaking so badly, and he could see without staring through an aquarium of regret. More than words could express, he wanted to pull Emily down from where her body was perched, indecorously splayed on the desk like that. Lay her somewhere more dignified and-- if he was being honest with himself-- less conspicuous. But, while he might have been able to pull that off with both arms at his disposal, there was no way he could now. So there she sat, silently screaming at him for not saving her, and he could only sit there and watch her as an inescapable thought rattled to the forefront of his brain.

Sam wasn’t here.

He didn’t know when or if Sam and Mike were coming back. He didn’t know if they’d find Josh, or if Josh was even still alive. He didn’t know if anyone was still alive, and the thought that he might be completely alone would have been enough to send him into another tailspin of panic if he didn’t already feel so utterly gutted. Everything was drained from him, like he’d been prey to a succubus. There was nothing left for panic to take hold of. He stood wearily and limped over to the swiveling chair in front of the CCTVs, pointedly avoiding looking towards Emily’s body, and gazed over the screens, squinting in the brightness of their light. Jeez… Josh really had set up cameras everywhere. Chris flicked from feed to feed, but there were no signs of life on the property. Wherever Sam and Mike were, it didn’t appear to be anywhere near the lodge.

Chris sighed and carefully, rigidly slid out of his coat and took advantage of the light to get the first good look at his injured arm. With the coat on, it hadn't looked so bad. Some punctures and tears in his sleeve. Minor blood stains that looked black against the blue of the fabric and more blood running down his hand. Overall, an outside observer wouldn't know how horrible it felt beneath the surface. With the coat off, however…. well, that was a different story altogether. The wendigo's teeth had torn much more easily through his sweater and undershirt. His forearm looked like hamburger meat and was deformed. Definitely broken; there was no denying that. The two bones angled and twisted in towards each other, giving his forearm a disturbing spiraled hourglass shape. And, it was still bleeding. The sleeve of his sweater was soaked up to the shoulder. He didn't even want to imagine what sort of mess the shirt underneath it was. No wonder he was so exhausted. On top of everything else, he was also bleeding to death. He unzipped his sweater and awkwardly fumbled at the bottom of his T-shirt to rip off a strip of fabric. This was much more easily said than done, with only one hand. And of course it was his stupid hand. Heaven forbid the wendigo leave him his dominant arm to work with.

Well, that is the one you threw the lighter with. If it only sees movement, of course it went for your right arm, you doofus. You painted a big red bullseye on it. 

"Aw hush, you," he muttered at Ashley’s voice, surprised at how defeated his own sounded. "Let me mope in peace."

He tied the pathetic strip of cloth around his injured arm just above the elbow and pulled the tourniquet tight with the aid of his teeth. He considered maybe trying to find something to splint his arm, but he didn't know the first thing about setting bones. Even if he did, he didn't think he had the fortitude to set his own bone. The Hartley clan was known for many things. A high pain tolerance was not one of them. On top of that, there was nothing around to use as a splint, and it had been an ass and a half just to rip one strip of cloth off his shirt. "Fuck it," he mumbled and slowly, agonizingly put his coat back on. His arm lodged a torrent of bitter complaints at all the movement, and he cradled it miserably when he was done. 

He was very tempted to just sit at the desk and wait until either Sam returned or the wendigo found him, whichever happened first. God knew his ankle needed a break from walking. He figured the numbness probably meant it had swollen so badly that the tightness of his boot was cutting off the circulation to his toes. But the throbbing in the joint itself wasn't going anywhere, and he was dying for an ottoman to prop his leg up onto. Anything to make his foot feel a little less engorged. He hoisted his leg up onto the desk while he took the cleaning cloth to his glasses, but the desk wasn’t exactly soft or comfortable, and the edge had an unpleasant habit of digging into his achilles tendon.

He pulled out his phone compulsively. The screen was cracked to hell, and the battery was at seven percent. The likelihood that he’d get anything even remotely approaching reception down here was zilch, but he figured he’d check anyway. Maybe he’d try shooting Sam a text. Hey, I know you’re probably fighting for your life against some cryptid abomination right now, but if you could send me a quick reply, so I can stop freaking out, that’d be greeeaaat. But of course, there was so little reception that his phone’s very attempts to find a signal were rapidly draining his battery. He sighed, put it on power-save and airplane mode, and slid it back into his pocket. Eventually there’d be a signal, and when that time came, he damn-well wanted his phone to still have juice. 

Meanwhile, Emily’s corpse was still just… sitting there, staring at the ceiling with its one blind eye. Mouth frozen in a silent scream. Chris refused to look at her, but he could feel her there, burning holes into the back of his neck. It made his stomach churn and twist. He could almost hear her voice coming from the yawning cavern of her mouth. Why didn't you stop him? Why didn't you save me? Raw, jagged, quivering guilt slithered its way through his guts, gnawed at the base of his skull like a rat, and dined on his precarious sanity like it was a delicacy. Eventually, the thought of spending even another moment alone in here with her was unbearable.

And that was when he heard something heavy and wooden clatter to the floor somewhere outside the safe room. Chris bolted upright, feeling his quickened pulse in his teeth. Was that the barricading beam? Maybe he hadn’t quite propped it up straight. He knew some of his old action figures at home had a habit of staying upright for months and months only to randomly fall off the shelf in the middle of the night and scare the holy bejeezus out of him. That could absolutely be what just happened with the beam. Right?

Then came the shriek, cutting through all the desperate denial and sending his nervous system into a blue screen of death. Only this time… that sound couldn't possibly have come from just one throat, no matter how supernatural that throat was. Waitwaitwait. You're telling me there's another wendigo?? The old guy didn’t say jack shit about there being more than one of those things! Not cool! Not cool at all!! But the shrieks and the clambering of bony fingers and toes against concrete and drywall crept closer and closer. His eyes darted around the room and landed on the revolver Mike had left behind. Deafening bang. Her eye disappearing into blackness and blood. Chris shuddered, glanced apologetically at Emily's body, and snatched up the gun. The ancient grip aggravated the blisters on his palm, but the weapon's weight was comforting in his hand. Awkwardly, he popped the cylinder to check its ammunition. Three rounds left. Awesome. So… barely any ammo, and it didn't have the stopping power of the shotgun-- hell, he wasn't even sure he’d be able to use the shotgun right now, even if it was down here-- but it was better than nothing. Chris fumbled one-handedly to toss the spent casings, snapped the cylinder back into place, and made sure it was turned right, before hobbling towards the saw room door. At the threshold, he froze dead in his tracks. His blood turned to ice in his veins, and his heart lodged itself somewhere behind his eyes. Long, pale fingers were wrapped around the edge of one of the circular blades on the ceiling. The light from the monitors gleamed in a pair of huge, pale eyes, peering around the mechanism the saw was hanging from. Another Gollum silhouette plopped into the doorway from the access hallway, limbs twisting in a jerky, arachnoid way. The wendigo clinging to the saw twitched its head to one side, staring at Chris with uncertainty. Then its face twisted in voracious hunger, and it screamed. 

And that was all Chris needed to see. If he had been a gambling man, he would have bet his life savings-- pathetic though they were-- that his adrenal glands had nothing left in them, that they were useless little deflated sacks sitting atop his kidneys like shriveled balloons. After all, they’d seen more rigorous action tonight than they had the entire rest of his life combined! But if he’d made that bet… he would have lost the farm. Those exhausted little sacks squirted a fresh new deluge of adrenaline into his blood, and suddenly, all of the pain, the guilt, the heartache, everything disappeared beneath an overwhelming animal instinct to run. Common sense surfaced from the deafening torrent of his racing heart long enough to make him slam and lock the door to the saw room. Then he whirled around and fled as fast as his legs would carry him. 

Immediately, he heard a loud thud against the door behind him, and he bit his lip to stifle a yell. No time for that! buzzed the adrenaline-soaked Voice of Ashley Judgment. Death is up your butt. Keep moving. Don't slow down. 

And, really… she was preaching to the choir, because he hadn't. He was out of the room in an instant, crashing through a heavy door with a peep-slot and slamming it shut behind him. He tried frantically to remember the way back to the lodge, but his brain seemed to be filled with swarming wasps, and he couldn’t think. He could only run. His legs carried him through some winding corridors, into a decrepit room, up a small flight of stairs, through another door, down a hallway, around a corner, and into a freezer. Well, that at least was familiar. Or at least the dead pigs hanging in it were. Without pausing, he continued through the freezer and into the kitchen. Relics and memories of Josh’s deranged little prank flew around him like spectres as he ran. Clues Ashley had found and pointed out to him, there one moment, gone the next. Felt like all of that had happened centuries ago. How quaint they seemed now, in light of the very real danger screaming through the corridors behind him. Something squealed and crashed loudly in the freezer. Shit, they were close. Could he really outrun them all the way back to the lodge? And once he got there, what then? How was the lodge any safer than the fucking safe room?

Well, for one, the safe room has very recently been full of monsters. So… I mean, the lodge wins that point.

Fair enough. He slammed the door to the kitchen and continued running through dark, dilapidated hallways, trying not to trip over debris in the inky blackness. He stumbled into a staircase, and took the steps two at a time-- a feat he knew would make his ankle bite him in the ass when the adrenaline rush simmered down. The cold air slapped at the sweat on his face. His breath tore through his chafed throat in harsh, ragged pants. The cold and the dust made his lungs ache horrendously from within, while his broken ribs jabbed at them from without. For the second time tonight, he intimately understood why people went on runs. It wasn’t for fun. Cause, really, only crazy people actually liked running. It was so that when cryptid abominations were on your ass, you weren’t braying like an asthmatic donkey two seconds into the chase. God, I promise, if you get me out of this, I’ll go to the gym every freakin’ day. Even weekends. Pinky swear.

When he reached an ancient elevator, he chanced a glance over his shoulder. Two wendigos hopped around the far corner, leaping from floor to ceiling to wall to ceiling again like deranged wolf spiders. His mouth dropped in a scream that his throat was too sore to voice. He considered taking aim with the revolver and shooting one of them but thought better of it when he remembered how limited his ammunition was. Each shot needed to count, and blind pot-shots didn’t count. Instead, he took off down the decrepit hallway, trying not to trip over the jutting timber and crumbling plaster of the dilapidated structure’s exposed skeleton. There was an open doorway at the end of the hallway. He didn’t see the steps leading up to it, tripped, and soared through the doorway, somehow managing not to land on his bad arm. Frantically, he went to slam the door shut with his foot. Only then did he notice there was no way to do so; the thing swung outward into the hall. “Dammit,” Chris muttered, scrambling to his feet and over to the much heftier door to the lodge’s wine cellar. It was closed and locked. Just as the group had left it on their way down to the safe room. “Shit!” His hand, hampered by the revolver, was shaking so badly that it slipped clean off the bolt the first time he tried to slide it from the lock. He had better luck on the second attempt. The very instant he’d pulled the door open, something solid slammed into his back, sending him flying dramatically into the basement. He was vaguely aware of a loud, wooden bang, and instinctively put his hands out to catch himself before he face-planted hard on the concrete floor. 

The mind-erasing agony in his broken arm made him want to scream, but his chest was full of glass, and he found that he couldn’t breathe. The weight on top of him shifted around madly, and he felt a line of fire slash across his back, then another. Chris tried frantically to turn around and face his assailant or move his arms out from under himself, but the wendigo’s weight had him firmly pinned. The thing slashed at his back again, claws digging deep enough to scrape bone. 

He strips the skin off of your entire body, piece by piece. 

That unlocked the scream that had been trapped in his chest. A huge, skeletal hand gripped his shoulder tightly enough to draw blood and yanked him back towards the wendigo’s maw… but it freed his good hand in the process. He crossed it up and over the opposite shoulder and turned his head away before squeezing the trigger on the revolver. He recoiled sharply from the discharge, pressing the back of his hand to his ear. He was gonna be deaf before the evening was done; he just knew it. But the claws extracted from his shoulder, and the weight lifted abruptly from his back. He scrambled around to face the monster, holding the revolver in front of him, and using his feet to slide himself further away from the thing. 

A wendigo-- just one-- was attached to the wine shelf, staring down at him contemplatively. This one looked different from the one he’d seen close-up before. Its face was broader, more grizzled. Its features were muddled, as though they were rotting away. And it was wearing clothes! Time had worn them down to indistinguishable rags, but they clung to the monster’s emaciated body with the tenacity of a video game heroine’s chainmail bikini. The reinforced door back to the buried hotel jolted in its frame, and that’s when Chris noticed that it had somehow gotten itself closed again. The other wendigo was trapped on the other side, trying to break through it. The wendigo on the shelf shrieked at him, but-- both thankfully and alarmingly-- the sound was muffled by the aftershock of the revolver going off in his ear. And then the thing leapt at him, and his finger squeezed the trigger without waiting for conscious permission. The first shot seemed to have no effect. The second, however…

Well, that was the million-dollar shot. 

It nailed the wendigo directly in the eye, bursting it like a grape. The creature shrieked again, recoiling violently back into the wall. Those horrifyingly long claws would have taken off his face as they arced towards the monster’s ruined eye socket, if Chris hadn’t snapped his head back at the last moment. He blinked and saw Emily’s face, pale as death, her eye exploding in the wake of the bullet entering her skull. He blinked again, and she was gone. There was a faint click-click-click, and Chris realized he was still pulling the trigger on an empty revolver. 

“Fuck you!” he meant to shout triumphantly, but his hoarse voice cracked unflatteringly instead. He threw the empty gun at the keening wendigo out of spite, clambered to his feet and ran as fast as he could for the stairs up to the lodge. 

Now he was in really familiar territory. Considerably less dilapidated. This cellar was almost as familiar to him as his parents', so navigating it in the dark was a piece of cake. He positively flew up the concrete steps, leaping over the broken one like a gazelle. He heard the door in the wine cellar burst apart just as his hand wrapped around the knob at the top of the stairs. He heaved an internal sigh of relief that it wasn't locked. Screeching and clicking followed him up the stairwell, and he slammed the cellar door on all of that noise, leaning against it and panting. After the intense darkness of traversing subterranean passages without a flashlight, he found the moonlight drifting through the dust motes and casting strange and disturbing shadows through the Washingtons' uniquely unsettling decor to be almost painfully bright. He groaned and squeezed his eyes shut, flitting his cold fingers delicately over the throbbing bruise on his head.

So. He was in the lodge. Where to, now? Maybe somewhere with no windows? A back door so as not to become trapped? Something heavy smashed into the other side of the door, jolting it agonizingly into his savaged back. Suddenly, Chris found he didn't much care where he went, as long as it wasn't here. He ran forward, zigged right, heard the wendigos burst through the door behind him yet again. Their screeches filled the hallway a couple dozen feet behind him. He ran through the guest room, somehow managing to leap up and over the bed without tripping. Ahead stood the door to the cinema room, and it was open. Through the gloom of the room beyond, Chris saw Sam and Mike's ashen faces appear from around the corner. Holy shit! They were still alive! They looked a bit worse for wear, but still mostly intact. They even seemed to be chuckling at each other over something. His smile immediately died. Shit! They were right in the path of the wendigos up his ass. He’d led the monsters straight to them! FUCK!!

"GO GO GO GO!!!" he yelled as he blasted past them, not slowing down to make sure they did. He heard one of them exclaim something but didn't register what. He was already out of the cinema room and clambering up the stairs. The loud clumping of boots on creaky boards marked Mike running up the stairs opposite him. Oh, God, please let Sam make it out of there. He was halfway through the great room when he saw it. Another wendigo-- the one that killed Ashley-- clinging like Spider-Man to the big metal sculpture hanging from the ceiling. There was a dread about its presence a thousand times heavier than any aura the wendigo stooges behind him could muster. It seemed bigger. Stronger. Deadlier. While the others liked to putz around and play with their food, this one had a habit of going straight for the kill. The stranger's head falling heavily into the snow, eyes glazing and becoming blank. Ashley's headless body, soaked in blood and still warm. No. This wendigo didn't fuck around. Paralyzing fear rooted Chris to the spot. All he could do was stand and stare. 

And he wasn't the only one. 

Chris heard Mike all but screech to a halt when the latter reached the great room. Then he heard the lighter steps of Sam doing the same.

"Don't… move…" Mike whispered, wholly unnecessarily. "Don't… fucking… move… a muscle."

He wanted to shoot back a "No shit, Sherlock," but his tongue became a fat piece of meat in his mouth, and the words stuck in his throat. 

For a small eternity, they all just stood there, frozen, while the wendigo on the sculpture jerked its head back and forth, searching for the prey it heard enter the room. But then something must have happened. Mike suddenly broke out in a run towards Sam, and the wendigo was on him faster than Chris could fathom. It picked Mike up and hurled him across the room like a rag doll. Shit. Shit! Mike might be a murdering asshole, but he was also their best chance of survival. If he didn’t make it...

The stooges chose that exact moment to join the party, drawing the attention of the one Chris was starting to think of as The Alpha away from Mike, and-- whoa, wait a second. Were they fighting? Each other? He wouldn’t have thought they did that. The stooges seemed to have had a synergistic energy between them whenever he’d hazarded a glance back at them. But... but yeah... they were fighting. That’s definitely what was happening. And The Alpha was kicking the other two's asses. It was hurling them all over creation, breaking every damn thing. It was a hell of a distraction. Chris looked at Mike and started slowly backing toward the lodge’s front door, willing the other two to do the same. He thought he saw Mike give a significant look just then, but it wasn’t to him-- because, of course, people like Chris don’t exist as anything but curiosities in Munroe-Land-- and he couldn't see Sam to know what the hell that was about. All he could see was Mike taking advantage of the distraction to pick himself up off the floor and creep beneath the clashing titans overhead. But he was going the wrong way. He was moving away from the front door and reaching towards… a wall lamp? What the fuck?? 

The Alpha ripped the head clean off of one of the stooges, and Chris felt his gorge rise when his mind’s eye replaced the stooge with Ash. Then someone-- Sam, he thought-- stepped on a creaky floorboard. The wendigo snapped its head towards her and screeched. Then it was gone, disappeared out of view to where Sam was, and then Sam was screaming over a wet, ripping sound. Shitshitshitshit what the hell?? He wanted to see what was happening. Wanted to do something. Make sure Sam was okay, but the stairs were in the way, and his legs weren’t responding to commands. Sam’s scream turned weak and faded into silence, and Chris heard another horrifyingly fleshy ripping sound. He could try to pretend he didn’t know what that meant, but there was only so much denial he could conjure in one night. Sam’s dead. Sam’s DEAD! None of this can be happening!! He could feel his lungs revving up a panic again. He looked pleadingly back at Mike who now had his hand wrapped around the lamp's light bulb. What the fuck?? How can Mike just be standing there, focusing on a fucking wall lamp, when that thing is killing Sam?

Just standing there… kinda like you are?

Chris bit his lip and closed his eyes at the guilt stabbing through his ravaged chest. Yeah. Like I am. Always there when things go tits up, but my presence is never beneficial. Then he smelled it. Gasoline. Had the wendigos broken a pipe in the fireplace? Oh, shit shit shit shit. Did that mean Mike was planning to-- He opened his eyes and saw the lightbulb shatter in the other man's hand. Mike doubled over and groaned, hugging his sides miserably. The wendigo, drawn by all the noise, was on Mike again like stink on cheese. It grabbed Mike by the face and lifted him into the air by it. Chris could feel that same hand wrapped around his throat in the dark of the tunnels. That bizarre moment where he thought the creature looked familiar. The creature wrapping its hand over his head like it was going to rip his head off right next to Ashley’s headless corpse. Then the wendigo tore out their esteemed class president’s guts with two quick swipes, hurling him into a nearby pillar with spine-shattering force. Chris felt a scream building up deep in his chest, climbing up his throat, to be whisked away by rapid, wheezing breaths. This was a nightmare. This was an absolute nightmare. 

Blind panic broke the paralysis, and Chris turned and fled out the door. No longer caring if the wendigo saw him, no longer caring what hell awaited him outside, or where the other stooge had gone. He simply could not stay in that room another second and watch that thing tear apart his friends. He couldn't take being a useless bystander to any more death. Hadn't he seen enough?

He'd hardly cleared the front door when the hand of God swatted him from behind with a deafening boom and sent him flying off the porch. His feet clipped a stone wall, and he went flipping ass over teakettle into a snowbank. For a while, Chris could only lie face-down in the snow, shuddering, exhausted, all of the pain returning as the last of his adrenaline was leached by the cold. His head felt like it was filled with sand. A silence unlike anything he’d ever experienced pressed in on him from all sides. Crushing him, like he’d jumped into the deep end of the pool and sunk to the bottom. He only found the strength to push himself up and regain his feet when he felt something viciously beating the air overhead. 

He wasn't ready for what he saw. 

The lodge was an absolute inferno. And Sam and Mike were still in there. Any hopes he may have been nursing that they might somehow survive the night vanished in the flames devouring the lodge. And the lodge. All of the memories of vacations they’d spent there… the pranks, the games, the hijinks… up in a puff of smoke, soon to be lost forever. Like Ash was. Like he feared Josh to be. And Emily. Like Sam and Mike soon would be, if they weren’t already-- God, the thought that they might still be alive in there, burning to death while he watched on helplessly, it sent a skewer into his stomach that twisted and rolled his guts up like spaghetti. A noise came out of him that barely sounded human as his vision blurred with tears that were both freezing and burning. Were Matt and Jess still alive? He didn't know. Probably not. Mike and Emily had seemed to think they were dead, and they were in the position to know. 

Huge embers came streaking out of the blaze, moving in unnatural ways through the smoke. One turned and surged toward him. A shriek cut through his deafness like a diamond through glass, and, in the flying blaze, he thought he could see the face of the devil. It nearly made him fall back into the snow, but he kept his balance on his one good foot by flailing his one good arm. He must be going mad. Either that or he'd died, and this was Hell. He wasn’t sure which thought was more comforting. 

But that sensation. A deep whump whump whump chopping through the air and into the pit of his stomach. What was that? It was like the freezing wind had developed a heartbeat that was squeezing him to its pulse. That’s when a shadow intruded across the first light of the sun, and he realized what it was. A helicopter. Help had finally come. 

But it had come too late. Way, way too late. Everyone was already dead. Everyone but Chris. And he felt the least deserving of help. How could he be the one getting saved?  It was a sick and twisted perversion of justice. He'd just stood by and watched all of his friends die, one by one, without twitching a finger to help. He hadn’t saved a single, solitary one of them. And now here was the cavalry, come to save him. 

It wasn't fair. It wasn't right. He didn't deserve to be alive when all the others were dead. 

Ashley? No. No, no, no. He couldn't let that thing have her. It was bad enough that it had her head. The wendigo could take the rest of her over his cold, dead body. Which, admittedly, looked like an extremely likely outcome. But, for all his heroic intent, he still couldn't get so much as a fingernail to quiver. His body was locked up tighter than Fort Knox. People always talked about Fight and Flight, but nobody ever mentioned their derpy little brother Freeze. Maybe it was because it didn't rhyme, but more likely it was because freezing in the face of danger-- utilized to stunning effect by such apex predators as goats, deer, possums, and now… Chris Hartley-- was usually a great way to get dead. The stranger's voice whispered through his mind. They can’t see you if you’re standing still. 

So maybe he'd accidentally stumbled into the one situation in human history where freezing as a fear response wasn't a death sentence. Yeah, well… I wouldn't recommend testing that out, the stranger sneered.

Fuck you, dude, I'm trying.

There was a soft thud by his head. Something sharp jabbed into his spine and immediately recoiled with a screech that almost sounded surprised. The pressure returned, poking, prodding up his back. Chris’ eyes screwed shut. He badly needed air, but he still couldn’t get himself to breathe. There was a soft ffffwwip sound as claws scraped along the nylon of his coat, followed by a bizarre, wet clicking from the thing’s throat a couple feet over his head. After what felt like ages, the thing’s long fingers tangled through the fuzz of Chris' hood and hoisted him into the air by it, like it was holding a kitten by the scruff. Ashley's hoodie tore out of his grasp, and he'd have rather lost one of his hands. But he had little opportunity to even think about it. His stomach lurched into his throat, replacing the cry of dismay that threatened to rip through the embargo of paralysis; he collided with the floor yet again as he was hurled to one side like an unwanted Raggedy Andy. He shook, rattled, and rolled, end over end, and the stone floor absolutely battered him until he smacked into the wall, and his momentum came to an abrupt halt. He felt something snap, but he wasn't sure what, because his whole body was a distracting injury. He thanked his lucky stars that his vocal cords were still too petrified to give sound to his pained moan. It came out as a sharp hiss instead. 

His glasses were resting skee-jawed on his face, and it took a moment to regain his bearings, but when he did, he hazarded a glance up. From where it lay, the flashlight was facing the wrong direction for him to see anything more than vague shadows, but the creature was definitely distracted by something. A horrible, wet, rending noise filled the small chamber. Slowly, carefully, Chris straightened his glasses, pushed them back up his nose, and propped himself stiffly on one elbow to see better. It was Ashley. The thing was eating her. Or what was left of her. It buried its teeth into her leg and jerked its head back, tearing off her calf muscle and slurping it into its mouth like spaghetti. Chris’ gorge rose into the back of his throat, and it was everything he could do to swallow it down again. But beneath the overwhelming nausea and disgust was an undercurrent of righteous indignation, frothed into a boil by a raw fury that was almost wholly alien to him. His hands clenched into fists. That was Ashley. She might be-- Chris swallowed hard, forcing himself to think it-- dead, but she was still a human being, and she deserved better. She deserved respect. As if it wasn’t enough that this thing had killed her, now it was positively relishing desecrating her body. Something inside Chris snapped. It was too much. 

Well, what exactly do you intend to do about it, tough guy? If you so much as stand up, it'll see you, and you're a goner.

The hand not holding him up drifted carefully through his pockets, looking for anything that might help. The first couple pockets turned out useless-- glasses cleaning cloth (huh… how long had that been there?), pill bottle, pocket knife. He considered the pocket knife for a moment, but his Voice of Better Judgment just scoffed. Then his fingers brushed an unfamiliar object and instinctively wrapped around it. It took him a second to figure out what it was, but when he did, his heart soared with hope. Josh's lighter! He'd forgotten to give it back after defrosting the lodge's lock about a century ago. The wendigo didn't like fire, right?

I seriously doubt a tiny lighter flame is the sort of fire the old guy was talking about. 

No, but those old storage drums over by the ladder were leaking something, weren't they? They had flammable hazmat stickers on them…

Yeah, okay, genius. Incinerate the way back to the lodge. Great idea! And if the crap in there is explosive? The concussive force has exactly nowhere in this tiny chamber to go except through your soft, little body. You really feel like blasting yourself to smithereens? To defend the honor of a corpse?

Honestly? Despite the persistent effort of his obnoxious Voice of Better Judgment to try to talk him out of this, he found that the answer was simply… yeah. He did. Because it wasn't just a corpse. It was all he had left of Ash. And if there was one damn thing he could do right tonight, it was to give the Browns something to bury. As hard as his brother's closed-casket funeral had been when he was a kid, seeing Josh absolutely disintegrate at the twins' funeral, there was zero doubt in his mind… an empty casket was worse. There was no resolution with an empty casket. Visiting an empty grave just left a hollow ache in your heart because you knew they weren't really there. You were only mourning a headstone. A rock. It couldn't hear you. Tears just rolled off of its cold, uncaring surface and sank into the empty soil beneath. He wouldn't let that be all that remained of Ashley. He couldn't. 

Slowly, he drew the lighter from his pocket. His thumb found the sparkwheel, and he silently prayed the damn thing would light on the first try. That was the only chance he was likely to get. Chris licked his lips anxiously. Before his nerve could falter, he flicked the lighter and suppressed an exclamation of relief when it caught.

Snik! 

The creature dropped whatever unrecognizable appendage it had been devouring and, faster than Chris could possibly perceive, whirled towards him and shrieked, blasting the putrid stench of death and blood directly into his face. He couldn't stop the scream of horror that ripped out of his chest. Every muscle in his body threatened to lock up again, but he knew if that happened, he was dead. Before panic could get in the way, he threw the lighter toward the drums. 

The wendigo was on his arm like a pitbull, teeth tunneling through the fabric of his coat, sweater, and shirt like they weren't there and ripping into the meat of his forearm. The weight of the monster flattened him onto his back and jarred his ribs excruciatingly. This time his scream was one of agony. The thing's jagged teeth plunged down to the bone, the power of its jaws threatening to snap his arm in two. He punched frantically at its head with his other hand, yelling and wailing mindlessly, but he might as well have been hitting a bowling ball, for all the good it did. The wendigo just bore down harder, and Chris definitely felt the bones in his arm crunch.

"Aaughaah!!" He started kicking madly, like a trapped animal, utterly mindless of his injured ankle. He was dimly aware that the lighter should have ignited something by now and hadn't. And that snuffed his last, pathetic hope of getting out of this alive; he was fighting the inevitable, now. And with him died the knowledge of where they were. Even Sam, if she survived, couldn't know they'd gone down into this trap door. They'd just… disappear. Exactly like the twins. So the Browns would not only be burying an empty casket, but they'd be doing so not knowing if she was really dead. 

And your parents will be doing the same to you. 

He screamed louder and fought harder, aiming a punch right at the thing's big, gray eyeball. The wendigo released his arm with a huff of displeasure and wrapped its gangly fingers around his throat, lifting him into the air like he weighed nothing. Chris' screams were abruptly cut off in a choked gasp. Both arms came up, but only one hand was actually able to pry at the monster's claw, but he might as well have been prying at granite. His feet ran through the air wildly, looking for purchase on anything. The contact of the thing's claw against the burns on his neck and jaw made him want to scream, but he couldn't. The wendigo drew him close to its face, looking him dead in the eyes. There was a flicker of something in those eyes, and Chris could feel it reflected in his own. Was it… recognition? There was something vaguely familiar about those stretched features. Something behind the cataracts of its eyes that he knew. Then the creature snorted, its face contorting in rage as its mouth stretched open and unleashed a scream that pierced his soul. 

And the moment was over. Whatever recognition he thought he felt was gone, and the monster slammed him hard against the wall behind him. The back of his head collided with stone, and white spots exploded across his dimming vision. His limbs went limp as he struggled to maintain consciousness, but it was difficult. Both the impact and the fact that his chest muscles were madly spasming to try and draw in oxygen made his ribs hurt so much he wanted to cry. Darkness engulfed his vision fully. His face felt tingly, full, and hot. For the first time since Josh's fucked up game, he could barely feel the burns on his jaw. His empty lungs cried out for new air, but his gaping mouth could not oblige. He tried kicking again, more weakly and attempted to wedge the fingers of his good hand between the claw and his throat, but it was no good. He felt the wendigo wrap its other hand over his head like a cowl; its long fingernails dug agonizingly into the soft flesh of his neck. He closed his useless eyes, waiting for the end to come. 

A massive thunderclap filled the chamber. Searing heat licked his face and hands. His back slammed into the wall again. A fidgeting weight smashed against his chest and face and then disappeared. A disorienting feeling of weightlessness swept over him, then a sharp pain lanced up from his ankle, and his legs buckled bonelessly beneath him. Blind agony made him scream when he landed on his ravaged arm. He could feel the air surging through his ragged throat, but he could hear neither the scream nor the ensuing coughing fit. All he could hear was that damned ringing he'd grown to detest. 

Chris rolled miserably onto his back and stayed like that until he felt a little less like puking. Then he opened his eyes and realized his glasses were gone. The cavern was filled with orange light; he guessed Josh's lighter must have found its mark after all. It just took its sweet time getting down to business. 

Not that he could see, but there didn't seem to be any sign of the wendigo. Slowly, agonizingly, he managed to get his feet under him, hugging his mangled arm to his throbbing side. Before endeavoring to straighten upright, he felt around the cavern floor with his good hand until his fingers stumbled across familiar plastic. He slid his glasses back onto his face with the practiced ease of a man who's done it since kindergarten. Miraculously, they weren't broken. Absolutely filthy? Yes. But not broken. He could deal with that. He straightened up as much as his broken body would allow and quickly looked around. His earlier impression held up. The wendigo was gone. Not killed, he noticed with a pang of regret. There was no corpse. But at least the explosion had driven it away. The cavern was rapidly becoming unbearably hot. Embers had caught on Ashley's clothing, igniting little fires. 

"Oh, shit! No, no, no," he felt his mouth saying.  

Chris dropped to his knees by her side and batted at the flames to put them out. It burnt his hand to blisters, but the whole reason he'd done this was to salvage something recognizable of Ashley. He bit his lip to keep in a pained sob he couldn't hear, but the flames spread too quickly across the fabric for one meager hand to keep up. With how fast the fire spread across her, she must have been dragged through whatever was coming out of the barrels. Soon, she was engulfed, and Chris had to back away or get swallowed up with her. 

He sat there for a while, just watching her burn. Her clothes peeled away to nothing, revealing charred and boiling skin beneath. Her delicate fingers curled and blackened with the heat, her nails cracking and falling apart. Everything that made her her was stripped from her, bit by bit, and Chris could only watch, powerless to stop it. He'd failed to protect her, even in death. He'd failed to secure for her the basest modicum of identity and decency. He'd failed, because he was a failure. In everything. Every damn thing he touched turned to ash in his hands. 

"Ash to ashes," he muttered. "Ashley to ashes." The words repeated in his mouth nonsensically for some time before he could hear them. Then, when he could actually hear what he was saying, giggles bubbled up inside of him, completely humorless, frantic. Hysterical. It wasn't long before they decomposed into sobs. She’d looked out for him all night, even when he was too exhausted to look out for himself.  She’d saved his life. More than that, she’d had his back for as long as he’d known her. He told her he had hers. He should have had hers.

But he didn’t.

"Ash?" he'd meant to call out, but it came out as more of a trembling whisper. 

The wendigo got her. The thought sent a cold dagger through his heart and made his legs feel heavy. No. Not her. I've already lost enough tonight. Please, God, not her, too. His throat tightened, and unwelcome tears stung his already aching eyes. 

"Ash??" His voice tore through the lump in his throat and cracked. It sounded way too shrill to his ears, and the way it echoed through the caves filled his soul with dread. As far as he knew, the wendigo could hear just fine; it was just its  vision that was funky. Biting his lips to hold in the rising panic, he took a shaky step forward. The pain in his ankle, objecting to having been temporarily forgotten, vigorously reminded him of its existence. He grunted softly. 

Images of the stranger, alive one second, gone the next, flooded his mind for the umpteenth time since it happened. Only this time, it was Ashley's body dropping to its knees. Ashley's head thudding heavily into the snow while he stood paralyzed with fear, clutching the stranger's shotgun uselessly as the air filled with the monster's shrieks. First, the wendigo, he'll render you immobile. Then he strips the skin off of your entire body, piece by piece.

Nononono. She can't be dead. I'd have heard something, right? Screams or something. I didn't hear anything, so maybe she just got lost. 

"Y-yeah… yeah... she just got lost," he murmured to himself, hoping its utterance would make it true. Chris continued limping toward where he'd seen her last.  He'd noticed a path branching off to the left on the way here. Maybe she took that by mistake. She did have a notoriously wretched sense of direction, and they hadn't exactly marked their passage. 

As he moved, his mind wandered to the time he and Ash had gone to see Star Trek Into Darkness in IMAX. There wasn't an IMAX theater in their hometown, so they'd had to drive all the way to the city-- an hour away. Chris had just gotten off an overnight double and was utterly wiped, so he'd given Ash the keys to his car and let her drive. He'd figured that way he could catch some z's on the way up and actually be conscious for the movie. Big. Mistake. Next thing he'd known, Ashley's sheepish voice was waking him up saying, "We're here!" When he'd looked at the clock, he saw that they were four and a half hours late for the movie. They couldn't even catch a later showing! Turned out Ash had driven them to every single movie theater in the city-- during rush hour traffic, no less! --before she finally found the one their tickets were for. It wasn't a total loss; they were able to get a refund on their tickets, since they weren't torn or anything, and they tried again (successfully) the following week, thanks to Chris' superior mastery of navigation. Now that he thought of it… that had been the first time they'd really gone anywhere together without someone else tagging along. Purely coincidentally (he told himself), that was also when Chris first noticed how very, very frantically the butterflies fluttered their wings in his stomach whenever he was near her. 

After that day, she was firmly forbidden from ever driving them anywhere again. From then on, her official job on road trips was to be the in-flight entertainment. This normally took the form of her reading one of her books aloud like a live-performance audiobook. It was a duty she solemnly accepted and performed with gusto; she even did voices for the different characters. The memory made soft laughter rise up out of him like a bubble, and, like a bubble, it abruptly vanished at the thought that he might never hear her silly voices again. 

Oh, God, Ash. Please be okay. I could probably handle losing Emily and Jess… maybe even Josh. But not you. 

Emily's face, pale and gray in the light of the monitors, mouth drawn open in a silent scream, dark blood oozing from the hole where her eye had been. The contents of her blown-out skull adorning the wall behind her head like a macabre rorschach. The image he'd been fighting to suppress since it happened hit him like a freight train. He doubled over and retched the nothing he'd had for dinner onto the cave floor. The sudden shift in balance irked his ankle and made him stagger against a rock, aggravating the tender spot in his ribs and jarring his aching jaw. He groaned. As he pushed himself away from the wall, he wiped at a tickle under his nose, and his hand came away bloody. Great. His nose was bleeding again. 

Shit, he was a mess. 

At least his nose wasn't broken. Or… he didn't think it was broken. His jaw, like the proverbial fat lady, sorta dominated the chorus of facial maladies, and he'd had other things on his mind when he'd rammed his face full-speed into that damned tree. Like, for instance, not getting eviscerated by the wendigo hot on his heels. You know… something that could be happening to Ash right now?

Come on, Ash, where are you? Please be okay. 

Ignoring the pain in his ankle, he picked up his pace. It wasn't long before he came upon the drop he'd completely forgotten about. Only, going this direction, it wasn't a drop. It was a climb. A string of curses and obscenities ran circles around his brain. The ledge wasn't low, coming up just above his shoulders. Even his attempts to gently lower himself when coming the other way had yielded a sharp pain in his ankle on landing. How the ever-loving fuck was he supposed to get back up? "Dammit, Sam…" he muttered. "Remind me why you left the gimp to navigate these tunnels alone?" Of course, she’d been just as oblivious to Ash’s absence as he was, but that was beside the point.

Why had they even come here? Something about Mike and the sanatorium and the wendigo and needing to warn him about something and hell if he knew. He hadn't read the journal that had Ash and Sam up in a tizzy. Nobody thought to volunteer to him any information they'd found out, and frankly… he'd been too relieved at the prospect of getting away from Emily's body to ask questions. Now he regretted not asking. The decision to leave the safe room might have gotten Ash killed, and he needed to know it was for a worthy cause. At this point, though, even if it was for a worthy cause, if it was down to a choice between Mike's life and Ash's… well… was that even really a choice? Especially since Mike just…

A deafening bang, reinforcing the ringing in his ear. Ghostly face, mouth stretched open in a scream cut short. Dark blood trickling down from the blackness of her eye socket. 

"Oh, God…" Chris stumbled against the wall blocking his way, using it for support as his lungs tried to explode out of his aching chest. His body rocked back and forth; the arm holding the flashlight hugged his ribs in place, while his free hand clapped over his mouth to hold back his sobs. The burns near his mouth shouted their protest, and he stifled a moan. 

Oh, God, how had this night gotten so fucked? This was supposed to be a good night! A night of remembrance and catharsis. A night of reconciliation and rekindling estranged friendships. A psycho? He could handle that. It was horrible, but he at least understood a psycho. But curses? Monsters?? How do you fight something like that? How do you escape something that moves that fast? How do you protect someone from a fear so pervasive that it makes them murder their own friends? 

Oh, shut up with that 'they' and 'them' bullshit. You helped, Christopher. By sitting there and stoking that fear, you might as well have pulled the trigger yourself. 

No, no, no. He hadn't wanted Emily to die! 

You should have done something, then. Should have helped Sam calm them down. Should have disarmed Mike. You could have forced him to stop. Overpowered him. Something! You call yourself a man, but you just sat there like a pussy and let it happen. Just like with the stranger!

His head was swimming, and his ribs were on fire. Somewhere along the way, he'd sunken down to his knees, still rocking. He was hyperventilating. 

Let's face it, Chris. You didn't do anything, because you didn't want to do anything. You were just as afraid as Mike and Ash, and just as willing to sacrifice Emily to save your own ass. 

"I didn't think he was going to shoot her." The words were rapid, small, and gasping, barely audible. Mike hadn't shot Josh. He’d bitched at Chris for even thinking he would. So why would he shoot Emily? It was a bluff. Had to be. Just to scare her out of the room. Chris wasn't about to ruin Mike's bluff again. 

Her small legs falling from the desk, limp and lifeless, making her whole body jerk when they stopped short of the floor. Her head settling on the wall beneath the Jackson Pollock pattern of her blood and brains was the last movement she'd ever make. Chris squeezed his eyes shut, but the image persisted. 

How is that even better? You didn't think Mike would shoot her? But you were perfectly content to let him sacrifice her to that thing out there. You've seen what it does. You, more than anyone else here, know that compared to that? The bullet was a mercy. You didn't care if or how she died. You just didn't want to see it happen, you selfish asshole. You killed her, and you killed her for no damn reason. 

"We didn't know, we didn't know, we didn't know…" His hands and face were tingling. Shit, he was about to pass out. Now was not the time for this; he had to find Ash. He forced himself to take a deep breath in. The pain in his side kept him from holding it as long as he'd have liked, and it all came out in a pitiful sigh. But his head felt clearer, at least. He repeated this exercise until his thoughts stopped spiraling, sliding his free hand up under his glasses to wipe away the tears blurring his eyes. 

Now wasn't the time for self-recrimination or excuses. Ash was in here somewhere. The wendigo might have her. He keeps you alive and aware and feasts on your organs, one piece at a time. He couldn't let that happen to her. Melting down in a cave wasn't going to help anyone, and Chris refused to have another death on his conscience because he was too wrapped up in himself to lift a finger to stop it. Especially not Ashley’s.

He sighed, pushing himself back onto his good leg and regarded the ledge. How the hell was he supposed to climb this? Even at the best of times, he was a pathetic climber. He'd damn near broken his neck trying to clamber over the wall by the broken gate at the bottom of the mountain. And now? With a bum ankle, a jacked up face, probably a concussion, and whatever the hell was going on with his ribs? He groaned, grabbing the ledge and hoisting himself up until the edge was under his armpits. His legs scrabbled uselessly for purchase on the sheer rock. His ribs protested strenuously. He was just about to lose his grip when his right foot found an outcropping and pushed off hard enough to get his left leg over the edge. But the momentary victory was promptly shat upon by the blinding agony in his ankle. 

"Aggghh!" he hissed "Ow ow ow ow ow ow owwwww!!" Each syllable gave him strength as he pulled himself up the rest of the way and rolled over onto his good side. He curled into a ball of misery and grabbed his throbbing leg. "Shitshitshitshitfuckingshiiiiiiit!"

When the pain died back down to a dull throb, he slowly pulled himself up to his feet. It was more miserable than ever to put weight on his ankle, but it still held him, so he hobbled onward. Had to be getting close to the branch-off now.

He felt, more than saw, the side tunnel open up to his right. The air was suddenly less close, and through the passage, the wind sang a soft and haunting song. Dripping water served as percussion. It vaguely harmonized with the ringing in his ear. He flicked his flashlight over to the opening. 

"Ash?" His own voice startled him, deafeningly loud against the cavern's subtle symphony. What if the wendigo could hear? What if he was just broadcasting his presence?

C'mon, dude. Pull yourself together. Your nerves are fried. 

He thought maybe he heard something further down the side passage, but he wasn't sure what. It was hard to tell over the persistent ringing in his ear, but… it could have been Ash. Then again, didn't the stranger also say the wendigo could mimic human voices? If that was the wendigo, then Ash could already be dead, and he'd be walking to his own demise. Even if the thing hadn't gotten around to killing her yet, a rescue attempt would almost certainly end in his death. He wasn't even armed. 

But if it wasn't the wendigo… if Ash had fallen somewhere and couldn't get back up or something. If she was hurt, if she was calling for help... could he forgive himself for not checking?

Gingerly, he opened his mouth and felt the swollen skin from his cheek to his adam's apple pull tight in protest. The right hinge of his jaw popped enthusiastically. That was new. 

Ah, what the hell. He'd already sacrificed himself for Ash once tonight. Why not do it again? Maybe this time it'd actually matter. 

His free hand hovered over his jaw, afraid to actually touch it, lest it reawaken the fire in his skin. Bright flash, deafening bang, a ringing that drowned out Ashley begging him to shoot her instead. Shockwave smashing into his jaw and knocking his head back hard enough to give him whiplash. Burning agony in his face making him want to scream. But he wasn't dead. How was he not dead? 

He shook off the memory, "I- I'm coming, Ash. Hold on. I'm coming." And he limped forward.  

The entrance to the side passage wasn't level with the main passage, and Chris almost tripped over it. Which, he discovered, would have been very bad. There was a pretty sizable drop on the other side. He climbed onto the berm, hanging his legs off the far side, and just stared at the drop with his flashlight. You gotta be freaking kidding me. 

This was even higher than the drop in the main passage, and that one had hurt badly enough. Even if he didn't straight-up break his ankle, he didn't know if he'd be able to climb back out of this on his own. But, short of Ash noping back to the lodge without telling anyone, which seemed unlikely, there was no other direction she could have gone.  He should have just waited for her to close the grate. Dammit, he was such a moron. She was only lost because, after she’d refused to leave him behind, he’d gone right ahead and done it to her. There was no way he was going to abandon her again. 

That settled it. He took a deep breath and slid his butt off the berm. His stomach had an out-of-body experience for a second of freefall. His landing was rough and graceless, but he managed to keep his feet by reeling into a wall. There was a loud, painful pop from his ankle that he badly hoped was just his joint settling. His jaw snapped shut at the impact and its muscles seized up painfully, cutting his cry of pain into a muffled groan. His hand came up instinctively to massage the tension out of his fucked up jaw only to aggravate the burns. He hummed miserably through his nose. Damn it all. Josh, more than any one of them, should have known how dangerous blanks were at point-blank range. Chris wanted to believe that Josh, his best friend, hadn't meant for him to damn near blow his face off for a prank. But he also had a hard time reconciling that with all the rest of the batshit crazy bullshit Josh had pulled on him tonight. That and the fact that Josh seemed neither surprised nor particularly concerned by how badly Chris had been hurt by the muzzle flash. What chilled him to the bone was the very real possibility that Josh knew exactly what he was doing when he gave Chris a gun loaded with blanks and encouraged him to put it up to his own head and pull the trigger. He was damn lucky he'd decided to aim it under his jaw instead of at his temple. The latter probably would have killed him. 

Had Josh wanted that? Did he really hate Chris that much? God knows Chris had blamed himself plenty enough for his part--or lack thereof-- in Hannah and Beth's disappearance. If he hadn't had so much to drink, he might have been able to stop things before they got out of hand. Or at least he could have been the one to go after Hannah, instead of Beth. But no. He'd been too shitfaced to be of use to anyone. Classic Chris maneuver. Always present when things went tits up, but his presence was never beneficial. He'd had to find out what happened second-hand, despite being there. If Chris was being honest with himself, he deserved a good, healthy, superheated blast of explosive decompression to the face.

But if Josh felt that way, too, how had Chris gone a whole year without noticing? He wasn't completely blind. He'd known things weren't good with Josh, but he had no idea they were anywhere near homicidal levels of bad. Was he really so self-absorbed that he couldn't see how deeply his best friend was hurting? Had he been so busy pining after Ashley that he'd completely missed how much Josh hated him? 

That would make sense, wouldn't it? Just a couple hours ago, he'd literally sacrificed Josh to save Ash. Flipped a switch, knowing full-well that it would send a whirling blade of doom over to cut his best friend in half. It didn't matter that it wasn't real. He hadn't known that at the time, and Josh knew he didn’t know. And now Josh knew that Chris was perfectly willing to kill him for a girl. What an awful truth to discover about someone you thought cared about you. Chris knew he'd be upset if their positions were reversed. So perhaps this was his punishment for prioritizing Ash above everything else. After all, nobody would have been hurt if he'd chosen to shoot Ash, right? She'd been across the table from him; too far away to be affected by a blank. But no…no... the thought of shooting her… it was unthinkable. It made his stomach tie up in knots. Even now, knowing the gun had been filled with blanks, he'd still rather shoot himself. 

The pain in his jaw subsided as the muscles slowly relaxed. He pushed himself off the wall and limped through the tunnel, hoping there weren't any more branch-offs to complicate things. 

All right, jackass. You're down in a hole, playing hero to impress a girl who may or may not still be alive, armed with a flashlight and bad puns. You haven't even touched the wendigo yet, and you're already beat to hell. Like a dipstick, you left the shotgun back in the lodge. What, exactly, is your plan?

Find Ash? Not die? That was pretty much the extent of it. 

That's not much of a plan.  

Much as he hated his little Voice of Better Judgment and loved few things more than ignoring it, he had to admit it had a point. He'd be no help to Ash dead.

The earth shook. Like, legitimately shook, making him stumble. A deep rumble resonated into his very soul. Rocks big and small were shaken loose from the cavern's ceiling, pelting the ground all around him. One of the bigger ones nailed him in the shoulder. The blow, only slightly softened by the padding of his coat, drove him to one knee. 

"Shit!" he cried, raising his other arm up to shield his head. When the patter of falling pebbles tapered off, and it seemed the cave wasn't planning to collapse on him after all, he lowered his arm and tilted the flashlight beam up toward the ceiling. "What the hell was that?" But the stalactites above him had no answer. They just dripped menacingly, promising that, next time, one of them would fall on him and leave him with more than just a bruise. He narrowed his eyes suspiciously. "Don't even think about it. I've got my eye on you. All of you." 

One of the stalactites dripped directly onto his glasses. "Aw, c'mon. Really?" He dropped his head and snatched his glasses from his face, unzipping his sweater to go to town on the soiled lens with his t-shirt. "Whyyy?" Chris did the best job he could cleaning them, but his shirt was drenched in sweat, and the water was… not clean. That lens was thoroughly smudged now. Wiping it might have actually made the situation worse. Squinting through that nonsense was gonna give him a headache in about three seconds. He put his glasses back on and glowered at the ceiling with one eye. "Not cool."

Defiantly, the stalactite dripped at him again, but this time he dodged it and got back to his feet, grimacing as he put weight on his right leg. "Onward and upward," he muttered and continued deeper into the tunnel. 

The tunnel wound and twisted. The floor was uneven and threatened to turn his ankle with every step. The walls and ceiling closed in around him, making him want to duck his head, to avoid the jagged rocks above. The path was so dark and claustrophobic, the beam of his flashlight seemed barely capable of cutting through it. Why would Ash ever come this way?

"Ash?" He paused to listen for any response, but the tinnitus was just too damn loud. He reached up to vigorously rub and bat at his ear, hoping to clear the stupid out of it, but, stubbornly, the ringing persisted. Who knew discharging a gun right next to your head could fuck up your hearing so bad? 

He sighed. Well… you knew that. That's why you always wear hearing protection at the range. But, like an idiot, you still did it. In fairness, though, he hadn't exactly been expecting to survive the gunshot. His hearing had been pretty low on his list of considerations. Now though? He was kinda starting to think maybe Van Gogh wasn't quite so crazy for cutting off his own ear.

The passage turned sharply to the right and opened up again into a room held up by mining beams. Moonlight filtered in through the cracks of a boarded up shaft, casting god-rays on a table beneath. In front of the table was a trap door, and in front of that…

"Oh no..." Chris blinked, not wanting to be sure of what he was seeing. Maybe it was just a trick of the light passing through his filthy glasses. He closed one eye, cutting off the interference from the lens smudged in cave crap, but that didn't help much. He'd have to get closer. 

But he really didn't want to get closer. Because that thing on the floor looked a lot like Ashley's beanie. And it was in a massive puddle of blood. If he moved closer, the comforting arms of doubt would vanish from around him. And he couldn't bear the thought of knowing something had happened to her. But what was the point? He already knew, didn't he?

"Oh my God, no..." his legs buckled, and he staggered forward to keep upright, dropping to his knees in front of the offending object, only faintly aware of the blood soaking through his jeans. There could no longer be any doubt. That was Ash's beanie, and it was covered in blood. The wendigo had gotten to her. Chris had seen what it does, how fast it works. He could see all the blood. So much blood. Surely nobody could survive that much blood loss. 

Ash. His Ash… with her long-suffering indulgence of his sense of humor, her big doe eyes, her adorable button nose, and the soft, warm lips he'd only just gotten to touch with his own…was....

The last beam supporting the mental dam that had been holding back his steadily mounting despair finally cracked. His grief came pouring out of his mouth in a flood of tears and sobs, unmindful of the danger he, himself, must be in. "Oh my God, Ash. No. No!" He scooped her beanie into his free hand,  feeling the soft wool slither over his fingers, leaving in its wake streaks of blood. Fresh blood. His hands felt like they were a million miles away, as he rubbed the blood-- Ash's blood-- between his fingers. The room around him wobbled and swayed; everything was surreal. It felt exactly like a nightmare. Yes. This was a nightmare. It had to be. But if so, why couldn't he wake up?? 

"I can't stand it…" he whimpered, his voice cracking. "None of this can be happening. This can't be real! Please tell me it's not real!" He lifted the beanie to his face, imploring it to respond. Begging Ashley to appear from around the corner or out of the trap door and tell him it was just a joke. A prank. A nightmare. That she was okay. But she didn't. The beanie reeked of iron, not corn syrup. Tears poured down his cheeks as he lowered the beanie and tucked it into his pocket. "No… no… no…" His eyes dropped to the cavern floor, looking for something-- anything-- to latch on to. Any sign that it wasn't hopeless. All he saw was a trail of blood connecting the puddle to the trap door, where it ended. If there was any chance whatsoever of finding her, it'd be down there. 

Numbly, he got back to his feet and shuffled over to the trap door. There was the gnawing sensation that he was just throwing his life away, but he couldn't be bothered to care anymore. If she'd died because he left her behind, then maybe he didn't deserve to survive the night. He bent down stiffly and opened the trap door. There were more support beams down there, some ancient, leaky hazmat drums, and pipes leading into darkness. The air was rank with the smell of must and whatever was coming out of those barrels. More blood pooled at the base of the ladder. Shit, there was so much of it. It trailed off in the direction the pipes were running. 

Setting the trapdoor down clumsily against the legs of the table, Chris started down the ladder. But after all the climbing, jumping, and… even just walking, his ankle picked that exact moment to decide it'd had enough. The first moment he put all his weight on it, it crumpled, and his foot slipped off of the rung. His hands, hampered by the flashlight, lost their grip on the ladder, and down he went, landing hard on his back. The air whooshed out of his lungs, and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't get his chest to expand and let new air in. 

God, this is how I die? By falling off a ladder that's like two inches high? After everything else, this is how it ends? For f-- Then his diaphragm started functioning again. His endless, involuntary groan stopped, and he took a huge, shaky breath. Nope. Not dying. His ribs hurt like a mother-- more than they already had-- but nothing in there seemed to be moving in an unnatural way, so he supposed he must be all right. Just knocked the wind out of himself. Slowly, he rolled over and fumbled for the flashlight that had flown out of his grasp during the fall. Once he found that, he rose unsteadily to his feet, his ankle grumbling like Yosemite Sam. 

With one hand, he rubbed at his leg conciliatorily; with the other, he cast the beam of the flashlight down to the pool of blood at the base of the ladder. Its structural integrity had been obliterated when he landed in it, but it was easy enough to follow the trail. 

He didn't have to follow it far. 

A few yards beyond the reach of the moonlight streaming through the trap door, his flashlight beam fell upon a big, red lump on the floor. Chris felt his stomach seize up into a tight ball and cram itself into his throat. For a long moment, he absolutely could not get his feet to move. When they did, they felt so heavy it was like moving through mud. Everything around the shape disappeared from his consciousness, and the closer he got, the more clear it became. Soon, it was impossible for him to deny the truth of what he was seeing. It was Ashley’s hoodie. But it was like those old crime scene photos from the Manson murders that Josh had shown him once. One of the victims was wearing a white nightgown so saturated in blood that the investigators initially thought it was red. Ash’s hoodie was the same way. You’d never know from looking at it now that it was gray. But there was something else wrong with it. It wasn't lying right on the cavern floor. It should be lying flat. Why wasn't it lying flat?

You know why, Christopher. 

"No," he hissed viciously. "It's just her hoodie. If she was in it, I’d see her head sticking out. Maybe her hoodie came off while she was fighting."

But down beneath the waistband of her hoodie were her shorts, and coming out the bottom of those were her leggings and boots, and those were definitely not empty. And there’s no way all of that would come off in a fight. But there was still nothing coming out of the collar of her hoodie! Then his eyes drifted down to her sleeves. Poking delicately out the ends were small, pale, crimson-streaked fingers. Unmistakeable. 

The ramifications of what he was seeing hit him like a ton of bricks. The stranger. Alive one second. Gone the next. His head toppling from his shoulders and thudding heavily to the snow. But it had Ashley's face when it landed. "Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God." He wanted to deny it. He needed to deny it, but no matter how hard his mind whirled for anything to latch onto, there was nothing but the truth.

Where was her head?? Letting out a horrible yell, he dropped his flashlight, fell to her side and found her hand, but there was no head to cradle. No eyes to look into. No hair to stroke. No cheek to caress. And her lips… the memory of her kiss haunted him, a ghost of warmth on his icy lips. The sensation was so intoxicating, and now he would never experience it again. He had no way to feel close to her but to take her blood-streaked hand and sandwich it between his own. 

Noise was coming out of him, maybe he was saying something, but hell if he knew what it was. He didn't even know if there were words, or if it was just a mindless outpouring of pure anguish. His vision swam as it locked in on the perfectly manicured fingers of the hand he held, took in the blood caked in the cuticles and under her nails. Was it hers or the pig's blood Josh had used to fake his death? Did it matter? Did anything matter? Then he couldn't see anything but vague blobs. His vision was obscured behind a flood of grief, and even blinking couldn't clear his eyes. So he closed them and doubled over into a hopeless, rocking ball. Unaware he was doing it, he pressed the back of her hand to his mouth, sobbing into it, washing away the blood with his tears. Her hand was still warm. Still warm! Maybe if he'd realized she was gone sooner… if he hadn't wasted so much time being an emotional wreck… if he hadn’t been an idiot and hurt his ankle in the first place… he might have been here in time to help… to do something…

To take her place. 

Yes. That, more than anything else, was what he wanted right now. He wanted to die knowing that she'd be all right because of it. But he'd never get to do that, because… because... Ashley was-- 

His mind recoiled violently from the word. He just couldn't accept it. This was clearly someone else's body. Someone wearing her clothes. One of Josh's horribly realistic dummies, maybe, with the head ripped off. He desperately wanted to cling to that idea. It felt warm and comfortable. But deep down he knew better. The smell of her hand, like peaches and vanilla mixed with old books. The soft warmth of her skin against his cold cheek. They were as familiar to him as the weight of his glasses on his nose-- impossible to mistake for anything else. For anyone else. There was no escaping the reality. This was Ashley’s body. Ashley was dead. Her words echoed back to him. 

It's just not fair!

His face stretched in a rictus of grief as he lowered his head to her chest, using it to muffle his sobs.

It's too late, Chris. What's the point?

Her chest was silent and still. No heartbeat to be heard. No whooshing of air through her lungs. No rise and fall of her breast. Each observation came like the fall of a hammer on a nail being driven through his heart. 

We've wasted everything.