Chapter Text
7:00am. Mike.
I fall onto the snow, face first, coughing, choking, breathing in the terrible smoke that clouds the air and closes around my throat like a fist. Oh my god. I am alive. Against all odds, I have survived the night. And somehow, that little happiness is enough to distract from the pain and fear and fucking cold and JessJessJessJessJessJess where is she?
Last time I saw her she was alive. Well and truly alive. Beat up, a general mess, bloody, but alive. She's a fighter, I know she is, and nothing could've taken her from this world. Nothing.
I realise my eyes are still squeezed shut, not sure why. Not sure. Don't want to see what's happening. How do I have the energy to force them open? But I do. And I don't like what I see.
Fire, smoke, ice, a contrasting whirl of snow, why hasn't it melted? Intense, intense heat, warming me and cooking me slowly from the inside out. Roasted human, great wendigo feed. Bet I smell like a five-course meal.
Blurry vision, ugh. The house is, like, a total wreck. Keeps swimming in and out of focus, headache. Fear, pangs of fear, waves of the stuff. Why am I scared? For Jess. Not for me, I'm long past insane, but Jess? No. Can't leave her.
Matt is pulling me up, gesturing to a helicopter above us, I think. He's crying. I'm crying too. Probably for a reason. I'm so numb, so numb, mind and body, cold and dull and everything is twisted like a fun-house and Matt says something about how he's sorry and it all goes black.
7:10am. Sam.
We're all on the helicopter now, sat on these hard leather seats that dig into my ass. I hardly feel it. We sit in two rows of four like mourners at a funeral, facing each other but refusing to make eye contact. People are watching us, standing either side of our solemn rows, but they make no effort to help any of us, not even Mike, who is unconscious. He's slumped over Matt's lap now that Jess isn't here to cradle his head. She's dead. Mouth ripped open. Only bones left in her jaw area, tongue ripped away, pretty teeth cracked and ripped from pink gums. Died from blood loss, trauma. Matt gave us a pretty detailed description of her murder in an old mineshaft.
Death by wendigo. How do you write that on a tombstone above an empty grave?
Why am I so flippant at a terrible time like this? I'm so awful. I've always been heartless like this. The fact that Jess is gone, gone forever, will hit me like a brick soon enough and I'll crumple and cry and everyone will see me for the weakling I am.
No one speaks. We don't have the energy. Ashley has silent tears running down her cheeks and dripping from her little red nose. Chris has an arm around her. What did Josh say? A traumatic event could push them together? Something like that. He's right, sadly, horrifically right, even from beyond the grave. Oh, did I forget to mention? He's dead too. Nobody saw his corpse, but hey, it's a pretty safe assumption to make.
I cared about him so much, man. After Beth and Hannah... We spoke a lot, helped each other slowly through the overwhelming grief. I never deleted any texts that he sent me. A little record of our friendship, hurt, suffering and reconciliation with life. How we learned to live again.
The Washingtons have lost all three of their children now. Hope we don't have to break it to them. Maybe whoever picked us up will do it. Go Emily, radioing them like that. She's so smart, if a little bitchy.
I think these people are the police. How do we explain that the psychopaths were our best friend and mythical creatures? How do we explain the trauma we are all going through without sounding like lunatics? Will we even get time to be together, devise a strategy to explain all this, before we are questioned and examined and broadcasted to the four corners of the world?
Emily's wendigo bite? The gashes and scratches that decorate each of our faces like paint on canvases? The huge black eye that shadows Ashley's face, and the pig's blood that spattered her jacket? What to say, what to do.
I've always been a logical thinker. I'll make up something.
Ashley's positively sobbing now. It grates against my ears, her raw, unrepressed agony. Can't she be quiet like the rest of us? Stony faced like Em? Quietly comforting like Chris? Stoically cold like me?
7:24am. Ashley.
I cry too much. I always have. But this time I have an excuse.
Josh and Jess are dead, dead forever, gone, gone permanently, and the last thing I thought of them both were slut and psychopath. I hate myself. I hate them. I hate everyone.
Fresh tears spill down my face. I choke on them. My mouth gapes open but I can't close it. I convulse slightly. Ugly crying. Can't help it.
My whole body aches. Physically aches. I was stretched to my limit and past it, paying the price for my survival.
Every muscle tight. Tense. Screaming to move, to be free. Joints creaking, whining in misery.
Any moment it'll see me. It'll see me and slowly lope over to me, defenceless little me, and pull off my head and swallow me whole. All of us in the lodge right now have the same thoughts. We're all envisioning our deaths.
Sam and Mike have a plan, I think they're going to light the lodge on fire, because fire kills the wendigo. They can enact the plan by themselves, but Emily, Chris and I just need to get the hell out before they blow the place.
It's so nearly light, so nearly daytime, when the wendigo leaves and returns to the forest. It's so nearly dawn. I'm so close to the open door. To salvation. Me, and Em too. I glance at her and she smiles slightly, encouragingly, but her face is wracked and tormented. The smile looks plastered on and fake.
Don't move, her expression screams. Or we're both dead. And it'll be your fault.
I can't stay tensed any longer. She's at the end of her rope too. The strain on her pretty face. My chattering teeth that threaten to give us away. We have no choice. Now or never.
In perfect synchronisation, we turn and run for the door. It takes a mere second to arrive, but it is a second of irrational panic and terror and the suspense of whether or not claws will sink into your back and rip the spine from it. It is the longest second of my life. Emily, usually cool and brave, is crying, the same hysteria flowing through her veins.
As one, we lunge through the door and fall into the powdery snow outside. We escaped. Now all we could do was wait.
I bury my face into Chris' chest in attempt to stem the emotions that flow through my body but it doesn't help. My sobs of guilt and anguish slice the silent air. Sam's glaring at me. Don't blame her. Mike's awake. He hasn't moved though, still resting on Matt's knees. He really loved Jess.
Where are we going? Are we there yet?
7:57am. Emily.
Fucking hell. Why is this stupid helicopter ride so long? Stupid shit. I just want to go home now. Go to bed. Hug Matt. He's busy trying to support Mike, who has literally let himself go. Think he heard what Matt said about Jess being... Gone.
I stick my tongue into my cheek and bite down on it. I taste blood. It hurts. Anything to stop me from crying. From looking weak in front of my friends.
I cannot believe that the last thing I ever said to Jess was something about her being a skank. Now she's gone. Not gone, that makes it sound like she might come back. She's dead. She died thinking that I hated her.
Suddenly I feel hollow. Empty. As if my insides have been scraped out. There is a horrible feeling in my chest and I can't do it any more, being strong is hard when you're carrying the weight of someone's happiness on your head.
I wonder what it feels like to die?
8:00am. Mike.
I'm awake. My head hurts less now. I want to go back to sleep. Back to the darkness, to a world where Jess is beside me and wendigos don't exist and Josh is still sane and everyone is at peace.
I'm going insane. Or at least, I'm on the way. Maybe I'll end up like Josh, totally psycho, wrecked by the twisting death of one I love. Maybe I'll end up taking pills upon pills upon pills, visiting a psychologist every other day, looking at ink blots and pictures and revealing my darkest fears to a person I hardly know.
The helicopter's landing.