Chapter Text
CHRIS
Washington Estate
Chris is morose as he approaches the gate to the Washington’s property. Despite the horrific events of the past two years, it was comforting to see the familiar metal bars. Normally, the anticipation of seeing his friends would begin to peak and fill him with childish glee. His body and mind preparing for fun, antics, and a break from homework and studying. This year, Chris feels no anticipation. There is only dread and melancholy as his fingers brush the metal.
The gate is shut, but not locked. Which is fitting, really.
“Enter if you dare. . .”
Chris gives his backpack strap one last firm squeeze before crossing the threshold.
He cheekily braces for something to happen, but there is nothing. Nothing out of the ordinary, anyway. Chris hopes the visit is comparably unremarkable. . .
As he treks, Chris spans his peripheral. He looks behind himself a healthy amount of times, too. Have the trees always been so foreboding? The incline so unforgiving? Chris has to pause for a moment and catch his breath, feeling like the mountain is about to swallow him whole.
“Fuck,” he swears, sitting down on an icy patch. “Be cool, man. It’s just a mountain. A fucking. . . Sentient mountain.” Chris holds back from directly insulting it, fearful of said mountain’s wrath. The blond stands, willing himself to continue to the cable car.
Chris isn’t doing well. But he isn’t doing terribly. Physically, he is fully recovered. He’s even making leaps and bounds in therapy. All things considered, Chris is great. He’s stared death in the face and escaped multiple times! He survived last year and faced little to no legal consequences. He’s completed PT and can go days at a time without an unexpected panic attack; back to factory settings, as it were.
The funny thing is, sometimes it isn’t monsters and near-death experiences that drive you mad. Sometimes it isn’t the nights lying awake in a panic, remembering the rancid breath of the creature that tried to eat you. Sometimes it isn’t having a whole ass lodge explode a few yards away from you and your friends. Sometimes, it is the most simple thing.
“I just want us to have a really good time, you know? Like we always used to.”
Chris shakes his head, trying to ignore the way his heart is pounding. Now that he is aware of the mountain’s legitimate power, the atmosphere is oppressing, like a sharp icicle dangling overhead.
Ahead, a wild rabbit is feeding on a bustle of greenery. Even spring doesn’t stop the mountain from reaching freezing temperatures, but nevertheless, there is a patch of freshly sprouted grass.
The rabbit freezes at the sight of Chris before lopping away.
Chris sighs softly, guilty for scaring it away from its meal. Well. . . “If I treat you right, you’ll treat me right?” He bends down to gather a few stems and waits.
After a few moments, the rabbit peaks out from the underbrush. It looks at Chris’s offer with skepticism before approaching. Without moving, Chris allows the small animal to eat out of his hand. The ticklish feeling brings a smile to his face.
“This has to count for something,” he mutters at the snow as the rabbit leaves to search for more food. Does it not count when you are intentionally farming good karma?
Far past the rabbit, Chris reaches the cable car. It has been repaired somewhat after Josh’s shenanigans. Really, the uncanniness is because everything is organized, courtesy of the police. It feels. . . Impersonal now; just a cable car station instead of the stressful sky Uber Chris and his friends would use to have an amazing vacation at the end of the year.
The key is not missing. Chris had told himself before leaving his apartment that if the key was not there, he would have to turn back. For this reason, he stares at it for a while.
“Well, I didn’t come this far to be smart.” He starts the engine and waits for the cable car to arrive.
Chris remembers the last time he used the cable car, accompanied by Sam. He rambled about the butterfly effect, a concept that has always been fascinating to him. As cheesy as it may be, the events that led to him meeting Josh were meaningful to him. They facilitated the best friendship he’s ever had. He’s grateful Sam hadn’t teased him too much for gushing over it, not that she was the type.
As he steps onto the transport, Chris sits in the same spot as last time with a sullen expression. Again, he contemplates the butterfly effect.
What if I had noticed sooner? I knew he was struggling. Even though he refused to talk about Hannah and Beth, I should have realized how bad it had gotten. Chris is tremendously heartbroken about Josh. Josh may have majorly fucked up, but he was grieving. Grieving and struggling with very serious mental illness. The way they handled the situation was understandable, especially for a bunch of teens, but what it resulted in has haunted him since. The ghost of Chris’s actions, or inactions, has driven him back to the mountain for closure and peace.
If I had been there for him, he wouldn’t be dead. Maybe, that night wouldn’t have happened at all. If Chris had gone out of his way to snoop, he would have discovered Josh had been missing appointments. Refusing medication. Buying super weird, super unexplainable shit. Right under his nose.
If anything positive could be said about Josh’s “prank”, the setup was unreal. How the hell did I not catch him? How could I have been too busy with school to miss something so traceable? This was a point of discussion among their friend group after the real legal issues had settled down. How was it that none of them noticed? Out of all of them, Chris should have caught on to Josh’s mental collapse. Maybe it’s his imagination, but Chris feels there’s some degree of resentment towards him for not preventing Josh from tormenting them. He could be projecting, though.
What if we hadn’t dragged Josh in the shed? He probably would have been rescued along with everyone else. The lodge had countless rooms, many of them lockable, as proven by Josh. They had wanted to get him away from them, but it would have made more sense if they stuck him upstairs. Less chilly. More secure. Maybe Josh wouldn’t have been. . .
“Man,” Chris whimpers. What a tragically brutal way to go. He can only imagine what Josh endured in his last moments. Hopefully, he was so detached from reality that he didn’t understand what was happening. Regardless of what Josh put them through, he was their friend and did not deserve whatever Hannah dragged him off for.
It is pretty obvious what fate met Josh. He was most likely killed that very night by Hannah. Mike recounted hearing Josh’s screams as he was dragged away by his sister. Given that Mike either killed or incinerated the remaining wendigos, there would have been no monsters left to hurt him after the initial rescue. Jessica and Matt had been retrieved from the mines without interference. Akin to the disappearance of the twins, an effort was made, with nothing to show for it.
Chris plans on searching until he comes across his remains. Must find them, for both his sake and Josh’s family . Hannah had kept Beth’s head as some kind of sick display. Somewhere in those cursed mines is his headless best friend.
Chris will forever regret leaving Josh behind. Abandoning him in his darkest hour. The least he can do is recover whatever is left of his body.
The sight of the decrepit lodge is unsettling for a variety of reasons. It isn’t as damaged as Chris expected. Much of it is charred and collapsed, yes, but it is clear that the damage was minimized by something internal. Chris realizes the Washingtons probably had the foresight to invest in a decent sprinkler system when building a wooden lodge with multiple fireplaces. The lodge is not what anyone would consider habitable, but a lot of things probably survived the fire.
“That’s. . . Something,” Chris murmurs to himself, vaguely nauseous. In the moment, it felt like they obliterated every threat in that final showdown. Surely. . . Nothing survived? Surely. “Fucking fire safety. Damn it.”
Chris muses that if for some reason, Josh had escaped Hannah and been making his way to the foyer during the blast, the police would have located his remains by now. What he is looking for is not inside the lodge. However, he dog-ears the idea of taking a look around if the mines are a bust.
As Chris treks to the guest cabin, he grows more anxious. He is less sure of his safety than he was an hour ago. Hannah had been the last, right? Mike had killed so many wendigos, there couldn’t possibly be any left. He would have said something otherwise, definitely.
The Stranger noted the nocturnal habits of wendigos, but did that mean Chris was safe in broad daylight? To comfort himself, Chris narrates the thoughts of a wendigo suffering from insomnia, “Oh, I just can’t sleep, maybe I should go work on my tan before bathing suit season. Who knows, maybe a suicidal moron is taking a walk!”
Chris debates what he plans to do if, say, he does run into a wendigo. He’d feel even worse if he left Josh, dead or not, behind once more. But is it worth risking his life? Chris brought camping supplies that could be recycled as weapons, but not a whole-ass flamethrower. He may have gotten away from certain death before, but he certainly isn’t lining up to push his luck. . .
Halfway to the guest cabin, Chris stops to take a piss. It is nothing he hasn’t thoughtlessly done a handful of times before, but after he’s finished, the man frowns. That isn’t disrespectful to nature, right? Hopefully, the mountain registers gray areas. “This is about as natural as it gets,” Chris comments to himself, coating his hands with a liberal squirt of hand sanitizer.
The guest cabin is in decent condition. The broken windows have been repaired. Chris is delighted to discover this, having been planning on using the guest cabin as a base of sorts. The police evidently had a similar idea if the stack of discarded cigarette butts outside were any indication. “Classy. . .”
Chris enters the cabin, delighting in how it smells the same as he remembers. It is nice to have one little place untainted by tragedies.
After double-checking the security of the cabin, Chris sets up shop. The gentle breeze outside offers a peaceful white noise while he works.
I wish Sam was here. By far, Sam was the most empathetic to Josh’s plight. After Chris, she was Josh’s closest friend. Everyone in the group felt remorse or pity for Josh to some extent, but Sam was distinctly aware of how badly they fumbled. Chris had invited everyone to join him on this excursion, but nobody was up to the challenge except him. Does it not keep them awake at night?
Chris shakes his head to scold himself. He is in no way fit to judge them. He is. . . In over his head. Sam did not hold back from expressing how much she disapproved of his plan to search for Josh solo. But. . . She understood why he had to.
A MONTH PRIOR
“So,” Sam sing-songs. “Tell me about you and Ashley!”
Chris feels a heavy stone settle in his stomach. “Oh, you know. . .” The topic is so draining that he cannot muster the energy to hide his true feelings. “Super good. Lots of dating. With Ash.”
“Wow, that bad?” Sam checks herself. “Sorry, I didn’t mean. . . So much has happened, changed. If you aren’t ready, then you shouldn’t feel guilty.”
So, so tired, Chris lets himself fall into the safe space Sam naturally oozes. He curls in on himself. “I don’t think I want anything more with Ashley. Actually, um. I thought it would be better. Fuck! I mean, not better.” Chris buries his face in his hands.
Sam snorts against her better judgment. “Not to be cliche, but. . . Is the spark gone or?”
“I don’t even know if it was there, to begin with,” Chris admits. “I like Ash a lot. She would be a great girlfriend. She’s beautiful and funny and so talented. But, I don’t think we mesh well. Not long-term. It’s been tough sorting it all out alongside. . . Everything else.”
“You always seemed to get along well enough.”
Chris scoffs. “Who’d want to settle for well enough?”
With a pitying frown, Sam offers, “Stop me if this is too much, Chris, but. Ash is great. But if you’re trying to replace Josh, you’re not gonna find anyone who can fill those shoes.”
All at once, Chris understands why he’s so dreadfully burnt out with Ashley. His eyes burn at the realization that Sam’s speculation was spot-on. How ironic that Josh’s theatric attempts to get them together would ultimately show Chris that he would never be compatible with Ashley. She just. . . Isn’t a bro.
“I’m sorry, honey,” Sam says, knowingly.
PRESENT DAY
Chris realizes he’s crying with a start. “Jeez,” he sniffles. “This blows.”
When dusk settles on the mountain, Chris waits for the other shoe to drop. Knowing his luck and the history of this place, something is going to try to kill him tonight. Where exactly is the line between realism and paranoia?
Chris only plans to search during the day even if he goes underground since there are plenty of non-supernatural creatures to watch out for. Therefore, he is staying inside the guest cabin until morning. He has everything he needs and no motivation to push his luck.
Hours pass. There are no unworldly sounds or knocks. Chris grows more comfortable being alone in the small space. He prepares the bedroom before laying down to rest.
“I’ll find you, buddy,” Chris whispers his promise into the threadbare sheets. He drifts off into a fitful sleep.