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Thick fog clings to the air, damp and heavy, like mold in a ruined closet. The moisture in the atmosphere threatens a rain that will never come, the tension of the promise weighing more than rainfall ever could. Sore and dirty and bloody, Jake wishes it would rain, just so he could stop thinking about it every time he looks at the sky.
By his count, it’s been two days since the last of his fellow survivors died. It’s hard to tell, because the moon never sets here, but he’s gotten good at tracking time without a watch.
The first to go was Dwight. Despite the fear on his face, he’d somehow managed to stand up against the pressure, to get everyone together, to make a plan. And when they were all hurt, he’d told them to go. None of them knew how he managed to keep the killer occupied for so long, but he did. He bought them the time for Claudette to close up their wounds with a pathetic first-aid kit, and time for them to hide, and time for them to mourn when those spider legs pierced the sky and pulled Dwight up into it, and time for the terror of facing the same fate to sink into them.
The next to go was Claudette. They’d all split up, and Claudette was tasked with gathering supplies. Presumably, she was found between the twisting trees of the shelter woods, trying to find plants for more of the poultice she’d used earlier, but Jake and Meg would never know, because her story ended with a piercing scream that tore through the decrepit estate. And those great limbs once again came from the sky to rattle the world and took her away. With her gone, their wounds ached more, were harder to treat, and smelled worse.
Then, two days ago, Meg followed her friends. They’d together spent some time creeping through the grounds as quietly as they could. Found odd things. A wreath made of sticks and innards, newspaper clippings about the history of this mining town, scattered notes, stories about a secret back exit for a lone survivor. When the killer closed in again, Meg said, let me take him, I’m faster. Work while I’m gone. But there was a finality and neither of them wanted nor had the time to weigh the chance that they wouldn’t see each other again. The pressure had settled in Jake’s chest and he couldn’t make himself say please let me go, I don’t want to be the last one, before Meg took off at a sprint.
To her credit, she went far. But eventually, Jake heard a snap, and a scream. A bear trap cut her chase short. He sprung from his hiding place in a panic and quickly, deftly, dismantled the nearest hook he could see. A cleaver cut into his side and he took off, praying he’d given Meg enough time to wrench from her captor’s grasp, but she couldn’t.
Two days ago, this place’s hungry fingers came again. Two days ago, Jake ended up alone.
He sits now behind the fallen rocks and wood blocking entry into a caved-in mine, heart racing in his chest, a thumping rabbit panic that starts whenever he knows, somehow, that hunter is nearby. He grits his teeth to keep quiet, despite the pain resting in his side like a companion, his only living one.
When the moment of terror passes, he pulls out the map he managed to scavenge from a chest with shaky hands and unrolls it. He’s been combing every corner of this place and still hasn’t been able to find the hatch, that backdoor exit that he and Meg read about.
He’s tired. So tired. He knows he needs to get up and keep searching, find it before the killer does, but he finds himself paralyzed by that responsibility. He’s still alive, isn’t he? He needs to keep moving. All the others, they died for him. He never asked them to. He didn’t want to be the last one here. He didn’t want to have that burden on his shoulders. Are they watching him? Are they rooting for him to escape? He doesn’t know if he believes in an afterlife, but he does believe in judgement. What if they all died so he could live and he doesn’t make it?
Jake looks to his side and the rubble beneath him almost looks like a face. Dwight’s face.
“You’re going to have to move eventually,” Dwight says, unpresent.
“I’m tired,” Jake protests.
“I know. But that doesn’t mean you can give up. It’s not over yet. The only way out is to keep doing things. You can’t stagnate.”
“You have to take care of those wounds, too,” Claudette adds, from her cozy spot beneath the dirt. “The more you bleed, the less you’ll be able to think. And if they get infected…”
“But you’re out of supplies,” Dwight says. “Which is why you have to move.”
“One of you should have made it instead,” Jake says.
“But we didn’t,” Meg replies, a shadow cast on the wall by a lantern swinging high above. “So you’re going to have to suck it up.”
“Your mother told you you were going to die out here,” Claudette doesn’t say, because she wouldn’t say that. Jake’s own thoughts are getting mingled with the guilty voices.
“She didn’t say that,” Jake protests.
“But she thought it.”
Jake wonders if his father called in the cavalry. If he spared no expense to look for him. If he even noticed. Jake looks at the heavy mist filling every inch of this building and wonders if this is where his grandfather disappeared to. If he died out there after all.
“You and I, Jake, we're caught in the same vicious cycle so don't feel so bad, all right? Today it's me. Tomorrow it's you." His grandfather didn’t say that. The hog did. Why did he think of it now? Tomorrow it’s him. Today it’s him. Chase something for long enough and it will surrender itself to you. Why is this killer hunting them all in the first place? Wearing that mask, made of bone. Is he looking for something?
“He’s looking for you,” Meg says. “So get your ass up and move before he finds you.”
Jake stands, on shaky legs, and rolls the map up again.
“That wouldn’t be such a bad thing,” Jake decides.
His brain feels like it’s been put in a pressure cooker. He’s always hated it. Expectations. Potential energy. The idea that something is looming, waiting to happen. It’s more agonizing than any torture this place could put on him. If the axe is going to come down, he’d rather it come down fast. He can’t stand all this waiting. This waiting to fail. This waiting to die.
He’d rather go out on his own terms, at least. And he’s curious. Maybe he can at least go out understanding. That’s all he really wants. To understand and to die.
He crawls out of the mine, his cave with no exit. He thinks of the hog falling into the spike trap. He recognizes the relevance just in time to stop before stepping in a bear trap.
Kneeling, Jake carefully disarms the trap, and it snaps shut. Then he sits in front of the trap and waits. A crow comes to settle next to him and he holds his hand out, carefully admiring its feathers as his heart rate steadily climbs.
The lumbering killer approaches. He’s all wrought iron and terrifying muscle, standing taller than any person should. He looks scorched. Caked in mud and grime, body filled with shrapnel. That twisted, sharp smile on his mask’s face, hiding any true emotion. Jake feels a lump in his throat.
When the killer sees him sitting there, he stops his approach. He stares. Jake can’t tell if it’s more like a predator stalking prey or a confused dog. The tension lingers in the air for a moment until Jake can’t stand it anymore.
“You win,” he says.
“...What?” The killer asks, in a voice rough and strained, like it hasn’t been used in years. His throat sounds as dry as his hands. Like he breathed in something terrible.
“I figured you chased me long enough,” Jake says.
The killer does not seem content with this answer. He shifts in place, fingers twitching on the handle of his machete.
“Aren’t you afraid?” He asks.
“I’m more afraid of this continuing,” Jake admits.
The silence stretches again.
“I just want to know one thing,” Jake says. “What are you looking for?”
“...Nothing?” The killer offers, confused.
“Are you one of the miners that worked here?” Jake asks.
“In a sense.”
“In what sense?”
“...My father owned these mines.”
Jake thinks about the clippings he had managed to find. Detailing the sorry history of this place, the collapse of the mines, the disappearance of the owners.
“Evan MacMillan,” Jake speculates.
Evan inhales, the sound just audible enough to pass for quiet surprise. Then he seems uncomfortable.
“A long time ago,” he decides.
“Did you get lost out here, too?”
“No. This place… swallowed me.”
“It ate you?” Jake asks, brows raised slightly.
“No. Yes. It’s eating all of us,” Evan seems to settle on.
“Oh.” It’s hungry. We’re caught in the same vicious cycle. Today it’s me. Tomorrow it’s you. “Is that why you’re killing us?”
That discomfort comes again, like Evan doesn’t know how to answer.
“You killed my friends. You’re going to kill me. So I won’t tell anyone what you say,” Jake jokes.
“I’m not worried about that,” Evan dismisses. He comes closer and kneels to pick up his trap.
“What are you worried about?” Jake asks.
“I’m supposed to hunt. Not talk,” Evan says.
“Not supposed to?” He asks. “You’re doing it right now.”
“It can’t stop me.”
“So don’t let it,” Jake says.
Evan considers that for a moment, then turns around to walk away. Jake balks, but when Evan looks back at him, he stands up to follow.
“It watches everything anyways,” Evan tells him. “If I displease it…” Jake’s eyes trace up Evan’s metal-laced arm to his shoulder. The hook there, just like the ones he’d been hanging them all on. Even without finishing the sentence, Jake thinks he understands.
“You don’t want to be doing this either,” Jake says.
“...I wouldn’t say that,” Evan says. “That makes me too blameless. It’s what I know.”
“...The collapse.”
“I caused it,” Evan agrees. “When given the choice between the right thing and protecting myself, I choose wrong.”
“What were you protecting yourself from?” Jake asks. “Before?”
Evan doesn’t answer.
Instead he says,
“Something else is consistent. ...I’m bad for everything that knows me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I can only listen for so long,” he answers. He pushes between a gap in two tree trunks and Jake hears a soft sound in the distance. A quiet, melodious hum.
Soon enough, they come upon it. A hole in the ground, leaking fog, humming. The black lock. Evan picks up a trap sitting in front of it.
“You knew where it was,” Jake says.
“I was planning on trapping you,” Evan clarifies.
“Until I gave up?” Jake asks.
“...Not much point. In chasing someone that lies down,” he answers.
“So giving in is the right move,” he jokes, heart clearly not in it. The others had fought so hard to live and here he is.
“No. Not at all,” Evan says. “...It’s just your lucky day.” He steps back, leaving the watch to the hatch open. The fog on the air seems to shiver and Evan trembles in kind. A whisper kicks up.
Jake crouches before the hatch and dangles his legs off the edge of it, into darkness below. It’s cold.
“Where does it lead?” Jake asks.
“I don’t know,” Evan answers. “I’m not allowed to leave.”
“...Thanks. I guess,” he says. “Are you going to get in trouble?”
“I’m sure.”
“...Good,” Jake says. “I’d rather be rebellious than do what I’m supposed to. Personally.”
He considers Evan for a moment longer, and Evan considers him. Then Jake slips quietly into the hatch.