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Everything was dark. Sam couldn’t see. She didn’t want to see.
She had just...she really couldn’t believe what she had just done. She had tried to kill Josh. She had killed their neighbors. And…
Deena. Oh god, she had stabbed Deena. She had stabbed the love of her life in cold blood.
Sam knew she was possessed. She tried so hard to fight it, really, but the witch was stronger. Kate and Simon had died for nothing and now Deena might be dead and holy shit she was dead too what was she gonna do-
She was hyperventilating now, and she realized her head hurt really bad. Sam took some deep breaths, tried to follow the breathing exercises Deena had shown her when her anxiety was really bad.
In for four, hold for seven, out for eight. In for four, hold for seven, out for eight. She could almost hear Deena telling her to calm down, that everything was going to be fine.
She could feel something hard beneath her. One of her hands already curled up in her hair reached down, trying to get a feel for what she was sitting on. It felt like hardwood flooring.
There were footsteps coming towards her now. They sounded heavy, like men’s boots, and they stopped just behind her.
Sam still hadn’t opened her eyes. She really didn’t want to, but she knew she had to eventually.
She slowly opened her eyes, surveying the area right in front of her. It was an entryway to some kind of house, with a large staircase to the right and a living room in front of her.
Oh, right. There was someone behind her. Sam had almost forgotten about that. She turned, very slowly, to find a young man standing a foot behind her, frozen in surprise. A young man she could almost recognize…
-
Tommy stood in the entryway. Suddenly, he couldn’t move. He remembered this girl. She had bled on Sarah Fier’s bones, and he had tried to kill her. Multiple times.
He remembered being at the grocery store the previous night, sticking an ax in her friend’s head, almost getting a swing in at her and her girlfriend. Even though Tommy didn’t know their names, he was proud of them for surviving. And now one of them was here, and that could only mean one thing.
Shit.
God, what was he gonna do? Yeah, he was a good shoulder to cry on for people, but this was a recently traumatized teenage girl who had just died. Not Ruby missing her mom again or Billy feeling overwhelmed after a particularly bad day.
Ok, ok, he needed to stay calm. If he panicked, he would only make the situation worse.
Oh, great. She was looking at him. “Ok, Tommy, play it cool. Everything’s gonna be fine, just calm down,” he thought to himself.
He decided to try and approach the girl, slowly, of course. He didn’t want her to get startled and run off.
“Hey, are you alright?” he asked once he had gotten down to her level. The girl stared at him like he was some kind of beast.
“I think I might’ve killed my girlfriend and her brother.” Well, this was off to a great start.
-
“I think I might’ve killed my girlfriend and her brother.” Sam silently cursed herself. That’s pretty much the worst thing you can say to a complete stranger when you randomly show up in their house after being shot dead.
Yet, the man didn’t look too alarmed. He had a grave look on his face when she said this and nodded. “Alright. At least it’s an ‘I think’ and not an ‘I know.”
That was unexpected. “I killed our neighbors.”
Again, the man didn’t look too surprised. He nodded again, a deep sigh leaving his lips. “I’m...so sorry this happened to you. I know you must have no idea what happened, but everything's gonna be fine, I promise.”
Sam blinked. This guy was surprisingly understanding, even though she had just confessed to murder. She swallowed a thick lump in her throat before speaking again. “I know this sounds crazy, but I swear I didn’t do it. I was possessed by Sarah-”
“The Devil. You were possessed by the Devil. Not Sarah Fier.”
A new voice cut her off. This was someone completely different. He sounded almost...Irish? She couldn’t exactly place it.
Sam looked behind her to see who was speaking and holyfuckingshit-
This man had no eyes.
The first thought that ran through Sam’s head after that very apparent observation was, “That’s that pastor from the 1600s! I know him! Josh had told me about him! What the fuck!”
The man behind her cleared his throat, trying to clear the silence ringing in the air.
“Uh, yeah,” he said intelligently. “Cyrus, this is...I’m so sorry, I never got your name.”
“I’m, uh, I’m Sam,” the teen whispered.
“Sam! This is Sam. Sam, this is Cyrus Miller. You’ve heard of him, right?”
Sam was...uncomfortable, to say the least. She gave a small nod at the question, keeping her eyes on the killer pastor in front of her. She could feel her breathing start to quicken.
“I’m sorry you’re here, Sam, but it wasn’t Sarah Fier. It was the doing of the Goodes.”
It was right then and there that Sam fainted.
-
She didn’t know how long it had been when she woke up in an unfamiliar bed.
The man who came up behind her was sitting in a chair next to the bed, with the pastor right beside him.
Sam almost rocketed up, but the man gently grabbed her shoulder and pushed her down. “Hey, hey, calm down. It’s ok, you just fainted. You’re in Ruby’s room.”
Ruby? That name sounded familiar. She looked around the room, slowly this time, so as not to cause a headache. She looked at the nightstand right beside her. There was a razor blade on it, with a bundle of gauze to the right.
So it was that Ruby.
Sam had a feeling everything was just going to get worse.
Cyrus cleared his throat, glancing down at his lap as he did so. “Sarah Fier wasn’t the culprit of this curse, Sam. She was just the scapegoat,” he explained. “The Goodes - from Solomon up to Nick - have been giving names of Shadysiders as sacrifices to the Devil for prosperity. They, in turn, kill people, and the Devil feeds off of it. I’m sorry.”
Sam blinked. Her brain was a computer monitor with a blue screen at the pastor’s words. And then it became a TV screen, with a little symbol floating around the black area. When it hit a corner, she had a thought.
“W-what about bleeding on the bones? Ruby and Skull Mask and Nightwing came after us because I bled on Sarah Fier’s bones! How could that have been the Goodes?”
The man she didn’t know the name of sighed. “It’s Tommy, not Nightwing. And it was used as a scapegoat, basically. You learned the truth when you bled on her bones, and the Goodes couldn’t have that, so they sent us. I...I’m so sorry about-”
“Simon. His name was Simon,” Sam replied sharply. She knew what he was going to say. She didn’t want to come off as bitchy because the guy clearly felt bad about it, but she couldn’t help it. She cared about Simon and Kate. They were her friends. And now they were dead.
She took a deep breath to steady herself. “Alright. So it wasn’t Sarah Fier, but the Goodes?” After a nod from both Cyrus and Tommy, she continued. “Ok...then where am I? You’re both dead, and so am I.”
Cyrus looked at her. “This is what we call the Void. We don’t know why or how we’re here. We just know that it is. Welcome.”
-
She already had her own room.
The one at her mom’s had been way too spacious, too sleek, completely devoid of personality. Her room at Dad’s was cramped and only had a few possessions she had decided to keep there.
The room in the Void was cozy, but it didn’t give her claustrophobia. It was warm, with soft colors and little knicknacks. She didn’t know why her room was like that, but she liked it. Tommy said it was probably a reflection of her personality. Sam had no idea what that was supposed to mean, but she took it as a compliment.
For the first week, she stayed in that room. She laid in bed, only getting up to eat and use the bathroom, and even then, she didn’t eat much anyways.
The others checked in on her often. Sam appreciated the concern.
Tommy was a frequent visitor. He wouldn’t say much, but he seemed content to just sit on the bed with her, sometimes holding her while she cried. She started to think of him as the older brother she never had. To be honest, everyone in the house was like the family she only fantasized about.
Ruby was pretty much her sister from day one. After she had talked with Cyrus and Tommy, Ruby had come in, a small smile on her face as she introduced herself properly. The two talked whenever Sam was up to it, and they got along very well. Both of them were glad to have at least one girl in the house to talk to, and now that they had met, they couldn’t be separated by the end of time itself.
Billy was the adoring younger brother. He hung around the new girl like a lost puppy. There were new drawings piling up on her desk every single day, all done and specially delivered by the little boy. Sam couldn’t believe a child like him, out of all of Shadyside’s scumbags, was picked to be a murderer.
Ryan was the annoying brother - older or younger, she couldn’t decide. He mostly stayed in his room, still freshly traumatized after being sacrificed and almost immediately thrust back into the living world, forced to hunt after Sam and her blood a day after dying. He didn’t look her in the eyes for a while. Not until Sam brought up horror movies, and Ryan immediately perked up. They talked more, both of them starting to come out of their shells. The rest of the household silently thanked Sam for that.
While others insisted that Cyrus was the father of the group, Sam felt he was more of the grandpa. The man had that “old man of wisdom” aura. He was the one Sam started to go to when she needed to vent, always spilling out her deepest feelings about what had happened that night. The pastor was always there with a smile and some words of wisdom, and Sam warmed up fast.
She was a little more hesitant around the other two adults in the house, however. She didn’t meet Harry and Isaac until her third day, and she was not exactly prepared. They were perfectly pleasant people, of course, but those headlines - Deviant Milkman Slays Housewives ; Grifter Guts Girls - had been burned into Sam’s brain, and they were not going anywhere anytime soon.
She had to admit that they were really nice. Isaac was a great listener. She used to be terrified of what he would think if he found out. He’s so strong, he’s so scary, what if he hurts her for having a girlfriend? And then she saw him call Harry “dear”, and suddenly she was gushing about Deena. She had the feeling Isaac wanted to ask Deena over for dinner after she was done.
Harry was the same, even if he was quite a bit more talkative than Isaac. Sam wouldn’t ever forget the night he came into her room with a plate of dinner and a notebook. She had carefully asked what the notebook was, and his response was to crack it open and reveal a large collection of war stories (or as he liked to call it, “the most and least proud moments of my life”) he had copied down. She spent the rest of the night listening to them until Tommy came in three hours later to physically force him out.
“She needs rest right now. You can tell her the stories later!” he had exclaimed.
It was the first time Sam had smiled in a while.
-
Sam had been in the Void for several months now. The long-timers were shocked at how quickly she had accepted her situation and adjusted, but it wasn’t as if they were upset. It was easier to be a family that way.
But there was one thing she couldn’t stop. The nightmares.
They happened almost every night. Sometimes, it was a flashback to what she had done. Stabbing Deena with a broken drumstick, going down to the basement to stab Josh, then breaking into their neighbor’s houses and slaughtering them.
Other times, it’s worse. There’s no blood, no screaming. She’s lying in bed with Deena. Everything starts out nice.
And then Deena starts to rot.
It starts from her stomach, where she stabbed her. And then it starts growing. It covers her entire body until the beautiful girl she knew is nothing more than a rotting corpse.
Sam can’t move from her side in those dreams. She can only stare, horrified, as Deena starts speaking.
“You’re a monster, Sam. This is your fault. You did this to me.”
She wakes up screaming every time.
The others rush into her room. She’s sobbing too hard to tell them what’s wrong. They understand far too well, though.
It doesn’t matter how many times Harry hugs her and tells her it was just a dream, how many times Isaac reminds her that she saw Deena alive and standing before she died, how many times Ruby squeezes her hand and tells her Deena couldn’t possibly hate her because she knew she was possessed. The nightmares and the anxiety and the thoughts of Deena hating her made her sick every night.
The nightmares never go away. But neither do the people she is starting to call her family.
-
Nick comes into the Void soon after.
For why, Sam didn’t know. She just knew to avoid the man who had both ruined and ended her life.
She didn’t see him when he came by. She just remembers Ruby pulling Billy and Ryan into her room and locking the door.
“What’s going on?” Sam asked.
Ruby gave a shuddering breath. “Goode’s here.”
They don’t leave until Tommy knocks on the door two hours later, telling them the coast is clear.
Sam doesn’t want to know why or how Goode got there. She just knew she didn’t want to see him again.
-
Life isn’t all nightmares and torture and fear, though.
Ryan plays his video games in front of the TV, yelling at anyone except Billy for walking in front of him.
Ruby teaches her songs on the piano, and they sing together, sometimes.
Tommy plays baseball with the kids and runs around with Billy on his shoulders when he wins.
Billy makes little family portraits and makes sure everyone has a copy, with an extra one for the fridge.
Harry tells stories to everyone whenever they’re all in the same place for once, and he insists they’re true, no matter how ridiculous they seem.
Isaac gathers the kids around a table and creates his own lessons, not wanting their education to stop, even though they were all dead.
Cyrus leads grace for every meal, and he helps with cooking whenever he can, even though he’s blind. He also introduced the family to some very old recipes that only made Sam think, “Not bad, dead people.”
They make her feel part of a family. Not the family she was born into, the cold, detached family with neglectful parents and prissy grandparents, but the warm, loving family that will crowd into someone’s room whenever they have nightmares. The family who will play loving pranks on each other, the family where everyone is happy to sit in the living room in silence, just savoring being with each other.
-
It’s 1995 now. Sam had been in the Void for a year.
She didn’t know what to think.
Being in the Void had been simultaneously the best and worst experience of her (after)life. She was surrounded by caring people, people she had grown to love just like they had with her.
But Deena wasn’t there. Her friends from Shadyside weren’t there. No one from home was there, and she couldn’t help but miss them every single day.
Sleeping on the night of October 4 was the hardest thing Sam had ever done.
She was in her mother’s house again. She dreaded being there, dead or alive. Her mother was standing in front of her. She was screaming. Sam couldn’t make out the words.
She could make out the slap to the face. Her head snapped to the side, and she was at the grocery store.
Kate was staring at her. Her head was in slices. Simon’s head was almost split in half, blood running down his face. Deena and Josh were bloody, too.
They did nothing but stare at her. They were angry, she could tell. Sam had let them down.
She let Kate and Simon die, and it was a waste in the end. She hurt the people she cared about the most.
She had failed them.
Someone was shaking her.
“Sam, wake up!”
“It’s just a dream, honey, wake up.”
She shot up. She was in the Void, in bed.
It was silent for a few seconds. Then, Ruby leaned over to give her a hug, and the floodwalls burst.
Sam didn’t know how long she cried. She just knew everyone stayed by her side until she stopped.
Once her sobs diminished to weak hiccups and sniffles, Isaac spoke. “Anniversaries are always the worst. Don’t worry, everything will be okay.”
They stayed in her room until morning. As Sam laid in between Tommy and Ruby, she came to a conclusion.
Yes, she will always miss Kate and Simon and Josh and Deena. There will never be anyone to replace them. For now, though...for now, living in the Void with a little gang of those like her will be enough. She’s found her family, and she wasn’t going to let go anytime soon.