Chapter Text
June 25th
There were a lot of things on Laura’s list of things she expected to do this summer. Enjoying nature and helping children were the simple ones. Figuring out what she wanted from her future and how, no, if her past and present fitted into it was the more demanding task on her summer camp to-do list. Rays of sunlight tickled her face when she woke up. Laura smiled. Her cheeks tingled as if pure happiness had touched them. The end of June, summer, a new beginning. She took a deep breath in an attempt to get all the sweet fresh nature air into her system but instead musty and damp air filled her lungs.
The moment she regained consciousness, all her expectations vanished like a dream that didn’t have a chance to be dreamed. Summer had turned dark the second she opened her eyes.
A coughing fit shook her and she sluggishly sat up.
Her entire body was hurting. Something inside her was trying to get her back to sleep. She looked around.
So it hadn’t been a bad dream. She was in jail.
“Max?” she called out, her voice raspy and shaking.
No answer. She remembered blood and looked at her fingers.
Red.
So much blood on her.
Laura swallowed down the sickness that crept up her throat. She had to believe Max was okay, otherwise-
An ugly feeling spread from inside her heart.
Guilt, surrounded by dread. It tried to take over, forcing her to think about her broken relationship with her high school sweetheart Max, but she violently shook it off. There would come a time to walk this path but it wasn’t now.
Before her mind was able to dig deeper into her memory to find things that made sense, a door to the hallway outside her cell opened. Steps drew closer.
Last night’s events were still mostly a blur but when the sheriff appeared in front of her cell, the first pieces got put back together. For a moment they stared at each other.
“Hands through the bars,” the cop said and rustled with a pair of handcuffs. Laura studied his hardened and worn-out face. He looked just as tired as she was feeling. Her eyelids got heavy.
“I said hands through the bars.”
So heavy.
“Ah damn.”
With a gasp, Laura came to it. Cold water dripped down her face, her heart beat fast in her chest. She found herself in an office, a police office, no doubt, since the creepy cop was sitting at the other side of the table. Her hands were tied behind her back and a strong wiggle confirmed that she had been handcuffed.
“Name?”
“What have you done to Max?” she asked.
“Shut up.” The calmness in his voice didn’t match the situation, throwing Laura off.
She blinked. The cop didn’t grimace.
“You can’t just-”
“I said SHUT UP!” His hand came down to the table, the noise startling Laura. “This is an interrogation. I ask, you answer. Name?”
Laura shook her head.
“Name,” the officer repeated slowly, his eyes piercing her. Laura’s mouth opened, ready to shoot at him with the only weapon she had access to: words, the ugliest ones. It was in her nature to speak her mind, to make herself present and to stand up for herself and some creep ass cop wouldn’t be exempt from it.
She let her gaze wander through the room, her main goal to find a weak spot she could use to add a fitting insult, but her eyes stopped at a sideboard.
There was a frame with a drawing on display - nothing unusual but it was the discrepancy between the two of them. The frame looked old, maybe an heirloom, golden and ornate, a piece of kitsch that had been well looked after.
There was a framed picture on it, a picture of a drawing. The colors were slightly faded but apparently it hadn’t lost its sentimental value yet. It showed two figures. One was very obviously the cop in front of her - the proportions were adventurous but the hat and his sheriff uniform were quite telling. The other figure was probably the artist. A child with short blonde hair wearing a pair of jeans and a black shirt with a yellow smiley on it.
A cough forced her to look away from the picture.
The sheriff looked impatient, almost as if he was waiting for Laura to lash out just so he could react accordingly. Intuition was a weird thing, wasn’t it? The rational part of her mind still wanted to yell at him but her eyes were drawn to the picture again. Her gut told her to stand down. It was such an irrational thought that she did an internal double-take on it. Living as a woman on this planet had taught her a lot about how to navigate around men, even at her young age. Maybe especially at her young age. Her gut feeling should have set off alarms, screaming at her.
But there was silence instead.
She swallowed the words she had prepared. For some reason, they felt wrong to her.
“If you don’t cooperate-”
“Laura,” she interrupted him. The cop stared at her, the same surprise on his face as Laura was feeling about her choice of action. “My name is Laura Kearny. What do you want to know?”
The interrogation left her confused. She had done what felt right but the situation remained the same. To her surprise, she was greeted by her boyfriend’s shouts when she got led back to her cell.
The moment of relief about Max being alive didn’t last long. The events of the night before demanded to be discussed which meant engaging with Max. Okay, life-threatening situations and unlawful imprisonment weren’t exactly things Laura wanted to talk about with anyone. But someone like Max who didn’t know when something was serious or not would be an additional challenge, especially during the tense state their relationship was in.
Recapturing what they were able to remember started out smoother than Laura had expected. They ushered through the topics without any problems, making her almost smile about the glimmer of hope she was clinging to in terms of her relationship.
Their 14-hour-road trip, getting lost on the damned I 191, the “something” jumping on the street, crash crash, creepy voices in the forest, a sketchy cop, Hackett’s Quarry, the storm shelter, an attack, blood, then a whole lot of nothing that ended with them being in jail.
“Did you get a look at his name badge? It’s Hackett,” Laura revealed excitedly. Until that point, it had to be their biggest clue that something was off. A weird connection she couldn’t make sense of. “Do you think he’s a relative of Chris Hackett?”
There was a moment of silence.
“You don’t mean the world-famous Chris Hackett?” Max said flatly. “Famous for being the Chris Hackett, do you?”
Laura let out a sigh, blowing out the glimmer of hope since she knew what was coming next.
“Who’s Chris Hackett?”
A simple question turned on the stove inside her, beginning to make her blood boil. Max’s ignorance always bothered her but this time it was ten times more intense. This wasn’t a college application deadline he had almost forgotten, this wasn’t him postponing a getaway weekend in favor of his grandma visiting which somehow had slipped his mind when Laura had planned it. This was serious with a capital S.
Stay calm, she told herself, actively pushing against her nature.
It didn’t work. Her guts wouldn’t let her.
“Are you kidding me, Max?” she pressed out slowly. “Did you even read the flyer or the application for the summer camp?”
“Come on-”
Separated by two walls and yet she could feel Max rolling his eyes at her.
“Hackett’s Quarry, Max? Camp leader Chris Hackett of Hackett’s freaking Quarry? Does it ring a bell?”
“I’m sorry I didn’t study the pamphlet. I had a bit of a rough night.”
“Yeah right, and I didn’t.”
“Laura, stop it, that’s not what I’m saying.”
“What are you saying?”
“Camp was your idea so.”
“So? So why would you care? So it’s my fault? So what?”
“So did the pamphlet say anything about getting arrested on sight?”
“Funny.”
Silence fell between them again.
The thing was, Max was right. Summer camp had been her idea. One last fun summer before college was about to begin, she and Max had told themselves. They hadn’t talked about it but their relationship was on a knife edge. It had been like this for some time, touch and go, another push and the house of cards their relationship was made of would collapse… until one of them would set up the first card again, starting the cycle all over. And Laura had promised herself to get rid of her set of cards when it came to it again.
After all, how many collapses could one relationship endure until the damage was too big, the cards bent too often to hold any weight?
“I’m sorry. I’m just- tired.” Max sighed in frustration. At least they had something in common.
She sat down on the floor. The house was about to collapse again, the cards shaking dangerously. All it would take was one move in the wrong direction. She had tried, they both had, that much credit she had to give him.
Tears filled Laura’s eyes.
“I’m sorry, Max. I’m stressed too. Let’s just… start all over.”
The cards remained untouched.
Hours passed. Hours of talking, speculating, and unspoken accusations from both sides, hidden in the tiniest disagreements. In the end, they pushed through without making their relationship collapse but they were both at their limit.
Max suggesting the possibility of him having become a werewolf was almost the last straw of all the last straws Laura had to offer but something stopped her from abandoning this idea.
At first, she blamed it on sheer exhaustion, on being too tired to argue any longer and the willingness to accept any answer that could shed some light into the darkness that surrounded them and the night before.
But as she was lying on her bed she realized that maybe there was something to it.
It was already dark outside when the door to the cell block opened.
“Hands through the bars.” Sheriff Hackett shook the handcuffs in his hand.
Without giving him any attention, Laura turned around, staring at the stone wall in front of her, giving the sheriff the literal cold shoulder. After all the stress she had with Max earlier, she just wanted to be left alone even if it meant slowing the process of them getting out.
“Ma’am, don’t make this harder for yourself. It’s for your own benefit.”
“Look, I answered all your questions. If you won’t answer mine then I have nothing to say, not tonight. I had a long day.”
To her surprise - both good and bad - her cell door got unlocked. Steps got closer and the hair on her neck stood up. Anxiety was trying to take a hold of her but there wasn’t much left inside her numb mind to make her care about questions that led to nowhere.
“There’s a bathroom at the end of the floor. Take a shower.”
Laura turned around, her anxiety locked in at last, turning her blood to ice. With her arms wrapped around her knees and her back pushed against the wall she stared at the cop in horror.
“No. I’m not doing this, no way.”
The cop tilted his head, brows furrowed.
“You have blood on you,” he said slowly and pointed at his cheek.
“I’m not stripping in front of you,” Laura clarified with bite in her voice and shook her head. This was the last thing she had expected but by god, that cop was the definition of a creep. Maybe whatever had come over her had been wrong. “Touch me and you’re dead.”
The second her words were out the cop took two steps back. There wasn’t much light in her cell but she could see how rigid he had become, almost mirroring her own reaction. She wasn’t sure but his facial expression almost looked as if he was genuinely shocked.
“Ma’am, I don’t know what you think this is about but I’m a- I’m a Sheriff in this county and you’re in my custody so by law I have to make sure you have access to facilities like showers.”
The stutter and unusual grand gestures made Laura pause. Earlier she had dismissed the idea of Sheriff Hackett being involved in a kidnapping ring cause no, this cop in front of her didn’t seem to have the attitude or the brains to be a big player in something like that. But the sudden politeness and correctness weirded her almost as much out as his sketchy behavior. What was his deal?
The cop rubbed his face, visibly hiding his growing impatience.
“Ma’am? Would you please come with me?”
“Well, do I have a choice?” She scoffed and stood up albeit making sure to keep both eyes on him. “Lead the way. You’re not honestly putting these on me?” She nodded at the handcuffs the sheriff was opening. “How am I supposed to wash?”
The cop glanced at the handcuffs. “They’re for the way to the stalls and back,” he explained after a short pause. Laura raised an eyebrow. She didn’t know yet what had caused it but the cop’s stance had changed. His shoulders were slightly hunched. For whatever reason, he was in defense mode. Interesting. Following her instinct, she pushed further.
“Seriously? This is like… a 10-second walk.” She raised her voice. “You’re the one with the gun, I’m the one with the… shaky legs and the empty stomach.”
He regarded her for a moment. “I will get you some food after-”
“Forget it, Laura,” Max’s voice interrupted them, “I bet he bought his badge off eBay along with an asshole of the year mug.”
Sheriff Hackett looked as if someone had stepped on his foot, annoyed and somewhat uncomfortable. Laura contemplated fueling the flames but suddenly found herself in an unexpected position: being looked at expectantly.
Max continued cracking jokes about the sheriff’s legitimacy but the cop himself didn’t react to it any longer, no, he was waiting for Laura’s reaction. She didn’t grant him one. Seconds passed.
“Shower. Now.”
His voice was strong, way too strong, almost over the top, as if he was intimidated and tried to overplay it. Laura obliged and let herself be led out of the cell - without handcuffs.
At the end of the hallway was a wire frame, separating her from the rest of the police office. It opened into a large room with a lot of chairs and tables but there was no sign of a single person. It might have been her first encounter with the law but she was sure a police station shouldn’t look like it had been abandoned in a hurry.
“HELLO?” Laura yelled and rattled at the wire. “HELP US! WE’RE KEPT HERE WITHOUT REASON!”
No answer. Without much strength, the cop pulled her off the wire.
“You done?”
“I had to try,” Laura explained more to herself.
The cop just stared at her and for the splinter of a second something like the beginning of a smile crossed his face.
“Of course you had." He nodded. “Well, here’s the shower and here are some clothes.” He took up a small bundle from a chair next to the bathroom entrance. “These should fit you, you’re the same height as-”
“The same height as who?”
"Nevermind."
“Your daughter?” The picture in his office came to her mind. It was a shot in the dark but a shot that did carry some light by the way the sheriff’s eyes widened.
He pushed her into the bathroom and closed the door behind her. “You have ten minutes. Towels are in the sink.”
He hadn’t been angry, Laura thought. He had been worried.