Work Text:
[Click]
[The Archivist]
Statement of Ivy Dyer, regarding…
[Ivy]
Um… my time at my ex's cabin.
[The Archivist]
Statement taken direct from subject, January 12th, 2017.
[Ivy]
Now?
[The Archivist]
Now.
[Ivy]
Alright then
[ Sigh ]
I’m gonna preemptively start this off by saying that I was sober during this entire period. No alcohol or drugs that make me hallucinate and I don’t have a family history of mental disorders that causes such things either. You got that?
[The Archivist]
I do.
[Ivy]
Good. Good…
[ Sigh ]
I was always a rather isolated person. Growing up I preferred reading books over interacting with the kids in my neighborhood. I found them immature, childish. Which is funny, seeing as they actually were children. They deserved to act like it. I just didn’t see it that way. But it was due to this sort of self-isolation that I never really made any long-term friends. Almost constantly they’d wind up getting on my nerves, or I never wanted to do the activities they always wanted to, they’d somehow forget I exist at some point, that kind of thing.
As I got older, I got better at keeping friends, maybe it was the maturity, maybe I just found alike minded people, but I could manage to keep one for about a year or two before we drifted off away from each other. This even extended to partners, be it guy or gal, no gender or all of them, I never managed to really… remain with them. That was until Rylie.
Rylie Graves.
A 6’ behemoth of a person with dyed red hair and hazel eyes, who always dressed in clothing she said was comfortable but that I’d always found to be too compressibe. She loved jewelry, especially chokers, and dressed in some of the most outlandish colours that always managed to work with her complexion. She was Rylie, and I didn’t want her any other way.
[ Ivy breaks off here, contemplating]
I met her in my last year of secondary school. I was fully expecting her to drop off the face of the planet from me after we graduated. We had a fun few months I figured, might as well make it last. And then I found out she landed in the same college as me. It was… exhilarating, realizing I would be able to keep the best person in my life for a little bit longer.
We majored in different things of course, I took on Computer Sciences and Rylie… I honestly don’t know what Rylie majored in honestly. One day she’d be talking about her lit major and the next it’d be her geology major. I think she genuinely didn’t know what her major was going to be and so was exploring every option available to her. I once joked that she switched majors so often she made it seem like she was taking them all at the same time. Her response for some reason remains in my head, though I cannot for the life of me explain why.
“I like to be buried in work. It’s comforting.”
Throughout the years, I wound up doing what i always do, make a few friends, keep them for a bit, and lose them eventually. It was a weird sort of constant. I’m not the kind of friend you keep around, I’m only the one you have for a short while. The only exception was Rylie. Every single year, we still somehow managed to remain a couple.
We’d had a couple of spats here or there, but it truly seemed like Rylie and I were going to remain together forever. It was… nice. Having someone I could say I’ve known for years and could confidently say I still knew her.
I’d say things took a worse when I met her family. We’d been together for years it was astounding that I hadn’t met them sooner, really, but ever time I asked her about it she would shrug it off and say it wasn’t important and that I could worry about it later.
That changed, I’d say late November. One day Rylie walked up to me super pale and said that her parents wanted to meet me. Said she was sorry and that she’d try to make it up to me she promised.
I was confused for a moment, I asked if there was something she wasn’t telling me about her family that made this worse than I thought it was. The way she was acting, it made me think her family was part of the mob.
Rylie took a moment to respond, seeming to choose her words carefully. “There are a few things I haven’t told you,” she had said, slowly, as though debating with herself over if she should even be saying this, “And I promise you I’ll tell you as much as I can, but it isn’t going to be much.”
I was a bit incredulous at that. Just what was she keeping from me? Was her family actually of the mob? She just looked… somber. Said she’d explain as much as she could later, but that she would explain.
And she did, somewhat. Said her family was rich, said that they avoided the tabloids so they weren’t well known, but they had the money, said that she’d been… “inducted” she said, into the family, that they were protective of her and that they didn’t want me with her if I couldn’t “prove myself”. I said it was a load of horse shit, said she could choose to be with whoever she wanted to be with. She just got this sad look in her eyes, like she was expecting me to fail or something.
Then came the holiday break. Rylie had been preparing me for this so much that it seemed like she was suffocating me with information. What to do, what not to do, how to talk to her mother verses her father, etcetera.
She didn’t know what to expect, she had said, she thought it would be an interview, an uncomfortable room, perhaps the shovel talk, she didn’t know. No one else in the family had ever talked about the supposed test coming up, not even the ones that passed it.
So when we were both invited to the cabin owned by her family, we were both confused. At first I thought it was the family trying to introduce me to the family in a non-home that way we were on even ground. Rachel seemed inclined to agree, but I could tell she was rather reluctant to accept that as what it was.
We were the first ones there, it seemed. Rylie had to use the key to get in, the fireplace wasn’t set, and everything was freezing. I made a joke, about how it was a good thing we didn’t quite get a dog because then they’d be freezing with us. It was a poor joke but I wanted to lighten the mood.
All things set, we explored. There were a couple of rooms, some single beds, some double beds, and they all felt homely, like people stayed there for years before one day abandoning the place. There was only one room that didn’t look lived in, one with a double bed.
Our relationship with each other hadn’t gotten as far as being able to sleep in the same bed together, even with how long we had remained together for, so we blushed a bit, but ultimately decided we’d rather share a bed now than lay down in one of the clearly lived in bedrooms. It felt like disturbing the peace, you know?
It was on our third day that that I started to think we’d been duped. I told Rylie as such and she shook her head. She said she didn’t know what her family was up to, but this was them “testing” me, and so we needed to remain. “We’d be staying there for another two weeks”, she’d reasoned, “Might as well enjoy the solitude of a winter cabin.”
One week in I got Cabin fever. We had all the food we could ever need, and we didn’t need to worry about anything happening, no bears in the area supposedly. It hadn’t snowed all week at the cabin either, it was a dry winter, and I felt the need to go on a walk. Rylie said she wanted to come with me, said she didn’t trust the woods. I wish I took her up on the offer, but I refused. Said we both needed some space, we’d been cooped up and I could tell she was geting antsy.
Out in the woods it was peaceful, relaxing even. My feet were moving and my head was getting clearer the more I walked. And then I saw a person. Or what I thought was a person. I called out to them. It was a dumb idea I know but these woods shouldn’t have been unsafe, and no other civilization existed for miles. I thought it might’ve been a lost person or something.
They didn’t respond, didn’t even move, they were just standing there. I got closer, asking out to them if they were alright or if they needed any help at all. And as I got closer, I got a better look at them, platinum blond hair, frosted blue eyes, and a palor in skin that suggested they were about to die of frostbite.
“You lasted longer than most. But still not enough.” I remember that, clear as day. It was ominous, and it scared me.
“What are you talking about?” I asked, taking a step back.
“The time you lasted in the cabin. Cabin fever, right? Couldn’t take being there for another minute?” The figure said.
I shook my head. I truly couldn’t, I was antsy.
“Then that’s why you’re not fit. You lasted well enough, I thought you’d make it you know, you make Rylie happy. But you just couldn’t take it.” And with that, they pushed me. And in the blink of an eye, I landed in snow. Confused, I sat up.
I said it was a dry winter and I meant it, there was no snow even ten minutes before and yet, all around me all I could see was inches upon inches of snow, gray clouds covering the sky. And the strange person wasn’t there either. I screamed, I had no idea what was going on and then I’d been suddenly dropped into effectively the same forest, but with a thick blanket of snow. And then, the first snow flake landed on my nose. It was about to get worse. I immediately ran for what I thought was the direction of the cabin. I swear it was the direction of the cabin, but it was gone. No matter where I walked, no matter the direction I took, it was just more woods.
I was lost, and the snow was falling faster, getting into blizzard territory. If I didn’t find shelter soon I’d be buried under snow and ice. I ran, which was both difficult and incredibly easy to do. I needed out, and I needed to make it safe to find my girlfriend. I didn’t want to be another person lost in the woods.
As time went on, I realized two things. The snow was growing faster than was feasibly possible, rising to half way to my knees, and it wasn’t getting any darker. The light remained the same as it had been my entire time in this weird snow place. Seeing that, I honestly thought it hadn’t been that long, and that if I continue in just one direction instead of going in random directions like before, I could make it to at least a path of some sort. And so I trekked, the snow getting higher and higher until eventually, I just couldn’t walk any more. Either my legs were frozen, or the snow was too high or too dense, but I couldn’t make another step. I was stuck, and I was going to be buried alive by the snow, if hypothermia didn’t take me first.
And just when the snow reached above my head, I felt a pull, and I collapsed. I was shivering, and i couldn’t really pay attention to a lot of things. Someone tried to take my coat off and I fought tooth and nail but someone shushed me, mumbling things I couldn’t understand. I gave up the fight and let them take the jacket off, only to have another surround my person, warm and not wet as my other one had been.
For a while, I had spaced out, I vaguely remember yelling and someone picking me up. I know at some point we landed at the cabin and I got put to bed. I honestly would have thought that it was some weird dream if it weren’t for Rylie, who was pacing up and down the halway looking scared out of her mind, and the fact I was still frozen all the way down to my bones.
When Rylie saw me, she lit up and hugged me. I returned it with full force and asked her what the hell was going on.
And just like that, Rylie apologized. Saying something about how she didn’t think that was the test and that they shouldn’t have done that to me and that she was sorry for her sibling, they were cruel to me and they shouldn’t have done what they did. I told her to slow down, demanded she explain because well, she just effectively told me her sibling tried to kill me. It was a shock to the system.
She explained as much as she could, that her family all had those abilities, that they fed on the fear of others, and that I had become an unwilling… meal…
I went mental, screamed at her, asked if she was just like them. She shrunk down on herself. I hate myself for it but I screamed at her until my voice was horse. And then I said that the moment I wasn’t frozen down to my bones I was going to leave, and that we were over. Rylie accepted it, and without much more of a leave, I left.
It’s been a couple weeks since then, I figured if anywhere knew what I was talking about, it’d be you guys, since you’re all supernatural stuff and probably knew more about this than I do.
There you go, my statement.
[The Archivist]
Well, that was… something. I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that you want access to the library?
[Ivy]
Is that an option? Wait, you believe me?
[The Archivist]
I’ll give you permission while I watch you if you would like. And yes I believe you. We’ve had quite a few statements about the Graves family here. You’re welcome to look into them. While I can’t recall any statements about Rylie specifically off the top of my head, there were quite a few about her sibling.
[Ivy]
That would be… wonderful. Where do I start?
[Click]