Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary.  Men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.”

– Joseph Conrad

Sam sank into the hot, soapy water and gave a deep, heartfelt sigh. She felt some of the tension lift from her shoulders as the heat soaked in. As much as they’d come here to be together, she had desperately needed some time on her own. The trip was turning out to be every bit as fraught, awkward and irritable as she thought it would be.

I can’t relax. Every time we’re together, I’m waiting for an argument to kick off.

Plugging in her earphones, she closed her eyes and leaned back, listening to the soothing strains of Bach…

Slam!

Sam blinked, jerking upright. The candles had burned low and the water was lukewarm. Did I fall asleep? And was that the door?

“Guys?” she asked uncertainly. There was no answer. Uneasy now, she climbed from the bath and wrapped herself in a towel. And then discovered her clothes were gone. “Really? Really?”

Leaving the bathroom, she stalked down the landing with wet, bare feet, calling out in irritation. “Guys, this isn’t funny! Where are my clothes?”

She came to the top of the stairs and blinked in surprise. Was that…balloons? And candles? Increasingly weirded out, she followed the arrows on the balloons down the stairs. If this was some kind of ill-conceived prank…

Her stomach turned as she remembered the last ill-conceived prank to happen in this house. What are they thinking?! Josh is going to flip!

“Where the hell are you guys?” She padded cautiously into the home cinema, peering about with the torch. The absolute silence and stillness of house was starting to get to her, making her irrationally afraid. “Guys! Come on! I am done with this game, it isn’t funny!”

The double doors to the cinema room swung shut with an echoing boom, making her scream and nearly drop the torch. Heart pounding in shock, she backed away from the doors, just as the big screen lit up behind her.

“Hello Samantha.”

The unfamiliar voice seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, deep and distorted with static. She spun on the spot, frantically searching for the owner of the voice and then it spoke again. “Looking for me?” Despite the electronic crackle, it seemed to have an almost amused tone. “You won’t find me. In fact, the only thing you’re going to see, is what I what want you to see. And I – have quite a lot to show you…”

“What the hell,” Sam whispered, backing away. She didn’t know where to run to, it was impossible to tell which way was safe, where was this guy –

“See for yourself,” the voice spoke again and Sam was horrified at the image that flickered up on screen.

“Oh my God.” Her trip tightened on the torch as she watched herself, relaxed and peaceful, lounging in the bath.

“She’s…quite beautiful, isn’t she.” All the little hairs on Sam’s arms rose at the admiring tone, obvious even through the distortion. “A beautiful bathing bird. Do you think she has any idea what lies ahead?”  The tone changed abruptly, thick with menace. “Do you think these were the last happy moments of this creature’s life?”

 “Why…why are you showing this to me?” Sam cried, terrified, backing away.

“Why are you watching?” The amusement was back. Then the picture changed again and Sam stared in horror as an image of Josh, bound and tied to a wall, filled the screen.

 “JOSH!” she screamed, over the sound of his screams, as an enormous blade sliced through her friend and ended his life. “NO, JOSH, JOSH!”

Electronic laughter rang through the room and Sam shook with terror and disgust. “What is wrong with you?!” she screamed. “How could you – you’re fucking sick!”

The laughter died down and that terrible, thoughtful amusement took its place. “So I’ve heard. But this isn’t about me, Samantha. And it isn’t really about you either. But this game is for all to enjoy, so I’m going to give you ten seconds. Nine…”

“What?” Sam’s eyes widened. “Nonononono –”

“Eight. Seven –” The doors slammed open behind her and Sam stumbled back at the sight of the looming figure in overalls and a demonic clown mask, holding a large metal canister in one hand.  “Sa-am,” he rumbled mockingly, black eyes glinting in the low light. “Sa-am? Are you going to waste your ten seconds, Sam?”

Sam finally managed to get her legs to work, pushing past the sheer fright, and sprinting for the other door. She slammed it behind her, shaking fingers almost dropping the torch, and jumped over the bed, just as the door burst open again. She could hear the heavy tread of the psycho on the wooden floorboards, boots thumping loudly as he stalked after her.

“Shit, shit, shit –” She fled down the concreate stairs to the basement, nearly falling but catching herself just in time, and still clutching that stupid, fucking towel, oh God, she was going to lose it any second –

Baseball bat! The thought flashed through her mind and she ducked behind the row of shelves where she had found the makeshift weapon earlier.

“Sam? Why are you hiding?”

Shit, shit – She switched off the torch and prayed he hadn’t seen the light. She could hear the mechanical breathing, just on the other side of the concreate support pillar she was hiding behind.

“Sa-am.” His voice was back to mocking. “Come out, come out, wherever you are. Why prolong the inevitable, Sam? Come out. I’ll make it quick. You won’t suffer, I promise.”

Sam’s knuckles whitened on the baseball bat. Yeah, like I fucking believe that, she thought, with more than a hint of hysteria. I haven’t given up on living yet, you asshole.

“You can’t hide from me, Sam.” A rhythmic clanking started up, echoing around the basement, and Sam tensed, every nerve singing with tension. “Don’t you know I can smell you? I can smell your fear.”

He walked into her line of vision and paused for an agonisingly long second. Sam barely noticed that she had stopped breathing entirely. Then he turned suddenly and looked down the aisle into the shadows where she was hiding. “Gotcha.” The single word dripped with satisfaction and a wave of cold fear washed over Sam.

Don’t hesitate, go! She leapt out of her crouch, propelling herself forward hard.  He seemed surprised that she wasn’t frozen in fear, and his split-second delayed reaction gave her the opportunity to swing the bat. It crashed into his shoulder, knocking him off-balance and Sam turned to run, but thick, gloved fingers closed over her wrist. “No,” she shouted, in fury and frustration and fear, kicking out hard, desperately trying to free herself.

“Yes,” the deep, distorted voice replied, dragging her backwards even as she fought. A rubber mask was shoved over her nose and mouth and she choked on the thick, cloying gas that it emitted, still struggling and fighting even as it stole the strength from her limbs. “Not good enough, Samantha,” he taunted, deep and mocking.

Her arms and legs stopped responding and Sam looked up, the hazy, wavering image of that awful clown mask the last thing she saw before her consciousness slid down, down, into the dark…

xxx

“Mmm…what…?” Ashley opened her eyes slowly. Her head hurt massively, particularly the area around her left eye. It felt hot and inflamed, and her cheekbone was throbbing. She looked up, squinting in an effort to see. The room was dark but a single pool of white light fell on the area she was sitting in; it illuminated the table in front of her, the chair Chris was slumped in across from her and the chair she was…tied...to.

 Oh God! Ashley tugged frantically at her bonds but they refused to budge. “Chris!” she whispered, fear closing her throat. “Oh God, Chris please wake up, Chris!” Her voice rose to a near-shriek and he stirred in his own bonds.

“Ash?” he raised his head sluggishly, squinting in the dim light.  “Ash?” his voice became increasingly concerned as alertness returned to his eyes, “What happened? What did he do to you?”

She was sure she must look terrible to prompt such a reaction; her head was throbbing badly enough that she was pretty sure that half of her face must be one big bruise. “I – I think he hit me,” she said shakily, the metallic taste of blood sharp on her tongue.

Chris swore and yanked at the metal cuff securing him to the chair. “I’m going to fucking kill him –”

“Oh God, oh God,” Ashley whispered, fear curling around her words as her fingers twisted frantically in around her restraints. There was not the slightest hint of give in the metal. “This isn’t happening, this isn’t happening –”

“Come out, you murdering piece of shit!” Chris roared, struggling against his own bonds, anger and fear evident in his voice.

“We’re going to die.” The awful, cold certainty had stolen over her like a death shroud. “He’s going to kill us like he killed Josh.”

“No one is going to be killed,” Chris tried to reassure her, but she ran on, desperate to finish before the psycho decided to step in.

“I wish I’d told you – told you before,” she choked, tripping on the words.

“What? Told me what?” Chris’ voice trembled.

“It’s too late now – we were always talking around it and now we’ve wasted everything, all the time we had –”

“Ashley. None of it was wasted.” Chris’ tone was soft and shaky, but sincerity coloured it so strongly that it was impossible to doubt.

“What do you mean?” Her voice broke halfway through the sentence.

“Every second I spent with you, was the only thing I ever wanted to do with my time. I’m sorry,” he choked. “I should have told you how I felt about you.”

“Chris.” She was half-sobbing, joy and grief and fear all saturating his name as she struggled to speak. “Oh, Chris –”

“Ashley, I swear, when we get out of this –”

An ominous grinding came from somewhere above them, followed by the hideously familiar sound of a sawblade whirring into life.

“Oh God –”

“No, no, no, no –” Ashley chanted.

“Hello there, my special little subjects.”  The psycho’s voice echoed through the ruined basement.

“Chris, I’m scared,” she cried, yanking her hands against the restraints. Blood welled up as the thin skin of her wrists was broken, the metal cuffs biting deeply. She knew she was being unfair, that Chris had to be just as terrified as she was, but she couldn’t make herself calm down, she was like a broken pipe, spilling fear instead of water –

“Don’t be scared, Ash –”

“Oh, you should be scared, Ash,” the deep voice, filled with awful amusement, came filtering through the speakers. “Because at least one of you isn’t going to be leaving this room alive.”

“You’re a monster,” Chris snarled, voice filled with rage and terror.

A distorted chuckle echoed around the room. “You’re not the first person to call me that. Not even the first person to call me that tonight. Sweet little Sam…”

“What have you done with her?” Ashley rattled at her restraints, a little current of anger running through her fear now. “Where is she?”

“Oh, don’t worry about Sam, Ashley. Worry about yourself. Because Chris has already made one fatal choice today, and now he must make another. Chris, you can take that gun on the table in front of you, and you can shoot yourself – or you can shoot Ashley. Or you can do nothing and the sawblades will kill you both. But, you have my word, if one of you dies, the sawblades will not descend any further. The choice is yours.”

Chris snatched the gun and fired at the sawblades, his face twisted in anger. Deep, mocking laughter echoed around the room. “Oh Chris. Don’t be so ridiculous. You won’t escape my trap that easily. And if you don’t make a decision soon, you won’t get to make one at all. Choose wisely.”

Chris took a deep breath and screwed up his face. And in one swift movement, put the gun to his own head.

“No!” Ashley lurched forward in her bonds, straining desperately. “No, wait Chris, no! Kill me instead, Chris, don’t, don’t shoot yourself! You saved me before; let me choose to save you, let me die in your place!” Her eyes were wet with tears. “Please…”

Chris’ hand trembled on the pistol, but it stayed pointing at his head. “I can’t. I’m sorry, Ash. I can’t kill you.”

“No!” Ashley howled. “No, Chris, no, I love you –!”

Bang!

Ashley’s scream of horror was lost in the sound of the gunshot, echoing through the vast basement. “No, no, no, no, no,” she repeated, voice hoarse and cheeks wet with tears. She barely even noticed as the sawblades stopped moving, as the shadows shifted and the psycho stepped into the light, mask shining bone-white; she couldn’t stop staring in dazed horror at Chris’ slumped form in the other chair. The table was flecked with shining scarlet and the shadowed pillar behind him was dark with blood and bone and brain matter.

Then the psycho stepped directly into her line of sight and she raised her head to look into the horrible white mask and the glinting black eyes. “Why?” she said brokenly. “How could you…how could you…?”

“Because you need to pay for what you did. All of you.” The deep voice was laced with definite anger, coming clearly through the electronic distortion.

“What?” Ashley whispered. “What are you talking about?”

“Oh, you know exactly what I’m talking about, Ashley.”  He stepped forward until he was towering over her in the chair. “The question is, ‘how could you?’”

Cold realisation settled over her. “You mean what happened…what happened with Hannah and Beth…” Of course. He’s obsessed with them, we saw that note in the library –

“Yes.” The word was an angry hiss. “Cruel. Selfish. You hurt Hannah for your amusement…and killed them both surely as if you’d done it with your own hands.”

“No.” Ashley was aghast. “I never meant to hurt anyone!” Her voice wavered and broke as her eyes were drawn back to the other side of the table. “You killed Chris!”

“Oh, Ashley. Weren’t you paying attention?” he said mockingly. “Chris killed himself.”

“Because you forced him to!” Ashley screamed, suddenly furious at the hypocrisy. She struggled against her restraints, yanking hard enough to split the skin further around her wrists. Blood shone on the metal, slick and bright. “You sick bastard!”

“What I offered Chris was kindness. The chance to admit his love and have it returned before he died; is that not a good way to leave this world? To die knowing you are loved? After all, of all of you, he bore the least guilt for that night. For that, he deserved kindness.” His voice lowered and became even more dangerous. “If think his death was bad, well, I’m sure Jessica, Michael, Matthew and Emily will shudder to contemplate their fates.”

Ashley sat frozen in a horrible mixture of disbelief, anger and fear. “You’re not going to let any of us leave this mountain alive, are you?” she whispered.

He chuckled, an awful grating sound. “Well done, Ashley. No, no-one will be leaving this mountain tonight, or ever again.”

Ashley raised her chin, trembling. She didn’t want to die, oh God she didn’t want to die, but she was not going to beg this man, this monster for her life. “Go on then,” she said, mustering up her courage. “Kill me. If you’re going to do it, just do it.”

The psycho laughed. “Oh, don’t worry. You’ll see Chris again soon enough.” She heard the distinctive sound of a pistol cocking and he raised his right hand to reveal the gun, gleaming in the low light. She flinched as he pressed the cold metal barrel to her temple. “For his sake, I’m giving you the privilege of the same quick death. And after all, your offence was minor compared to some of your friends.”

Cold rage swelled within Ashley, at what this monster was doing, what he had done, and what he intended to go on to do after she was dead. It gave her the courage to stare him directly in the eyes without flinching. “Fuck. You.” She enunciated deliberately.

The ringing laughter of a psychopath and an overwhelmingly loud explosion of noise in her left ear was the last thing Ashley ever heard.

xxx

Jess yawned sleepily and curled closer against Mike’s bare chest. The flickering firelight painted their skin a soft gold and filled the small living room with warmth. I knew a fire was a good idea.

“You okay, Jess?” Mike’s voice rumbled pleasantly in his chest, vibrating against her ear and unbidden, a warm, contented smile curled Jessica’s mouth. She rolled over to look up at him so he could see exactly just how okay she was.

 “Peachy,” she grinned, knowing the happiness was written all over her face.

Mike grinned back at her, with both pride and happiness. “Well, obviously…”

 She snorted and lightly swatted his chest. “Oh, really? Then why did you ask?” The banter was playful but she glowed with quiet joy, knowing that their previous conversation was the reason he was checking to make sure she was okay. He really is a good guy.

“Because it is, of course, my duty to ensure the happiness and wellbeing of the Snowball Queen at all times,” Mike said solemnly, his mouth twitching like he wanted to laugh.

Jess really did laugh then. “You’re an idiot,” she said fondly.

“Well, this idiot is hungry.” Mike slid out from under her, leaving Jessica pouting at the loss of her pillow. “Do you want anything?”

“Yeah, you back here, on this couch with me,” Jess said, batting her eyelashes in an exaggerated fashion.

He grinned at her as he slipped on his jeans and padded into the kitchen, flicking on the lights. “I’ll be right back, I promise.”

“Fiiiine,” she heaved a dramatic sigh as she rolled over.  His laughter drifted through the doorway and she smiled again, unable to help the curl of warmth in her chest at the sound. She snuggled down into the intent left by his body in the cushions, drawing the blanket closer around her to help keep the heat in.

She was just starting to doze off to the sound of cutlery clinking and the rustle of packaging, when sudden there was a loud curse, followed almost instantly by a loud crash.

“Shit!”

“Mike?” Jess sat up and peered around, disorientated. She realised the kitchen was in complete darkness; the only light came from the fire, which was starting to die down to red embers.

“I’m fine, Jess,” he sounded distracted and annoyed, but not at her. “The lights just went out and accidently I knocked my plate off the worktop.” There was the sound of a light switch clicking on and off. “The electricity’s not working.”

“What?” she frowned. “We turned the generator on though…”  An idea came to her. “Maybe it’s the fuse box? I think I saw one just outside the front door.”

“Good idea,” Mike called from the kitchen. “I’ll look for a torch, there’s gotta be one in here somewhere.”

“Cool.” Jess slid off the couch and quickly pulled on her bra and panties, followed by her shirt. Where the heck are my jeans…? Never mind, I’ll only be outside for a minute. She padded across the room carefully, trying not to bump into anything in the semi-darkness, and grabbed the door handle. It refused to turn. “What the heck?” she frowned. “Mike!” she raised her voice. “Did you lock the door?”

“What? No,” he sounded confused. “Are you sure it’s not just stiff?”

Normally she would have pounced on the innuendo, but she was really starting to get anxious and not in the mood for joking anymore. “No.” Her voice was sharper than she intended, as she rattled the door handle futilely. “It’s not budging.”

“Hello Jessica, Michael.”

Jess nearly jumped out of her skin in fright as a deep, electronically-distorted voice suddenly echoed around the cabin. “What the hell…?!” she heard Mike yelp from the kitchen.

“I hope you’ve had fun here tonight. Because the rest of the evening isn’t going to go nearly so well for you.”

“Oh my God, you pervert,” Jess hissed in fright and disgust, crossing her arms protectively over her chest. She was suddenly very aware that she was standing in only a shirt and panties and oh my God, we just had sex, what if this freak was filming us? Her thoughts spun chaotically, frantically trying work out what was going on. Had he cut the lights and locked them in? The cabin clearly had some sort of speaker system wired in, it wasn’t impossible that other electronics had been remotely rigged –

Just as she had that thought, the television in the corner of the room suddenly came on and she leapt back, unnerved. “Jess!” Mike finally made it past the wreckage of the broken plate in his bare feet and hurried immediately to her side. “Are you okay?”

That very question that had warmed her earlier did nothing to banish the fear crawling around inside her now. “Oh God, Mike,” she whispered, horrified and unable to take her eyes from the screen, even as she accepted his embrace. He followed her line of vision and paled in horror.

The screen showed Ashley and Josh tied a wall, an enormous spinning sawblade travelling steadily towards them. Jess screamed as it sliced into Josh’s stomach, echoed by Mike’s own cry of horror. “Oh Jesus, oh God, fuck –”

The video didn’t stop there, relentlessly continuing: Sam, fleeing in nothing but a towel, through the lodge’s basement, from a looming figure in a demonic clown mask; Chris and Ashley, bloodstained and stumbling through what looked like a meat locker; Chris and Ashley tied to chairs, with two sawblades descending towards them, Chris putting the gun to his own head, Chris pulling the trigger, Chris’ head exploding in a shower of gore –

Jess was dimly aware of Ashley’s sobbing and screaming echoing her own, as she clung to Mike and wept in horrified shock and grief, and Mike’s own fierce embrace, holding her back so hard that it would probably leave bruises. She could hear him mumbling a litany of curses and denials, in a dazed horrified way. The psycho in the clown mask executed Ashley onscreen and then the TV went dark.

“Well, I hope that’s been enlightening,” the voice crackled through the speakers again, sounding malevolently amused.  “I look forward to commencing the next part of the game with you, Jessica, Michael.”

A low hissing suddenly started around them and Jess looked around frantically, blinking past her teary, blurry eyes.  A pale mist was filling up the room, barely visible in the dim light of the dying fire. A sweet cloying scent filled the air and Jess instantly clapped her hand over her mouth, trying not to breathe in the gas. Beside her, Mike had snatched up his abandoned shirt to breathe into, and by unspoken agreement they stumbled forward, holding onto each other, searching desperately for an exit.

But to no avail. Every window and door refused to budge, and Jess could feel herself growing weak and lightheaded as more and more of the gas found its way past her makeshift gasmask. “Mike,” she gasped, fear and dread clawing at her. “Mike…”

“I don’t know, Jess,” he whispered desperately into her hair. She could feel the despair and fury and fear radiating off of him.

Deep, mocking laughter rolled through the room. “Goodnight, boys and girls.”

The last thing Jess felt before she fell unconscious was Mike’s weakening hands desperately trying to hold onto her and him frantically calling her name.

xxx

 Emily huffed as she pushed open the big door to the main lodge. “Well, I don’t know, Matt, maybe you dropped it somewhere else? Because I sure as hell didn’t.”

Her boyfriend’s tired sigh came from somewhere behind her. “Em, I don’t even remember this bag and it wasn’t anywhere between here and the cable car. We checked twice.”

“Well, maybe…” Emily trailed off as they stepped into the living room. It was dark and absolutely silent. “Hey!” she yelled. “Guys! What the hell have you been doing all this time? Why aren’t the lights on?” Her voice echoed and bounced up through the cavernous three-storey room. There was no reply.

“What the hell?” she muttered uneasily. “Matt, do you…” She turned around. He wasn’t there.  The front door gaped open, a black void. All the little hairs on the back of Emily’s arms rose. She backed away, unease blossoming into fear. “Matt?” she called. “Matt, this isn’t funny. Where are you?”

There was a tiny noise somewhere behind her. Emily spun on her heel instantly, just in time to see something swinging towards her head but with no time to avoid the blow. The blurred object smacked into her temple and Emily collapsed to the floor, as darkness swallowed her vision.

Chapter Text

Sam woke slowly. Her head swam and her thoughts were slow and sluggish. Only a vague sense of urgency and unease kept her from falling back asleep. There was something…something important…if only she weren’t so tired…

Her mind rolled like a whale turning slowly in the waves, thoughts slipping through her grasp like minnows darting through her fingers. Something…something about being chased…

She squinted into dark, vaguely aware of some sort of binding around her arms and legs, securing her to the chair she was in. The only light she could see was a wall of television screens, flickering with dull blue light that hurt her head even more. And the outline of a figure…of someone...sitting in front of them…

The silhouette was setting alarms wailing in some corner of her brain but it was behind walls and walls of cotton wool, so distant it might as well be on another planet.

A deep garbled voice spoke a very familiar name and Sam struggled with her uncooperative brain long enough to think, Jessica, he said Jessica, before losing the battle and slipping into unconsciousness once more.

xxx

Jess blinked, stirring slowly. Her head felt too heavy for her neck. What happened…? She sat up, trying to get her bearings.

The room she was in looked if it was underground, what with its bare concrete walls and floor, no windows, a single door and a solitary bulb hanging from the ceiling without a lampshade. In large, obvious letters, the word ‘EXIT’ was sloppily scrawled in red paint above the doorframe and between her and the door… Jess’ gaze fell upon the ground, increasingly horrified as her memories started to trickle back. Between her and the door, stretched an expanse of broken glass, sharp and glinting in the harsh light.

“Oh God,” she whimpered, suddenly excruciatingly aware of her bare feet and legs, of the thin fabric of her shirt. “Oh God, I can’t…”

“You’ll have to if you want to leave, Jessica.” That horrible voice suddenly spoke from nowhere and Jess shrieked before she could stop herself. Heart pounding in shock, she clamped a hand over her mouth as electronic laughter issued from the hidden speakers. “Or you could just stay here,” the psycho continued, still sounding amused. “I hear starvation is a slow, painful way to die.”

“What do you want?!” Jess screamed, clenching her fists, nails biting painfully into her palms. “What the hell is wrong with you?!”

The psycho chuckled. “A lot of things, or so I’ve been told. As for what I want,” his voice dropped, becoming even deeper and more menacing. “What I want is for you to pay for what you’ve done Jessica. You and all your friends.”

“What? I don’t understan –” But then her mind flashed to what had happened so recently on this mountain and ice pooled in her stomach. “You mean – you mean Hannah and Beth.”

“Yes,” the voice snarled, low and thick with anger, crackling with electronic distortion. “You killed them, Jessica. And now, I’m going to kill you.”

Jess shook her head, in disbelief and grief and horror. “We never meant – never meant to hurt Hannah –”

“They are dead!” The psycho roared, raising his voice for the first time and his rage seemed to fill the room. “And they’re never coming back, regardless of what you meant!”

For a few seconds, there was no sound as Jess stood stock still, trembling. Then he spoke again, sounding as calm as if he had never lost his temper. “Tick-tock Jessica. Michael will be worried.”

Jess had thought she was scared before; now her stomach dropped as she hit an entirely new level of fear, ice cascading through her as she practically went numb with terror. “Mike,” she breathed, horrified. She had been so distracted, she hadn’t thought –

“Where is he?” she screamed. “Where is my boyfriend you son of a bitch –”

The speaker system shut off with a final sort of click and Jess’ furious, terrified question was left to bounce off the bare concrete walls, unanswered.

xxx

Emily woke with a start. Her head was throbbing painfully, and she was pretty sure the skin was split over her left eye. There was certainly plenty of blood coating the side of her head; she could feel it drying on her skin and matting her hair.

It was also then that, as she sat up, she discovered she had been lying in the centre of a ring of ten metal boxes of various shapes and sizes, in a bare concrete room. She also discovered that her ankles were clamped in manacles and chained to the floor. “What the hell…?”

“Hello Emily. Nice of you to join us again in the world of the waking. Now, we’re going to play a little game, you and I – put your vaunted intelligence to the test. You see, in one of the boxes around you is the key to your manacles. And in the other nine there are bear traps. I’m going to read you a riddle Emily, and then you’re going to have to make a choice…”

xxx

Mike stirred with a groan. He rolled up onto his hands and knees, and sat back on his heels, staring sluggishly around the room. He appeared to have been lying in some sort of derelict entrance hall. It had clearly been a grand room at one point but it was now littered with chunks of rubble, the staircases were in ruins and all the windows and the doors had been boarded up. Cold moonlight fell in through a skylight three storeys above and illuminated a sign reading Blackwood Sanatorium.

I’m in the old sanatorium? Mike blinked, feeling his brain beginning to get up to speed. Memories began to flood back in and he jerked upright. “Jessica!” he cried, panicked. “Jess!” Silence and the echo of his own voice was his only answer.

Scrambling to his feet, he set off in an uneven, stumbling run for the only visible exit to the room. His limbs were clumsy with cold; the only thing he was wearing was his jeans and he had been lying on a bare, stone floor for God knows how long.

He reached the doorway and came to a halt. There was a small antechamber ahead of him, then another set of closed double doors, over which was plaque with the word ‘Chapel’ written on it. Set up in the antechamber however, was a small table with two open cages on it, each with an object inside.

Mike paced forward warily and peered at the cages in the semi-dark.  In the left, there was a machete. In the right, there was a pistol, with three bullets lined up neatly next to it, gleaming in the half-light. Between them there was a slip of paper, with the words ‘Choose your weapon’ written on it.

Mike frowned. What’s to stop me taking both? Reaching in, he lifted out the gun and ammunition and then moved to the other cage to take out the machete, but with a loud snik, it snapped shut, missing his fingertips by millimetres.

“Shit!” Mike jumped back, heart beating fast from the narrow escape. I guess that’s what’s stopping me. He loaded the bullets into the gun and paced forward to the chapel door, every nerve on high alert as his mind raced. That psycho must have a reason for arming me. He wouldn’t want me to be able to defend myself against him, so it stands to reason that something else is going to attack me…

Mike peered through the slot in one of the doors, conveniently located at eye height and his mouth went dry at the sight that greeted him. Lean, sleek canine shapes prowled through the chapel, claws clicking on the bare stone floor and eyes glowing in the faint moonlight trickling down from the dusty skylight.

Wolves, Mike thought in absolute disbelief. Motherfucking wolves. What kind of psycho risks his life trapping a bunch of wild…oh right. The kind of psycho that spies on you when you’re having sex, knocks you out with sleeping gas and kidnaps you.

He glanced uncertainly at the gun in his hand. He’d never killed anything in his life before. And there were a lot more wolves than bullets for his gun. But there were no other paths open to him; the doors and windows of the room behind him were boarded over and nailed shut, and there was no way he could pry them open with only his bare hands. Waiting was always an option but – Jess had to be here somewhere too. His stomach tightened at the thought. He couldn’t stay here; God knows that psycho could be doing to her. Not to mention if he stayed put, the psycho might decide to just open the doors remotely and let the wolves into this room too.

No, going on is the only option. Even if it is playing into his hands. The thought left a sour taste in Mike’s mouth but he could see no other way. Taking a deep breath, he hoisted the pistol, adjusted his grip and sent up a brief prayer to a God he was no longer sure he believed in. Then he cracked the door open and slid as silently as he was able into the wolves’ den.

xxx

When Matt woke, the first thing he was aware of was how much his head hurt. His skull throbbed and ached all over, although the pain seemed to radiate out from a spot on the back of his head. His mouth was throbbing as well, and his lips felt oddly thick, swollen and inflamed. He tried to raise his hand to touch the site of his wounds and that was when he discovered that he couldn’t move his fingers at all.

The hell… He squinted, through the dark and through blurred, painful vision, and then his eyes widened in shock. He was sitting slumped in a chair, which was bolted to the floor, in a small, shadowy room.  His legs were manacled to the chair and his hands were bound, oddly delicately, in red thread. Deceptively slender strands had been woven in and out, and in and out, and all around his fingers, like some child’s failed game of cat’s cradle. The mass of thin red threads secured his hands to the handles on a big camera in front of him, which was long and mounted on some sort of stand. It was the sort of camera that wouldn’t look out of place on a movie set and the front end of it was pointed towards a window of smoky glass, that Matt could just about see by craning his head around the bulk of the camera.

Through the glass, barely visible, was what looked like two cells made of thick, wire-mesh. And in one of them was…

“Emily!” Matt tried to shout but a sudden explosion of pain in his mouth made him instinctively recoil into the chair. What the hell... he thought, bewildered and hurting. He carefully, tentatively tried to open his mouth again. It hurt a lot less, but it still sparked wild, bright pain from the sensitive skin around his lips and he couldn’t part them more than a couple of millimetres without the pain reaching agonising levels. There was an odd resistance too, some sort of material moving as he moved his mouth, increasing the pressure on what he assumed was damaged skin…

“Hello Matthew.”

Matt jumped in surprise as a deep, electronically distorted voice spoke. It echoed, disproportionately loud in the tiny room. “Today you’re going to help me with a little experiment. I imagine you’ve already noticed the camera in front of you; after all, it’s hard to miss something you’re attached to.”

Matt wriggled futilely in his bonds, trying to find a loose knot, something. It didn’t take a genius to work out that this was not a good situation to be in, even if he had no clue what the hell was going on or why.

“And it’s not been the first camera you’ve been attached to, has it Matthew?” The deep voice gained a dangerous edge. “Not quite as literally as this one, but you were very eager to film Hannah that night last year, weren’t you?”

Matt froze and the voice laughed. It wasn’t a pleasant laugh, but electronic overlay made it even more horrible and menacing. “I see you do remember. Well, you’ll be pleased to know you’ll have the front row seat for the upcoming performance, since you’re in charge of filming this one too.”

Matt’s horrified gaze landed on the view through the smoky window in front of him, the two wire-mesh cages, one of which contained a pale-looking Emily, gripping the mesh tightly with one hand. It looked like it was the only thing keeping her upright. “Mmmf!” he tried to protest but once again, he couldn’t open his mouth without a fresh wave of agony.

“Oh, no need to thank me. After all, I do know how you like to watch Matt,” the voice rumbled mockingly. “But remember, there is no talking allowed from the audience during the performance. Not that you’ll be able to, with your mouth sewn shut.”

Matt’s mind went blank with shock. …What? Slowly, tentatively, he probed the back of his lips with his tongue. Focusing past the initial shock of pain, he found…thread. Strands of thread disappearing into his skin.

“Prevention is better than cure, Matthew,” the voice chided. “I didn’t think you’d be able to keep quiet and we don’t want to throw off the performers, do we? Now sit tight. The show’s about to begin…”

xxx

Jess gritted her teeth as she limped along the narrow corridor. It had taken her a while to get out of the glass-strewn room but she had managed to use her shirt as a makeshift broom, wrapping her hands in it and crawling forwards on hands and knees, carefully sweeping the glass out of the way.

Not all of it though; slivers of glass studded her knees and shins, testimony to her failure to catch all of the pieces. She had picked them out as best she could, but there were some shards she wasn’t going to be able to remove without tweezers.  With every step, fresh blood trickled down her legs from the puncture wounds and the glass ground against her flesh.

Could be worse, Jess reminded herself grimly. You could have feet full of glass and then you wouldn’t be walking at all. Although at the moment, I don’t know where the hell I’m walking to.

The corridor was grey and featureless, with exposed pipes running overhead. She had been following it ever since she left the room of glass and so far she hadn’t come across any other rooms or hallways branching off this one. It’s got to end eventually, she reasoned. I have to get out of here, I have to find Mike. The thought of her boyfriend threatened to shatter her relative calm and Jess took several deep breaths, trying to regain her equilibrium. The psycho’s taunt about Mike had been haunting her. What if he was lying somewhere, injured, and she was wasting time down here, wandering about in this fucking endless hallway? 

Jess bit her lip hard, trying to suppress the mix of fear and anger that threatened to overwhelm her. I need to get out of here… She rounded the corner and halted in surprise. The corridor ended abruptly about three metres away, terminating in a plain metal door.

Jess stared at it, curling her right hand reflexively in a fist. She was aware she was likely playing right into the psycho’s hands, running around like a rat in his maze, but what were the other options? There were no other route to take and she couldn’t break through the walls without a fucking pickaxe or something.

No choice. Keep going. Taking a deep breath, she stepped forward and grasped the door handle. It opened easily at her touch…into complete darkness.

Jess frowned. Sliding one foot forward in front of her carefully, in case there was a sudden drop just inside the door, she tentatively felt her way into the new room.

“Hello?” a familiar voice called from the darkness, tone touched with irritation as usual. “What the hell is with the powercut?”

“Emily?” Jess asked, astonished. At any other moment, Em would have been the last person she would have wanted to see, but right now any (relatively) friendly face would be a welcome sight.

“Jess?” Emily sounded equally astonished. Then she suddenly yelled, “No, don’t come in, you idiot! It’s a fucking – !”

The door swung shut behind Jess with a resounding bang and at the same moment, light flooded the room as all the overhead lights suddenly came on.

“ – trap,” Emily finished resignedly. “Why are you so goddamn stupid sometimes, Jess?”

The blonde squinted against the light as her eyes adjusted. She was standing in some sort of cage made of sturdy wire-mesh, with a small slot about fifty centimetres long and twenty centimetres tall, situated around eye-level. Emily was in a cage exactly the same as hers, immediately adjacent to her own cell. Apart from that the room they were in was empty of anything else. Only one other door led into it, directly opposite their cages.

“Well, it looks like you were caught in the exact same trap to me,” Jess retorted.

“Yeah, whatever,” Emily muttered, leaning against the wall of her cage. Jess frowned. That response wasn’t like Emily, her tone lacking its usual bite.

The blonde looked closer and realised exactly how pale and drawn Emily’s face was. Then her eyes fell on the brunette’s left arm. She seemed to have wrapped it in her jacket and was cradling it close, in a hunched, protective sort of way. And…and there was something horribly wrong with the outline of her arm through the coat. It was hard to tell with the dark fabric, but her jacket looked soaked through…

“Em?” Jess didn’t realise she was speaking in a sort of hushed whisper, until it was already out, floating in the space between them. “Em, is your arm…?”

“Okay?” Emily’s voice was laced with its usual mocking this time, although a lot more exhausted than normal and with new bitterness threading around her words.  “No. And it’s never going to be fucking okay again. That psycho made me answer riddles to get the key to my handcuffs and for every wrong answer, a fucking bear trap took a chunk out of me.”

Jess  stared, speechless with horror. Emily offered her a twisted smile. “What about you?”

“Uh,” Jess gave herself a shake and glanced down at her legs, streaked with blood. “I had to get out of room filled with broken glass.”

Emily considered. “Doesn’t seem so bad.”

Jess laughed, partly in disbelief, partly in morbid amusement. Only Em would turn even this into a contest. Although, that could be easily her way of coping. “No shoes, no socks, no jeans,” she reminded her, joining in.

Emily nodded. “That’s more difficult. Still easier though than –”

The door across from them was flung open so hard it rebounded off the wall and a bloodied figure sprinted into the room. An eerie howling drifted along the corridor behind them and the figure slammed the door shut again, cutting the sound off, and slumping against the wall in relief. Then they raised their head slightly and Jess’s eyes widened in a mixture of horror and joy. “Mike!” she cried, hearing the call echoed by Emily next to her.

Her boyfriend looked up, seeming to see the room in front of him for the first time. Jess couldn’t exactly blame him for not being lucid. His bare torso and arms were littered with deep gouges and bite marks, and his entire body was streaked in scarlet. His jeans seemed to have protected his legs a little better but teeth and claws had clearly still penetrated the fabric; the denim was also tattered and soaked in blood.

“Jess? Em?” he whispered in disbelief. Then relief so strong it was painful to look at appeared on his face and he hobbled forward, nearly falling against the front of Jess’s cage. The blonde didn’t recall actually moving, only being suddenly pressed up against the fence, trying to desperately touch as much of Mike as she could through the mesh.

“Mike, oh my God, Mike,” she repeated over and over, tears running down her face. Mike was no better, tears washing trails through the blood on his face. Their hands found each other through the narrow slot in the front of Jess’s cage, and they clutched at each other desperately, yearning for more than that meagre contact.

“Well, now that everyone is present, I think it’s time to begin the experiment.”

No. Jess raised her head and snarled at that by now familiar, hated, dreaded voice coming from unseen speakers. “Fuck you!”

In the cage next to her, Emily was gripping the mesh with her one good hand, growling similar insults.

“Now, this experiment involves all of you, but Michael has the starring role in this performance.”

Mike dazedly raised his head at the sound of his name and Jess’ fear spiked at the unfocused expression on his face. How much blood had he lost exactly?

“Now, Michael. You will pick up that gun that you dropped by the door and load it with this bullet.” A small panel opened in the ceiling and a single gleaming bullet fell through, bouncing off the concrete floor with a loud tinkle.

“And then you will make a choice; Jessica or Emily. Who lives – and who dies?”

Chapter Text

“And then you will make a choice; Jessica or Emily. Who lives – and who dies?”

Jess froze in horror at the pronouncement and Mike paled considerably, swaying slightly on the spot. “No, no, no, no…” he muttered dazedly. “I can’t – I can’t kill someone. Not Jess, not Em…”

“Oh, but you can Michael.” The voice was darkly amused. “You can and you will, or I will kill them both.”

Mike backed away from the cages, hands going to the sides of his head. “No, no, no…” he mumbled in distress, eyes glazed.

Jess felt the terror curl into a hard ball somewhere in her stomach. A large part of her mind was stuck in a frightened loop of denial, locked in the same sort of this can’t be happening chant Mike was muttering. But to her shame, a smaller, colder part of herself, a part she didn’t want to actually acknowledge, whispered – he’ll pick me, right?

Mike will save me over Em…he’s my boyfriend. Jess didn’t know if she was more ashamed of the selfishness of the thought, or that tiny prickle of uncertainty that accompanied it. He’s my boyfriend…but he’s been Emily’s too. And I know he still cares for her.

He cares for me too! A part of her argued.

Of course he does. I’ve never doubted that. But enough to essentially kill Emily for me?

Guilt and shame and fear tasted bitter in her mouth and Jess’s gaze moved to Emily in the cage next to her for the first time since the psycho’s announcement. Em hadn’t moved or uttered a word, rooted in place with her one good hand curled in the wire mesh fence. Her gaze was fixed on Mike, her eyes narrowed in an expression of concentration. Jess could almost see the thoughts flickering past behind her eyes, lightning quick, and the familiarity of it made something hurt in her chest. It was Em at her most analytical, at her sharpest, the intelligence and calculation and drive that had always made her a force to be reckoned with, in both academic and social circles.

Then she stirred. Her spine straightened, her head came up and she breathed out slowly and evenly as her face settled into typical determined lines. Whatever options Emily had been considering, she had made her decision and Jess ached at the familiarity inherent in the gesture. Once upon a time, she had seen that expression on Emily’s face nearly every day of their lives – but then the prank had happened. She had been existing separately from Emily for a year now, and to suddenly see this familiar facet of her one-time friend (best friend, whispered a quiet, still-wounded part of her mind), even in these far from normal circumstances, was enough to steal her breath.

“Mike.” Emily’s voice was sharp and level. It carried without being loud and seemed to pierce Mike’s hazy cloud of pain and denial. His head came up again and he met her gaze, still wavering a little in place, as blood continued to leak in lazy rivulets down his torso.

“Em?” he asked hoarsely.

“Kill me.”

Jess’s eyes went wide, even as shock flashed over Mike’s face too. “What! No, Em, I can’t –”

“Yes, you can!” Emily snapped, her voice like a whip-crack. “It has to be one of us and –” her gaze moved to Jess, “– I know who you’d rather save.”

“I don’t want to kill either of you –” Mike started to protest, but she cut him off again.

“I know that, Mike. I’m not an idiot.” Her tone was bitingly sharp, but Jess was familiar with her venomous tongue. There was no real spite behind these words. “But it has to be one of us and I’m not going to win this popularity contest.”

So I’m quitting before I’m fired. Jess heard the rest of the unspoken sentence and was torn between the urge to laugh and the urge to sob. How wonderfully, terribly, typically Em.

Her ex-best friend held herself ramrod-straight, chin tilted up defiantly as she levelled a haughty, imperious stare at Mike. “Go ahead, Michael.”

Mike shook his head in denial and the gun wavered in his hands, but he didn’t lower it.

“Em…” Jess wasn’t aware she was going to speak until she heard the words leave her mouth. But it felt right. She couldn’t leave it like this, let Em go to the afterlife thinking she hated her. She desperately gripped the mesh separating her from the girl she had regarded as a sister for most of her life. “Em, I…”

“Don’t bother, Jess,” Emily said, her gaze still locked on Mike. “I know what you’re going to say.”

Jess faltered. The words you do?  hovered on her lips, but of course Em knew. Their relationship had gone both ways and a year wasn’t enough to erase a lifetime’s worth of knowledge of someone’s character.

How did it come to this? That we both became both so hurt and defensive in each other’s company, that our first instinct was to strike first to avoid getting hurt more? That we saw each other as the enemy?

The answer was obvious of course. In the wake of the prank that had gone so horribly, devastatingly wrong, they had drifted apart – and in much the same way, Em’s relationship with Mike had suffered. An inability to deal with their joint guilt and grief had driven them apart – and similarly, paradoxically, brought Jess and Mike together.

Tragedy either pushes people together, or tears them apart. Creates bonds, or destroys them.

“Jess.”

Jess looked up to see that finally, at last, Emily was meeting her gaze. Those dark eyes bored into her fiercely, with that familiar breath-taking intensity, that force of will. “You better not fucking die, Jess. If I get to the other side and find out you got yourself killed after this, there’ll be hell to pay.”

Jess was startled into a laugh, a laugh that broke halfway through into something more like a strangled sob. “Yes, ma’am,” she managed their usual mocking retort, complete with sarcastic salute.

“Hmph.” Emily swung back to face Mike, imperious, icy demeanour firmly in place. On the outside at least. Only Jess could see the fear underneath; only Jess knew that Em at her most controlled and haughty was Em at her most frightened. “Make that fucker pay for this, Jess.”

Then she barked, “Come on, Michael! I haven’t got all day!”

Mike’s face was a picture of agony. “Oh God, I’m sorry Em, I’m so sorry –”

“Do it!”

Bang! The gun leapt in his hands, the muzzle flashed and Emily fell like a puppet with its strings abruptly cut.

Jess couldn’t help the scream that tore itself out of her throat as the blood splattered through the wire-mesh onto her hair and clothes and skin, oh God she was covered in blood, Em’s blood, Em was dead, dead, dead, dead –

“Well done.” The speakers crackled back to life, the voice horrifically satisfied. “Self-sacrifice. How strangely noble for dear Emily. You may proceed, Jessica.”

The door to her cell slid open and Mike wasted no time in dropping the gun to meet her in a desperate, clinging embrace. Jess dug her fingers into his back, burrowing her face into his neck, trying desperately to memorise the feel and scent of her boyfriend. She felt him press his cheek to the top of her head, holding her in a hug so fierce it nearly hurt. She didn’t care. She felt the same way; terrified that he’d be ripped away from her at any moment, dreadfully, keenly aware of their mortality. This might be the last time you ever hold him, her mind whispered and Jess couldn’t stop the sob that escaped her at the thought, or the tears that slipped from her eyes.

“It’s okay, Jess. It’s okay,” Mike murmured dazedly against her hair, his voice breaking mid-sentence. He sounded choked with tears of his own. “It’s okay.”

No, it’s not. It’ll never be alright again. But she didn’t voice the thought, letting the kind lie remain uncontested as they held onto each other fiercely, desperately; just two bloodstained figures clinging to light in the dark.

xxx

Matt screamed soundlessly as Emily fell, one eye a gaping red ruin. He struggled furiously against his bonds, grief and fury roiling within him, unable to even scream properly thanks to that fucking sadistic psychotic bastard that had fucking stitched his mouth shut –

He was barely even aware of the pain in his hands, hundreds of threads digging into his skin deep enough to draw blood as he yanked mindlessly at his restraints. Emily, Emily, Emily, Emily, oh God Emily, nonononononono, please no –

Twang!

The pressure in his left hand suddenly lessened by the tiniest amount, as one of the threads was pulled taut over a sharp corner of the big camera stand and abruptly severed. Matt stared for a second, then his mind caught up with what he was seeing and he began feverishly pulling his restraints back and forth over the sharp edge, doing his best to ignore the pain; it strained the threads to their maximum reach just to reach the edge and made them cut deeply into his flesh.

By the time enough threads had snapped for him to be able to detach himself from the camera, his fingers and hands were streaked with bright crimson and carved with deep, bloody furrows.

Ignoring the throbbing pain in his hands, Matt then reached down to pry at the manacles clamping his ankles to the chair – but it was useless. No, God damn it, no!  He yanked more frantically at the restraints but all that happened was that his already bleeding fingers were further torn and shredded by the unforgiving metal.

Shit, no, come on!  Matt reached for the base of the chair legs but they were securely bolted to the floor. Then his fingers brushed something different…a small piece of metal in a very familiar shape.

No way… For a moment he was frozen in disbelief. Then Matt tugged quickly at the piece of metal, fingers clumsy with pain, and it came away from the back of the chair leg with the sound of tearing sellotape. He was left holding a tiny, shiny silver key.

This maniac is fucking making fun of me, Matt raged internally, even as he shoved the key into the lock of the manacle on his left leg. The key was there all along – I could have – Emily!

Rage and grief warred within him as he stood up, manacles falling away with a clatter to the concrete floor. I’m going to kill that fucker.

xxx

“You okay, Jess?” Mike muttered, as they limped along the corridor together.

“Yeah. I think your wolf bites trump my broken glass, frankly.” Jess aimed for a flippant tone and fell short. She adjusted her grip on her boyfriend’s waist, allowing him to lean on her more. It worried her how much he was relying on her to hold him up; he must be in a lot of pain to compromise his pride this much.

“Fucker,” Mike mumbled. “Gonna fucking kill him.”

Jess’ free hand tightened on the gun she had retrieved. “Join the club,” she said grimly. The pistol might have been out of bullets but she could always hit someone with it. Any weapon was a good weapon in this situation.

She was acutely aware of Emily’s blood, drying on her skin, her hair, her clothes. If she stopped to think about it, she was going to start crying again and not stop; so instead she pushed on, focusing on the warm weight of Mike at her side and on getting them both out of this hellhole.

“Jess.”

She looked up and saw instantly what had caught his attention. The corridor turned into a T-junction up ahead, and each of the two new branches ended in a door. On one door, a red butterfly was painted. On the other, a black butterfly.

“The hell?” Mike muttered quietly.

Jess narrowed her eyes at the pair of doors. “I think we have to choose.” The words left a bitter taste in her mouth. As long as this psycho was in control of their environment and the decisions they were forced to make, they weren’t going to have the chance to fight back or escape. Who are you kidding; escape. You’re going to die down here, in this filthy underground maze –

Shut the fuck up, she snapped at herself. Concentrate. Being fatalistic will get you nowhere.

“Fucking wonderful.” Mike swayed a little and fear spiked through Jess. She tightened her grip to support him further.

“Yeah.” She eyed the doors, anger and fear and bone-deep exhaustion fighting for dominance within her.  “Guess we have no choice but to choose, thanks to that fucking psycho.”

Mike laughed humourlessly. “What do you think then, Jess? Red – or black?”

Chapter Text

Mike laughed humourlessly. “What do you think then, Jess? Red – or black?”

Jess bit her lip. “Well, it’s not like either of those colours have particularly good connotations. Red – fire, blood, danger.  Black –”

“Death,” Mike supplied wearily. “Darkness.”

“Or they could mean nothing at all. This is his game after all,” Jess said bitterly. “He’s making us dance to his tune.”

“We’re going to have pick eventually,” Mike pointed out.

“I know, that’s the problem –”

The sound of a door slamming open somewhere back down the corridor behind them rang out, followed by the click of claws on concreate and low growling.

Mike paled so fast that Jess was worried for a moment he was going to faint. “Red,” she snapped decisively and he nodded frantically. They lurched forwards together, Jess knocking the red butterfly door open with one shoulder and pulling Mike through before slamming it shut hard behind them.

For a moment, they just stood there, leaning on each other and trembling with a mix of fear and adrenaline. Then, in unison, they glanced around the room they had stumbled into.

It was large and consisted mostly of a tiled floor and bare concrete walls – a running theme with the décor down here. A chain-link fence split the room in half, with a small, mesh door in the middle. In the other half of the room, five wooden boxes sat on a long table, each with a hole cut in the top. Behind the table was another door with the word ‘EXIT’ painted above it in red, much like in the room Jess had woken up in.

“The hell,” Mike muttered a second later.

“Good question,” she murmured back. They started making their way across the room towards the door in the chain-link fence. Then Mike gave a startled cry beside her and stumbled, wrenching away from her. Jess turned, grabbing for him desperately as the cry turned into a scream of pain, and she was horrified to see that one of the tiles had sunk under the weight of his left foot, and the metal jaws of some kind of trap were visible just under the floor. The teeth of the trap had bitten deep into Mike’s calf, trapping his leg.

Mike made pained, breathless sounds, tugging uselessly at the immovable steel jaws of the trap, now slick and gleaming red with his blood. Jess stepped towards him but his shout made her freeze in place. “No!” he cried, voice breaking with pain. “Stay there! There might be more traps!”

Jess glanced around in horror, seeing the tiled floor in a new light. “Shit,” she breathed. “It’s like a minefield.”

“Not quite, Jessica.” The psycho’s voice echoed loudly around the room and Jess jumped at the sudden noise, swearing in fright and anger. “But you don’t have time to worry about that anymore. You see, by stepping into that trap, Michael has activated a timer. And unless you can free him before it runs out, I’m afraid it will mean his untimely demise.” The malevolent amusement in his voice was clear even through the voice modulator. “In one of the five boxes on the other side of the door in the chain-link fence, is the C-clamp tool for depressing the springs of that bear trap. In the others…well, that’s for me to know and you to find out.”

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Jess chanted desperately under her breath, hopping from foot to foot. The whole thing practically screamed of another trap but she was physically incapable of abandoning Mike at this point. Her boyfriend barely looked lucid now, chalk-white and swaying slightly where he sat on the floor, streaked with blood from the wolf bites and from the trap still digging into the flesh of his calf.

She darted across the tiled floor and through the chain-link fence into the other half of the room, breathing out a silent sigh of relief when she didn’t trigger any more traps. She approached the table with the five boxes and eyed them warily. They looked identical and she’d been given no way of identifying what was what.

Mike made a low, pained noise somewhere behind her and Jess’ stress ratcheted higher. Which one, which one, which one –

“Tick-tock, Jessica,” the psycho taunted.

“Shut the fuck up!” she screamed at him, furious and afraid. Spinning, she reached for the nearest box and reached inside –

Empty.

Her fingers frantically searched, feeling into every corner of the box but to no avail. She swore and grabbed for the next box.

Empty.

“You have got to be kidding me,” Jess snarled and reached into the third box. The sensation of something closing around the tips of her index, middle and ring fingers was immediately followed by blinding pain and she cried out in shock and agony. The sides of the box fell away, to reveal a smaller version of the same trap clamped around Mike’s left leg, now gripping the tops of her fingers in inescapable steel teeth.

“What a shame, Jessica. You have chosen incorrectly.” The voice rolled across the room, deep and mocking. “I am, however, willing to give you a second chance; never let it be said that I am not generous. If you reach under that table, to your right, you’ll find a blade attached to the underside.” Jess dazedly reached out as instructed and to her distant surprise, he hadn’t lied. She stared at the gleaming machete now in her left hand. “And now, you have a choice to make. Your fingers – or dear Michael.”

Once she might have hesitated. Before tonight even. But they had already been through hell together; fingers seemed laughably small in comparison to Mike’s life. Do it fast, she reminded herself, settling into a stance and poising the machete to swing. Hard and fast and don’t think about it too much.

And with a deep breath, she did just that.

There was an odd moment of disconnect, as a part of her body suddenly, to her senses, seemed to vanish.  Then the pain hit and she couldn’t stop herself from screaming. “Fuck, shit, fuck –”

Hastily tearing off a wide strip from her shirt, Jess wound it around and around the three mutilated fingers before tying it as tightly as she could one-handed. The white fabric was already soaking through, alarmingly splotched with crimson, but she did her best to ignore it.

Swimming in a haze of pain and adrenaline, she reached for the fourth box with her wounded hand, still lucid enough to be aware that risking her uninjured hand on this was stupid –

“Ten,” the psycho began, awful amusement audible in his voice. “Nine…”

“No!” Jess plunged her hand into the box, no longer caring about caution of any kind. Her desperate search found nothing but thin air.

“Five…four…”

 She leapt for the last box and finally, finally, her fingers (three damaged, two whole) closed around the c-clamp tool. She spun on her heel and ran for the gate –

Slam!

“Zero.” The psycho finished, his words overlapping with Jess’ cry of frustrated fury as the gate slammed shut in her face.

“No, no, no –” She clung to the chain-link fence, fingers gripping the mesh desperately. “Mike, Mike –”

“It’s okay, Jess.” He managed a wan smile, looking up at her from where he was sitting on the floor. His wounds were still bleeding sluggishly and he looked on the verge of passing out completely.

“It’s not okay,” she cried out, “Oh my God, Mike, I’ve killed you –”

“No,” he cut her off sharply, although the effort behind the emphasis made him sway slightly. “It was this psycho, this manic – you did your best to save me. I don’t blame you, Jess.”

Jess shook her head, pressing desperately against the barrier between them. She was about to reply when the door swung open silently behind Mike and the words died in her mouth, as the light gleamed off the blade of a fire axe.

“How magnanimous of you, Michael.” The deep, distorted voice that had been tormenting them for the entire night issued from the figure standing in the doorway. He stepped through as Mike twisted around, shocked by the proximity of the voice; Jess stared in horror at the bulky figure as he moved into the light, fire axe in hand and his overalls splattered with blood.

Ashley’s blood, a little voice in back of Jess’ head whispered, horrified, and she jolted forwards. “Mike,” she choked, terror for her boyfriend clogging her throat. “Mike –”

“Don’t worry, Jessica.” The psycho’s horrible clown mask tilted towards her, black eyes glinting in the light. “He’ll get more mercy from me than he ever showed to Hannah.”

“For God’s sake, we never meant to hurt Hannah! We were assholes and we made a stupid mistake and Beth and Hannah died because of it – and we’ve had to live with that every single day since!” Jess’ shout rang in the bare concrete room and the psycho paused, staring at her with those unreadable black eyes. For a moment everything seemed poised, teetering on the edge of a blade.

Then he shook his head. “Too little, too late,” he said and turned towards Mike. Jess screamed and didn’t stop screaming, even as Mike gazed desperately at her, mouthing what she already knew so well, even as the axe came slashing down, the steel gleaming bright in the artificial light.

xxx

Matt paused, straining his ears to hear. He could a sworn he heard a scream from somewhere up ahead.

The corridor behind him was dotted with shining spots of ruby blood from his injured hands, marking where he had come from like a macabre breadcrumb trail. It was the only reason he was sure that he hadn’t doubled back on himself; the tunnels down here were like a rabbit’s warren.

“Mike!” The scream came again, faint but recognisable.

Jessica? Matt thought, his brow creasing. He broke into a run, both desperate to help his friend, who was clearly in trouble, and burning with the desire to wreck vengeance on the likely source of her trouble. I’m coming, Jess!

xxx

Mike… Jess was barely aware of anything, her entire focus narrowed to the axe buried in her boyfriend’s chest. There was a ringing in her ears as she watched Mike gasp and shudder, before the light faded from his eyes and he went still.

The psycho pulled the bloodied axe free and Jess’ shock shattered into blinding rage and grief. “YOU FUCKER! PRICK! COWARD!” She hurled herself against the fence in a berserk fury, the chain-links rattling loudly. “FUCKING KILLING A HELPLESS MAN! FIGHT ME IF YOU THINK YOU’RE SO FUCKING TOUGH!”

He regarded her with looked like amusement. “Very well. If that’s what you want.” He flicked some kind of switch on his belt and the gate in the fence opened again.

Jess only felt momentary surprise before the rage reasserted itself again and fierce satisfaction that her way was clear. Tightening her grip on the machete in her non-dominant, uninjured hand, she charged at him.

She had never wielded a blade in her life but fury put strength and certainty behind her blows. The psycho dodged back and away from each swipe of the machete, his laughter filtering through the voice modulator and Jess saw red at the clear mockery, her rage skyrocketing. “Fucker!” she snarled and slashed at his torso –

The door flew open behind the psycho, rebounding hard off the wall and in charged –

“Matt?” Jess paused in momentary astonishment and so did the psycho. She had a split-second realise that Matt’s mouth was sewn shut before he launched himself at their tormentor and they both went down in a tangle of struggling limbs, the fire axe clattering to the floor.

Jess darted in, grabbing the axe and heaving it through the gate in the fence behind her. She took the machete in a two-handed grip, readying herself to attack and shouted, “Move, Matt!”

She was prepared to strike the moment Matt detached himself but he suddenly groaned through his sewn lips and went still; she saw the glint of metal in the psycho’s hand and the sudden, spreading dark stain on Matt’s grey turtleneck.

Jess swore and launched herself forward to attack anyway, when suddenly she found herself staring at the business end of a pistol. She skidded to a halt as the psycho climbed back to his feet, breathing heavily, one hand pointing the gun at her and the other holding the penknife that had killed Matt. “Good show, Jessica,” he said, laughter crackling through the electronic distortion. “But it’s game over, I’m afraid.”

Jess stared at the gun in his hand and wondered why she had even stopped. I’m going to die anyway, so I may as well go down swinging. She leapt for him, machete in hand, and a second later the gun barked, echoing as loud as thunder in the enclosed space.

The sound gradually died away and deathly silence fell; punctuated only by the rasp of mechanised breathing.

xxx

It was the fourth time that Sam woke that she finally managed to hold onto consciousness.

She rolled her neck and shoulders, trying to get rid of the ache from sitting slumped forwards for so long, as she gazed blearily around.

It didn’t take long to work out that she was not in a good place. As her eyes roved around what was clearly some kind of underground workshop, her sluggish brain started picking up speed and supplying her with memories from just before she had fallen unconscious.

“Oh, God,” she muttered, tugging desperately at her bonds. But her wrists were duct-taped securely behind her through the arms of the chair and her ankles were firmly bound as well. “Shit.”

“No, no, no, no…I can’t – I can’t kill someone. Not Jess, not Em…”

Sam’s gaze snapped over to her right. The bank of televisions glowed with a dull blue light, and with a sense of slowly growing horror, she realised that the centre-left screen showed Jess and Emily trapped in a pair of cages, with Mike standing outside and an expression of agony on his face.

She started shouting at the screens when Emily fell, a helpless expression of rage and grief and horror. She kept watching, desperate to look away, but unable to; she couldn’t pretend this wasn’t happening. By the time the last gunshot rang out, and the bloodied, blonde figure of Jess collapsed to the floor, machete falling from her hand – Jess, brave Jess, God I would never have guessed she’d have it in her – Sam was just crying silently, grief-stricken and horrified.

Blinking hard to try and stem the flow, Sam tilted her head down and did her best to dry her eyes on the top of her (filthy) towel. C’mon Sam, buck up. Crying never fixed anything. You’ve got to –

– be ready. Her mind stuttered as it came to the conclusion that her unconscious mind had already arrived at. I’m the only one left. He’ll come for me next.

As if on cue, a door slammed somewhere close by, followed by the thud of heavy footsteps. Sam flinched at the horribly familiar sound, and then tensed as the door to the workshop swung open.

The bulky figure of the psycho stepped through, white mask gleaming in the reflected light from the TV screens. His overalls were splattered in even more blood than before (Ash, Mike, Matt, Jess, God no) and the metallic, coppery scent hit her nose, making her stomach lurch.

Then he turned and his gaze landed on her. Sam held it defiantly, head tilted up as she stared at the glittering black eyes of the mask. The seconds ticked by and the only sounds were her shallow, quiet breaths as she fought to keep  her panic under control and the barely audible sound of his breathing, mechanised by the voice modifier. 

Sam felt the beginnings of unease creep over her as he continued to lock gazes with her without saying a word. His behaviour was very different from what it had been previously, both when he had chased her and when he had been taunting and killing her friends. Why the change? Before he had been smug and amused, now he was just…staring at her…

Something clicked in her brain and all the hairs rose on the back of her arms as she remembered his comment from earlier. “She’s…quite beautiful, isn’t she. A beautiful bathing bird.” His admiring tone had been obvious…

An entirely new kind of fear crawled down her spine and she was suddenly, acutely, aware of the fact she was wearing nothing but a grubby towel. No…no, it can’t be that. She tried to straighten as much as she could in the chair, doing her best to shake off the sudden feeling of aching vulnerability and summoned her courage to glare at him. “Come to kill me too?”

She was relieved that her voice didn’t waver, coming out as strong as she wanted it too, but he didn’t even seem to register the question, holding her gaze as he took one step forwards. She couldn’t help her instinctive flinch and he paused. “Why,” he muttered, so low she could barely hear it. “Why Sam.”

Sam looked at him warily, confused by the question and unable to decipher his tone through the voice modulator. “Why what?” she asked cautiously.

He didn’t seem to hear her, his mask turning to look at something somewhere over her left shoulder. “Why Sam?” he murmured and she suddenly realised he wasn’t talking to her at all. “Why her? She’s blameless…”

Sam stared at him, ice trickling down her spine. Is he hallucinating? She had assumed that he must be a certain level of unhinged to carry out these murders but to see such visible proof of instability…

“That’s not fair.” The deep, distorted voice sounded oddly pleading. He paced away, his hands curling and uncurling agitatedly. “She didn’t do anything.”  He suddenly swung back in her direction and strode towards her.

 Sam recoiled back hard into the chair but there was nowhere to go. He came to a halt beside her abruptly, hovering in a way that might have been funny, given his bulk and fearsome appearance, if she hadn’t been so frightened. He reached out a hand towards her face and Sam jerked back, snapping, “Don’t touch me!”

His gloved fingers stopped, mere centimetres away from her cheek. This close, she could see the weave in the fabric, and the darker splotches staining the material, the metallic scent stronger than ever. “Sammy?” He cocked his head and a sudden sense of familiarity overcame Sam. She stared up at him, at the glinting black eyes of the mask; there was something in that confused tone, the tilt of his head, the unusual shortening of her full name…

“What’s wrong, Sammy? It’s me.” His voice took on a bizarre attempt at a soothing quality, coming out strangely through the modifier. “It’s okay.” He reached up to his head with both hands and Sam had just enough time to realise what he was about to do before he grasped the mask and lifted it away from his face.

Josh?

All of Sam’s thought processes were obliterated by blinding white shock. There was a roaring in her ears, as she looked up at the man that she had considered a friend, a good friend, a best friend, nearly more –

Josh.

He smiled down at her, an easy tilt of the lips, so familiar and so wrong, edged in something bloodied and hollow as it was –

“Hey Sammy.”

She could only stare. The shock was gradually receding and in its place grew a horrible mixture of joy and grief and rage and betrayal. He’s alive, he’s alive, I never thought I’d see him again but also, he’s the one who did this, Josh murdered our friends, how could he, how could he –

“Josh,” she choked out. “Josh, why…?”

He frowned slightly. “Why what?”

“Why did you do all this?” she cried. “Josh you murdered our friends, you, you –”

His expression grew thunderous. “They killed Hannah and Beth,” he said darkly. “They fucking killed my sisters, my little sisters –” His eyes darted to somewhere over her left shoulder and his voice became anguished, “– and I was fucking drunk, they were dying out in the cold, after the people who were supposed to be their friends had driven them out into a snowstorm, and I was passed out drunk when they needed me most.”

The black self-loathing in his voice caught Sam off-guard. It spoke of a wound left to fester, of a slow, bitter poison that ate away at the soul. He clenched his fists and looked away. “They deserved it,” he said harshly. “Hannah and Beth could never have found peace until they were avenged. They still can’t,” he added, looking tormented. “Isn’t this enough?” he mumbled, his eyes tracking something Sam couldn’t see. “Can’t you go to your rest now? Please, just leave me alone.” He pressed his hands to the sides of his head, screwing his eyes shut.

Sam stared, completely unable to decide what to think or feel. Her emotions were a roiling sea of joyangerpainfearbetrayalpitygrief, but one thing was abundantly clear. Josh was deeply, profoundly ill and probably had been for a while – this kind of thing didn’t spring up overnight. And they had all missed it.

He’s a murderer. He’s our friend who needed help. Sam shook her head, struggling with the disconnect between the friend she had known for so long and the maniac who had tortured and tormented them tonight.

“I’m sorry, Sam.”

Sam’s head snapped around. Josh was standing at his workbench, facing away from her. His shoulders were tight with tension and his voice shook with anguish. “It’s not fair. You loved them too.”

He turned around and Sam’s attention was immediately grabbed by the syringe in his right hand. Light glinted off the long, slender needle. No. Icy dread condensed in her stomach and Sam shook her head violently. “No, Josh, don’t do this!”

“I’m sorry.” He advanced towards her, his expression the picture of misery.  “It’s not fair, I’m sorry –”

Sam tried recoil, to move, something, but she couldn’t go anywhere; the restraints had no give in them. Josh’s left hand landed on her bare shoulder, holding her steady as his right hand readied the syringe. “I’m sorry,” he said again and his voice cracked. “I’m sorry, Sam. Please – please tell Hannah and Beth that I love them when you see them again.” He attempted a smile but it fell far short, shadowed by the grief and despair on his face. “After all, I’m not likely to meet them where I’m going.”

The last thing Sam saw was Josh’s face, etched in stark light and shadows, before she felt the bite of the needle in her neck and the darkness swallowed her whole.

xxx

It was quiet. So, so quiet.

Josh exhaled deeply, scrubbing a hair through his hair and over his tired face as he limped into the main living room of the lodge. His body was humming with exhaustion but underneath that was a quiet elation and bone-deep relief. It’s quiet. It’s finally, completely, quiet.

“I did it,” he murmured, a small smile curling his lips. “They’re at rest now.” His voice echoed through the massive, shadowy lodge. The big building had never been so utterly silent; even the wind had died away, leaving a hush in its wake.

“So quiet,” he marvelled, a little giddy. “Just me…” And the seven corpses of your friends downstairs.

The smile dropped off his face, even as he struggled to hold on to his good mood. Hannah and Beth are at rest now. That’s the important thing. They can move on, now that their unfinished business is dealt with.

Now that those sorry excuses for friends have paid for what they’ve done –

But it’s –

So –

Quiet.

Josh shook his head violently. “No!” he shouted. The sound echoed loudly, in the empty, empty lodge. “It’s what Hannah and Beth wanted!  It’s what I wanted! They deserved it!”

Really, Josh? Dr Hill whispered in his ear. All of them deserved it? Were there not those who were blameless in this affair?

Josh’s mood dropped even further. Chris. And…Sam. His best friend and his…and his…

Doesn’t matter anymore, does it? She’ll never be your anything now, the voice continued mercilessly.

His brain helpfully supplied him with an image of Sam, ashen and terrified, looking up at him from where she was tied to the chair. But still with that underlying determination that was such a vital part of what made her Sam. Brave, beautiful, kind Sam.

Gone now. You snuffed her out like a candle, and now only the cold, silent, darkness is left in the absence of her light.

Sam, who had suffered right alongside him, her face becoming more tired and drawn with each passing day that the search teams had returned empty-handed. Sam who, like Chris, had taken his calls any time of the day or night, replied to every random, stupid 3am Facebook message when he couldn’t bear the oppressive weight of being alone inside his own head, or face the nightmares that greeted him every time he closed his eyes. Sam who had grieved for Hannah and Beth nearly as much as he had; Sam who had walked through life’s tragedies straight-backed and proud, refusing to let the rest of the world see how much she hurt, but had allowed to him to witness her tears…

…and in return he had chased her through the basement of the lodge in nothing but a towel. He had stalked her and terrorised her and…and killed her.

“Why?” Josh muttered, rubbing at his eyes.  It was easier to think about his gritty, tired eyes than the throbbing agony in his chest that spiked at every thought of Sam. “Why did she have to die too?”

He had saved her for last in the wild hope that her sacrifice wouldn’t be necessary, that the deaths of those most responsible would be enough to lay Hannah and Beth’s spirits to rest. But it hadn’t.

“Why did you blame Sam too?” he mumbled. “Why?” A flash of movement caught his attention and his head jerked up, heart suddenly pounding. But it was only his own reflection, moving in the big mirror over the mantelpiece.

He stared at himself and his reflection looked back, dark eyes glittering in the pale moonlight filtering in through the windows. He looked hellish, even without the mask; bulky, bloodstained overalls, an empty syringe that he was still holding like an absurd security blanket, a bloody, ragged hole in his shoulder where Ashley had stabbed him with those scissors (fuck, that had hurt) and a –

A girlish giggle echoed through the room behind him and the bottom fell out of Josh’s stomach. “No, no, no, no, no, no,” he moaned, backing away from his own reflection. “You’re supposed to be at peace now!” Sam can’t have died for nothing, she can’t!

He blinked and suddenly there they were, on either side of him. Beth and Hannah, dressed in the same outfits they had been wearing when they had run out into that snowstorm, a year ago to the day.

“Oh Josh,” Hannah giggled, her dark eyes bright with laughter. The moonlight falling through the windows made her skin porcelain white and just for a moment, Josh’s vision wavered and the moonlight glinted off a skeletal cheekbone, before returning to its normal appearance. “Josh, we’ll never be at peace.”

She flitted over to stand next to Beth, who opened her arms to her twin and drew her into a hug. “Not until everyone else who was there that night is, anyway,” Beth remarked, laying her head on top of Hannah’s and holding Josh’s gaze.

He frowned in puzzlement. “Everyone else…? Everyone else has been laid to rest…”

No. The realisation suddenly dawned upon him. Not everyone.

“And after that?” he asked. “You promise you’ll be at peace?”

“Yes, Josh,” his sisters chorused with familiar, loving exasperation. “We promise.”

“Okay,” Josh drew in a deep breath. “Okay. I trust you. I trust you.”

xxx

Blackwood Mountain was cold. Beautiful, with its pristine blanket of snow and ice, but cold. A herd of elk huddled together for warmth on top of a crag above the Washington lodge, their breath hanging in great plumes of white in the still air. A couple of younger elk stood at the edge of the crag, gazing down at the lodge as they chewed.

They watched with cervine curiosity as a tiny figure, clad in overalls, appeared, backing out of the front door of the building. It appeared to be carrying a barrel of some kind. There was a pause, and then orange flames blossomed from the canister. The figure hurled the canister back through the open door of the lodge. There was a distant whump and suddenly fierce orange light spilled across the pure white snow as the entire lower floor of the building lit up, fire licking at the inside of the windows.

The young elk watched, blandly curious, as the figure seemed to wait for something. The flames climbed ever higher, the highly flammable gasoline doing its job. Soon the entire lodge was burning, a roaring inferno of golden-orange fire, heat lashing the air and eating up the wooden structure.

Then the figure walked into the heart of the flames and was swallowed up by the conflagration.

The elk continued to chew placidly, as the fire raged on. It wasn’t until dawn, as the light broke over the horizon, that the flames finally burned themselves out.

The sound of helicopter blades echoed off the surrounding mountains and the elk finally fled, unnerved by the sound. The wind howled mournfully around the peaks, seeming to whisper, too little, too late.

All that was left of the Washington lodge was a gutted, black ruin.