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William has been missing for 3 days.
Typically, Norah wouldn't have been too worried (no more than usual, anyway). William's a investigator. Getting lost in trails and weird sightings and ouija boards is his entire soul.
Now, Norah's trapped in her room, bookshelves crowded with revision guides and non-fiction looming over their head. She considers open one, ignoring William and the Unwitness Protection Program altogether and leaving it to the police. It would make her parents the littlest bit happier.
But the police don't understand Deadwood— not in its entirety— and, most importantly, they don't understand William.
So, everything she needs to find him is spread across her pine floorboards. Every map of the town and the surrounding area she could find. A guide titled 'The Deadly Creatures of Deadwood'. Her fliphone, adorned with a beaded wolf charm, opened on the last message he sent her: 'DONT TELL ANY1', then radio silence. The last few supplies: a flashlight, a notebook and HB pencil, and a digicam.
Norah slings a tote bag around their shoulder, hand trembling in the grip, and wonders how they're going to make their escape.
...
The last time Norah saw William Wisp, they were sitting around in the Unwitness Protection Program's Secret Hide-out (or, more commonly known as the Wisp's basement).
'The Wispering Woods?' Norah gasps, sitting up from her designated green bean bag chair, 'you can't go there.'
'Yeah, Will, that's pretty fucking stupid. Even if it fits your whole,' Isaac gestures towards William's clothing choices, 'shtick. You'd like, actually die out there.'
'Guys. I need to do this. I don't just want to into the forest for some emo thing. Or to take photos, or whatever. Or just investigate for the sake of investigating. I need to. It's like— a calling—'
'Oh, so it's okay to go into the most dangerous part of Deadwood, y'know, the evil danger place because you felt a calling? Do you know how evil that sounds? I thought you were all about "ouija board safety" and "not disturbing the ghosts". Are you an actual idiot?'
'C'mon, Isaac-'
'No, because this is just going to be the Church thing all over again, or worse, and this time you're gonna get hurt just like Norah did and it's going to be your fault. Fuck off.'
Norah opens their mouth to speak, but they don't really know what to say.
She remembers an bolt of pain in her skull, red dripping past her eyes. The river rushing like blood in her ears. William holding her tight, pleading her to stop, to be okay. Waking up to a bright white room and her mother's eyes.
Norah does not wish that on her worst enemy, nevermind her best friend. But William is a free spirit, and she doesn't think she can stop the determination in his eyes, no matter how wrong she thinks he is.
'I'm sorry, Isaac,' William whispers, 'but I have to do this.'
The door slams shut. Norah looks back, at William's disappointed eyes, and follows through after it.
...
As a matter of fact, Norah walks through the front door. It's the middle of the afternoon, but having doctors for parents in a town that has just passed an epidemic means emergency calls and haphazardly strewn keys are common.
As she exists, the cold permeates Norah's clothing, to the point they opt to pull on the baggy cardigan originally tied around their hips over their knit sweater. Even though it's normally freezing at this time of year, this type of chill is different. Like a villain with an ice power has crystallised a small secluded town for no apparent reason.
Nobody in Deadwood really has magic. In that respect, they're actually relatively normal. When the signs of developing magic appear, people are generally whisked away to one of the bigger towns or cities, like Freedom City or Rockfall. Deadwood's magicless. Weird, creepy and full of monsters, but magicless. Other than the Unwitness Protection Program's sight.
Although Norah is very familiar with Deadwood, she opens a pocket map and walks through the streets
Every time she sees a cross necklace hanging round an old lady's neck, she looks down. No matter how hard she tries, she can't press down the memories and push it to the back of her mind.
The Church. William, Isaac. Bugs crawling. Water flooding her mind, she can't breath, she can't stop. Bugs crawling, slithering, inching across her body. They're on her body, they're in her mouth. Let her go. She can't see. She can't breathe. Let her go. Insects, insects. Crawling. Blood dripping, snaking down her skull.
Norah stands still for a second, and then continues pushing forwards. One foot in front of the other.
She can't let that happen to William.
...
When she reaches the Wispering Woods, she releases where the cold has been coming from. It almost radiates off the forests (even if, at the back of her mind, she knows that's not how it works). Norah knows there's things that can't be explained, no matter how rigourous your science.
Her heart beats rapidly, like quickly approaching footsteps. She tries to ignore it.
Over Norah's head, the leafless trees still manage to form a thick canopy like she's never seen before. Despite it being mid afternoon, the fused tree trunk canopy eclipses her world in darkness. No one goes here, not even researchers, and scientific wonder bubbles under Norah's anxiety.
She stumbles in further, wishing she had worn more comfortable shoes. She stares up at the amalgamation of organic matter above her, and remembers the compact digicam in her bag. She pulls it out, and snaps a couple low quality photos.
As she continues pacing through, she checks back on the pictures she took. On one of them, she can she a faint blue glint midway through a glide in the air. She stops in confusion. It's too saturated to be glare, or anything from herself. It's glowing. She realises something, and turns her flashlight on. Suddenly, she can see them all.
The wisps.
...
William must've found these. Maybe this was the things calling him. Maybe he could see them in the first place and couldn't help but recognise their strange blue glow. God, where did he go?
How long had she been out here? She didn't want to waste a second checking her fliphone.
She runs as quickly as she can, without hyperextending her knees, squelching through the dirt. The wisps lead her through disorganised forks in the path.
They come to a stagnant river, and Norah can't stop the sound of insects wriggling and squirming and chittering.
She doesn't know why she's trusting some flickering light blue will-o wisps, but she kind of has to. They have to know where William is; where they led him.
The previously self-contained forest morphs into a small clearing, and Norah realises just how late it is. The sky is slowly fading to black. If she knew any better, she would run home at this second, and never return to the Wispering Woods ever again.
At the other edge of the clearing, there's a twisting figure of a man, and his changing form fades like a gradient into the earth.
Against their best judgement, they follow the wisps up to the figure.
He looks down at her, with eyebags etched into his pale skin, and something like makeup across his face and says,
'Looking for him?'
His voice is riddled with a croaking laughter.
'Good luck.'
He disappears like rising smoke into the air.
Norah looks around to the wisps for some sort of explanation. Either they don't know, don't understand her confusion, or are refusing to tell her. They continue trudging through the thick mud.
...
Bodiless and floating, the wisps are much, much faster than Norah's painfully human legs. It's like they're inpatient, as if they were running out of time. Norah knows there's only a handful of things that could mean; none of them good.
Norah wonders if their parents have gotten home to a silent house yet. She wonders if they're repeatedly calling her, or texting her. But there's not point in checking; there is no signal out here. Even so, Norah can't afford to go back now.
...
The wisps halt at the edge of a cliff.
Norah wants to believe that they're wrong, or can't figure out where to go next.
When she looks over the dirt, she can help but see the mangled body 90 foot down.
'William,' she yells, 'William!'
She stands stark against the massive collection of wisps, blue gleam highlighting her tired face. He almost vomits. Suddenly, the wisps dart in one direction.
'Oh my God, oh my God,' she mutters under her breath, pacing behind them.
They lead her across the boundary, flitting through the dispersed trees. They feel the mud cake Their shoes and suddenly wishes that she had brought a first aid kit. As if it would help, anyway. She was stupid for believing that William could've been anything but whatever was at the bottom that that cliff. Maybe, deep down, they knew it couldn't have been true.
Rocks grazing her shins, she slides down a ledge nearby the cliffside. She runs, quicker than she ever did in track, to where she knows William will be.
Beyond the cliff's edge, the forest is much clearer. The trees aren't as packed anymore and, lacking leaves, they barely form much cover at all. The moon glares from above.
Norah falls to her knees beside the mutilated thing she can't even begin to believe is her best friend. His limbs are deformed; obviously broken from the fall. She touches his forehead, and it's an undoubtable stone cold that only a corpse could become, but Norah wraps her cardigan around it all the same.
'Will,' Norah pleads desperately, 'please.'
His eyes are wide open, as if William were still alive, but glazed over. The blood that drenches the dead grass has coagulated and has seeped into the earth. There's purple bruising on his back from the pooling blood and his cheeks are deprived of any hint of red. She can't bring herself to hook her finger under his jaw, press her fingertips against the carotid artery where she knows there won't be any pulse to feel.
In that moment, Norah is the stupidest person alive.
She leans backwards, trying not to look too closely. William wouldn't have wanted to be remembered by this. Even so, his body doesn't look like it's especially rotted. She's thankful that no crawling insects have gotten to him yet.
She doesn't know what to do, so she pulls out her fliphone, wolf charm dangling from its hook, and fumbles around with the keys to call for help. It's in vain, because there isn't any signal for miles, and she knows that.
The wisps have crowded William's face. She tries to push them away, then peers over his face, trying to see if anything had changed.
His eye twitches, his mouth, too, and then he takes a gasp of frozen air.
'William? William!' she almost yells, 'Can you hear me?'
Nothing else has changed. He's still pale, and she can still see the horrid bruising.
His vacant eyes blink. Then, they must be hallucinating because William, who has to be dead, slowly rises to his knees.
'William?'
William's grey-coated eyes look up to Norah, but his pupils don't dilate. She must be as pale as him right now.
Abruptly, he doubles over and starts violently coughing and heaving into his hand, trembling. He makes an awful sound and starts retching into the earth.
As her first aid training kicks in, Norah moves over to hold his hand, and carefully rub his back.
He regurgitates, what it seems to Norah, a somewhat digested full set of human organs, mixed in with thick chunks of coagulated, maroon blood. The viscera drips down his chin and onto his black hoodie as if he were a carnivore that had hurriedly finished its meal. He stares down at his insides covering his clothes and the ground. The wisps still cling to him like a lifeline.
'Norah,' he finally croaks out.
She squeezes his hand tighter, heart beating rapidly against her ribs.
'You're going to be okay,' she lies.
...
Norah has to part drag, part carry William back through the forest.
He's much lighter now— after very literally puking his guts out— but with all the walking she's already done, it's difficult. William's still swaddled in her cardigan, but it does nothing to help the ice cold that coats him.
The wisps stick close the entire way.
There is complete silence, and it sickens Norah, because a couple days ago— while he was wandering through this exact path— William was probably in absolute awe of this place. Now, it's just the place he died. Curiosity killed the cat. Or, maybe, he knew this was going to happen. She probably won't ever know.
When they finally reach the edge of the forest, its way past sunrise, and there's a crowd waiting for them. She notices Isaac among them.
There's police cars and ambulances all pointed towards the entrance. She pushes William's weight off her back and lays him on a stretcher. Even there, outside the woods, the wisps stay stuck to him.
Finally, she collapses into her mother's arms.
...