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wacem · 4 years

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Alone in the Dark

An Until Dawn fic by Wacem

Read it here or check it out on AO3, where everything is definitely formatted properly, because I suck at Tumblr.

Chapter 1

Chris --- 5:35 AM

Tunnel to Sanatorium

Chris stumbled back a few steps and craned his neck to watch Sam clamber up the wall like a spider monkey. He shook his head. He'd never understand how a person could make that look so effortless. Hell, he'd never understand the appeal of rock-climbing in the first place. He supposed it was useful in circumstances like these, but heights just weren't his thing. At all.

“Guess it’s just you and me now, A--”

He turned around and stopped dead in his tracks. He thought Ash was right behind him, but his eyes met nothing but darkness. With the agonizingly slow pace he'd been able to keep up, he hadn’t even considered the possibility that she wouldn’t catch up. Hell, that's the only reason he hadn't waited for her back at the manhole. She had just groused at him for moving too slowly, so he figured he might as well get a head start. That way, she could overtake him, and no time would be wasted waiting for his crippled ass to keep up.

Only she hadn't.

And now there wasn't so much as a glimmer of reflection on a rock to indicate her existence.

"Ash?" he'd meant to call out, but it came out as more of a trembling whisper.

The wendigo got her. The thought sent a cold dagger through his heart and made his legs feel heavy. No. Not her. I've already lost enough tonight. Please, God, not her, too. His throat tightened, and unwelcome tears stung his already aching eyes.

"Ash??" His voice tore through the lump in his throat and cracked. It sounded way too shrill to his ears, and the way it echoed through the caves filled his soul with dread. As far as he knew, the wendigo could hear just fine; it was just its vision that was funky. Biting his lips to hold in the rising panic, he took a shaky step forward. The pain in his ankle, objecting to having been temporarily forgotten, vigorously reminded him of its existence. He grunted softly.

Images of the stranger, alive one second, gone the next, flooded his mind for the umpteenth time since it happened. Only this time, it was Ashley's body dropping to its knees. Ashley's head thudding heavily into the snow while he stood paralyzed with fear, clutching the stranger's shotgun uselessly as the air filled with the monster's shrieks. First, the wendigo, he'll render you immobile. Then he strips the skin off of your entire body, piece by piece.

Nononono. She can't be dead. I'd have heard something, right? Screams or something. I didn't hear anything, so maybe she just got lost.

"Y-yeah… yeah... she just got lost," he murmured to himself, hoping its utterance would make it true. Chris continued limping toward where he'd seen her last. He'd noticed a path branching off to the left on the way here. Maybe she took that by mistake. She did have a notoriously wretched sense of direction, and they hadn't exactly marked their passage.

As he moved, his mind wandered to the time he and Ash had gone to see Star Trek Into Darkness in IMAX. There wasn't an IMAX theater in their hometown, so they'd had to drive all the way to the city-- an hour away. Chris had just gotten off an overnight double and was utterly wiped, so he'd given Ash the keys to his car and let her drive. He'd figured that way he could catch some z's on the way up and actually be conscious for the movie. Big. Mistake. Next thing he'd known, Ashley's sheepish voice was waking him up saying, "We're here!" When he'd looked at the clock, he saw that they were four and a half hours late for the movie. They couldn't even catch a later showing! Turned out Ash had driven them to every single movie theater in the city-- during rush hour traffic, no less! --before she finally found the one their tickets were for. It wasn't a total loss; they were able to get a refund on their tickets, since they weren't torn or anything, and they tried again (successfully) the following week, thanks to Chris' superior mastery of navigation. Now that he thought of it… that had been the first time they'd really gone anywhere together without someone else tagging along. Purely coincidentally (he told himself), that was also when Chris first noticed how very, very frantically the butterflies fluttered their wings in his stomach whenever he was near her.

After that day, she was firmly forbidden from ever driving them anywhere again. From then on, her official job on road trips was to be the in-flight entertainment. This normally took the form of her reading one of her books aloud like a live-performance audiobook. It was a duty she solemnly accepted and performed with gusto; she even did voices for the different characters. The memory made soft laughter rise up out of him like a bubble, and, like a bubble, it abruptly vanished at the thought that he might never hear her silly voices again.

Oh, God, Ash. Please be okay. I could probably handle losing Emily and Jess… maybe even Josh. But not you.

Emily's face, pale and gray in the light of the monitors, mouth drawn open in a silent scream, dark blood oozing from the hole where her eye had been. The contents of her blown-out skull adorning the wall behind her head like a macabre rorschach. The image he'd been fighting to suppress since it happened hit him like a freight train. He doubled over and retched the nothing he'd had for dinner onto the cave floor. The sudden shift in balance irked his ankle and made him stagger against a rock, aggravating the tender spot in his ribs and jarring his aching jaw. He groaned. As he pushed himself away from the wall, he wiped at a tickle under his nose, and his hand came away bloody. Great. His nose was bleeding again.

Shit, he was a mess.

At least his nose wasn't broken. Or… he didn't think it was broken. His jaw, like the proverbial fat lady, sorta dominated the chorus of facial maladies, and he'd had other things on his mind when he'd rammed his face full-speed into that damned tree. Like, for instance, not getting eviscerated by the wendigo hot on his heels. You know… something that could be happening to Ash right now?

Come on, Ash, where are you? Please be okay.

Ignoring the pain in his ankle, he picked up his pace. It wasn't long before he came upon the drop he'd completely forgotten about. Only, going this direction, it wasn't a drop. It was a climb. A string of curses and obscenities ran circles around his brain. The ledge wasn't low, coming up just above his shoulders. Even his attempts to gently lower himself when coming the other way had yielded a sharp pain in his ankle on landing. How the ever-loving fuck was he supposed to get back up? "Dammit, Sam…" he muttered. "Remind me why you left the gimp to navigate these tunnels alone?" Of course, she’d been just as oblivious to Ash’s absence as he was, but that was beside the point.

Why had they even come here? Something about Mike and the sanatorium and the wendigo and needing to warn him about something and hell if he knew. He hadn't read the journal that had Ash and Sam up in a tizzy. Nobody thought to volunteer to him any information they'd found out, and frankly… he'd been too relieved at the prospect of getting away from Emily's body to ask questions. Now he regretted not asking. The decision to leave the safe room might have gotten Ash killed, and he needed to know it was for a worthy cause. At this point, though, even if it was for a worthy cause, if it was down to a choice between Mike's life and Ash's… well… was that even really a choice? Especially since Mike just…

A deafening bang, reinforcing the ringing in his ear. Ghostly face, mouth stretched open in a scream cut short. Dark blood trickling down from the blackness of her eye socket.

"Oh, God…" Chris stumbled against the wall blocking his way, using it for support as his lungs tried to explode out of his aching chest. His body rocked back and forth; the arm holding the flashlight hugged his ribs in place, while his free hand clapped over his mouth to hold back his sobs. The burns near his mouth shouted their protest, and he stifled a moan.

Oh, God, how had this night gotten so fucked? This was supposed to be a good night! A night of remembrance and catharsis. A night of reconciliation and rekindling estranged friendships. A psycho? He could handle that. It was horrible, but he at least understood a psycho. But curses? Monsters?? How do you fight something like that? How do you escape something that moves that fast? How do you protect someone from a fear so pervasive that it makes them murder their own friends?

Oh, shut up with that 'they' and 'them' bullshit. You helped, Christopher. By sitting there and stoking that fear, you might as well have pulled the trigger yourself.

No, no, no. He hadn't wanted Emily to die!

You should have done something, then. Should have helped Sam calm them down. Should have disarmed Mike. You could have forced him to stop. Overpowered him. Something! You call yourself a man, but you just sat there like a pussy and let it happen. Just like with the stranger!

His head was swimming, and his ribs were on fire. Somewhere along the way, he'd sunken down to his knees, still rocking. He was hyperventilating.

Let's face it, Chris. You didn't do anything, because you didn't want to do anything. You were just as afraid as Mike and Ash, and just as willing to sacrifice Emily to save your own ass.

"I didn't think he was going to shoot her." The words were rapid, small, and gasping, barely audible. Mike hadn't shot Josh. He’d bitched at Chris for even thinking he would. So why would he shoot Emily? It was a bluff. Had to be. Just to scare her out of the room. Chris wasn't about to ruin Mike's bluff again.

Her small legs falling from the desk, limp and lifeless, making her whole body jerk when they stopped short of the floor. Her head settling on the wall beneath the Jackson Pollock pattern of her blood and brains was the last movement she'd ever make. Chris squeezed his eyes shut, but the image persisted.

How is that even better? You didn't think Mike would shoot her? But you were perfectly content to let him sacrifice her to that thing out there. You've seen what it does. You, more than anyone else here, know that compared to that? The bullet was a mercy. You didn't care if or how she died. You just didn't want to see it happen, you selfish asshole. You killed her, and you killed her for no damn reason.

"We didn't know, we didn't know, we didn't know…" His hands and face were tingling. Shit, he was about to pass out. Now was not the time for this; he had to find Ash. He forced himself to take a deep breath in. The pain in his side kept him from holding it as long as he'd have liked, and it all came out in a pitiful sigh. But his head felt clearer, at least. He repeated this exercise until his thoughts stopped spiraling, sliding his free hand up under his glasses to wipe away the tears blurring his eyes.

Now wasn't the time for self-recrimination or excuses. Ash was in here somewhere. The wendigo might have her. He keeps you alive and aware and feasts on your organs, one piece at a time. He couldn't let that happen to her. Melting down in a cave wasn't going to help anyone, and Chris refused to have another death on his conscience because he was too wrapped up in himself to lift a finger to stop it. Especially not Ashley’s.

He sighed, pushing himself back onto his good leg and regarded the ledge. How the hell was he supposed to climb this? Even at the best of times, he was a pathetic climber. He'd damn near broken his neck trying to clamber over the wall by the broken gate at the bottom of the mountain. And now? With a bum ankle, a jacked up face, probably a concussion, and whatever the hell was going on with his ribs? He groaned, grabbing the ledge and hoisting himself up until the edge was under his armpits. His legs scrabbled uselessly for purchase on the sheer rock. His ribs protested strenuously. He was just about to lose his grip when his right foot found an outcropping and pushed off hard enough to get his left leg over the edge. But the momentary victory was promptly shat upon by the blinding agony in his ankle.

"Aggghh!" he hissed "Ow ow ow ow ow ow owwwww!!" Each syllable gave him strength as he pulled himself up the rest of the way and rolled over onto his good side. He curled into a ball of misery and grabbed his throbbing leg. "Shitshitshitshitfuckingshiiiiiiit!"

When the pain died back down to a dull throb, he slowly pulled himself up to his feet. It was more miserable than ever to put weight on his ankle, but it still held him, so he hobbled onward. Had to be getting close to the branch-off now.

He felt, more than saw, the side tunnel open up to his right. The air was suddenly less close, and through the passage, the wind sang a soft and haunting song. Dripping water served as percussion. It vaguely harmonized with the ringing in his ear. He flicked his flashlight over to the opening.

"Ash?" His own voice startled him, deafeningly loud against the cavern's subtle symphony. What if the wendigo could hear? What if he was just broadcasting his presence?

C'mon, dude. Pull yourself together. Your nerves are fried.

He thought maybe he heard something further down the side passage, but he wasn't sure what. It was hard to tell over the persistent ringing in his ear, but… it could have been Ash. Then again, didn't the stranger also say the wendigo could mimic human voices? If that was the wendigo, then Ash could already be dead, and he'd be walking to his own demise. Even if the thing hadn't gotten around to killing her yet, a rescue attempt would almost certainly end in his death. He wasn't even armed.

But if it wasn't the wendigo… if Ash had fallen somewhere and couldn't get back up or something. If she was hurt, if she was calling for help... could he forgive himself for not checking?

Gingerly, he opened his mouth and felt the swollen skin from his cheek to his adam's apple pull tight in protest. The right hinge of his jaw popped enthusiastically. That was new.

Ah, what the hell. He'd already sacrificed himself for Ash once tonight. Why not do it again? Maybe this time it'd actually matter.

His free hand hovered over his jaw, afraid to actually touch it, lest it reawaken the fire in his skin. Bright flash, deafening bang, a ringing that drowned out Ashley begging him to shoot her instead. Shockwave smashing into his jaw and knocking his head back hard enough to give him whiplash. Burning agony in his face making him want to scream. But he wasn't dead. How was he not dead?

He shook off the memory, "I- I'm coming, Ash. Hold on. I'm coming." And he limped forward.

The entrance to the side passage wasn't level with the main passage, and Chris almost tripped over it. Which, he discovered, would have been very bad. There was a pretty sizable drop on the other side. He climbed onto the berm, hanging his legs off the far side, and just stared at the drop with his flashlight. You gotta be freaking kidding me.

This was even higher than the drop in the main passage, and that one had hurt badly enough. Even if he didn't straight-up break his ankle, he didn't know if he'd be able to climb back out of this on his own. But, short of Ash noping back to the lodge without telling anyone, which seemed unlikely, there was no other direction she could have gone. He should have just waited for her to close the grate. Dammit, he was such a moron. She was only lost because, after she’d refused to leave him behind, he’d gone right ahead and done it to her. There was no way he was going to abandon her again.

That settled it. He took a deep breath and slid his butt off the berm. His stomach had an out-of-body experience for a second of freefall. His landing was rough and graceless, but he managed to keep his feet by reeling into a wall. There was a loud, painful pop from his ankle that he badly hoped was just his joint settling. His jaw snapped shut at the impact and its muscles seized up painfully, cutting his cry of pain into a muffled groan. His hand came up instinctively to massage the tension out of his fucked up jaw only to aggravate the burns. He hummed miserably through his nose. Damn it all. Josh, more than any one of them, should have known how dangerous blanks were at point-blank range. Chris wanted to believe that Josh, his best friend, hadn't meant for him to damn near blow his face off for a prank. But he also had a hard time reconciling that with all the rest of the batshit crazy bullshit Josh had pulled on him tonight. That and the fact that Josh seemed neither surprised nor particularly concerned by how badly Chris had been hurt by the muzzle flash. What chilled him to the bone was the very real possibility that Josh knew exactly what he was doing when he gave Chris a gun loaded with blanks and encouraged him to put it up to his own head and pull the trigger. He was damn lucky he'd decided to aim it under his jaw instead of at his temple. The latter probably would have killed him.

Had Josh wanted that? Did he really hate Chris that much? God knows Chris had blamed himself plenty enough for his part--or lack thereof-- in Hannah and Beth's disappearance. If he hadn't had so much to drink, he might have been able to stop things before they got out of hand. Or at least he could have been the one to go after Hannah, instead of Beth. But no. He'd been too shitfaced to be of use to anyone. Classic Chris maneuver. Always present when things went tits up, but his presence was never beneficial. He'd had to find out what happened second-hand, despite being there. If Chris was being honest with himself, he deserved a good, healthy, superheated blast of explosive decompression to the face.

But if Josh felt that way, too, how had Chris gone a whole year without noticing? He wasn't completely blind. He'd known things weren't good with Josh, but he had no idea they were anywhere near homicidal levels of bad. Was he really so self-absorbed that he couldn't see how deeply his best friend was hurting? Had he been so busy pining after Ashley that he'd completely missed how much Josh hated him?

That would make sense, wouldn't it? Just a couple hours ago, he'd literally sacrificed Josh to save Ash. Flipped a switch, knowing full-well that it would send a whirling blade of doom over to cut his best friend in half. It didn't matter that it wasn't real. He hadn't known that at the time, and Josh knew he didn’t know. And now Josh knew that Chris was perfectly willing to kill him for a girl. What an awful truth to discover about someone you thought cared about you. Chris knew he'd be upset if their positions were reversed. So perhaps this was his punishment for prioritizing Ash above everything else. After all, nobody would have been hurt if he'd chosen to shoot Ash, right? She'd been across the table from him; too far away to be affected by a blank. But no…no... the thought of shooting her… it was unthinkable. It made his stomach tie up in knots. Even now, knowing the gun had been filled with blanks, he'd still rather shoot himself.

The pain in his jaw subsided as the muscles slowly relaxed. He pushed himself off the wall and limped through the tunnel, hoping there weren't any more branch-offs to complicate things.

All right, jackass. You're down in a hole, playing hero to impress a girl who may or may not still be alive, armed with a flashlight and bad puns. You haven't even touched the wendigo yet, and you're already beat to hell. Like a dipstick, you left the shotgun back in the lodge. What, exactly, is your plan?

Find Ash? Not die? That was pretty much the extent of it.

That's not much of a plan.

Much as he hated his little Voice of Better Judgment and loved few things more than ignoring it, he had to admit it had a point. He'd be no help to Ash dead.

The earth shook. Like, legitimately shook, making him stumble. A deep rumble resonated into his very soul. Rocks big and small were shaken loose from the cavern's ceiling, pelting the ground all around him. One of the bigger ones nailed him in the shoulder. The blow, only slightly softened by the padding of his coat, drove him to one knee.

"Shit!" he cried, raising his other arm up to shield his head. When the patter of falling pebbles tapered off, and it seemed the cave wasn't planning to collapse on him after all, he lowered his arm and tilted the flashlight beam up toward the ceiling. "What the hell was that?" But the stalactites above him had no answer. They just dripped menacingly, promising that, next time, one of them would fall on him and leave him with more than just a bruise. He narrowed his eyes suspiciously. "Don't even think about it. I've got my eye on you. All of you."

One of the stalactites dripped directly onto his glasses. "Aw, c'mon. Really?" He dropped his head and snatched his glasses from his face, unzipping his sweater to go to town on the soiled lens with his t-shirt. "Whyyy?" Chris did the best job he could cleaning them, but his shirt was drenched in sweat, and the water was… not clean. That lens was thoroughly smudged now. Wiping it might have actually made the situation worse. Squinting through that nonsense was gonna give him a headache in about three seconds. He put his glasses back on and glowered at the ceiling with one eye. "Not cool."

Defiantly, the stalactite dripped at him again, but this time he dodged it and got back to his feet, grimacing as he put weight on his right leg. "Onward and upward," he muttered and continued deeper into the tunnel.

The tunnel wound and twisted. The floor was uneven and threatened to turn his ankle with every step. The walls and ceiling closed in around him, making him want to duck his head, to avoid the jagged rocks above. The path was so dark and claustrophobic, the beam of his flashlight seemed barely capable of cutting through it. Why would Ash ever come this way?

"Ash?" He paused to listen for any response, but the tinnitus was just too damn loud. He reached up to vigorously rub and bat at his ear, hoping to clear the stupid out of it, but, stubbornly, the ringing persisted. Who knew discharging a gun right next to your head could fuck up your hearing so bad?

He sighed. Well… you knew that. That's why you always wear hearing protection at the range. But, like an idiot, you still did it. In fairness, though, he hadn't exactly been expecting to survive the gunshot. His hearing had been pretty low on his list of considerations. Now though? He was kinda starting to think maybe Van Gogh wasn't quite so crazy for cutting off his own ear.

The passage turned sharply to the right and opened up again into a room held up by mining beams. Moonlight filtered in through the cracks of a boarded up shaft, casting god-rays on a table beneath. In front of the table was a trap door, and in front of that…

"Oh no..." Chris blinked, not wanting to be sure of what he was seeing. Maybe it was just a trick of the light passing through his filthy glasses. He closed one eye, cutting off the interference from the lens smudged in cave crap, but that didn't help much. He'd have to get closer.

But he really didn't want to get closer. Because that thing on the floor looked a lot like Ashley's beanie. And it was in a massive puddle of blood. If he moved closer, the comforting arms of doubt would vanish from around him. And he couldn't bear the thought of knowing something had happened to her. But what was the point? He already knew, didn't he?

"Oh my God, no..." his legs buckled, and he staggered forward to keep upright, dropping to his knees in front of the offending object, only faintly aware of the blood soaking through his jeans. There could no longer be any doubt. That was Ash's beanie, and it was covered in blood. The wendigo had gotten to her. Chris had seen what it does, how fast it works. He could see all the blood. So much blood. Surely nobody could survive that much blood loss.

Ash. His Ash… with her long-suffering indulgence of his sense of humor, her big doe eyes, her adorable button nose, and the soft, warm lips he'd only just gotten to touch with his own…was....

The last beam supporting the mental dam that had been holding back his steadily mounting despair finally cracked. His grief came pouring out of his mouth in a flood of tears and sobs, unmindful of the danger he, himself, must be in. "Oh my God, Ash. No. No!" He scooped her beanie into his free hand, feeling the soft wool slither over his fingers, leaving in its wake streaks of blood. Fresh blood. His hands felt like they were a million miles away, as he rubbed the blood-- Ash's blood-- between his fingers. The room around him wobbled and swayed; everything was surreal. It felt exactly like a nightmare. Yes. This was a nightmare. It had to be. But if so, why couldn't he wake up??

"I can't stand it…" he whimpered, his voice cracking. "None of this can be happening. This can't be real! Please tell me it's not real!" He lifted the beanie to his face, imploring it to respond. Begging Ashley to appear from around the corner or out of the trap door and tell him it was just a joke. A prank. A nightmare. That she was okay. But she didn't. The beanie reeked of iron, not corn syrup. Tears poured down his cheeks as he lowered the beanie and tucked it into his pocket. "No… no… no…" His eyes dropped to the cavern floor, looking for something-- anything-- to latch on to. Any sign that it wasn't hopeless. All he saw was a trail of blood connecting the puddle to the trap door, where it ended. If there was any chance whatsoever of finding her, it'd be down there.

Numbly, he got back to his feet and shuffled over to the trap door. There was the gnawing sensation that he was just throwing his life away, but he couldn't be bothered to care anymore. If she'd died because he left her behind, then maybe he didn't deserve to survive the night. He bent down stiffly and opened the trap door. There were more support beams down there, some ancient, leaky hazmat drums, and pipes leading into darkness. The air was rank with the smell of must and whatever was coming out of those barrels. More blood pooled at the base of the ladder. Shit, there was so much of it. It trailed off in the direction the pipes were running.

Setting the trapdoor down clumsily against the legs of the table, Chris started down the ladder. But after all the climbing, jumping, and… even just walking, his ankle picked that exact moment to decide it'd had enough. The first moment he put all his weight on it, it crumpled, and his foot slipped off of the rung. His hands, hampered by the flashlight, lost their grip on the ladder, and down he went, landing hard on his back. The air whooshed out of his lungs, and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't get his chest to expand and let new air in.

God, this is how I die? By falling off a ladder that's like two inches high? After everything else, this is how it ends? For f-- Then his diaphragm started functioning again. His endless, involuntary groan stopped, and he took a huge, shaky breath. Nope. Not dying. His ribs hurt like a mother-- more than they already had-- but nothing in there seemed to be moving in an unnatural way, so he supposed he must be all right. Just knocked the wind out of himself. Slowly, he rolled over and fumbled for the flashlight that had flown out of his grasp during the fall. Once he found that, he rose unsteadily to his feet, his ankle grumbling like Yosemite Sam.

With one hand, he rubbed at his leg conciliatorily; with the other, he cast the beam of the flashlight down to the pool of blood at the base of the ladder. Its structural integrity had been obliterated when he landed in it, but it was easy enough to follow the trail.

He didn't have to follow it far.

A few yards beyond the reach of the moonlight streaming through the trap door, his flashlight beam fell upon a big, red lump on the floor. Chris felt his stomach seize up into a tight ball and cram itself into his throat. For a long moment, he absolutely could not get his feet to move. When they did, they felt so heavy it was like moving through mud. Everything around the shape disappeared from his consciousness, and the closer he got, the more clear it became. Soon, it was impossible for him to deny the truth of what he was seeing. It was Ashley’s hoodie. But it was like those old crime scene photos from the Manson murders that Josh had shown him once. One of the victims was wearing a white nightgown so saturated in blood that the investigators initially thought it was red. Ash’s hoodie was the same way. You’d never know from looking at it now that it was gray. But there was something else wrong with it. It wasn't lying right on the cavern floor. It should be lying flat. Why wasn't it lying flat?

You know why, Christopher.

"No," he hissed viciously. "It's just her hoodie. If she was in it, I’d see her head sticking out. Maybe her hoodie came off while she was fighting."

But down beneath the waistband of her hoodie were her shorts, and coming out the bottom of those were her leggings and boots, and those were definitely not empty. And there’s no way all of that would come off in a fight. But there was still nothing coming out of the collar of her hoodie! Then his eyes drifted down to her sleeves. Poking delicately out the ends were small, pale, crimson-streaked fingers. Unmistakeable.

The ramifications of what he was seeing hit him like a ton of bricks. The stranger. Alive one second. Gone the next. His head toppling from his shoulders and thudding heavily to the snow. But it had Ashley's face when it landed. "Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God." He wanted to deny it. He needed to deny it, but no matter how hard his mind whirled for anything to latch onto, there was nothing but the truth.

Where was her head?? Letting out a horrible yell, he dropped his flashlight, fell to her side and found her hand, but there was no head to cradle. No eyes to look into. No hair to stroke. No cheek to caress. And her lips… the memory of her kiss haunted him, a ghost of warmth on his icy lips. The sensation was so intoxicating, and now he would never experience it again. He had no way to feel close to her but to take her blood-streaked hand and sandwich it between his own.

Noise was coming out of him, maybe he was saying something, but hell if he knew what it was. He didn't even know if there were words, or if it was just a mindless outpouring of pure anguish. His vision swam as it locked in on the perfectly manicured fingers of the hand he held, took in the blood caked in the cuticles and under her nails. Was it hers or the pig's blood Josh had used to fake his death? Did it matter? Did anything matter? Then he couldn't see anything but vague blobs. His vision was obscured behind a flood of grief, and even blinking couldn't clear his eyes. So he closed them and doubled over into a hopeless, rocking ball. Unaware he was doing it, he pressed the back of her hand to his mouth, sobbing into it, washing away the blood with his tears. Her hand was still warm. Still warm! Maybe if he'd realized she was gone sooner… if he hadn't wasted so much time being an emotional wreck… if he hadn’t been an idiot and hurt his ankle in the first place… he might have been here in time to help… to do something…

To take her place.

Yes. That, more than anything else, was what he wanted right now. He wanted to die knowing that she'd be all right because of it. But he'd never get to do that, because… because... Ashley was--

His mind recoiled violently from the word. He just couldn't accept it. This was clearly someone else's body. Someone wearing her clothes. One of Josh's horribly realistic dummies, maybe, with the head ripped off. He desperately wanted to cling to that idea. It felt warm and comfortable. But deep down he knew better. The smell of her hand, like peaches and vanilla mixed with old books. The soft warmth of her skin against his cold cheek. They were as familiar to him as the weight of his glasses on his nose-- impossible to mistake for anything else. For anyone else. There was no escaping the reality. This was Ashley’s body. Ashley was dead. Her words echoed back to him.

It's just not fair!

His face stretched in a rictus of grief as he lowered his head to her chest, using it to muffle his sobs.

It's too late, Chris. What's the point?

Her chest was silent and still. No heartbeat to be heard. No whooshing of air through her lungs. No rise and fall of her breast. Each observation came like the fall of a hammer on a nail being driven through his heart.

We've wasted everything.

"Oh, God, Ash. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry." His voice was too high and broken, muffled by the fabric of her hoodie and coming out in quick, wavering gasps amidst the rapid heaving of his chest. "It should have been me. It should have been me. I should have saved you. I'm so sorry." His head was swimming. His face was heavy and tingling, and his lips were numb. His hands, still clasping hers, felt a million miles away. Chris was vaguely aware that he was hyperventilating again, but there was no stopping it this time; he didn’t want to stop it. He just didn't care anymore. If he died down here, what difference did it make? He’d failed in the one thing that mattered most to him; there was no living with that. Spots bloomed across his vision, even though his eyes were closed. Vaguely, he heard the sound of something clamoring in the room up above. He sat up, opened his eyes, and still couldn't see through the swarm of darkness blooming across his vision. At the movement, he felt the blood drain out of his face. Suddenly, his head lolled heavily forward, his shoulders went limp, and he slumped over Ash's body in a dead faint.

#until dawn #chris hartley #fanfiction #elliepollie #wacem scribbles

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