by C. K. Walker
"Ben..."
*
"We have to wake her up soon." I looked over at Mel as I sat on the couch absentmindedly folding and unfolding Ash's drawing over and over.
"Not yet." Lloyd stared through the window at the rain and smoked out of cracked sliding door.
"So...he didn't say anything to you? Did he tell you he was planning to go outside?" I asked.
"He didn't say anything to me. I woke Moss up, told him it was his turn, he nodded and then got up and I went to bed."
"We told him to stay in the cabin," Ben muttered, shaking his head. "It's not safe out there. They're out there."
"What are they?" I asked.
"Does it matter?" Ben didn't spare me a look.
Lloyd flicked his cigarette outside and slid the door shut. "Not anymore. This is only a game of survival now."
"Yes it does matter,” I countered. “Part of surviving is knowing how to defend ourselves."
"Then we do what Ash told us to do and stay in the cabin until someone comes looking for us." Ben said.
"And if Ash is the one doing this?" I shot back.
"It's NOT Ash."
Mel continued to sleep while we argued quietly with one another. The rain from the day before had left the mountain cloudy and soaked in mist. The graves were thankfully concealed by a thick, gray fog by the time Mel woke up.
The entire morning something had been bothering me about the room we were standing in. Something was not right, something had changed. I could see it there out of the corner of my eye. But every time I turned to look nothing was out of place. It distressed me to the point that I brought it up to Ben and Lloyd.
"Do you guys notice anything...I don't know, different around here?"
"Yeah. There are graves in the front yard."
"No, Lloyd, I mean different about this room. Something is bothering me..."
I followed my peripheral vision around the room again but nothing popped out at me.
"No, Ingrid. Right now we're trying to figure out how best to survive outside of the house."
"Wait, we- we're leaving the cabin?" I sputtered.
"Lloyd thinks we should," answered Ben.
"What, no, why the fuck would we do that?!"
After continuing to argue for hours with Ben and Lloyd about the best course of action we decided that, in the absence of phones and neighbors, the two of them would have to try to fix one of the cars with their limited knowledge of mechanics. Since Lloyd's jeep was the oldest - and therefore, they reasoned, the most mechanically simple - they decided to work on that car first.
I was to stand guard on the overlooking deck and watch anything that moved. Ash had taken his gun with him when he left the day before, but we reasoned a warning was better than nothing at all.
Mel spent most of the morning sitting on the deck with me watching the trees through the fog. I don't know when she noticed the absence of Moss and the appearance of the second grave but she didn’t mentioned it.
The boys had only been out there an hour when I heard a loud thud from above us. It had come from the roof.
"Mel, did you hear that?" I whispered.
She nodded but continued her vigil over the wood. I leaned over the railing and yelled down at Ben, who was sitting in the front seat of the car keying the ignition.
"I'll be right back. Mel will watch you guys."
Ben nodded but Lloyd had his head buried in the engine which was desperately trying to turn over. Mel turned her head to look down at them but otherwise seemed uninvested.
"If you see anything, yell out, ok?"
Mel gave an almost imperceptible nod.
"I mean it, Mel, anything."
"Yep."
Having no plan at all except to hope I'd hear the thud again, I went inside and climbed the stairs to Mel and Ash's room on the 3rd floor. I stood there quietly for what seemed like ages with only the sound of the jeep turning over to pierce through the silence of the mountain. Finally, I went to the sliding door to look at the tree line of the forest, which was now almost impossible to see through the heavy fog.
And then I heard it again. But it wasn't a thud...it was footstep. My breath caught in my throat. And then another step. Someone was walking on the roof directly above me. They were slow, heavy, careful footsteps.
On blind, dumb instinct I ripped open the sliding door to the balcony. Just as I took a step out, an earsplitting scream sliced through the chill, outside air.
Lloyd.
I spun away from the door and ran down the stairs as fast as I could, falling once on the landing. I jerked on the front door to run outside but it wouldn't budge. In desperation, I ran out onto the deck to find Mel where I'd left her - completely unaware and again staring at the trees.
I ran to the railing and saw the thing; it was running towards a copse of trees and dragging something behind it. It was too tall to be Ben or Lloyd. I screamed for Melanie and she instantly snapped out of her spell.
"Wha- what happened?"
“Goddamn it, Mel!” I cried. She followed me inside and I again tried the front door, screaming for Ben and Lloyd in blind panic.
"Ingrid?" I heard a voice echo up the basement stairs.
"Ben!" My voice broke over his name.
I ran down the basement stairs skipping two or three steps at a time as Mel hurried behind. When I reached the bottom, Ben was standing in the doorway of the basement bedroom holding a small, black box.
"Ben, where's Lloyd?" I choked out as soon as I saw him.
"What?"
"Where the fuck is Lloyd?"
Ben looked perplexed and nodded at the open door I hadn't noticed before. "He's still out with the car, wh- why aren't you guys watching him?"
"He's not there," I shook my head in shock and tears spilled down my cheeks. "I heard him scream and I just saw someone running away from the jeep."
The small box fell from Ben's hands and crashed to the floor, assorted tools fanning out in every direction. I made for the door but Ben caught me in one arm and slammed the door shut with the other.
"No, Ingrid. Don't."
I thrashed against him ineffectively until I melted into a hysterical pile of broken girl at his feet. Ben sat down on the floor next to me and held me while I convulsed in sobs. Mel watched the scene for a moment and then slid down the side of the old, metal furnace to rest her back against it and silently cry.
I don't know how long we sat there but it felt like only minutes. The tears hadn't even dried from my face when we heard a door creak open upstairs. I knew immediately it was the jammed front door.
Mel's eyes widened and Ben slowly let go of me and stood up. He put a finger to his lips and began quietly climbing the stairs - we'd left the basement door open.
Mel and I barely breathed as we heard Ben's footfalls reach the landing. Suddenly there was the sound of heavy, hurried footsteps running across the floor above us. We heard Ben run up the rest of the way to the door and slam it shut. Then silence. Mel and I got to our feet.
Ben descended back down to the basement and by the time he got to the bottom his face had drained of color and his body was wracked with shudders.
"Who was it, Ben?"
"Was it Ashley?"
Ben shook his head and ran a trembling hand through his hair. "The- the door locks from this side. We should be safe." But I didn't think a locked door was going to stop it.
We sat Ben down and Mel held him while I paced around the room. There was no more sound from above but that meant we hadn't heard the thing leave, either. I paced the basement floor staring out the window as I passed by it until the fog momentarily cleared and I saw the thing I’d been dreading - the third grave. Lloyd's grave. I grabbed onto the window ledge as my legs gave out beneath me. I tried to recover quickly, for Mel's sake. The girl was barely holding it together.
"What? What is it?" Mel asked.
"Nothing. It's nothing; I just haven't eaten since yesterday."
Ben gave me a l
ook that said he knew what I'd seen and Mel sprang up to run to the window since she wasn't buying it either.
"No..." Mel whispered and her voice cracked. "No! We have to find Ashley. He can stop all this!"
Before I could grab her, Mel was on the staircase, taking them two at a time.
"Mel!" I screamed at her.
"What if that was Ashley up there? What if he's come back for us?"
Melanie, being the gentle soul that she was, just wasn't prepared to handle any more of it. She was out of her mind in grief and fear.
By the time I caught up with her, Mel had already thrown open the basement door and stepped out into the living room area. There was nothing there. I entered the room cautiously behind her and immediately noticed that whatever had been bothering me that morning was still there and that the uneasy feeling it gave me was more pronounced than ever.
"Melanie..." I breathed. "We have to get out of here."
I stepped toward her to drag her back down the stairs but she bolted for the front door which was still standing open. I took one last long look around the room and ran out the door and down the stairs after Mel.
By the time I reached the ground, Ben had already thrown open the basement door and was ahead of me in the chase. By the time he reached her, Mel was tearing through the wet soil of the first grave plot – Ash’s grave – with her bare hands.
Ben grabbed her shoulders to pull her away and then suddenly froze. I came up next to him and watched as Mel tore through the mud and dirt for an eternity until she finally hit packed earth.
"It's empty." She looked up at us with mud and tears dripping down her face. "Ashley isn't dead!"
"Ash is alive..." I breathed. "Are- are all of these graves empty?"
I walked over to the grave that would have been Lloyd's and began scraping away the loose earth. It was much easier to dig up than the first plot because the grave was fresh and the dirt was dry. Mel sat back on her haunches and watched me hopefully as Ben stared out ahead of us.
"Guys..."
"Ben, fucking help me."
"Guys, we have to go. Now." Ben said without looking away from the trees.
"But Lloyd-"
My fingers caught on something hard deep in dirt. And I didn't have to know much to know I was suddenly holding a rib cage. I jerked my hand out in horror.
"Jesus fuck!"
I fell back on my hands and scooted away from the hole in revulsion.
Mel shook her head in disbelief. "But..."
"Then it's Ash!" I screamed at her. "It's Ash who's doing this! He's killing everyone, he killed Lloyd!"
Mel shook her head fervently and stood up to walk over to me. "How-"
"He's been murdering us, Melanie, don't you get it? His mind is fucked. He killed Moss and he killed Lloyd and he'll kill you too. He's out there right now-"
SLAP
Melanie pulled her hand back and cradled it to her breast. “How dare you. How dare you?! You're supposed to be his friend, Ingrid, you've known him all your life. Ashley didn't do this. Ashley would never hurt the people he loved! He’d never hurt me!”
I cupped my cheek with the hand that had so recently held Lloyd's bones. "There is no other possibility, Melanie." I said, icily.
She took a step away from me, and opened her mouth but it fell into a gape and her face suddenly went white. Mel stumbled and fell to the ground but was back on her feet in an instant. She looked up at the house and then back down at me.
"He deserved better from his friends, Ingrid." Mel’s voice cracked and then she turned and fled for the tree line.
"Ben!" I screamed, "Stop her!" But Ben was already moving toward me at lightning speed. He grabbed my arm and pulled me to my feet and back toward the cabin.
"Ben!" I screamed. "We have to get Mel!"
"Mel is gone, we can't help her now."
As soon as the door to the cabin closed behind us, I ripped off my mud caked jacket and threw it at Ben.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?”
"They were there. They were out there."
"There is no 'they', Ben. There's only Ash."
"No, Ash is dead; he was probably killed minutes after walking out of this cabin."
"Then where's his body, Ben? Why is his grave empty?"
I knew I was starting to snap. The shock, the absurdity of it all…my brain couldn’t comprehend what was happening to me anymore.
"I don't know. It was the first grave; it was made to- made to draw us out there."
"By Ash. There’s no other logical-“
"No!" Ben shook his head. "Mel was right, Ash wouldn't do that."
"Well he did do that."
"You're wrong."
"Because there's no other alternative-"
"Those things we're seeing aren't Ash!"
"-and I refuse to believe that stick figure people-"
“You have to accept the fact-"
"-are running around the woods killing our friends-"
"-that we're being hunted out here-"
"- and field-stripping their dead bodies!"
"-by something fucked up and inhuman!”
"-when it's clearly Ashley suffering from some sort of PTSD!"
"It's not Ash, Ingrid.”
"He murdered Lloyd!"
"Listen to me-“
"Ashley fucking murdered Lloyd!"
“No-“
“There’s no-“
"I did it! Okay? I killed Lloyd."
I shook my head, disoriented and took a step backward.
"It was me, Ingrid! I killed him." Ben’s voice broke over my name.
"Why are you saying that...?” I choked.
"Because it's true. Out by the jeep-"
"Stop."
"And I'm pretty sure that Lloyd ki-"
"Stop!"
"Ingrid, you have to listen to me if you want to survive. Those things, they have this power - when they're near you - to make you so angry. Fuck, I mean, fuck, I just, I couldn’t stop hitting Lloyd's-”
"STOP!" I gasped, trying desperately to draw air into my lungs. I clutched the back of the couch for support. I could feel a blind, foreign rage building in me and I turned my knuckles white trying to quell it.
"Are you on Ash's side?” I whispered, finally. “Did he tell you to hurt Lloyd?"
“No, I just...I just killed him."
"And who peeled the flesh from his bones and buried him in the ground then, Benjamin?" I said and was unsettled by the flat, impassive tone of my voice.
"They did."
"Why would they do that?"
Ben nodded to Lloyd's computer, which was sitting open on the coffee table where he'd left after he went to bed at the end of his watch.
"Read what Lloyd has been writing, Ingrid."
Keeping a wary eye on Ben I rounded the couch and picked up the computer, waking up the monitor with a swipe of my finger.
There were only 15 pages - which didn't seem like much for the days he'd spent locked away writing - and while it started out like any other story, the text quickly descended into nonsense and random strings of alphanumeric until the last three pages on which he'd simply typed It Eats Us over and over again.
I slammed the laptop shut and threw it across the floor. Then I walked over to fridge, pulled out the last beer in it - one of Ben's- and dropped down into the nearest chair.
Ben hadn't moved.
"I'm so sorry, Ingrid. I'm so sorry. I loved Lloyd like a brother and I just snapped. I was just standing there holding the crowbar and thinking about-"
"Stop talking, Ben."
He stopped but choked on a sob in his throat. Ben was right. Mel was right. It wasn't Ash, it couldn’t be. It was something else altogether, something that lived out in the wood.
"Ingrid, I have to-"
"Ben, the only reason you're telling me this is because they want you to, I'd guess. I don't have a reason to hate you and so they're allowing you to give me one."
CREAK
Ben and I looked at each other and then at the door to the basement. It was coming up the stairs.
I knew it was over, we were totally fucked. There was nothing left to do but die. I raised my beer to Ben, gave him a solemn nod, took a long gulp and then hurled the bottle at the basement door where is shattered against the wood.
"Fuck you!" I screamed at the thing.
"Ingrid," Ben brought my attention back to him and he looked at me pleadingly, through the veil of a thousand different emotions. "Run."
Before I could respond, Ben dove for the basement door and threw himself down the stairs. I shot up out of the chair in horror as his body made the most tortured and sickening screams I had ever heard.
I stood there for long seconds listening to his flesh ripping apart against the soundtrack of a low, satisfied growl.
I was frozen. I was alone. And as I looked desperately around the room for something to fight with, I found the thing that I couldn't see before, the thing that had bothered me about the room since Moss’s disappearance.
And it wasn't frightening or even unsettling; it was just...out of place.
There had appeared sometime overnight a very long, very thin black line that ran vertically on the wall from the floor to almost the ceiling. It was hard to see and at first glance it appeared to be a crack in the wood but when I really looked at it, it somehow wasn't actually the wall at all.
And then, as I was studying it, it moved and expanded to become the tall, black stick man from Ash's drawing. No, it hadn't expanded...it had turned toward me. The thing was as thin as a few pieces of construction paper.
I can tell you that when you're presented with something so impossible and something so innately wrong, you don't scream. You don't gasp. You just stand there frozen with confusion and, in my case, crippling fear.
It took another creak from the basement stairs to snap me out of my catatonia. The creature that had been quietly standing in front of me suddenly sprang to life and ran at me with all the fluidity of an animated drawing.
Since it was between me and front door I turned and fled out onto the deck through the sliding glass door which Mel had left blessedly open. I ran to the end of the patio, and without taking half a second to think, climbed over the wooden railing and jumped off.