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“Welcome to Bizarre Yet Bonafide, the podcast of the paranormal. Hello and welcome to the latest episode, I’m Grace and this is Anton! Today we’re going to be discussing the recent tragic and yet bizarre, Hackett Family Massacre. Now picture this, you’re a camp counsellor on your last day of summer camp, all the kids are gone and you’re ready to go home to spend the rest of your summer away from all the mosquitoes and bears that you’ve had to fend off in those dangerous and mysterious woods. However, just as you’re about to go, your van breaks down and you unwittingly become trapped in the same woods as a man on a murder spree! Well there’s no need to imagine my dear listeners, as nearly a month ago, this very situation befell seven camp counsellors at the Hackett Quarry Summer Camp. On this night, the patriarch of the Hackett family, Jedediah, set out to murder his wife, three sons and two grandchildren for reasons still unknown, unaware that the counsellors of the camp had not left that day. Now, I know you’re wondering, where’s the bizarre? This is a podcast of the paranormal of course. Well here it is! There have been rumours, particularly creditable rumours if you ask me, that the reason Jedediah massacred his family is because he was in fact possessed by a ghost! And none other than the ghost that has been discussed on this very podcast before, so drum roll please! Thank you Anton. A ghost that is none other than the Hag of Hackett’s Quarry! Or maybe her long lost son Silas? Why are these rumours credible? Well I’m glad you asked because-“
Ryan yanks the earbuds out and lets them fall, a quiet clicking noise filling the otherwise silent room as they knock together against his chest. He hits the pause button perhaps a little too roughly and resists the urge to toss his phone across the room. He really shouldn’t be surprised that Bizarre Yet Bonafide are covering the “Hackett Family Massacre” but still, it wasn’t what he was expecting to hear when he mindlessly clicked on the podcast.
He immediately tries to forget the words he just heard, trying to wash them out of his mind alongside the sudden bitter taste in his mouth. But memories have already begun flooding back, the simple mention of the Hackett name instantly drawing him back to that night, with all the deep seated fear and nausea that comes with it.
Images of blood, so much blood, and torn open skin flash behind his eyes. His hand protectively and instinctively clasps around his wrist where Silas bit him outside the radio shack. He swallows back the bile that creeps up his throat, like the lies he has had to tell since that summer night.
‘They don’t know. They don’t know the truth.’ He reassures himself over and over again, to little avail. It feels like their collective secret will be found out at any moment and that it’s only a matter of time.
They’ve all put their faith in Travis and the story he had them spin to his fellow police officers to keep them safe. Ryan has to believe it will hold up as the investigation wraps up. The other possibility is far too much to even comprehend thinking about. Laura has repeatedly reassured him that it is a believable story and he tries to recall her words to reassure him once more. What other explanations would there be? That the Hacketts had been sheltering werewolves, which just so happen to be real, and those very real werewolves attacked them that night and the family was killed in an attempt to dispel the werewolf curse? Yeah, she really doubts the police would even entertain the idea and Ryan, despite his anxieties, logically agrees with her. The Hacketts had always been a strange, isolated family, so it isn’t such a leap that someone like Jedediah could do something so terrible. Even if he didn’t.
The counsellors weren’t particularly suspicious either, he supposes. They had washed and changed their clothes well before the police came and their story of the night was cohesive amongst them. Travis was trusted by his fellow policemen. He had no reason to lie, nor did seven random camp counsellors taken to be questioned individually. They were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Their van broke down, they went to the beach to play truth or dare when they were attacked by a bear and ran to the radio shack to call for help. When Travis arrived they found Kaylee’s body in the pool and sheltered in the lodge while Travis went to his family home, having to unfortunately shoot his father to put an end to the massacre. He then of course immediately called the station, with no delay to hide any proof of their involvement or guilt. Any evidence of the counsellors being anywhere else that night could be attributed to spending the summer there and any other strange findings, such as explosions of blood dotted around the forest, could be blamed on the Hackett patriarch.
They’d been sent home and straight into therapy before the end of the week, with stern instructions not to leave the state and carrying with them the weight of the lies they could never expose, the memory of horrors well beyond what any other person will ever have to experience fresh in their minds and a burden in their blood thicker than tar.
Ryan has felt it grow thicker this past week.
As he sits inside his room, stewing over his guilt and anxiety, he can smell the pie that his neighbour in the apartment beside him had pulled from the oven a few hours ago. He can hear the conversation that the man waiting in traffic on the street below holds over the phone as if he were here in the room with him. The lamp on his bedside table behind him feels just a little too bright, despite having his back turned to it. Despite spending practically half of his earnings on food, his stomach rolls with an insatiable hunger. And today, his teeth had gnashed together as he held himself back from growling at an irate customer.
He doesn’t remember noticing any signs of Chris or his two children dealing with what Ryan is having to deal with now. Yes Chris has been extremely anxious that day, yet now knowing what would happen that night, it was a completely reasonable reaction. Other than that however, he hadn’t noticed anything to indicate that Chris was anything other than an ordinary man. Perhaps he had learned to hide it after the six years of infection. Perhaps it no longer affected him as strongly as it does to Ryan now, after all that time. There’s no way to know now.
The only thing that keeps Ryan from plunging into despair or panic is the knowledge that he is not alone with this. As guilty as the thought makes him, he is secretly glad that each of his former coworkers turned friends also share in this curse. Whenever he wants to complain about his suddenly delicate sense of smell, Abi beats him to it, lamenting about how the liles her mother keeps in the foyer now give her splitting headaches, when she used to love their strong scent. When he bemoans his now sensitive hearing, Kaitlyn chimes in to give the groupchat a total rundown of all her neighbours drama that she heard clearly through the walls. When he begins feeling fearful of himself due to the increasing irritability, he checks his phone and finds another recount of Emma only narrowly avoiding slapping someone again- though in all fairness, that may just be an Emma issue.
So it’s not just him going through this. All of his friends are suffering from similar symptoms, though some worse and some better. Though there is one symptom he hasn’t mentioned to them, simply because he isn’t sure it is a symptom at all. There has been a pit in his stomach since that night.
At first he thought it was residual fear. Then he assumed it was just anxiety from the trauma. Now he isn’t so sure what it is, but it feels as if it is getting stronger, deeper. It doesn’t feel like fear or anxiety. It doesn’t feel like numbness or depression. It’s simply a hole in his stomach, like something is missing. A few times when he really focuses on it, he’s felt it is almost like a deep seated loneliness. But he knows what loneliness feels like, he knows it well. Loneliness is a feeling that sits within the chest and feels so thick, like his lungs are filled with water. This isn’t just loneliness. Besides, he has no reason to feel lonely. He visits his grandparents and little sister Sarah every weekend, and he has more friends than ever before, even if he can only interact with them through a screen. Whatever it is, these past days it has grown and it now feels as if he’ll fall into it, like a black hole pulling in and consuming everything that ventures near.
A loud Bzzrt! yanks his eyes down to his phone and snaps him out of thoughts. He pulls his jaw to the side as if it could clear his ear of the grating sound that felt as if it stabbed his eardrums, despite his phone being on the lowest notification setting possible. Any day before that night he would have ignored his phone in favour of returning to his musing but now Ryan instantly flips his phone over and clicks on the message. Even if it is just a random meme sent by Jacob to the group chat, he’d rather be safe than sorry and potentially miss a cry for help or worse.
Laura
Hey, all packed up and sorted with Emma?
His thumbs tap out his message with the quick and practised ease of someone who spends entirely too much time online, informing her with an ease he does not feel, indeed he is. It takes him a second before he remembers to ask after Max and their new car, forgetting the dark fate he was told met the last.
Her response is quick, a simple yes before three dots bouncing pop up on the corner of his screen, indicating either a long message is coming or she is struggling to word her next message right. Ryan places his phone down on his desk and looks out his window as he waits, sweeping his eyes up and down the street and the buildings that line it. He doesn’t know how he feels about still being in this town. When he asked Chris about animation school, he’d been looking for reassurance, for that final push over the edge to get him to apply. That push never came and the choice has been taken away from him now anyway. Going to college with a backpack full of trauma and veins full of a supernatural curse slash disease slash whatever being a goddamn werewolf is- well to put it simply, he didn’t think he’d get many ‘A’s’.
Instead he’s in the smallest, dingiest apartment in town and working for his grandfather. Technically his contract hasn’t been drawn up yet, so it’s all under the table for now. But it’s enough to afford this place, so Ryan makes do. He just didn’t feel comfortable living with his grandparents and little sister anymore. The first thing he did when he came home, after giving many tearful explanations and being forced to endure back breaking hugs, was begin organising to move out. He didn’t know how the ‘disease’ would affect him and now that he does, he’s glad that he had the urgency that he did. On top of that, being alone means he’s not disturbing or waking anyone as he potters around at night.
It seems that most of his new friends have had the same idea of taking at least a year off before broaching the idea of further schooling as well. If he recalls correctly, only he and Jacob have begun working so soon after that night, and only out of necessity, not mental security. Though Laura has mentioned that she still intends to pursue veterinary school.
As if summoned by the thought of her, his phone buzzes once more. He swipes up into his texts and squints his eyes as the screen blares a bright light before it adjusts itself down to a more tolerable brightness. If he didn't know better, Ryan might think she was happy their last car got crushed apart in the scrapyard, seeming happy enough to tell him the improved quality of this one. Then, as he's coming to expect from Laura, she makes sure to run through the plan once more. It isn't exactly difficult to recall, simply picking up those along their path, fetching Nick first before swinging round to grab Jacob and Kaitlyn. He can almost hear the dry tone through the silent phone, when she apologises for being unable to fit Ryan in too, but consoling him with the fact he at least won't be stuck listening to Nick and Jacob's bickering the whole way. It's almost funny how Laura only really knows either of them by grace of the group text chat, and yet that's enough to know the ruckus she'll be no doubt putting up with on the drive.
Her next message pops onto his screen before he can reply to the first, arriving quickly enough that Ryan assumes she’s copied and pasted it. It's the sudden, direct question for how Ryan's managing. While she tacks on a comment of how Max doesn't seem to be finding his 'symptoms' so bad and she hopes Ryan feels the same, the message reads as if his answer has already been given. Well, fairly enough, considering she's right. Ryan tells her yeah, he wouldn't call any of this mild. Frankly he doesn't know how he'll ever adjust to this, however Laura's thoughts on that sentiment are delivered instantly, a short but heartfelt declaration that they will find a way. They'll stick together and work it out. It's a nice thought, and Ryan tries to make himself feel hopeful, or encouraged, or honestly anything positive. Mostly he just feels dread. Thank God for Laura then, and her plans. As she writes, once they're all together again and settled in, tomorrow they should list down everything known about their new 'condition'; symptoms, things that held, changes, so on and so forth.
It's a good idea, and sending off his agreement prompts Laura into giving another reason for why it is, one he hadn't even considered. He thought jotting down their symptoms to see if anyone has worked out some magic fix for dealing with the grating noises and irritability would be beneficial. As Laura points out however, even more than that, it has value as simply a distraction too. They don't know how everyone will react to being forced back. Ryan breathes in a deep breath, raising his eyebrows to himself in silent agreement. There’s no way around it, even if they all manage to hold it together, returning to the Hackett camp will be incredibly tough on them all. Especially having to return so extremely soon after that night. The place where they saw horrors worse than could be imagined, where good people died for nothing and where a monstrosity still roams, with them soon to join it. It’s a nauseating idea to turn, but as they’ve quickly learned, they don’t have as many choices in life as they’d once thought.
His phone dings again and a goodnight message from Laura pops onto the screen, expressing how she hadn’t realised how late it’s gotten. He taps a goodnight back and flicks his eyes to the corner of his phone to see how late is too late for her. It’s just past midnight. He sighs, tapping the power button on his computer and pulling over his graphics tablet that he got for a birthday a few years back. He picks off a small shaving from the tip of the stylus nib with his nail as he waits for his clunky computer to boot up. He might as well continue on with his current work in process, as Ryan’s well aware he won’t be sleeping for a good few more hours, as much as the dark circles under his eyes beg him too. As much as he wants to.
Ryan honestly considers himself lucky with the insomnia. He could be having panic attacks every hour or be one bad memory away from stringing himself up. As painful, scary and depressing as it all is, he thinks he’s coping okay. Just focusing on what he needs to do, pushing back every reminder of that night and stuffing down any emotion too large to deal with. He’s doing good.
His hand slides across the tablet, thick black lines mirroring his movements across the screen. His mind finally falls quiet as he sinks himself into the project, drawing away, frame by frame, into the early hours of the morning until his head grows heavy and eyes go blurry. When he drops heavily down onto his bed shoved into the corner of the tiny room, he’s asleep before he can even tug the blanket over him.