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Anxiety nestled itself in Pete’s stomach, mixing with dread and apprehension to make the world’s worst and most nauseating new emotion. He tugged at the strap of his backpack, staring at the floor as he walked. He’d never been in detention before. There was a certain shame to it. He’d never done anything wrong in his entire academic career, so detention felt to him like a failure. It didn’t help that when he called Ted to let him know he would need to be picked up later, his brother cheered and offered to buy him a drink for “finally loosening up”. Anything that made Ted proud was automatically a negative in Pete’s eyes.
At the very least his two best friends would be in detention with him.
“I cannot believe we got in trouble,” Ruth groaned, walking down the hall beside him. Her curly hair was extra fluffy today, bouncing with each step she took.
“I can believe you got in trouble,” Richie stated. “You watched porn in the middle of Spanish class.” He was being too loud again, ignorant of the social norms that dictate you shouldn’t shout things like that in the quiet hallway.
“It was in Spanish!” Ruth defended herself. “I was technically studying!”
“Shhh! You guys are being so loud!” Pete tried his hardest to turn invisible because everyone in the hallway stared at them. Unfortunately, he did not have superpowers, so he stayed completely non-transparent.
“It sucks that we got detention for stuff that wasn’t even our fault,” Richie turned to Pete. “Mrs. Kirkland knows you have blood sugar issues, you shouldn’t have gotten in trouble for eating during class!”
“Yeah, my parents are probably going to come down to the school and complain about it on Monday. Why’d you get detention?”
“I was late to class because Max shoved me in a locker again.”
The other two nodded. That happened to them often enough, but they usually made it out before class started. Richie was unlucky because his locker got jammed easily.
The hallways slowly emptied as students filtered out. Afterschool clubs were cancelled today due to the snowstorm coming tonight, but detention wasn’t cancelled, which was absolutely stupid and unfair. What, are the “bad kids” just supposed to die of the cold or something?
They entered the classroom where detention was taking place today. Mr. Houston, who looked like he would literally rather be anywhere else, sat at the desk in front, staring into the distance with a frown. Grace stood beside the desk, talking to him even though it was obvious all her words were going in one ear and out the other.
“Why’s she here?” Ruth whispered.
Pete shrugged. Grace was the hall monitor and she never got in trouble.
The three of them stood near the windows, waiting for detention to start. Outside, snow had already begun to fall, the white sky darkening to grey. They were only tiny snowflakes now, but it was supposed to become a blizzard later in the night.
Pete settled into a seat next to the window and Richie sat beside him, pulling out his sketchbook and beginning to draw. Ruth took the seat in front of Richie, turning around so she could watch him draw. He kept placing his hand in front of his art to shield her from looking, but she just shoved his hand away whenever he did. Pete ignored their scuffling and watched the parking lot empty outside.
Another student entered the room, Stephanie Lauter, the mayor’s daughter. When she scanned her eyes over the people in the room, they widened as they settled on the group of nerds. She was probably wondering what those three were doing in detention. She didn’t ask, just sat at a desk in the back row, immediately pulling out her phone. She was probably getting into one of her infamous Twitter fights.
Suddenly, the room went cold, an almost imperceptible change in temperature that actually could have been them imagining things. Standing at the doorway was Max Jägerman, staring right at the nerds. Shit. They were going to have to spend detention with Max.
Max sat in the back near Steph, but they could feel him glaring holes in the back of their heads. Now that everyone was settled, Mr. Houston stood up, grimacing at the students. He was trying to smile, but it was obvious he wasn’t happy to be here at all, because the smile didn’t reach his eyes, which had dark circles nestled firmly and permanently beneath them. “Detention starts now. I don’t care how you spend your time as long as you aren’t killing eachother.” With that, he sat back down. As soon as he was back in his chair, his phone rang. He picked it up and quickly walked out of the room, shutting the door behind him. They could hear his muffled speech through the door.
The three nerds glanced at each other nervously. Pete looked back at Max and Steph. Max leaned back in his chair, arms crossed over his chest, and smiled at them. It was not a kind smile. His eyes glinted with a cruel sparkle, and it made Pete's stomach twist into knots. Ruth fidgeted in her seat, her hands clasped tightly together. Richie kept his gaze on his desk, eyes tracing over the graffiti pencilled on the light wood. It said “S+B” and was encircled by a heart.
Time seemed to slow down as they sat there, the silence broken only by the scratching of Richie’s pencil and the occasional cough. The snow outside grew heavier, blanketing the ground in a white, wintry coat.
Steph put down her phone, watching the screen as she waited for Twitter user @repawblican to respond to her ratio. While she waited, she turned to Max.“How’d you get detention?”
Max lit up in glee, suddenly looking less dangerous and more like an excited toddler. It was strange. “Oh, you should’ve seen it, it was so awesome! This fuckin’ nerd told me he wouldn’t do my homework for me, so I took off my shirt, shouted ‘Come at me bro’ and threw him across the classroom. It was fuckin’ sick!”
The nerds winced.
“How’d you get detention?” Max asked.
“I was on my phone again.” Steph rolled her eyes. “Mr. Henson is such a hardass about that.”
“Language!” Grace reprimanded from the front of the class. Everyone groaned.
“Why are you even here?”
“I’m helping Mr. Houston watch over you.”
Mr. Houston probably just wanted the freedom to sleep during detention without worrying the kids would leave. No one blamed him. It was his first month back at work after his wife died. The anniversary of her death was going to be tough for him.
“Hey,” Steph leaned forward, catching the attention of the nerds. Pete gulped, avoiding her gaze. He could feel his face flush red. “How’d you guys get detention?”
Richie was apparently the bravest of them. Stunned by the fact that Steph was talking to them, he blurted out, “I was late to class.”
“Aren’t you nerds always early to class? I thought you liked school.”
Richie looked at Max and then back down again. He was afraid to say anything in front of Max. He had been the one to cause Richie’s tardiness, after all.
Steph didn't seem to notice the tension in the room. She leaned back in her chair, eyes flicking to Ruth.
“I was uh…” Ruth spoke high and quick, “I was watching videos in class. Family-friendly videos. Not porn.”
“Um… okay…” Steph looked at Pete now.
“I had a m-medical emergency during class,” he stuttered, something he tended to do when nervous. “I had to eat som-something to fix my blood sugar, but then I got in trouble. Mrs. Kirkland’s a fucking asshole.”
“Language!” Grace called out.
Pete rolled his eyes. "I could say it in Polish if you didn't like it in English."
Steph laughed, a pleasant sound they didn't hear often. "I didn't know you were funny!"
"Neither did I," Pete said.
Max gave Pete a seething look. "You're a nerd. That means you aren't supposed to be talking to popular people."
The jovial atmosphere quickly turned icy. Pete gulped, glueing his eyes to the scuffed linoleum floors.
"What's that supposed to mean, Max? You think you can tell me who I can and can’t talk to?" Steph asked, her voice dangerously low.
Before Max could answer, Mr. Houston entered the classroom again, looking a little haggard. “Sorry kids, my son just called. I gotta leave. The power went out at my house and I have to either fix the generator or chop some wood before the blizzard really hits.”
“It’s okay Mr. Houston,” Grace practically jumped to have the opportunity to help out. “I can supervise the detention while you go help Tim.”
“Thanks, Grace,” Mr. Houston sighed. He grabbed all his stuff and left.
As soon as the door closed behind him, Steph leaned forward in her chair. "I'm so over this detention. Why are we even here?"
“We could just leave,” Max suggested.
“Absolutely not,” Grace spoke up. “You are all staying here for the rest of detention.”
“But Grace,” Richie said, peering out the window and into the snowy white world outside, “The storm is getting bad. It might be dangerous for us to drive later.”
Steph nodded. "Yeah, if we just leave now we can get home before it really hits."
“If you leave right now, I’m telling on you,” Grace crossed her arms and tried to appear stern, but her words just sounded childish to the rest of them.
Max stood up, making for the door. “You can’t stop us from leaving, Chastity.”
“It’s Chasity, and yes I can.” Grace stood in front of the door, looking tiny in comparison to Max’s hulking form.
"Oh come on, Grace," Max huffed. He leaned close to her. She wasn’t intimidated at all. In fact, it seemed to make her more angry.
"Don't you dare try anything," she said, her voice cold as ice. "You're all going to stay here and finish your detention. If you want to act up, I'll just tell Mr. Houston."
Max rolled his eyes, but he must not have wanted to get in more trouble, because he sat back down. The nerds couldn’t believe he did what she told him to. If one of them had been in Grace’s place, they would be mincemeat right now.
Grace took a seat at the teacher’s desk and pulled out her bible. She began to read, but she kept glancing up at the others, making sure they stayed put.
Mr. Houston’s car left the parking lot, leaving it empty except for Max and Steph’s vehicles. By now, the wind was howling an eerie dirge and the snow was falling thick and fast, blanketing the ground and sticking to the windows. The sky was dark now, almost pitch black. Their reflections sat beside them in the windows.
Max, bored, took out earbuds and began to listen to music on his phone. Steph checked hers, hoping @repawblican had responded. They hadn’t, apparently so embarrassed by Steph’s insane roasting skills that they were afraid to. Good. But that meant she was bored. She looked at Max, who had his head down on his desk, his eyes closed. He didn’t seem in the mood for conversation, or even to be awake.
She glanced at Grace. Grace was strange and uptight and had incredibly strict parents. Sometimes, when they passed in the hall, Steph would feel bad for her. But then she'd remember all the times Grace had ignored her or made snide remarks or called her a slut, and the pity would shrivel up into nothing.
She stood up, stretching. Maybe the weirdos in the front of the class would make for good conversation. She was sure Max would be mad that she was talking to them, but Max could fuck right off. They both knew she was more powerful than him when it really came down to it.
“Hey, dweebs,” Steph sat in the chair beside the girl with the headgear. She felt bad she didn’t know her name.
The boy with the messy hair flinched, but the girl looked at Steph with stars in her eyes. “Stephanie Lauter is sitting by us!” Headgear squeaked, rocking back and forth in her chair a little.
“My friends call me Steph.”
“... Are we friends?” The boy with the glasses looked at her with suspicion.
“Dunno. Do you wanna be?”
Messy Hair sunk down in his seat a little, eyes flickering between the other two. He leaned over to Glasses and whispered to him, though Steph could easily hear him in the otherwise silent room.
“Pete, this has to be a trick.”
“It’s not a trick,” Steph interrupted. Messy Hair jumped in surprise, accidentally knocking over his chair and falling on the ground. They all watched him pick himself up, cheeks burning red. Steph waited until he was situated in his seat again to continue talking, “I’m bored and you guys actually seem pretty interesting.”
Pete looked surprised. He glanced at Headgear, who was practically vibrating with excitement. He scratched the back of his neck, then looked at Steph out of the corner of his eye, “We um… we aren’t that interesting… and Max says we aren’t supposed to talk to you.”
“Screw Max. What can he do?”
Pete and his friends glanced nervously at Max, then at Steph, then at eachother.
“A lot?” Messy Hair answered. He lowered his voice, “I didn’t want to say it earlier, but I was late to class because Max locked me in my locker. I had an asthma attack and I couldn’t get out.”
“Richie!” Pete turned to him, “You didn’t tell us you had an asthma attack!”
Richie shrugged. “It didn’t come up.”
The three started bickering amongst eachother, and Steph watched Pete. There was something magnetic about him. He was cute in a dorky way, with his thick-rimmed glasses and his stupid bowtie. Beyond the odd clothes and his shy demeanour, he seemed really smart. She’d been in classes with him before, and he seemed to have an encyclopedic knowledge of everything, constantly dominating in Kahoot games and always knowing the answers when the teachers called on him, even if he didn’t say the answer with confidence. She had never spoken to him before today, but judging by the small conversation they had earlier, he was witty and funny too. She found herself wanting to know more about him, to get closer to him.
“What do you guys do?” Steph asked. “Like, for fun, I mean.”
“Ruth does theatre,” Richie said.
Ruth nodded. “I operate the lightboard for the theatre club. I want to get into acting, but I have pretty awful stage fright. Last time I tried to audition, I got all shaky and sweaty and I threw up in the orchestra pit!” Okay, so Ruth was an oversharer, got it. “Other than that we do a lot of stuff together, like movie nights or going to the arcade or DnD sessions.” She laughed nervously.
“I like anime. You should join the anime club! I’m the leader,” Richie said. “And also the only member... It would be really nice to have someone else in the club!”
He looked at her expectantly, nervously tugging on his sleeve.
“How… fun,” Steph said, which wasn’t a yes or a no but somehow managed to imply absolutely not . “What about you?” She looked at Pete, who turned bashful under her gaze. “What do you like to do?”
“Um, I-”
He cut himself off with a shriek when all the power in the building cut out.
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The town hunkered down in the darkness. Just last night, the dark and cold were kept away, if only a little, by the cheerful holiday lights that garlanded trees and buildings around the town. Now it was dark and cold, festive lights replaced by monochromatic hues. The white of the rushing snow, the black of the sky, the steel grey of the air. The night grew darker still, the wind whipping up snow until it covered sight like a vicious fog. The waves of Lake Michigan crashed on the rocky beaches, a drumline underneath the mournful cry of wind. A song of winter’s harshness, its cruelty, its forlornness.
Inside the storm, something walked. It walked against the gale and the snowdrifts, against the deadly cold and the freeze. It walked in biting frost, through the storm as if a part of it, as if it had been born in its teeth. It walked searching. It walked with purpose.
In the darkness, light revealed itself dim and hazy. It was a single flare, like the beacon of a lighthouse, beckoning lost travellers. It was a promise of warmth, a promise of life.
It followed the light until it flickered dark.
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Steph’s phone flashlight poorly illuminated their corner of the room. Even the classroom's emergency lights had gone out, something that was definitely not supposed to happen. They could already feel the cold creeping in now that the heaters had turned off.
“Well… shit,” Max whispered.
Grace didn't even try to reprimand him for swearing, peering out the window instead. Beside her, the nerds were also checking conditions outside.
Ruth followed Steph in pulling out her phone to make use of the flashlight. She pointed it outside, revealing snow gathering on the ground and crashing from the sky, all against the ink black void of the night. “Geez. It looks pretty bad out there.”
“I don't think our parents are coming to get us,” Richie checked his phone. “There's a storm warning.” They each checked their phones. Sure enough, on each of their lock screens, there was a red block reading:
Blizzard Warning in effect until 4 PM EST Saturday
When they clicked on the alert, further explanation was given:
Blizzard conditions for next 6 hours. 20-30 inches snow expected. Wind gusts up to 65 mph. White out conditions. Road closures likely. Downed trees, branches, extended power outages. Travel not advised.
“See this is why we wanted to leave earlier,” Steph glared at Grace. “Now we're stuck here, without power, for the weekend!”
“Oh my God, we're gonna die,” Richie whispered.
“Shut the fuck up,” Max practically growled, making Richie shrink back.
Feeling a little more brave than usual, Pete defended his friend, “No, he's right. Without power, we could freeze to death overnight. Plus, temperatures are in the negatives, which means the pipes will freeze and then we won't have water either.”
Silence fell as each of the teens started to plan a way out of this situation. Hatchetfield had cold and snowy winters, meaning they'd all experienced winter power outages. They knew to bundle up, to huddle together to share heat, to cover the doors and windows to keep out the cold, to use flashlights and drink bottled water and use the emergency radio. The issue was they were at school, not at home.
“We need to get to a room without windows,” Grace broke the silence. She took a ring of keys out of her backpack, shaking them in the air. “Since I'm the hall monitor, I have the keys to every room.”
“There are a couple windowless rooms in the building,” Steph absentmindedly twirled a lock of hair around her finger as she spoke, “Mrs. Nadir's class is a good spot. It’s always hot in there.”
“It’s in the centre of the school, so it should lose heat more slowly than the other classrooms,” Pete agreed.
Grace led the way to the classroom, unlocking the door. “We should gather some supplies,” she pocketed the key ring.
“The costume department at the theatre has clothing and fabric,” Ruth suggested. “I have a key.”
“Excellent idea!” Grace snapped her fingers absentmindedly as she thought about other locations to take supplies from. “We need food, obviously. The cafeteria should have something on hand. And we need to collect water before the pipes freeze…” When she was finished muttering to herself, she stopped snapping, instead pointing to her fellow students. “Ruthie, Richie— you two are on theatre duty. You,” She pointed at Steph and Pete, “take the cafeteria. Max and I will prepare the classroom and collect water. Sounds good?”
No one had any complaints.
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“This place gives me the creeps when it's dark,” Richie said, pointing his phone flashlight at the lock Ruth was struggling to fit her key into.
“Don't say that. Have you ever watched a horror movie? Saying stuff like that pretty much guarantees a monster is going to pop out and jumpscare us.” She finally got the key to fit the stupid old lock, turning it and pushing the theatre door open.
“I've watched a ton of horror movies,” Richie insisted, following Ruth into the theatre. He waved his phone around, illuminating seats as they walked down the aisle. “I just don't think a monster is likely to jump at us. If anything, the school setting we find ourselves in,” he dramatically waved his arms around, “would warrant a slasher rather than a monster.”
“Okay, but which one?”
“What do you mean ‘which one’?”
Ruth sighed, as though what she asked was the most obvious thing in the world and Richie was dumb for not getting it. “I mean if we were to get killed by a slasher villain, which would you prefer?”
“Ghostface, no question. You?”
“Same. Ghostface is objectively the sexiest slasher. Like, who's it gonna be when you take the mask off? Is it gonna be sexy sexy Billy Loomis or his cougar mom, you know?”
“Shhh!”
“What? You think Billy is sexy too! It's Skeet Ulrich! Everyone thinks he's-”
“No, I thought I heard something,” Richie interrupted her.
Ruth felt a chill run down her spine. Despite their earlier conversation and the many times she had thirsted over horror movie characters, she didn't actually want one to jump out at her, no matter how sexy they were.
After a long silence, during which the two of them stood frozen, Richie whispered, “Guess I was hearing things.”
“You did that just to scare me, didn’t you?” Ruth huffed, walking towards the stage.
“I didn’t!” Richie followed close behind, lighting the way. “I swear I heard something.”
Ruth glanced at him. She couldn’t see well in the darkness, just the little bit of blue light his phone screen shone on his face. He looked a bit startled like he was telling the truth and not just messing with her. She liked it better when she thought he was messing with her.
When they got to the stage, Ruth unlocked another door, this one leading to the basement storage room where props and clothing were held. This room always gave her the creeps, but tonight was even worse. With only a phone flashlight to illuminate their path, they stepped down the crumbling concrete stairs carefully. When they reached the bottom, she headed towards the costume racks, watching her feet the whole time. She hated the idea of the light revealing something down here with them, so she elected to look only at the floor to avoid the (incredibly small) possibility of seeing a face peeking out behind a prop.
“I take back what I said earlier,” Richie dragged his finger along a table, carving a path in the dust, “ this place gives me the creeps. I’d rather be back upstairs.”
“Too bad,” Ruth began to pull some of the warmer, more practical clothing off the racks, “cause I need you to help me carry these.” She plopped a pile of clothes in his arms, prompting a cloud of dust to puff up right into Richie’s face. He sneezed several times, rubbing his nose with his sleeve.
“Are there blankets down here? We can build up a fort using some blankets to keep in our body heat.”
“Yeah,” Ruth pointed to a pile of boxes, “One of those is labelled blankets, and there’s a bunch of ‘em in there. Some of the boxes might have pillows as well.”
Together, the two of them gathered clothes and blankets and pillows, setting them at the top of the stairs to bring to the classroom later. They made a mess of the room, but Ruth was sure Ms. Mulberry wouldn’t mind. Their fear from before was completely forgotten as they goofed around.
When they made a sizable pile, they decided to head back, planning to come back for more if they needed to. They left backstage and entered the auditorium again, making their way through rows and rows of seats. Suddenly, Richie stopped, prompting Ruth to nearly barrel straight into him because her eyesight was partially blocked by the pillows she held.
“Richie, what the hell?”
“Shhh! I hear it again!” He hissed.
Ruth stayed still, straining to hear whatever it was Richie could. All she could hear was the wind keening outside, and her own heart beating in her ears.
“I don’t hear-”
“Shhh!”
Suddenly, she heard exactly what Richie did. The building groaned, aching with the sound of something scratching outside. It was quiet, high-pitched, repetitive, like metal on metal or nails on chalkboard.
Skritch skritch skritch… skritch skritch skritch.
The sound sent her hair rising. It seemed to be coming from the emergency exit on the other side of the theatre. Every few seconds it would sound again, followed by silence long enough it seemed the sound might not come back, but then it did, starting the cycle over again.
“What is it?” Ruth whispered, scooting closer to Richie as if he could protect her.
“I was hoping you would know?” He whispered back, trying though failing to sound chipper when he really just came off as nervous.
“Do you think it’s an animal?”
“Don’t know, don’t wanna know, let’s get out of here.”
Ruth couldn’t agree more.
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Pete was pretty certain he was going to collapse and melt into a puddle of slush. He was walking to the cafeteria with Stephanie Lauter! This was like a dream come true for nerds everywhere! However, he couldn’t find room in him to celebrate when all of his mind was taken up trying not to fight, flight, or freeze.
He tried to remember everything Ted had ever told him about talking to women, then quickly abandoned that idea because Ted was kind of a bastard and Pete was sure using Ted’s “advice” around a girl like Stephanie would earn him at best a slap in the face and at worst a nice early grave. Next, he tried to think of how it was to talk to Ruth. Unfortunately, Ruth was more of a creature than a girl, really, and he didn’t think Steph would appreciate that.
“You’re pretty quiet,” Steph noticed, breaking the silence between them.
“Uh…yuh?” Dammit Pete! God dammit! Those weren’t real words you fucking idiot! “I- I mean I guess I just have a lot on my mind. Yeah.” He cleared his throat awkwardly.
“Like what?”
“Uh…” He didn’t want to tell her he was thinking of how not to fuck up this conversation (something he was very clearly doing anyways) so he just lied, “I’m worried about the blizzard. We might be stuck here for a while. My parents are going to freak out. When I get home they aren’t letting me out of their sight until I’m thirty.”
Steph snorted. “So they’re overprotective, huh?”
“Very. When my brother was a kid they were apparently a little more laissez-faire about parenting, but I think they’re afraid I’ll turn out like him if they do the same for me.”
“So your brother’s pretty bad?”
“Sort of. He’s in his thirties and he still lives in our basement.”
Steph laughed at that, taking out the key ring Grace loaned them and unlocking the cafeteria doors. Pete pushed the door open, holding it open for her to pass through.
“Ah, so you’re a gentleman too?” Steph drawled a little sarcastically, her words echoing in the empty cafeteria.
“I try my best.”
They walked through the rows of tables to the back of the room where the kitchen was. It looked a little scary in the glow of Pete’s phone flashlight. The metal appliances reflected the beam of light while also casting long shadows in the depths of the room. Steph opened the kitchen door.
Entering the kitchen felt forbidden, like entering the teacher’s lounge or the girls’ restroom. This was a place usually inaccessible to students, and here they were crossing the threshold. The kitchen was a lot larger than it looked from the outside. A large fridge and freezer sat beside a row of huge ovens and an industrial sink. At the very back of the kitchen stood a long shelf filled with non-perishable food, lunch trays, napkins, and other assorted items. The floor was sticky with grime and spilled food, the crumbling tiles interspersed with drains sunken into the floor.
Suddenly Pete felt nauseous thinking of the school lunches he ate everyday. This place couldn’t be considered sanitary enough for food preparation, right? Like, everyone knew the school lunches were gross, but knowing they were cooked in a room in which mice or cockroaches would not seem out of place was just a whole new level of revolting.
“There isn’t a lot here,” Steph approached the shelves, seeing that most of the food stored there were ingredients that they would have to cook somehow.
“What about the stuff in the freezer?” Pete opened it, revealing pizzas, chicken nuggets, and frozen hamburger patties.
“Doesn't that need to be cooked?”
“Yeah, but we can use the bunsen burners in the chemistry lab.”
“You can use those with the power down?”
Pete nodded. “They run on gas. The gas lines aren’t affected by power outages.”
Steph smiled at him, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. “You’re really smart.”
Pete turned away, feeling his cheeks begin to burn despite the chill. “Thanks.”
Seeming a little embarrassed, Steph cleared her throat, directing her attention to the shelves. “So… we should bring back some of these cans of fruit, some of the vegetables, a bag of bread, maybe.” She began to move the items around, making sure she wasn’t missing anything. “Jackpot! I found cookies!”
“Nice!” Pete said, leaning into the freezer as he pulled out a pizza and some hamburger patties.
“I also found… wait, ew, nevermind.”
“What is it?”
“Raisins,” Steph held out a pack of raisins as she turned to show him, making a face of disgust.
“Fucking raisins,” Pete shook his head. “Those things are so gross. If I wanted to eat a grape I’d just eat a grape. Why would anyone want to eat an old dry grape? I'd rather die than eat a raisin.”
“You have some strong opinions about raisins,” Steph snickered. “I dislike them as much as the next guy, but I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who hated them that much. Did something traumatic happen involving you and raisins?”
“As a matter of fact, it did.” Pete pulled himself out of the freezer with the food he collected and watched Steph load her backpack with canned goods.
“Oo, I need to hear this.”
“Promise not to tell anyone?”
“Cross my heart.”
“Okay. You’re the only person to know this besides my brother. When I was six years old, Ted— that’s my brother— decided to play a prank on me. He could have done literally anything else, but he thought it would be hilarious to fill a box of raisins with rat poop and give it to me.”
“Oh my god! Ew! Please tell me you didn’t-”
“I did. I was too young to be suspicious that he was laughing at me, so I ate a single “raisin”. My only consolation is that they came from his friend’s pet and not some random street rat.”
Steph finished up with the cans, “You know, I usually wish I wasn’t an only child, but right now I’m really glad I don’t have siblings. Eugh, no wonder you hate raisins. I don’t think I’ll ever look at them the same way again.”
Steph was about to pick up the backpack, but Pete reached for its strap instead. “I can carry it. It looks heavy.”
Steph looked from the backpack to his skinny arms with something resembling disbelief, but she quickly covered it with a smile. “If you’re sure.” She held out the strap to him.
Pete took the strap. The way this played out in his head was smooth. He meant to take the strap and heft the bag up, swinging it over his shoulder like it weighed nothing and impressing Steph in the process. What actually happened was he took the strap, tried to lift it once, failed, set the frozen foods on the counter and tried again with two hands, failed again, tried one last time, fell on his ass, and gave up.
He covered his face in his hands, very aware of how thoroughly he had just humiliated himself. Fuck, this was going to be one of those moments that replayed in his head every night to haunt him as he tried to sleep, wasn’t it? “Do me a favour and just— just hit me in the head with a pan or something,” he groaned. “If you hit me hard enough I might not remember this at all when I wake up.”
Steph laughed. It wasn’t an unkind laugh, like he had come to expect was directed at him by girls of her social status. Rather, it was a sympathetic laugh, one reminiscent of the kind friends share at their misfortunes.
He uncovered his face and looked up at her, seeing she had her hand out for him to grab. He hesitated, hand shaking before he finally took hers. Her skin was soft and warm, so smooth and uncalloused it felt unreal. She pulled him to his feet, and he became suddenly aware of the strength she possessed. Once he was on two feet, dusting off his clothes and picking up the frozen food again, she grabbed the strap of her bag and threw the heavy backpack over her shoulder like it was nothing.
“What!?” He couldn’t help but voice his astonishment. She didn’t appear outwardly very strong, but for a moment when she held the bag, he caught a glimpse of her biceps flexing under the weight.
Shit. Women with muscular arms were his kryptonite.
Steph gave him a sly grin and— did she just wink?! “C’mon. Let’s get back to the classroom. This bag’s pretty heavy.”
Stephanie Lauter was going to be the death of him, he was sure of it.
⋆⋅•⋅⊰∙∘⋆ ❆ ⋆∘∙⊱⋅•⋅⋆
Grace spent most of the time while the others collected supplies rearranging Mrs. Nadir’s classroom. Pushing the desks to the sides of the room gave them more space to set up an area to sleep. Max, despite his reputation for disobedience, seemed happy to follow Grace’s orders. He moved desks, collected buckets from the janitor’s closet, and didn’t argue once with any of her demands. If he was this well-behaved all the time maybe he wouldn’t be spending all his afternoons in detention.
“Can you take a few desks out in the hall?” Grace asked, noticing that they were running out of wall space to push the desks up against.
Max made a sound of agreement, taking one desk in each hand and dragging them outside. She watched him go, shining her phone's flashlight at the door to light the way. She was the only one of the two of them whose phone was still alive. He used his too much during the day and using the flashlight feature earlier had succeeded in killing it.
Grace took the last desk to drag into the hall. Before she was completely out of the room, Max slid up behind her, taking the desk in an uncharacteristically gentlemanly manner.
“I'll take that,” he said.
Grace let him. The action brought to her stomach a mixture of emotions. It was clear to her (Max had made it abundantly so) that he had been flirting with her since the beginning of the year. Sometimes he conveyed his crush through unwanted advances that frustrated and humiliated Grace, but other times he showed it through kindness: beating up people who bullied her, showing interest in her campaigns, and being the only person in this entire school who seemed genuinely happy at her presence.
The worst part was that he was such a contradictory person. If he always stayed soft and kind, like he was right now, Grace might have considered letting him court her. Sure, he didn't go to church or follow the Lord's teachings, but Grace could teach him. Unfortunately, he was not always like this. Most of the time, Max was crass and rude and sinful. He hurt people and said weird sexy things to Grace. Unless he got rid of that side of him, Grace would never let him have a chance.
“I did it perfectly, didn't I,” Max gestured to the row of desks.
Grace almost scoffed. It wasn't difficult to line up desks. If Max thought he had done something impressive, he was wrong. Besides, it was obvious to her that Max only remarked on it because he wanted Grace’s reassurance. He acted all proud and confident, but he was just fishing for compliments.
Well, she wasn't going to give them to him.
“Pick up the buckets,” she ordered. She couldn't see Max’s face clearly in the lack of light, but she could see him slump dejectedly for a moment before forcing himself into standing straight again.
“What do we need these for?” He asked, taking them from where he placed them before the door.
“Have you never prepared for a blizzard before?” Grace asked harshly, walking towards the locker rooms. This was stuff every kid in Hatchetfield knew how to do. She couldn't believe Max didn't.
“No.” He followed close behind.
“Seriously?”
“I dunno it's just snow. Not that big of a deal.”
“So your family has no plans for when power goes off at home?”
“No. It's never happened. I guess we'd burn some shit in the fireplace.” He paused, then spoke again, “So what're the buckets for?”
“The buckets are to collect water. When it gets too cold, the pipes can freeze or burst. We need to collect water before that happens so we have something to drink.”
“Ohhhh!” Max nodded, a smile splitting his face like it always did when a scrap of information got past his big dumb skull and actually landed in his brain for once. “That's like, super smart.”
Grace felt a warmth rise in her cheeks. Of course she got a little flustered when someone complimented her! She probably would've blushed no matter who said it! Yeah, it didn't matter that it was Max complimenting her. Max standing so close in the dark. Max who she was alone with in the hall. If she were some kind of atheist sinner, she would probably be thinking about doing inappropriate things with Max right now, like holding his hand. But, since she was a pure and righteous woman of God, she totally wasn't thinking about that at all.
She almost sighed in relief when they made it to the locker rooms. “You fill one bucket in the men's room and I'll fill mine in the women's.” She started to open the door but Max stopped her.
“You're the only one with a light.”
Shoot. He couldn't fill the bucket in complete darkness, but he couldn't come into the girl’s locker room either because that was against the rules. It would be easier if they both filled the buckets in one room, but those rules were there for a reason. Grace looked down, trying to think of a solution. It was often hard to balance practicality and religion, but that was just God’s way of keeping his followers loyal. You have to work to worship. Sloth is a sin, after all.
“I can go in the men’s room and we can keep the door open so you can shine the flashlight,” Max suggested. “That way you don’t have to go in.”
Grace blinked, surprised. Something fluttered behind her ribcage when she realised Max was actually respecting her boundaries. Yes, it was bare minimum, but it was sweet. Max propped the door open with a doorstop and Grace shone her phone flashlight into the pitch-black locker room. He grabbed the buckets and paused at the threshold between hallway and locker room.
“What are you doing?” Grace asked.
“Just stopping… for… no reason?” Max attempted to inject confidence in his voice, but it came out a little shaky.
“Well, can you go now? Everyone else is going to be back soon.”
Max inhaled deeply, trying to hype himself up. The phone flashlight illuminated the sinks dimly, but the rest of the room was bathed in shadow, the kind so dark that the mind detects movement in its depths when there is none. There could be all kinds of things in there: ghosts, skeletons, vampires. He was admittedly terrified to go in there, but there was no way he wanted to let Grace see behind his tough-guy act.
Max stepped into the locker room, feeling an urge to turn heel and run as soon as his shoes met tile. There was no reason to be afraid of this place. He was in here all the time. This was a safe place, a place to celebrate wins and mourn losses, a place to hype up his teammates and be hyped in return. Focusing on the good memories helped a little as he tried to ignore the creeping dark.
He almost jumped when he turned and saw his reflection in the mirror, thinking for a moment that another person was in there with him. He placed one of the buckets under the sink faucet, turning on the water and watching it fill. It was awkward trying to fit the bucket in the sink, having to tilt it on its side. He wouldn’t be able to fill it completely. When the first bucket was as full as it could get, he moved on to the other. He couldn’t get out of there fast enough after both buckets were as full as they were going to get.
When they made it back to Mrs. Nadir’s classroom, Steph and Pete were back, arranging the food they found on a desk in the corner. Max set the buckets down by the desk, careful not to slosh water everywhere.
“What kind of stuff did you find?” Grace looked over the food. She wasn’t expecting much, considering she had seen the “food” the school served at lunch. There was a reason her mom still made all her lunches. As she suspected, the food certainly wasn’t the healthiest: white bread, canned foods, frozen pizza. At least it was better than no food at all.
“Are we eating the pizza frozen?” Max asked, grimacing.
“Nah. Pete’s going to cook it in the chemistry lab,” Steph emptied the last of the food out of her backpack.
“There’s an oven in the chemistry lab?” Max asked.
“Bunson burners,” Pete corrected, voice shaking a little.
“I don’t know what that is.”
“Of course you don’t,” Pete muttered.
“The fuck did you say to me?”
Before Max could do anything to Pete, they were all interrupted as Ruth and Richie ran into the room, out of breath and holding bundles of fabric. They dropped the fabric on the floor, and Ruth flopped down on the pile while Richie sank to the ground beside it, clutching his chest as though his heart was going to fall out.
“What happened to you guys?” Steph asked.
They couldn't answer at first, still too out of breath. Ruth recovered first, “Someone-”
“-or something!” Richie wheezed.
“Someone or something was trying to get into the theatre.”
“It could be someone needing shelter from the storm,” Pete said. “We should let them in.”
Richie shook his head. “No! If it was someone who needed shelter, they would have knocked on the door or something. This was more like… like…”
“It was scratching,” Ruth finished for him. “Scratching the door with a knife or claws or something.”
Pete looked between his two friends. They didn’t seem to be messing with them. Their eyes didn’t reflect the amusement of pulling a practical joke. Even in the low lighting, he could see that they were both pale and scared. Whatever it was they had heard, they both believed it was something bad.
“We can leave the ghost stories for later,” Grace interrupted the tense silence of the room. “Right now we need to bundle up and distribute blankets.” She nudged Ruth off the pile of blankets and began to go through it, digging out clothes and sorting them into groups. Luckily, the school had put on a production of Santa Claus is Goin’ to Highschool: The Musical last Winter so there were plenty of jackets, sweaters, scarves, and hats to choose from.
“Can I have the fingerless gloves?” Richie asked.
Grace handed them to him, along with a sweater, a jacket, a scarf, and a beanie. She issued everyone else a pile of clothes and they all began to bundle up. The school was getting colder by the minute, infecting them all with a bone-deep chill that didn’t seem to go away even with the extra layers.
“We were thinking we could build some kind of blanket fort,” Ruth suggested, tucking all her hair into a ski hat. “It’ll trap our body heat to keep us warm.”
“I hate to say it, but good idea, Flemwad!” Max immediately started to grab blankets and pillows, taking them to the centre of the room. Everyone else shared looks of surprise. Who knew Max Jägerman would be so excited to build a pillow fort?
As if Max could feel their eyes on him, he turned around, donning his usual glare. “Don’t watch me. You’re messing with my flow.”
Steph gave an exasperated sigh, but the rest of them, used to Max ordering them around (and usually threatening violence as well), turned to face the wall. She reluctantly joined them, sitting on the floor and leaning against one of the desks.
Grace was in her own little world, not talking to anyone else. Pete and Ruth talked quietly about Star Wars, and Richie leaned against the wall, eyes closed.
Steph pulled out her phone, something she did unconsciously whenever she was bored. Automatically, she pressed the Twitter icon, waiting for the app to load. She was then unfortunately reminded that they had no WiFi or service. She turned her phone off, groaning as she sunk down. “Ugh! What am I supposed to do without WiFi? Someone could be writing a callout post on a niche internet celebrity right now and if I don’t comment on the situation, my followers are going to think I’m endorsing their problematic actions!”
“Tell me about it,” Richie grumbled, opening his eyes.
“You use Twitter?”
“No. But I’m a mod on r/anime. If someone needs me and I don’t respond fast enough, I’ll lose my position.”
Steph lifted herself up a bit and stared at Richie over her shoulder. “Knowing you are a moderator on an anime subreddit explains like, everything about you.”
“Thanks?”
“... Sure.”
Meanwhile, Max moved a few desks to the centre of the room, arranging blankets and pillows with the utmost precision. He used heavy textbooks from the shelf in the back of the room to keep the blankets from sliding down, occasionally securing the corners with rubber bands he found in a jar atop the teacher’s desk. He set the pillows on the floor, turning the entire fort into one big bed, leaving a few blankets inside for them to cover themselves with.
Max was very passionate about pillow forts. As a child, he used to build them in every room of the house, playing at camping and intending to sleep in them. Of course, when his father got home at the end of the day, he would yell at Max to clean the damn mess up, so he never quite got to accomplish the sleeping-in-it part. Well, jokes on his dad— he was sleeping in it tonight!
“I'm going to go cook the pizza,” Pete took the frozen pizza from the table of food. Ruth volunteered to go with him but was shot down immediately because Pete didn't trust her with fire or food prep. He ended up going alone.
⋆⋅•⋅⊰∙∘⋆ ❆ ⋆∘∙⊱⋅•⋅⋆
With the fort finished and pizza eaten, everyone was ready for bed. Max proudly showed off the fort's “features” like he was a realtor, eager to point out the “comfy double pillow floor layer” and the “awesome lighting” (a flashlight he found and balanced on a stack of composition books).
Everyone piled into the fort. It was large enough to hold six teenagers, but only just. Out of necessity, they kind of had to be close, since body heat was easier to share in smaller confines.
Grace was not happy about the arrangements. She didn't disagree with them, and she knew God would forgive her proximity to the other teens since it was a matter of life and death, but she couldn't help that feeling of shame and wrongness that muddled in her stomach.
On the complete opposite end of the spectrum, Ruth was delighted to finally have an excuse to cuddle someone. In fact, she would argue they needed to be even closer!
“I heard if you take off all your clothes and go skin-to-skin it's actually warmer,” Ruth suggested.
She was met with a chorus of “No!” and “Absolutely not!” and “You'll be plenty warm when you get to Hell.” She grumbled and curled into herself, disappointed but unsurprised by the responses she got. At least Richie had seemed to entertain the idea for a moment.
There was an air of awkwardness inside the fort, mostly due to Max’s presence. The nerds were still wary of him, even though he hadn’t done anything yet. Ruth, Pete, and Richie all sat as far away from Max as they could, afraid he would start a fight or yell at them. They were even nervous to fall asleep since Max might take that moment of vulnerability to draw on them with a permanent marker or something else equally as childish and cruel.
“Um…” Pete piped up, then immediately shut down when everyone looked at him, scared that this was a terrible idea. It took him a moment to regain his courage, taking a deep breath before he spoke again. “Can we— uh… we should make some kind of truce?”
“What do you mean?” Steph asked.
“Since we’re going to be here for a few days, we should make a truce to work together instead of you know, bully eachother.” He felt Max’s eyes on him and gulped audibly.
“That’s a great idea,” Grace said, sitting up straighter. “If we want to work as a team, we have to be able to trust eachother. We’ll make a deal: no more bullying, no more inappropriate comments.”
“Wait, ever? ” Max asked, sounding concerned at the prospect of being forced to be nice to these nerds forever.
The rest of them gave eachother looks. It would be nice to have Max off their cases forever, but it was clear he wasn’t going to agree to that, and they needed to be assured of their safety tonight and for however long they would remain trapped in the school.
“Just while we’re stuck here,” Pete acquiesced.
Max thought it over. There was a concerning moment when they worried he might reject the deal, but he agreed.
“Great!” Grace leaned forward, putting out her hand, “Pinky promise!”
They all attempted to link pinkies but pinky promises only really work between two people so it just turned into a mess of sort-of holding hands. Despite this, Grace seemed satisfied with the gesture and leaned back, a smile on her face.
Even though Max agreed to the terms, the nerds weren’t certain he would adhere to them. Pete tried to stay up as long as he could to make sure Max fell asleep before he did. As the night grew later, everyone began to drop to sleep, but Pete kept his heavy eyes open, fighting the exhaustion that made his limbs feel numb and his head feel stuffy. Even after he heard Max fall asleep, his soft snores filling the fort, Pete still didn’t feel like he could sleep.
This time, his sleeplessness was not due to suspicion with Max, but to suddenly feeling ill. His head began to ache and he started to feel dizzy. He tried to sleep, hoping he would wake up feeling better, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t drift off.
He wasn’t sure how much time passed. The early morning hours stretched on eternally, each second lasting longer than the last, dripping slow as tar. He shivered, but he didn’t feel cold. In fact, it felt burning hot. The shivering turned to shaking, the strain on his muscles drawing him further away from sleep. He must have been shivering enough to wake up the others because he heard someone whispering his name.
“Petey. Pete, are you okay?” It was Grace. He heard worry in her voice.
“I feel sick,” Pete admitted.
“Are you going to throw up?”
“... Maybe.”
“Let’s do that not in the fort please,” Grace moved one of the blankets, creating an opening for Pete to crawl through. She followed after him, grabbing the flashlight and flicking it on once they exited.
Pete felt woozy, and each time he moved his head he felt like his brain was spinning. It felt electric, and not in a good way. In a fuzzy, zapping way. He sat down on the floor outside the fort. It probably wasn’t a good idea to stand. He didn’t think he’d ever been more nauseous in his life.
Grace laid the back of her hand on his forehead, checking for a fever. “Your temperature is normal.”
Then why did it feel like he was inside an oven? He rested his head on his knees, wishing he would vomit and get it over with. Anything was better than being this nauseous and shaky.
“Wha’s going’ on?” Ruth’s voice came from inside the blanket fort, muffled by the blankets. Oh great, they’d probably woken everyone up.
“Pete’s sick,” Grace explained.
“Richie, wake up.”
“Nooooo. Wanna sleep.”
There was some shuffling before Ruth and Richie came out of the fort. Ruth, who hardly ever slept, was functioning great on a couple of hours of sleep. Richie, on the other hand, looked like he just crawled out of his own grave. It didn’t help that Ruth was practically dragging him out.
“What’s wrong?” Ruth kneeled beside Pete.
“I feel so sick,” Pete grumbled. “I’m dizzy and nauseous and I can’t stop shaking.”
“Did he get food poisoning or something?” Richie rubbed sleep out of his eyes, yawning.
“No, we would all be sick if it was food poisoning,” Grace said.
Richie blinked slowly, trying to wake himself up. “What about your meds? Have you taken those?” He knew Pete took medication every night because he always brought about a dozen pill bottles to every sleepover.
Pete was afraid that if he opened his mouth he would throw up, so he answered by shaking his head, which sent his brain zapping and spinning again.
“Shit.”
“Do you think-” Ruth stopped, trying to get her thoughts in order. “You take anxiety meds, right? If I don’t take mine I feel pretty sick, do you think that’s what this is?”
Realisation dawned on Peter through the haziness of his mind. He took several medications, all of which were a bad idea to quit cold turkey, but the most dangerous one was alprazolam. “Shit. If I don’t take my alprazolam I get withdrawal symptoms. I didn’t think of it earlier.”
“You’re not gonna have a seizure or something, right?” Richie squeaked, messing with his sleeve.
“Well, it can cause those.”
“Do you have any with you?” Ruth asked, “Or in your locker?”
“No.”
“Would Stephanie or Max have any?” Richie looked back at the fort.
“I can’t imagine either of them taking anxiety meds,” Ruth said.
“Doesn’t hurt to try,” Grace crawled back into the fort, waking the other two.
Ruth stuck her head inside, “Hey, do you guys happen to have alprazolam?”
Max looked confused, “Isn’t that what fuckin’... magicians say?”
No one could figure out what he was talking about. Finally, Richie suggested, “Do you mean abracadabra?”
“Yeah, we obviously don’t know what that is,” Steph said, running her fingers through her hair. “What d’ya need it for?”
“Pete’s going through withdrawal from his anxiety meds.”
“Fuck,” Steph crawled out of the fort to get a look at Pete. She was in the Smoke Club, and though she herself never partook in anything crazier than weed and alcohol, she had friends who did, and she made sure she was well aware of both withdrawal and overdose symptoms.
“Um, if it helps,” Pete said, “Alprazolam is also called Xanax.”
Now Max and Steph knew what he was talking about.
“You can take that as medicine?” Max asked, “I thought it was a drug.”
“It is a drug. All medications are,” Richie said.
Before Max could ask another stupid question, Steph stood up, starting to slip her shoes on, “I have some in my car.” At the judgemental look Grace gave her, Steph sighed, “It isn’t mine. One of my friends left it after a party. I keep forgetting to return it.”
“Stephie, you shouldn’t be popping pills! Don’t you know Satan invented drugs to drive us away from God?” Grace started a lecture that everyone else decided to ignore.
“Where are you going?” Pete asked, gesturing towards the snow boots Steph was lacing up.
“To my car,” she shrugged as though it wasn’t a big deal.
“What? Don’t do that! That’s so dangerous. Like you’d have to be stupid to go there dangerous!”
“I’ll go with,” Richie said. “Safety in numbers?”
“Absolutely not!” Pete hit his arm. “Do you just not know what whiteout conditions are? You can’t just walk into a blizzard!”
Grace straightened up like she always did when she had an idea (usually a terrible one). “We can take jump ropes from the gym, tie them together, and use them as a guide rope so we won’t get lost trying to make our way back!”
“That’s a great idea!” Richie agreed, probably because he was susceptible to peer pressure and always agreed to any plan, no matter how bad.
“One of us will have to stay by the door to hold it open and keep the rope steady,” Ruth slipped on a coat.
“You guys are all fucking stupid,” Pete argued, though there wasn’t much venom in his words, considering he was still shaking like someone’s fragile geriatric chihuahua.
“Max, you coming?” Steph asked.
He looked a little nervous. Usually, he wasn’t one to listen to nerds, but for once he agreed with Pete. Sometimes the smart kids are right; they are smart for a reason. However, he couldn’t help but feel like staying would make him a coward. Yeah, he was terrified of potentially dying in a blizzard, but he was even more terrified of looking like a total pussy in front of all these losers.
“Yeah, I’m coming,” Max couldn’t hide the shake in his voice. Shit, that didn’t sound convincing at all! Summoning his bravado, he tried again, “Let’s go kick that blizzard’s fucking ass!”
⋆⋅•⋅⊰∙∘⋆ ❆ ⋆∘∙⊱⋅•⋅⋆
Max was less confident about “kicking that blizzard’s fucking ass” when they got to the door leading outside. Pete had begged them not to go, listing off every historical death he could think of that occurred in weather like this. It was pitch black outside. Not even the moon or stars shone through. Just a void ready to swallow them up. Thinking of what could be out there, going unseen by them, was so terrifying it made his eyes water. He thought about how Ruth and Richie mentioned something trying to get in.
"There better not be any fuckin' skele'ons out there."
"I don't know why you're so afraid of them. We all have skeletons inside us,” Richie said, finishing off tying the jump ropes together.
"Well maybe you do, nerd, but I'm built different," Max flexed his biceps, "That's pure muscle."
"I wish there was a skeleton inside me," Ruth whined.
Everyone turned to glare at her.
"Boner?" She said.
Steph fondly rolled her eyes. “Everyone have enough clothes?” They’d retrieved more from the theatre, now all looking ridiculous bundled in a mismatch of winter clothes (courtesy of Santa Claus is Goin’ to Highschool: The Musical ), leather jackets (á la Grease ), and furs (thanks, Tarzan ). They looked absolutely stupid, but they were warm.
“Remember,” Ruth said, “Don’t let go of the ropes, especially not when you get out there.”
They all nodded, taking hold of the string of jump ropes while Ruth tied the end of it to the door for security. Steph stood at the front. She would be leading the way. Behind her, the others were holding flashlights they found in the gym’s supply closet. Max stood in the back, holding the rope so tightly that it hurt even through his gloves.
“Alright, get ready!” Steph shouted, opening the door.
Freezing wind burst through the open doorway, flapping the edge of their clothes and stinging their eyes. They could see nothing in the swirling black. Richie and Grace shone their flashlights into the storm, illuminating sheets of snow falling with force, creating a fog-like effect that obscured the world in black and white.
Stepping out into the parking lot felt like stepping into a whole new world. If they thought the halls inside were cold, this was a whole different kind of freezing. It was like ice had been injected into their veins. Richie shuddered, pulling his scarf up over his nose and mouth because the biting air hurt when it entered his lungs.
“Can you see the car?” Max asked, shouting over the roaring wind.
“I can’t see shit!” Steph shouted.
Great, so they were probably going to get lost. They held tight to the rope, Steph leading them forward as if she hoped the car would just rise from the darkness. The cold continued to pierce deep, like an aching in their joints. Grace wondered, shivering, if she would ever feel warm again.
They must have been headed the right way, because Steph shouted in joy, speeding up. The beam of Richie’s flashlight revealed a dark shape behind the veil of billowing snow. As they got closer, it became clearer the shape was a car.
“That’s my car,” Max shouted to be heard over the wind.
“Mine was a couple spaces down.” Steph led them to the right, and soon enough her car came into view. It was a tiny car, though a nice one, with only two doors. She fumbled with her keys for a moment before unlocking the driver’s side door. When she pulled on the handle to open it, it didn’t budge. “It’s frozen shut,” her voice betrayed her frustration.
“Lemme try.” Max pushed past Grace and Richie. He grabbed the handle with both hands, pulling as hard as he could. The door popped open with a cracking sound and Max tumbled comically to the ground from the force of pulling it. Richie stifled a giggle in his scarf, watching as Max stood up, awkwardly brushing powdery snow off his clothes.
Steph, meanwhile, got into the car. It didn’t shelter her completely from the cold, but the reprieve from the blinding snow and forceful wind was refreshing enough. She kneeled on the driver’s seat, facing the back as she rifled through the seatback pocket. It was hard for her cold-numbed fingers to feel anything through the gloves.
“Can I get a flashlight?” She leaned out of the car to ask.
Grace handed her her flashlight, and Steph leaned back in. She had to strain in an awkward position to see over the shoulder of the seat. The seatback pocket was full of junk: food wrappers, old receipts, and a pair of Brenda’s oversized cat-eye sunglasses. Eventually, she found what she was looking for: a plastic sandwich bag with a few blue pills in it. Stacy left it there after buying them off Ziggs during a party and Steph kept forgetting to return them. She stuffed the bag in her coat pocket, zipping it up so it wouldn’t fall out.
“Did you find it?” Richie asked.
“Yup.” Steph handed the flashlight back to Grace and got out of the car, closing and locking the door behind her. “Now let’s get back inside before our toes fall off.” She was only half joking.
“They can do that?” Max asked, eyes wide with panic.
“They won’t if we get back inside.”
Steph took the lead again, making sure to keep her fingers curled around the rope so they wouldn’t lose their way. The wind seemed to howl even harder, sounding less now like a force of nature and more like a living creature.
A particularly large gust almost blew Grace off her feet, but Max steadied her with one hand on her hip and the other on her shoulder. As soon as she was no longer in danger of falling, his hands left. Even though it was a touch through layers of clothing, Grace felt heat rush to her face. It just wasn’t right for a boy to be touching her like that. They weren’t even married!
Before Grace could turn around and lecture Max on his inappropriate behaviour, Richie interrupted, “What’s that?”
“What’s what?” Steph asked.
Richie swung his flashlight, trying to illuminate the world around them, but the snow was too thick. “I saw— I thought I saw something. Like, something moving.”
Max stiffened in fear, eyes darting around. Every hair on his body rose as a fearful tingle zapped down his spine. This was like his worst nightmare come true: trapped in impenetrable dark, something lurking just beyond sight. His mind brought up unbidden what Ruth and Richie said earlier, about something scratching on the auditorium door, something wanting in. The shelter of the school gave them safety, but now they were out in the open, functionally blind.
“It’s nothing,” Steph reassured them all, but her voice wobbled almost imperceptibly at the end, and she tried to walk faster. She was always good at acting, putting on a mask of responsibility or leadership or whatever other bullshit her dad wanted from her. Truth was, she felt scared. The idea of some creature out there, watching them as they walked unaware of its presence— it was enough to make that mask of confidence slip. She took a deep breath, hurting her lungs as she drew in needles of icy air. Richie was just being paranoid, that was all.
But then Grace stiffened, shining her light into the abyss.
“Did-”
“Shh!” Grace peered into the shadowed night, trying to listen over the shrieking wind. Suddenly, they all heard what Grace had. It was an eerie, multi-toned howl. It started low, rising into a ghostly whistle that hung above like the melancholy horn of a steam train before falling down again.
It left them all frozen with terror, unable to move or blink or even breathe. Their muscles tensed, their eyes watered. Richie made a strangled noise— a scream stuck in the back of his throat. They’d never heard a noise like this before, even as they tried to rationalise it. The bugle of an elk, the shriek of a cougar, the howl of a wolf, the moan of a foghorn, the wail of a tornado siren, the distant whistle of a train. No matter which example they tried to compare it to, nothing fit. It was too large and eldritch and almost as beautiful as it was frightening.
Whatever was out there howled again, closer this time. The spell it had over them broke as their horrified awe was replaced by an animal instinct to run.
The four of them sprinted towards the school, following the rope that led them to safety. Max was the fastest, and he passed by the rest of them easily. Adrenaline fueled them all, pushing their weary limbs and stinging lungs. There was a blind panic guiding them forward, this primal part of them hidden and unused in modern life but brought to the surface when faced with an ancient fear none of them ever had to endure before. They were being hunted. They could feel a predatory gaze on them, could hear the loping of the thing behind them, could almost smell its ravenous intent, its salivating hunger.
Grace stumbled through the piled snow, tripping over her own feet. She screamed, trying to get up but slipping on the icy ground.
“Grace!” Max shouted, turning quickly and running towards her. He honestly wasn’t sure why he turned back. Helping Grace would only slow him down, but for once in his life, he decided to do something for someone else rather than himself. He grabbed her arm, dragging her to her feet. When she regained her footing, Max pushed her, urging her to go.
The thing behind them howled again, close enough that the snow around them was blown by the sound. Grace didn’t need any more urging after that, sprinting away as fast as she could, Max following close behind. In front of them, Steph and Richie had already gotten far enough ahead that they disappeared into the blizzard, but Grace luckily still had a hold on the jump ropes.
The thing behind them was close. They could almost feel its breath on them, stinking like algae and mycelium. Grace’s heart beat so fast she was scared it would kill her, fear stopping her heart like a rabbit– scared to death. Terrified tears spilled from her eyes, freezing on her cheeks. When the school came into sight, she ran harder, sure her entire body would give out if she pushed it more.
The school doors were closed, but they could see a faint light coming from the window. Steph, Ruth, and Richie were watching out the window for the two of them, getting ready to open and close the door as fast as possible.
“Go! Go! Go!” Max shouted, physically pushing Grace so she would go faster. Adrenaline burned his veins– and not the good kind like when he played a particularly exhilarating football game. This was the kind that was literally making the difference between life and death.
When they were close enough to the door, Ruth pulled it open. Steph reached out, dragging Grace inside. Max tried to dive through the doorway, but something caught his shoulder, freezing cold. It took a moment to register the pain spiking down his arm, the burning blood. Steph grabbed his arms, pulling him in. The force of being pulled hurt so bad he thought he would pass out. Instead, he tumbled to the linoleum floor, cursing in pain.
Ruth and Richie slammed the door closed, making sure it was locked. Richie peered out the window, terrified he would see something looking back at him. He saw only the swirling snow.
“What the fuck was that?” Ruth shouted. No one answered her. They didn't know either.
“Max is bleeding,” Steph kneeled next to him, hands bloodied.
He groaned when she sat him up. The layers of clothing he wore were torn and tattered with claw marks. Blood stained the edges of the tears, pooling on the floor. It looked like he had been attacked by a bear.
“Was it a bear?” Ruth asked.
The rest of the group was silent, terrified and contemplative. What was that? It couldn’t have been a bear. There hadn’t been bears on the island since Hatchetfield was just a tiny logging town. And bears didn’t make those noises, did they?
“I don’t think it was a bear,” Richie whispered. “I don’t know what it was.”
“And it doesn’t matter,” Grace took charge of the situation, as always. “We need to get back to the classroom and treat Max’s wounds.” She tossed her keys at Ruth. “Get to the nurse’s office. Bring back whatever you can.”
“Um… Can someone come with me? I’m scared.”
Richie took a flashlight, volunteering to join Ruth. The two of them ran off towards the office. Meanwhile, Steph and Grace helped Max stand up. He hissed through his teeth whenever his shoulder or back were jostled. He was bleeding a lot, but he was alive, and that’s what mattered.
When the three of them were back in the classroom, they relayed what happened to Pete. Steph gave him the medication, which he took gratefully. Thankfully, the medication was fast-acting, and he felt much better after a few minutes. His nausea faded, and while he still felt a little fuzzy, he wasn't shaking anymore.
Max, on the other hand, had never felt worse. He had to take off his shirt and coats so Grace could clean out his wound, but the cold air on his bare skin made him shiver. Pain spread from the claw marks, making his entire back feel like it was on fire. Grace poured water onto a scarf, using it to wash away some of the blood so she could see it better.
“How’s it look?” Steph asked, leaning over to see.
The answer was: bad. Huge gashes scraped down his back, cutting through skin and fat and muscle. It looked like a giant hand had clawed down his back, ripping flesh with it. This could get infected very easily.
“You think an animal did this?” Pete asked, getting a look for himself.
“A monster,” Max corrected, hissing when Grace cleaned too close to the cuts.
Pete analysed the wounds. It looked at first like a bear had gotten to him, but bears didn’t live on the island, so how did that happen? He counted the marks, then recounted them.
“Bears, cougars, and wolves all have five claws,” Pete said. “There are six cuts.”
“Shit! Fuck! I told you! See? There's a fuckin’ monster out there!” Max panicked loudly. “We can't let it get in!”
Steph tried to calm him down. “Max, we aren't letting it in. Okay? We're safe.”
“We're trapped,” Grace whispered.
“Grace, not helping !” Steph sighed, massaging her temples. “It can't get in. And– and if it tries we'll… fight it?” She looked at Grace and Pete, eyes practically begging them to back her up.
“Uh– y-yeah? Sure. We'll– uh– kick its butt… er, ass,” Pete stuttered entirely unconvincingly.
Steph face-palmed, groaning.
Ruth and Richie entered the room before Grace could say anything more. Ruth held up several boxes, cheering, “We got the stuff!”
“There isn't much,” Richie warned, handing Grace a first aid kit. Ruth dropped the boxes beside her.
They gathered all the flashlights they could find, shining them wherever Grace needed. She rifled through the kit and the boxes. There were plenty of alcohol prep pads, butterfly bandages, bandaids of assorted sizes, gauze rolls, medical tape, and a few packets of antibiotic cream, but everything else was totally useless.
Grace didn't know much about first aid– just what she learned at camp– but what she did know was that Max needed to go to a hospital as soon as possible. She tried what she could: cleaning the wounds, using the butterfly bandages to keep them closed. She wanted to use the gauze to cover his back to keep it clean, but she wasn't sure how to do it. Luckily, Richie helped her out, making sure they wrapped the gauze snugly but not too tightly around Max's torso and shoulder.
Max complained the whole time, needing to be held still because he kept flinching away whenever he was even lightly touched. At least he stopped complaining when they were done, only grumbling again when he tried to put on a shirt and bumped his shoulder. Grace was just happy when he was finally covered up because it meant her eyes were no longer tempted to gaze at his muscular biceps and his six pack. Ruth and Richie were, on the other hand, quite disappointed.
“We should probably have weapons,” Grace suggested as she cleaned blood off her hands. “If that thing tries to get in, we don't want to be unprepared.”
“The gym has baseball bats,” Ruth suggested. She used to play baseball, so she figured she’d do okay with a bat.
“There's also the shop classroom,” Steph said. “I don't know how useful some of the stuff in there is, but Mr. Houston acts like every tool in there could kill everyone in the room if it isn't used correctly.”
“And the lunch room has knives,” Pete recalled seeing a few large knives in the kitchen.
“Pete, you stay here,” Grace ordered, standing up. “I'll search Mr. Houston’s room. Ruth, check the gym. Steph, find something from the kitchen. Richie, see if the chemistry lab has anything useful.”
⋆⋅•⋅⊰∙∘⋆ ❆ ⋆∘∙⊱⋅•⋅⋆
Pete and Max sat in awkward silence while they waited for the other four to come back. They both returned to the blanket fort, collapsing into the cosy warmth of the blankets and pillows. They left the opening uncovered so they could see when the others returned. Pete wrapped himself completely in a blanket.
Max lay on his uninjured side, pulling the blankets over his head. Since he was a kid, he was terrified monsters would get him in the night. He always used his comforter as a shield, believing that it would somehow protect him. He didn't think a blanket would protect him now, but the habit still stuck.
Pete nervously broke the silence, “Um… do you want ibuprofen? I don't know if it will help your shoulder or anything but–”
“Sure,” Max answered.
Pete left the blanket fort to dig through his backpack. He kept a small bottle of ibuprofen there because he sometimes got headaches. Finding it, he took out two pills, which he gave to Max when he entered the fort again.
“Thanks,” Max took the pills and popped them in his mouth, swallowing them dry. He sucked in a pained breath of air when he laid back down, accidentally jostling his shoulder.
“What exactly was out there?” Pete asked. “You were the closest to it. Did you see it?”
Max tensed up. “Don't talk to me, nerd.”
Pete was pretty sure that statement broke the No Bullying Truce, but he didn't say anything. Max was injured and terrified. Pete was pushing his luck even being in the same room as him, let alone trying to ask about something that was clearly upsetting to him. He probably wouldn’t have told Max either, were the roles reversed.
Ruth returned first, carrying a few baseball bats. Steph was not far behind her, carefully balancing knives and a broom in her arms.
“Max, did you see any duct tape when you and Grace were setting up the room?” Steph asked, setting the knives down on a desk. “I was thinking of attaching some knives to this broom to make a spear.”
“I didn’t see any,” Max said.
“There’s a bunch in Mr. Houston’s room,” Ruth suggested. “I’ll get it and see if Grace needs any help.”
Shortly after Ruth left, Richie came in with a fire extinguisher and a shovel. He set both on the ground. “There surprisingly wasn’t much in there. I was thinking we could put some hydrochloric acid in one of those flasks with the stoppers and like, throw it. But that has the potential to go so wrong. I did find this shovel, though... Not sure what it was doing in there.”
“The freshmen are doing a soil lab,” Pete answered. He was the teacher’s assistant for the Earth Science class. He took the shovel. It was nice and sturdy, and the blade had a sharp pointed tip.
Ruth and Grace returned carrying several items. They had a nail gun and a circular saw (both cordless) as well as a whole box of nails to reload the gun and several rolls of PVC and duct tape. Now they just had to distribute weapons. Steph took the rolls of tape. She taped the handles of the knives to the end of the broom, making sure they were sturdy and held fast.
“Max, you should have the saw,” Grace said. It would be the easiest weapon to use with his injury. “I’m taking the nail gun.”
“How do I use this?” Max asked, turning the saw over in his hands. It was decently heavy, but it didn’t require too much use of his arms. Grace showed him the buttons. He set it down near the fort and laid back down on the pillows.
“I’m using a baseball bat.” Ruth went to her pile of bats and picked one up, going to the other side of the room and giving an experimental swing. She was pretty good at baseball in middle school, but then one day she got hit too hard in the face by a ball and for the past four years she was in and out of different orthodontists to fix her broken jaw and get her teeth back to normal. It was kind of nice to have a bat back in her hand.
“Do you still want the shovel?” Richie asked Pete.
“Yeah.”
“Okay.” Richie shone his light on the fire extinguisher, reading the instructions again.
Now they were all prepared for that thing coming back.
“We’ll sleep in shifts,” Grace decided. “I doubt it can get into the school, but we don’t want to be caught by surprise anyway.”
“I can take the first shift,” Richie raised his hand. “I don’t think I can sleep.”
“Should we do two-person shifts?” Pete asked. “To make sure the person on watch doesn’t fall asleep?”
“Sure,” Grace said.
“I don’t want to be on first watch,” Steph said. “I’ll take third.”
“Me too!” Pete insisted far too quickly. Ruth gave him a knowing look that made him shrink into himself. His crush on Steph wasn’t that obvious, right?
“Ruth and I will take second watch,” Grace said. She would have taken first watch, but it would be indecent if she were to stay up with a man, even if said man was Richie, who– if rumours were to be believed– was probably gay anyway.
That left Richie and Max.
“Can I switch?” They both asked at the same time.
“No,” Grace said, and since she had appointed herself leader, that was final.
While everyone else got back to sleep in the fort, Richie and Max sat in front of it, listening for any strange noises. The circular saw sat beside Max on his uninjured side, and Richie had the fire extinguisher in his lap, his arms wrapped around it as though it were a pillow. A flashlight between them was pointed towards the door.
For half an hour, nothing happened at all. It was boring, but Richie was glad because the alternative was that thing coming back, or Max deciding to break the truce.
Max broke the silence (but not the truce), when he shifted a little, groaning. “These cuts fucking itch.”
Richie hummed a sound to let Max know he was listening, eyes fixed on the door. He wasn’t sure if Max wanted him to respond or not.
There was another long silence before Max whispered again. “Can monsters get rabies?”
Richie almost laughed. “I don't know. The thing out there might be a regular animal…” He didn't sound confident, he wasn't sure he believed what he was saying. “Either way, when we get out of here, you should go to the hospital. They'll give you rabies shots there.”
“I don't want shots.”
“The alternative is dying of rabies.”
“I think monsters can't get rabies,” Max said. “And they don't need to have rabies to attack people. Attacking people unevoked is monsters’ job .”
Unprovoked, Richie corrected in his head. Outloud, he said, “I guess you're right. They're going to give you shots at the hospital anyways, though.”
“Fuckin’ hate doctors,” Max grumbled.
“Same. I had a doctor tell me I had trouble breathing because I didn't play enough sports. It turned out I just have asthma.” It was getting easier to talk to Max now that there was temporarily no fear of bullying on Richie’s end and no fear of looking uncool on Max’s. They could feel themselves picking up where they left off before they stopped being friends in the fourth grade.
“That's stupid. Tell me the name and address, I'll punch that guy,” Max joked.
Richie giggled. “I don't even remember. I was like ten years old. Uh… he had the biggest eyebrows I've ever seen. He looked like Commander Amarao.”
“Who?”
Richie pulled out his phone to look up a picture, but then he remembered the WiFi was down and his phone was dead. “I guess I can't show you. He's from FLCL– that's an anime– and he has huge eyebrows. They aren't actually his eyebrows, though. It's really just two pieces of seaweed.”
“Anime is weird,” Max said.
Richie flinched, afraid Max was about to start insulting him, but when he looked at the other boy's face, he didn't look mad at all. “S- some of it is kind of strange, but a lot of it is really good. There are tons of different genres, like sports anime and isekai. I think you'd like the sports ones.”
“I don't even know where to find an–”
Max was cut off by a distant howl. It was the same one the creature howled before, long and forlorn and chilling. Richie shivered, hugging the fire extinguisher tighter. Max cocked his head like he was listening for it again.
Max was listening to it. He swore to god he heard words this time, like it was talking to them. The claw marks on his back itched again. This time, it was even worse, like his skin was trying to crawl off his body. It was worse than mosquito bites, or that time he'd fallen in a patch of poison ivy in the Witchwood.
The howling came again, and this time Max was able to discern the words: “Let me in.”
“Do you hear it?” Max asked.
“The howling? Yes.”
“No– it's talking to us.”
Richie looked mildly alarmed. “I… don't think so.”
“Shhh!”
“Let me in, Max.”
“See?! It said my name!”
Richie turned a concerned gaze on Max, looking equal parts scared and pitying. “Do you have a fever? I can wake up–”
“Shhh! I'm listening to it!”
Richie looked between Max and the blanket fort, wondering what he was supposed to do in this situation. Max was hearing things, which could be a symptom of any manner of things. He leaned towards Max, trying to place a hand on his forehead to gauge his temperature, but Max slapped it away before he could.
“Can you at least tell me what it's saying?” Richie asked.
Max thought it over. He could tell Richie, but something in him warned him not to. He didn't think he could trust Richie with the message. He didn't think he could trust anyone with the message.
“Max, come here. Open the door. It's so cold out here.”
He shook his head, wondering if his ears were working correctly. He hadn't heard that voice since he was nine years old. He remembered it clearer than any other part of his childhood.
❆
He heard the man announce her name and the rush of applause that filled the auditorium like rolling thunder. He looked to his left, where his dad was cheering, trying to clap even though his arm was still in a sling. That was okay, because Max clapped enough for the both of them, shouting out to the people around him, “That's my Momma! That's my Momma!”
His mom left the line-up of women and walked to the front of the stage, smiling brighter than Max had ever seen as she accepted the crown and sash. She stepped up to the microphone, looking out over the crowd until she saw her husband and son, “I want first off to thank my competitors. You have all been so lovely tonight and I'm honoured I got to compete beside you. I'd also like to thank my husband and son for supporting me. I love you!”
❆
I love you. The last thing his mom ever said to him. She left that night, took half the prize money and never returned. His father was convinced she was murdered, and he drove himself crazy looking for her, getting addicted to the medications he was put on after his injury at work, and then to booze and cigarettes. Max had wanted his entire life since then to see his mom and ask her why she left him.
Now she was here, calling for him out in the cold. He needed to let her in before she froze to death. Or before the monster found her.
“Please. Max!”
Max stood up, ignoring the agony that burned down his arm and back.
Richie furrowed his eyebrows, looking up at him in worry and confusion. “A-are you alright?”
“‘m fine.” Max hefted up the circular saw, walking to the door and opening it with some difficulty.
“Wait–! Where–? What are you doing?!” Richie scrambled to his feet, taking his fire extinguisher and the flashlight.
“Nothing.” Max left the room, turning left.
“Shit!” Richie hissed, looking between the door and the blanket fort. Something was going on with Max, but he wasn't sure if he should wake everyone else. It could be a false alarm and he woke them up for nothing, or waking them up could take too long and give Max time to do something regrettable.
Richie decided to run after Max, though not without shouting a warning to his sleeping friends first. He heard someone stir inside the blanket fort, but he followed Max out the door before he could see who it was.
Max walked slowly but purposefully down the halls, giving Richie ample time to catch up with him. When Richie got closer, he noticed Max’s jaw was set with pain or maybe anger. He didn’t particularly care to find out which.
“What’s going on?” Richie asked, short of breath from running.
“None of your business,” Max sneered, not even looking at Richie because he was staring straight ahead.
“Actually, it is my business since we’re supposed to be keeping watch together . What happens if that thing comes in? We’re completely exposed out here!” Richie gestured to the hallway around them. “I don’t want to get mauled!”
The creature outside howled again, as though taunting Richie. It was louder now, closer. He shivered, hugging the fire extinguisher as though it were one of his body pillows. It was not nearly as soft or as comforting as any of his waifus, but it was better than nothing.
Max continued walking– going towards the sound like an idiot who dies first in a horror movie. Richie followed after him on shaky legs, fear and concern tingling under his skin, heart hammering. Max was terrified of the thing outside before. Why was he acting so calm now?
“Max, we need to walk away from it!” Richie pleaded. He almost reached out to grab Max’s arm and drag him back, but he didn't feel like getting his nose broken tonight, so he lowered his hand.
Max was silent for a moment, before whispering, “My mom is out there.”
Richie felt like he had just been hit in the head. “Um… what?”
“She’s asking me to let her in.”
“I don’t think–”
Another howl rose. Max moved more purposely in the direction it came from. “Are you deaf or something? She’s calling for me.”
No way. Absolutely not. This was some horror movie bullshit. “The only thing I hear is howling.”
“My mom is out there,” Max repeated. He said it atonally, but his eyes had taken on a wild look that made Richie nervous.
Richie tried to reason with Max, keeping his voice steady. “Max, think – why would your mom be outside the school? She doesn’t know we’re in here.”
But Max didn’t respond. He was too focused on whatever he thought he was hearing. The creature’s howling grew more insistent, like it knew Max was coming and was eager to claim its prize. They were now in the hallway that led to the gym. This hall had a door leading outside.
Richie frantically tried to convince Max, “Your mom isn’t out there! The creature is tricking you! Stop! I’m serious!” He fumbled with the fire extinguisher, fully prepared to hit Max with it if that was what it took to get him back to his senses. “No one has even heard from your mom for years. What makes you think she’d come back now? You really think she would walk through a fucking blizzard for you? She took all that money and left and never left a note or sent you a birthday card or anything and she’s suddenly back in town and knows exactly where you are? Bullshit!”
Max froze. At first, Richie rejoiced, thinking he had finally gotten through to him, but then he turned and the glow of the flashlight caught his angry face. Shit. Oh, he fucked up so bad .
“Shut the fuck up!” Max snarled, stomping closer, and Richie became very aware of the saw he was holding. His eyes darted between Max’s face and the circular saw, wondering if he would actually go so far as to use it. He would like to think Max wouldn’t, but he wasn’t in his right mind right now.
“I didn’t mean anyth– I’m just– Don’t–” Richie choked on his words, panic making his mind short-circuit.
Max’s chest heaved with anger. Richie tried to back away, but he ended up just plastering himself against the wall. Max trapped him there, grabbing the collar of his shirt.
“Somebody help!” Richie screamed at the top of his lungs, hoping everyone else would hear it and help him before Max decided to go all Chainsaw Man on him. Max lifted the saw, and Richie swore he saw his whole life flash before his eyes. It was boring and a little sad. His life fucking sucked.
He shook as the blade stopped right before his face, eyes pooling with tears. He wondered if he had fallen asleep and this was just a nightmare because there was no way Max would do something as bad as this. He always went too far, but even he wouldn’t do something this bad, right?
Before Max could power up the saw, the monster outside howled again. It was close, just a few feet away. The only thing separating it from them was the door. The door that suddenly rattled with a deafening groan of metal.
Max let go of Richie, who fell to the floor hyperventilating. He slowly walked towards the door, shaking hand outstretched as he reached for the push bar. “Momma?
“NO!” Richie tried to get him to stop, but Max didn’t seem to hear him, too set on opening the door.
Richie pushed himself off of the floor, grabbing the flashlight, which he had dropped. He needed to get back to the classroom and warn everyone. It was too late to save Max.
He sprinted down the hall. He had never felt more useless than he did now, lungs screaming and heart thundering so loud it almost blocked out the sound of the door groaning open, the sound of that howl, the sound of Max screaming, and worse– the silence when he stopped.
⋆⋅•⋅⊰∙∘⋆ ❆ ⋆∘∙⊱⋅•⋅⋆
They woke up to raucous commotion. The door slamming shut, someone shouting, movement all around.
“IT’S INSIDE! IT’S INSIDE!” Richie screamed, and there was the sound of something dragging.
Everyone scrambled out of the blanket fort, knocking one of the “walls” down in their haste. They’d laid the flashlights and weapons out on a desk for easy access. Ruth turned the flashlights on, aiming them at the door, while Pete helped barricade the door with desks. Richie abandoned the barricade for a moment to dive for his backpack, taking out his inhaler.
“What happened?” Steph asked, taking Richie’s place and helping Pete lift one desk on top of the other.
“Where’s Max?” Grace leaned over to check the door was locked and then pulled down the lockdown shades to cover its window.
“He– fuck– he–” Richie hiccuped, speaking through tears.
“What were you doing out there?” Grace asked, sounding like a mother scolding him.
“He opened the door! He went out and he was going to open the door and I tried to stop him and he was going to k-kill me and he opened it and– and he was screaming and–”
“You let him open the door?!”
“I didn’t let him! He was going to kill me!”
“SHHH!” Ruth hissed, silencing everyone. “Treat this like an actual lockdown. Be quiet!”
They stayed quiet, grouping in the middle of the classroom and facing the door. Grace and Ruth moved the blanket fort mostly out of the way so they had more room to move. No one was going to be doing any more sleeping tonight.
They listened closely for the monster. There was silence for a long time, except for the sounds of their breaths, their hearts beating. It felt like an eternity had passed. They were all scared out of their minds, but none of them said it out loud. They just held their weapons tightly, ready to fight for their lives.
A bang on the door startled them. Ruth screamed as she flinched back. Richie started crying again, and Steph swore under her breath. The thing out there must have heard them because it scratched on the door. The same scratching Ruth and Richie heard in the theatre. Grace raised her nail gun, pointing it right at the door. If the monster managed to come inside, she would shoot it first thing.
Skritch skritch skritch… skritch skritch skritch.
“What do we do if it gets in?” Pete whispered frantically. “There’s only one way out.”
No one answered. They had no idea.
For a long time, nothing happened. There was no more scratching, no more howling, no more banging. But they didn’t try to fool themselves into believing it had left.
Then, the scratching came again. A voice spoke to them, muffled through the door, “Hey guys, can you open this? I think it’s locked.”
“Max?” Grace lowered the nail gun hesitantly.
“It’s not Max!” Richie insisted.
“Grace? Can you open the door?” Max asked, sounding a little more desperate. “It’s cold out here.”
Grace took a step forward.
“No! It isn’t Max!” Richie said. “When Max let the monster in, he said it was because he could hear his mom talking to him, but all I could hear was howling.”
“Well, are you hearing howling now?” Grace asked, propping one hand on her hip.
“N-no.”
“I’m opening the door.”
“Don’t do that,” Steph grabbed her shoulder. “Grace, that thing isn’t Max.”
“Why would Max be scratching the door?” Pete asked. “Only the monster was doing that. Max would have knocked.”
“And if it is Max, I don’t want him in here,” Richie said. “He threatened me with the saw.”
“We can’t leave him out there!” Grace argued.
“It’s mimicking people’s voices to try to get to us,” Ruth whispered. “I’ve heard there are things in the Witchwood that do that.”
Every child who grew up in Hatchetfield knew the stories of the things that lurk in the Witchwood. They’d had it drilled into them from a young age never to follow anything into the woods, never to respond if something in the forest called their name, and never to trust your eyes or ears over your gut. They were the kind of stories kids in normal towns grow up to disbelieve, right along with fairy tales and urban legends– but Hatchetfield wasn't a normal town by any stretch.
Grace ignored her, trying to reach the door again, though Pete and Steph pulled her back.
“C’mon, let me in!” The thing using Max’s voice pleaded. “I’m freezing my balls off out here!”
“He’s dead,” Richie shook his head, trying to remind himself that no matter how much it sounded like Max, it wasn’t him. “He’s dead. He was screaming and he stopped. He’s dead.”
“Richie, I’m not dead. The monster isn’t even here anymore.”
“See?” Grace said. “Let me open the door.”
“Let’s put it to a vote,” Pete suggested, knowing they would outvote Grace. “All in favour of opening the door?” Grace was the only one to raise her hand. “All in favour of keeping it closed?” Pete, Steph, Ruth, and Richie all raised their hands. “It’s four to one, so we’re keeping the door–”
He was interrupted by Max’s terrified scream. The door rattled and banged. “IT’S BACK! IT’S BACK! LET ME IN! PLEASE LET ME IN!”
Richie covered his ears. It sounded just like he did when he died. And Richie did nothing the first time, just ran away like a coward. He had to keep reminding himself that Max was dead, that the screams of terror outside were just copies of his voice.
Grace struggled out of Pete and Steph’s grasp. Ruth tried to grab her too, but Grace held up the nail gun, ready to shoot anyone who tried to stop her.
“Don’t do this!” Steph held up her hands.
On the other side of the door, Max pleaded and cried, begging Grace to let him in. Grace moved towards the door, keeping the nail gun trained on the other four.
“We’re going to die,” Ruth said in despair.
They all gripped their weapons tighter. They couldn’t fight Grace, since she had a gun and the rest of them only had melee weapons. She would shoot them before they even got close. Ruth was right. They were all going to die.
Grace moved the barricade piece by piece, keeping her eyes on them the whole time. Steph waited for her to turn around. She would have to at some point.
Grace did turn to move one of the desks, and Steph took the opportunity to rush her. Before she could attempt to tackle her, Grace raised the nail gun again and fired it.
They all ducked. Luckily, Grace wasn't aiming for anyone. That was just a warning shot. The nail had flown past them all, embedding itself in the wall.
“WHAT THE HELL!” Pete shouted.
“You could've killed someone!” Ruth added, looking between Grace– who still held the nail gun pointed at them– and the hole punched through the wall.
“And I didn't,” Grace said. “But next person who tries to stop me gets a nail in the leg.”
They always knew Grace was a certain level of crazy, but no one ever suspected she would do something like this.
“She’s gone insane!” Richie moaned. “We're all gonna die!”
With trembling hands, Grace reached for the lock. The door slammed again, as if in anticipation. The room was silent, the tension thick as a fog. They watched as she unlocked the door and pulled it open.
A cold breeze whipped through the opening, carrying with it the scent that permeated the Witchwood: a mix of pine and rot and something else– something ancient and wild. To smell it brought to mind dark soil, mycelium reaching like pale fingers, twisting roots and creeping vines and shadows lurking in the trees beyond. It was the kind of nature untouched by mankind, the rare kind that was still wild, untamed, hungry.
Whatever was out there stood concealed by the yawning shadow of the hallway. Even unable to see it, Grace realised how badly she messed up based on the scent of it alone. The thing out there wasn’t Max. It was something from the Witchwood.
And nothing good comes from the Witchwood.
Grace tried to push the door closed, but it was too late. Something emerged from the shadows, long and spindly. She didn’t even give herself time to get a better look at it before she shot it thrice. The creature seemed to stumble back, howling at a higher pitch than before. Everyone covered their ears as its bellows echoed through the tiny classroom.
The creature succeeded in entering the room this time, its form coming into the flashlight glow. At first, it looked like a moose, but the further in it came, the more that mask fell away.
Its legs were long and twisting, resembling the branches of an oak. Some of them bent the wrong way, and they all ended with claws that resembled human fingers, six on each foot. Its skin was a patchwork of fur, fungus, and bark. Burls and knots covered its back, sprouting grey fur and hen-of-the-woods. Deep gouges marred its sides like the spaces between ribs, growing black trumpet mushrooms that peaked out from the cuts like rotting flowers searching for light.
The creature had an ursine face, but it was elongated and distorted like it had been pulled and stretched over the skull of an elk. It had no eyes, only hollows where eyes should be, exposing yellowed and dirtied bone. What had appeared to be antlers were shrubs bursting from the sides of its head, twisted and dry, though a few shrivelled leaves clung stubbornly to twigs. Whatever this thing was, it looked like it was rotting in front of them.
It opened its mouth too wide for any natural creature, dripping slimy saliva, and screamed again. This time, the sound was piercing, and it left the room feeling like it had been scraped out from the inside. The sound washed over them, and they felt their sanity cracking like dry twigs underfoot.
Grace shot at it again, aiming at its body. They all heard the thunk of the nail entering wood, but the monster seemed largely unaffected. Everyone tensed, afraid of what it would do next.
The creature lunged at Grace, its claws outstretched. She dodged to the side and tried to shoot it again, but it was too fast. It knocked the nail gun out of her hand and swiped at her with one of its clawed limbs. Ruth, in a moment of uncharacteristic bravery, stepped forward and swung her baseball bat, knocking its limb out of the way. Grace was able to take that moment of distraction to dive for the nail gun.
Steph thrust at the creature with her spear, trying to stab it in its stomach, while Pete smacked at one of its limbs with his shovel, managing to cut a slice in it. Richie rushed to Ruth’s side. He raised the fire extinguisher and bashed at the creature’s leg, but it didn’t seem to do anything other than make it angrily swipe at him.
“We need to leave!” Pete shouted, breathing heavily as he protected Steph from the creature’s claws.
Steph stabbed at the thing again, and it howled in pain when she managed to hit one of the furry parts. The spear pushed through, finding flesh rather than bark. “Aim for the fur!” She shouted, yanking back her spear. Viscous black chunks of decomposing blood came with it, splattering to the floor in clumps and smelling of death.
Grace stood up, holding the nail gun again. She took a strong stance, aiming at the creature’s head. She fired. The nail embedded itself in the creature’s skull, but it didn’t seem bothered. It simply stumbled for a moment, and then turned its sights (if it could see at all from its eye sockets) on Grace.
The creature charged her, and she barely had time to fire again. The nail glanced off the side of its head, leaving a gouge in the wood, but not stopping it. Grace was knocked to the ground, and the creature’s clawed hand was on her before she knew what was happening. Time slowed down for them all. Someone screamed. The creature’s claws were an inch from her face, and she could see every crack in the bark, every filamentous fungal growth.
The others stood in silent horror as the creature tore through her side, rending flesh as easily as tearing paper. Grace screamed, scrabbling on the ground for purchase. She frantically began to pray, forcing the words out through the pain. The creature’s mouth opened again, a black void filled with pointed teeth, and it leaned closer to her.
Her hand found something hard under her palm, and she shoved it into the creature’s mouth. It was a chunk of chalk she’d grabbed off the floor in her panic. The creature recoiled, the chalk sticking to its teeth and gums. It made a sound like branches snapping, and then it was on her, ripping and tearing and biting.
Blood covered the floor, black as tar in the low light. It splattered on the walls, steaming in the cold air. Grace’s screaming abruptly stopped, leaving the sound of flesh ripping and teeth chewing.
“Go!” Pete hissed, ushering everyone to leave the room while the creature stayed busy with Grace’s body. They all left and Pete closed the door as quietly as possible, taking a flashlight on his way out. Ruth took it, and she tucked it into her scarf so she would have both hands free.
“I to- I told her! I told her it wasn’t Max!” Richie gasped, choking on his breath in hysterics. At some point between fighting the monster and getting here, he lost the fire extinguisher, leaving him weaponless. “We’re all gonna die!”
“We’ll talk about it later,” Ruth grabbed his arm, pulling him down the hallway. Pete and Steph led the way, occasionally looking behind themselves to be sure the creature wasn’t following them.
“How are you so calm right now?” Richie asked.
“I took a Xanax.”
“Where are we going?” Steph asked, ignoring those two.
They couldn’t duck into one of the classrooms because all the doors were locked and Grace still had the keys. The only rooms still unlocked were the cafeteria, theatre, and lab, which were all on the other side of the school, or the gym, which was where the creature came in.
“The theatre has a basement. It’s a storm shelter,” Ruth suggested.
“Then we have to run back towards the monster!” Pete argued. “We should go to the storage closet in the gym.”
No one objected, so they kept running that way. Frigid air met them the further they ran, let in earlier when Max opened the side door. The gym would be freezing. They might survive the monster but die overnight of the cold. The cold was preferable.
A loud bang sounded behind them, urging them to run faster. The creature had doubtless slammed open the door. They didn’t look back, but they could hear it gallop down the hall.
They arrived in the hallway by the gym to a grisly sight. Max lay a few feet from the door like he had tried to run before that thing got to him. He was face up, skin paler than any of them had ever seen. His mouth was open in a silent scream and his chest was torn open, ribs cracked and sticking out of his skin, revealing the gaping cavity of his chest and his deflated lungs. Things had begun to grow out of his chest– roots and mycelium and lichen– an unnaturally quick decay.
Steph gagged, turning away so she could open the gym door. The sight seemed burned into her eyes, playing behind her closed lids like a projector at a drive-in theatre. It didn’t settle in that Max was dead until seeing his body just now.
They didn’t have much time to mourn. The creature entered the other end of the hallway, howling and bellowing. Pete tried to open the gym door, but it didn’t budge. He rattled it and pushed harder. Steph helped, but they were still unsuccessful.
“Shit! It’s locked!” Pete panicked.
“But I left it unlocked!” Ruth insisted. Grace must have gone back to lock it at some point.
They couldn’t go the way they just came because the monster was there. The only other option was to leave the building. None of them were wearing proper attire for that level of cold, and they had no jump ropes to tie together to make a lead line anymore.
“We need to get to the parking lot,” Steph said. “We can hide in my car.”
Ruth opened the side door. A glacial gale blasted in, carrying snowflakes. It was so cold it froze the breath in their lungs, entering them like ice water.
They all jumped as the creature howled again, feeling its breath on them. It was behind them. Pete grasped Steph’s hand in his own, reaching for Ruth and Richie. Ruth held his arm and took Richie’s hand, pulling him outside.
Richie was suddenly yanked away from her, caught in the creature’s claws. He screamed as it pulled him further into the hallway, sinking its teeth into him. Ruth tried to hit it with her baseball bat, but it swiped at it with one of its claws, sending the bat splintering into the wall.
“Help!” Richie cried, kicking uselessly at its head. Blood and viscera pooled on the floor. There was so much blood. Even if they somehow got him away from the creature, he would die of his wounds as soon as they tried to drag him into the snow.
“We need to go,” Steph tugged Pete and Ruth back, knowing they would die too if they went after him. Tears pricked her eyes. The two didn’t move. They watched with terrified eyes as the creature mauled their friend in front of them. “We’ll die if we stay! We need to go!”
When Richie’s cries reduced to a pained gurgle and then to silence, the creature stepped into the cold, seemingly unaffected by the snow that clung to its fur and the ice forming where the blood coagulated on its jaw and claws. Its breath was a mist in the freezing air. It took a step towards them, and that was when Pete and Ruth finally listened to Steph.
The cold was a distant concern as the creature took another step towards them. They had to get out of here before it killed them all. They bolted into the night, the creature’s howls following them into the dark.
They could not see a thing. In the blizzard, Hatchetfield became like an alien world, losing all sense of direction and familiarity. Only their hands gripping tight to each other held any sense of stability, a small comfort when stepping into the cold unknown. The snow stung their faces and legs as they sprinted. The wind was a beast of its own, cutting through their clothes like a knife. They had to keep moving. If they stopped, they would freeze to death. If they stopped, the creature would get them.
Steph tried to lead the way towards the parking lot, but she wasn’t quite sure where she was going. It was like they were deep underwater, no sense of which way was up or down. They stumbled over the drifts, the snow so deep it was up to their knees in places.
Pete tripped over something that might have been a curb or a parking stop at one point. He fell, the snow cushioning him. Ruth pulled him back up. He dropped his shovel, but they didn’t have time to retrieve it as Steph took hold of his hand again and pulled the trio away, sprinting as fast as she could. At least their blood was kept warm and pumping by the exertion.
But their breath grew shorter and shorter. The cold was winning. They had to find shelter, and soon. Even if they made it to Steph’s car, what would they do? They couldn’t drive in the whiteout conditions, they couldn’t call for help (how would they even begin to explain what was happening?), they could try to turn the heater on but Steph wasn’t sure her car would start in this cold, and that might attract the monster to them. Were they even safe in a car? What if it broke the windshield?
Shadows emerged from the blanket of snow, giving them hope that they had reached the parking lot, or perhaps the row of houses situated near the school. Brenda lived in one of those houses, and Steph was sure her parents would let them in from the snow.
However, as they got close enough for the shadows to become shapes, they realised it wasn’t a row of houses, but the straggling trees at the edge of the Witchwood. None of them wanted to enter the forest, even though the trees would give them cover from the wind and snow. The creature came out of there, it would be stupid to enter a place it knew better than they did. They turned around, following the treeline in the direction the parking lot should be.
The creature howled in harmony with the wind, giving up its location to them. It was close, having gained on them quickly in the snow. It moved through snowdrifts more easily than they did, closing the distance between itself and the stumbling humans it hunted.
“Faster!” Ruth urged, pushing them forward.
The creature’s breath was hot on their backs, especially compared to the chill of the air. If one of them tripped, it would be on them in an instant. None of them dared to look back, afraid to see how close it was behind them.
They felt the air swish above their heads as one of the creature’s claws swiped at them, narrowly missing Pete. He nearly fell, but Steph caught him.
“We’re almost there!” Ruth shouted, pointing forward. Pete’s flashlight illuminated the LED sign that sat where the street met the parking lot. It emitted no light now, and they almost missed it. Steph had parked on the opposite end of the lot, so they still had a ways to go, but the sight of the sign ignited hope and excitement within them.
It was then that a sharp claw ripped through the air, and Ruth was torn from Pete’s grasp. The monster had sliced through the fabric of her jacket and into her side. She screamed a piercing sound that sounded muffled in the storming wind. The creature had caught up to them.
Pete and Steph were both knocked over by the force of the creature’s lunge. Steph was thrown a little ways away, losing her spear, and Pete’s glasses were knocked off (not like he could see anything in this storm anyway). The creature dragged Ruth through the snow and out of sight. Her cries grew quieter until they were only a whimper.
Pete scrambled onto his knees, feeling around for his glasses. His hand fell into something warm, and for a moment, he was glad, because it temporarily banished the numb chill in his fingers. But then he realised his hand had made contact with a puddle of Ruth’s blood. He cried out, recoiling.
The creature’s footsteps grew quieter. They had to move now, while it was distracted with its kill. Ruth was the one with the flashlight, and Pete couldn’t see anything its light shining anywhere. He couldn’t see anything at all. Pete searched for his glasses again, hoping that wearing them would bring some clarity. He found them and shakily put them on, the cold making his hands tremble. The wind had picked up so much that the snow was stinging his eyes.
He didn’t see Steph anywhere. It was just so dark . He remembered going on a middle school field trip on Mackinac Island. They did a cave tour, and the guide turned off all the lights, leaving them in total darkness. He had never experienced the dark that way before, and he thought he never would again. Tonight was as close as he could get to that total darkness. No light from the moon or stars reached through the storm clouds and the raging wind to illuminate Hatchetfield tonight.
He didn’t dare call out to Steph, afraid the creature would hear him. He just had to trust that she was okay. He staggered to his feet and through the snow drifts, walking blindly forward in the dark. He just had to get to the car. Then they could hide, or try to drive away, or something, and this nightmare could finally end.
His whole body was numb from the cold. The biting wind didn’t even hurt anymore, and he no longer shivered. A part of his brain told him he should be worried about this, but the creature stalking them was of greater concern, even as his limbs slowed, even as he could barely keep upright. He kept falling over, having to drag himself back up. He wasn’t getting very far. Eventually, he decided to crawl.
He felt too heavy, like getting out of a pool. And he was so so tired. He fought the need to close his eyes, to lie down for just a moment, to take a short rest. He had to remind himself that he was being chased. He could sleep when he and Steph made it to the car.
But was he still being chased? Pete had lost all sense of direction. He didn’t hear the monster. He didn’t hear anything, just his heart pounding. Maybe it had gone after Steph? Or maybe it had caught up to him, and was now standing right behind him, watching him crawl? He didn’t dare look back. He just had to keep moving.
If he could just get to the car, they could warm up. They could figure out what to do next. They could survive.
But his body was giving out. The cold was too much. He could feel his consciousness slipping away. He was going to die here, in the snow, on his hands and knees. He was going to leave this world the same way he had entered it: blind and helpless.
“PETE!” A voice called, loud and shrill over the wind and his pounding heart. It was Steph, shouting for him. He dragged himself forward, trying to get closer to the sound. It seemed to be coming from everywhere.
He stopped, trying to regain his bearings. He heard her shout again, but this time, it seemed to be coming from right behind him. “Steph?”
The air moved around him, and something large smacked him to the side. He rolled onto his back, staring up at the creature standing above him. He didn’t have the energy to scream or fight it. His body was as frozen as the snow around him.
He looked up, beyond the creature’s head, up into the dark clouds swirling with snow. For a moment they parted, letting droplets of starlight fall like rain, shining like eyes. They looked down at him, unblinking. Watching him die.
The stars weren’t the worst thing to see as you die, Pete thought. Pain ripped through his body, igniting fire in his nerves. But he kept his eyes open, watching the stars slowly blur.
No, the stars aren’t the worst thing to see at all.