Chapter Text
It wasn’t the warmest in the Washington’s lodge, and the slight draft that brushed against her damp skin only enhanced her chills. Sam cursed under her breath, but a fond smile touched her lips as she left the bathroom, her towel wrapped around her tightly. Josh and Chris were probably having a laugh down in the living room, with Ashley rolling her eyes at their antics.
Closing the door behind her, she couldn’t help but look to Hannah and Beth’s room. They were close to her size, but Sam put the thought out of her head. She knew from a quick peek while her bath filled that nothing in the room had changed from last year. Keeping it in the same condition meant that when they came back, they would find everything like they had left it.
Sam shook her head slightly, putting those melancholy thoughts back in their box. Josh had set this weekend up to be about them, and about moving past what happened last year. And this reeked of something that he would rope Chris and Ashley into doing. Sam went to the railing and leaned over slightly, noticing the balloons set up around the stairs with arrows painted on them.
“Chris?” she said loudly as she walked to the stairs. “Josh?”
Neither of them replied, and she rolled her eyes, tugging the towel again to make sure that it was tight against her back. It didn’t really bother her to show her soulmarks, but the only people who had actually seen all of her marks were the twins. Hannah had been jealous before flashing the words “Are you new here?” scrawled on the bottom of her foot. Beth’s “I can’t believe I finally met you” on her ribs had their little group in hysterics as they tried to imagine the kind of person that she’d end up with. They’d finally decided on horribly romantic, much to Beth’s consternation.
Sam wondered if their soulmates knew that they would never meet. If their words had faded to a pale white, indistinguishable from scars unless you knew what you were looking at.
The rugs that the Washingtons had thrown across almost every wooden floor was to her benefit now. By the time she reached the hallway to the main landing, her heart beating fast from the unexpected gong of the clock, her feet were dry, if not a little cold. Then again, she was shivering anyway, the warm heat that had suffused the bathroom nothing more than a memory. She debated turning around to go back to it, but let it drop. It was better to be cold and naked once, rather than getting warm only to freeze again.
“Chris?” she said again. “Mike? Emily? This is really getting out of hand, okay? It was all very funny, ha ha, look at Sam walking around in a towel, maybe we’ll see her soulmarks, but now I really just want this to be over, all right?”
Nobody answered her as she walked down to the living room. The hair on the back of her neck prickled as she saw that the fire Josh had lit earlier had been put out. Walking into the room, she crept around the sofa, trying to see if anyone was waiting to jump out at her. Sam bit her lip as she walked over to the fireplace, holding her hand out over the grate. The heat from it was barely enough to warm the palm of her hand, which meant that someone had turned it off almost as soon as she had gone up to take her bath.
Sam rubbed her arms, trying to soothe the prickling unease that crawled over her skin. A bobbing balloon in the corner of her vision drew her gaze. She padded over to them, the rugs muffling her footsteps. Tugging on the string, she pulled it down, noting the arrow drawn in what looked like white paint pointing towards the steps to the bottom floor.
“Okay, if you were trying to freak me out, guess what, you succeeded,” she said, letting the balloon go to bob with the others.
Following the balloons, she walked down the stairs. The cinema room was open with what looked like light from the screen illuminating the hallway in front of it. Stopping in front of it, Sam reached for the flashlight Josh had left earlier. If worst came to worst, she could always hit Josh or whoever came up with the stupid idea in the first place with it. A creak behind her made her turn around and click the flashlight on. The low powered beam didn’t show her anything, and she made her way into the cinema room.
“Hey, guys,” she called, entering the cinema room. “Come on! I’m done with this! I really don’t appreciate the silent treatment here!”
Whatever film had been queued was one of the older ones in black and white. Beth had always liked them better, but Hannah and Josh had almost always outvoted her. The Washington movie nights were known in high school to be reserved almost exclusively for horror, gore, violence, and, on one memorable occasion, The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Emily had almost never forgiven Beth for that one, never mind that she had met her three soulmates that night. Apparently all of her marks, except for Matt’s, referenced the movie.
She couldn’t stop herself from letting out a short scream as the doors to the cinema room snapped shut behind her with a bang. Sam swung the beam of her flashlight across the chairs, making sure no one was going to jump out at her from behind them. The adrenaline coursing through her made the beam wobble as she turned it back to the now closed doors, but, as far as she could tell, there was no one else in the room with her.
“Hello Samantha. Looking for me?”
Sam froze. Those words had been emblazoned on her back, just below those of her first soulmate, for years. She had dreamed of thousands of ways that those words could be spoken, but none of them made sense for what was happening now. The words her soulmate continued to say made her look at the screen, only to see herself in the bath.
“Why are you showing this to me?” she finally asked after trying and failing to find her words. Part of her wished that they were more outraged, but the terror of knowing that someone had filmed her in the bath made her voice tremble.
“Why are you watching?”
Sam turned to look at the projector, but it was too bright to tell her if there was someone in that room. Turning back around, she saw the film stutter, as if someone was changing the reel, before revealing Josh and Ashley tied to a wall with a saw blade whirring in front of them. The film cut, focusing on Josh and his panicked face as the blade came towards him.
“Josh!” she shouted, her hand reaching out for him even as the blade cut into - and through - him. “Oh my god, what did you do?”
“I’m going to give ten seconds,” the voice droned on.
The cold stone of the wall calmed Sam down enough to hear her soulmate... no, the psycho who had murdered her soulmate, begin his countdown. Vaguely, she was aware of the litany of no’s under her breath as she tried to figure out what to do. She slid down it slightly, the terror twisting her stomach and making it hard to breathe.
“Please, no,” she cried as the doors burst open.
“Sa-am,” the Psycho hissed.
Her breathing hitched as she stood, facing the man who supposedly her soulmate. The man who had killed one of her soulmates. She shoved the panic bubbling up in her chest, her eyes skittering across the room to the only other door. His hand reached for her and she jerked herself away, almost tripping over her feet as she ran for the door and threw it open.
Sam slammed into the door at the other end of the hall, her hand scrabbling at the handle. Once it opened, she ran in, slamming it closed behind her and vaulting over the bed into the bathroom. She heard the Psycho swear behind her as she slammed the bathroom door closed as well. She looked around the basement landing, her eyes catching the open door to the boiler room. It wasn’t the best option, but she knew there was at least a chance that she could hide among the odds and ends down there.
As she ran down the stone steps, colder than the wood against her feet, she barely remembered the broken step Josh had warned her about earlier. She hopped the step, misjudging it by the smallest amount and smashing her shoulder against the concrete wall and scraping it.
“Shit, shit, shit,” she swore under her breath. Sam looked around for someplace to hide, but nothing stood out to her. To her right was Mrs. Washington’s wine cellar, which had a door at the end of it, which led to the old lodge. The twins and she had snuck down there on dares and bets during past winter getaways, often to the dismay of Mrs. Washington. She had never outright forbidden them from doing it, and, if Sam was lucky, she had kept the door handle on top of one of the wine cabinets.
The sound of footsteps sealed her choice. She dashed for the wine cellar, stopping at the last cabinet and trying to jump and grab the handle perched on top of it. Sam looked back, seeing the Psycho walking towards her. When she had been down here with the twins, one of them had given the other a boost to grab the handle. Clenching her eyes shut and praying that Mrs. Washington would forgive her, she pulled at the cabinet. As the Psycho entered the wine cellar, it tipped, sending the handle clattering across the floor. She bent down, uncaring of modesty, missing it in one swipe before grabbing it in her free hand.
Sam slammed the handle in and turned it, looking over her shoulder to see the Psycho stepping through the wood of the cabinet. She closed it, slamming the lock into place. She looked at the small window set beside it, a shriek escaping her as her eyes met those of her attacker. She grabbed the small metal door that would cover it as his hand reached through for the lock. It barely missed his fingers as she shut it, and she heard his muttered curses through the thick wood, as well as what sounded like his foot kicking it.
Sam looked around the small storage room, surprised to see that the light was still on. The image of Chris in his ridiculous monk costume sprang to her mind. This must have been the room where he had found the props, which meant that the Psycho could get in here from the boiler room. Spurred on by this thought, she went to the door on the opposite side of the room, hoping that the Washingtons hadn’t sealed off the entrance to the old hotel in the last year.
The door didn’t open, but it was older and less sturdy than the door she had come through. Sam squared her shoulders and took a running start at it. Crashing through it, she remembered too late that the reason she and the twins had stopped going into the old lodge was because the wood steps that led to it had finally broken. She landed on her side, the scrape on her shoulder being joined by what felt like a bruise on her ribs and a cut on her knee.
“Fuck, that hurt,” she muttered as she got to her feet.
The flashlight had survived her tumble, which meant that she had some light to make sure that she didn’t step on something liable to give her tetanus. She looked side to side, hoping that one of the rooms they had explored a few years ago would offer her refuge. Unfortunately, it seemed like the old lodge had degraded even further than she remembered, the few doors on the hallway blocked by ceiling beams, or just collapsed in on themselves.
As she reached the cross of the hallway, she stopped, unsure of where to go. Hannah and Beth hadn’t taken her very far into the old lodge, speaking from experience when they told her about some of the areas definitely being unsafe. Sam’s eyes darted to the other hallway that she had played in with the twins, pretending to be the ghosts of murdered lovers left in the lodge. There was always the chance that one of those rooms was a viable place to hide.
The only other option was the old elevator. Mrs. Washington had expressly forbidden them from going near it, even as she had denied knowing of their activities. The sound of approaching footsteps sealed her decision. Sam winced as her foot dragged over the uneven wood, and hobbled towards the elevator. Jumping down onto the small concrete ledge below what had been the door, she pressed herself against the bricks. At the last second she pressed the flashlight against her towel to block its light and held her breath. The footsteps stopped just above her head, and she shut her eyes, praying to whoever would listen to let her escape.
“Here little kitty,” the Psycho whispered above her. “Here pussy pussy.”
Her lungs were burning, but Sam continued to hold her breath. One little gasp could let him know that she was right under his feet. And she wasn’t ready to die yet. A metal clunk made her jump, and she bit her tongue to stop from letting out a little cry of surprise.
“Fuck!”
The sound of him walking away let her relax slightly, and Sam slowly let out the breath she had been holding. Unbidden, a few tears slipped down her face. She wiped them away hastily, looking around for another way out of the elevator shaft. A few feet to her left there was an open ventilation shaft, and, without any other options, she shimmied towards it.
The light from her flashlight shone against the old metal walls of the shaft. Sam crawled in far enough that a few feet separated her from the opening. As she stopped, what happened hit her. A choked sob escaped her throat, and this time Sam couldn’t stop the tears that ran down her face.
Josh was dead. And she’d never admitted to him that he was her soulmate.