AN: This was created for the CM Big Bang. I've posted the entire thing on AO3, so if you can't wait to read it all - and see the accompanying artwork by Daze Venture, head on over there. Second, if you've seen the first season of Channel Zero, please don't spoil anything for those that haven't. I've borrowed elements from the show and the creepypasta that inspired it.

Emily was ripped from the depths of sleep in the early hours of the morning by screaming. Derek was already halfway out of bed, reaching for his gun safe. She yawned, scrubbing a hand through her sleep-dishevelled hair. "Henry's probably just having a nightmare," she dismissed with a wave of her hand. JJ had warned them that he'd been waking up screaming with regularity lately, so she wasn't overly concerned.

Derek's expression was dubious, a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach. His silent doubts were quickly punctuated by a second, more urgent scream.

Both adults flew out of bed and into the bedroom down the hall where the children were supposed to be asleep.

Emily had seen a lot of gore in her life, but the scene before her turned her stomach and she clapped a hand to her mouth to keep a startled cry from emitting.

In the middle of the innocence of her once-nursery, her daughter stood, rusty hook in hand, over the prone form of her best friend, blood decorating the carpet.

Emily paced back and forth, back and forth. "How could this have happened?" she asked the waiting room, but spoke only to Derek. "Where would she even get a hook?"

"Calm down, Em," he said gently, coming up behind her and resting his hands on her shoulders. "You're going to make yourself sick stressing out over this."

"She could have killed him!" she exploded, whirling around. "Why would she do that!?"

"Emily..." he said softly at the same time someone shouted her name across the room.

"JJ!" Emily gasped, turning towards her best friend, ready to apologize profusely for her daughter's strange actions. "I'm so..."

But before she could get the words out, JJ lashed out and slapped her.

Emily let out a gasp of surprise and stumbled back just in time to avoid a second blow. In the next instant, Derek was in between them and Will was struggling to hold back an enraged JJ.

"Your crazy daughter tried to kill my son!" she shrieked.

"It was an accident!" Emily insisted. "You know she'd never hurt anyone, let alone Henry!"

But JJ didn't want to hear it. "Keep her away from him!"

In the weeks leading up to the attack on Henry, Maren had been acting oddly.

It started out innocently enough – she had started talking to an imaginary friend. Janice kept her company, so they saw no reason to be concerned. Until they started asking questions about Janice, like what she looked like and where she'd come from and Maren replied, "Janice said it's a secret." Maren never kept anything a secret from them, every thought she had, everything she did, she told her parents, as they'd always encouraged her that she could tell them everything. Her sudden obsession with secrecy was alarmingly all-consuming.

Playing with Janice slowly turned into an inexplicable obsession with pirates. She never played pirates with anyone but Janice and got angry if anyone tried. The obsession with pirates had migrated from her to Henry and Michael, to Jack, to Kai, even though she never indulged anyone's desire to be involved in her game.

Most of Maren's anger was directed at Emily. Or, rather, Janice was angry at Emily and Maren fed on it and slowly turned a cold shoulder towards her mother where they had once been inseparable. Emily had been distraught by her daughter pulling away from her, but Derek had convinced her it was just normal childhood behaviour – testing boundaries, testing relationships, learning independence. They agreed it was just a phase.

Then one day, Maren was missing several teeth. She hadn't had any loose teeth when she'd been to the dentist a week before. When Derek asked her about it, she confessed that she'd pulled out her own teeth because Janice had told her she needed to, so she could feed The Monster.

Reid agreed that it was looking a lot like early onset schizophrenia. They'd made an appointment to have her assessed by a psychiatrist.

It had been too late for Henry.