Her fingers rattle in his hands. They tap out an unfamiliar, rapid rhythm. It unsettles him.
"Ashley," he breathes cautiously, as close to her hair as he dare be. Her eyes are hollowed out. Staring ahead, unmoved. Like stones. Like somebody has violently scooped the life out of them.
Somebody. A maniac. A best friend.
The helicopter's blades whirr. They split the air like a knife. And the sky rains heavy like blood. It stains cheeks like tears.
"Ash," Chris repeats in a whisper, just to fill the rest of the silence. The helicopter is filled with people but it feels like there is no one. They are all empty shells. Frozen, shivering, breathing shells.
She squeezes his hand. The one that is cradling hers. It's in the same rhythm that her fingers had been tapping but he doesn't care.
It's still warm enough to be considered alive.
He still has eyes. She has to remind herself.
His eyes are still there. They haven't been eaten out. A gun hasn't been hooked under his chin. He hasn't pressed his finger against the trigger.
He's not dead.
But his eyelashes hang with sharp memories. His skin is dried with blood. She can't look at him. His face whispers of horror and creatures and his best friend.
She snatches her gaze away. Her breath hitches. Her bones rattle. She protects herself.
And she presses her body against his. She feels the faint beating of his heart. The thrumming of adrenaline and fear and relief. His warmth is enough.
The waiting room is too normal. It's walls are too plain, too white. These people. They have changed, their insides shattered and reformed and twisted. And yet the rest of the world trails behind. Normal.
Chris' phone weighs heavily in his pocket. He doesn't dare touch it. It's too much of who he was before.
That's what he always heard. There are moments in life where there's a before and an after. This was one of those.
He waits for her. The plastic chair creaks as he nervously twitches. Mike cradles his bandaged hand across the room, Jessica smeared with dirt and pain, curled up in his lap. She rocks back and forth.
Emily's mouth is empty for once. Silent. She stares at the useless posters pinned on the wall above Chris' head. They advertise safety and warn against drug use. It's so pointless. There's never any warning about wendigoes. Or about beheaded strangers. About losing your best friend to a disease. To one you didn't even see eating away at him.
Chris clenches his fist. He shudders. He breathes.
Matt is breathing too. That's all anyone ever seems to hear. He throws his head over his knees. His fingers quiver behind his head.
Sam's fingers are twisted around the front of her plastic chair. Her knuckles are white. She strains. She cries.
But they are alive. Alive and in one room. All that ventured to the mountain. All that so easily used to be whole people.
All alive.
All but one.
Ashley's eyes rattle in her sockets. The investigator pushes her seat away from the table, opening the door for her. Her bones are empty. She has no strength. She poured all that out in her words. In her insistent of everything that happened. Everything that is seared into her mind.
Her jaw aches from clenching it. She has no more energy to smile. She has no more reason to.
The interviewer thanks her as she shakes herself to her feet and stumbles out of the room.
Her cheeks are wet before she realises she's been crying.
There are too many phone calls that separate him now. From the before and after. He had stolen himself enough courage to call his mom, enough to tell her he was okay. Her voice had been shaking uncontrollably with tears. He could hear the news report in the background. The one announcing that everything was real.
No one has phoned Josh's parents yet. Chris has stared at their number on the screen of his phone, each figure individually burning into his skull. Recitable. His thumb hovers over the call button. He should be the one to do it. They know him. They know his voice.
Or what it used to be.
His throat tightens. His palm sweats. He shakes in the emptiness of his hotel room.
He still expects his best friend to walk through the door and to shout with a grin that it was all a prank. All of it. Even the wendigoes. Even Hannah and Beth.
Chris would forgive him. After a good punch to the face.
He grits his teeth. A tear rips down his cheek. He violently swipes it away with his wrist.
Sam will phone them. She has always been stronger than Chris ever was.
His friend is not dead.
The room is too hollow. The bed is too soft. Ashley is too alone in her thoughts.
She can't stay still. If she stays still, it'll eat alive at her.
And if she moves, it'll see her.
She chokes on her breath. It is not here. It is not real.
That is what the rest of the world believes.
Ashley jerks. She needs something to fill the silence. Her hand grabs for the television remote, her fingers twitching over the buttons. The screen flickers on. And the room erupts in frantic burning. Fire blazes across the television screen. Ribbons of news reports stream across the bottom of the flames, words that dictate the last few hours of her life. Words that invade and remind and-
She gasps and violently cuts the screen off, throwing the remote away from her. Like it was a weapon. Like it is a gun.
She can't be alone.
She is dangerous alone.
He can't close his eyes. If he does, he sees them. The ghosts that he has created.
The body of his best friend hangs limply – lifeless – from a board. His intestines stream like rope from his decapitated body. Screams bloat his ears. Blood chokes his throat. He can't look.
He tears his eyes away. He looks at the empty walls of his hotel room. Too normal. Not normal enough.
The bandage itches on his forehead. He had tried to refuse the medical attention. He didn't need it. He refused to need it. There was a far more injured man who had just lost half of his fingers.
But they had insisted anyway. Not everything is so easy to cover up with a bandage.
His fist twists. His muscles remember. He feels the lever. He feels the gun. He feels sick.
He has to close his eyes. He can't close his eyes.
The man chokes. His head tumbles from his shoulders.
His best friend tugs at the rope digging into his wrists.
He dies. He dies. He dies.
His phone pings with a message.
He breathes.
Ashley breathes before she opens her door. There are no wendigoes or maniacs or dead friends behind it. Just an empty, hotel corridor. She exhales.
She clutches the small spoon in her hands. The hotel didn't have scissors or a knife or a gun. But it is enough metal to make her feel protected.
Ashley closes the door behind her, slowly padding down the corridor carpet. She memorises the wallpaper – the twists of its cliché pattern. How unconcerned it is. How normal it is.
How safe it is.
And, just for a moment, she can forget what happened. She isn't a girl who just survived a monstrous attack on a burning mountain.
She is just a girl who loves books and her family and has a serious crush on this great guy.
Then the metal in her hand reminds her.
"Thank you," Ashley's limply smiles as Chris opens his hotel room door for her. He smiles back. He can look her in the eye now. And she can look back.
"What brings you here?" he chuckles lifelessly under his breath. The joke is lost in the silence. It was never appropriate anyway. He steps aside, letting her walk in, a small spoon clutched in her hand.
She had texted him. A quick, "I can't be alone", hovering below the earlier text he had received from her earlier in the night. The hopeful, friendly, "Can't wait to see you! A". She had even added a daring X on the end. He had almost beamed at it, aware of Sam's teasing eyes. He'd even texted back a quick, "Be there soon. X". He never did X's.
All that seems meaningless now.
Ashley hovers in the middle of the room as Chris dares to close the door. She looks as unsure of the normalcy as he does.
"You can sleep on the bed," he assures her suddenly.
She looks at him. Her eyes glisten. He looks back. And he realises; they needed to.
They survived this together. They're in this together. They're not in this alone.
"Please stay," she finally whispers.
He still has lips. She kisses him.
He holds her, wrapped in foreign covers. In an empty room filled with emotions. She can feel his breath and hear his heartbeat. And it's gentle. It's normal. She needs normal.
He had let her use the shower in his room. She'd asked him to keep speaking to her from outside the door. Even as the water was running. Even if she couldn't hear what he said. Even when her tears mixed in with the shower. She needed to know she wasn't alone. Because when he was there, she could make it. They could make it together.
And they'd slipped into the clean pyjamas that the hotel had provided. They felt like new skin.
Enough like a new start that it was believable.
And now they were curled up in the bed, close enough to feel each other's heartbeats. Close enough to breathe and kiss and trust.
And survive.
"Ashley," he whispers. His words hold meaning. They ask her to trust him. To help him. To be with him. And this time she isn't hollow. This time she isn't empty.
This time, he's slowly filling her back up again.
He breathes. He closes his eyes. No ghosts haunt him when she's here.
His lips sip hers. Cautiously and bravely at the same time. His fingers search for hers, wrapping around the spoon that is still clutched in her hand. They hold it together.
Her nose grazes against his. "Thank you," she exhales. "For everything."
In that moment, he knows. He is meant to live. For Ashley. For the others.
And for the one who made this happen. Josh.
Chris smiles and he realises it's not hard anymore. "Always."
She lets go of the spoon. And her hands wrap around Chris.