From number 19 of Raptorlily's Autumn Prompt Table.
(Also a spooky tune rec from the Stranger Things OST: Photos in the Woods)
"Betty. Stay here."
The swishing ponytail indicates the series of no's before they start leaving her mouth. Back and forth, back and forth, until her voice stutters the refusal.
"Jug, no, I-I-I-" Her eyes address his own - he realizes her neck is no longer swiveling to and fro. The irises are wide, blown with the sliver of light from the car's front console. He has a hand on the passenger door, a foot breaking into the damp night air, but he takes a moment to reach across the middle to grab her hand. It's dark, but not the blinding kind, he can see that her eyes are flooding with tears.
Betty's nose twitches twice. Its movement shakes a tear from her right eye. It's light and can only skim slowly down her cheek, every centimeter down seems to line in time with the clicking of the car's blinker. Usually, he'd take the role of wiping it away but the risk of moving from the already open door keeps him stagnant. Getting the door open was only half a victory, he still needs to go through it. Shutting it would bring them back to square one and that's the last place he wants to be.
He really doesn't want her trying to leave the car again.
"Let me handle it, Betts," he orders, though really pleads, because this is Betty. Not matter what, if she wants to she'll bolt from her seat and follow after him.
Although to his luck (and dismay) only a whimper replies and he finds Betty's eyes devoid of any reflective stars as she turns from the glowing digital clock and presses her cheek into the seat. The single tear dips into the leather and vanishes.
"Hey, I know it sucks," and it does suck, it really does, he wishes he could turn back time instead of just running fingers through her hair - not to mention, if he's honest with himself, he doesn't want to go out and inspect the damage.
Jughead lets his hand skim Betty's cheek before pulling it back to his side. "These things happen, okay?" He offers the reassurance with, what he hopes is, a managed a smile. Not that it matters much when it's followed by a sudden rap of wind that has her jumping from her reprieve and him cursing as it nearly shuts the car door on his foot.
A huff escapes him as he juts out his knee to push it back open. He turns to Betty one last time.
"Keep the car running; I'll be right back." He moves to go once her wobbling chin gives a nod and, just in case, he pulls the beanie from his scalp and places it into her half-clenched hands. After all, he's doing this so only one of them gets blood on their hands.
The hat might as well be a piece of himself as he can feel her nails wringing safely into the fabric instead of her own flesh even he turns away from the grateful quiver of her lips. The feeling that he did something right follows him as a final burst of warmth before he takes the first step into the bitter October night.
Empty.
It's the only word he can find to describe such a night.
As he rounds the visibly dented hood of the car he thinks that the word may not pertain to this specific night but rather the feeling every man has when they stand in the middle of an endless road without a sign of life or light. With only the monstrous void of trees to greet them. Jughead crosses diagonally across the street with that same void right on his heels and closing in from the front as moves away from the safety of the lone flashing yellow high beam. Rationally he knows, the only sound to be heard is the groaning of the car engine and the scratch of gravel at his feet, and yet… there's something primal crawling along his spine. And for it, he has no words.
But the farther up his back it climbs…
And the further from the blinking light he moves…
Empty, is no longer the word his brain wants to use…
Not when he finds the smeared trail of red just as the tip of his boot kisses its edges and squeaks with the slick friction.
"Oh fu- come on, seriously?" His demand to the universe goes unanswered as he backs away and drags the bottom of his boot once, twice, and then once more, to rid the shiny liquid from its rubber traction. The misstep is his own fault, he came out expecting some unpleasant residue across the road, he should've been watching his feet instead of the evening atmosphere.
He decides to chalk this up to the theme of shitshow that's been repeating all night instead of some universal trickster at work.
First Veronica's pumpkin lights fit and now blood is forever stuck in the lining of his shoe.
With his eyes to the ground and irritation pressing down his brow he proceeds along the trail of blood to the tree strewn edge of the road. Each foot now hesitant with the possibility of stepping into something worse, something thicker, something bodily and internal like-
Jughead freezes. And it's not just a distinct pause, his body jolts back and forgets how to function. He's yet to reach the end of the bloodied trail but with a few steps closer his ears have picked up a faint and sickening sound.
He knows his body is rooted to this Riverdale outskirts road. He knows the small noises breaking into the night air can only be one thing… but curse his mind and sentimental memory but somehow that's all forgotten. Right now, he only knows how similar this sounds to the small hiccupping squeaks Jellybean once made when she was six and split her bone at the wrist.
There's a shift of wind that blows a cold stroke across his face and it gives him focus away from the drying in his throat and the upward pumping of his stomach. He's never heard a dying animal before. He's never heard anything dying before. He's hardly prepared for it because now it means he has to do something about it.
He'd gotten out of the car to move a dead deer off the road. Now, he realizes - as he wipes the sweat of his palms over the pockets of his pants - that Bambi might need him to finish the job.
He spares a glance over his shoulder to the flashing headlight across the road. He owes the universe one thanks despite this theme of bad luck. Betty's still sitting safely unaware in the car.
He steals one more breath of damp night air that strokes along his throat like a shock of cold water after peppermint to ready himself to take care of this like he promised. Any more dawdling and Betty will come out to him and the blood, and the squeaks, and the whatever remains that we're still piecing together this soon to be roadkill.
She doesn't need to know her driving didn't kill it in one blow.
With careful steps Jughead closes in on the squeaks that lie just beneath the deepest shadow in the off-road grass. Every press against the ground follows the pitiful sounds.
Step, squeak… step, squeak… step, squeak…
He's so close now that the noise is comparable to high toned whimpers, with sad little breathes of pain in between. A note of observation that only circles him back to Jelly and her withering form with the far-off shouts as his father clambered towards them.
For a moment it makes him wish he wasn't doing this alone but that's not a thought he can hark on for long. It's gone in a second along with the wind in his lungs. Another thought is seeping into him and it sends his mind careening back to the second thing that crossed his mind when he started thinking anything about this night.
Not empty.
As his boots flatten the mush of dried grass and crinkled leaves and his eyes adjust over the shadowed mass lying an arm's length away, he tries and fails to keep his mind from fitting uncomfortable pieces together.
To stop from thinking why these cries aren't similar to Jelly's, but why they're identical.
"-lease…"
Why the form at his feet no longer has the shape of what he swears he saw through the dashboard window.
"Help me."
Why it's reaching out with arms and hands and the face of-
A gasping choke clicks out from his jaw in a disbelieving question.
"A..Archie?"
His best friend.
Pitched up gurgles froth from the pleading mouth at Jughead's feet. Thick streams of liquid and substance - he almost needs turn his head away as it travels over the slope of blood stained lips.
"Please, it hurts… help me, please…"
He wants to, he wants to, his heart his screaming and his hands are shaking, begging to reach forward and cradle his friend. Crumble together the broken pieces of flesh that are strewn haphazardly over the unforgiving ground. His throat tugs open in his mouth trying to let out a scream along with the vomit burning in his stomach.
But the uncertainty. The questions littering his mind. They're pulling him back. They're climbing up and prickling his spine, keeping him in a state of sweat and shakes and fear because this can't be Archie.
Archie was at the party.
Archie is at the party. Waiting with Veronica waiting for them to come back.
Archie's at the party at his house miles away from this backstreet road and mangled bloody mass sitting on his couch exactly how Jughead and Betty left him when they ran out the door to buy blinking string pumpkin lights.
Exactly how he was when they were on route back to the party when their car swerved down this blacktop void and hit something.
If Jughead is anything tonight it's that he's certain they hit something. Maybe it wasn't a deer, but he knows, it wasn't a fucking human being.
It wasn't Archie Andrews.
And another irrational and creatively stupid part of his mind whispers from the endless abyss of horror movies with certainty that the thing that froze in the beams of their headlights and flung with limbs and body wriggling across their hood until it crumbled in a broken heap on this side of the road - maybe it wasn't an animal either.
A steady thud increases inside Jughead's chest. His senses seem to heighten. The whistling brush of the wind upon every leaf, the distant tick tick of the car headlight from across the street, the slow and heavy slither that scratches against rocks and twigs as this thing, this thief still wearing Archie's face pulls itself desperately towards the edge of his toes. It looks at him with trust and an eagerness Jughead can't place as it reaches a deformed and twice bent arm out to make a plea for his hand.
Jughead can't even take a step back. He can only watch as Archie whispers around bubbles of pain and blood for help. He wonders if his eyes are falling out of his head, if there's some force pulling them into the empty black he's finding in the eyes of this illusion of his best friend.
If someone is pulling a string in his arm to bring it up and slowly towards the open outstretched hand of his trembling friend.
"Please, Jug, please."
His fingers have straightened, the end of his nail is nearly brushing against the red tip of the exposed bone coming for him.
A far away voice - that may be himself - ponders how the pleading sounds like more than one. Like Archie but something unworldly. Something sinister. Something dripping with an alluring feature that sounded like the soft and warm voice of-
"Jughead!"
His body jolts awake like he's been thrown from sleep into the sudden break of a moving car. The stretching hand a spec away from his own recoils and flings upwards to cover its owner's face just as a long metal stick swings by to collide with it.
As the weapon meets the exposed bone of the arm the entire body flings back with a scream and Jughead flings himself away from the spot he had somehow been spirited away at.
"Jesus Christ Betty!" He hisses and blinks his eyes from the flopping and whimpering form of Archie Andrews to Betty Cooper as she stands tall with knuckles tight around a now bloodied wrench in her hands.
At his curse she flings a look across the darkness to him.
"It was a deer," she decides to say, eyes like two full moons and face beginning to tighten along her jaw. "We hit a deer, Jug."
He takes a step forward to reach out, grab her shoulder, and pull her towards him before shooting a look to the figure, Betty brings the wrench out in front of both of them and grabs the sleeve of his shirt in a strangling grip.
"Archie called asking where we were…" she adds and Jughead isn't sure what that will mean for them because as Betty brings his world back to sense Archie is no longer whimpering in pain at their feet.
Either his hearing has morphed or the whimpers have changed. Jughead swears he hears a high-pitched snarl - something that comes before a witch's shriek. It perforates the air bringing his spine to a coil like a snake and rattle a song of danger into his head.
He takes a step back, or Betty pulls him back, moving them closer to the car, but this withering form, as it crawls towards them inch by inch he feels that close distance grow instead of shrink. With his back turned perhaps the void has swallowed the car and spit into the other side of reality, keeping them trapped in this twilight zone of no escape.
But he can't look away now.
He can't check to make sure the car is running or that Betty is behind him. The piece of him seeking sense, the logic lodged in his gut, it tells him to trust that reality has not completely bent. That everything behind him is as expected because with the low shriek bleeding into a murmuring of animal like garble what other choice does he have.
There's a clicking of an unhinged jaw, jumbled speech overflowing with drool and a long slobbering tongue that can't fit into a mouth, this is no longer a hurt animal desperate to hurt back. No. This a monster ready for a hunt.
The sudden pitch of a drawn-out screech bellows across the night like a howl and Archie is gone. Despite what his eyes and ears had found, Jughead knew, his best friend was never there to begin with. Only a trap he couldn't see through, and now that he can, his mind cannot catch up.
The neck of not Archie is a shadowed writhing thing that juts up to bring into view what Jughead's brain can only define as eyes - many many many eyes - to meet his. They move together following the center largest one from his face to his inspect his body up and down before moving to do the same to Betty by his side.
It's satisfied. A long thin, abscess of teeth and tongue opens under the dancing and gleeful eyes.
Jughead can't think but his feet certainly can and with that they're fleeing before his mouth can open and follow Betty's with a scream. Some part of him fumbles an arm out to clasp around her wrist and pull her with him before she's stuck in their pursuer's path.
The song and dance of straightening limbs comes from behind them as Jughead barely takes the first lunge into a sprint. No longer meeting the creature in the eyes, turning their backs and running away with loose quivering limbs - it doesn't take the second howl that shoots across his shoulder, bringing an earthquake into his ear for Jughead to know fear, the first was enough - they're prey now.
Betty scrambles along to catch up with his pace, tripping over his legs as they stretch across the empty black top to the flashing yellow car light on the other side.
Another sound breaks from behind them. No longer a howl.
Jughead nearly whips his head around but stops halfway as he catches Betty's face. She's looking back with a expression that shows he doesn't have to (doesn't want to).
The sounds are now hungry slobbering snarls. A wet mouth open for its meal.
Jughead throws an arm messily around Betty's waist, pulling her entire weight against him as he throws himself the finally feet to practically slam against the door.
Animal pants and pounding feet are coming for them.
A hail of muttering slips his lips.
"Get in the car! Get in car! Getinthecargetinthecar!"
Jughead tears the handle back to pull the door open, pushing Betty inside before she can protest. The inching shadow of death is closing in and he pushes her across the leather seat away from its grip. Only then does he try to follow his own command, pushing his body of disconnected pieces all pumping with fear and flee to work himself through the door.
Apparently, he's not efficient enough. If not for Betty's grip locked around his wrist he'd surely be pulled half way across the street by now. Instead, his arm pops from his socket as it fights to stay with Betty in the car while the rest of him finds the grip around his ankle too compelling of a force to let down.
His body falls from his halfway climb into the front seat and his head takes a major blow against the ground. It has him blinking away stars and trying to remember what's forcing his body into a cardiac arrest.
A clicking jaw of too many teeth penetrating his ears has his eyes focusing to the sight at his heel and his slight head injury is forgotten.
Half of Archie is wrapped around his foot.
Half being his hair, jacket, pieces of remaining skin, and a somewhat recognizable grin.
The other half is still stuttering to morph from the nightmare he knew that it was.
A thing of extra skin and fur, that belonged in a film or another world, that's staring down at him with a look of glee because it knows the last thing Jughead will see is the face of his dearest friend before his flesh is ripped from his head and his guts are sucked from his middle.
This is it, he thinks, this is how I die.
"Get the fuck-!"
A snap of Betty's hand flies by his chin. He doesn't blink but somehow misses the movement because one second the creature from hell is smiling with the teeth of his brother, preparing to snap its long-broken jaw around his leg to rip him apart and eat him alive…
"-Off him!"
And in the next the center bulbous eye of the beast is breaching open with thick blood like liquid as the wrench in Betty's hands digs deep into its socket. The grotesque image of tearing flesh and the sound of screaming from the devil's throat is enough to give Jughead's body to catch up. He yanks his foot away and crawls backwards with hands and feet only to freeze again as the monster flings about to dig the metal blade from its now completely inhuman face.
Luckily, Betty catches Jughead in his falter and finishes the job, pulling him up the threshold and into the car. He at least has enough sense to slam the door shut after she does.
"Bet-"
The harsh rev of an engine comes to life as her foot slams against the gas. She flashes him a manic look after she's pressed the door lock three times in succession.
"I kept it running like you said."
And then they're blowing backwards. The car screaming from the wheels as Betty guns it in reverse. His hand shoots to steady himself on the plush ceiling and his other flops helplessly over her's that's gripping his beanie wrapped around the center shift. Their travel backwards extends long enough for him to draw blood in his cheek to distract from the searing pain resonating in his shoulder and dig his fingers around Betty's knuckles so he can skim her palm.
The moment of acceleration ends. Betty brings them into a half break, which nearly throws him from his seat, and the next thing he feels is his hand following her own forward as she shifts to drive.
Through the window, ahead, in the stream of their single yellow headlight, the scrambling form of their hunter works to do everything but remove itself from their path.
Jughead doesn't think anything besides tucking his pulsing and popped out arm against his side just before Betty lifts her knee to crash her foot against the gas.
They surge down the road for the seconds it takes to return to their starting place…
And for the head of the wailing, wriggling, shrieking monster to disappear under their hood.
The car flings them forward, up, and back. The distinct sounds that began the night come in to repeat.
A bump, a thump, and–
A squeal.
Only this time, they keep driving.
.
.
.
Later, when he's dragged to the couch, Archie's hands pressing warm and firm against his swelling shoulder and Betty shivering at his side with 300 pumpkin lights tangled in her bloodied hands along with his own, he'll find himself for the second time that night questioning sanity as for the first time he finds himself grateful to listen to the sound of Veronica's hysterical and unnecessary screams.
(Don't fall for the doppelganger, especially when its face is All-American Archie Andrews.
This was an excuse for me to do something spooky for the season and get back into my writing - I hope you enjoyed! As always I'd love to hear what you thought in the comments!)