Synopsis: Sam is convinced she is alone. She has been ever since she was the only one to walk away from the mountain that night. Rattled with survivor's guilt and fear for the future, Sam decides to face the mountain one more time before she moves on.
Genre: Angst, Friendship
Ending: Sam Lone Survivor
Rating: T
Themes: Survivor's guilt, Suicidal thoughts
A/N: I apologise for this ridiculously long oneshot that nobody asked for. It's definitely a lot darker than some of the stuff I've been writing recently. I apologise for anyone who doesn't like that.
Sam had always been convinced that windows were made for looking through. A barrier between the inside and the out. Practical. Purposeful.
Now she's not so sure. Even as she rests her head against the window of the rickety bus, even as the vibrations shake through her skull. Recently she's taken to looking at the window. Not through.
She's become accustomed to focusing on the almost invisible tendrils of the glass. They're unique, like fingerprints. Like they hold the memories of the maker. They hold the weight of the bus around it.
And, right now, they let beads of raindrops cling to it as they slither down the outside. Her breath clings to the inside. And she is just an inch – an inch from the rain. Just an inch from the outside. An inch from the cold.
An inch from other things she's been trying to avoid.
There are some things windows can't separate anyone from. Not from things that can smash them.
Sam has started to wonder if windows work like mirrors. She wonders if there was ever a fairytale written about a magic window. If they grant wishes in the same way. She could do with one of those right now.
The bus is void except for her and the lone driver. He had smiled sadly at her with drooping eyes when she'd first climbed heavily onto the bus – like he'd known what she was here for. As if he remembered her from last time. The bus had creaked and groaned under her weight and, with each step she took towards the farthest seat she could find, she was convinced it was going to split right open and spill out its intestines of tubes and wires.
She kind of wishes it had. Maybe she'd have an excuse not to go.
Sam breathes against the glass, condensation growing like cobwebs. Right now, the majority of Sam wants the driver to just keep driving. To keep driving and driving towards the horizon, letting it swallow them whole, never stopping, never parking. So that maybe time can hover and freeze and maybe she doesn't have to face this.
Maybe she doesn't have to get off the bus. Maybe she can just be comfortable here. Wrapped up in her aching arms and vibrating glass.
The mushroom of breath on the glass has shrivelled again. She puffs out, the window clouding once more. Her finger twitches and moves and she absent-mindedly traces a wonky heart in the cloud. It hovers there for a second before the cloud shrinks, swallowing the heart with it, and disappears again.
"We're almost there," the driver calls out behind him – probably because he has no one else to talk to. Probably because he thinks she's restless. Impatient. If only he knew.
She wants to tell him it's okay. To tell him to take his time. She's not in a rush.
But she can't speak. It'll take up too much energy. Too draining. She needs to salvage all of that energy to keep her courage up. To be able to continuously convince herself this is a good idea.
Because she's heading towards a ghost town. A graveyard. A mess of bones and memories.
The bus rumbles as it jolts over a bump on the road. Sam shudders in her seat, her head rapping against the window. She lets out a trapped sigh, a hiss as she rubs her head and the driver yells back a quick, "Sorry!", swearing at, "these blasted country roads."
And that's when she notices it. The puff of air smearing across the glass. She hadn't realised her sigh had reached that far.
Neither did she know that her sigh could also trace letters. Because in the centre of the cloud of breath is a single letter 'S'.
She stares at it. She's sure that looks like an 'S'. Maybe it's just the bending of the glass, maybe it's just the light. But she's sure... she's sure...
Her eyes watch it, eyebrows knitting together; even as the edges of the cloud unravel inwards, even as the 'S' starts to disappear, even as she watches the beginnings of an 'A' starting to form.
Her gasp is sharp.
"You alright back there?" The driver asks, glancing at her in his rear mirror.
"Uh," she starts, still staring at the glass, now void of any breath or any drawn letters. Like it hadn't happen. Maybe it hadn't. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine."
But she's not. She's not.
She can't have been seeing things.
Maybe she is going crazy.
Almost like she's scrambling, she breathes onto the glass again, watching the condensation spread, raindrops trickling behind it.
She doesn't know what she's expecting to see. Maybe the letters will form again. Maybe things will start to make sense. Maybe this is a magic window after all.
But nothing happens. The breath comes and go like a single beat of a heart. No writing. No letters. No revelations. Just breath and glass and nothing.
Her eyes really must have been playing tricks on her.
The bus cranks to a stop. Sam jolts back into her seat as the driver yanks up the handbrake.
"We've arrived," he calls back and his smile is tight and remorseful and Sam wants to completely ignore it.
Instead, she achingly stands up, swinging her satchel bag over her shoulder and patters down the isle of the bus. "Thanks," she smiles at the driver when she reaches him and he shrugs back. She guesses his shift is over now that she's reached her destination. Part of her – no, most of her – hopes that he'll stay parked here. Just to wait for her, just in case she changes her mind. Just so she has somewhere to run to; creaky and rickety and all.
But he'll have a family to go home to. A family and friends and people surrounding him. Maybe that's why he's so sympathetic towards her. Because he knows she has none of that.
The bus doors wrench open and, with a bitter inhale of breath, she steps outside.
It's just as cold as it was that night.
Cold enough that she has to wrap her arms tightly around her body to barricade the wind.
The bus hovers behind her, unsure, before growling its engine and chugging along the road, leaving her alone. Alone and blustered and terrified.
With bone-chilled fingers, she tugs her hat further down her head and puffs breath into her gloved hands, rubbing them together. She tries to ignore the fact that those exact fingers are shaking. And not because of the cold.
Blackwood Mountain stretches achingly above her. She's seen it so many times in her nightmares but she forgot how big it actually is. How overbearing and haunting and sturdy it is. Like it won't even be moved an inch by her fear.
Sam lets out a shuddering breath, watching it puff out like mist, before she pushes all her energy into taking one single step forward. Snow crunches underneath her feet. It's a normal thing. A normal thing, but it sets off alarms, her full body clenching and stiffening.
She had been so fuelled by energy and adrenaline that night that she'd forgotten to note how terrified she would soon be at the sound of snow. Or how she would slam her curtains shut at the mere glance of a flake of the stuff. Darkness is better than white. Or how she'd call in sick to work at the mere broadcast of snow. Just so she didn't have to face it.
How had she managed to salvage enough courage to come out here? She doesn't know. But if she's going to face this, she might as well be brave. She might as well brace everything at once. She might as well plough down the wall while she still can.
With clenched, gloved hands, and lips poised to take in steady, calm breaths, Sam takes another step. And another.
"We're..." She starts, feeling the dark, February sky clouding over her. She doesn't know who she's talking to. She wish she did. "We're gonna be fine."
But there is no 'we' anymore.
Just Sam. Just Sam and the endless void where her friends used to be.
When she had come here – when she had come here that night, she hadn't known that, at the end of it, she'd be leaving alone. Leaving isn't even the right word. It was more like stumbling. It was more like falling.
But whatever she had been doing, it had been alone. Because everyone else was dead.
With a stern huff of breath, Sam passes under the groaning Blackwood Pines sign. The old wood is empty and rotting in the bitter, night wind.
No. She has to do this. She deserves to go through this. After everything they went through, after everything she put them through, she has to suffer too. She lets out a bitter, biting laugh. They got the easy end of the bargain. They got the peace of death. She's riddled with guilt; like wood worm. It itches under her skin. It bites her.
And this – it's a tradition, isn't it? The Annual Blackwood Winter Getaway.
There's only her left – but somebody has to fulfil it.
She owes this to them.
So, without letting any more of her guilt or fear or cowardice cling onto the skin of her back like clawing fingers, she pushes forward. She pushes forward and she leaps.
She thinks she's alone. She thinks she is but she's not.
I walk with her. Pace after pace, snow print after snow print.
She can't see my footprints, they don't exist anymore. But I exist. Enough to feel her; breath and warmth and all. Enough to see the familiar band of blue beads dangling around her wrist.
I want to tell her she's not alone. I want to tell her that I'm here.
I've always been here. Long enough.
But she can't see me. She can't hear me.
She can't feel me.
Slowly, by her side, I link hands with her. A steady comfort. Even if she can't feel it. Even if I'm not really here.
And I walk alongside her.
Sam stares at the cable car station. It's a figure of normality in a shade of bleak darkness. She forgot how normal it is. How normal it had felt at that time. Easy. It had been the most normal of things that night – and not much was normal at all. Not when a grieving brother was distracting himself by hosting a party. Not when a grieving brother was plotting a hideous prank.
Not when a grieving brother was about to die.
"Okay, Sam," she speaks to herself, as if that can help. Maybe it makes it worse. Maybe it will alert the mountain of her presence – so that it can unleash all its horrors onto her. She doesn't care. "You got this."
A single step takes her forward. Her eyes linger on the cable car station door. Debating. She's not ready for that yet. Even as the flickering light hovering over the bench shudders like a dying firefly.
Instead, she tries to soak in the memories. To inhale them.
Oh! So! I found something kinda amazing.
The wind whispers, a mix of rustling leaves, a whistling breeze and a memory of Chris' voice.
I'm not gonna tell you, you gotta see for yourself. Come on, it's this way.
The whispers weave through the air, passing her ears, and leading her through the winding path behind the cable car station. She knows exactly where they're taking her.
The shooting range looks barren, burlap bags hanging limply from their branches, shrivelled as the sand has trickled out of them. Snow trickles along the ground, interspersed by gravel and dirt.
Tada! Pretty rad, right?
Sam closes her eyes, imagining Chris standing here – still alive. Still clutching onto his rifle like a dork. Carefree and, did she dare to think it, excited. How normal it had all been. The calm before the storm. The gentle rumble before the earthquake.
Chris and Ashley had never returned when Sam and the others had found their way to the basement. Sam had assumed that they had just found somewhere alone together. Somewhere to be safe. That's what she'd hoped. That's what she'd forced herself to hope.
She should have turned back. She should have looked for them. She shouldn't have accepted it.
Maybe if she hadn't left Ashley behind, maybe if Ashley hadn't left Chris behind, maybe... maybe Sam wouldn't be alone right now.
A twig snaps. Sam's heart jolts. Her eyes flick towards the dark, shadowed brush. Bushes and trees twist together, dark leaves fluttering in the wind. And the air around Sam clouds, like a building tension.
She's not alone. There's something here.
Something. Someone.
Her throat closes.
Creak...
Creak...
Instinctively, Sam's eyes yank over to the shooting range. There, hanging from its branch, a sandbag swings. Gently at first. Gently, smoothly and then more insistently, swinging back and force. If she didn't know better, it could have been the wind. Creak, creak, creak.
Sam's skin ripples with tingles. Her fingers shiver. She can't tell if she's scared. She just stands there, with her eyes locked there on the bag. Swinging on its own. Swinging and flying. Wildly and gently and everything she was sure he was.
Her voice cracks. Her breath hiccups.
No.
No no no, she's being stupid.
Stupid and ridiculous and scared.
Don't even think it, Sam.
And yet her throat works on its own. Just like the sandbag. Wistfully hoping. Taking the chance.
Her lips part; "Chris?"
Her voice escapes into the air, a loose tendril of an echo. All that answers is the rustling of leaves and the dying creaking of a sandbag.
I'm not Chris.
I'm watching her but I'm not Chris.
The breath escaping from her lips looks the slightest bit hopeful just a moment before her shoulders sag.
I'm here. I'm here.
I try and beat it into her pulse but I know she won't feel it.
She won't sense it.
She never has.
It is easy to slip beside her again as she turns – turning her back on hope – and dares to brace the rest of the journey.
We can do this together.
Sam shakes her head, letting a scoff fall from her lips. How could she have been so stupid to think that Chris was here? That anyone was here?
Nobody's here. Nobody has ever been here. It's just her. Her and her alone.
A sigh drags it way out of her lungs as she dares to stare at the handle of the cable car station door. With a stolen breath of courage, Sam inhales through her teeth and reaches forward. She twists the handle and, desperately wishing that it's jammed shut, feels the door open with ease.
…
The cable car clangs as it reaches the top. Her fingers bite into the strap of her bag as she tightly holds it around her shoulder. The cable car swings in mid-air, not unlike a certain sandbag. Not unlike a certain soul.
I mean, who knows? You could be riding in this cable car alone.
The whispers fill the metal box.
If only you'd known, Chris.
The metal door screeches open, grating against her ears. The cold, icy air meets Sam's face like an unwanted kiss. She shivers, arms clinging around her body. Daring to step outside.
Oh boy oh boy oh boy. New people. Time to meet and greet.
The whispers change their form, twisting into a different voice. A voice not dissimilar to Jess'.
Sam steps forward, hearing them flutter around her ears. Like fireflies. Like the humming of the wings of a fly.
Uh... are you guys having a really weird stroke?
The door to the cable car station is waiting wide open. Like it knew she was coming. Like someone knew she was coming.
An uncomfortable shiver runs down Sam's back. She wants to turn around. To lock herself back into the cable car. To return to earth.
But no. She's come this far. She has to continue. She has to move on.
The wind toys with the loose unwrapped ends of her hair, flicking them against her face, as she steps through the station door, the wood of the porch bending and bowing underneath her feet. Or maybe that's just her mind. Maybe that's her insisting that she's sinking. That the world is about to break under her.
And she's going to fall. She's going to fall and never get up again.
Jess and Matt never returned from the mines. Sam had never really been sure of what had happened to them. All she'd heard were the pieces Emily and Mike had pieced together for her.
They were only fragments, flickers of memories and assumptions. She'd never been sure. Even when the searchers had told her they'd found their bodies hanging limply at the bottom of the mines.
She'd never know how painful their deaths had been. Or what their last moments had been. Their last words.
She barely knew anything about them – not really, not probably – and now she couldn't even know how they had spent their last minutes. Didn't she owe that to them? Didn't she owe this to them?
Instinctively, her eyelids smash closed and she tries to breath in calmly – the bitter, cold air chilling her lungs. Once breath after the other. These breaths are precious. They're signs that she's still alive. Not everyone has them anymore.
Her breath quivers. She's convinced that the moment a tear beads at her eyes, it will instantly freeze to ice. At least that will make crying painful. At least it'll maybe stop her. At least it'll maybe scar her.
Her eyes flicker open. Her heart has steadied. Just a little. Just enough.
You guys go ahead. I'm just gonna wait here for a bit. See who else is coming.
With an inhale through her nose, she steps forward. Leaving the only chance of escape behind her. Locked and behind two doors. Locked behind doors she never should have left through last time.
I watch her trudge up the hill, snow crunching under her feet with each heave. It's not the walk that's slowing her down. It's the weight of what this walk means. The fact that she can still move, can still breathe, can even be here.
That's what this means.
She sees it as a burden. I see it as a blessing. I see it as a saved life. I see it as a reason to be here. To still walk here.
To still live here.
Her footsteps slow. I slow with her.
She sees the lodge. The charred, burned remains of the lodge. Chewed bones and all.
I want to whisper that everything is okay. Everything will be okay.
But this is the place of abandon. This is the place of betrayal.
This is where she feels most guilty.
Sam stops. The epitome of her guilt is embodied in this building. It's as black as her, smeared with soot and charred wood. It's a skeleton. Every living thing, every muscle, every vein has been stolen from it. And all that's left is it's rickety bones, joints jolting out of place.
Sam tries not to let the sob ripple out of her throat. She feels like she's going to topple over. Like someone has kicked her in the stomach. She's winded. Winded from guilt. Winded from pain. Winded from living.
Oh? Yeah? All wrapped up like a little present with a bow on top for that thing to tear us apart on Christmas morning?
The whispers have changed again. Shifted with the scenery. She doesn't want to hear this voice. Not this one. This one makes her feel the most guilt.
Bravery flickers like a dying light in her veins. But there's just enough of it. Just enough to step forward. Just enough to finish this.
Emily...
Sam smears away tears that have fallen down her cheeks. Snow crunches and compresses underneath her boots as she moves. Gentle, strolling footsteps. To the point where she had stood.
The place she had been when she'd watched the lodge lap up in flames.
Mike with it.
If the Wendigo bit you... you could turn into one of those things.
She had been so mad. So mad at him when he'd shot Emily. He didn't have the right. He had no right to decide who lived and who died.
But she didn't want him to die.
And, in the end, she had been the one to decide. She had been the one to flick the switch. She had been the one to kill Mike.
She had been the one to decide whether he survived.
And she was deciding now.
Her body crumbles, just a space away from the entrance of the charred lodge. She can almost still feel the heat steaming from it. As if it still holds onto the memory of it's burning. She wonders if it still remembers she had been the one who'd done this to it.
The snow is soft through her woollen gloves. Cold and numbing. She could stay here.
It doesn't look so bad. Not here. Not while it's gently, effortlessly piled up like pillows.
Maybe she could just lay down here. Maybe she could just sleep here. Maybe the snow would cover her. Maybe it would devour her painlessly in her sleep.
Maybe this could be how she did it.
A door rattles.
It jolts Sam up.
The door to the lodge hangs from its hinges, swinging back and forth. The fire has bitten a chunk out of it. But it still hangs. Like it's still trying to do what it was made for.
Sam stumbles on her feet. This is not like the sandbag.
This is exactly like the sandbag.
"Hello?" Sam dares to croak out. If it's Mike. If it's Mike, she's sorry. She didn't mean to run for the switch. Not that soon. She didn't mean to kill him. She didn't mean to-
The door slams open. Wide wide open, a blackness inside waiting for her.
Her breath is frozen. She stares at it. Like it's welcoming her. Like it's waiting for her.
She hovers for a beat, a beat in which her heart thumps and tumbles, before she moves. She steps forward – forward and inside.
Into the cavern where she committed a murder.
I have visited this place many times. Many times with different people. Many different people in many different realities.
This is her reality.
This is her time.
This is the one that matters. The one that matters to me.
Her steps are uneven. Uneven but brave, as she paces through the rubble, eyes daring to search the remains of the room. Stairs have tumbled and crumbled over themselves. Furniture has been reduced to stumps.
But the walls. Still remain. The windows still remain.
She's shaking. I want to comfort her but I know it won't help. I know she won't feel me.
And so I just walk.
I walk beside her.
I walk beside her and exist.
It's emptier than she had been expecting. She hadn't even been expecting to come up this far. To come in this far. Not before she did what she'd come here to do.
But something is tugging her forward. Some entity. Some cloud.
Maybe it's Mike. Maybe it's Chris. She doesn't care who. As long as she's not alone.
As long as she's not alone like they were.
Her biting fingers tug on the catch of her satchel. She knows what's inside. She knows what it means as soon as she opens it. She knows what exactly what-
Something smashes. Like a vase being thrown across the room.
Her fingers freeze.
No. No, there's nobody here.
The 'S' in the window was her imagination. The sandbag was the wind. The door was a coincidence.
There's nobody.
Don't.
It's the whispers. The whispers – they've found themselves in here.
But this time, it isn't a memory. It's something. Someone talking through them.
Something new.
Sam chokes.
"Hello?" She tries again. As if that will help.
Don't do it.
What? Who?
She shakes her head violently. How can she let whispers – figments of her imagination – influence her decision? She's already made up her mind.
It would be so easy.
So easy and quick and... and...
And she's terrified.
Don't do it, Sam.
"Who are you?" it's a choke. A break in her voice.
Don't do it, Sam.
It's repeating now. Over and over again. Like a heartbeat. Like a pounding in her head.
No. No, this isn't real.
And yet this place – the mountain – is the most unreal place she has ever known. And how real it has become.
Her soul sinks. She feels something in her chest. A will. A want. A need to say.
She battles with her words. She doesn't want to say it, she doesn't want to dare hope for it.
But she does. She does when she says; "Josh?"
I watch her.
I wait for her.
I'm not Josh.
I don't know where he is.
The whispers flick past her ears. Like they're leading her somewhere. Twisting through the rubble and smoke and blackness.
Sam follows.
Her feet pace, feeling the whispers tugging her. To the only intact window still hanging in its wall.
A window. A magic window.
Another fingerprint to watch.
The whispers still as she stands, gazing at the steamed up glass. It would be so easy to leave it. To block out the outside world. Just watching the beads of condensation bubble on the glass.
Instead, Sam moves. She clutches onto the edge of her sleeve in her fingers. And she wipes the steam with her arm.
And catches a reflection in the glass. A reflection of a girl – with long black hair, a pair of glasses and a butterfly tattoo.
Sam gasps, stumbling back and spinning around.
To the emptiness of the burned room.
Her throat bubbles.
"Hannah?"
She says my name.
I smile.
"Hannah?"
Tears bubble at her eyes. She's looking in my direction. She can't see me but she knows. Finally she knows I'm here.
In an instant, she collapses. On the floor around my feet. A mess of tears and vulnerability and burdens.
I gather myself around her, collecting her into my arms. And I hold her. I hug her.
I hug my best friend.
I hug her and I never let her go.
She cries into the empty space where I hold her.
And she knows.
She is not alone.
Sam has never been alone.