They were standing in a black room, with no ceiling and no floor. There was no light apart from the warming glow of her face, flickering like a candle under her wild blonde hair. She reached out, arms spread open into a giant bear hug, waiting to envelope his frame. She stood there frozen like this, and he tried to run to her. He tried to run and sprint and jump and walk, but every footstep sent her another inch backwards. She was falling from him as he lunged towards her, in a paradox of speed and humanity. He loved her, with all of his heart. He never stopped loving her, no matter how far away she was.

Xxx

The visions never really left him; they just got quieter for a while. They were like the crunch of the grass underneath his boots: a constant, but so ubiquitous that they had synchronized with his own heartbeat. The two entities, her whisper and his body, had merged into one indefinite whole. They were connected, she and him, and yet he had never felt so alone.

Peter Rumanek let his spidery fingers run down his hair fiery brown hair. He had missed that feeling, the feeling of hair on a human head. It was shorter now, of course, but it still felt nice. Hair was Peter's security blanket, the same way his mother's security blanket was his Peter.

His mother was all he had left.

Letha-

No! Peter shook his head violently, shaking the thought from his mind. It was physically unbearable for him to think of her: her porcelain face, her doll eyes, and… no. Peter had promised himself that he wouldn't think of her. He wouldn't think of any of them anymore: not Christina, not Olivia, not Clementine, and especially not…

He couldn't do it. He couldn't dare to even think of his name. Every once in a while, he saw his face in a dream, blurred from the edges like a silent vignette. He seemed different in the dreams: stronger, more mature, less dependent. If Peter could tell all of that from his face, there was no way he could even begin to gage what had happened to… him… in real life.

Fuck, he was thinking about them again. He needed to stop thinking so much about the goddamn Godfreys. Peter had left Hemlock Grove for a reason: it had broken him. The crumbling stone buildings and spiced evergreen forests had broken him, Peter Rumanek, in a single snap of their iron jaws. They had torn his heart from his chest and his face from his bones, only to be glued back together into a hollow shell.

Oh, how he missed her. Letha Letha Letha.

Peter had needed to move on, hadn't he? He had needed to escape the choking grip of his past and find freedom from his self-loathing: he needed to get away. And so, Peter did. Peter ran away as far and as fast as he could: to an empty town in Northern California, as far away as he could get. Linda liked it in California; it made her feel like Queen of the Fucking Universe, she said. It was full of woods and people and hospitality. It was a good place.

Peter tried to redeem himself through pattern. Every day it was the same routine: smoke a cig, go to town, read the newspaper, come back home, take a nap, take a jog, talk to Linda, go to bed. It was ridiculous, really, how boring Peter's life had become, but there wasn't much life left in him. It had all been sucked out with Letha's soul on that cold day last year.

Every night she haunted his dreams, with her unattainable frozen self. She would stand there motionless as he ran towards her, spinning round and round with the clockwork of the sun. He hated to sleep, but it was all he had left. It was the closest they could ever be to one-another.

"Peter."

Morning.

Linda tapped Peter on the back. He lay limp on the torn sofa in their new rotting mobile home, with his legs splayed out and his fingers still in his hair. "Peter, you're spacing out again. Wake up, it's almost eleven."

Peter rolled onto his stomach and let out a hum. "I'm not spacing out, I'm just marking my space." He buried his fingernails into his scalp and closed his eyes. "Goodnight, I'm not in the mood to talk right now."

"No, Peter." Linda slapped her son on the back, pressing him just hard enough to make him writhe in a split second of pain. "You've gotta get up. There's something outside."

Peter rolled his eyes. "It's a squirrel, Mom. Now go away."

"It's not a squirrel." Linda's eyes narrowed and fixated on her son with a sense of frantic urgency. "Peter, I hear leaves rustling. There's something fighting out there."

"Squirrels."

"Fucking listen to the window, Peter."

Peter rolled off the couch and lazily dragged his chilled feet to the window. He felt groggy and exhausted, but he would rather prove Linda wrong than listen to her bicker with him for another fifteen minutes. Hemlock Grove had changed Linda, too. It had made her more anxious; it had weakened her to a set of bones.

Outside the window, the forest looked as it had for the past year. There were thick, burly trees twisting around the roots of a lush carpet of grass. It was completely silent except for the lone chirp of a bird from high above.

"Listen."

It took him a minute, but at last, Peter heard it. There was grunting and kicking and wrestling and pushing, all muted by the steady breath of what seemed to be a man.

Suddenly, the sounds came to a halt. The forest was silent, except for the bird. It was also empty.

Peter gently thrust open the door to he and Linda's mobile home and croaked, "Who's there?" to the emptiness the engulfed him, as if to be polite to his mother's own nervousness. "Go the fuck away!" (He couldn't help it: he just wanted to get some rest.)

Linda stood behind Peter, investigating. She pushed through him and walked into the green, motioning for him to come follow her. "Follow me, Peter. Something's up."

Peter shrugged and followed her, eyes shifting closed with the brightness of the sun. He cupped his palms over his fore brow to try and block it out, but it still managed to invade his field of vision. Peter just wanted to sleep, but he had to reassure her nothing was wrong, and then go back to bed. It was a Saturday, for crying out loud, but he'd never hear the end of it if he didn't follow her.

Linda didn't ask for much, so when she asked, it was an order.

She walked with a ferocity and sureness that Peter hadn't seen since Hemlock Grove. It was as if she knew something was out there: she knew something had happened, something important, even if it was just a mumble from outside their window.

"Mom, honestly. Can we just go back? There's nothing here."

"There is," she muttered, under her breath. "I can feel it. I've never felt so sure about something in all of my life."

Peter sighed, yet again. It felt so wonderful to lie down on a sofa and do nothing, to let the pillow hit one's ear like a dam. If he closed his eyes again, he'd see her. He'd see her heavy lips and cheekbones and oh, that hair. Maybe, if he closed his eyes again, he'd finally reach her. He'd hug her and kiss her and fuck her and marry her and grow old with her, all in the course of a one-hour-dream. It would be so magical, even to pretend that he was with her again.

"Peter." Linda stopped walking.

Except, it was less of a "stop". It was more of a jolt, as if she had hit an invisible brick wall headfirst.

"Mom, what the-"

She stopped, and she pointed.

She had been walking towards something the whole time, something that Peter had been too dazed to notice.

From the branch of a tree not 500 meters from their house, a man hang limp from a string. His face was anonymous: Peter had never seen it before, but his lips were blue and his eyes were gray with the echo of death. He was wearing leather saddle shoes and khaki pants: hemmed, pleated, and pressed. His pink oxford shirt was torn down the middle, revealing a pale stomach adorned in a dripping red message.

A blade had etched a simple symbol into the flesh, still hot with fresh blood. The symbol was all too familiar to Peter: a snake… a snake… a snake…

He stumbled back, his mind now buzzing with… well, he wasn't sure how to describe it. It was a mixture of fear, excitement, and confusion.

"R.G.," it read below the snake.

RG.

This is not Peter's story. This is Roman's.