Trigger Warnings: mention of animal death, violence, blood, gore, death, and guns.
They remained by the door, unmoving - one wrong move, they thought, and we'll get our asses handed to us.
Shifting her gaze around the pub, Emmaline took in the various scrawls and glares of distrust that had narrowed in on her and her friends. She ran through a list of annoying American things she could have done to piss them off but kept coming up short, as well as realizing that she was lacking in knowledge when it came to English customs. Based on that alone, it could have been a ton of things. Marking her as another shitty tourist.
The sound of David uncomfortably clearing his throat broke the stuffy silence, pressing play to release them from their rigid postures. "Hello," he greeted, attempting to flash those he looked in the eye a friendly smile.
"Hi," said Jack as he slung the straps of his bulky backpack off his shoulders with stiff movements. "Nice to see you."
Emmaline remained silent, opting to wait for things to further unfold. Still, she managed to nod to try to tilt the odds in their favor.
Despite the pleasantries that had been initiated on their end, the other occupants remained unfazed - peering into them as if they could see their souls swirling around their feet. It was strange, seeing this many people filled with so much suspicion that it clung to every surface it could find.
Granted, she did have a reputation to be quite a troublemaker back home, but that was the result a couple of decades' worth of pranks and snarky remarks. This felt different, like it was more than just locals being tired of putting up with backpacker antics.
"It's very cold outside, may we come in?" asked David, his eyebrows shooting up as if the concept of being given permission was far more thrilling than it was.
While he was the most at ease person in the room, Jack's fists had become balls of tense muscles - his shoulders shrinking into themselves.
So, Emmaline wasn't the only one who felt as if the whole situation was off. Then again, this was Jack: the most hesitant and wary of the trio. His normally dark gaze had become sharper, ready to flee at a moment's notice.
"It's a pub, David," whispered Emmaline, sight still on Jack. She looked away when he shifted his attention onto her, sending a ripple down her spine. "And we're already in."
Their exchange clicked a switch in the barmaid, the weirdness of it forcing a flag into the folds of Emmaline's brain. It was like she'd been lifeless until a magic word was spoken, an action that drew back enough of the locals' prickliness. She jerked her chin in the direction of the only open table - a booth kissing the Slaughtered Lamb's doorway where a hardly noticeable chill whooshed from the space between the door's bottom and the weathered floorboards.
Slowly, they made their way towards their seats, switching between looking at the still hostile patrons and their packs. Plopping hers on the chair across from David, Emmaline's butt had hardly brushed hers when the barmaid approached their booth.
The woman was stoic, fierce enough to repel vermin from her place of business with a creased forehead. Her obnoxious floor-length dress and gaudy jewelry reminded Emmaline of her aunt, Myrtle.
When they were kids, her older siblings used to threaten her with being babysat by Aunt Myrtle if she didn't leave them alone. To a seven-year-old, going to a house that had an overwhelming scent of marigolds and a dated TV that she wasn't allowed to touch was enough to get her to comply.
"Do you have any hot soup?" asked Jack.
Him and David had politely folded their hands together, looking up at the barmaid as if she had scolded them for getting into a nasty fight.
A snort left Emmaline, shaking her head as she made it a point to wrap her arms around her chest.
"No," said the barmaid, unamused.
Drats.
There went any hope of dinner. Then again, knowing their luck, they probably did have something in the kitchen but didn't want to give them any. It only served to strengthen the unsettling feeling brewing in Emmaline's belly. The sooner they found out if and where they could book a room or two for the night, the better.
"Well, do you have any coffee, then?" asked David.
"No," the barmaid replied, board tone waiting for a question that didn't make her want to dump water over their heads.
Gears were turning in Jack's gaze, brows scrunched together as he tried to piece together what else he could ask for that wouldn't get him slapped. "Do you, uh, have any hot chocolate?"
"Let me guess: 'No?'"
The way the barmaid's eyes flamed with annoyance made her wonder who thought it would be a good idea to give her a smart mouth. Perhaps it was fetus Emmaline's fault that she deemed it a much more appealing trait than being a mathematical prodigy. It sure would have saved her a lot of trouble if she'd gone with the latter, especially now.
"'Yes,' then?" she waveringly corrected, flashing the barmaid an I-know-I'm-an-idiot-please-don't-make-me-leave grin.
"We've spirits and beers," shortly answered the barmaid. "If it's something hot you want, you can have tea."
"Then you have tea?" Jack perkily asked, both him and David looking relieved that they didn't have to keep asking for things the pub didn't offer.
"No."
The hell?
"But I can make some for you." She shot Emmaline another glare before she finished, "If you like."
"Oh, yes please," David and Jack replied, bobbing their heads as if they'd recently discovered that they could move them in sync.
"And. . . six shots of vodka. Please," Emmaline added.
Without a hint of acknowledgment, the barmaid turned and briskly made her way back towards the bar.
"What's the vodka for?" asked David.
"Warmth."
When she woke up earlier on in the day, Emmaline hadn't expected to run into something particularly strange. Just a hell of an amount traveling, leaving one town for another. The sheep herder had been a pleasant addition their exhausting trip, a chance to rest her throbbing feet; a pub that would spit at her if it could the furthest thing on her mind.
Thankfully, the tensity had started to decrease, glasses clanking as they were picked back up and hushed murmurs filling the quiet.
"Nice looking group," joked Jack.
"Hey," said David, "at least it's warm in here." His eyes shyly moved towards the hand Emmaline had resting near her neck. "You okay?" he asked, looking at her in a significantly less unsettled way.
Glancing down at her fingers, she spotted the source of his concern: her necklace's pendant, its bottom right corner having lost its silver coating from years of being rubbed. "Survey says: guess."
"Speak of the devil," Jack said, tapping his fingertips against the tabletop. "That drawing over there looks a lot like it."
Looking at the object in question, Emmaline saw a five-pointed star – big, boisterous, and significantly out of place – on a wall illuminated by melting candles; the same symbol that she'd worn since her sophomore year of college: "A pentagram."
What on Earth was it doing in an unassuming Yorkshire village?
"Well, maybe the owners are from Texas," David ignorantly offered.
A breath of laughter left Jack. "'Remember the Alamo.'"
"Yes, because a Bible Belt state would gladly put a pentagram on their flag," Emmaline huffed, mindlessly adjusting her pesky braid – the strands that wouldn't stay put no matter how many times she snuggly tucked them back into one of its rubber bands gliding across her thumb.
She yelped in surprise before nearly falling from her seat when a splash of hot water landed on her thigh. "Fuck!" she swore, rapidly rubbing her jeans as David clumsily got back on his feet.
"Emma!"
For a fleeting moment, Emmaline could have sworn she saw a hint of fear in the barmaid's eyes. However, just as quick as it had appeared, it was replaced by the guarded, stone-cold look she'd served her since their arrival.
Another flag planted itself alongside the others, erratically billowing their warning.
"I'm fine," she assured, grabbing a napkin to alternate between dabbing it on her pants and lifting some of the sturdy fabric to lessen the leftover sting.
"I beg your pardon?" the barmaid asked, eyeing Emmaline - wait, no, her necklace; the one her roommate, Nancy, had given her - like she was the one with a major secret.
"Oh, he was just joking," chuckled David, rolling his eyes as if to say, "kids these days."
It was such a speedy recovery, the barmaid's focus switching from Emmaline to David, that it practically gave her whiplash. "Joking? I remember the Alamo. I saw it once in London; in Leicester Square."
Having noticed the confusion on their faces, a balding man sitting before a chess board turned in his chair to explain, "She means in the cinema." This only served to further confuse Emmaline. Didn't he make it excruciatingly clear that he didn't want her near him? "That film with John Wayne."
"Oh, yeah!" said David, eagerly accepting the sliver of acceptance that had been given to them. "Of course."
"The one with Lawrence Harvey?" asked Emmaline, unsure if she should pay more attention to the man or the barmaid who was in the middle of drying a beer glass with a rag, while she poured a shot into her tea before lazily stirring it.
"Everyone dies," confirmed Jack, watching with amusement as she took a large sip of her drink, only to cough it back out when the heat sliced the inside of her throat. "Very bloody."
"Bloody awful, if you ask me," jeered the balding man, joining the other patrons when they broke into fits of roaring laughter.
"Ha, ha. Laugh at the dumb Americans," quietly grumbled Emmaline into her cup, the tea bubbling from where her breath passed over it. "Not like you're winning saint of the year or anything."
Encouraged by the chortles he'd received from his jab, the balding man soon launched into an offensive joke that she'd heard her Grandpa West tell at far too many family gatherings. ("We get it," Emmaline had said a few years back, finally fed-up with his asshole tendencies. "You're a racist, old fuck. Now, can I please have some more turkey without anyone making another fat joke?" That didn't end well for her or her parents.)
"Ask him what the candles are for," Jack dared David in a whisper.
"You ask him."
"Protection, I think," interrupted Emmaline, trying to remember what Nancy had shared with her about Wicca.
"This is my life, Emmie," Nancy had said to her towards the beginning of their friendship. "You need to know these things if you want me to bail you out of jail."
It's why she'd been given her necklace, a possession she'd taken off less than a handful of times since receiving it.
"To protect you from the Big Bad Wolf," Nancy had teased – baring her teeth and playfully growling as she poked Emmaline's sides with her nails.
"Okay, then what's a pentagram?"
Jack made sure that he was the first to speak. "It's used in witchcraft."
"For protection," Emmaline made sure to repeat, continuing to rub the pendent as she took in what had begun to further push Jack into his uncertainty. "It makes sure that the bad shit can't hurt you."
"Lon Chaney, Jr. and Universal Studios maintain that's the mark of the wolf man."
There was that humoring twinkle in David's eye, the kind that had the power to make those it was directed towards feel small. "Oh, I see," he said, his condensation enough to make Emmaline and Jack frown in frustration. "You want me to ask them if they're burning candles to ward off monsters?"
"Guess it didn't work," she fired back, flinging a balled-up napkin at her friend's face. "Drop the dad-a-tude, mister."
"There's no such thing as monsters," David stubbornly insisted. "If there were, we'd know."
"I thought I was the one who didn't believe in religion?"
"I'm just saying -"
"That we're being paranoid? If you 'yes,' I'll stab a fork in your hand."
"Well - Wait, stop!" protested David, grabbing her wrist when she went to grab a discarded eating utensil. "Don't do that!"
"Go on, ask him," challenged Jack, snatching what she had tried to reach before being stopped.
"You ask him," said David, shaking Emmaline's hand until she yanked it out of his grip to over-dramatically roll it in its socket. "Hey, look. I'm sorry, but you were going to stab me."
In retaliation, she stuck out her tongue, slowing her movements until she found sipping her spiked beverage a far better way to spend her time at the Slaughtered Lamb.
A sea of laughter exploded around them once the punchline of the joke had been delivered. Droplets of beer splattered against the back of Emmaline's neck, the lukewarm liquid settling itself on top of its peach fuzz.
She reflectively went to rub it off her, nose wrinkling with disgust when she felt another person's spittle. It was enough to further sour her mood. "Oh, for fu –"
First they looked at them like they had been asked to commit treason against their queen, then they interacted with them like they were a tolerable elephant in the room, and now they were acting as if none of this had happened.
"Fine, you pussies," Emmaline said through gritted teeth, her irritation pushing her to speak before her head could catch up to her. "I'll ask." To be heard above the massive amount of sound, she practically yelled, "Can anyone tell us why there's a pentagram on the wall?!"
A hollow thud sucked out all the life that had strangely sprung alive mere seconds ago, the frigidness that had hit Emmaline when she entered the pub washing over her with an unforgiving vengeance. Instead of looking at the three of them, all had solely narrowed in on her.
"Tiny" wasn't an adequate description for how they made her feel, sitting in a business that reminded her more of a closet than a place of gathering. The walls began to close in on her, attempting to squeeze out every ounce of her infamous wit.
"You," slowly began a man holding a meager collection of darts, accusingly pointing a finger Emmaline's way, "made me miss, miss."
She licked her lips, dry bits of skin sticking to her fuzzy-feeling tongue. "Hope you weren't trying to beat a personal record, sir."
"Don't play cute." His eyes practically bulged out of their sockets, antagonizing the breeze that wished to attack those irksome flags. "I've never missed that board before."
"I won't tell anyone if you don't."
"Enough!" barked the balding chess player, shaking with barely contained anger. "Think you're funny, do ya? That you can ask of things you have no business knowing about?"
As his anger rose, so did Emmaline's. All she could see was a man who had pulled a Grandpa West, not a man who had been the first to break the ice. His knuckles were pale from gripping his chair as if it was the only thing that kept him from beating the living daylights out of her. All for what? A question that didn't call for any of this?
With a darkened tone, Emmaline evenly said, "If it's nothing, then say it is."
Her necklace shifted against her crinkling jacket, the metal gingerly drumming its dented zipper.
His gaze moved down to her neck, wariness soon replacing his anger. "It's nothing."
There was a feather-soft touch on her forearm, enough to draw her back in. Turning her head, she spotted David. She could feel herself beginning to forget how the balding man had managed to ignite a rage in her, to drop righting a wrong that needn't be bothered with.
"I think we'd better go," he calmly told her.
She paused to weigh her options: venture out on an empty stomach, or stay and further agitate the locals.
Grabbing a shot glass that still held vodka, Emmaline swallowed it in a single gulp before adjusting her lopsided winter cap, the orange fabric tickling her ears.
"Leave? But I'm starved!" protested Jack. "And what about a place to sleep?"
"There's no food here," said the man with the darts, still gazing at Emmaline like she was about to rob them at gunpoint. "And our inn's full for the night. Try the next village."
"Shall we go, Jack?" David lowly said, voice strained.
Not even Jack could no longer pretend that they'd have a chance of staying a moment longer. With an expression that exclaimed a thousand choice words, he replied, "Apparently so."
Emmaline was more than ready to leave, crossing her fingers that South Procter would have a place to stay, the barmaid said, "You can't let them go."
There was worry in the no-nonsense woman's tone, enough to make her wish they'd never popped in to begin with. (It served her right for presenting her cards when she wasn't ready to fold.)
"How much do we owe you?" asked David.
"Nothing, lad," answered the balding chess player with a pitying look that reminded Emmaline of the time her dog, Wafer, had been hit by a car.
She and her siblings had been in tears, seeing their beloved Labrador in more pain than she could fantom. Having been so young when this happened, she had foolishly believed that he'd pull through; that when she woke up the next day, he would be patiently waiting for her at the foot of her bed - happy, healthy, enthusiastically squeaking at her to play with him.
The expression the balding man wore was the same that her dad had had when he knew of the fate that awaited their pet.
"God be with you," he softly finished.
A sickening feeling clenched her stomach when the streaks of tears and blood on Wafer's muzzle flashed before her.
"Sure. . . ." she trailed off, unable to find it in herself to say something particularly cynical.
"Wait!" the barmaid called out, glancing at the other occupants in desperation. "You can't just let them go!"
They didn't quite look sad. Rather, it was as if they hated the thought of what would happen next.
Next?
What was next? Probably a sleepless night, frost nipping at her body, and an army of bugs buzzing near her ears. But the way they were acting made it seem like that was the least worrying thing that was out there.
"Go," advised the dart player, his face having aged a decade in the span of seconds. "Stay on the road. Keep clear of the moors."
"Thank you," David said, his attempt at trying to remain somewhat upbeat and polite dwindling the longer they stayed.
"Beware the moon," continued the balding chess player, acting as if he had bestowed upon them advice that could save their lives.
"Yeah. . . ."
Promptly after this was said, the friends hastily made their way for the exit.
"You keep that necklace of yours close," cautioned the balding chess player, stopping Emmaline in her tracks. "Don't take it off, not even when you've made it someplace safe."
Hiding the jewelry beneath her clothes, where she should have kept it, Emmaline hissed, "Bite me."
She slammed the door firmly behind her.
Ralph O'Shea was a damn good pilot, thank you very much.
He'd been flying for close to twenty-five years now, and he had yet to make a grave mistake. In his youth, he could out-fly the best of them, twirling his planes in extravagant loops and landing on narrow strips of land like all landing strips were meant be no thicker than a drawing pin.
Child's play.
It was second nature, his core eternally tied to the center of gravity.
Which is way it was a fucking shame whenever his gifts were wasted on things that bore him to bits.
It had been a couple of days since he'd been called in to search the surrounding area for escaped inmates from the nearby sanatorium. The first to be located had been returned to his room twelve hours after he was reported missing (poor bloke would be on full lock-down until he be trusted to have more freedom); the other, however, had yet to be tracked down.
If Ralph didn't know that there wasn't such a thing as the Invisible Man, he'd say that this other fellow had evaporated into mist. Even from up high, where the world was but a picture in an album, the police hadn't been able to catch a glimpse of him. (The tracks they'd obsessively followed were either lacking in disturbed plants or too much of it, erratic and misleading – as if whoever had made them knew exactly what they were doing.)
"Nothing, sergeant!" Ralph informed in disbelief, pinning their goose egg search on a lack of sleep and caffeine. "Nothing in a normal search pattern, sir, within a hundred square miles."
He could see from the corner of his eye the puzzled look the older man wore, further confirming how strange this all was.
This wasn't Ralph's first search party - far from it. He'd seen it all, from runaway vehicles to convicts trying to put as much distance as they could between themselves and their prison.
He'd noted that this looked more like the work of an intelligent creature that hunted its prey with a drooling maw. From what he could gather, whatever it was had to be huge – possibly a stag.
Had they been tracking the wrong target? Were they going after a beast instead of a human?
Ralph had been certain he hadn't gotten it wrong. . . .
"But the guards at the sanitarium said there was a trail of broken vegetation heading off towards East Procter," the sergeant insisted, trusting that his pilot couldn't be wrong - bless him.
"Well, there's a special constable in the village there, sir. George Hackett; one of the locals."
If by any chance this was their man, then maybe they would come across and apprehend him - all nice and ready to be taken back to the sanitarium. That is, if he didn't harm them first.
"I'll give him a ring," decided the sergeant, peering at the distance between them and the minuscule village.
"Better safe than sorry," Ralph agreed, angling the helicopter towards home base, "with a killer on the loose."
Watching Emmaline slam the door, cheeks a blazing red, Jack wished he'd be more adamant about avoiding the Slaughtered Lamb. The sign had only been the tip of the crappy iceberg, an omen for what lied in waiting. (A bloody wolf's head on a pike? He didn't care what excuse David gave; it was not good for any company that wanted to make a profit. Now he'd come to realize that it was to scare off anyone who didn't give people the heebie-jeebies and a disturbing stink-eye for no reason at all.)
"What the hell was that all about?" asked Jack when Emmaline re-joined them, vigorously stomping the ground in her haste to leave East Procter.
"I don't know," admitted David. "Let's go up the road and see if there's an inn or something." Noticing how far ahead their friend was, he hollered, "Hey, wait up!"
"You wait up!" she shouted back, though she did slow down enough to give them a chance to catch up to her.
From behind, he could see the grass stain on her jeans – the clumps of mud that she hadn't been able to brush off having decreased.
Had it really been less than an hour since she had fallen? It felt like a lifetime away, lost in a past that had to have been nothing more than a hazy dream.
Gripping David's sleeve, the cool fabric sliding through his fingers, Jack repeated the balding chess player's bizarre words: "'Beware the moon?'"
Unable to completely mask how shaken she was by the encounter, Emmaline nosily grunted. "Rabbi Bloom has nothing on them."
A fond memory came back to Jack, when they had been awkward pre-teens ridden with pimples and had to wear whatever their moms had put together for Sabbath.
"Think we owe him an apology for locking him in his office?"
Rabbi Bloom tended to drag out his sermons, nodding off at least twice each time – snores vibrating in his chest until someone in the front pews cleared their throats.
Since David was sick with the flu, it had been just them that day. It wasn't their best plan, but the thought of livening up their Saturday morning was enough for them to jump right in. All they'd managed to do was stall the rabbi, much to their disappointment. How they managed to get away with it, they still weren't sure, but they'd gone over ten years without being confronted by either of their mothers. It was an impressive feat that had inflated their egos.
"As long as we don't have to come back here, I'm all for it."
"Come on, you two," complained David, his steps becoming longer and breaths giant puffs of gray. "I'm freezing."
"Where are we going?" wondered Jack, body brushing against Emmaline's.
Being this close, feeling what heat she managed to hold onto, made him quiver.
Her jaw's outline was roundly pointed and tight from what they'd been told. She looked both scary and beautiful; harsh and vulnerable; intense and lovely. Contradiction upon contradiction.
Her eyes cut to him, startling him into looking away. Jack could feel her examining him, searching for an answer he wasn't ready to reveal - not even to himself.
"I don't know, anywhere," David said. "I just want to get away from the Slaughtered Lamb."
"You promised, Kessler," gripped Emmaline, leaning her head onto his shoulder to stare up at him through a tired gaze. "I'm not ready to have another go at being a bug buffet."
"I'm sorry," – the puffiness beneath his eyes gave away that - even if they were lucky enough to find a stretch of shelter beneath some trees - he also wasn't looking forward to this – "but I'm sure we'll find something else."
"Weird place," commented Jack as they made their way down the road, the ashy moon their only source of light. He could hardly make it out, despite it being just wide enough for the three of them to walk side-by-side.
"It was, man," David agreed with a small, humorous grin. "But boy could they play darts."
Gloria was the toughest woman George knew, able to spot a trick from miles away and calling the culprits out before it crossed their minds to put their plan into action. She was one of the few East Procter residents who would fight tooth and nail to keep their secrets. But even with her stoic nature and ability to drink anyone under the table, she had a shred of decency that he knew he lacked; a trait he couldn't allow himself to feel if he wanted to keep what was left his friends and family safe.
"You can't let them go," she said, the wrinkles on her face prominent as she stared him down.
"Should the world know about our business?" he argued.
Connie, who had stopped pulling his darts from the dartboard, gawked at him. "It's murder, then."
His nephew may have mostly taken after his dearly departed mum, blunt and authoritative, but there were times where the traits he shared with his father managed to peek out of their holes. For example: their tendency to be a bit slow when it came to fully realizing the consequences of their actions.
"Then murder it is. It's in God's hands now."
"This isn't right," Gloria repeated, voice wearily torn. "Stan told us -"
"It doesn't matter what Stan said. We're all indoors, protected from him."
"Not all of us." A haunting ring came from the pub's phone, drawing Gloria from a conversation George wanted to be dropped. "The Slaughtered Lamb," she cheerily greeted, her lips dipping into confusion upon hearing what had been said. "Special Constable? Oh! George Hackett," she hummed, motioning for him to come up to the bar.
"That'll be for you, George," chuckled Tommy from opposite the table they sat at, wiggling his bushy brows.
Ignoring his friend, George took the phone from Gloria. "This is George Hackett."
"Evening, George. This is Detective Inspector Smith. I have some news on the escaped sanitarium inmate."
"Go on?" he tentatively asked.
"Now, I don't wish to alarm you, but we believe he's heading your way."
His heart dropped to the pit of his stomach, the knowledge of what he'd done speeding towards an outcome he would not wish upon his worst enemy: the backpackers were walking to their deaths, and he had a hand in their approaching gruesome fate.
It was hard enough walking around someplace unfamiliar at night. Having a thick covering of fog to further add to the difficulty of it all was an aggravating development. If she held a hand in front of her, she'd hardly be able to make it out.
Well, isn't that just peachy keen.
"What do you think was wrong?" asked Jack, back curved against the iciness blowing behind them.
"I have no idea," said Mr. So Over It.
Drop it, he seemed to convey to their jittery friend. Let's forget about it.
"Maybe that pentangle was for something supernatural?" rambled Jack, anxiety hitching his voice.
"There's no such thing," said Emmaline. "At least, I think there's no such thing, and that's good enough for me."
"Right. You don't believe in angels."
"Or the Tooth Fairy, or Frankenstein's monster, or El Chupacabra."
"But what if -"
Shifting herself to stand sideways, Emmaline tenderly said, "Hey." She placed her hands onto his shoulders, making sure they dipped into the puffy fabric of his coat. It was faint, but she could feel them trembling, his pupils overpowering his irises. "Nothing's going to happen, Jackie. You have us. And if a creature is creeping in the shadows, I'll kick its ass into next year."
Jack's breath hitched, some of the stress in his muscles settling.
Standing face-to-face, Emmaline could tell that he was shorter than her, nor was he as tall as he presented himself. She had to bend a little to be level with him, the motion having popped the air from between her vertebrae.
Though the nerves he felt hadn't entirely disappeared, he nodded his head, Adam's apple bobbing as he took a huge gulp of nothing. "You know I don't like it when you call me that."
With a sneaky grin, Emmaline smartly said, "What? Jack? Goodman? Best friend?"
"You really are a bitch," he rasped, choosing to ignore her good-humored chuckles as he resumed their stroll down the empty road.
"I told you I was."
A wet drop landed on the tip of her runny nose, a cloudy sky distracting her until a tremendous shower covered every inch of her.
"Oh, no," moaned Jack.
"Please don't rain," David whined, head miserably drooping near his clavicle. "Of course."
"Wow. Who would have thought?"
"Yeah, yeah," Jack muttered, his hair drenched with an abundance of rain. "Rub it in."
"That's right. Me. I did." Realization over that evening's sleeping arrangements began to settle in, the smugness she acquired from being right leaving her. "David. Tell me again how sorry you are."
"Yes," he groaned. "I'm well aware of how wrong I was."
"Bet it isn't raining in Rome," said Jack.
"Or cold," added Emmaline.
"Or lacking in food."
A sound of longing resonated in Emmaline's throat, tickling her vocal cords as her belly reminded her that it had been hours since her last meal. "I can't wait to have gorgeous men feed me pasta."
"If you don't manage to scare them off first."
"Har-har." Throwing her arms around David and Jack, she tossed her head back - rain sloppily caressing her chilled face - and squawked, "'When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's amore!'"
Together, they sang Dean Martin's "That's Amore," the boys - her wonderfully wonderful boys - waving their hands about as if they were performing to a full house – the audience on the edge of their velvet seats. "When the world seems to shine like you've had too much wine -"
"That's amore!" warbled Emmaline, stretching her dominate palm skyward - watching as streams of water became a system of iridescent veins.
Opening up to others had never been an easy thing for her to do; the edges of her personality too jagged for her plethora of ex-partners' moms.
"Too improper," they'd say with thin lips whenever she wore clothes that highlighted her plus-sized curves rather than hide them. "She's too wild to be anyone's wife," they'd proclaim whenever they found out she believed marriage to be an overrated practice, that she would be content if she never became someone's spouse.
None of that mattered to Jack and David, the only people she felt understood her. They weren't thrown-off by her shenanigans, often joining her - be it on the sidelines or alongside her. They didn't consider her sense of humor too mean for their tastes, able to dish back any good-humored jab that was sent their way. They had seen the good, the bad, the ugly, and - among it all - saw a friend worth keeping.
If she had to walk down a spooky road, Emmaline supposed that she could do far worse than her favorite people in the universe.
Lifting her hand off Jack, Emmaline balled her fist and moved it in slow motion as she cried, "Encore! Encore!"
Their laughter was drowned out by the clapping of thunder, the only ovation they'd ever be able to revel in.
East Procter wasn't a stranger to dreary weather. It was a common occurrence, be it a quick drizzle or a storm that lasted half a day. It wasn't much, but Gloria could feel some of the weight lift from her conscious.
"Perhaps they'll be safe in the rain," she spoke into existence, wishing that she could reach out and drop the young tourists in the middle of South Procter.
It was a lie, thinly veiled by false hope. All it would do was delay the inevitable. There wasn't a chance in God's green Earth that they'd safely make the seven-mile trek to the next village. Not before they were sniffed out and horrifically torn limb-from-limb.
"No one brought them here," said George, voice rising above the downpour. "No one wanted them here."
"You could've told them, George, and now we know they're in danger!"
"Are you daft?" accused Connie, some of the edge he'd used when speaking to the girl – Emma – returning. "And what do you think they'd say? They'd think us mad."
"But we're not mad," argued Hamish, a timid fellow who mostly kept to himself, the beer in his glass frantic waves of gold. "And we know there's good reason to fear."
The implications Hamish's statement held was enough for George to vibrate with fury, the pawns he still had in play teetering on the board. "He knows better than to come back here."
Hamish's drink began to settle, the rise and fall of his chest mollified by the older man's claim. "Yeah," he said, taking in the symbol that had protected them for centuries, their guardian against what should have been nothing more than stories. "Yeah."
It then hit Gloria what her neighbors and customers refused to do. "You're not going after them?!" she gasped in disbelief.
When George didn't so much as blink, she raged with scorn, "You're supposed to! You're the special constable!"
What if, by some miracle, they made it out alive to tell the tale of how they'd narrowly escaped death? If they managed to catch a glimpse of what wanted to gobble them up like super, they were bound to let their encounter slip. They couldn't risk exposure, even if no one would believe them.
"If they stay on the road, they're perfectly safe," he reasoned. "Look, if we said anymore, we'd be involved, and we agreed we wouldn't get involved this time."
There it was: the selling point that deemed him the best candidate for East Proctor's special constable. Sounding so reasonable; so level-headed; so sure of himself. It's how he got most of the village to side with him for thirty years.
"Am I right?" George stated more than asked.
"Right," said Connie, twirling his darts.
Hamish nodded his head like he wasn't strong enough to hold it up anymore. "You're right."
But that had been before the Americans had dropped in; before the girl and one of the boys proved to be more aware of what their wall meant; before they'd been sent on their way.
A baleful cry rang in the distance, striking a blow against Gloria, taking her back to the day she'd lost so much.
"Shh!" she glanced around the pub, examining it as if they were the ones under attack. "Listen. Listen."
Eerie yowls flashed past the pub before fading back into the distance – frenzied and set on unsuspecting kills that wouldn't stand a chance against its petrifying power.
"Did you hear it?!" she fearfully cried, knowing that they'd only find unidentifiable chunks of the backpackers come morning. "We must go to them!"
Silence, much like what they'd given the Americans, filled the room. It was unsettling, being on the receiving end. She hadn't been left out of the loop since she was too young to legally drink, when she dreamed of moving to Paris and attending the best culinary school the city had to offer. All that had been shattered when –
Her father and brother in all directions of the village's furthest field, scattered among the innards of their sheep. Skippy, their faithful Australian Shepard, cowering beneath a pile of hay, shrieking whenever they tried to pull him out from his hiding place. The sound of her mother's heart breaking into a million pieces, leaving her a husk of the person she used to be.
"I heard nothing," somberly said George, sight fixed on the floor.
Copying his uncle's mannerisms, body looser than a rag doll, Connie said, "Nor I."
For the first time in years, Gloria questioned her actions - of how far she was willing to go to keep outsiders from discovering the skeletons hiding in their closets.
Not my son! her mother wailed, rocking into herself before the carnage that had once been Gloria's baby brother. Please, God, not my son!
If she didn't put her foot down before it was too late, she'd be the reason the tourists' loved ones would soon know the ache of loss; of burying their children; of asking the Lord why they'd been taken from them.
The ghosts of their past would haunt them from now until kingdom come, and there would be nothing they could do to be rid of them.
What have we done?
Good news: the rain had finally stopped. Bad news: something had howled in the distance.
Emmaline wasn't easily frightened and was brave enough to be able to sit though the horror films Nancy was too afraid to watch alone. She was the person who made fun of the cheerleader for searching for her boyfriend in the abandoned warehouse, who could only see poorly done stage makeup instead of nightmare fuel when the villain showed up towards the end to stab the final girl.
Whatever had made that sound was enough to make her heart flip the hell out.
"Did you hear that?" Jack asked, squashing any chance of pretending that it had been in her head.
"I heard that," confirmed David.
"I wish I didn't hear that," Emmaline said, shifting on her feet as her fight or flight response began to bubble in her torso.
Scanning the now drenched moors, Jack wondered, "What was that?"
"Could be a lot of things," David said, shrugging his broad shoulders.
"Yeah?"
"A coyote?"
"Not unless the Roadrunner moved to England," mused Emmaline, eyes stuck on their still foggy surroundings.
"The Hound of the Baskerville?"
"Pecos Bill?" chuckled Jack.
"Yosemite Sam?" added Emmaline, beginning to forget about what had her on edge.
"Heathcliff?" said David.
"Heathcliff didn't howl!" Jack burst out, the roots they'd dug into the soil loosening.
There was a comically crazed look in David's eyes as he reminded them, "No, but he was on the moors."
"If we're going by that logic, I'm changing my answer to Rochester," Emmaline said, deciding that moving onward was their only chance at sleeping on a bed instead of mushy soil.
"Wouldn't he be calling out Jane's name?" David pointed-out. Of course, the time he decided to goof around was when his best friends were unsettled. "'Jane! Jane!'"
"Stop it!"
"No? How about: Emmaline! Emmaline!"
She slapped her hand over his mouth, breath hitched, irritated eyes wide with alarm. "I mean it. Stop."
Long gone was the moment of forgetfulness, of lighthearted humor that helped the time go by. If whatever the baying belonged to turned out to be dangerous, the last thing they needed was to draw it in.
"It's. . . probably nothing," David said when Emmaline removed her hand and shoved it in her pockets. "If we keep moving, it'll leave us alone."
Silently, they picked up their pace. South Procter had to be only a few miles away now. If they hurried, they could get there within the hour. Rochester or not, she wanted to be far from whatever that thing was.
Jerking to a halt, Jack fearfully gasped, "It's a full moon!"
Looking at each other, David and Jack exclaimed, "'Beware the moon!'"
"'Stick to the road,'" echoed Emmaline, a tightness clenching her throat when she finally decided to pay attention to where they were going.
Fear ate at her when she saw not cracked pavement but wild clumps of grass and shrubs.
How could they have been so careless? When did they even leave the road to begin with? Had the fog and rain been that disorienting?
As much as she wished she could remain clueless, Emmaline knew better: they'd been stupid – arrogantly stupid; borderline you'll-get-yourself-killed stupid.
Who's to say that you won't? mocked a nasty voice.
No. She refused to believe that they'd made the biggest mistake of their lives. They had the rest of their twenties to screw the pooch. Dying in Yorkshire, far from the crowded streets of New York, was not going to be what took her out.
"Oops," David unhelpfully said.
"No fucking kidding." Another piercing howl, closer, answered her. She leapt, feet scurrying backwards, the unevenness of the ground making each step she took wobble. "Holy -"
Get a hold of yourself, West.
"I vote we go back to the Slaughtered Lamb," proposed Jack, his bangs steadily dripping at its tips.
"Seconded."
With an eager nod, David pushed this into action. "Yeah."
If the locals barricaded the doors and pretended they weren't home, Emmaline would break the windows with her elbow. (If she had to choose between a bunch of enraged dicks and the howling thing, she'd choose the former in a heartbeat.)
None of them spoke as they backtracked their steps, their breathing switching between erratic and more erratic.
It could have been her desperation to get off the moors, or her willingness to act on whatever seemed like the smartest move, that Emmaline didn't take a second to gather all their options, slim as they were. Perhaps if she had, she would have figured out long before David that they had brushed over a critical fact.
David bumped into Emmaline, nearly knocking her off balance. She caught herself by resting her hands on Jack, shoving them further along, pushing a yip of surprise from them both.
"Jesus," she wheezed, forehead resting on Jack's strained shoulder blade. "Watch it, Kessler!"
"We're lost!" he said.
"We can't be lost!" Emmaline argued. "We were going that way, and now we're going this way."
But the more she noticed their surroundings, the more she realized that they had no idea where they were going.
She'd always assumed that you'd have to be dense if you couldn't do something as simple as walk in a straight line. Now she wasn't so sure. If they didn't notice they'd walked onto the moors, then who's to say that they didn't have a clue as to where the road was?
Another howl; too close for comfort.
Having returned to his anxious state, Jack whimpered, "Oh, David. What is that?"
"I don't know, come on."
"Come on where?!"
"Anywhere. I think we should just keep moving."
"We don't even know where we are!" said Emmaline, panic welling inside of her. "We could be getting closer to that. . . that -" She pressed her palms beneath her eyes, fingers forming an icy cage. Tears sprung from them, messily blurring her vision. "Let's just get out of here. Now."
So, they ran. Ran until their knees hurt and spines ached from the pressure of their backpacks thumping against them.
She couldn't remember the last time she'd felt this sore, with tendons that angrily stretched across her bones and calves ready to blow into smithereens. Whenever she felt the temptation to pause, to let her overworked lungs rest, she forcefully reminded herself about how it would be ideal if she woke up with all her appendages instead of them being in an animal's insides.
A growl, near enough that she could practically feel its presence, made Emmaline let out a squeak of crippling fear. The hairs on the back on her neck became alert when she heard monstrous footsteps whoosh past them in the darkness.
"It's moving," whispered David.
They had stepped back, a fraction of a distance away, when Jack realized aloud as his hand blindly searched for Emmaline's: "It's circling us."
There had never been an instance, no matter how tricky it may have been, where Emmaline had been genuinely speechless. The girl who couldn't help herself when it came to sarcasm; who would search for cards that she could play in her favor; who could pull a clever quip from a hat. Not even the pressure of Jack's hold was enough to help her pretend that they were going to make it out of this.
You keep that necklace of yours close, the balding chess player had warned her. Don't take it off, not even when you've made it someplace safe.
Had he known what was out here, waiting for them, all along?
Oh, my God.
He did. They all did. That had to be the reason why the barmaid's temperament had drastically changed.
We're going to die.
Supernatural or not, death was right at their doorstep, and it was hungry.
"What's the plan?" David asked without a single trace of confidence.
"'Plan?'" said Jack in an I-thought-you-had-a-plan way.
Emmaline shook her head, empty - so empty and scared.
Through all the things that she'd lived through, this took the cake. This was worse than the time her and her oldest sister had been stuck on a corkscrew roller coaster twenty minutes too long; worse than the time her and Nancy had been stranded in a ditch after they drove over a patch of black ice; worse than watching her dad put Wafer in the backseat of the family car, returning an hour later without him.
Squeezing her hand tight in his own, Jack - Mr. I Can't Bring You Down Because I'm There, Too - soundlessly said, "Hey." Through a cloudy gaze (because of freaking 'course her pride had to suffer, too), she could see an equally frightened face looking back at her with more courage than she could find it in herself to feel. "We're. . . we're going to make it, Em."
A moment passed between them; a promise that resurrected her senses.
It was hard to, given the circumstances, but she believed him. Believed that they would make it back to the road and to the safety of a pub that was cramped in more ways than one.
"Let's just keep walking," said David, having not much else to suggest.
Having no other options, the trio continued moving.
"That's right, a lovely stroll on the moors," Jack said in a shaky sing-song voice. "Tra-la-la-la-la. Isn't this fun?"
"To an. . . adrenaline. . . junkie," she choked-out, chaos wreaking havoc on her nerves.
So much for kicking that thing's ass into next year; so much for being brave enough for both her and Jack.
She was a coward. A reckless, vapid bitch who thought of herself in a higher regard than she was.
Emmaline may not believe in monsters that lived under the bed, but she did believe in predators who did not care that humans were at the top of the food chain. (Which, side note, was complete and utter bullshit. The supposed best of the best mammals did not shit their pants when hungrily looked at.)
They slowed when the thing that had been hunting them was near enough to reveal itself.
In the shadows hulked a beast of beasts. It was almost as tall as Jack, with matted, black fur and beefy hunches that had been raised to make it look bigger than it was. Its lips rippled, displaying bloody gums and razor-sharp teeth. And its paws. . . they were as big as her face, maybe even more - midnight claws thick and coated with varying degrees of soil and plants.
She brought herself closer to Jack, mouth a hair length away from his ear, unable to prevent a tiny mewl from leaving her.
"It's in front of us," stated David in horror.
"No shit, Sherlock," Emmaline shakily retorted.
"You think it's a dog?" asked Jack.
It took a step closer to them, snapping its maw at them in warning.
"Oh, shit. What is it?" he demanded.
"Yeah, it's a sheep dog or something," David answered, hoping that it looked far more intimidating than it was.
A trick of the full moon.
"'Something,'" she weakly whispered, knowing full well that it wouldn't let them pass without a scratch.
Pulling at Jack's sleeve, never tearing his attention off the creature, David began to drag them away. "Come on, tread slowly. Let's walk away."
Sprinting in the direction David had begun leading them, Jack thought it wise to say, "Nice doggy. Good boy."
"Sit. Stay. Roll over," Emmaline croaked, jumping when it began to lumber after them. "Shit!"
I've got you, it sneered with a sinister grin. You're mine.
"Come on, guys" David begged, tugging at Emmaline's coat. "Walk away."
The movement he felt through the jerk of her body jolted Jack back to what David wanted them to do. "Walking away, yes. Here we are, walking away."
Desperation led to powerwalking and irregular glances. Too afraid to look at anything aside from her arms as they moved in sync with her legs, Emmaline no longer had the animal in her line of sight.
"Can you see anything?" David asked, panting heavily.
"If I can't see it, it can't see me," Emmaline answered, pulse thrumming the more she thought about what was chasing them.
The rumbling growl proved otherwise.
"It sounds far away," said David.
Still, it was enough to push them into a full-out run. (Fuck those who claimed that running would only paint a bigger target on their backs. It already knew where they were. Going any slower would just make it reach them sooner.)
"Not far enough," said Jack, agreeing with her line of thinking. "Come on!"
"Jack!"
"What?!"
"Where are we going?!"
"I don't know, I'll tell you when we get there!"
"You better not forget me!" puffed Emmaline, thighs burning from the stress of running faster than she believed she was capable of. (Thankfully, her gym teachers never figured out that all they needed to do was sic a hellhound on her to make her a stellar student.)
"Yeah, 'cause -"
Emmaline shrieked when she felt herself being yanked backwards, feet flying out from beneath her. A grunt of discomfort left her when her body met the ground, fall ineptly broken by her lumpy backpack. She didn't move, limbs stiffer than a plank of wood, as her friends' screams settled around her. There were thin lines of pale silver coming from her numb nose, the quivery wisps blowing off into the night.
Beside her laid David with a death grip on a floppy section of her bag – its ruined, blue threads poking through the gaps in his hand.
Awkwardly strained giggles tickled the insides of her cheeks when she found that her joints had turned into jelly. "Christ."
Standing above them, beads of sweat clinging to his waxy skin, Jack looked at her and David like the countless other instances they'd managed to successfully mess with him. "You really scared me, you shitheads."
Rolling over to help Emmaline into a sitting position, David laughed, "You going to help us up or what?"
Jack had begun to pull on David's outstretched arm when a flash of fur pounced at him with a deafening roar, the brute force tearing them from each other.
A high-pitched scream vibrated around Emmaline, a sound she didn't realize was coming from her, as she watched the thing that had been stalking them viciously dug into Jack.
"Jesus Christ! Oh, my God!" he cried with indescribable agony, feebly punching its chest. "It burns! Oh, my God, it's killing me!"
A dam broke in her crotch, the warm sensation flowing down her splayed legs to dribble onto her boots.
"Help me! Oh, God, help! Get it off me! It's killing me!"
Everything was a blur, filled with fluffs of white lining and dots of scarlet. One moment she was on the ground, sitting in her own piss; the next she had sprung into a wall of nothingness. Her hands were swallowed by greasy fur when she pushed against it where the scent of rotting flesh flooded her senses and its sourness lodged itself into all her pores.
With a shriek, much like what an injured dog would make if it had been beaten with a leather belt, it swiftly pulled itself from her reach.
Without the support needed to remain upright, she fell forwards – grunting when she landed on top of a bony object. There was a rapidly growing pool that was sticky to the touch that dipped into the crevices of her hands.
Too lost in shock, she didn't notice that the creature kept kneading the ground with aggravated uncertainty, or the bits of skin that hung from its whiskers, or the red fabric it tried to shake away before trotting away.
Beneath her abdomen, she could feel the faint rise and fall of someone taking labored breaths.
A new warmth pressed against her, trying to find a way into her zipped-up jacket. There was gurgling, a liquid thickly bubbling whenever they tried to breathe through a shredded windpipe.
"E-e-e," they gagged, pulling her stomach up her esophagus.
What she saw drew out a devastated sob: her best friend - face drenched in crimson, a gaping hole in his weakly pulsing neck, and buckets of blood gushing from his mouth - stared at her, curled fingers twitching. "E-e-m-m-m -"
There was nothing now, not a trace of occupancy left and zero evidence that he'd been alive to begin with.
Gone.
Gone.
Gone.
"No," she wailed, clumsily crawling her way up his chest until the tips of their noses touched. "No." Emmaline placed her hands onto his cheeks, digging into them as she vigorously shook him. "No, no, no."
This wasn't happening; this couldn't be happening; this had to be a nightmare.
Emmaline willed herself to wake up in the back of the sheep herder's truck where she'd have to push ewes off her to not get a steady whiff of wool.
"Don't do this to me, you asshole!"
From behind her, David began to cry when he took in the damaged sight of his best friend, reminding her that this was far from over – that the thing that had killed Jack was still out there.
An enraged roar tore Emmaline from her mourning, watching as the thing that killed Jack tackled David to the ground, its form shaking with unconstrained fury.
"David!" Emmaline shrilly screeched, tumbling off Jack and back onto the moors, hysterical tears rushing down her gore speckled face. "David!"
Boom!
Boom!
Boom!
She screamed, covering her ears too little too late as gunshots overpowered the sound of flesh being ripped open.
The beast released a curt yowl of pain before its body ungraciously thumped onto ground where it became limply still.
"You alright, miss?" asked the dart player whose record she'd ruined when he squatted beside her, concern swimming in his tone.
Stunned by all that had happened in the span of a minute, she shoved him off – not caring that he lost his balance and found himself covered in all that had been splattered across the ground.
Dragging herself towards her only surviving friend, she repeated his name over and over through a series of hysterical sniffles. She grabbed hold of the front of his jacket, pulling herself over what distance was left between them.
There was still life in his blank gaze. It drew a cry of relief from her, allowing her to drop on top of him to press her face where she could feel his beating heart.
He's alive. We're alive. We -
Lost in processing that she'd lost a childhood best friend, she failed to notice the naked man beside them, bleeding from the same places that the creature had been shot.