The Haunted
TW: Blanket warning for the rest of the story for gore/horror.
"Dreams"
~What a weight to live under
What a lie that's been covered
I'm talking about rolling thunder~
Kyler Valde
I sit awkwardly at the edge of the fire. Azai and Basila are holding their pieces of squirrel meat over the fire, slowly turning the sticks. The fourth member of the group is sitting even further back than I am, the small girl from Twelve quietly fiddling with her backpack, far away from the fire, her knees up to her chest as she looks out over the arena from our mountaintop perch.
The peak is only a bit further up from here, but this little flat of land is much more hospitable for a base camp than anything above or below it. The night air is blowing cold tonight, the fire providing more than enough warmth to stave off the cold but only narrowly avoiding being blown out by the breeze.
"So," Azai says, examining his food, holding it up into the air and turning it over. "I suppose some better introductions are in order, Kyler. Seeing as we've found ourselves as allies."
"I don't know if I'd call us that," I say.
He shrugs. "None of us were allies when the plates lifted. I was with Kiera. Basila was with Cyrus and Elias." He rips the meat off the stick and snaps the wood, tossing it into the fire. "Not much room for us to be picky 'bout who we call friends anymore though. Is there?"
"So we're friends now?" Basila murmurs, mimicking Azai's action.
Azai sighs. "Friends, allies, partners of convenience, we can call each other whatever we want, I don't care. Just so long as we kill every last one of those Careers."
"That's a big ask," I say.
"Not as big as you think," Azai says, though he doesn't explain any further than that, Basila picking up the conversation before I get the chance to ask.
"Cambria talked 'bout you lots," she says, munching down on a large bite of squirrel, her mouth full and smacking open and closed with every word she speaks. "Said you were a good guy." She shrugs. "But Cambria'd say that Pierre is a good guy if ya asked her."
"I'm not a good guy," I say in a low voice. "I'm not anything."
She pauses as she takes another bite, then throws the scraps aside as she looks at me intensely. "Were you with her when she died?"
"Yeah," I say. I can't stand the look she's giving me and so I look away, focusing my attention on the dancing tails of orange spitting out from the fire. "I was with her. Right to the end. She didn't die alone."
"Who got her?"
"Four."
She nods her head, throwing an acorn into the fire. "Cambria," she mutters in a low voice. I decide not to question her about it. After a long moment of silence, she turns back to me, even more anger than before in her voice, filling her with an anxious energy. "Three killed Cyrus and Elias. Slit their throats like–like–like they were just nothing."
Azai throws another acorn into the fire. "Pierre stood over Kiera and killing her wasn't enough for him. He taunted her, wanted her to feel powerless and weak and afraid because she dared to try to be the opposite. They think that we're just gonna crawl onto our bellies and let them walk all over us. That this is just a game for them to play and we're nothing but the meaningless extras."
Tamika speaks up for the first time from the edge of the camp, her voice hoarse and quiet, barely audible over the howling of the wind. "The boy from Two killed Alyssane." She doesn't say anything more, she doesn't need to, the shaking anger in her voice says plenty.
I can feel my hands shaking, and the words spill out from me like water from a faucet, all the thoughts I've been holding inside me and keeping bottled up since the moment her cannon fired off.
"I watched Amara die last year. She was the only person I ever knew who was good. Not just decent, or nice. Good. And the girl who hunted her down and slit her throat like she was nothing is still alive." I turn to Basila, tears beginning to flood my eyes and obscure my vision. But I don't care. "Cambria, did she have siblings?"
She nods her head somberly. "Two brothers and a sister."
I nod my head fiercely, my hands curling into fists. "I'm not letting them have to watch the person who killed their sister get paraded around like some sort of hero."
"No," Azai says. "We're not." He looks over to Basila, and she nods back at him. He looks to Tamika, and she does the same. He picks up an acorn from the ground and tosses it into the fire. "For Cambria."
Basila tosses an acorn into the fire. "For Alyssane."
My hands find themselves sweeping the floor, an acorn finding its way into my hands. I toss it into the fire, the words spilling out of my mouth on their own accord. "For Kiera," I say.
Tamika throws an acorn from a distance, the ball landing tightly into the middle of the fire. "For Cyrus and Elias," she says. "And all the rest, too."
The flame seems to be burning brighter now, the heat burning my skin. "So then," I ask. "How are we doing this?"
Azai nods at Tamika, and she hoists up her backpack with a great effort, dropping it off the log and onto the ground. It's hard to see with her distance from the fire, but I can make out a red X on the back. "My mentor, Tristan Bay, she sent us a gift." She unzips the bag, and the contents spill out onto the rocky floor.
Dozens of sticks of dynamite roll out of the large bag, dozens more remaining jammed inside, just faint outlines in the shadow of the fire.
Basila nods her head, fire and dynamite shining in the black of her eyes. "Let's deliver it to the Careers for her."
Vesta Brigarde
It's been a quiet few days in the arena. I haven't seen a single person since the bloodbath. There hasn't been any reason for me to move from my hideout, and so most of my time has been spent foraging for nuts and berries and wandering aimlessly and directionless for a few hours before returning to my hiding spot beneath the overhanging rock.
The nights have been getting a bit colder, and a sleeping bag wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, but it's nothing that I haven't managed a hundred times before. It'll have to get a lot colder before I need to light a fire at night, much less start to actually worry about finding someplace warmer. And while I may be craving a warm meal, the nuts and berries I've been eating fill my belly well enough.
The biggest problem I'm facing isn't something I need to do. It's not knowing what it is I should be doing. Am I supposed to be wandering around the woods trying to find something or somebody? Or if I just stay still will the Gamemakers bring something to me, or even better yet just forget that I exist.
It's a weird feeling. But the whole arena has been quiet since the bloodbath, so I can't be alone in this. There was another cannon an hour back, but that was the first one since those initial seven. Three days are in the books, and two-thirds of us are still left. A few more minutes and I'll find out if it's six or seven of those that are Careers.
I sigh and lean up against the rock wall of my hideout, eyes unfocusing as they blandly stare out at the night sky. The stars are out in force again. They seem to get brighter each night, the sky filling in with more and more recognizable constellations and patterns. My eyes trace around the sky, trying to fill in the boredom and silence with at least something.
It's starting to dawn on me how hard being alone is going to be.
My whole life I've always been surrounded by people. I never needed to be the center of attention, all eyes on me, but something about being in the middle of something larger just filled me with a comfort that I've been missing. Even if there were no stories, no Wendy, no loud and boisterous Bigarde Brigade boys to fill the woods with arguing, just having people around me would be enough.
The distant sound of voices fills the air in an immediate response. I shoot up, my eyes refocusing and scanning my surroundings, but I can't see anything. I feel myself being pulled between walking out and searching for the source of the voices and staying glued in place in the shadows and end up staying frozen in place as the voices steadily get closer.
"I'm telling you, we need to head to the mountains, there's something about these woods that isn't right."
"Morah, I know you're scared, but–"
"It's not that I'm scared. Stop treating me like a little kid! I'm just saying that there's something here that's off. I don't know if it's mutts or the Careers or what, but it's just something."
The voices combine with the name Morah and recognition flickers across my brain. I scamper out of my hideout and crawl to my feet. "Hey!" I shout out in the direction of the voices, the darkness of the woods making it impossible to see them exactly.
I'm met with silence.
"I'm not a Career!" I promise. "It's Vesta, District Twelve. You ate lunch with us on the second day of training? Morah and Epzo, right?"
The Panem anthem blares, light flooding the arena just enough for me to see the District Seven duo, a few dozen feet in front of me, frozen in place. Morah is half-hidden behind Epzo's leg, and he's uncertainly holding a dagger in his hand. I wave at them meekly.
Epzo seems to be weighing the options in his mind, the two of us locking eyes as he fiddles with the dagger, shifting it between his two hands. I dig my feet into the dirt, readying myself to turn and run if he takes a step toward me.
Morah interrupts the stand-off. "Oh no," she says sadly. She nudges Epzo and points at the sky. Both of us follow her gaze to the sky, where Ceeja Giles of District Eleven smiles down with that goofy smile of his.
"Poor Ceeja," I find myself saying. There's not much more I can find it in me to say. He and Lakin were always off on their own, so I didn't know him very well, but still. He always seemed sweet, slipping his and Lakin's extra desserts to Alyssane and Elias every day at lunch.
"Always figured him and Lakin would die together," Epzo says. He slides his dagger back into his belt and shakes his head. "Wonder how someone managed to kill him without having to get through Lakin first."
"You trained with them two a lot, right?" I ask, eager to keep up any sort of conversation that ends without a fight.
Morah shrugs. "Just during the first day. They said they didn't want to ally with us. Lakin said he didn't want Ceeja distracted trying to worry about protecting somebody else."
"Hopefully Lakin takes a few of the Careers out for that," Epzo says as the anthem fades and his face drops from the sky.
It's only dark for a moment, Morah flicking on a flashlight that illuminates the path between us in a dim glow. We all stand awkwardly for a long moment, nobody knowing what to say or do. Finally, I decide to break the silence.
"It isn't much, but I have a spot that I've been staying in. Out of sight, especially at night. I know where some safe berries and nuts and a few streams are too." My voice goes sheepish. "Could be smart to stick together, at least for a bit."
Epzo looks unconvinced, but Morah doesn't give him a chance to voice his thoughts. "For sure!" She says. "We've been walking all day, someplace safe to sleep sounds like the best thing in the whole world."
I look over to Epzo and he shrugs, not looking willing to argue. "Sleep doesn't sound too bad, I guess."
That's enough to win a smile from me and I nod my head, trying not to seem too excited. Already it feels like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders, the arena suddenly feeling so much less uncertain. "Fantastic," I say.
Arno Dupont
His blood spills onto the floor as I pull my spear out of his chest. The District Eleven boy looks at me with wide, red eyes. He goes to lift his hand out to me but it collapses as his body crumples to the floor. I put him out of his misery, my spear piercing through his skull in perfect unison with the cannon that rings out.
Boom!
"I got one of them!" I shout out, yanking my spear free and turning around to make sure there's nobody else in the room with him. But the bedroom is empty.
Clomping footsteps come in from the hallway, Pierre rushing in with a dagger held in his hand. He looks almost disappointed to find the boy already dead.
"Where's the other one?" He asks, walking in and peering around the room.
I shrug. "He isn't here. Was just this one."
"What, he was just taking a nap in here all by himself?" Pierre asks aggressively, as if I'm lying to him for some reason.
"He wasn't sleeping," I say dismissively, brushing him off as he approaches and taking a step back.
"Well, then what was he doing?" He demands.
"I don't know, I didn't ask," I say, gesturing down to him. "He was just sitting on the floor looking at the wall when I opened the door up. Second I stepped in he leapt up and ran at me. So I stuck him with the spear and there he is. I would have made sure to save you the kill if it wasn't so sudden," I say sarcastically.
He seems to take it sincerely, nodding his head. "Good. Maybe his buddy is close by then. Let's fan out and check the bathrooms nearby."
Before we can get the chance to head out, footsteps sound off from the creaky staircase and Pierre sighs, shakes his head, and then calls out, "Over here! Arno actually got one of them."
Everly and Ainsley appear at the doorway, both of them peering in. I'm not sure if it's just the short sprint up the stairs over to us, but both of them look exhausted in their eyes. Pierre slaps both of them on the shoulder. "Let's get to searching, this other kid can't be far off. I don't want us wasting any time."
Ainsley looks at me with shifty eyes. "How did you find him?" She asks.
"By opening the door and looking inside?" I ask, not sure what else to say. I quickly look over all three of them. "Why is everyone acting like this is all suspicious."
"We're surprised you actually managed to kill someone," Pierre says gruffly, though he flashes a smile and lets out a brisk laugh.
Ainsley doesn't react, keeping her eyes narrowed at me. Everly doesn't even look like she's here at all, her eyes unfocused and trained on the wall behind me.
I shake my head, not having it in me to argue any further. "Whatever," I say. "Let's just keep searching so that we can get out of this place, I'm actually starting to miss–"
"What's that?" Everly says quietly. All of us pause and look at her. I follow her gaze to the wall, which looks entirely empty, unless you count dust and cobwebs.
"What's what?" I ask.
Pierre rolls his eyes and mutters something incomprehensible, storming out of the room and continuing his search on his own. Everly keeps staring at the wall, not saying anything more. I look over to Ainsley exasperatedly, but she's just as focused on the wall. I turn back to face the wall again, expecting to find something, but it's still the same empty wall that the District Eleven boy was staring at.
A cold shudder runs through my blood.
"Whatcha all looking at?"
All three of us visibly leap into the air. I stumble backward, falling onto the floor and landing on top of the dead boy from Eleven. From the doorway, Ariya looks at all of us like we're idiots.
"And I thought May would be the one wetting her pants in here," she says, rolling her eyes.
"Hey, I had a good reason to, that was–" May cuts herself off as she steps up to the doorway and peers in. She tilts her head. "Arno, why are you lying on top of the boy from Eleven?"
"He's not alive," I mutter, rolling off of the boy's corpse.
She squints her eyes. "That doesn't make that any better."
"So, are we all just staring at Arno's handiwork then?" Ariya asks. "In shock that he actually killed somebody? I'd probably be pretty spooked to see that too."
"How did you even get up here?" Ainsley asks breathlessly. "We didn't hear the stairs creaking."
"Hey!" Pierre shouts from the hallway. "Can you worthless jackasses stop sitting on your asses in there and help me find the second half of Eleven before he slithers out the front door?"
"Gladly!" I shout back. I put my hands on the floor to lift myself up, and slice the palm of my hand on something sharp. "Fuck," I mutter.
"Aww, did Four get a splinter?" Ariya coos.
"Oh, leave Arno alone," May says, hitting her lightly on the shoulder. "Which one did you kill, big guy? Lakin or Ceeja?"
"I don't know," I murmur, crawling back up to my feet.
"Flip him over on his front," May tells me, stepping forward. "I can tell you."
"I'll leave you two to the crime scene investigation," Ariya says drolly. "C'mon." She nudges Ainsley and Everly, redirecting them toward the door. The spur of movement seems to be enough to get their feet moving. "Let's go help Pierre before he blows his lid."
The three file out and May takes a step toward me. I bend down and flip over the Eleven boy. His jaw is missing, blood and chunks of brain covering the left side of his face and leaving it unrecognizable. The right half looks almost untouched though, right down to the panicked eyes, red roots splintering across the whites of his eye. May crouches down beside me and hums thoughtfully.
"It's Ceeja," she says quietly. "Did a bit of a number on him, huh?"
"He didn't really give me much choice," I say, shrugging. I may not love having to kill, but I'm not going to let myself start feeling guilt for what was just self-defense.
May looks confused by that. "What do you mean?"
"I mean that I walked in here and the guy just charged right at me. Practically ran himself onto my spear."
May leans back from me. She looks at me oddly for a moment, then shakes her head. "Huh, that's weird."
"Why?" I ask.
She shrugs. "I don't know, just, doesn't really seem like him, at least from what I saw during training. In his interview, he talked about how he hated fighting, said he tried to always avoid it if he could."
I snort. "Yeah, tell that to my shoulder that he chucked a spear at."
She shrugs uneasily. "Yeah, I guess. But, that was different. Lakin was there that time and it was a planned out ambush. I don't know, I'm just overthinking things I guess, but he just didn't seem like the type of guy to hear somebody and immediately run at them with his bare hands and try to kill them."
"The arena changes people," I say nonchalantly. I look back to the boy and bring my hand up to his face, sliding shut his eyelids. I turn to May. "I'm sure that you–"
May screams.
A fiery pain comes from my wrist. I look down just in time to see Lakin's mouth open wide, his teeth digging out a chunk of my flesh while red eyes beat into mine.
I scream out, instinct taking over as I kick him away, my shoes crunching against the bones of his face and sending him backward. He looks completely unfazed, his body unnaturally contorting up into a standing position, his back snapping upwards and his jaw sliding back into place.
He takes a half-step toward me and I take hold of my spear and throw it at him with all my might. The spear tears through his stomach and pins him to the wall, but he doesn't even seem to notice. He continues to thrash out wildly, high-pitched croaks escaping his throat.
"What the fuck," May pants, staggering back.
I go to respond, but stop myself. The boy stops flailing wildly, an eerie calmness taking over him as his lone red eye stares me down emotionlessly. Slowly, he takes hold of the spear with both hands. And he pulls.
His skin and organs tear to shreds, the jagged edges of the spear blending his stomach into a jumbled mess that drops to the floor. But he doesn't seem to even notice. He takes hold again, and with another pull slides himself further along.
"Oh, fuck this," May says, turning and stumbling out the door. I slowly backpedal away, not wanting to break eye contact with the boy as he continues to drag himself forward. Finally, he reaches the end of the spear, his hands wrapping around the handle, and with one final pull, he's free.
I'm out in the hall by now, my hands wrapped around the doorknob, ready to slam it shut the moment he breaks into a dead sprint at me. He tilts his head, his eye bearing into mine. Between the hole in his jaw and the kick to the face, his mouth is almost entirely missing, just a collection of teeth loosely held in place by bloodied flesh. But it's impossible to mistake the smile that breaks onto his face.
Calmly, he turns around, walks over to the lone window in the room, and pushes himself through, his body flopping awkwardly out into the open air.
I can feel everybody else behind me, hear May's panicked breathing, but my attention isn't on them. Hesitantly, I walk back into the room, then over to the window. Peering through confirms what I already had guessed. His body is splayed out on the ground, motionless, his head snapped at an unnatural angle.
And he's still smiling.
May Redding
I drew the first watch. I wasn't too eager to try to sleep, so I didn't put up much of an argument. Ainsley is the other one on watch, and she hasn't said a single thing, just sitting somberly on the opposite side of the room as me, both of ours lazily watching the lone entrance.
After the Ceeja incident, we all agreed to call it for the night. We were still halfway between arguing about whether to just camp outside for the night and then start again tomorrow morning or head all the way back to the cornucopia when we ran into a problem that made the decision for us. The front door was locked.
Pierre tried barrelling through it with all his weight, but the door didn't budge so much as an inch. After a few more creative attempts we decided to settle in and sleep in the large living room at the entrance. With the door seemingly barred shut there's only one entrance (assuming somebody doesn't jump off the third-floor balcony), so it isn't a terrible decision. I just hope that the door being locked turns out to be a nighttime thing like Everly suggested.
The alternative theory that nobody seemed to want to say is that we're stuck in here until we finish off all the outliers in here, whether that's just Lakin or there's another one in here too. I can't help but find that one more likely.
I can feel my facade breaking. If it weren't for how on edge everybody else is, it would be obvious. I've tried so hard to keep pretending that I'm the same, that nothing has changed. That I'm brave. That I'm a Career, with no room for fears, insecurities, or hangups. Today has made it all the more clear just how stupid I was to ever believe that.
A loud whistling sound runs through the house and I have to stop myself from jumping up. It's just the wind blowing through the two-dozen open windows in this place. Just the Gamemakers playing their games.
Ainsley doesn't seem to even notice the noise. She's been weirdly quiet since this morning. Not that anybody is acting normally. Arno is at least understandable. He got bit on the wrist by a dead kid who threw himself out a window. Me acting out would be understandable. I had to watch all of that. And that's not even mentioning the whole mess with Ariya deciding to crawl through that stupid hole in the wall on her own.
What excuse do the rest of them have? Ariya is mostly her usual self, maybe a bit meaner than usual. Or maybe I'm just finding her jokes less funny than usual right now. Pierre is a bit more tangibly on edge, but whether that's fear or annoyance at how long it's taking to find Lakin is impossible to tell.
Everly is silent and reserved, but there's something else going on too that I can't put my finger on. It's almost like she seems fragile, ready to shatter apart if you poke her too hard. It isn't fear, that's for sure. She was the only one who didn't seem the slightest bit bothered by the sight of Ceeja's disfigured corpse sprawled out on the ground outside the window.
"Stop it," Ainsley mutters.
I look down, expecting to find my feet tapping anxiously against the floor, but there's nothing. When I look over at her, she isn't even looking at me, her eyes focused on the hallway. Her whole body is slumped over, her eyes looking droopy. She looks out of it.
"Ainsley," I say, and that snaps her out of whatever trance she was stuck in, her eyes lazily crawling over to me. "It's just one entrance, I can keep watch by myself. Get some sleep."
The Ainsley that I know would have scoffed at that, muttered that she wasn't someone who needed to be coddled. That it was dumb to only have one guard on watch. I would at least expect her to not trust me to be the only one awake with how little she seems to think of me. But she doesn't offer up any of those arguments. She nods her head and drops down onto the floor where she sits, her eyes sliding shut before her head even hits the floor.
I set my sword onto the floor and tuck my legs up against my chest for warmth, my chin resting glumly on my knees. For as horrible as today was, from Ariya deciding to disappear then reappear to whatever I'm supposed to call what happened with Arno, it isn't any of these stupid arena gimmicks or Gamemaker tricks that's stuck keeping my mind racing.
It was looking out the window while the anthem was playing and seeing Ceeja's face in the sky. His smile was so big and lacking any sort of worry. They took that person that was so full of happiness and turned him into a broken monster, and for what? For a jump scare to entertain the audiences? To scare Arno and me? Like they needed to do that to make me scared.
But no matter how angry I try to get at the Gamemakers, I can't bring myself to hold onto it. Because it isn't their fault. He was dead regardless of what they did. Because we all decided to volunteer for this. To chase them down and hunt them and make sure they day scared and boxed in with nowhere to run. All the Gamemakers did was make it that much clearer what we were doing.
Bzzzzzt.
My head lifts up lazily from my knees at the sound of static, softly humming from the halls. I look over to the rest of my allies. None of them so much as turn over, each and every one of them out for the count. Even Ainsley is practically motionless, the only sign that she's even alive being the soft rise and fall of her chest.
I'm not sure what gets me to climb to my feet. Whether it's fear or sleep deprivation or guilt or that bottled-up feeling of wanting to break down and cry but having to hold it in and just laugh and crack jokes and pretend to be okay, I find myself following the noise.
I'm pushing through the bedsheets and into the hallway when I realize that I don't even have my dagger with me. That might have been enough to get me to head back, but I'm instantly met with the source of the static, and that's enough to get me to stop.
Sitting on the floor is an old, grainy television. It wasn't there before, it isn't even plugged into any sort of outlet to keep it turned on, but the static is humming nonetheless. And then the static cuts off, and it's replaced with words that are enough to keep me glued in place.
The 87th Hunger Games
Dad's games.
Hesitantly, I crouch down. A tiny little piece of my brain that's still thinking rationally, that's remembering where it is I am, is yelling at me to run. But I'm stuck in place, weights on my feet that force me to drop to my knees and watch.
The recap doesn't bother with any of the fluff. It cuts through Dad's kills, starting with the District Four duo at the bloodbath. District Two is next, then those two asshole outlier boys after that, and his district partner in the finale.
I almost laugh. Is this supposed to be it? Do they think seeing him kill is going to make me break down and cry? Think that he's a monster? I almost feel like shouting out at the nearest camera, asking them if they realize that they show the 87th Hunger Games to every trainee a thousand times over. That I've seen all seven of his kills a hundred times. That none of them were saints or worth crying over.
But the tape doesn't stop. It rewinds, the picture moving in reverse, before the trumpets, before the finale, before he kills his cocky district partner in ten seconds flat. An unfamiliar face appears, a young outlier girl who can't be any older than I am. She has a knife in her hand, but she drops it to the floor as Dad approaches and opens her mouth to say something. He cuts her throat before the words can come out.
The tape rewinds again. She drops the knife. Opens her mouth. He opens her throat. Rewind. Knife. Mouth. Throat. Rewind.
I'm not sure how many times I watch it before I feel a cold hand on my shoulder. I spin around, pushing away and raising my empty fists. But there's nothing there. I turn back to the television, but it's gone too, nothing on the floor but dust. I scramble to my feet, head on a swivel but finding nothing but bedsheets and torn wallpaper.
I dash away the tears from my eyes and hurry back into the living room, hoping that when I wake up tomorrow morning I can convince myself that this was all just a nightmare.
A/N: End of day 3.
17th: Ceeja (killed by Arno)