Disclaimer: I don't own Until Dawn.

A/N: Hey guys, I'm so glad you're still interested in this fic! ^_^ Thanks for letting me know, and I'm glad you're enjoying it. :)

An Inextinguishable Light

Chapter Five: Walk a Mile in My Body

It took a lot of convincing. A lot.

Firstly, to get Emily and Matt to even entertain the idea of using the board, and then that it wasn't some kind of elaborate trick. Beth lost count of the number of personal questions Emily asked in an effort to trip her up (Matt was also skeptical, but ultimately easier to win over.) However, the majority of Beth's attention was on Josh, even as she answered Emily. The darkness slowly faded from his face during the questioning, leaving behind something achingly lost and bewildered, with just the slightest flicker of hope around the edges of his expression.

(Something about the way the way Emily and Matt were so clear in their disbelief had somehow convinced him that this was real; the way Chris and Ashley were so pale and shaken up, and so obviously not putting on a show for anyone's benefit. Not to mention the embarrassing secrets being divulged by Beth, about Emily, in the other girl's efforts to trip her up with questions. "I don't like all anime," Emily snapped, her cheeks faintly pink as Ashley, Chris and Matt goggled at her in surprise and Beth smirked in the background. "I'm not a fucking nerd, unlike some people in this group. I just think Spirited Away is kinda cool.")

In the end, Beth managed to convince them she was there and real, but naturally the wendigo revelation was harder to swallow. "No." Emily appeared to have stalled completely. "I refuse to fucking believe there are honest to God monsters on this mountain, this is too fucking much."

(Beth was ninety percent sure what she could see under Emily's disbelief was something like shock, and amazingly, guilt. You don't want it to be true, because then it'll mean what Hannah has become is partially your fault, she thought, a little part of her meanly pleased.)

Beth paused to think for a moment, frustrated. Short of actually running into a wendigo (bad idea), she couldn't think of a way to prove their existence beyond a shadow of a doubt. Although maybe…

'Go sanatorium,' she spelled out. 'Locked up wendigos in basement.' Sending them to the sanatorium also had the advantage of placing them behind the protection of far superior talismans than the ones Jack had hastily put together for the lodge – and they would be able to see her. Talk to her, without the intermediator of the board between them (which, during the latest round of questions, she had come to realise that while it was useful, it was also incredibly limited and laborious to have a conversation through.)

There were sounds of general confusion from all present. "What? Locked up by who?" Emily asked, which started a whole other round of questions and arguments as Beth explained about Jack and his occupation, although it did give her the opportunity to reassure them that he was looking out for Mike and Jess while Beth was looking out for them.

'Go sanatorium,' Beth spelled firmly, ending the conversation in exasperation. 'Get Sam, go sanatorium. Proof.'

Emily had already lifted her finger from the pointer, but before Ashley could move to fold the board away, Josh lurched forward, falling to his knees beside it. His trembling hand landed on the triangle, before he spoke. "Beth?"

His voice was a low croak, and Beth couldn't help the surge of pain that tore through her at how broken her brother looked, shaking slightly as he sat hunched over the board. 'Still here, Josh,' she traced out.

"I'm sorry." He sounded utterly miserable. "For not believing you before. And for – for what happened –"

'Don't blame you.' Beth spelled, wishing the board could indicate tone better, could project both kindness and firmness. His self-hatred and misplaced guilt was not helping him in the slightest and it hurt her to see him like that. 'Last year not your fault. Go sanatorium, talk more.'

He nodded, making a pained noise of acknowledgement in his throat. In the end, it was Chris' gentle coaxing that encouraging him up from where he was bowed over the board, and Ashley carefully folded it away, tucking it into the backpack she'd picked up before leaving the lodge.

"Let's go, man. Sooner we get there the better."

xxx

To no one's surprise, Sam was still in the bath when they got back to the lodge, and rather startled by the majority of her friends knocking on the bathroom door. This naturally prompted another round of disbelief and questions and answers, which Beth was getting heartily sick of at this point – but she made the effort for Sam; Sam whose face went chalk-white at the confirmation she was talking to Beth, whose hands gripped the edges of the board so hard her knuckles went bloodless.

(She knew Sam felt it too, the potential hovering between them both, potential snatched away by her death. She also knew that Sam had that same possibility with Josh, the same tangle of unspoken feelings, and while she couldn't help but feel jealous, she also wanted them both to be happy. In some ways, her death made her feelings on the subject simpler – she didn't have a horse in the race anymore, as it were. It made the way Sam gently put her arm around Josh's hunched form – concern and reproach in her eyes in equal measure as the others filled her in on what happened – easier to deal with.)

Regardless, Sam managed to regain her composure with admirable speed, and under her direction the group was soon pulling on parkas and hats and scarfs from the Washingtons' collection of winter clothing. They set off from the lodge in a clustered group, the wind and snowflakes whipping around them as their breath smoked in the cold night air. Beth circled around them, wary and protective, hyper-aware now that they were out in the open.

She'd warned them of the basics through the spirit board ('don't move, they see movement, hate fire, shotgun slows them, bite not infectious, can mimic human voices') and despite their dubious expressions, they'd retrieved a couple of shotguns from Beth and Josh's father's gun cabinet (since there was a distinct shortage of flamethrowers on the premises). They'd all had a go on one occasion or the other at the shooting range in Blackwood, but Chris, Sam and Mike were deniably the best shots of the group – so Chris and Sam were the ones carrying the weapons, despite Sam's distaste for guns in general.

They were just over halfway to the sanatorium when a shrieking scream rang out through darkened pine trees, chilling and undeniably inhuman. The group turned as one, eyes wide, and Beth barely had time to curse furiously before the thing-that-was-once-Hannah burst from the treeline, all jittering movements and elongated, spidery limbs.

There was a moment of absolute stunned silence and Beth could almost feel the disbelief crumble and give way as the group was confronted by irrefutable proof of the wendigos' existence. Then Josh stumbled back, horror written all over his face, and the wendigo's head snapped around and it screeched as it skittered forward, drawn by his movement.

"No!" Beth shouted, at the same time as Sam, and then suddenly she was there, feet planted firmly in front of Josh, shotgun raised to sight along it. There was a heartbeat of stillness where all Beth could see was Sam, blonde tendrils of hair whipped about her face by the wind, face a mask of determination and fear. Then the shotgun boomed and the wendigo was thrown back, crashing to a halt against a tree trunk.

It screamed in fury and started to pull itself upright, milky eyes staring in Sam and Josh's direction, but Beth darted forward, her heart in her mouth. "I don't fucking think so!" she shouted, reaching out for that ever-present flicker of red light under the wendigo's skin, and pulling.

She had a split-second to be startled – her reaction had been bizarrely instinctive and she couldn't say exact what had prompted her to try it – but the next moment, she was almost overwhelmed by the burning crimson tide of hungerhungerhunger and black malevolence that burst against her immaterial form, the sense that she had grabbed onto something that clung to her hands like hot tar.

Then the wendigo turned to look directly at her with its sightless eyes, screeching furiously as the red light moved and pulsed under its skin – and then it leapt. Beth backpedalled frantically, ducking through a pine tree and tearing off as fast as she could into the woods. Fuck, fuck, fuck, okay definitely got its attention, fuck, fuck –

She was aware of it terrifyingly close behind her, screaming in that awful inhuman way, and knew the only reason she was managing to stay ahead of it was because the wendigo's physical body was (for once) working against it, as it was unable to simply run straight through any trees or rocky outcrops in its path.

Fuck, just a little further from the group and then I'll try phasing through the ground or something, that always sucks and makes me feel like I'm drowning, but it's better than being fucking eaten –

Then she ran over the crest of a slight hill and immediately spotted a better alternative; a herd of elk, which were probably grazing quietly before, but now looked uneasy and spooked, on the verge of fleeing. Thank you Mother Nature! Beth cheered internally. Or possibly the fucking mountain itself, who knows!

She made it down amongst the herd, just as the wendigo burst over the brow of the hill, and had just enough time to throw herself at the closest elk and slip inside his skin, before the herd erupted into panicked flight at the sudden arrival of a predator in their midst.

The wendigo screeched again and Beth almost fancied there was a note of confusion this time, as its original prey vanished and it was presented with a sea of new targets – not that the elk were sticking around to be eaten. The thunder of hooves echoed all around her as the herd charged through the trees, and Beth gritted her teeth against the weird, blurring sensation of possession – not true possession, she wasn't trying to wrestle control of his body away from the elk, but riding shotgun was enough to experience the thoroughly unnerving feeling of having both two and four legs at the same time, and a point of view from two different pairs of eyes. Not to mention the tail and fucking antlers, Beth groused, in an effort to distract herself from the weirdness. There's a reason I tried this once and never again.

Eventually she judged they'd moved far enough to confuse the wendigo and parted from the elk, slipping back out of its skin as easily she'd slid in. The herd continued past, the sound of hoofbeats eventually fading away into the distance as Beth started making her way towards the sanatorium, circling around and up the mountain. I hope they had the sense to keeping going, to run for the sanatorium when I distracted the wendigo. Please, let one fucking thing go right tonight.

And miraculously, it seemed her prayers were answered; she reached the sanatorium just in time to see Emily and Matt struggling to close the heavy double doors behind the group, Chris and Sam standing nervously by with shotguns at the ready.

"Thank fucking God," she announced, phasing through the wall into the ruined entrance hall just as the door finally closed with an echoing boom. "I didn't know if you guys would keep your heads long enough to actually make a break for this place."

The group whipped around in almost perfect unison at the sound of her voice; Ashley let out a stifled shriek, her hands flying up to cover her mouth, as Chris cursed in surprise. They all stared, wide-eyed at the now-visible form of Beth, shimmering faintly in the moonlight streaming in from the hole in the ceiling. She smirked at them and waved. "I told you we'd be able to talk more here. Hi, it's me, Beth. In the flesh. Or not, as the case may be."

"Beth?" Sam whispered. Her face was pale but intense as she stepped forward – Josh beside her, trembling, with his eyes locked on the form of his sister's ghost. "How–?"

But before Beth could answer, out of nowhere, a colossal boom suddenly thundered through the sanatorium, an explosion from somewhere under their feet that made the ground heave and the walls shake.

Shrieks and shouts of surprise rang out as the six living humans staggered and tried to keep their balance; Beth only swore, and yelled, "Everyone get in the fucking chapel, now!"

"Beth!" Sam shouted in alarm as she stumbled into Matt. "What's going on?!"

"No fucking clue, going to find out!" Beth yelled over her shoulder, before diving down through the concrete floor, aiming for the basement where the explosion seemed to originate.

I swear to God, why does nothing ever seem to go according to plan?

A/N: Thank you again for your continued interest! Please let me know if you liked this chapter. :)