Friday
"Jessica!" Sam practically tackled her two steps in the door.
"Hi Sam!" Jess hugged her tight.
"I was concerned when I couldn't find you. I didn't know if something happened."
"Heh, nope. Everything's just the same as always."
Em and Jess had agreed beforehand to keep the details of Jess' struggles scarce. As far as Sam knew Jess was spending the weekend at Emily's to catch up. Anything beyond that was left to Sam's imagination.
Emily tried not to let Chris and Ashley's worries interfere with her treatment of Sam. It was difficult. Sam was no different than before, but Em found herself scrutinizing every one of her actions. Especially around Jess.
Jess immediately invited Sam into the living room (as if it were her house in which to do so) to hang out on the couch and catch up for a while. Sam shyly took a seat at the far end of it, and Jess bounced down beside her. They immediately began chattering away. Wordlessly Emily sat down at Jess' other side. She let them talk.
It felt like Sam recounted her entire fucking life, though that was probably just because it was boring and seemed to drag on forever. Jess purposely didn't volunteer much information of her own, but eventually Sam asked her, "So what have you been up to?"
Jess hesitated. "Oh, I, um, rent an apartment with two friends of mine. I work from home, and, uh–"
"Yeah? What do you do for a living?" Sam asked.
"I run a website. Um, it's sort of my own one-person business…"
Sam seemed finally to pick up on Jessica's reluctance to answer her questions. "Oh. Cool!"
"So you're married?" Jess asked her in turn.
Sam beamed. "Yes. Sarah and I have been together for a little over three years now. It's really flown by – it feels like just yesterday she was rushing into my office with her tarantula, worried because he'd had a bad molt and part of his old skin was stuck to one of his legs." She chuckled to herself. "He pulled through in the end. And I got a date out of it."
"How?" Jess asked. "Did you just ask her out then and there?"
Sam blushed a little. "Well, not exactly. I've never really been a big romantic, so I wasn't even thinking like that. I gave her my card and told her to call me with any questions. And she did. With an awful lot of them. Most of which could have been easily solved with a quick online search. That's when I kind of started to figure something was up."
"That's cute," Jess purred.
"Heh, thanks. So what about you?" Sam waggled her eyebrows. "Anybody on your radar?"
"Actually…" Jess twirled a lock of hair around one finger. "I am seeing someone."
"Oh yeah?"
"Yeah." Jess smiled a little. She nudged Emily. Emily felt her face warm a bit.
Sam glanced between the two of them. "Wait, it's not…"
Jess' smile evolved into a full grin. She nodded enthusiastically.
Sam's eyes widened. "Oh wow! So you and…Emily? Is that what you're saying?"
"Yes. We're a thing." Emily took Jess' hand and entwined her fingers with hers.
"Wow. That's great! I never would have guessed."
Emily kept her hand on Jessica's for the rest of the conversation. It was relieving to be able to come out to someone so casually. Sam was an easy one, since she herself was married to a woman. They hadn't told Matt yet, or anyone else in the group for that matter. Em wasn't looking forward to it.
"So how the heck did you finally find Jess, anyway?" Sam asked after nobody responded to her other statement. Her question was directed at Emily. "I looked all over for her."
Emily shrugged. "Things just worked out."
"Oh." Sam was clearly intrigued by her vague response, but she didn't press. "Well I'm glad you reconnected."
Sam may have been socially oblivious, but she wasn't stupid. One look at Jess and anyone could see she'd been to Hell and back. If Emily were in Sam's shoes she'd be prying Jess open like a stubborn clamshell. But Sam wasn't like her. Maybe that was the difference.
"I'm kinda bummed I missed the reunion," Jess murmured. "Maybe someday I'll make another one."
Sam's eyes lit up at that. "You know, I've actually been thinking about having another get-together at some point. Maybe you'd like to come?"
"Oh…" Jess slumped in her seat. "I'd like to, but, um, I don't get out much these days."
Sam chuckled. "Don't worry, neither do I. And I still enjoyed it last time."
"Yeah, I heard you and Chris talked quite a bit." Emily seized the opportunity to sate her curiosity about the truthfulness of Chris' story.
Jess shifted her attention to Emily. She knew nothing of what had transpired that day at Ashley's house.
For a moment Sam's warm, friendly mask slipped, and Emily caught a glimpse of wariness in her face. "Oh yeah," she said, laughing a little too loud, "he was showing me pictures of his sons and, um, we were talking about married life and–"
"Yeah? He said you tried to convince him to go back to Blackwood to find Josh." Her tone was neutral, trying to gauge Sam's reaction further. She hadn't expected her to react in a suspicious manner. Her interest was piqued.
"Why would Sam do that?" Jess turned to eye Sam curiously.
Sam shifted uncomfortably. "…Why is this being brought up now?"
"Holy shit, so you did do it?"
Sam got up from the couch. "Wow, it got late fast. I have work in the morning, I should go–"
"Bitch, don't even." Emily was up in a flash, blocking her path.
"Move." Sam's voice was low, a warning. "I'm leaving."
"Tell me what the hell you're plotting. Chris has two young kids, why the hell would you–"
Suddenly Sam was rushing at her. Anticipating getting knocked into, Emily tensed. In that moment Sam scooped her up and hefted her over her shoulder. Before Emily could do anything but shriek in confused rage, Sam deposited her on the couch and then bolted for the door.
Sam and her freakish fucking strength!
Emily darted off the couch and charged after her. Sam was practically to the front door when she was stopped by Jess. Jess stood in front of the door, wearing an expression of confusion and what almost looked like hurt.
"Move, Jess." Sam hesitated, apparently not wanting to manhandle Jess like she'd been fine with doing to Emily.
"You tried to get Chris to go back to the mountain with you?" Jess' voice was small but resolute. "Why?"
Before Sam could give an answer Emily pounced, tackling her to the floor. She pinned Sam by her wrists as Sam squirmed beneath her.
"I win," Emily said. "Now tell me what I want to know."
Sam glared up at her. "Can you get off me first?"
Emily looked to Jess, who was still guarding the door. She then reluctantly released Sam's wrists and stood up. Sam rose slowly, cautiously. She took a few steps deeper into the house, presumably trying to convince Em she wasn't going to flee again. Emily remained close to her anyway.
Sam took a seat on the couch again. Jess and Emily hesitantly followed suit.
"I don't know where to start," Sam said.
"Anywhere's better than nowhere," Emily replied. "Because right now I kinda just feel like you've lost your fucking mind."
Sam rested her elbows on her knees. "You might be on to something there."
"So, what, you think you're going crazy or something?"
"I don't know. Sometimes I have these totally bizarre…thoughts, and it's just, well I've looked through that old man's notebook probably a hundred times since The Incident, and one thing he mentions just always comes back to me."
Jess and Emily were both angled toward her, waiting for an elaboration.
"He said killing wendigos releases their spirits," Sam uttered. "And that they can enter the bodies of humans on the mountain. Mess with their minds. Dominate their free will."
"We knew that already. That's what happened to…we knew that." Emily steered away from mentioning Hannah by name. It didn't feel right talking so casually about her horrible fate.
"The old man's theory about wendigo possession had the first step as the spirit entering a human's body and subtly influencing their mind, to push them toward ultimately engaging in cannibalism." Sam spoke as if she were reading directly from the notebook. Emily wondered just how many times she'd pored over those words. "This can include keeping them lost and confused in an unfamiliar area, making them focus on their hunger, and even pushing them to turn on their fellow humans, like in the case of that mining disaster in 1952. The man speculated that a person could be possessed indefinitely. 'Only resorting to and completing an act of cannibalism grants the spirit the strength necessary to take control of the human's body'. That's what he said about it."
"Okay?" Emily folded her arms. "What does this have to do with you?"
Sam avoided eye contact with both women. "I think I might have one inside me."
"What?" Jess and Emily's responses were simultaneous.
Sam shrugged.
"Elaborate, please?" Emily said.
Sam sighed. "I really didn't want to bring this up now. But fine. Sometimes I have these really…fucked-up thoughts. They don't feel like they're my own. They feel like they're coming from someone else. But they're in my head."
"Such as?" Emily pressed.
Sam crossed her legs and arms tightly. "I don't want to talk about them."
"You can't just throw something like that out there and then not give any supporting evidence! What the fuck, Sam?"
Sam stared down at her lap.
"Christ, why do you have to be so fucking stoic all the time?" Emily snapped. "You think you might have some terrible evil spirit inside you and you just 'don't want to talk about it'?!"
Sam said something under her breath.
Emily leaned forward. "Excuse me?"
"I said they scare me. I'm scared, okay? If you don't want me to be 'stoic' then that's the honest truth."
Silence filled the room. In fact, the only audible sound in the entire house was Rin crunching her dry food in the kitchen.
"I have hallucinations," Jess eventually said. "Sometimes I think I'm seeing really messed-up things, like bodies hanging from the ceiling, or that my hands are covered in blood and I can't wash it off. Is it like that?"
Emily frowned. Jess rarely elaborated on the nature of her hallucinations. Whenever she did it just reminded Emily of what a living nightmare they must be.
"That's horrible." Sam looked away from Jess. "They're not like that. They're more like, well for one example, when I was at work a few months ago a client brought in their old English Mastiff for a checkup. And while I was checking him I just had this thought like, of me stripping the poor thing's skin off and – and eating him."
Jess and Emily exchanged a look.
"And to make things worse," Sam continued, "it made me hungry. I couldn't stop thinking about it. And nothing I ate made the feeling go away."
"What did you end up doing about it?" Jess asked.
Sam looked up, but her gaze was distant. "It was all just a blur. I remember finishing my shift, closing down the clinic and getting in the car, then deciding to stop and grab a few groceries on the way home. The next thing I remember after that is Sarah asking me what the hell I was doing, and me realizing I was sitting at our kitchen table with a shredded-open package of raw ground beef. Which I was eating. By the handful."
Simply recounting the story Sam looked as if she could be sick at any moment. "I've never cheated on my veganism. Hell, even before I went vegan I never liked red meat. Sarah, you know, she's vegan too, so I can't even imagine how she must have felt walking in to find her wife dripping with blood, devouring raw meat…"
It took Emily some time to process and respond to Sam's incredibly fucked-up tale. Finally she just said, "How often has stuff like that happened to you over the years?"
"Not often. But as the years have gone by, maybe as I've gotten older or more complacent or something, it's started to get worse. That's actually why I sought you guys all out in the first place."
Emily raised an eyebrow. "What were you hoping we'd do?"
"I was hoping we might be able to come up with a plan together. When I got talking to Chris he mentioned wishing he could go back to the mountain for Josh. I got an idea that maybe he and I could go up there in the daylight and look for any possible clues or notes that might be able to help me. Chris would think we were looking for Josh. He wouldn't even have to know about my situation."
"You don't even know for sure that you have one inside you," Emily said. "Isn't there some way you could find out for sure before you put yourself and Chris in mortal danger for potentially no reason?"
"That's another reason I wanted to get back in touch with all of you." Sam glanced briefly at Jess, then Emily. "I've thought about trying to communicate with it. But I'd need someone to tell me what it says, because the times it's had any sort of power over me I can't clearly remember."
"So you really think one is in there with you." Jess' words were somewhere between a statement and a question.
"I think so. It's hard to explain, but it feels like I'm sharing my body with someone else. Someone with motives that don't match mine. And I…" She ran a hand through her short hair. "I can't help but wonder if this is what Hannah went through. Except she was weak and starving…this spirit's probably weakened because I'm healthy and I don't eat meat. Um, usually."
"So what do you expect us to do? Talk to it?" Em was pretty sure she didn't want to be near one of those things again, much less have a chat with one.
"I don't know. I don't even know how you would. The journal doesn't have any insight about that. I don't think he was interested in talking to them."
"Honestly, neither am I." Emily made a face. "I wonder if we could find one of those people who can talk to spirits. A channeler. Maybe they could help us."
"No." Sam's response was immediate. "I don't want help from anyone outside the old group. You're the only ones who get it."
"I bet we could find a DIY guide online," Jess said. "You can find anything if you look hard enough."
"A guide to channeling spirits?"
Jess already had her phone out. "Look, it's right here on WikiHow. 'How to channel.' With pictures!"
Emily slapped her forehead. Sam watched Jess with interest as she skimmed the article.
"Hm, so we wouldn't really be trying to 'contact the spirit world' since the thing is already here with us." Jess scrolled a little. "Oh! There's a section on inducing trance. Maybe that could help."
"I used to be able to do that when I did yoga," Sam replied. "Maybe I could practice a little so I'm not rusty, and then someone could try to coax the thing into talking to you."
"Um, this sounds incredibly stupid." Emily cast a disdainful look over at the two of them. "What if it takes over your body and you can't regain control of it? What if you try to eat one of us?"
Sam was quiet for a moment. "You'll probably have to tie me down first."
Emily shook her head. "This is – this is crazy. I'm not doing this!"
"You wanted to know what was going on. I told you." Sam's stoic posture had returned. "Help me or don't. I'll do it eventually, even I'm just by myself with a camera."
Emily huffed. "Yeah, because that'll be safe."
"It's pretty scary, Sam." Jess reached out and laid a hand on Sam's shoulder. "But I'd like to help you if I can. I bet everyone from the old group would. We all love you a lot."
That brought a tiny smile to Sam's face. "Thanks, Jess. I love you all, too."
Truthfully, Emily could not bear to refuse Sam. She knew this in her heart. Though they may have drifted apart – hell, they were never even that close to begin with – she could not forget that horrible night, in her bleakest hour, who had defended her against her friends' paranoia. Who was responsible, at least in some part, for Emily still being here today. Though she hated to admit it, she could not live with the thought of rejecting Sam in Sam's own darkest time.
Emily examined her nails. "Well I'm not gonna let Jess get involved in something this risky by herself. So, fuck it, I guess I'm getting caught up in this stupid plan too."
Sam stood up from the couch. "Thank you both. If you don't mind, I'd like to go now. I'm sorry I ruined the night."
Jess hopped up and grabbed her in a tight hug. At first startled, Sam slowly returned the motion.
"We have to stick together, y'know?" Jess murmured. "Nobody else will ever understand."
Sam looked to Emily. Emily couldn't think of anything to say. She instead simply folded her arms and returned Sam's look.
"I should apologize to Ashley," Sam mumbled. "I never should have driven her and Chris apart like that. I mean, I didn't mean to, but still."
"You should," Em said. "She was pretty torn up about it."
"I will." Sam picked her bag up off the coffee table. "Thank you for having me. Goodbye, girls."
"Bye, Sam." Jess waved as Sam walked out.
Emily listened as Sam's car started, then eventually drove away. "So…that was something."
"Yeah."
"What do you think?"
Jess chewed her lip. "Sam is so hard to read. But she doesn't talk about her feelings very much. If she's telling us she's worried…"
"We might have a reason to be worried, too."
"Mhm."
Emily exhaled. "I thought that nightmare was over. We should have known. We should have fucking known."
