"Mike, what the hell are we doing here?" Matt demands, walking quietly behind the class president. They're in the hospital, the one that treated them after the incident on Blackwood Mountain. The only problem is that half of the hospital is deserted considering it's three in the morning. Matt had been sleeping peacefully next to Emily when the shrill ringing of "We Will Rock You" broke him back into consciousness.
"You need to see something," Mike replies solemnly, hugging the sides of the hospital corridor wall. He's never seen Mike quite this quiet, or serious for that matter. Whatever Mike brought him here for makes Matt's heart speed up and hit his chest cavity a little harder.
"What do I need to see?" the jock demands. Mike continues on quietly, glancing around suspiciously. They're in the basement, which is already abandoned enough during the day. At night… well, at night it's even more eerily quiet. The only sounds are the light padding of their hurried footsteps and the harsh buzz of florescent lights. "Mike, seriously. What are we doing here?"
"I need you to see something," he repeats firmly, an edge to his voice.
"Yeah, dude, you said that. What do you need me to see? Why the hell are we even here at three in the morning?" Mike shakes his head at the question, coming up on the locked doors to the morgue. "Mike," Matt says warily, looking up at the block letters over the door. He doesn't like this at all. Morgues are creepy enough during the daytime and he's had enough creepiness to last a lifetime.
Mike proceeds to pull out a hospital ID that clearly isn't his and scans the both of them into the morgue as quietly as possible. He motions for Matt to crouch down with him, slinking against the wall. When they come to the door to the autopsy room, Mike holds a finger to his lips and glances slyly through the window in the door. After a few moments, the class president shuts his eyes dismally, then gestures for Matt to look through the glass.
The athletic boy goes up to the window cautiously, both curious and wary about what he might see. His heart beats hard against his chest, knowing that whatever's got Mike so solemn can't be a good thing. It can't be anything worse than what we saw on that mountain, Matt tells himself. He takes a deep breath and forces himself to look, eyes shutting horrified on the image he finds there.
The doctor who had treated Josh, Dr. Ward, stands over one of the bodies from the morgue, gnawing on the arm of it. Blood stains his mouth and a guttural sounds escapes his throat. His eyes have devolved from brown to a bluish color and his nails are far too long. There's no doubt that the man in that room is turning into a wendigo.
Matt falls back and creeps behind Mike back to the safety of outside the main door to the morgue. His heart races in his chest, pumping adrenaline though his veins. Panic seems to flood his nerves, memories of those things up on the mountain flooding through his mind. This is supposed to be over. All of this is supposed to be over.
"What the hell is happening?" Matt demands in a whisper. "We killed all of the wendigos and we reversed Josh."
"The stranger's book had this lore on the wendigos," Mike begins darkly. "It said the whole curse originated from Native American spirits. The stranger said that its best not to kill the wendigos unless you kill all of them, including the original one, otherwise these souls get released into the air. Well, we killed all of them, except for Josh."
"We're not killing Josh," Matt interrupts flatly.
"I'm not done," Mike says dismissively. "These Native America souls apparently had kind of a leader, or at least the stranger thought one of them was the origin of the entire thing. He called him Makkapitew and he's the one that, uh, that took over Hannah. Since he's the strongest, I'm guessing that little fucker worked his way into Josh and then when we stopped him from transforming, he hitched a ride inside the good doctor there."
"You're telling me that by saving Josh, we brought some Native American spirit that started the whole damn wendigo problem back here?" Mike nods. "Well that's just great. Really-freaking-great." Matt crosses his arms in frustration, resisting the urge to kick something. He takes a few deep breaths, trying to ignore the fact that their nightmare has followed them home, and asks "So, how do we fix this?"
"Well, we've got three options," Mike replies. "We can call the rangers and let them deal with it, even though it will go right over their heads, or we can attempt to lock the wendigo up for the rest of eternity."
"What's option three?" Matt questions warily, not liking the sound of the other two choices.
"I don't think you're going to like it," Mike warns.
"Just tell me."
"Option three is to burn that transforming little sucker alive."
"Mike, there's a person in there, a doctor. That man saved Josh's life and it's our fault he's like that, because he saved Josh. We can't repay him with murder. That's just- it's just wrong. We can get another doctor to scrape out his stomach and get him back to normal like Josh."
"And then someone's going to have to save that doctor and then the next doctor and then the next doctor until one day no one notices in time and they fully turn and slaughter everyone around them," Mike argues. "Look man, I don't want to kill this guy. I know it's wrong, I know there's a person in there. If we had known this was going to happen," he shakes his head. "We've got to end this once and for all."
"Even if I agreed with this insane idea, how would we even do it? Our faces are all over the hospital cameras."
"Leave that part to me."
Sam sits outside the ranger station, wrapping her crimson jacket tightly around her. She's waiting for the rangers to finish questioning Josh. She had been hanging out with him at his house when Mike called from a random person's cell phone. After a few ominous sentences, he hung up and showed up with Matt at Josh's house twenty minutes later, where he told her the story that sent a chill down her spine.
Mike said that they waited outside the hospital until the doctor came out, and then they followed him. He went into the woods behind the hospital, which is evidently where the blossoming wendigo inside of him is attracted to. He made a camp in the thicket of the woods, taking souvenirs from the morgue and storing them there. Matt looked like he was going to throw up when they said that and even worse, Mike looked a little green as well.
They threw alcohol everywhere and burned the whole thing up, Dr. Ward included. Mike said they made it look like an accident, hence alcohol instead of gasoline. They even started the fire with a cigarette.
The whole thing is like another drawn out nightmare. She knows that Mike and Matt had to do it to end the wendigos once and for all, but being back in this mess again makes her more scared than she cares to admit. Here she is lying to the police again about those damn monsters. She's not lying quite as much as Mike and Matt, but she'd still rather not get arrested for giving her friends a fake alibi, or witness any of her friends getting arrested for murder.
It sounds like Mike and Matt have it under control, though. The only reason any of them are even here is because they were seen skulking around the morgue. She collaborated with Mike that it was a stupid dare for the both of them and that they had no clue Dr. Ward was down there. The ranger she talked to seemed to buy it at least. Hopefully Josh's equally made-up responses will win them over.
At that moment, the doors to the station open and Josh comes walking out. He's got a thick bandage over his cheek, even though she told him the scar looked fine. He said he didn't want to freak anyone out, but she's actually gotten rather used to the line of jagged flesh.
"Why on earth are you electively sitting out in the cold?" he questions.
"I don't like ranger stations," she replies. Not after being questioned in one for hours thinking you were dead, she adds mentally.
"And they say I'm the crazy one," he adds with a grin. "Seriously, are you alright?"
"I'm fine. How did the questioning go?"
"Peachy. I was almost certain the guy was about to say 'you meddling kids' but I guess he held it in," he retorts with smirk. "I'm pretty sure they're going to let Mike and Matt go at least, considering we are all scarily good liars. I definitely know who to call if I ever need to commit murder."
"Oh hush," Sam says, smacking him on the good shoulder. "You really think they're going to let them go?" she asks on a more serious note.
"Yeah, I wouldn't worry about it. They don't have much and I heard some of them talking about releasing Mike and Matt. They played it pretty well, not to mention the authorities found some missing bones from the morgue in the doctor's little woodland hideout. The only person with access was the doctor after all; there's no way Mike and Matt could've done that. Some of them think the doctor drank himself in regret and passed out with a lit cigarette."
Sam nods, processing. "What about you, are you alright?"
"Me? Yeah, I'm totally fine. Why wouldn't I be?" He drops the joking façade for a moment, seeing her solemn expression. "I know, I'm the one who screwed him, transferred my monster life to him. It's my fault we're here now. I just can't seem to stop fucking up lives, but there's nothing we can do now. I wish things didn't have to go this way. If I'd have known being saved meant someone else's death," he takes a deep breath, "but none of us knew."
Josh wraps his arms around her and adds, "But it's over now. There's nothing left of that mountain that can come after us."
"I like the sound of that," Sam murmurs with a grin. "And, to be fair, you can count the number of lives you've screwed up on a little less than both hands."
"Oh, is that all?" he muses.
"We-ll," she begins, drawing out the sound. "I can think of one life you have made better, minus a towel chase."
"I'll take what I can get," he says, leaning down and plopping a kiss on her lips. "Let's go home and repress this for the next twenty years."
Sam laughs. "Sounds good to me, pornstar."
A/N- And so we've come to the end of the story. I hope you've all enjoyed reading this as much as I've enjoyed writing it! I really do appreciate all of the support for this story and thank all of you who have read, reviewed, favorited, and followed so far, it means a lot to me. Feel free to let me know what you thought of the story and again, thanks for all of the support. :)