Chapter Text
DAY 1
A mountain retreat, the flyers said. A fun getaway for charity, the flyers said. They were hard to miss, huge and laminated plastered across the church, across the towns billboard. Bright colours shone out from behind the dirty glass, pink lettering stark against the white snow surrounding the grainy pictures of the mountain lodge.
A holiday for hikers, the flyers said, a social event sure to bond everyone for a lifetime.
How wrong they were.
The hotel buzzed with action, twenty voices echoing around the hallways as the hikers prepared to depart. Twenty volunteers, twenty sure-to-be friends. They crowded in the hallways, making alliances, deciding who would be sharing each room, talking excitedly of the week away they were about to enjoy. The peeling yellow paint of the walls did nothing to dull their moods, nor the snow already dotting the small town the group had flown to not even two days earlier. The cold bit through the windows, but nobody could find it in themselves to mind, not with the pictures of snowy mountains, bonfires, and a cosy lodge in their heads.
Early in the morning, the twenty hikers gathered in the courtyard, ice threatening to freeze their feet, huddled together for warmth. Jack stood quietly to one side, hugging his arms close to his chest as he watched his breath rise in the air before his face.
Each hiker wore a thick winter coat, their name vividly written across the back as a safety feature. Jacks’ own, pitch black with white stitching, stayed pressed to the brick wall behind him.
“Alright, alright! Hello, everyone.” A tall woman, clad in a rich red coat that seemed to billow out across her shoulders, and with a long blonde braid trailing down her chest, caught the attention of the bustling group, and silence quickly fell.
“We have eight hours of walking to do today, so I hope everyone has eaten. The guides checked the route yesterday, and the snow should prove no hinderance to our path. We will be leaving in 20 minutes, as the sun rises, so I expect you all to be back here by that time.” She nodded sharply, dismissing the crowd, and stepped away. As she went, Jack squinted to catch a glimpse of the block letters on her back: Bella.
The chattering quickly resumed, plaguing the small courtyard, but Jack watched as a young girl, hair almost platinum blonde, rushed away into the hotel, bag in hand.
Lily, or Lila. Her hair covered her back too much to tell.
“Hey.” A voice from beside him made him jump, a quick shot of adrenaline forcing him to flinch away, head snapping to look at who it was.
A young man, hair a deep brown and face slightly tanned, looked back at him hopefully. His coat, white with two stripes of brown, was buttoned up tightly over his chest, unlike Jacks’ own, which lay as limply as the dyed black hair plastered over his forehead.
“Oh, hello.” He managed to force out, giving the stranger an awkward smile.
“I haven’t seen you yet, have you only just got here or something? Everyone was joking someone had bad wifi.” The stranger laughed nervously, one hand rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly as though he didn’t quite understand the joke.
Jack wordlessly shook his head, his smile growing a touch more strained,
“No, I’ve been here two days.”
The strangers’ face fell,
“Sorry, I must have missed you then. My name is Sean, what’s yours? I like your coat, by the way, I wish I got black.” Sean smiled at that, a touch more genuine than before.
“I’m Jack. Nice to meet you.”
Seans’ grin turned lopsided, and he gave Jack a once over,
“Hey, can we skip the small talk? No offense, but I really want to find a guy to hang out with on this trip, and everyone else seems to have found the loves of their lives.”
Jack raised an eyebrow, looking back over at the other eighteen hikers. That part was true, he knew it all too well. Four of the hikers had already been caught flirting, both platonically and romantically, and few of the others had already become inseparable, as though they hadn’t all met mere days ago.
He looked back to Sean, stomach rolling in anticipation,
“Yeah, alright. Let’s stick together.”
Sean somehow grinned wider, one hand rummaging in his pocket,
“I’m one of the medics, by the way. There’s two of us, but I don’t know who the other person is. We’re not meant to talk about our jobs, apparently. Not sure why, but I guess part of the bonding thing is staying in the present. I heard there’s a bodyguard, though, and a detective. It’s kind of scary, isn’t it, knowing there’s random protective people here.”
Jacks’ stomach turned once again at the new information, and he swallowed heavily,
“Why do they need a detective?”
Sean shrugged, as though it hardly mattered,
“No clue, but hey, Athena gave me a muffin earlier, want some?”
Jack swallowed down his anxiety, smiling weakly,
“Yeah, alright.”
A charity hike that was really more of a holiday. That was what the flyers suggested. One day of walking around the mountains, seven nights in a rustic lodge, five days of bonding exercises, and one day of walking back. The forest surrounding them was the perfect setting for the activities, shooting, knife throwing, archery, survival skill competitions. Jack wondered if Sean would be leading the first aid activity set for the fifth day.
Sean pushed half the muffin into his hand, ignoring the jealous glares of a few people around him, and Jack couldn’t help but step a little closer to the man, not wanting to lose him in the crowd of people far more talkative than himself.
-
Sean, it turned out, was more than capable of filling the quiet by himself.
The walk began slowly, immediately hitting an incline that burnt Jacks’ legs as he struggled to find purchase in the thick snow. They had set off twenty minutes later, as promised by Bella, with only eighteen people.
“I hate it when people drop out of trips like these,” he chattered on, uncaring that the five people surrounding the pair could hear every word he was saying, “it’s annoying. Suddenly we have less people to work with. At least we’ll get to know each other better, if there’s less people around.”
Jack huffed as the gradient steepened once again, fog obscuring the path forwards. Five hours into the walk, and Sean was yet to run out of things to say. The rest of the hikers had fallen into an exhausted lull, crunching snow taking the place of chatter, but Sean hadn’t quite taken the hint.
“Hey, Bella!” Sean waved as Bella, the tall woman that had previously taken control of the group, fell into stride with them.
“Hello.” She responded simply, cheeks as red as her coat.
Jack nodded at her quietly, chest too tight to talk, and hugged his black coat tighter, the torch in the pocket icy against his hands.
“I’m Sean, and this is Jack. Do you want to hang out at the lodge?” Sean asked, completely unaware of how odd the question sounded, given they had met a grand total of 5 seconds ago.
Bella gave a weak smile back,
“Um, I guess? You really don’t run out of steam, do you? I keep hearing your voice back here.”
Sean grinned back at her,
“My mother always tells me to shut up.”
Bella stared back in shocked silence, mouth hanging slightly open. Frowning, Jack glanced sideways at the still-grinning man beside him, slight concern pinging in the back of his head.
“Oh.” Bella managed, just as a second girl, small with near-white hair, caught up with the small group.
“Can you slow down, I can’t keep up.” She huffed, blowing out a ghostly trail of mist as she stumbled over the ice dotting the ground. Her grey jacket almost blended into the sea of snow across the mountain, making her seem as though she truly belonged in the landscape, but her clumsy feet said otherwise.
Bella looked down, almost surprised, before slowing slightly,
“Of course. This is Sean,” she motioned to the man still grinning as though he hadn’t just dropped a statement that would make a therapist cry, “and Jack. Guys, this is Athena.”
Athena shyly waved back, feet catching on each stray cobblestone,
“Hi.”
The newly-formed group of four forged onwards, colourful jackets lighting the tail end of the hiking group as the open snow gradually turned into forest, Sean’s voice filling the silence once again.
-
It was nearly dark by the time the group finally reached the summit, a mere thirty minutes away from the lodge. Trees covered every inch of the rocky landscape, dotting with white as it begun to fall from the sky.
Jack looked up, feeling the icy flakes on his cheeks, watching as they fell from the misty air with untouched grace. He had come from a city, and had seen snow perhaps three times in his short lifetime, all of which sat a few centimetres thick, and turned to sludge within an hour. The air was awfully cold, but fresh, and not even the rapidly darkening sky could ruin his high spirits.
The lodge was nestled in a corrie, according to Bella. A large armchair-shaped hollow in the mountain made by long gone glaciers. She said the fact as though reciting it from a textbook, but looked excited all the same as they finally began to descend,
“Alright, everyone! If I could get your attention.”
The group of hikers obediently turned to listen, feet crunching in the snow.
Bella cleared her throat,
“You can all see the lodges’ lights from here, correct?”
A mismatch of murmuring and nodding responded, one man in a cowboy hat loudly proclaiming that he couldn’t see anything.
“Well, this is the boundary point, don’t go over the peak unless you want to get horribly lost. Curfew is in an hour, so feel free to explore. You shouldn’t get lost in the corrie, because this section here is the only traversable area, but don’t try anything stupid. Up that way,” she pointed into the trees, directly to the left, “is the cave. There’s a campfire and some seats in there for you all to socialise. The lodge is directly down from here, and there’s a few little areas for you to sit dotted around the site if you want to have a look at them now. Remember to use your torches, the last thing we need is someone getting hurt.”
As she spoke, the snow began to fall more heavily, quickly beginning to blanket the trees and hikers alike. Bella’s face quickly pulled into a frown,
“On second thoughts, why don’t we all get ourselves comfortable. There’s plenty to do tomorrow, and we’ve all had a long walk.”
Her statement went down well as the snow turned into something more of a blizzard, the wind picking up slightly as the group hurried to delve into the trees, wanting nothing more than a warm lodge to keep them safe from the biting temperatures.
-
The lodge itself stood strong against the elements, heavy wooden walls glowing with torchlight as the group descended upon it. A fire was already visible through the frosted windows, throwing light across the building.
Squealing, the door opened into the warm living room, and all eighteen of the group rushed inside in relief, throwing off their snow-sodden walking boots at the door and collapsing onto the plush rug and sofas across the room.
The living room itself wasn’t large, too small to house eighteen if anything, but after the long, freezing walk the group had just endured, nobody seemed to care.
Sean jumped upon one sofa- face first- and blindly beckoned Jack over, sighing contently at his claimed spot by the fire. Weaving past a few other hikers, Jack walked over, awkwardly sitting down beside the man as the rest of the group bustled to claim rooms and make hot drinks.
“It’s a bit small, don’t you think?” He quietly said, hands resting on his knees as he surveyed the room. There certainly wasn’t enough space for eighteen fully grown adults, not in the living room at least, and the kitchen was small enough that one girl was delegated the hot drink leader- a red-headed girl with a green jacket boasting the name Ella. The room was nice, at least, an out-of-season Christmas tree tucked away in the corner, a few sofas and coffee tables scattered about the room in a circle, two cupboards promised to hold games and books, a fire in the fireplace, and a fully stocked kitchen. The temperatures inside the lodge were fairly high, and Jack took the opportunity to unzip his coat once again, finally letting his chest breathe under the thick material.
“Well, it is for charity, I guess,” Sean mumbled from where his face was shoved into the sofa, “can’t be spending too much on our lodgings.”
Slowly, the group of hikers trickled into their respective spots, ten going upstairs to claim their rooms, eight sitting in the living room or kitchen and airing their battered feet.
Eventually, Bella and Athena walked back down the stairs, and Sean had the decency to sit up from his sprawl across the seat.
“We claimed a room with two double beds, you can take the second one if you’re happy to.” Bella sat down heavily, red jacket nowhere to be seen, a matching red and white fleece in its place. Her hair had been let loose as well, and it looked much too neat for somebody who had just been hiking up a mountain for eight hours. Athena followed, also missing her grey coat and instead wearing a simple white hoodie, and sat down almost upon Bella’s lap.
Jack glanced sideways at Sean, who looked positively beaming at the suggestion, and shrugged,
“Yeah, okay.” He had expected to be sharing a bed with someone, obviously, but something about sleeping right next to Sean- who never kept still nor quiet- seemed slightly daunting.
Athena squinted at something above the fireplace, not quite listening, and lifted a pale hand up at the wall,
“What do you think that means?”
Three heads turned to look at what she was talking about, landing eyes upon a grainy tv screen mounted just below a deer head. The screen flickered with static every few seconds, a faint buzz emitting from its screen, but that wasn’t what Athena was talking about.
Jack frowned as his stomach constricted once more.
Upon the screen, in large red letters, said 15 / 3.
The message buzzed and glitched above their heads, ominously staring out at the group of hikers with unrelenting solemnity, and Jack didn’t like it at all.
“It isn’t March.” Sean said simply, crossing his arms and getting to his feet, slowly swaggering to stand before the TV. He tilted his head as he looked at it, before shrugging and turning back to Jack,
“Decoration, I guess. Weird.”
Bella nodded, one arm around Athena’s shoulder as the other girl shrunk back into the cushions of the sofa, clearly unnerved,
“Yeah, I guess,” she glanced over at the two men, eyes slightly creased, “I’m tired, I think I might go to bed, no point going outside to explore now anyways. You coming?”
As if to highlight her point, a deafening howl sounded from outside the lodge, echoing about the place. Every person sat in the living room froze, listening intently as the howling was picked up by another wolf, and another.
A few of the hikers had gone pale, clutching their knees or arms close as they stared at the wooden door separating them from the wild beasts outside.
“Please tell me that wasn’t a wolf.” Athena whispered, the perfect picture of horror upon her face. She huddled ever closer to Bella, and Jack swallowed heavily. Slowly, he clambered up onto the back of the sofa, pressing his face close to the frosted window and squinting out at the white landscape outside. Nothing met his eyes but heavy snow drifting from the sky, and the wolves did not howl again.
“Hey, they didn’t say anything about wolves on the website.” A dark haired girl spoke up from the kitchen, stood beside Ella with crossed arms and an anxious expression.
“Yeah, what the hell?” The man in the cowboy hat- the one that had loudly talked about not being able to see anything upon the mountain- agreed, his white and black spotted coat making him look rather like a cow. He turned to look out the other windows, and Jack spotted the name Dylan in bold letters across his back.
Bella sighed, as though resigned,
“Yeah, they only roam at night, past 8pm. They shouldn’t be any trouble, don’t worry, there’s been dozens of these trips before us.”
The rest of the room seemed content with that explanation, although a good number wandered up the stairs with nervous expressions.
Jack stared at Bella, eyebrows furrowed. Why did she know so much about the trip? She wasn’t the expedition charge, that was for sure, but she had been appointed group leader on the first night at the hotel.
Bella must have noticed Jacks’ staring, because she shrugged good-naturedly,
“I grew up around here, and I couldn’t resist a change to come back for a while.”
With that, she got to her feet, pulling Athena up with her,
“Anyway, I’m going to bed. I put our names on the door, so, see you guys?” She waved, and took her leave, Athena following after her with a shy smile, leaving only five hikers in the living room.
The pair watched them go, before turning back to each other.
“Wolves and an ominous sign on the TV. The flyer didn’t say anything about that.” Jack whispered across to Sean, eyeing the other three lounging about the living room, reading or checking their phones despite the lack of signal that they were all informed of.
Sean hummed, still staring out the window as the snow began to build up on the darkened forest floor,
“Yeah, weird. It’s nice here, though. Do you want a drink?” He stood up before even finishing his question, stretching his arms high above his head with a soft grunt. With one smooth motion, Sean threw his coat onto Jack, grinning cheekily, and making his way over to the tiny kitchen.
Jack just watched, feeling the weight of a first aid kit upon his lap, and turned to look back out the frosty window.
-
They settled into a comfortable silence as the hours ticked by, Sean fiddling with the TV remote- unable to figure out how it worked- and Jack absent-mindedly reading a book that had been left on the coffee table, sipping on his tea every time he remembered he had it.
The other three hadn’t budged from their own sofa, but neither group had made much effort to speak to each other, nor amongst themselves. Jack could feel himself dozing off as he sat, the fire only meters away blasting hot air into his face, filling the room with soothing crackles, but he didn’t want to leave just yet. Once, the lights flickered off- a power outage- for a good 30 seconds, but such a thing had been mentioned on the expedition brief all that time ago, and so nobody showed much acknowledgement beyond pulling out their torches and casting the light upon each other.
After a good three hours, Sean- on his fourth cup of tea (and having subsequently made Jack four, two of which sat undrunk on the table)- finally fell back with a sigh, giving up on the remote and instead throwing his arm out mere millimetres from Jacks’ leg, his own knees bumping up against Jack’s thick cargo trousers,
“No luck with the TV. I wanted to watch Love Island.”
Jack raised an eyebrow, putting down the book he could hardly pay attention to,
“You watch Love Island?” He looked Sean up and down, caught off guard by the newfound interest.
Sean grinned,
“Nope, but it’s the only channel I know. I doubt these guys have Netflix.”
Jack hummed, looking back over at the group across the room. Ella, the girl that had been in charge of making tea, sat between another girl and the man with a cowboy hat, all three of them seeming to have fallen asleep on top of each other.
Jack opened his mouth, planning on making some remark about the others sleeping like babies, but was cut off as a huge thump came from upstairs, sending dust raining from the ceiling.
“What the-” The cowboy woke up at the noise, sitting up with wide eyes, but he didn’t get a chance to finish his sentence, as an ear-splitting scream shot through the floorboards, throwing a bucket of ice-water over anybody in the area.
It reverberated off the wooden walls, devolving into a repeat of hysterical cries as all five hikers leapt to their feet and sprinted up the stairway, footsteps loud against the wood.
The cowboy took lead, throwing open the first door in the hallway as the screams grew louder, and behind Jack, a small crowd formed of hikers clad in their night clothes.
“Oh my god! Help!” A girl was screaming, crouched beside a darkened figure on the floor. A tall man stood on the other side of the bed, face tight and hands pressed to his neck.
Jack stepped forward, heart beating wildly, Sean right beside him, brow furrowed in worry, likely already assessing the scene, looking for someone to give aid to.
The girl on the floor did not need first aid.
She lay completely prone upon the floorboards, hair splayed out about her head, skin a sickly grey. Her eyes stared blindly upwards, mouth open in a scream that never escaped her throat. Red had seeped across her chest, dripping into the pool beneath her limbs. A horrible, chilling red, that leaked from the hole in her chest, directly above her heart.
Jack stumbled forward, crouching beside the body of the girl, not daring to touch her, not daring to do anything. She lay awkwardly, limbs tight, black hair loose from where it had been tied up, her red nightgown soaked an almost black with the volume of her blood.
“What happened?”
“What’s going on?”
“Who the hell is screaming at this time of night?”
A symphony of complaints and questions echoed in the doorway, each one dying as they laid eyes on the sight of the girl.
Sean bowed his head, gently lifting the girls’ head up and pressing two fingers to the side of her neck. Jack knew what he was doing, and he knew it was useless. Sean probably knew it was useless too.
The girl was dead.
“Hey! Let me through!” Bella barged through the crowd, face set in a solemn glare, and she paused before the body, eyes widening by the slightest fraction.
“Crap.” She glanced backwards, at the crowd of hysterical hikers, and then turned back to Jack and Sean, crouching beside them,
“What the hell happened?”
Sean retracted his hand, sighing heavily, his face a perfect mask of calm,
“She’s been stabbed. Someone has stabbed her, and killed her. She is dead.”
Bella pursed her lips, hands shaking as she looked back down upon the body laid upon the floor, but she didn’t have a chance to respond, as the crying girl leapt to her feet, tears glinting in the moonlight,
“Not someone, him! He did it! He stabbed Mikayla!” She thrust one condemning hand out at the man stood by the bed, his hands never leaving his throat,
“It was him! It was him!”
The room shifted, a few people backing away from the doorway, a few people swaying on their feet at the sight of the murder.
Jack turned to the man in question, a tall, smartly dressed man with close cropped black hair.
He still stood, mouth opening and closing mutely, hands never moving from his throat as if superglued there. Panic was written across his face, tears in his eyes, blood on his sleeves.
Bella stood up, her feet staying rooted firmly in place,
“What is your name?”
As she spoke, the cowboy pushed forward, his face set and angry, and he stepped closer to the man, handcuffs dangling from his hip.
The man continued to mutely gape, shaking his head, fingernails digging into his neck as he backed away further, as if pleading, wide eyes staring at Bella in a horrified scream.
“It was him! His name is Martin and he killed her! I woke up and she was dead and he was stood there, and he had to have done it.” The girl collapsed back to her knees, sobbing over Mikaylas’ body, and the cowboy stepped forward again, roughly yanking Martins’ arms behind his back, locking them together with a decisive click.
Bella let out a quiet sigh, looking back down to the girl on the floor,
“We can’t leave, not at night. It’s too dark, and there are wolves roaming about as we speak.”
The shouts of protest quickly filled the room, crying, shouting, angry threats of leaving.
The cowboy turned back around,
“Quiet! We ain’t leaving. Not now. I got this guy, and my room has a jail cell in it, I’ll put him in there ‘till the sun comes up.” Without waiting for an answer, he roughly grabbed Martins’ shoulders, dragging him out of the room as the crowd threw themselves away from the murderer. As he went, Martin stared back at Bella, his eyes full of pleading, no remorse to be seen. His gaze shifted to Jack and Sean momentarily as he finally was dragged around the corner, and the slam of a door signalled his disappearance.
Jack looked down to the girl sobbing on the floor, slowly putting one hand over her shoulder,
“Come on, lets’ go downstairs, get you something to drink.”
Bella turned to address the room,
“Go back to your rooms, all of you. Lock the doors, stick together, and keep the lights on, okay? Don’t leave until the sun is up, and then we can work something out.”
Murmured upset echoed across the room, but the crowd diligently thinned, and as Jack guided the sobbing girl down the stairs, one gentle hand upon her back, he could see Sean solemnly pulling a stained yellow bedsheet over Mikayla’s body.
-
The kettle whistled as Jack poured the boiling water into the cup of hot chocolate upon the side, his back pressed into the corner of the kitchen in favour of being blind to the room behind him.
Zoe, the sobbing girl, sat upon the sofa with her knees tucked tight to her chest, eyes still full of tears, but no more noise coming from her mouth.
Bella finally came downstairs, Sean and Athena right behind her, just as Jack returned to the sofa, placing the mug upon the table, and quietly sitting cross legged on the floor, back pressed against the sofa. Sean joined him, knees pulled close to his chest, and for once Jack didn’t mind the pressure of somebody leaning into him.
“Are you sure it was Martin, Zoe? It couldn’t have been anyone else?” Bella gently asked, sitting down beside the tearful girl with a quiet sound.
Zoe sniffled, shaking her head,
“It must have been. There was nobody else in there, not when we went to bed, and then I heard this great crash and the man had tripped over-” She cut herself off with a sob.
Sean frowned,
“Mikayla must have been dead for hours, now. Why would he still be in the room?”
Zoe sobbed harder,
“I don’t know!”
Sean pulled a face, as though he hadn’t meant to pose the question to her,
“Right, I’m sorry. I just want to make sure everybody is safe. Are you hurt?”
Zoe shook her head, finally accepting the hot chocolate that had been abandoned upon the table,
“Do you think it isn’t him?”
The four exchanged looks with each other, eyes dark, faces tight. Athena kept her eyes low, eyebrows furrowed in thought, and Bella sighed softly,
“We just want to make sure.”
Jack folded his arms across his chest, glancing back over at Sean, feeling wholly useless now his task had been completed. He wanted to comfort the girl, but he felt sick enough himself, and wanted nothing more than to escape the lodge, damn the wolves.
He could only hope the cowboy had been truthful in his promise of detaining Martin.
Zoe continued her explanation of the night, coaxed into a slight sense of calm by Bella and Sean, leaving Jack and Athena to pace the floorboards, looking out the windows in worry.
The snow was still falling heavily, obscuring the windows, giving no suggestion as to how deep it was going to become. Jack could feel his stomach churning beneath his shirt; how much snow would it take to trap them here?
Athena seemed similarly stressed, chewing upon one nail as she paced.
After some time, as Bella calmly stood Zoe up and announced the girl would be sleeping in their shared room, Jack finally stopped pacing, nodding and uncrossing his arms.
He would sleep on the sofa, he decided. He felt that Zoe wouldn’t be happy with having to cram into a room with two random men.
It was only as Bella walked Zoe back upstairs that a flash of red caught his eye, blinking from above the fireplace.
He turned to stare at it as Sean begun to talk once again, both to Athena and himself.
Jack could feel his stomach dropping slightly as he laid eyes upon the ominous screen, half-thinking he was mistaken.
“Jack? Jack!” Sean was trying to get his attention, not having noticed what had captivated his friend so intensely.
Jack looked at the man for hardly a split-second, before raising one arm and pointing it to the screen above the fireplace, swallowing heavily,
“Um, that said fifteen before, didn’t it?”
The other two followed his finger, and Jack could see the colour draining from both of their faces.
On the TV screen, in huge bold red letters, read 14 / 3.