climbing up the walls

The burial doesn’t hurt any less the second time around. 

It’s morbid and grisly and it makes her wrists ache, because digging graves without shovels is hard and dirty and no one should ever have to fucking do it. No one should ever have to feel the way charred skin slides off of cooked flesh, or see the way congealed blood slides across their hands, or know the exact weight of their soccer coaches' detached leg in their arms. 

But Nat does. 

She tries to justify it. Forcing herself through the wringer. Maybe, if the rest of the team are shielded from trauma, from the raw, brutal, desperate reality of these fucking awful woods, then they won’t lose their humanity. Not like last time. They won’t spiral and draw cards from decks like death is a fated queen or drive axes into the back of hiker’s heads or beat each other’s faces out of pent up rage. Not if Nat can fucking help it.

The ceremony, the funeral, if you can even call it that, is quick and dignified and almost proper. And if she cries, it’s only because she remembers returning here, once, when the ground was solid and the birds had flocked their nests, with a bag of bones clacking over her shoulder. Remembers talking to Jackie’s fucking remains. 

When all is said and done they pack up their makeshift camp and throw together a shoddy stretcher for crippled Coach Ben, who is still delirious and writhing, and make a start for the lake. This time, the trek is faster. With every step she takes, fuzzy memories unveil themselves. She knows the dips and rises of this terrain. She knows the way to the water. Lottie walks alongside her. She’s quiet, pensive, not quite present, her eyes focused within, and Nat can’t quite figure out what’s got her so silent. She’s unreadable, inscrutable, like that. 

Behind them the girls form a winding line, Coach Ben being lugged on his stretcher at the very back. Misty never strays from his side, drunk on adoration, and that, at least, cracks a smile out of Lottie when Nat points it out to her. She’d forgotten about Misty’s weird, obsessive, fucking infatuation. 

“Oh my god!” Van calls breathlessly when they descend the slope and the sun struck water comes into view. “Guys, come on!” She rushes past Nat and Lottie, streaking off her clothes as she pounds across the cobbled stones towards the tidemark. 

Nat glances across at Lottie. “You wanna?” After all, the water does look cool and refreshing, and god is she in need of it. She feels fucking disgusting. There’s grime and dirt and blood caked under her fingernails like glue, and she can feel the sweat permeating off of her body from the exertion of grave digging.

Lottie is quiet, tense. “You can.” She follows Nat towards the edge of the stones, and drops her luggage down against the floor. She looks nervous. “I think I’m gonna stay here.”

Nat shrugs. “If you’re sure.” 

Nat peels off of her clothes, dropping them onto the pebbles beside Lottie. Her shirt ends up draped over the tips of Lot’s toes, the collar edging towards the water in the breeze, the fabric slowly soaking. Nat reaches to snatch it back but Lottie is faster; as she swoops her hand down Lottie’s fingers brush against hers. Wordlessly she takes it, and sets it down over her bent knees to dry out the dampness.

“Thanks,” Nat says quietly, and swallows. Lottie only smiles, and god, Nat hasn’t realised how much she missed it until then. It’s so…reassuring, sweet, homely. She could’ve done with it for the past twenty five shitty years. 

Nat pads into the water. It’s cold and electrifying against her bare skin, and her muscles twitch to life the deeper she goes. It’d be beautiful if the circumstances were different, picturesque; it’s clear, reflective, so clean that she can taste it in the afternoon air. 

This time, she goes all in with reckless abandon. She swims and dips under the rippling surface and starts water fights with Travis and even ends up on his shoulders; they’re strong and familiar and safe, and she knows that romance is stupid and pointless but the musky scent of his tan skin almost shatters her resolve. She laughs and kicks her feet at his sides and ignores the probing gazes of the other girls, revelling in the way his hair slides through her fingers and her thighs fit around his neck. 

It feels perfect. It feels like home. 

Until her eyes fall to the shore.

Until her eyes fall to Lottie.

She’s staring right at her. Face still. Nat’s damp t-shirt clutched tight in her hand. Gaze deeper than the waters. 

Nat swallows.

“Nat?” He mumbles, realising that she’s fallen quiet. “You good?”

Nat blinks away from Lottie. “Yeah, yeah,” she dismisses. “I think I’m gonna go get dry.”

Travis shrugs, but lets her down back into the water. It feels colder than before, raw against her bare skin, shocking her system back to the reality of everything. Of the fact that as nice as this is, bathing the blood and dirt away, they shouldn’t be wasting any time if they can help it; the sunset won’t wait for them, and neither will the imminent threat of the creatures lurking in the woods. She remembers what happened to Van last time. She can almost see the scar ghosting across her cheek.

Nat manages to coax everyone out of the lake and onto the shore where they pull back on their clothes. Lottie hands her the t-shirt wordlessly, their fingers brushing once more. Lottie’s hands are warm like a furnace, sizzling against Nat’s water-cooled skin; they balance out each other’s temperature perfectly, and a shot of electricity zips up Nat’s arm.

“Thanks,” Nat shrugs. She doesn’t wait for a response before marching toward the treeline.

—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When they reach the cabin the sun is beginning to fall below the mountains, the forest washed by the amber sunset glow. The temperature drops and her skin begins to tingle against the buzzing air, and she has to squeeze her leather jacket tighter around her shoulders. It’s not a horrible, biting cold, though; not like the cold that took Jackie.

“Here it is,” Nat announces when the little shack comes into view, and a dozen relieved gasps echo in response. She hangs back as the team hurries past her and bursts inside, hangs back as the flurry of stagnant dust flies out of the door, hangs back until she’s helped Misty fit Coach Ben and his stretcher safely through. 

Everything about the cabin is exactly as Nat remembers. The stone fireplace where they cooked bear, and later Javi in her place. The little bedroom where she messed about with Travis, where she found comfort and companionship. The makeshift bathroom with the little tub where she’d bathed a shivering Lottie and bandaged the slit on her palm and hid her offering to the wilderness behind cloth. The pantry where the ladder sat to the loft with the mummified corpse of cabin guy-

Cabin guy.

Nat spins back and looks through the open door to find exactly what she expected. Lottie, standing stock still in the foreground of the cabin, her feet planted firmly against the dry earth.

“Lot?” She calls, and steps out into the air. With a gentle click, she pulls the door closed behind her. Then, firmer, “Lottie.” 

Lottie doesn’t say a word, her features still, mouth cemented into a line. She’s fixing her gaze on the little attic window, her fists balled at her sides. Nat knows what she’s seeing. What she’s looking for.

“Look, I’ll get rid of him,” Nat offers without really thinking it through, scrubbing a hand across her goosebumped neck. “I can go bury him somewhere, or something-”

“No.” Lottie suddenly cuts her off, voice sharp and sure. “Don’t.”

Nat furrows her brows. “I thought-”

Lottie shakes her head. “No.” She takes a step closer to Nat. “Not yet.”

Nat sighs. “It’s just a body,” she breathes, exasperated. “It doesn’t- it doesn’t mean anything. Just come inside, Lot. The others need us.”

Lottie’s jaw grinds a little, her tongue passing once across her pink lips. “I just- I still feel like this place is bad.” She moves towards the wooden steps, and strokes a hand across one of the dusty support beams. “Like it’s dark. Like we shouldn’t be here.”

“Oh please!” Nat exclaims. “Lottie, you know better than anyone what happens when you- when we- do this. You can’t be thinking like this-”

“You talk like this is easy for me.” Her voice is light, but her gaze is not. There’s a wallowing pain masked behind it, trapped in the cosmos of her brain. “This is hard for me too, Natalie. I don’t want to think like this either.”

“What do you mean?” Nat questions. It doesn’t sound like Lottie.

“I never chose this,” she explains, and takes a careful seat on the porch floor, her legs bent over the edge. “I didn’t choose to think this way the first time. I didn’t have a choice. It spoke to me. And…I think it gave a sense of comfort to the others. Made them feel like there was a reason.”

Nat joins her, sitting a few inches away. 

“It comforted me, too,” she continues, looking down at her hands clasped in her lap. “But then when I got back- in Switzerland- I wasn’t so sure anymore. I…I got medicated, and got a new shrink, and then I moved back to New Jersey and started Green Pine and I didn’t get them anymore. The visions.”

“Green Pine?” Nat ventures.

“Green Pine is the camp I run. The community,” Lottie says, and there’s a prideful little smile decorating her apple cheeks. Her face glows and Nat almost wants to reach out and feel it. “Anyways. I stopped believing in the things I’d seen. The things it had told me. And I was sure, so sure, that the things I saw didn’t mean anything. That it was just psychosis like the Doctors said. But now…”

“Now that you’re back you feel it again,” Nat finishes. “You’re believing.”

Lottie shrugs. “I wouldn’t say believing. Not yet, at least.” She sucks in a sharp breath through her nose. “But I’m feeling something again. I felt it from the moment I woke up in that plane.” 

Nat holds her breath, making sure Lottie is finished. “Maybe it’s the memory of being back here making you feel like that?” she suggests. “I don’t know. It’s stupid.”

“It’s not,” Lottie assures. “What you said holds true. Places hold memories. The environment can trigger feelings.”

She doesn’t say anything more. The quiet that settles over them is peaceful, like the unbroken surface of a shimmering pool. Behind them, the cabin hums, the muffled chatter of a dozen teenagers warming the air. The sound of it makes something odd wash over Nat; a peculiar, twisted, wrongful feeling of longing.

“It wasn’t all that bad,” Nat suddenly says, surprising even herself. Lottie snaps her head up to look up at her. “Being here. At first, at least. Before…” She doesn’t need to say it. Before Laura Lee. Before Jackie. Before Javi. 

Lottie stays quiet and just stares. Nat takes a shuddering breath. She suddenly feels exposed, like Lottie’s dark eyes are staring right through her, piercing into her soul and nestling into the little nook of her brain reserved for the memories of the last twenty five years of her life. The memories of how, sometimes, she felt worse at home- if she could even call it that- than she had out here, in this hell. 

“Are you sure you don’t want me to get rid of it?” Nat switches topics abruptly and jumps up from her seat. “It’s no big deal. I can do it.”

Lottie rises gracefully to join her. “I said no,” she reaffirms, and treads towards the cabin door. “I- I’d like to try something, tonight. If you’ll join me.”

Nat is perplexed. “What…with everyone?” 

Lottie shakes her head, and pulls open the door.

“No. Just us.”