Josh had been doing pretty well, until the goddamn monster showed up.

He'd allowed Beth to wake him from his drunken slumber, given Mike an appropriately threatening speech, and talked Hannah out of her tears. He'd had to sacrifice his sweater to keep her warm and now he was freezing, but she was happier, and that was what mattered.

They were on their way back to the lodge, Josh animatedly discussing various ways to punish Mike, when a screech echoed through the woods around them. Josh ignored it; he'd heard that earlier, when he was tracking Hannah's footprints, and brushed it off as a particularly frightening auditory hallucination.

Apparently, it was not.

"What was that?" Hannah asked. She turned around in a circle, peering through the snow, and found nothing.

"You mean you heard it too?"

She stopped surveying the woods and looked at Josh now, her brow furrowed in confusion. "What? Of course I—" Realization dawned, and her voice softened. "Yeah, I did."

Well, shit. Josh knew a lot about Mount Washington—probably more than anyone else in his family—but clearly there was something he missed. Something that sounded dangerous.

"Hey," he said, trying to keep his tone light, "why don't we race back to the lodge? I bet I can kick your—"

Something slithered and crunched nearby, and Josh's words trailed off as a creature emerged from the trees. Its pale skin glowed bright against in the darkness, and it crouched on four long, spindly limbs, cocking its head almost curiously to the side.

Okay, creature wasn't the right word. That was no creature Josh had ever seen. That was a monster.

Hannah moved then—nothing more than the brush of her fingers against Josh's ice-cold skin, but the monster's head snapped in their direction like she'd set off an alarm. It leapt toward them with wild speed and another inhuman scream, and Hannah was off like a shot.

Josh remained frozen until he realized she was headed straight for the cliff. Jesus fuck. He'd nearly fallen off it seven years ago, back when the mountain was new and ripe for exploration, and now he knew better. But Hannah didn't. She had no idea where it was.

"Hannah!" Josh shouted, finally turning on his heel and taking off after her. He could hear the monster behind him—gaining, and gaining fast—but he pumped harder, the cold air setting his lungs on fire.

He ran until she was in his sights again, and when he screamed for her to stop, she listened, skidding to a halt just a few feet from the drop-off. She whirled around, wide eyes immediately landing on the thing behind him. She held out her hand.

Josh grabbed it and they faced the monster together, cornered like prey and paralyzed by fear. It lumbered toward them on two legs now, almost slowly, and through the terror coursing through his veins, Josh realized something. He looked at its milky-white saucer eyes, and the way it was moving its head, and something clicked.

"Hannah," he whispered. "Hannah, whatever you do, don't—"

That was when she slipped.

It happened so fast that Josh's brain didn't process anything until he was hanging from a jagged rock, his scraped palm throbbing. Hannah hung beneath him, gripping tightly to his arm.

"Holy shit!" he screamed, and his voice sounded strange, like it was coming from someone else. "Oh, fuck!"

To make things even more surreal, a masked figure appeared over the ledge. Josh flinched instinctively, wishing he could retreat somewhere, but the only way out was down.

Then the figure did something unexpected: It reached out a hand, and Josh stared at it in confusion. What the fuck was going on in Blackwood Pines?

Josh didn't have time to ask. Hannah slipped further down his arm with a whimper, and his other arm was starting to shake violently with the effort of holding them up. Her voice managed to reach him through a haze of pain and fear.

"Let me go," she begged. "Josh, please."

"Are you kidding?" he growled. "No."

The masked figure held his hand closer, and Josh pointedly ignored it.

"Josh—" Hannah started.

And that's when he lost his grip.

The first thing on Chris' mind when he woke up was Josh. He was drunk, but he'd have to be completely shitfaced not to remember the way Josh had kissed him earlier that night, his fingers threading through the hair at the nape of Chris' neck. They'd been together long enough that maybe kisses shouldn't have affected him like that, but God, they did. They always did.

Chris lifted his head from the counter and rubbed the sore spot on his forehead, frowning when he saw that Josh was no longer across from him.

"Josh?" he called groggily. He glanced around the empty kitchen before pulling himself heavily to his feet and peeking into the surrounding rooms—also empty. "Uh, anybody?" he amended.

A chill blew in from his left, and Chris turned to see that the door leading outside was open. That was weird. He could feel his anxiety kicking into high gear already, and he was tempted to grab the empty wine bottle on the counter and arm himself.

He refrained, instead sauntering toward the door with as much confidence as he could muster. "Alright, who's making snow angels out there?" he called.

"Chris!" Beth's voice was oddly high-pitched, and Chris had barely reached the threshold of the door when she barreled into him, wrapping her arms around his midsection. "Chris, I don't know to do—Josh and Hannah— "

"Whoa, slow down," Chris said. He looked down at Beth's worried face, and something like dread started to pool thick and heavy in his gut. Beth was always calm and collected. The only times he'd ever seen her lose it were when Josh—

Well, now wasn't the time to be thinking about that. But Chris' experiences with Josh had made him pretty skilled in talking people down. He lowered his voice until it was gentle and soft, and his hands squeezed Beth's shoulders encouragingly.

"Tell me what happened," he said. "Go slow."

Beth took a deep breath, and everything came pouring out. By the time she finished, Chris wished he could keep himself calm as well as he did others.

"Shit. Okay. Uh." He looked at the snow swirling in the darkness outside, then at Beth's pleading expression, and blurted the first solution that came to his mind. "I'm going after them."

He darted around Beth and into the cold, where Sam promptly blocked his path. She raised her hands like she was trying to calm a dangerous animal.

"Chris," she said, "I know you want to go find them, but I just want to tell you that's a really stupid idea."

Chris scoffed and scrambled for a snarky response. "Yeah," he said, "says who?"

Comebacks had never been his strong suit.

"Think about it," Sam implored. "Josh knows this mountain better than anyone. If anyone can find Hannah and bring her back, it's him. Sending more people out there with no sense of direction—and no cell reception—is asking for trouble."

Damn. She was right, and they both knew it, but he didn't want to go down so easily.

"That's my boyfriend out there," he argued. A weak protest, but it was his only remaining defense.

Sam looked at him sympathetically. "And that's my best friend."

They held each other's gaze for a moment before Chris kicked his heel stubbornly into the snow. "Fine," he huffed. He'd never say it out loud, but Chris knew he wouldn't last a minute before finding the nearest rock to trip over and spraining his ankle—even if he was sober. And then Josh would have to come rescue him too.

Sam nodded and looked around at the group. "If…" she started, "and I mean if they don't come back soon…we should probably think about calling the cops."

Nearly everyone started protesting, but Emily was the loudest.

"Are you kidding me?" she shouted. "And you think going into the woods is asking for trouble!"

"Em is right," Mike added. "All of us unsupervised, shitloads of alcohol, and Chris drunk off his ass? Come on."

"No, you come on, Mike," Sam snapped. "You knew how she felt about you, and you did it anyway. I don't care whose idea it was—it couldn't have happened without your participation. So take some fucking responsibility."

Mike fell back, speechless. Near Chris, Ashley wrapped her arms around herself and stared into the forest with frightened eyes. "If they're really lost out there…" she mumbled.

"Josh wouldn't get lost," Chris said, with more than a little edge in his voice. Ashley shrunk away from him, looking even more scared, and he immediately regretted his response. "He just—he wouldn't, okay?" Chris caught another flash of sympathy in Sam's eyes, and he turned away from the group, hoping his voice didn't betray the emotion that must've been written all over his face. His eyes swept over the surrounding woods, and he nearly prayed to a deity he didn't believe in to let them come back. Please, fuck, let them come back.

He kept his gaze fixed on the trail like that might actually work. When his half-assed prayers weren't answered, Chris huffed another sigh, fighting against the panic that was starting to bloom in his chest.

"Let's just go inside and see what happens."

This is what happened: Josh and Hannah didn't come back. They called the cops. The police office took one tired look at them and subjected them all to a Breathalyzer test—which they all failed, rather spectacularly—and Chris thanked fuck for the Canadian drinking age. The last thing the Washingtons needed on top of two missing children was multiple charges for supplying alcohol to minors.

The police insisted that they couldn't file missing persons' reports so soon, but Sam argued with them until they agreed to send out a search party. Something about snow and darkness and dangerous conditions… Chris couldn't really focus on what she was saying, but she sounded convincing.

The search party didn't find them. Not that night, or the next day, or the day after that. It had snowed so thickly that there weren't any footprints by the time they started looking, so the problem wasn't that the trail ran cold; it was that there was no trail to begin with.

Chris flew home next to an empty seat while Bob Washington held a press conference, tearfully pleading for anyone with information about Josh and Hannah's whereabouts to please step forward. It was a shot in the dark, of course, because it was the Washington's mountain, and Bob had a minor reputation for suing trespassers into the next dimension, but it was worth a try. Having Josh and Hannah home safely, he insisted, was all that mattered to him.

For once, he and Chris were on the same page.

When Josh woke up, everything hurt. For a long, almost blissful moment the pain was enough to block his memories, but then it wasn't, and he remembered.

"Hannah." His voice was rough and cracked, and when his eyes fluttered open, he saw nothing but rock, towering above him into oblivion. He turned his head to the side and saw Hannah lying on her back next to him, facing away. He croaked her name again, louder this time.

When she didn't respond, Josh started a slow roll onto his stomach, yelping in pain when his weight landed on his arm—which, now that he looked at it, didn't look exactly like a functioning arm should.

The sight made his head spin, and he breathed deeply through the lightheaded feeling. "Okay," he murmured to himself. "Your arm's broken. It's fine. You're fine. Just…roll the other way."

He followed his own instructions, turning onto his stomach from the other direction and achingly pulling himself to his knees. Braced against the ground with his good arm, he noticed that the nails on three of his fingers were torn off. Tracks of dried blood ran down to his wrist.

"Shit, that's gross," he hissed. The sight of dried blood also made him wonder how long he'd been out, and when he looked upward for confirmation, he saw pale winter light. The ledge was there, but it was far—far and steep. There was no way he could climb it, even if both of his arms were working.

Right this second, though, that didn't really matter. What mattered was Hannah. He crawled around to the other side of her body, whispering her name like a mantra that cut off into a choked sound the second he saw her face. Slack-jawed and lifeless, she stared into the space around Josh's knees with wide, unseeing eyes.

"No," he blurted, his voice thick and garbled. "Fucking no. This is not happening."

He reached with his working arm and pressed his fingers to the side of her neck. He flinched at how cold her skin was, but he kept his hand where it was, determined feel some sign of life beat back against his fingertips. When nothing happened, he checked the other side of her neck, her wrists, and her chest; finally, he lowered himself to his side and listened for a breath, the shell of his ear almost brushing against her frigid lips.

He didn't hear anything.

"Hannah," Josh whispered, this time like a plea. He pulled back to look at her face and gently straightened her broken glasses. "Hannah, please. Please wake up. I can't—"

Something inside him cracked just then, and Josh lost himself. Curled next to his sister's corpse, he cried into the ground until his eyes burned. It was a long time before he regained some semblance of composure, and when he did, he met Hannah's unwavering gaze.

"I'm going to get us the fuck out of here, okay?" he said. "I am not leaving you."

Josh sealed the promise with a kiss to her forehead, hauled himself to his feet, and started looking for another way out.

Thursday, Feb. 6, 11:42 p.m.

hey

i know this is…stupid

its not like you can read this, and tbh if you come back i dont think i want you to

and yes, i KNOW you hate facebook, but the police have confiscated your phone, so…

hey

speaking of fb, everyone's been leaving ridiculous messages on your wall. your dad went on tv, so now the whole world knows, and anybody who's so much as looked at you is writing about how much they miss you and hope you come home soon

that probably shouldn't make me angry, but it does

i feel like you would get that

anyway…i do miss you

and i hope you come soon

bye

The mines were endless. At least, that's how they felt. On top of that, Josh's watch was shattered, and he'd left his phone on the kitchen counter like a complete dumbass. He'd found Hannah's phone after working up the courage to fish through her pockets, but it was broken—a problem he'd only exacerbated by throwing it against the rock wall in a fit of anger.

If he was stuck down here, he'd at least like to know what goddamn time it was.

Instead, he obeyed his body clock to the best of his ability and spent the first few days doing nothing but exploring. Years of roaming the mountain and countless hours of video games had actually come in handy, and his sense of direction was better than average, but this place was a fucking maze. Every day he branched off in different directions, leaving a trail of rocks to guide his way back, and every day he hit dead end after dead end.

After a few days of no rescue, no food, and no progress, Josh realized he needed to stop looking for a way out and start focusing on survival.

But first, he had another problem to take care of: Hannah.

Every night he came back to her, and every night she looked and smelled worse. He'd pushed the idea out of his mind for as long as possible, but when he stumbled across a shovel during one of his wanderings, it was practically a neon sign: Bury her already, jackass.

So he did. The digging took hours, and it was exhausting. Josh stayed up well past the point when his body told him to go to sleep, breathing heavy in the cold, stale air as the hole grew deeper and deeper.

He forced himself to stop when black spots started to creep into his vision, and he knew he couldn't stay conscious much longer. This shouldn't have been that hard, but after no food or water… His stomach grumbled on cue and he ignored it, dropping the shovel to the ground and dragging Hannah toward the hole.

Her foot had just started to dip over the edge when Josh realized that she was still wearing his sweater. And the mines were very cold. God damn it.

He tugged lightly on Hannah's sleeve, pulling it toward him, and he was surprised at how easily her limbs moved. He raised both of her arms before carefully sliding the sweater off her head, knocking her glasses askew in the process.

"Sorry," he said, meaning it for the glasses, but then thinking about the sweater and the monster and everything else that had led them to this point. Josh dropped to his knees and buried his face in his sore, dirty hand. "Fuck, I'm sorry."

He lowered Hannah carefully into the makeshift grave and fixed her glasses one last time, apologizing with nearly every shovelful of dirt he tossed onto her body. By the time he was done, he was so tired that he collapsed right there on the mound of dirt, curled up like a cat, head resting on a stolen sweater.

Friday, Feb. 7, 5:13 p.m.

hey (again)

sorry i'm being clingy af, but i just had a major panic attack in the middle of my chem lab and idk what to do

you're the one who always talks me down

my mom said i could take the rest of the semester off but idk

i think that i need the distractions maybe

idk

today i nearly got rammed by a biker bc i was looking at my phone and i almost called to tell you the dramatic story of my near-death

every time my phone buzzes i think its you

like this is one of your dumb schemes and you're just going to pop up out of the blue

"surprise!"

did you just want to see how much i need you or something?

is that what this is?

bc it worked!

i need you a lot!

you can come out now!

[insert obligatory gay joke here]

alright?

bye

Josh had only one thing on his mind when he woke up: water. He'd found some on his first day, but the thought of drinking from that murky, likely disease-ridden water was repulsive to say the least, and he hadn't been that desperate.

Now he was. Between the exertion and the crying and the fact that it had been days since he'd last had something to drink, he couldn't wait any longer.

He pulled on the sweater and stumbled off Hannah's grave, dropping rocks almost lazily behind him. He found the appropriate cavern and knelt down at the ledge. As if drinking from this shit wasn't bad enough, Josh had nothing to hold water and a useless arm. Cupping his hands together wasn't really an option. He'd have to go face-first.

He lowered himself onto his stomach and pushed himself until he was partway over the edge. He hovered for a moment, lips just inches above the dark surface, and tried not to think about what might be lurking in those depths. Instead he closed his eyes, took a few steady breaths, and plunged his face into the water.

It tasted terrible, but it felt cool against his dry, parched throat, and Josh sucked in as many mouthfuls as he could manage. When his thirst was at least somewhat relieved, he pulled himself back from the edge and lay back on the hard ground. He stared at the high ceiling, listening to the sounds of his stomach gurgle as it tried to keep the water down.

That had taken so little effort, but already he was tired. He wondered idly what his friends and family were doing, wondered what they would think if they knew he'd seen a monster and fallen off a cliff and buried his sister.

A monster, Josh? his mother asked. Are you sure?

How do we know this isn't another one of your stories, hmm? His dad this time.

It's real! Josh squeaked. He was tiny, just a kid. I promise! Hannah saw it too!

His mom looked at him skeptically. Why doesn't Hannah tell us what she saw?

Because she's dead!

His parents threw their heads back in laughter, and his mom reached toward him to pinch his cheeks. Oh, Josh. Such an imagination.

You'll make a great writer one day, kid, his dad agreed, wiping a tear from the corner of his eye.

I'm serious! Josh insisted, and his breath caught in his throat as a hand wrapped around each of his parent's throats—the monster's hands, long spindly fingers with sharp nails that dug into soft skin. A few drops of blood trickled from the puncture wounds on his parents' necks, but they didn't seem to notice. It's right behind you! he screamed, frantic now. Turn around!

His parents laughed louder, so loud that Josh had to cover his ears. He watched as the disembodied hands crawled up his parents' faces, brushing almost gently over their features. The claws settled on top of his parents' heads, nails piercing new wounds. Rivulets of blood trailed down his parents' cheeks, into their open mouths. The hands twisted then, hard and fast, and Josh saw his parents' necks snap with simultaneous cracks.

They were still laughing.

Josh woke with a start, gasping and sweating on the hard ground. He hoisted himself into a sitting position, and his stomach clenched painfully. He managed a garbled "fuck" before he was throwing up. It was mostly liquid—there wasn't enough food in his system for anything more substantial—but it burned in his mouth nonetheless, leaving an acrid taste on his tongue. By the time he finished heaving, he was pretty sure he'd kill someone for a toothbrush.

He waited until his stomach settled before trying to stand. Standing was hard. Josh's head swam, and for a second he thought he was going to fall and break his other arm, but then his head cleared a little. He shook it off.

"Okay," he rasped. "You're okay. Not dead yet, Washington."

He spared a glance at the water, stomach muscles tightening at the mere thought of having to drink it again. "Hey," he said to himself. "Hey, hey, hey. It's not so bad. Maybe it's like, an acquired taste, you know? Like fancy wine. You like fancy wine, Joshy."

He started making his way back to Hannah, and he had just turned down the hall that led to her when he saw it. The monster. Perched on top of Hannah's grave with its back to Josh, pawing through the dirt and chittering like it had found buried treasure.

Josh could feel himself boiling with rage. This was the root of his problems, the source of his misery. This was the thing to blame, for everything. It had sent Hannah tumbling to her death, sent Josh to this labyrinth, and now it was—what, exactly? Digging up his sister's corpse to hang it up in its lair like a fucking trophy?

"Oh, no," Josh whispered. "No, no, no. Over my dead body, motherfucker."

He glanced around for something, anything, and his eyes landed on a rock from his breadcrumb trail. Perfectly sized for a monster head. Bingo. He sunk slowly to the ground, praying his knees wouldn't crack, and grabbed the rock. Clenching it tightly in his fist, he crept toward the opening of another room and crouched behind a small rock wall. Then he thanked God for not breaking his throwing arm, kissed the rock, and flung it straight at the monster's head.

If Josh ever made it out of this hell-hole alive, he made a mental note to thank his parents for years of mandatory Little League. His target hit the mark, slamming into the back of the monster's bald little head, and Josh had to try very hard not to yell in triumph. The monster screeched wildly, one clawed hand coming up to rub the point of impact, and then it whirled around in search of the culprit.

Of all the reckless shit Josh had done in his short time on earth, this definitely topped the list. He had, in reality, no idea whether this thing was actually blind or just looked blind, no idea whether it was indeed movement that it sensed—and this was, by anyone's standards, the worst way to test that theory. Josh's eyes were still poking out above the low rock wall, and if this thing could see literally anything, it was going to be on him before he could blink.

But it wasn't. In fact, it did the same thing it had done on the cliff: curious head-cocking, its eyes sweeping blindly over Josh's exposed head. It clicked and purred and then let out another screech before leaping off Hannah's grave.

Holy shit, this thing can move. Josh had been too busy running for his life on the cliff to see just how fast it could go, but now he understood. It cleared the distance between them in a few spry jumps, and when it had passed the wall Josh was hiding behind, Josh ducked completely behind it. Out of sight, he reached for two more rocks, checked to make sure them monster still had its back to him, and launched one of them in a high arc. He aimed it to land in front of the monster—to appear, for all intents and purposes, like it had come from above.

He was spot-on again. When the rock clattered in front of the monster, its head jerked up and then back down, and Josh took advantage of that moment to throw his second rock as far along the far wall as he could manage. The monster let out of a wail, leapt onto the wall, and then—Josh had to blink to make sure he wasn't imagining this—stuck to it. Like a crazy, terrifying cat.

Holy shitting fuck.

Josh watched in awe as it crawled up, seemingly unaffected by the laws of gravity. It looked back in the direction of Hannah's grave, and for a split second Josh imagined the monster going back for Hannah anyway—slinging her over its shoulder, possibly flipping him off, and then cackle-screeching as it took the only thing that gave Josh any sense of purpose.

Instead, it let out an angry hiss and continued, up and up and up until it was out of Josh's sight.

Josh waited until he couldn't hear the clicking of its claws, and then he waited some more. Finally he took a breath.

"Holy shit," he wheezed. "Holy… I mean. I. The plan was to…to get it into another room, but you know, wall-climbing works too." He let out a hiccupping laugh and clapped a hand over his mouth. "Jesus Christ," he murmured against his fingers.

Josh hauled himself to his feet and tentatively approached the wall it had climbed, half-expecting it to be waiting, hanging upside down like a fucking spider ready to catch its prey. But it wasn't. Josh squinted into the darkness until he was sure—well, as sure as he could be—that he was alone, and then he checked on Hannah.

Her body was undamaged, but the fucker was definitely trying to dig her up, and it'd nearly done it, too. Josh had no idea what it could possibly want with a corpse, but he was determined not to let it have her. If that meant reburying Hannah in a different spot every day, so fucking be it.

Josh was going to protect his sister, or he was going to die trying.