ㅤ✕ㅤ CH. 3;
THE WINTER'S END ✕ㅤ CHAPTER FIVE!chapter
chapter
three
three
timothy, if anything, is not an insomniac. he may toss and turn to make the bed comfortable, but as soon as his head hits the pillow, he’s out like a light. timothy doesn’t do restlessness, which is why it’s a slight surprise that an hour after everyone’s retired to bed and damien’s switched off the lights, he’s wide awake, lying on his side.
the sheets are comfortable enough, albeit slightly musty-smelling, and they’re of the soft, plush variety that primarily existed in hotels. the washingtons were incredibly accommodating, if not anything else. they’re cool to the touch, smooth against his skin, and yet he can think of nothing else except for what he saw in the woods.
what he described to kimberly when she was climbing the tree, frankly, was an understatement. he doesn’t think that he’ll ever be able to properly describe the hulking figure looming behind a few trees, the unnatural shape of the silhouette and the stillness of it before it ran off with superhuman speed as kimberly fell from the tree. it still draws shivers out of him when he conjures up the memory, hours after, and he draws the covers tighter to his body, goosebumps rising.
he has to find out what that creature is.
every bone in his body is protesting against the idea, but he’s more frightened by the fact that it’s out there, unidentified. there’s no doubt it was something paranormal; these mountains have always attracted attention in the worst possible ways. identifying the cryptid would at least allow them to fortify their defenses at the lodge, should the thing have a taste for human flesh.
after contemplating the pros and cons for a while longer ( the biggest con being that it was freezing outside ), timothy threw the comforter off him, sitting up in bed and toeing on his socks. damian is still softly snoring when he pulls a sweater over his shirt and wraps his blue scarf around his neck, and, as an afterthought, the young man fluffs up his pillows and draws the blanket over the lumps. no need for damian to start panicking if he woke up before timothy would be gone, and it wouldn’t do for him to return half an hour later with the cabin in chaos, especially with what happened the year previous.
he unplugs his phone, the screen briefly lighting up to show his homescreen ( the selfie with damien he took earlier that evening! ) before he stuffs it in his back pocket. with everyone asleep in the cabin, it doesn’t take much effort for him to stay as quiet as a mouse, despite the small creaking of the steps as he pads down the stairs.
he thinks he’s in the clear halfway across the living room, ready to shrug on three coats and step into the freezing air, when a voice hoarsely calls out, “tim…?”
timothy eeps, a startled sound that he immediately clasps his hands around, and he turns his head towards the living room couch where the sound originated from.
nathan is sitting up and sleepily staring back, hair sticking up on one side and wrapped in a blanket. he looks vulnerable almost, the drowsiness softening his usually-alert gaze that would have half of their friend group uncomfortably on edge.
timothy cautiously brings his hands away from his mouth. “what are you doing awake?” he asks in a low voice, afraid of speaking any louder.
the older rubs the sleep out of his eyes. “your steps are loud.”
timothy sheepishly smiles. oops.
nathan notices his attire, his eyesight acute even in the dark. “what are you doing up? where are you going?” then his gaze becomes more alert, more critical. “tim, don’t tell me you’re going outside.”
it’s with great satisfaction that he tells the other, “i’m going outside.” it’s less satisfying to have nathan shake his head adamantly, fixing him with a glare.
“you’re kidding me,” he says flatly. “it’s ing freezing outside. i’m not letting you go be an idiot in the cold.”
timothy musters up the most serious look he can. “look, nathan. there’s something out there. skulking around in the forest. when i was with kimmy grabbing her camera, i- i saw it. we aren’t alone on this mountain.” he huffs, at a loss of words, and starts wildly gesticulating with his hands. “there’s something… out there. watching us. it’s safer for us if we know what it is, in case anything happens and we have to defend ourselves.”
when nathan doesn’t seem to budge, he lets his voice drop, vulnerable. “nathan, i think it’ll be connected to what happened last year. we’ll be able to finally find out what happened to julia and aiden.”
nathan tenses, eyes steel, and the change in sleepy and apathetic to stark hostility is a shock. “using them to chase after some imaginary cryptid is low, even for you, timothy.” his voice is bitingly cold.
he can feel his own temper rising. “it’s not imaginary,” timothy bites back, marching to the door to grab his coats hanging beside it. his eyes feel hot. “and i never asked for your permission, anyway, nathan. you can go back to sleep, and not care about why we came up here to begin with. i’m going to go outside, and- and i’m going to get to the bottom of whatever the heck is going on on this mountain, and i’m going to find their bodies by myself- ”
he doesn’t realize frustrated tears are forming until he’s angrily tugging on his second coat, and suddenly nathan’s by his side, running warm hands along his arms, slowing down his hurried movements.
“calm down, tim.” nathan sounds tired, in a different way this time. “i jumped to conclusions, i’m sorry for saying that. i see you’re serious about this.”
timothy speedily wipes his eyes with the back of his hand as fingers help him pull his coat sleeves over his hoodie, tight against his arms. “i’m gonna bring them back to their parents,” he mumbles, almost numbly. “i’m gonna give them a proper burial… not… not give them empty graves in the cemetery. they deserve more than that.”
“they do,” nathan replies, almost in a soothing tone. “you’re right, they deserve more.”
timothy is still looking at the ground when nathan walks away from him, willing the heat away from his eyes, but he looks up when he hears the shuffling of fabric and sees the older pull on his sweater and gloves. “what are you- ”
“i’m not letting you go be an idiot in the cold,” nathan repeats, and then surprises timothy by adding a chiding “alone, at least.” he finds his earmuffs resting on the coffee table and pulls them over his head. “i don’t want a repeat of last year.”
timothy stands for a second in stunned surprise as nathan laces his boots, standing to walk past him and open the door. “after you,” he says.
the trek out through the forest is nice enough, or as nice as it could be in the cold. could’ve been worse, timothy thinks. the blizzard wasn’t set to arrive until early morning, and there were still several hours between them and the snow fleet. the slight sheet falling at the moment was a countdown for the two regardless, a premonition of the storm to come. the snow crunches beneath their feet as timothy breathes into his scarf, thankful for the barrier between the lower half of his face and the below-zero temperatures.
nathan is quietly walking alongside him, lost in his thoughts. either that, or mentally calculating how far they’ve walked already from the cabin, he doesn’t know. nathan was always hard to read, even when the twins had introduced him to their group, and though nathan stood several centimeters shorter than him, timothy has never felt smaller in his life than standing beside the older.
nathan wasn’t ever accommodating even when the eleven of them were still together, he thinks with a twist of his lips. parker was undoubtedly the hardest individual to get along with in the group aside from aiden, but the pair were always easy to read, for the most part. if aiden didn’t want to talk, he would irritably snap, and even when he did, it was hard to find him any more dangerous than a grumpy cat. he was short-tempered enough that nobody paid too much attention to his mood swings.
it was harder for timothy to find parker as charming in his eyes as aiden was, ironically enough. granted, parker cared for them all in his odd ways, his compliments veiled insults, but aside from the twins (and, he supposes, kimberly), parker was difficult to socialize with. he was someone who didn’t appreciate human company in general, but he’d do anything for the nam siblings, even if he thought it was beneath him (timothy doesn’t know if he really thought this or not, but parker was snooty enough that he wouldn’t doubt the truth to the thought).
nathan, he thinks, flip-flops easily between falling into a father figure role and someone absolutely unreadable. he engages in group activities, but he’ll be outright hostile to some of the others in their friend group, if the conversation permits. the older humors timothy and his paranormal theories, contributing easily to the discussion, but otherwise doesn’t share a word with him if timothy doesn’t start chatting first. he gnaws at his lower lip, wondering if he’ll have to speak up again this time to break the fragile silence hanging in the air.
nathan stops in his tracks before timothy has the opportunity to. “tim,” he says, “where are we?”
“huh?” timothy responds intelligently. when nathan’s expression shutters into something less friendly, the younger quickly looks around and takes in his surroundings. “we passed by where the cable cars should be, i think… the fire tower’s old structure should be somewhere around here.”
nathan begins walking again, so timothy takes that as an invitation to fall in step alongside him. “old structure?”
“i don’t think the washingtons rebuilt the tower after its collapse,” timothy answers honestly, “back when they still owned the property. they found an old mine right beneath the lodge.”
the narrow forest path expands into a clearing with rickety wooden steps, and timothy takes the moment to gawk at just how high up they’ve travelled along the side of the mountain when he can see where the cliffside drops into rubble, not even noticing the incline of the trail until the moment they had stopped.
“those steps don’t look too safe,” timothy says nervously. the wood, weathered and obviously needing repair, was the only path ahead to the other side of the cliff. thick rope was the only thing that separated them from falling to their deaths, if a strong breeze blew by.
nathan fixes a look on him. “it was your idea to come out here, dora the explorer. if you’re done, we can go back to the cabin.”
should they? they had been walking for some time already, with no movement in the woods except theirs and possibly a few deer minding their own business. timothy had no idea what the time was in between them and the blizzard, but the sheet of snow fallen had begun to thicken, and he didn’t want to be found frozen to death because he had acted recklessly on some feeling in his gut.
the younger purses his lips, examining the bridge, and then the other side of the cliff parallel to their position. it’s a little too dark to ascertain what was waiting across the steps, and so he burrows out his phone from the pocket of his outmost jacket, pawing at the screen to tap his flashlight function on with thick gloves.
“i can’t see what’s on the other side,” he says aloud, squinting against the snowflakes falling on his lashes. he holds his phone up, a beacon of light cutting through the gloomy atmosphere.
“there’s nothing on the other side,” nathan responds dryly, but then takes a few steps forward. “wait, there is something.”
timothy’s hand does not shake. “something moving?” something alive?
nathan takes a while to respond. he belatedly realizes that the older is squinting just as harshly as he was to gaze through the snow. “no… it’s reflecting your phone light.”
that most definitely solidifies timothy’s plans to travel across the bridge, because there’s little to nothing nature-made that will reflect light at night, and if anything could offer clues about what had happened the previous year or what he had seen in the forest, he’ll take it.
( he does not yelp while tip-toeing across the creaking steps, displacing snow that scatters beneath him and softly clatters against the rocks. nathan sees right through his ruse and rolls his eyes, making it across in half the time timothy took. )
they find what exactly reflected the light from timothy’s phone. a few steps further to the left found them in front of a decrepit shed of some sorts, the wall of a cliff on the other side and the doors having already rotted away. it provided no shelter in regards to the snow, but it did house framed photographs of various sizes, all sitting in snow that had piled up around them throughout winter. shriveled flowers sat in unpolished vases, its petals crumbling in the clumsy thickness of timothy’s gloves when he reached out to touch.
nathan points towards one of the photo frames, angled out the door and towards the bridge. “that’s what reflected your light.”
“but what are they?” timothy asks.
the older bends down, surveying the photos. “they look old. they’re all black-and-white.” nathan picks up one of the frames, examining the smiling faces immortalized. “you said there was a mining system here, right?”
timothy looks at the photos surrounding them, shock dousing his system. “this must be a memorial site for the missing miners,” he tells nathan, his thoughts racing. “they- they released names to the media, after police came up here to investigate.”
nathan sets the frame down, picks up another one. “this one is newer. they look too young to be miners.” timothy looks over. he recognizes them instantly, with a sudden wave of sympathy washing over him. “oh…”
“you know them?”
“these are the washington children.” he delicately takes the frame from nathan’s hands. “they were all reported to be dead.”
he wonders how the washingtons felt, having lost their three kids to tragedy. how the younger washingtons’ group of friends felt, having come to this mountain not once, but twice, and after their second trip refusing to talk to the media about what exactly had happened during their one-night stay. looking at their faces in the photo and wiping accumulated snow from the inner corners of the frame, he feels a strangely detached sense of deja vu, a peculiar feeling like he could do nothing but watch history loop endlessly.
nathan shifts his weight from one foot to another. “what... happened to them?”
timothy sets the picture down back where the older had picked it up from, nestled in a corner among others who have most likely perished. “the twins went missing one year, and their brother went missing the next. their group of friends burned down the cabin and just demanded that the police send troops into the mines.”
“which they did,” nathan confirmed.
“for a little bit.” timothy walks out of the shed, feeling unsettled. “after a few days of investigating, canadian police called off the search and shut the case down. they said officers were going missing, and then they declared the mountain off limits to the public.”
the silence that follows afterwards is almost amiable. “there are theories about what happened, though,” he says. he turns off his flashlight in an effort to conserve battery life and zips his phone back up into his pocket. “stuff about there being wendigos here.”
to that, nathan sharply exhales. “all these people dead, and you can still find time to talk about wendigos.” he steps past timothy with swift strides, looks back with his arms extended in an exasperated manner. “look, i’d love to talk to you about these things, but it’s dark and my socks are wet, so can we go back now? you can tell me in full detail what you saw when we’re sitting in front of the fireplace. there’s nothing out here but the dead.”
timothy sighs. the offer of warmth and out of the depressing cold is too much to pass up. he gestures towards the bridge. “you know what? fine, fine. lead the way, nathan.”
nathan inclines his head, walking again. “thank you.”
timothy ambles after him, hoping his voice carried even through the scarf and the snow. “you know, i really do appreciate you coming with me tonight. i know i can be a bit much when i’m onto something, but- ”
“oh, holy ,” nathan hisses, cutting him short. that sends a chill down timothy’s spine, and he quickens his pace.
“what’s wrong?” he asks, quickly jogging to the other. nathan doesn’t respond, but when he reaches the other, frozen still in front of the bridge with his eyes trained ahead of him, he gets his answer.
in the middle of the rickety bridge, a humanoid figure stands, and it automatically sends timothy’s heart rate skyrocketing as he instinctively jumps behind nathan with a sharp “what the hell!”
“it’s not real,” nathan says. “- goddamn it, tim, stop clinging to me for one second, you’re making the snow fall into my jacket- ”
“what is that?!” timothy yells, his fingers digging into nathan’s arm.
“ow-!” nathan tries to pry the younger off of him. “dude, come on, it’s just a ing mannequin!”
timothy has a death grip, but he relents in favor of letting the blood circulate back through nathan’s arm and taking hesitant steps closer to the thing standing erect on the wooden steps. he ignores the hissed “thank you!” in favor of looking at the grotesque clown mask strapped to the mannequin’s head, its unclothed figure chained by its torso to a stand that rested impervious to the winds. the maniacal sneer, sharp teeth and lips curled up to a round blood-red nose, and unnaturally wide eyes set under comically curled thin brows makes timothy severely uncomfortable.
WELCOME BACK is sprawled on its chest and abdomen, dried drips trailing from the words. he can’t tell what color the words are, but it’s dark enough to be seen without the use of his flashlight, a heavy contrast between the pale skin of the mannequin and the words.
“oh my god,” he says, “oh my god, someone’s up here with us.”
nathan’s words sound faint to him. “listen, it’s gotta be one of the others messing around- ”
“nate, that thing wasn’t there when we came up here!” timothy hisses. “we were being followed! no one in our friend group would do something like this!”
“... at least you know now it’s not a supernatural creature,” the older offers helpfully. “it’s just a psychotic stranger playing mind-games with us.”
timothy gives him an unamused look. “yeah, okay, thanks a lot for that.” he eyes the clown-faced mannequin again. “i’m not feeling up to walking back, to be honest. we need to tell the others we gotta leave as soon as possible.”
“well, we can’t tell them if we don’t go back, timore.” nathan taps a finger to his temple. “and i don’t think you’re feeling up to staying out in the cold here, either.”
they look at each other in silence.
“rock-paper-scissors for who pushes the thing off the bridge,” timothy says.
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✕ㅤevery time im tempted 2 write a cliche i think of cinemasins dinging me for what i write n i change it
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