ㅤ✕ㅤ CH. 5;
THE WINTER'S END ✕ㅤ CHAPTER FIVE!chapter
chapter
five
five
she’s always felt a closeness to damian, even though he hung out with sam and timothy more often than he did with her. it was something about his bravado even when he was hesitant about something, or the way he could always get someone to easily open up, no matter if it was someone as unsociable as parker, that drew her to him. but now, slowly scanning the hallways side by side, jennifer feels that this might be the first time that feeling’s been reciprocated. that gladness, sheer relief, that there was someone with you in the most unnerving of situations, who would have your back no matter what popped up. that you were not alone.
they agree not to split up while checking through the rest of the house for clues. after all the horror films they’ve seen with their friends, they’ve learned it was a rookie mistake to do so. so jennifer finds herself darting the flashlight along the walls, damian a step behind, bat raised to beat the out of anything unknown moving.
the cinema is to their right when they enter the hallway. jennifer takes a deep breath before slowly pushing the double doors open to enter. she knows it’s the cinema because the year before when they came here, she and kimberly had stumbled across the room and decided to plan a movie marathon with the others, ancient projector be damned.
( and then, well, there was no use watching a movie when two of your friends were— )
it’s still as dusty and old as she remembers. she bites back a sneeze as her flashlight beam falls across all the dust particles suspended in the air, over worn leather that has seen better days and a large home theater screen at the very front. for a very brief, masochistic moment, she imagines the eleven of them, smushed together on the couches and sitting at each other’s feet, throwing popcorn in the air and laughing at the silliness of it all.
“was this here the whole time?” damian asks, gawking at the wide room. with the double doors shut behind him, he’s less cautious and more in awe with the reminder of just how lavish the cabin was. “i had no idea.”
“me and kimmy found it last year,” jennifer tells him, her eyes still roaming around. “we were trying to see if we could play any movies in here. it works, but…”
the unsaid we never got the chance to hangs in the air. damian, thankfully, turns to putter around the projector instead of shooting some kind of sympathetic look jennifer’s way.
“were you going to hook up someone’s phone?” he asks, prodding at the machine. “i don’t see a disc player here. that would’ve taken up major data.”
jennifer frowns. that doesn’t sound quite right. “damian, there should be some kind of player there. there was, last time we were here. i think it had bluetooth components, but it’s too old to sync up to our phones.”
just as she finishes speaking, damian flips some kind of hidden switch and the old projector flickers to life, white light streaming onto the canvas at the front. just as he’s mid-laugh, delighted, the lamp powers down with a groan.
“uh, what’d you do?” jennifer asks.
“nothing!” damian hisses, and he smacks the machine on its side.
it stays stubbornly dark, then whirs to life again. this time, when it does, there’s a struggling figure on the home theater screen, a burlap sack over their head and rope tying their arms behind their back, stringing them up like a christmas ham from a hook. with the angle the camera’s at, jennifer can clearly see the rusted saw gears at the person’s feet. there’s muffled screams coming from beneath the bag.
why was this playing, continuously looping on the same scene? there’s a cold, cold shiver that runs down her back at the realization that the projector couldn’t be playing anything since the dvd player was gone.
she shudders. “damian, turn it off.”
damian’s still frozen, eyes glued to the screen. he seems to have gone into some kind of trance.
“damian!” jennifer barks, grip tightening on the flashlight as the screams of the person grow louder. her head’s thudding. “turn the ing thing off!”
that seems to break him out of whatever daze he was in, and he fumbles with the switch. the person vanishes from the screen, mid-plea, as the cinema is thrown into silence and darkness again, save for the flashlight beam and the sound of her thudding heart echoing in her ears.
she doesn’t wait for damian to move before she’s twisting on her heel and charging out of the cinema, limbs shaking furiously. her brain feels stretched out, thoughts scattered. to think that there was someone out there, ready to be shredded to pieces…
“jenny…” damian says behind her, lowly.
when she spins around, ready to lash out in fearful defense, for the first time that evening she can see a glimpse of something in damian’s eyes. a glimmer of defeat? exhaustion? already he looks much, much older than he actually is, like a thirty-year-old trapped in the body of a young man. she swallows her shouts of anger down. forces herself to steady her erratic breathing and look him in the eyes.
“what, damian?” she says instead.
“jesus christ, jenny,” he says. slicks back his bangs with his right hand, the trembling of his fingers almost indiscernible. “i… we’re in way over our heads, here. that was- that was a real person. that was ing broadcasted, there’s no way anything was playing on- ”
“and what do we do?” jennifer says. “call the police?”
“yes!” damian says. “that is exactly what we should do! call the ing police!”
“and will they believe us?” she retorts, trying not to raise her voice, but god, she doesn’t want to get back into another nightmare. “get here with the blizzard coming? nathan said we can’t even call the rangers, for god’s sake. the park isn’t open until morning.”
damian’s insistent. “no, no, even if they don’t believe us- we need someone out here, jenny. we need to find the others and get out. i mean, look at this place! you think they’d say we were wasting their time?”
yes, jennifer wants to say, the word on the tip of her tongue, because that’s all she’s heard from police officers her entire life, all sorts of why don’t you go home to your father now, young lady? and hope you’re not a troublemaker like your brother! and you better watch what kind of stories you spread around here about respectable people. but she clamps shut and furiously stares at the ground.
there’s a long sigh from damian, then slow steps, and a warm hand on her shoulder. “jenny,” he says, “please. we can’t let this turn into another ‘aiden-and-julia.’ we need to find our friends.”
she looks up at him, mouth thinned. “yeah, i know,” she says, but she doesn’t know if it’s in a disgruntled manner or defeat. “i think there’s a line in the kitchen you can try using.”
the kitchen, being connected to the lounge, takes some rerouting from the hallway, but they do it in the dark using jennifer’s light to shine the way, with their eyes averted from the stained wall as they make their way onto linoleum tiles and marble countertops.
damian hastily goes for the landline beside the fridge as jennifer absentmindedly rummages through the leftover snacks they’ve brought with them. their morning arrival seems so long ago.
“, !” damian curses. jennifer swivels her head to see him slam the receiver back onto the wall. “the line’s been cut!”
“figures,” jennifer says. she thinks that she’s starting to feel a little hysteria creep into her voice. “we’re in a horror flick, right? of course the line’s cut.”
“jenny, i’m serious, i’m actually freaking out here.” and he must be, if he’s outright admitting it and not bothering to equip his usual bravado for the situation.
jennifer sighs. crosses her arms, for a lack of anything better to do. “then what do we do now? search the other floors?”
she throws the remark out there, more of an offhand comment than an actual suggestion, but he perks up. “yeah! maybe we can find stuff to protect ourselves with. y-trap this place until sunrise.”
“what, like home alone?”
“exactly,” he says, enunciating the cut of the syllables.
so they venture up to the third floor, having already checked the second and finding nothing but empty beds and comforters strewn about the rooms. the third floor hosts only two rooms at the very top, seeming like more of a nook than a whole floor. she can’t feel her toes with how cold it is at the top of the cabin. looking outside the circular window yields a round moon and light snow falling.
“right or left?” damian asks her.
“we’ll just check both anyway,” jennifer responds. “go left. let’s make this quick.”
damian turns the doorknob, pushing the heavy door open slowly. his bat is poised in front of him just as jennifer’s shining the flashlight beam through the doorway, but there’s nothing but beanbag chairs atop a comfortable plush rug, an undressed mattress, and an open closet to the side when they enter. the room smells incredibly musty, which is understandable, given that none of them had even bothered to check out the third floor what with arguing over who got what room on the second. she scrunches her nose.
they pad through quietly. damian checks the closet while jennifer goes over to circle around the beanbag chairs. this would’ve been a great place for their friend group to sit and converse freely, if it were daytime and there was a fireplace installed in this room for the colder months.
“there’s a whole lot of boxes all stacked up here,” damian informs her, his back still turned as he rummages through them. “it’s all, like, plastic wraps and stuff, though.”
something catches jennifer’s eye, buried in the rug’s fibers and half under a beanbag chair, and she bends down to scoop it up. “i found something, damian.”
it’s a polaroid: slightly creased, well-cherished. her fingers tremble as she sees her own face smile back at her from the corner of the photo, amid the other faces of her friends cramped in alongside her. they look so young. the twins are beside her, and it’s the very rare occasion that aiden busts out a genuine smile, however small it may be.
kimberly’s holding the camera — must be, from how her head peaks out of the bottom, barely included in the shot. in kimberly’s bubbly writing at the bottom, it reads potato trip with the birthday boogers!!!
damian’s behind her shoulder when she says, “i don’t remember this photo.”
“i do,” he says, and his voice trembles imperceptibly. “god, it- it was their birthday. we went to five guys and then their house afterwards. this was before kimmy left for america.” it must hurt, seeing his own face there, too. enjoying the peak of his life, not knowing that it would all go to hell several years later.
“what’s this doing up here?” jennifer says.
damian doesn’t say anything for a moment. then: “aiden really liked that photo. i saw him carry this one in his phone case.” he must’ve been up here the year before, to relax in solitude, but neither of them say it.
jennifer glances at him, unsure. everyone had an inkling of some sort as to how he felt about aiden. “damian…”
but the young man cuts her off. “can we get out?” he pleads. “let’s check the next room and go down. it’s really cold.”
she wants to say yes, but something’s keeping her from agreeing with damian to leave. call it her curiosity. “let me just check the room one more time, okay, damian?”
the blond doesn’t move when she rests a hand on his forearm, but he sighs heavily through his nose. she takes it as compliance and pockets the polaroid, scanning the room once more.
there’s really nothing else aside from the rug, the beanbag chairs, and the boxes in the closet. it looks like there once used to be a bed in the middle of the room but, instead of the frame, only the mattress itself was left after the cabin was sold off. it’s cold to the touch when she presses her palm against it, but she could see a brooding aiden lying down to stare at the sloped ceiling, uncaring. turning on his side to skim his playlist on his phone and doze off before julia began to stomp around the place trying to find him. thinking about them like this made it hurt less.
she finds a half-opened box of nails, tucked between the mattress and the wall, while she’s musing. an idea forming in her head, she picks it up. “damian.”
“yeah?” damian responds.
jennifer shows him the box. he stares at it for a few seconds, and then raises a brow at her in confusion. “i’m sorry, you lost me.”
“we can use the nails on your bat, damian,” she says patiently, like she’s explaining to a child. “the nails are long enough to penetrate through and—”
“nail bat!” damian finishes, more animated. he s his bat forward in triumph.
“i- yeah,” jennifer says, caught off-guard. “gimme that.”
her idea works more in theory than practice. she feels a little silly having to press the bat down with her sole and wriggling the nail against it, trying to chisel through the sanded wood with the sharp tip of the nail, so when damian interrupts her focus with, “maybe you should try—”, she cuts him off.
“yeah,” she says, “i know.” she’s going about this all wrong. she places the nail on the ground instead, crouches over it with the bat, and proceeds to slam the bat down atop it. the first few attempts have her missing, with the tip grating over the wood’s surface instead, but on the fourth slam she pins it halfway through the bat.
“holy ,” damian says, stunned. it motivates her into slamming the bat down against the floor once more, and the nail successfully pierces through it. when they meet eyes, jennifer smirking triumphantly, he hands her another nail from the box. “wongsawat, go ham.”
“you’re saying it wrong,” she grunts, placing the nail down against the floor and striking it with the face of the bat. this time, it jams through in two hits. “mister cracker.”
“excuse me!” he says in mock offense, placing a new nail down on the ground for her. “it’s mister half-cracker to you.”
“silly me, how could i forget, blue-eyes, kinda-white dragon?”
“ha-ha. do you need help?”
“nah, i got it, just keep doing what you’re doing.”
the small talk soothes her nerves, even as she’s using up most of her energy into constructing the spiked bat. she’s glad damian doesn’t try to make a joke out of the differences in their strength, not that he was the kind of person to do so, but there were so many previous instances with male colleagues from school where that was the case.
she’s maybe six nails in when she misses slightly to the left, forcing the nail to turn as she pummels it. the motion causes it to slip from under her foot, veering toward the arch and impaling her skin.
“ow!” immediately, damian’s by her side, and she scrunches her eyes shut as she harshly hisses.
“,” damian swears, shoving the bat aside with a swat of his hand. he grabs her foot, firmly but gently. she’s too preoccupied with the pain to care about what he might think of her bare feet, obviously dirtied from the un-sweeped floors. “okay, jenny, it’s not that deep, i don’t think.”
“oh, me, just get it out!” she shouts at him.
he relents, gripping the head of the nail and tugging it free in one yanking motion. she muffles her scream against her own shoulder, turning her head so she doesn’t see what state her foot is it. it’s both numb and scalding at the same time. it hurts.
there’s the sound of cloth ripping, and she blearily peeks at damian to see him ripping the bottom hem of his tee clean off. he gently wraps the cloth around her foot, and even though she’s slightly sweating she manages a laugh.
“nice crop top,” she hoarsely says.
“it’s all the rage right now,” he replies, but his face is pale. “jenny, we need to get you washed up. we need to find a medical kit for this.”
“water’s going to be downstairs,” she says, struggling to get up on her elbows, and he carefully helps her up with broad hands. “bathroom or kitchen will have water. we haven’t checked the second room up here yet.”
“ the second room!” damian begins, heated, but jennifer cuts him off.
“it might have first aid,” she says. that gets him to quiet down as he helps her shuffle out of the bedroom. it’s obvious he’s going through some kind of internal struggle with himself, because as he helps her inch towards the stairs he’s quiet. when they’re standing in front of the bedroom, he’s made up his mind.
“i’ll be quick,” damian promises jennifer, and he leaves her leaning against the doorway and gritting her teeth as he does a once-over of the room. it’s the standard bedroom, impersonal and furnished. it’s huge, probably the size of a master bedroom, but the walls are a light lilac instead of a dark maroon like the rest of the house. someone had lived in here once.
the bed’s mussed up even before damian pulls back the sheets to examine the bed, like it was slept in, and when he pulls open the drawers, he doesn’t seem to find an antibiotic cream or something that can be used as a weapon. he does pause, however, brows knit together in the middle.
“what’s wrong?” jennifer asks.
damian fishes whatever he’s looking at out of the drawer and pads across the room to show it to her. “it’s a broken camera.”
jennifer recognizes it immediately. “it’s kimmy’s.”
“like, the camera that she said was missing?” damian asks. “why is it up here?”
“someone broke it…” jennifer slowly begins, trying to piece things together. “...and hid it up here instead, knowing that we wouldn’t be up here.” the more she thinks about it, the more the fine hairs on the backs of her arms stand up. the fact that they were being watched, that their things were being tampered with, and now that her friends were all gone…
she winces, accidentally putting too much weight onto her foot. damian looks at her worriedly as he sets the shards down onto the carpeting and nudges it aside with his foot. “do you want to lie down?”
“let’s check the basement first,” she says. if they were finding things up here, who knows what was in the basement that they could investigate. “we might be able to learn more about what’s going on.”
“but the stairs,” the blond argues.
“i can grab the railing,” she retorts, “and if it hurts too much, i’ll tell you and we can sit down.” going down wasn’t the problem; going up was. damian looked like he wanted to say more, but he sighs and unenthusiastically nods instead. she does her best to control her facial expressions anytime her foot throbs; damian is most likely watching her for the slightest hint of pain, and would probably throw her over his shoulder like a caveman to carry her down to the basement if she so much as winced.
the basement is expansive, with numerous rooms spanning from where the stairs originate, and the ceiling is high enough that it makes jennifer feel like they’re in some other location entirely — not the basement. there’s a large window in front of her where moonlight is coming in, but all she sees is a wall and a grate right on the ground in front of it. she’s assuming that this is for drainage purposes when it rains, with the basement being built into the ground.
she hobbles over to the nearest desk, cluttered with trinkets of little value and completely covered in dust. it looks like the previous owners didn’t move out everything that belonged to them. there are bobbleheads, and old workshop tools, and a stash of batteries, still in their original plastic casings. notebooks take up most of the desk space, making a tall stack that would probably topple over if she gave into the urge to sneeze.
a few loose papers are sticking out of the top stack. out of curiosity, she slips them out of the notebook, being careful not to disturb the dust too much as she does so. two of the papers have to do with nonsensical scribbles on various subject matters: character casting, easy arithmetic that a sleep-deprived person probably couldn’t mentally solve, a grocery list. the third paper is a catalogue by the nearest supermarket and dated six years prior, various items circled in red. the fourth paper is a printed list of items, crumpled and pressed into the pages like it was balled up before being smoothed out last-minute.
she stares at the list. this one made even less sense than the few papers she picked up earlier: wireless transmitters, a mannequin, chains, gears. most of the items are crossed off in black sharpie, dark enough to bleed through the paper and for her not to be able to read what else there was.
“damian, i found a list,” she calls out.
“of what?” damian yells back, poking and prodding at several open cardboard boxes against the far wall. “i found some- newspaper clippings? apparently there was, like, this arsonist guy who escaped prison. and, quote, ‘wanted revenge against the washingtons.’ that’s the family who lived here, right?”
“that newspaper clipping was fake, damian!” she says. “a whole bunch of people died here, but that article was a hoax. and yeah, it was the washingtons. i found a list of, like, weird things. it reads like a to-do list but i don’t know who would buy any of it. like, there’s chains and a mannequin on here.”
“some people have weird kinks. i found old photos of a family. you think it’s the washingtons?”
she looks over to where he’s crouching, unamused. “back up. did you just insinuate—”
her friend looks back at her, grinning. “life has many doors, jenny-girl.”
“doesn’t work as well as the original,” she clicks her tongue.
“yeah, i figured,” he says, and stands up. “there’s saw blades tucked away in these newspapers, so be careful if you wanna look.”
“um, i’ll pass. i don’t wanna get some kind of disease from them if i cut myself.”
he gives her a look. “they’re new. like, very new. definitely not from… whatever you said happened here in 2015. and there’s a bunch of red paint cans around this place.”
she arches an eyebrow. “are you saying that…?”
“that we’re scooby-dooing our way through this mothering mystery? uh, yeah.” he’s unabashedly smiling at his own joke, which makes her scoff, even though the corners of twitch up into a smile too.
“all we need is the rest of the gang, a dog, and the villain to reveal themselves in the next twenty minutes,” she plays along, but damian’s smile vanishes from his face as he turns his head to look past her. his alert gaze is eerie.
when she begins turning to find out what he’s staring at, damian jolts. “jenny, did you see that?”
jennifer turns to faces him again, bewildered. “see what?” he’s looking down the hallway.
“i saw something move. down the hall, there.” he points.
her brows furrow. last she remembered of the blueprints she looked at online, she didn’t think there were any rooms once the hallway tapered off. “is there a door?”
“let’s go look.”
he patiently walks alongside her, lending an arm when she needs it, as they approach the hallway and turn to where the figure disappeared. the door they face is rusted metal; jennifer didn’t hear a noise to indicate it was shut behind whatever scampered along here, but damian seems pretty certain that he saw something.
he tests the door handle, which jiggles resolutely. “feels locked,” he says, examining the door. “but it could be barricaded from the other side. it doesn’t look that secure.”
“are you saying we ram into it and knock it down?” jennifer asks drily.
she doesn’t expect damian to actually do that, backing up a meter or so before running shoulder-first into the door. she’s left standing there, slack-jawed, as he grunts at the resistance, and then takes a few paces back before repeating the action. the door groans under his ministrations, settled dust scattering into the air, and the second time he smashes into the door it actually swings open, causing him to abruptly lose his balance and topple onto the floor on the other side of the door.
she hurriedly wobbles over. “damian? damian?”
“i’m okay!” his voice echoes. there’s some groaning noises as he struggles to get onto his feet, and then he’s standing in the doorway, albeit disheveled and covered with dust.
“damian, are you a moron?” jennifer asks. she’s honestly astounded. “lost your brain cells after finals, mayhaps? you think you’re some kind of- ing- battering ram?”
he cracks a grin. “it worked, didn’t it?” there’s no word to describe how elevated her levels of exasperation and lack of patience are at the moment, so she decides to ignore that sentence and instead shine her light behind him. all she sees are barely-lit halls, moonlight gleaming through the cracks in the walls, and a passageway that seems to stretch forever. “what the is this?”
damian in a breath. “i honestly have no freaking clue. but this place has more to it than we originally thought, jenny. so much more.” there’s a quiet pause as they take in the knowledge that the cabin leads to something that neither of them know about. that is most likely involved with their friends’ disappearances.
the blond takes a step forward into the darkness, and jennifer grabs his arm.
“wait, damian, we can’t go now,” she says. “my foot…” and that seems to remind him of the state she’s in.
“here, lean on me,” he says, ducking his head under her arm and standing. “christ, is your foot still bleeding?”
she doesn’t know, but she doesn’t want to check beneath the makeshift wrap. even thinking about it has her foot pulsing in waves of pain. “probably. can we go back upstairs? i kind of want to lie down.”
damian’s helping her up the basement stairs, little by little. “why not the lounge?” he asks.
“too open,” she says, and then hesitates. being in the living room would mean seeing all the writing on the walls if she decided to sit on the sofa, paint be damned. “i don’t… feel safe.”
the young man’s mouth opens in an understanding, silent ah. “upstairs, then. don’t worry. we’ll get you all taken care of, jenny.”
it takes them a little stumbling to do, but when they reach the second floor, damian gently guides her body into the nearest open room, and she collapses into the bed. the pillows smell vaguely of timothy’s hair gel.
“i’m going to find a medkit,” damian says when he’s sure she’s flat on the bed and in no danger of passing out anytime soon. “jesus christ, jenny- of all the things to happen- ”
“i have luck, get over it,” she says as she burrows the blankets around her torso, cracking a faint smile in the hopes of easing his furrowed brow.
it doesn’t. “do you want the bat with you or no?” he asks, as if in the few minutes he was gone something would steal her away into the night. she rolls her eyes.
“up to you,” she tells him.
the blond hesitates, then nods resolutely to himself. “keep the bat. i won’t take too long.” without waiting for jennifer to answer, he sets the spiked terror against the bed’s legs within her reach. “shout if you need anything.”
“okay, mom,” she says, shooing him away with the wave of a hand. she turns her face into the pillow. has she always been this tired?
damian’s footsteps as he walks out of the room and treads down the halls are reassuring. she drowsily listens to the steady thump-thump of his walking as he checks the mini bathroom first, then the bath at the end of the hall. it seems to pulsate on beat with her injured foot.
slowly, her eyes fall shut.
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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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