Alice had snagged Cindy's bag and the journal, with her and Arnie beelining out of the cabin. Cindy stormed after tham. "Alice! Bring that back! What are you doing?"

Alice scoffed, knocking back one of the pills from the bottle Arnie had taken from Danny. "It's called fun, Cindy Berman. You used to have it, remember?"

They ran off into the forest, whooping about Sarah Fier. Cindy was all the way down the steps, with Evie and Danny hanging around the open door.

"Did you say something?"

Evie looked up at him, shaking her head. "You okay? Your headache isn't any worse, is it?"

Danny grimaced. "Think if I asked nicely they'd give me whatever those pills were."

Cindy huffed. "Come on! They took everything!"

Danny shrugged his jacket on, looking down at Evie. "Great, this should be super fun to deal with."

Evie agreed, both of them jogging to catch up to Cindy. "I really didn't plan to do any running tonight."

It was mid-sunset, and it was getting darker by the second. It was lucky that Arnie had grabbed a flashlight or they wouldn't have been able to see an inch in front of them, especially with how thick the trees were.

Cindy was truly pissed to have to be there. "I swear to god," she grumbled, gasping as her top caught in the branch of a tree. When she pulled it away there was a hole at the bottom of her sleeve. "Shit!"

"Oh, this is something that just happens now?" Evie asked. 

She looked back at the two of them, unimpressed. "You want me to murder you?"

Sometimes Cindy felt like her friends ganged up on her. She knew she was uptight, she just had a lot of responsibility on her shoulders. She had enough shit to worry about without other people making her life harder. She loved Evie, and she loved Danny too, but Cindy's life was kind of fucked if she was honest. Eliminating small problems made her feel better about it, and it felt like Evie and Danny didn't really care. It was just a shirt. 

Cindy frowned and Evie thought they were going to get snapped at again, going to apologise for the joke. Cindy spoke first, "Are you okay?"

Evie turned to Danny. He was shaking, his entire face covered in sweat, blonde hair sticking to his cheeks. It was freezing out there, Evie was only in shorts and a tank top and she was cold. Danny was wearing jeans and a jacket. "Yeah," he said uncertainly. "I'm fine."

Neither of the girls could ask again, though, because they were interrupted by Alice letting out a bloodcurdling shriek further into the forest.

They all took off, Cindy reaching Alice first and the other two trailing behind. Danny looked gaunt in the torch light, eyes with dark circles that weren't usually there, skin an ashy grey. 

Alice crawled out of what looked like a whole in the ground. "Watch your step," she brushed off her knees. 

Danny approached hesitantly. "Is someone digging a grave?"

Evie thought that was kind of a weird place for his mind to go to, and then she saw the clearing surrounding the hole. "Graves," Alice corrected, shining her light around to show the collection. 

"Okay, guys, this isn't fun anymore." Evie wrapped her arms around herself. "Can we go back?"

They all ignored her, Danny and Cindy were now to invested. "Mary," Danny said, eyes wide. "Where's the, uh," he leaned down and grabbed the journal that Alice had dropped when she fell. "The X's, look. Look. She was marking places she'd been," he looked down at Evie, showing her the map Mary had scribbled over. "Where she dug."

Alice reached over and flipped the page. ""But without her hand, her grip on the land holds firm and the curse will last until body and hand unite."" She read. "Maybe Mary was looking for the hand."

Evie knew that grief would drive a person crazy. She hadn't been thinking rationally, she couldn't blame Mary. For months after, Evie had been consumed with the idea of finding a reason. She went back and thought over every interaction the two of them had shared ever, and Evie hated herself for each and every one. 

Because in every interaction Evie had with her sister, she found that she was the reason for Shirley's death. 

If Evie had found a book that told her she wasn't responsible, that someone else had killed her sister, something supernatural, she probably could've been driven to madness as well. 

Unfortunately, for some reason, Mary decided that the person to blame was Sarah Fier, and an already iffy urban legend had grown to whatever they were looking for now. 

"She wanted closure," Evie was looking at her shoes. "For her daughter. If she broke the curse then it would never happen again and she could move on."

Danny softened, looking at her sympathetically. It had been big news when Shirley had died. People tried to connect it to Sarah Fier, but the idea that the witch had caused the storm just to run one teenage girl's car off the road was a little far fetched, even for the most hardcore believer. It had been nine months ago, and Evie was only just coming back to her normal self. 

Cindy scoffed. "This is silly."

"Yeah," Arnie nodded. All four of them looked at him, slightly shocked. "I gotta piss." He turned and walked away.

"Let me see that," Alice held her hand out for the book. 

Danny held it out for the blonde, but Cindy snatched it up before Alice could. "You can have it," she said, eyes steely. "But first, give me the drugs. If Nurse Mary took them and went crazy, those drugs are very dangerous."

Alice laughed, actually laughed right in Cindy's face. "Oh my god! What happened to you? You remember when we used to have fun? Before you became a snitch?"

Cindy held her composure, just barely. "Just let it go already!"

"That's easy for you to say," Alice said disdainfully. "You lying fucking Brutus."

"I found it!"

Evie turned to find Arnie with a big grin on his face. "I found the witch's house!"

He led them back to it, Evie felt her headache get worse by the second. She should've just got a normal summer job, she'd be at home in her bed. Probably listening to Bonnie and Scott's daughter not wanting to go to bed. 

At least she would be out here in the woods with a pair of potentially high teenagers. 

That was where she and her sister differed, Evie supposed. Shirley would often come home smelling of booze and dirt. Evie never asked, Shirley wouldn't have told her anyway.

"Was I the only one expecting, like, I dunno, a house made out of candy?" Alice asked. It was more like a dumpsite than a house. A barely-standing pile of wood, overgrown with vines. 

"Maybe there's candy down here," Arnie smirked. There was a stone tunnel that went down under the house. 

Evie watched as Alice stood on the ledge and Arnie pretended to push her in. She crouched down, shining her flashlight into the hole. "Hey Sarah, you got any candy down there?" She laughed. "We're high and hungry." The pit gave no response. "Sarah Fier!"

"Okay," Cindy snapped. "We've seen enough."

Alice scowled. "Alright, go home then, Berman. I didn't march all the way out here for nothing, okay?" She laughed, putting her middle finger up at Cindy before marching down the steps. 

"Are you crazy?" Cindy hissed. "Alice!"

"Hey!" Alice called out. "Someone's been here! Like, recently!"

Evie really did want to go back to camp. She'd lost weeks of her life out in the woods behind her house. Being surrounded by trees, using them as walls, it reminded her of everything she was still struggling to forget. Shirley's ribbon was in her hair, green and soft like the leaves. Like her eyes. 

It was too dark to find camp, she felt fizzy. Bubbling up and around with nowhere concrete to go. The rest of them all went down into the pit and Evie had no idea how to get back. So, she followed. 

It looked like a witch lived there. Old candles, piles of paper, grime on the walls, a deep rust colour. "Look at all this witchy shit." Alice touched a collection of what looked like animal bones hanging from the ceiling. 

"It's Sarah Fier!"

Cindy sighed. "Sarah Fier isn't real," she said stiffly. 

"Well, someone lit that candle."

Alice continued wandering and Evie felt her stomach flip over at what she saw as she followed. There was a tunnel, barely big enough for a teenage girl to slip through. "Hey, Sarah Fier, if you're in here, say something!"

Evie didn't want to believe that Sarah Fier was real. Obviously she was a real person, they had records of her back when the town was founded. They had records of her hanging, her crimes of witchcraft. She killed the town's crops, then the town's kids. The ones who survived were traumatised, you couldn't even utter her name around them. But just because they had records of her existence and her execution didn't mean that she really was a witch.

But, of course, she would continue being a witch regardless of whether or not Evie believed or not. 

"Maybe she's shy." Alice chuckled and then ducked in through the passage into a room only slightly smaller than the one they were just in. Evie followed, and she could hear Cindy grumbling behind her. 

It was the symbol from Mary's book. It had been carved so deep into the cave floor that Evie couldn't see where the bottom of the etchings ended. In the middle there was a dip, almost a bowl. It held a single candle, lit and sitting in its own wax.

"It's some kind of, like, occult thing..." Alice said. There were bookshelves filled with fabric bags and animal skulls, along with so many books some were on their sides to fit, plus a workbench with shovels and an axe on the wall. "Like Devil worship." She reached around and grabbed for her boyfriend, smirking widldy. "It's kinky."

Cindy frowned. "It's the witch's mark." She flipped to the page in the journal. ""A deal was made with the Devil. Sarah Fier cut off her wicked hand on Satan's stone in exchange for eternal life, scarring the soil beneath with the witch's mark, bringing Darkness upon the land."

Evie didn't care about the engraving on the floor anymore, not when she saw what was carved into the walls.

She was shaking, her head pounded and fuck, she felt like crying. 

"That's it," Arnie said. "It's acetaminophen."

"Arnie, what are you talking about?"

"L484," he explained. "It just hit me, it's fucking Tylenol. It's nothing.

"Are you sure?" Cindy pressed. She didn't want to know why he knew all of the numerical codes and scientfic names or whatever of what she figured was probably every single drug approved by the FDA. 

"Fucking positive." He tossed the bottle of pills down.

"Come on, Alice," Arnie shrugged. "Let's get out of here, pretty sure Joan might still have some weed if we pay her."

Alice turned to leave after Arnie, catching sight of Evie before she did. Cindy was on her knees in the corner, trying to find the bottle of pills, but Evie had been stock still. 

The whole wall, floor to ceiling, stone that she had thought was just scratched. Evie reached out to touch the marking closest to her and she had to stop herself from crying.

No, they weren't random lines. On the wall there were names.

Cindy and Alice came up behind her. Alice had dragged Cindy away from the bookshelf that the redhead had just found out blocked another passageway. 

All three girls stood and looked at the names on the wall in silence. 

Cyrus Miller. Billy Barker. Ruby Lane.

"Mary's daughter," Cindy breathed out. 

Alice nodded. "Isaac Milton, Harry Rooker. You don't have to go to fucking class to learn those names."

Cindy nodded uneasily. "The Shadyside Killers."

But even more concerning than that was the name that had caught Evie's eye in the first place. Right down the bottom, the most recent name added, was Daniel Matthews.

Cindy ran for the tunnel out, dragging Evie along with her. Arnie and Danny were the only ones back in the main room, Alice following soon behind.

They arrived just in time to watch Danny pull the axe off the wall and slam it directly in the middle of Arnie's forehead.

Cindy couldn't scream loud enough to drown out the sickening crunch of his skull.

────────── ⋆˚✿˖° author's note
tylenol won't stop that headache anyway

hiiiiiii how are we all i hope we're well i hope we're well this chapter was lowkey a little bit more gruesome than i planned but also like. this is a horror book, you guys have seen it. anyway sorry

yeah, rip shirley </33 you'll learn more about evie's sister's death and why evie thinks it's her fault, and that she's the reason etc etc 

speaking of reasons for people dying, in chapter 25 valerie told arnie she hoped he got an axe to the face so that's that on foreshadowing i'll see you guys on thursday <3333 thank you for reading