They bolted immediately, Danny turning around and looking at them with dead eyes. None of them had time to think about anything other than escape and the way the blood dripped down Arnie's face as Danny yanked the axe out of his face.

They went back into the smaller room since Danny was blocking the door and Cindy pointed to the bookshelf. "Help me!"

The other two girls both grabbed the other end and they tipped it over. Cindy looked up and saw Danny come in through the door, screaming.

Evie pulled her through the hole in the cave wall hidden by the bookshelf. They had to get on their stomachs and crawl the tunnel was that narrow. Evie hauled herself across the rocks not daring to look back and check that Cindy was behind her.

Alice kicked her in the face and Evie buried her face in the dirt, she could feel it bruising already. "Go!" Cindy urged.

Cindy called out again and Evie realised she wasn't screaming "Go" she had been yelling "No!"

Evie whipped around as best as she could and clobbered Danny with the flashlight in her hand. Cindy screamed trying to loosen his grip on her leg. She flipped over and kicked him as hard as he could in the chest. Danny's head collided with the rock on the roof of the tunnel and The two girls used that as their opportunity to get away, Alice grabbing them desperately.

When Danny hit the side of the tunnel, it had shaken a few rocks loose and Evie could hear rumbling above her head. They reached the next 'room' and Alice hauled them both to their feet just in time for the passage to completely collapse in on itself.

The rocks hadn't even finished falling before Cindy started sobbing into her hands. Evie sat on a rock, shaking so bad she couldn't tell which way gravity was pointing her.

Alice looked up. "Do you hear that?"

Evie had thought it was just all their breathing combined, but the heavy breathing wasn't coming from inside their cave.

Cindy's voice caught in her throat. "He's still alive?"

Alice eyed the caved-in passage. "He can't... He can't get us. He can't get us."

Evie's brain wasn't working enough to form a coherent sentence. "He... Danny..."

Maybe she had taken some of whatever Alice and Arnie took. Maybe it wasn't Tylenol. They were trapped in some weird group hallucination and somehow they'd roped Cindy in as well.

Arnie's skull had collapsed in on itself, just the way that their tunnel had.

Alice was right, Danny couldn't reach them. The breathing faded and Evie felt guilty for hoping it was because he had stopped. That was Danny! Her friend. Sure, they weren't best friends, but they were at least good friends.

Cindy and Danny had a relationship, probably. They were always huddled together, whispering and smiling. Cindy didn't look at Danny the way she looked at Evie.

Maybe this was God's punishment to her. The universe could tell how she had been feeling for years, and it was trying to quash that once and for all.

Or maybe she just lived in Shadyside, where everything fucking sucked all the time.

"Where are we?" She asked after a second.

Cindy stood, shining the flashlight around. "It's some kind of cavern. I don't know, it seems to just... go on forever."

"There has to be a way out right?" Evie asked. Surely if there was, they would have found it by now, seen it from aboveground in the years they'd been going to camp.

Before her sister died, Evie had spent hours in those woods.

"I don't care." Alice said. She was sitting on a collection of fallen rocks, staring at her shoes.

Cindy huffed, moving back towards her. "Alice, can you please just..." She tried to grab one of the rocks and move it. "Help me?"

Alice didn't look at her. "What, you're just gonna pretend that everything's okay?"

Cindy struggled, moving around on the rocks to sit between her and Evie. "Alice, I just..."

"Danny split Arnie's head in half." Alice said. Her voice was deep and gravelly and more tired than Evie had ever felt. "Do you realise that?"

Cindy was crying. "Please can you just help me?"

"With what? Okay, this shit weighs like, a million pounds. I thought you got an A in physics!" Alice snapped, standing.

"We can't stay down here," Evie tried. They weren't going to find a new way out, they could barely get through the way they came in.

"Well, tough shit," Alice sneered. "Because we can't. We're gonna die down here. Just like Arnie."

Evie had never been a particularly claustrophobic person, but being in that cave made her head spin. It was like she could feel Danny walking above her head.

"We have to!" Cindy argued. "Those names on the wall, they didn't stop with one murder. Seven, nine, ten, fifteen people! Those were serial killers. The campers..."

Tommy. Val. Julia.

They were all still up there with him. She'd been focused on Danny not being down there with her that she'd forgotten the alternative was him being up there with them.

Cindy could barely speak with how hard she was crying. "My... my sister, they're up there. And now, so is he."

"I thought you didn't believe in the witch," Alice said disdainfully.

"I don't! I... The... There must be some... some explanation." Cindy looked more upset than Evie had ever seen her and she stood.

"Oh my god, you are fucking unbelieveable, Cindy. He was possessed!"

"Maybe... maybe he took a pill or-"

"Who gives a shit why?" Evie snapped. "The important thing is that our friends - Valerie - your best friend is up there with him. We need to warn them!"

Cindy fell silent but Alice kept going. "Mary knew it. She knew it. And it's all right here." She held up the journal they'd found in Mary's office.

Cindy slapped it out of her hand. "It's not real!"

"You want an explanation?" Alice got really close to Cindy and Evie stepped in front of her. "Here it is, okay?" Alice looked right past Evie, straight at the redhead. "She looked for the hand bone to fucking stop the curse, to save Shadyside, but she couldn't find it. And you wanna know what she did find? Your boyfriend's name in that fucking wall. So she tried to kill him."

"Stop!" Evie couldn't listen to this anymore. Regardless of whether or not the witch was the one behind Danny killing Arnie, they needed to get out of there.

They had made plans as a group to go see Halloween when it came out in October, and Danny had been the one to frown. He didn't even like pretend murders.

Alice wasn't listening to her, though. "I would have done the same if I knew there was a chance that Danny fucking Matthews would axe my boyfriend in the fucking head!"

Evie had enough at that point, shoving Alice out of her face. Cindy had the same sort of idea. "Shut up!"

It echoed around the cave.

"There we go," Alice said, chest heaving. "That's the Cindy Berman I knew."

Cindy huffed, turning towards the part of the cave that seemed to stretch out into the void.

Alice looked nervous. "Hey! Where are you going?"

"To find another way out," Cindy snapped. "Are you coming?" Evie realised with a start that Cindy was talking to her, and the brunette nodded, gripping her torch tightly. "Don't follow me." That part was said to Alice and Evie was ashamed of the thoughts that ran through her head.

Cindy had let her go and told Alice to stay because whatever weird history Alice and Cindy had together, Cindy was her best friend. Evie felt a surge of smugness and then squashed it down inside of her.

"Well!" Alice called out as the two of them left. "Don't come back here, alright? Alright, do you hear me? Don't come back!"

Evie hurried to keep pace with Cindy. Alice didn't need to tell them to not come back, they weren't planning on it. Cindy was her best friend, they would find their own way out.

────────── ⋆˚✿˖° author's note
for a chapter that's mostly about men and their actions wasn't there a lot of lesbian energy. all 3 of those women aren't straight don't lie to me but also i feel like being jealous of your female best friend that you definitely do not have a crush on having OTHER female friends that aren't you is such a queer experience like we all see through you evelyn

i hope your week is going well!! i have a job interview later this morning so please pray that i get it i need all the manifestation i can get really. fear street more like struggle street, that's where i've been lately

i wrote a majority of this chapter in my college library while i should have been doing homework and that reminds me that i wanted to say that updates are going to be as consistent as i can make them but i have exams coming up in less than 3 weeks so they might be a little sporadic until then and then we will be back at our usual 3 day upload schedule (unless otherwise specified) so i will see you all on sunday!! i hope you enjoyed this chapter, thank you so much for reading i appreciate you so much <3333