Chapter Text
It starts, as nothing good has ever started, with a pool of dog blood and dog guts and dog viscera. Just out on the front lawn of the Grants’ house, an entire Golden Retriever just… opened. Opened and dismantled. Mrs. Grant’s scream feels like it carves a jagged, weeping opening in a cold Wiskayok morning; that opening lets something through, and it makes itself awfully comfortable preying on whatever local pet is unlucky enough to wander through an open dog door when it gets dark.
People start telling stories. Some kind of monster springs into local myth quicker than any prior example, with the couple weeks between each attack being prime real estate for the Beast of Wiskayok Woods to cement itself in the local kids’ minds. The woods get emptier and emptier of kids fooling around with each new layer to the story. Within weeks, the Beast allegedly preys on big dogs because they’re the closest it can get to a human kid, or something; at least that’s what Nat Scatorccio, the burnout who works in the local greenhouse, starts telling the guys who she smokes weed in her van with. And that’s the information that finds its way back to Lottie Matthews, the town’s “favourite” rich freak, and her sister – step-sister – Shauna Shipman.
-
‘Baxter’s fertilizer,’ Lottie calls, stooping her head down for a second as she takes the stairs into the basement of the Matthews-Shipman house, the door to her bedroom already hanging open. There’s some crunchy guitar riff bleeding out from inside, but it fades as she hears a yell of ‘What?’ from inside. Making it to the bottom with a little jog, camera bouncing against her belly, Lottie pokes her head around the door and sees Shauna sitting on the side of her bed, facing the far wall, pants hooked round her ankles as she does her shot.
‘The Beast got Baxter,’ Lottie says again, hopping onto her bed and fumbling through her bedside table for the TV remote.
‘Gory?’
‘Didn’t see. Sounded gnarly, though.’
‘Sweet.’
Lottie channel-surfs idly, paying more attention to Shauna swinging herself around the bed to face her, pants still most of the way off.
‘You think we could stage a Beast attack? For the project? The parents’d have to be out of the way, but we still have some leftover gore, right?’
‘Think so. Hey, look, they got Evil Dead on.’
Quietly watching the fuzzy CRT feed of Bruce Campbell losing his hand – it’s Evil Dead II, Lottie corrects herself in her head – Lottie sits back, still wrapped in layers of shawl and cardigan and dress, and settles into her own head. She takes a moment to fish around her clothes and pull her necklace out of her sweater, the old, weather-smoothed bird skull resting on her chest, matching the one laying softly on Shauna’s breast. Making them together, finding that nest and the two neatly-preserved skeletons, boring holes and threading them through with thin strips of leather snuck from Shauna’s mom’s old, barely-used sewing kit; every detail of the day still bounces around Lottie’s skull, with maybe a little much focus on the kisses each of them softly pressed to the other’s necklace. It’s fine. Whatever. When Shauna pulls herself up onto her knees to fix the pinboard above her bed, so what if Lottie lets her eyes linger a little? She’s cute!
-
Lottie can’t really remember a time when Shauna wasn’t part of her life. All the divorces and remarriages fell into the background in the face of having a new sister, someone in her life who was honestly too open to look at her sideways upon finding out she was medicated, because so was she. Shauna being trans was just a fact of life, really, and they could just ice out anyone who gave her shit for it. It made them real, real close, especially once they discovered the wonders of the horror movies no-one cared if they watched together on TV late at night or rented from the video place staffed by bored, half-stoned high-schoolers who didn’t give a shit that they were letting two twelve-year-olds rent The Brood or Hellraiser for the second time this week. They could stay up deep into the night, down in their basement bedroom, freaking out at the grossest parts, pulling each other closer in disgust but never letting themselves look away.
-
Matthews-Shipman household dinner is never a distinctively talkative process. Deb and Sarah make valiant efforts nonetheless, but the girls are mostly interested in communicating with unreadable glances that still make the other react like she just got told a joke during a two minutes’ silence, clearly trying to stifle a yell of laughter that would turn every inattentive head in the room. Most days, their parents will just give up, and this evening is no different; Shauna is resolutely, glumly silent as she fights her way through slightly gamey beef, and Lottie isn’t exactly taking pains to play the comedy to her tragedy mask, as it were. Deb just switches the radio on the sideboard on and lets tinny top 40 music try, and fail pretty impressively, to fill the silence at the centre of the four of them.
‘Nice casserole, mom,’ Lottie says, barely louder than a whisper, softly setting her cutlery straight in the middle of her plate and standing, her skirt so long even on a girl so tall the hem is practically brushing the floor.
‘We all done?’ Deb asks nobody in particular, looking around the table. ‘Shauna, help your sister clear up, please?’
The way Lottie and Shauna slide around each other to collect the plates is like some arcane dance; both totally silent, they still seem instinctively to know what they’re doing, just off the cues of each movement. Although Shauna does mutter something to Lottie that neither of the adults pick up, just the resultant bark of a laugh while the girls are in the kitchen.
‘We’re at counselling this evening, so it’s just you girls,’ Sarah pipes up. ‘Don’t wreck the place and don’t stay up too late.’
‘Of course, mom,’ Shauna mock-rolls her eyes as she and Lottie turn almost in unison for the basement stairs. ‘See you later.’
‘God, we have to get out of here,’ Shauna groans, collapsing backwards onto her bed. ‘It’s either we run away or we kill ourselves – what d’you think’s a bigger statement?’
‘Suicide,’ Lottie says flatly. ‘Just spark out. Both hang or something,’ then lies down, rolling awkwardly onto her side to look at Shauna.
‘It’s a great picture, isn’t it?’ Shauna asks, a little rhetorically. ‘Both of us just hanging there… might wanna do it somewhere else so you’re a little further off the floor than down here, though.’
Lottie snickers as Shauna pulls herself across her bed and starts changing for the night, pulling one of her tens of sweaters down and snatching away the good look Lottie had at her pale, sparsely-freckled back softly arching away from her. Shauna’s plaid pyjama pants fall around her hips handsomely, though. Lottie’s sister has always been soft and a little plush, good for pulling herself close to and leaning up against, but she’s filled out a little more the past year.
When she snaps back into focus after a second, Lottie looks over at Shauna on her knees, rifling through their admittedly limited VHS collection. ‘Alien again? Or Sleepaway Camp? That one’s been a while.’
‘You can still watch that?’ Lottie asks. ‘After… y’know?’
Shauna scoffs at the suggestion. ‘I’m over it. Long time ago. Plus, I like the movie and I wouldn’t want some dickhead ruining it for me just ‘cuz he and his friends thought they were fucking funny, Lot. It’s relatable!’
‘Sure…’ Lottie murmurs, unconvinced. ‘Sure, put it on. Feels like we’ve seen Alien a little much.’
As Shauna gently pushes the tape into their VHS player and the TV lights up, Lottie pulls herself into a sitting position a little off to one side of her bed, silently hoping Shauna will get the message. Sure enough, a moment later, Shauna pulls herself up next to Lottie, palpably warm and solid through her sweater, and they lean into each other; Shauna has to settle for resting her head on her sister’s shoulder rather than vice versa because of the gap of a few inches between them, but it’s comfy nonetheless. Lottie is the cold to Shauna’s hot, the tall to her [relatively!] short, the quiet to her loud, et cetera, et cetera, yadda yadda; this is all to say they’re perfect complements. It’s like they’re actually related, like they’ve been part of each other’s lives since birth and that’s why they work so well together. All of their reactions to the movie border on being in time with each other; at the kill with the hair curlers, they both wince loudly in union and burst out in brief, hysterical laughter that drowns out the TV. When the movie is over, Lottie’s reticent to get up and get ready for bed, pull away into the briskness of their room and brush her teeth. She settles for burrowing into Shauna’s bed when the lights are off, laying an arm around her waist in the dark and letting out a contented murmur that doesn’t say anything other than this is nice. Once she’s pretty sure Shauna is asleep, Lottie whispers a couple of test phrases to make sure her volume control is all right, and says her little pseudo-prayer. ‘And let the darkness set us free. Versez le sang, mes beaux amis.’
-
Lottie dreams in vague, soft shapes, about animals and her sister and their parents, maybe. It’s free-associative, mostly, like most of the dreams she thinks are sometimes suggesting things about her life.
-
Morning is, as ever, grey and dull and bleak. Wiskayok is not an exciting place by day or by night. Shauna non-verbally grumbles her way through the early morning by Lottie’s side as she gives brushing her hair a mostly cursory effort, letting it fall thick and knotted and wavy to frame her face. When they step out of the front door to make the walk to school, Shauna mimes putting her head through a noose and Lottie opens her mouth around a finger-gun; their idle conversation doesn’t move the needle much in terms of tone.
Gym class last period sees Lottie and Shauna change in a corner, low-voiced to each other – near silence – among the general chattiness of twenty-seven other girls, all of whom are more likely to be prime targets for the boys sitting in the bleachers; today, though, the boys are joined by royalty. Jackie Taylor, all neatly-coiffed blonde hair and tasteful denim jacket over sundress in late October, sits with a few juniors, maybe, whose names Lottie has to quietly volunteer to Shauna as they stand awkward and overly-angular at the side of the field; Mari, Melissa and Gen, Shauna either remembers or feigns memory of. They talk amongst themselves as they watch the class split up and pick teams. The two girls on the side-line don’t even register that they aren’t chosen, and neither does Mrs. Marcus, the gym teacher who people said was a lesbian because she’s a gym teacher until she got divorced and briefly became worryingly aggressive in class.
‘Jackie keeps looking at you,’ Lottie murmurs, somewhere in Shauna’s direction.
‘What?’
‘I said Jackie keeps looking at you. Can’t get a bead.’
‘Weird. Maybe it’ll be, like, some Carrie shit and someone wants her to take the weird bitch to prom so they can cover me in whatever dog the Beast gets closest to June.’
Lottie snickers, then looks over at the field. ‘We need to find a way to make search and destroy interesting again,’ says Shauna.
‘I was just thinking the same thing.’
‘Nothing’s been good enough for it since the baseball team stopped having parties,’ Shauna snorts, ‘and it isn’t like anyone out there,’ she points a thumb back at the bleachers, ‘is interesting either. Bunch of processed white bread people. A waste ground for human potential.’
‘I dunno,’ Lottie volunteers. ‘I think people think Gen might be gay, or something.’
‘People here think everyone who isn’t them or their clique is gay, Lot. It’s just a really easy way to make them look weird. Doesn’t matter if they’re actually gay.’
‘Guess so,’ Lottie says. ‘Hey. Look. Drama.’
Out on the field, two blonde girls who look like one girl and her reflection are arguing; the mocking little noises Shauna makes as she watches come like second nature. ‘Oh, blah, blah, your boyfriend, my boyfriend, whatever – fucking hell. None of it matters, does it?’
‘Not at all,’ Lottie says. ‘Better off dying,’ she continues, then whips around at the sound of a whistle.
‘Matthews! Shipman! Get in there, girls! This class is for moving, not standing around!’
Reluctantly moving to brandish a hockey stick, Lottie jogs into the scrum and immediately gets lost in the movement of however many bodies; she’s not a team player or a sports person, at all, and each and every time the puck is in her vicinity she’s lost track of it again, getting jostled on all sides to the point that she doesn’t really feel cold any more. She feels like she’s in the workings of some great, elaborate, living machine whose purpose is indeterminate and this – this being anything from gym class to the entire of Wiskayok High School to the town at large – is just some nebulous Them testing how it reacts to whatever criteria they can think of. Or maybe she’s just thinking too hard about gym class hockey. Whatever. She wishes, dimly, that she had thought for a second before racing in without paying attention to wherever Shauna is, because Shauna is a little stronger and broader than she is.
Then, abruptly, she’s getting shoulder-checked and stumbling, falling forward off the far side of the field and bracing herself against hard earth with a sharp pain, her other hand and her fucking face landing in something cold and wet and, oh, Jesus, something that feels like hair? Pushing herself up with one hand, Lottie looks down and gags at something that must be the Beast’s handiwork. You wouldn’t even guess it had once been a dog, Lottie thinks, the only cogent thought that fights its way out of the warring urges to scream and puke.
‘Lot? Oh, fuck me, how did that even get here?’
Lottie silently lets Shauna haul her up from behind, hands looped under her armpits as she numbly stares down at the remains of some poor dog.
‘Thought you woulda loved that shit,’ some girl whose name Lottie can’t call to mind says. ‘Freak.’
‘Hey!’ Shauna barks. ‘Shut the fuck up!’
‘All of you, quiet! And keep your language in check, Shipman!’ Mrs. Marcus calls out, striding over to the congregation of girls.
A little softer, ‘Shauna, take Lottie inside and get cleaned up. You don’t have to come back out if you don’t want to.’
Everyone turns and stares as Shauna walks Lottie off the field, whispers running through the crowd. Shauna’s taken aback, though, when Jackie hops down from the bleachers as they pass.
‘Hey, you two okay? Lottie took a pretty nasty – oh my God. Is that – her blood?’ Jackie has to turn away for a second as she registers the mess.
Lottie gives a near-imperceptible shake of her head, leaving it to Shauna to answer. ‘Nope. Something dead on the field. Think the Beast might be hanging around school.’
‘If it is, it’ll get Melissa first!’ Mari yells down from the bleachers, getting a punch to the shoulder in response.
‘God… I’m sorry,’ Jackie says. ‘I wish I saw who pushed you.’
‘Thanks,’ Lottie says, barely above a whisper, and Jackie gives her a soft smile.
-
‘I kinda wanna ask Shauna out,’ Jackie says to no-one in particular, and gets a look of genuine concern from Mari.
‘You – are you serious? She’s a fucking freak!’
‘ She’s cute, I guess,’ Melissa pipes up, ‘but Mari is kinda right…’
‘ C’mon, guys, I’m sure she’s nice – what’s the worst that could happen?’ ‘
She might, like, bite you,’ Mari snarks. ‘She used to be a biter, I think. Might still be.’
‘ I’m gonna try it,’ Jackie decides. ‘See what happens. The worst thing she can do is say no.’
-
Shivering in the bathroom, Lottie awkwardly angles herself out of her shirt, gingerly slipping the neck over her head so it doesn’t get any bloodier than it already is, and stands turned in on herself in her worn black bra, dog blood still smeared across her face.
‘Fuck, Lot, if I find out which of those bitches pushed you… it’s over. I’ll kill her.’ Shauna turns around and steps closer to Lottie than she was prepared for. ‘I’ll kill her for you, Lottie. Whoever it is,’ she says, dark and insistent, then presses a kiss to Lottie’s forehead. ‘Now, let’s get you cleaned up. Does anyone give a fuck how many paper towels we use?’
And if Shauna watches sneakily as Lottie, shirtless, cleans herself off, it’s fine. The girl needs to get herself clean, and she has a habit of stewing in herself. There’s a shaky, kicked-dog prettiness to the way Lottie pulls on her hoodie and zips it up around herself, hugging her sides and looking like she wishes her fringe could grow a foot and swallow her completely, just let her recede into her own private world of dark, thick hair. She’s too tall to really make herself small, but she likes to try her best.
‘You wanna just go?’ Shauna asks, sitting back in the corner of the changing room they had claimed earlier. ‘We can just sit around and watch movies and think about revenge or whatever as much as we want. Bet Marcus doesn’t give a shit if we leave.’ Lottie just starts putting her clothes back on without needing to say yes, walking close by Shauna as they make their way out of the empty gym building.
‘Hey, Shauna!’ Jackie is very suddenly jogging towards them, still interested for some reason.
‘Oh… uh, hi…?’
‘Well, I, uh, I was just wondering if you wanted to, like, go out with me sometime?’
Shauna blinks once-twice, silently, and finally musters up ‘Um… no.’
‘Oh,’ Jackie looks just a little more crestfallen than Shauna would’ve guessed. ‘No worries!’
The way Jackie’s demeanour changes back to chipper and sweet is, frankly, impressive. She smiles broadly as she turns and chirps ‘Well, see you later!’
‘Huh,’ Shauna muses to herself.
The house is empty when Lottie and Shauna finish their walk home. Everything is as quiet as usual; no Beast attack so soon after the last one.
‘It must be waiting,’ Lottie says. ‘Running out of prey.’
‘It’s gotta be sad that everyone around here has, like, tiny, shitty dogs. The Grants’ Golden Retriever was the last decent one.’
Lottie snorts with laughter as Shauna steps in front to push the door open, leading them into their cold, empty hallway.
‘Huge bowl of popcorn and American Werewolf in London? Keep your mind off things?’
‘Sure,’ Lottie smiles softly.
-
Lottie, age five, is reticent about having a new sister until she meets her. The first thing Shauna ever says to her is ‘You’re tall,’ and somehow that just makes a young Lottie feel recognised. ‘People think I’m weird,’ she says back, and Shauna says ‘Me too,’ and then from there it feels like they don’t stop talking until Deb shushes them in the car. Within a few years they’re thick as thieves; totally inseparable. Every once in a while, Deb or Sarah will make a futile effort to get them to make more friends and it’ll never stick. Shauna has a talent for scaring people off and a commitment to claiming it’s never intentional and that the other people involved are just overly judgemental. It ends up that there’s a few people they don’t hate, but none of them are exactly friends as such; Shauna finds them a way into Tai Turner and Van Palmer’s orbit, and every once in a while they nod at Travis Martinez when they pass in the hallways, but that’s it, basically. They don’t really need much more than each other.
-
There are snickers from the back of the room when Lottie shadows Shauna into biology class, tall and dark like Shauna is lit from below. Neither of them see who barks at Lottie, but Shauna glares hard enough to shut them up, her eyes deep, dark and really unpleasant to be on the receiving end of a quietly furious stare from. So when a note reading BARK, FREAK scrawled in dark red marker arrives on Lottie’s desk, Shauna is honestly surprised someone took the risk. It’s an opportunity for a search and destroy if she ever saw one.
Out on the field during lunch period, Shauna smoulders in the very top corner of the bleachers, practically attacking her cold, ever-so-slightly soggy chicken sandwich as Lottie stares down at her feet, trying with everything she has not to stare over at Jackie and the rest of her soccer friends talking amongst themselves; Jackie is mirroring her almost eerily well, resolutely refusing to look back up at Shauna after the quietly awful conversation the day before. Shame; it had seemed like they might be getting on well. At least until, cutting through the relative peace and quiet, a wadded-up ball of paper towel and half a sandwich and a – thank God, unused – tampon narrowly misses Lottie’s head and Shauna is practically full-body vaulting down the bleachers in a second, with a yell of ‘Fuck you!’ the only thing that foreshadows her. Lottie glances down there for just a second and, maybe thankfully, misses Shauna swinging a closed fist at Randy Walsh immediately after, a couple of girls she wouldn’t be able to name scrambling back from the arc of her arm. Randy’s turn away is a little too slow; Shauna gets him in the cheekbone, pulling her hand back and shaking it out like she’s ready to swing for him again if necessary.
‘Shipman! Christ, everyone, step back,’ Coach Scott calls out from wherever he appeared from. ‘Shauna. Guidance office – and your sister too,’ he says, pointing up at Lottie. ‘Separately.’
-
‘You girls could be so sociable,’ Mrs. Wallace laments to a resignedly silent Lottie. ‘I’ve been here for long enough to have seen that you two used to be perfectly nice girls, and I know that you’re both bright and creative, so… what happened?’
‘People think we’re weird,’ Lottie mumbles, pulling her sweater sleeves down her hands in her lap, committed to her refusal to look anyone in the eye today.
‘Have you or Shauna ever considered that maybe people think you two are weird because she punches people and neither of you are willing to have a real conversation?’ Lottie rolls her eyes and pushes her chair back slightly with one foot, slowly preparing to get the fuck out of there.
‘No, not really. It’s more that Shauna’s trans and I’ve been medicated since I was five fucking years old, Mrs. Wallace, and the people ‘round here are all judgemental.’
‘Language, Ms. Matthews.’
‘Nope. Fuck this,’ Lottie mutters, standing up and turning in one swift movement.
‘Ms. Matthews, if you want to cut off what could be a productive conversation, you’re welcome to, but I would advise you don’t.’
‘Well, I’m awfully sorry, Mrs. Wallace, but I just don’t think you know what me or my sister’s problems actually are,’ Lottie says, and pulls the door open sharply, letting it slam behind her as Shauna falls in step next to her.
‘Can you fucking believe she said people think we’re weird just because you got mad at Randy?’ Lottie says, her emphasis more forceful than anything she’s said in what feels like the past few years.
‘I wish I’d hit him again,’ Shauna sighs. ‘Or whichever of those bitches had him do it. I fucking bet it was Tara Mears – swear to God I might’ve seen her right by you when you fell yesterday.’
‘Isn’t she –‘
‘Yep. Danny Mears’ cousin. The one he dumped Mari for.’ Lottie’s bark of laughter could light up entire universes; it’s vanishingly rare she laughs at full volume. Shauna grins toothily and, just a second later, her whole face lights up even more. ‘You wanna try and find a way to get back at ‘em?’
‘Of course,’ Lottie says. ‘Deb and Sarah’re out again after dinner tonight, right?’
-
And, with perfect timing, something big and dog-like slinks from the woods across town and descends, as though teeing Lottie and Shauna up for something appropriately disgusting and related, upon the Wilsons’ Labrador. Leaves it a little more intact than usual, too.
-
‘School called, girls,’ Deb says abruptly at dinner. ‘Something about a fight and the guidance office? Either of you care to tell us what happened?’
‘Randy Walsh was being an asshole again,’ Shauna starts explaining. ‘Some girl put him up to throwing some shit at Lottie during lunch and they were passing notes about us in biology.’
‘So you…?’
‘I, uh, I did try and punch him in the face,’ Shauna winces, looking over at Lottie for backup.
‘She didn’t get him that hard, though,’ Lottie pipes up. ‘Glancing blow.’
‘Oh, come on, Shauna,’ Deb sighs, exasperated. ‘I thought we were over this? You do remember the last time you got into all this, right? The four-week therapy stuff when you bit Gretchen Walker?’
Shauna throws her hands in the air in frustration. ‘She called me the T-word to my face!’
‘Twice,’ Lottie says.
‘Yes, but Randy Walsh didn’t, and you punched him? You’re lucky you got away with just a trip to the guidance counsellor!’
‘Okay, sorry, Jesus,’ Shauna rolls her eyes. ‘It’s done, I’m probably not gonna hit him again, it feels like we can move on?’
‘If only because I don’t want to make this a fight, yes,’ Deb says. ‘We don’t have time for a fight, Shauna. Just – just don’t keep punching people. Simple solution.’
‘I’ll do my best!’ Shauna chirps, just faux-peppy enough to disconcert her parents and make Lottie smile to herself.
‘Just you again for a while tonight, girls,’ Sarah points out again, watching only slightly puzzled as they look at each other briefly but meaningfully. ‘Same advice as last time, really.’
-
With housekeys stuffed into the inside pocket of her huge overcoat, a plastic bag folded inside her shoulder bag, and her camera slung around her neck, Lottie leads the charge out of the house for once, the night air cold on what little of her face stays exposed as a chilly wind blows her hair around. They don’t really have a goal in mind as they wander the streets, talking aimlessly about movies they can’t remember if the other has seen and albums they can’t remember if the other has heard, each followed by a promise that Shauna will listen to Boys for Pele or Lottie will watch Brain Damage next time they have it in at the video rental place. Each street they take on the path that eventually evolves into the way down to the park is pretty much silent; it’s past ten and the whole town might as well be asleep anyway, except two teenage bandits roaming on the hunt for revenge, or whatever.
The park, neatly placed behind a row of [relatively] nice houses on the border of Wiskayok Woods, is deadly silent. It’s been kind of run-down since before Lottie or Shauna was born, with dents in the slide and one step up to it broken. There’s a climbing frame that might actually be a risk to children’s lives, which is what inspired them to photograph a death here last year; it was a miracle nobody stumbled on Lottie, faking being twisted around herself from a fall, while Shauna had to run home because they forgot the fake blood. The ache in Lottie’s back had been worth how good the photos came out.
-
In their homeroom, Lottie and Shauna are both practically buzzing to see the reactions to their slideshow for the ‘Life in Wiskayok’ project. It’s the result of months of elaborate tableaux, a stupid amount of fake gore, and a mixture of sneaking around and frantically overcorrecting explanations to Deb and Sarah as to why Lottie was wearing a thrift-shop wedding dress covered in dirt, grime, and fake blood that they had lashed over her belly and down the front of the skirt a little overzealously.
So the projector whirrs into life, the girls standing to either side of the screen, and Shauna introduces it with ‘This is our Life in Wiskayok slideshow. It’s a kind of summary of what we think the ideal life here would look like,’ her second sentence ending almost perfectly in time with the first photo: Shauna herself, lying on the bathroom floor surrounded by violently emptied pill bottles. The classroom echoes with a few nervous laughs as the next photo, Lottie in the bloody wedding dress, spread across Shauna’s bed with an unreadable note laying on her chest, is blown up on the screen. Coach Scott, still sitting at his desk, looks like he can’t decide whether to laugh guiltily or cut the whole thing off before it can get any darker. It turns out, a couple minutes later, that Lottie with a rag stuffed in her mouth and wire around her wrists is his limit.
‘ Well, girls, that was – I mean, totally sick. Please, both of you see the guidance counsellor again at the end of the day.’
‘Can we see the ones of Shauna again?’ Mari asks from the back of the room to a laugh from everyone at their desks and, surreptitiously, a sharp kick to the leg of her chair as Shauna goes to sit back down, Lottie in tow.
‘Did you see their faces?’ Shauna hisses gleefully as they take their seats in back of the classroom, desks moved a little closer together. They’ve been doing it for so long that nobody bothers to ask them not to anymore.
‘Coach Scott looked like he was gonna puke at me with the rag,’ Lottie grins.
‘That’s the best one!’ Shauna says, quiet but still sufficiently effusive to get her point across. ‘You still have a few more sketched out, right?’
-
‘Wait,’ Lottie says sharply as she and Shauna are sitting down on the swings.
‘What?’
‘You see that?’
‘No, Lot, what is it?’
Lottie points over at the edge of the sandpit. ‘The Beast’s been around here. Looks fresh, I think…?’
She stands up and starts moving to investigate in the middle of her sentence, mumbling thoughts aloud to herself. Shauna follows, coming in a few moments to see Lottie kneeling next to yet another dog that looks like it got into an industrial accident.
‘Oh, gross,’ Shauna crows. ‘Wait… you wanna drag this over to Tara’s house? It’s pretty sick, but, like, it’d probably scare her off for good if she found most of a Labrador in the yard.’
‘We’d probably better avoid the main streets carrying it,’ Lottie suggests. ‘People’d probably think we’ve been killing all the dogs if they spotted us carrying a bag of dog corpse.’
Shauna sits back in the sandpit, thinking for a moment; her reverie threatens to deepen until there’s a loud snap from somewhere in the trees.
‘Holy fuck,’ Lottie blurts out, heart speeding up. ‘This thing’s still warm.’
A crunch emanates and Shauna is on her feet.
‘Shauna… are you sure this is a good idea?’
‘No. That’s why I wanna do it. You got your camera ready?’
Reticent, hesitant, Lottie stands and follows, feet crunching in dry autumn leaves as Shauna starts picking up speed, leaving Lottie behind. Her heart is hammering in her chest; it feels like if it were to beat any harder her necklace would be hopping back and forth under her clothes. Within what feels like a couple seconds, Shauna has vanished into the woods and Lottie is still standing at their edge. She feels like she’s betraying herself, unable to live up to the fascination with the dark and morbid and dangerous that’s propelled her through the last eight years as an outsider. The leaves have gone silent, and she can’t even tell where Shauna is.
And then she hears the scream. Lottie’s heart feels like it stops dead for a second. Full cessation of blood pumping through her as she hears a raw, guttural, hoarse scream that develops into an ear-splitting shriek. She knows, on pure intimate instinct, that it’s Shauna; her sister’s name rips its way out of her mouth in an unconscious response as she pelts at a speed she didn’t know she could muster into the woods.
‘Shauna!’ Lottie howls, hard enough to make it feel like her throat is going to tear. ‘Keep screaming! Keep making noise!’
‘LOTTIE!’
She sounds close. Somewhere to Lottie’s left; she pivots so hard she nearly trips, bracing herself on a tree and continuing to summon an inexplicable speed, at least until she finds herself in the right place.
The scene Lottie stumbles upon is something from a nightmare. Or a movie. Shauna is on her back, with some… thing, huge, maybe seven or eight feet tall and roped with muscle underneath wiry fur, pinning her to the dirt and raking fucking claws up her thigh, under her skirt like it wants to violate her. She’s still screaming, although it’s wracked by sobs of pain and fear. Lottie is in full fight or flight as she looks around for the biggest rock she can find and lift, settling on something sharp-looking that she charges with. When Lottie descends on the thing, she wants to pull back and puke at the smell, like a wet, unwashed dog that’s been roaming the streets for, like, a year. But she stays in the fray, bashing at its back with a sharp-edged chunk of rock that doesn’t take long to draw blood. She just keeps slashing at it until, finally, it throws her away from its back into the trunk of a tree and starts to limp away in the direction of one of the roads out of town. Lottie winces, sucking air through her teeth at the pain in her spine as she forces herself to her feet and nearly trips over to her sister, looking down in horror at Shauna, covered in blood and dirt and old, dead leaves.
'Lot,' she whimpers. 'Oh, God, Lot, that was a terrible fucking idea - hurts, hurts, have you got me?'
'I've got you, Shauna, hang on,' Lottie grunts, moving awkwardly in weird, small motions.
Hauling a crying, bloodied Shauna to her feet, Lottie follows the trail of stink and beast blood, finding it padding across the dirt into the road. It goes still for a minute, looks back at them, and then –
A battered yellow van fucking plows through the Beast of Wiskayok Woods, because that’s what Lottie is convinced it is – it was – and that it’s been real the whole time. Or, at least, it was real until Nat Scatorccio wrecked the fender of her van running it down by accident. In any case, Lottie is stumbling away with Shauna’s arm hooked around her shoulder and her arm wrapped tight around Shauna’s waist before Nat has time to get out and ask them what the fuck just happened. Shauna is practically incoherent as they make the awkward, clumsy walk half an hour back to their house, stumbling down dark, empty streets, houses full of people who might as well not exist
‘It – you – you – fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck me,’ she breaks for a second to let out a furious growl of pain that chokes out into a sob, her face wet with tears, ‘that fucking thing – it died, right? It definitely died?’
‘Fuck – Shauna, I think it fucking died,’ Lottie says, choking back her own tears. ‘You saw how hard that van hit it, right?’
‘No!’
Lottie ends up fumbling with hands slick with Shauna’s and the Beast’s blood to unlock the front door, collapsing into the hallway with Shauna still in tow and yowling ‘MOM!’ like a wild animal. No response. The house is empty. For now, at least, Lottie and Shauna are on their own.