“Landis?”
Landis opens his eyes. They take a moment to adjust to the darkness. He doesn’t try to stand - just looks up towards the slivers of moon showing through the forest canopy. Damp leaves are stuck in his face and hair. They’re slimy against his skin, cold like dead hands reaching out of the ground to grasp at him. Dead hands. Something about dead hands -
Landis sits bolt upright. Otter, who he now realizes was leaning over him, calling his name, jumps back to give him room.
“The lake,” Landis says. His voice comes out a hoarse croak, rattling painfully inside his throat.
No one answers him. Landis looks around the clearing - the other witches are still there, alive, standing around the smoking wreckage of the fire pit. Gen’s glasses are askew, and behind them, her eyes look hollow and haunted. She’s twisting the hem of her dress in her fists, staring absently into the trees. Sparrow and Tara are both looking towards Landis and Otter. Even as far away as he is, Landis can tell Tara is white as a sheet. Sparrow just looks like they’re going to be sick, their hands pulled up inside their sleeves and pressed against their mouth.
The lake entity is nowhere in sight. A chill runs down Landis’s spine, and he shivers, feeling the hairs on the back of his neck prickle.
“What happened to the lake?” he asks, a little louder.
“Gone,” Otter says. He squats down, sticking out a hand to help Landis up. “It just vanished. It was really weird - like, it was there one second, and then it just,” he makes a popping noise with his lips, “poofed. Lost interest after you passed out, I guess.”
Sparrow makes a noise like they want to say something. Landis looks to them, but they give their head the tiniest of shakes and turn away, scuffing the toe of their shoe against the ashy ground.
“How long was I out?” Landis asks, grabbing Otter’s hand in both of his and levering himself to his feet. His whole body aches, and his legs feel wobbly, likely to give out again sometime soon. He looks down at his arms and finds them filthy, black mud packed in under his fingernails. Hopefully his knife wound won’t get infected. It still hurts like a bitch.
“Not too long,” Otter says. “A minute at most. I still want to get you home so I can stitch up your arm.”
“Yeah.”
Home sounds good, but something still feels wrong. Landis’s stomach is churning with anxiety. If the lake entity left on its own, there’s no way it’s gone for good. It’s probably going to stick around until someone sends it back to wherever it came from. People are going to die because you couldn’t turn down a stupid invitation to hang out in the woods. Antlers is going to be wiped off the map because you couldn’t keep your mouth shut about killing your best friends.
“It’s still here,” Tara blurts out loudly.
Landis turns his head to look at her so fast that it sends a jolt of pain through his temples. He squeezes his eyes shut until the feeling passes, and swallows hard. “What?”
“The entity,” she says. Her eyes are wide, her pupils wavering pinpricks in big fields of slate gray. “It never left.”
Sparrow makes a low, moaning noise and clutches Tara’s arm unsteadily. “Don’t.”
“What do you mean it never left?” Landis asks, stepping towards the witches. Otter shifts uneasily at his side, but doesn’t try to stop him, or restrain him.
“It went inside your friend,” Tara says. She lifts a finger and points at Otter.
Landis laughs. The sound is thin and mirthless, crazy even to his ears. They’re fucking with me. Trying to turn Otter and I against each other - more likely, the entity possessed one of them and they’re defending each other. Or it really did vanish, and they’re protecting it. They’re the ones who called it here, after all. To possess me. They’re on its side.
“Bullshit,” he says.
“What, like it possessed me?” Otter asks. His voice is tinged with worry.
“It didn’t possess you,” Landis says lowly, “there’s no reason it’d want you. It probably went into one of them.”
“Tara’s right,” Sparrow says shakily, “it went inside your friend. We all saw it.”
“That doesn’t make any fucking sense.” Landis pulls his fingers through his hair, combing it back from his forehead, flicking leaves out of it. “It’s probably - it’s in Gen, if it’s in anyone. Look at her.”
He gestures to Gen. She still looks spaced out, her gaze unfocused. She hasn’t looked away from the forest the whole time since Landis woke up, and doesn’t now. It’s like she didn’t even hear the accusation. She was the closest to the entity when Landis passed out. She was the one who tried to coerce it to use Landis as its vessel. If anyone here is possessed, it has to be her.
“She’s in shock,” Sparrow snaps. They take a step towards Landis, dark eyes narrowed, their hands dropping down to their sides to ball into fists. “One of our best friends just died here, asshole. But if you don’t want to believe us about her murderer being inside your friend, that’s your fucking prerogative.”
“Yeah, it is my fucking prerogative,” Landis says. Adrenaline is flooding back into his body, making the pain he’s in seem farther and farther away. “Because every single thing you’ve told me up until now has been a lie. You lied about what you do out here, you lied about why you wanted me to come. You tried to kill me -”
“We didn’t,” Tara protests weakly.
“Yes, you did,” Landis says, and the words are deafening even inside of his own head. “You tried to give me to the - the fucking lake, as some kind of meat puppet, and you didn’t even think about how you were going to control a thing like that once it was here! So excuse me for saying so, but yeah, your friend is dead, and it’s your own fucking fault! And maybe next time, don’t fucking talk to me about best friends dying right in front of you!”
Tara bursts into tears. Sparrow stares dumbfoundedly at Landis, opening and closing their mouth, but not saying anything. Gen keeps twisting the hem of her dress in her hands, rocking back and forth on her heels.
“Let’s go,” Landis says, turning his back on the witches and walking out of the clearing. He almost looks back to make sure Otter follows him, but hears the sound of Otter’s shoes cracking twigs and leaves in the underbrush, and exhales in relief. Hopefully they can find their way back to the car.
“You’re making a mistake!” Sparrow shouts after him. “Letting that thing come back with you!”
Landis ignores them. He’s past caring about what they have to say. It doesn’t matter if the lake really did vanish, or went into Gen - the witches called it back to Earth, so it’s their mess to deal with now. Maybe now that the entity killed Aster, it’ll forget about Landis and go after the rest of the witches. Landis shoulders past a low tree branch and presses on until he can’t hear the sounds from the clearing anymore, until he can’t hear anything except the birds in the trees and Otter’s footfalls behind him.
i can’t think of any reason why this would go badly. this is fine.