The car from the Sheriff’s Department is idling outside of the apartment complex. Grace is in the passenger seat, and she waves cheerfully at Landis. He lifts a hand to wave back, sees the sheriff sitting on the driver’s side, and seriously considers turning around and heading back inside. But he doesn’t have time to be conflicted about this. Austin’s in trouble. And just because the sheriff knows what he did, probably doesn’t believe that he was under the influence of anything except maybe meth or cocaine - that doesn’t mean she’s here to arrest him. Oh, God, but what if she is? What if they think he did something to Austin, and is lying about it?
Landis fumbles with the door, and slides into the backseat of the car. Walker does the same, both men contorting their tall frames to try and fit comfortably in the space. Richard and Danton followed them out of the building, but haven’t appeared in the car yet. Landis guesses that they’ve judged the lack of room inside and decided to make their own way out to the trails. He hopes so, anyway. They won’t know exactly where Austin is unless Richard comes along to help.
“Landis, you look great!” Grace enthuses once they pull out of the parking lot, twisting around to look through the glass and chain link barrier that separates back and front seat. “I love what you did to your hair. Who’s your friend? You didn’t say you were bringing someone else with you.”
“Walker Rivers,” Walker answers, before Landis can even open his mouth. “Austin’s brother sent me from home to keep an eye on him. Make sure he doesn’t get into trouble.”
“Then where were you when he got possessed and stabbed?” Grace laughs.
Landis cracks a half-smile, but she’s right - if Walker really is supposed to be protecting Austin, how come they haven’t met until today, when Landis actually had to seek him out and tell him Austin was in trouble? He would have assumed that Walker, at least, would have come out and tried to intervene in the incident at the lake house.
Walker shrugs noncommittally. “Babysitting him isn’t my only responsibility. Besides, he can take care of himself.”
“He did well enough against that monster that was killing folks from out of town,” the sheriff speaks up for the first time. Her voice is low and pleasant, with a slight, lilting Southern accent. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Rivers. I’m Sheriff Maxwell.”
She doesn’t acknowledge Landis. He wonders if he should have said hello, or should say something now, but maybe it’s better just to leave it be. It’s been a couple months since the lake house incident, but their last interaction with one another wasn’t exactly friendly.
“Yeah.” Walker smiles in a funny way that Landis can’t quite make sense of. “I guess he did, didn’t he? Anyway, nice to meet you.”
“Grace filled me in on her phone conversation with you, Mr. Holliday,” the sheriff says. Landis suddenly wishes she had gone on not acknowledging him.
“Uh, yeah,” he chokes out, assuming her long pause means that she’s waiting for him to say something. “That’s…good.”
He feels his face heat up, and thinks that maybe he should have offered her some kind of apology for breaking out of the station. How about for murdering eight people? drawls an internal voice that sounds eerily like Mal’s.
“Grace also tells me that you were the one who broke Austin out of it, when he was possessed by this…entity that seems to be inside of your other friend,” Sheriff Maxwell says. She has to force the words “possessed” and “entity” out, like she can’t believe she’s really saying them in all seriousness.
“Yes ma’am.”
“He stabbed Austin,” Grace chips in, “and the evil spirit inside of him gave up. Like it hadn’t felt pain before.”
“Considering it’s felt pain now, I don’t think that’ll work again,” Walker says darkly.
Landis bobs his head in agreement, forgetting that Sheriff Maxwell can’t see him. “I don’t think so either.”
“What are the chances they’ll all still be alive by the time we get to the mine?” Walker asks. It’s the question that’s been hanging in the air since before they all got in the car - since Landis heard the words “blood sacrifice” come out of Richard’s mouth.
“I don’t know,” Landis says. “Austin is injured, but apparently not apt to bleed out anytime soon. The other two…I have no idea. Richard said the lake entity is trying to do some kind of blood sacrifice.”
“Richard?” Sheriff Maxwell and Walker both ask, nearly in harmony.
“Austin’s dad.”
“Landis can see ghosts, same as Austin,” Grace explains to Sheriff Maxwell. Landis can’t see the sheriff’s expression from where he’s sitting, but he swears she slumps a little in her seat. She must not have been used to dealing with the supernatural before Austin came along. Or she could ignore it until she was face-to-face with it, like most people in Antlers.
“Blood sacrifices kind of end in death by their very nature, right?” Walker asks. “I mean, I think someone else at the Department told me Austin’s dad died in one.”
Landis glances down towards the long scar on his forearm. “Not necessarily. I was…involved in one, and I only needed stitches.”
Grace’s eyes get as big as saucers, and she gets so close to the glass barrier that her nose squishes against it. “You what?”
“Grace,” Sheriff Maxwell says warningly. Grace seems to get the message, and twists around to sit properly, casting a glance every few seconds over her shoulder at Landis.
“It was involuntary,” Landis says.
“As most blood sacrifices are,” Walker mutters under his breath, only loud enough for Landis to hear.
“But it’s actually how whatever was in the lake got into Otter,” Landis continues, figuring Grace and the sheriff should get the full story before they actually start formulating any sort of plan. “Some…witches, I guess, used my blood to summon it back. In the woods - the park, actually. It killed one of them, and possessed Otter.”
The car is silent for a few minutes that feel like an entire eternity. Landis watches Walker start to bounce one of his legs boredly, and wonders if the sheriff is about to just drive them back to the Sheriff’s Department and toss them in lockup. If he were her, he probably would. All this talk about possession and blood sacrifice has to sound crazy to someone who didn’t live through it.
“Those college students we brought in for trespassing,” Sheriff Maxwell says finally, slowly, like she’s coming to a realization. “The ones who were having a bonfire in the woods. They were covered in dirt and blood, and when we questioned one of them, she kept rambling about how something had come out of the fire, and taken someone. I assumed they were all on drugs, but -”
“That was them,” Landis confirms.
“Jesus,” Sheriff Maxwell breathes.
“But that was a while ago, wasn’t it?” Grace asks. “How come your friend is only being possessed now?”
“Probably had to wait for an excuse to get into the mines,” Walker says. “Dunno what it would want there, though.”
He and Grace both look towards Landis, expecting an answer, but Landis shrugs. He doesn’t know what the lake entity wants with the mines, exactly, but if it’s doing a blood sacrifice, it must be summoning something. Some other blood-hungry creature lying in wait underneath the soil, or something from Hell itself.
“Whatever it is, it can’t be good,” he says out loud.
“How are we going to stop it?” Grace asks. “Well, both things, I mean. Assuming the blood sacrifice or whatever works.”
“What if we knock the possessed guy unconscious?” Walker raises an eyebrow, folding over with his elbows digging into his knees.
Landis bites his lower lip. If Otter’s body is unconscious, the lake entity might be forced to jump into someone else’s, or make a strategic retreat. It’s risky. But it might buy us more time to figure out how to get rid of the entity for good.
He can’t shake the feeling that they’re all walking into something way over their heads. Like the closer they get to the mines, the more they’re losing their chance to turn around and run away screaming. It’s unlike any feeling of dread he’s ever had before, even when Grace was driving him to the lake house, and he was sure he was about to know what it felt like to drown.
Grace is saying something, and looking back at him quizzically, and Landis realized he’s tuned out of the conversation. He blinks, and shakes his head a little to ground himself back in reality.
“Sorry, what?”
“I said, we’re probably going to be fine.” Grace smiles. “Right?”
“Right,” Landis agrees, despite the uneasy pit opening up in his stomach.
absolutely one of the best parts of this chapter. this awkward conversation between landis (who doesn’t want to be there), walker (who doesn’t want to be there - derogatory), maxwell (who doesn’t want to be there), and grace (who’s happy to be catching up) is SO FUNNT