Chapter Text
Why did he desert me?
In my hour of need,
I truly am indeed
Alone again, naturally,
It seems to me-
Travis turned off the radio, shutting off the song that cut entirely too close to home. He continued to his house on the edge of town in silence. The events of the last full moon resurfaced in moments of quiet like this. All his life every spare moment was taken up in some way by his family. It had been an often unwanted intrusion, but now every moment was consumed by emptiness.
There was work and then there was nothing else. He felt akin to a piece of machinery, outdated and rusting out. He failed at his primary function and was sent out to pasture.
He survived and killed Silas after six years of agonizing over his family's safety. All for it to mean nothing in the end. The years he dedicated to keeping his family afloat, even the ones before the curse, felt entirely wasted. A raw feeling tattered the edges of his mind, the connections he depended upon suddenly gone without a goodbye, again.
He mulled over the events of the day following the massacre of the night. He thought he would be spending the rest of his life in a jail cell. Perhaps it was cruel punishment when none of the counselors incriminated him. For years, deep down, a small part of him craved being discovered. Now that his family wasn't around there was no one to protect so fiercely, it was just cowardice keeping him from turning himself in and maybe giving some peace to the families of the dead hikers he covered up.
That day when the higher law enforcement arrived, he didn't need to even think about lying anymore. Though, it would be wrong to say the lies just slipped out unfettered after years of hiding the truth. There was already such a complex web of fallacy, spun so thick it was easier to slip into the false truth and pretend it was the reality than to tear it all down. Misdirecting people's attention onto what they already suspected was easy enough. Protective more than just dishonest.
“No, I didn't get here until later when…” he paused, letting his expression crack before quickly zipping it back up and changing the subject, “the deer has been going missing lately, we've been finding mutilated deer around the property. We weren't sure what to make of them."
To the knowledge of the investigators, he wasn't even aware the counselors were still in Hacketts Quarry, assuming they went home soon after the campers. The death of Kaylee and Caleb was determined to be the fault of the terrified paranoid counselors mistaking the kids for the creature. Which was actually the truth, just lacking the correct context. In any case he chose not to prosecute them.
He could have drawn it out and spun the blame on them if he really cared. It didn't make sense to enter a legal standoff with Laura and Max who could just as easily press charges on him. Without any incentive it felt like fighting the wind, his family was already dead, ruining the lives of young adults with bright futures ahead of them wouldn't do any good. Not when their reasons for going after the Hacketts was to preserve those futures.
The lack of legal action wasn't solely out of the good of his heart, he knew there was evidence against him if things went too far. For the week succeeding the night of the full moon, extensive combs of the property were held. When the wardens and investigators looking for a possibly rabid or extremely vicious animal grazed too close to the lake, his heart squeezed. If they found those bodies at the bottom of the lake it was over. Would it really be that bad? he wondered.
He nearly confessed when he and one of the game wardens passed the boat house. The man had kind eyes and a full neatly trimmed beard, there was sympathy in his voice when he spoke to Travis about the goings on of the investigation. Not in the accidentally condescending fashion he found lots of people used. It would have been best to confess to him before they found the bloated corpses in the depths.
“Why no swimmin’?” Officer Maclaren asked, and pointed to the sign posted by the docs.
“I don't know, I never spent much time at the summer camp. More my brothers calling,” he said, trying and failing to add some inflection into his response. He couldn't seem to pull himself out of despondency for quite a while after the adrenaline had faded and he found Caleb dead in the lodge.
They spent another couple weeks combing the woods and coming up dry. Travis himself wasn't there for most of it but when he was aiding the search for the beast that did not exist, a confession was on the tip of his tongue. When he returned home he would drink a cup of whiskey and wallow in the shame of it all.
He took the week off as was expected of him after his entire family’s murder, a month or longer would be more than acceptable given the circumstances. He found the silent house and silent phone more of a burden than returning to work. Trying to stay true to the vision of the police officer he wanted to be in the first place felt like the only way he could ever make up for the misdeeds he did in the name of his family who no longer existed because of him.
As he pulled into the dirt driveway of his small house. The sun was beginning to dip into the horizon in an unfair show of everyday splendor. Travis sat with the engine off for a while trying to gather the motivation to face his lonely house.
He pushed open the car door and swung his legs under him to make the short walk to his house. The few steps up the stairs of the porch felt like hiking a mountain. With keys in hand, Travis unlocked the front door and pulled it closed behind him. The inside was dim and the fading sunshine washed the room in tones of grey.
Just as Travis reached for the light switch, the click of the CD player on the old radio at the other end of his house echoed to the entryway, and soft twangs of a familiar song reached him at the doorway. A shiver of confusion and unease creeped up his spine. His hand fell away from the light switch and down to his sidearm.
I go out walkin’ after midnight
Out in the moonlight
Just like we used to do
With his back to the space he'd already seen, he pushed the half closed door of the bathroom open, nothing. He turned to the bedroom and made to do the same.
I’m always walkin’ after midnight
Searching for you
I walk for miles along the highway
Breath caught in his throat at the sight of the dark silhouette of a man swaying to the music, back turned to the doorway. How the hell had someone gotten into his house? He raised his gun and inched forward, hoping to subdue the intruder without shooting him. The last thing he needed was more spotlight from higher police.
Well that's just my way
Of sayin’, “I love you”
I’m always walkin’ after midnight
“Put your hands above your head and get on the ground,” he said loud enough to be heard over the music.
As he inched closer and prepared to repeat the command more forcefully, the man started to turn. Any action or order he had been prepared to do to get rid of the intruder immediately died upon recognizing the shadowed face. A face he hadn't seen in four years since. He choked on a breath,
“You’re not real,” his senses both sharpened and dulled simultaneously. The music became too loud and his vision tunneled. The man called John Rivers took a step toward but before he could reach him Travis backed into the wall unable to tear his eyes away, heart thundering in his chest.
Maybe he’s cryin’ for me
And as the skies turn gloomy
Night wind whispers to me
Travis gasped against the wall, eyes wide, his hands fumbling for the light switch,
I’m lonesome as I can b-
In a flash, the light flooded the dim room, and both Patsy Cline and John Rivers were gone without a trace. Travis leaned heavily on the wall for a while. The adrenaline of the moment coursed through his body for a long while, making his hands shake with the aftershock.
“I'm going crazy. I’m actually losing my goddamn mind,” Travis said aloud. something he found he did more often in the past few weeks.
He stood still, taking deep breaths and trying to calm himself for a while longer, and in that time the sun had sunken even deeper into the horizon, leaving only a faint orange in the sky and an inky blackness in the rest of his house. He shook himself off and tentatively trekked into the darkness, mind still reeling, and quickly turned on the rest of the lights.
“I need a drink,” He said to the emptiness. Shuffling over to his cupboards, he pulled out the bottle of whiskey he had just bought after finishing off the last of his alcohol cabinet over his week off. His hands shook grabbing a glass, clinking it with the others in the cupboard.
“Jesus, they’re gonna lock me up and throw away the key,” he said to himself shakily.
Only when he had downed one glass and began to sip another, sitting on his couch in silence did he begin to calm down enough to push whatever happened out of his head. The fear faded into the sadness that always lingered beneath the surface.
Reaching forward for the TV remote he clicked on the TV, desperate for something to fill the quiet. The radio was out of the question.
He got the TV in the 90s with John. Technically John bought it and they kept it at Travis’s house. Kaylee and Caleb always made fun of him for not upgrading the clunky thing, but he always thought it had a certain charm. Now that John was gone, it was something to hang onto as a reminder.
They each bought things for each other's houses. Travis had bought John a couch and a recliner among other things. John reciprocated with other appliances and homewares, a coffee maker, a set of kitchen chairs. A way to live together without suspicion.
Travis decided that taking off his uniform down to his undershirt and boxers was as far as he was going in getting ready for bed. He was still a little apprehensive about returning to his bedroom after what had happened, even if it was just a hallucination. So sleeping on the couch clutching a half-drunk cup of alcohol it was.
He awoke in the morning with the sensation of a hand on his shoulder that moved soothingly up and down his bicep, he didn't immediately recognize it as concerning in a half-awake stupor. However, as his mind became more aware and remembered he was alone, he jolted off of the couch and onto the floor looking around wildly and finding nothing. As the heat of the hand on his shoulder faded, so too did the immediate panic.
“You dreamed it,” he said absently. He leaned back into a lying position on the floor and exhaled covering his face with his hands. He didn't move for a while and chased the feeling of the familiar warmth on his shoulder.
-
Glancing up from his plain toast and black coffee, he noticed the light in his bedroom was still on. A faded mimicry of the icy panic from the night before spread through his veins. He stood up, denying his inhibitions, and went to turn the light off.
As he suspected nothing happened when he entered his room and flicked off the overhead light. He busied himself by getting dressed in a fresh uniform. He paused as the CD player on his bookcase caught his attention. There wasn't supposed to be a CD in there, especially not that one. He reached out to eject the disk but retracted his hand. Whether there was or wasn't a disk in there it wouldn't change anything. Or maybe it would change everything. Schrodiner’s CD could mind its own business.
-
He sat on the porch steps with a second cup of coffee warming his hands. He breathed in the cool morning air and let it wash away the cold remnants of the anxiety. The morning was relatively crisp as a whisper of autumn started to creep into the warm summer. The breeze rustled the leaves overhead and despite the changing season it still carried the sweet smell of summertime. Lately, the silence had been a source of great unease but Travis couldn't find it in himself to ruin the quiet morning. John loved mornings like this. Were he still alive they would probably be sharing a cigarette over their coffee, or talking on the phone, or just thinking about each other.
He stood and returned the mug of coffee to the kitchen, locking the door on his way back outside. As he stepped off the porch to leave for the police station his phone rang. Not his personal cell however but his work phone. It was an unknown number, anyone with the number would be in his contacts so he nearly declined before deciding against it.
“Sheriff Hackett speaking,” He answered swiftly.
“Travis? It's Laura Kearney,” Travis paused halfway to his vehicle, “Killing Silas didn't work,” her voice was clear with no room for misinterpretation, “and we're gonna need somewhere to stay. Like very soon if you know what I mean.”
That couldn't be possible. There was simply no chance. The white wolf that started this whole mess was unquestionably dead. Was she pulling one over on him? She wouldn’t, why would she do that? What happened to make her so sure? Was it just paranoia? He wasn't sure what to say, all the questions he had piled into one indecipherable mess.
“How did you get this number?” was all that he could muster, not fully processing the information. He rolled his eyes at himself.
“I called the North Kill police department? I said I was a friend of yours trying to reconnect and the secretary gave it to me. I feel like you're not focussing on the right information here Travis.”
“Um yeah uh, how do you know it didn’t work?” Travis asked, suppressing his rising hysteria.
“We're all experiencing… symptoms I guess, and we all just want to stay together somewhere secluded on the next full moon. All of us are pretty convinced killing Silas didn't work but there could just be residual side effects, I guess? In any case, we want to make sure we don’t hurt anyone.”
He had only just begun to entertain the idea that he could spend each full moon asleep in his bed as a man of 56 should be doing instead of pulling stressful and laborious all-nighters every month. The wound of the past six years and the death of his entire family was barely beginning to scab over enough for him to pack it away in the recesses of his mind. No time at all had passed in fact, not a single incident free full moon in six years. The death of his family, the death of John, it all felt like it happened again right in front of him.
“Uhhh, Travis? You there?” Laura questioned, pulling him out of his spiral. He has a duty to protect the public. He can't just turn a blind eye to the knowledge that there could be a possible massacre.
“All of you?” he said weakly before he could rephrase to sound a little more dignified. He continued without waiting for an answer, not needing one, “Yes. You can use the summer camp. Make sure you are all here a day early,” he said, putting on his professional sheriff mask. “I'm going to give you my personal number. If you need to contact me, use that. Okay?”
“Yeah, alright, give it to me,” she replied after a beat.
He rattled off the number, and just like that the rather mundane day was gone and replaced with another worry for his plate of negativity. A to-do list began to form. How many counselors were there? Nine his mind supplied. He was going to have to face the house and the summer camp and likely spend substantial time there fixing cages and creating makeshift enclosures. A pit of dread settled in his core, at the very least it was something to do.
The full moon was due in less than a week, he sighed a long suffering breath and shook off the conversation. Just when he was hoping to go straight and narrow as a man of the law. It was for the good of everyone, he told himself. He couldn't handle another dead civilian on his conscience.