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alphabetbill · 18 days

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Macabre [ HEMLOCK GROVE ] - chapter 1

" 𝐬𝐢𝐜𝐤 𝐨𝐟 𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐟𝐚𝐜𝐞, 𝐬𝐢𝐜𝐤 𝐨𝐟 𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐬𝐤𝐢𝐧, 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐝𝐚𝐫𝐤, 𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐫𝐚𝐰𝐥𝐬 𝐡𝐢𝐦𝐬𝐞𝐥𝐟 𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠- 𝐚 𝐛𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐩𝐨𝐞𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐧 𝐦𝐨𝐬𝐭 "

[ C I C A D A ] hosho mccreesh.

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~ description ~

A werewolf whose only skill is running from his fears, a half-upir with no idea of the true darkness lying inside of him, and a girl found alive in the woods months after her mysterious death.

Some secrets in Hemlock Grove should have just stayed buried. In a town that isn't so sleepy after all, monsters of all kinds are wide awake under the surface, crawling their way up.

~ warnings~

This story will contain mature and heavy themes that may involve potentially explicit content, gore and murder, talk of kidnapping and stalking victims, supernatural/paranormal/religious themes and trauma, any other themes not covered in the general description will probably be tagged here at the start of the chapters that other significant warnings apply to.

A list will be linked here upon completion and upload of each chapter:

Cicada and the Snake

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

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c h a p t e r o n e .

Peter Rumancek

<<>>

IT WAS WITH A HEAVY HEART SOMEWHERE INSIDE THAT Lance Evergreen would lay his daughter to finally rest, but not heavy enough.

On a muggy October evening, the man would stumble into his house, more of a trailer trash dwelling than anything, and hit the drinks as though he had never left them. Judith had been gone for months, and in his mind, seeing them lower her battered corpse into a hole in the ground where he would never see her again felt almost offensively anti-climactic. He had dreamt of the worst-case scenario over and over again, had imagined how it happened, when and why. How they would find her and what would be left of her.

By the time her body was found dumped in that ditch, in his head, Lance had already seen it all.

He had already mourned. He would never stop.

Peter went to visit him the day after the funeral.

He kicked his way through discarded beer cans and shattered bottles that spilled sticky ichor onto the bare particle board. He thought Uncle Vince was bad, given his lethal alcoholism that had eventually killed him, but this was just sad and Peter was just sad.

He knew Lance as well as he had known Vince, the two men having been close friends. Peter knew that Lance had an ex-wife, Judith's mother, who had shown up for the funeral and left promptly afterwards. Peter hadn't known her all that well from the couple of times he met the woman when he was little, but he had seen the way she clung to her cigarette and never said a word to anyone at the funeral. She used to be a local, but neither his uncle or Lance had brought it up so he had never had a reason to ask why she left. They also had a son who died.

Peter had also known Judith, which only made his heart squeeze more to think about it. He had fond memories of throwing worms at each other, collecting snails as kids, and gathering around Nicolae Rumancek to observe the fairy he had caught in a mason jar. He remembered so clearly how Jude was so adamant that it was in fact not a fairy, but a firefly, and that Peter's grandfather ought to let it go. Now his grandfather was gone, the girl was gone, and all he had left were faded recollections to remember it all by.

The man was already out cold by the time he reached the couch, which had been torn up by a dog- he could tell from the scent. It must have died not too long ago, because the food bowl still sat in the corner of the kitchen, flies buzzing around it. Peter took it upon himself to dispatch the old food with a hollow feeling in his chest and returned to the living room.

It was difficult to see how much this man had changed. Peter had fond memories of Lance giving him shoulder rides and driving around in his car. He remembered his stories, many of which he and Vince made up, and remembered how life-like and exciting he had been. Now all that was left was a husk of the soul of a man- a man with a failed marriage, two dead kids and one dead best friend. Alone in the world to drink and then die.

Peter didn't know what to do to fix his uncle's friend. He didn't know how to help his sad, hulking body off the couch when he had no interest in learning how to move. He didn't know how to console a father whose daughter was gone. But he did know that he wanted to be there for him, and that he wanted to help.

So, he helped. All while the man had drank himself into a stupor, the boy found his way to the kitchen and to the garbage bags beneath the rusted sink with the constant drip. He put the bottles, the cans, the wrappers, and all of the litter that his eye could see into the bag and hauled that bag out to the trash. He came back. He repeated the process.

It should not have been Peter's job to clean up this mess, but for once he didn't mind doing it. It felt almost therapeutic to cleanse the trailer of the mess and the alcohol and the despair he wished Uncle Vince had the chance to. The last thing he did was pry the bottle from his hand and set it away on the kitchen table.

Then Lance muttered in his sleep. Something something not worth it anymore.

When Peter came home later, he hugged his mother. He loved Lynda and she loved him, but they had never been a family for too much sentimentalism. Tonight was different. He needed that hug. He couldn't imagine what it would be like to never hug her again.

The following day at school felt like walking through a land of zombies. Peter was new to town, having arrived a couple of weeks prior to Judith Evergreen's funeral. He didn't know whether or not it was because of that, that everyone here seemed so lifeless and flat. He didn't think so, because he only found one or two funeral flyers dangling from the noticeboards, all of which had been trampled on or discarded on the floor.

It was the end of the day and Peter was in the middle of picking up one of the memorial notices for her when Roman Godfrey spoke to him for the first time.

"So you knew her," he said. A statement, not a question. His eyes– those eyes– tore right through the flesh and into his soul.

Peter knew at once that the boy was upir. He could sense it from a mile away, from the very first time he had glanced in the rich boy's direction on his first day at school. He could sense it like a serpent shifting beneath Roman's skin in the dark.

Roman was impossibly tall for the age of seventeen and had a face that had been morbidly carved by the holiest of angels. His hair was brown and loose, unlike his crisp blazer or tucked-in shirt and trousers. Peter wondered if the boy could smell his blood.

"Yeah. When I was a kid" he replied, anything to erase the unbearable cloud of tension that was the upir standing behind him.

"Mm. It's weird. I knew her too," Roman said. His voice didn't sound sympathetic, or if it did, it fronted as disjointed and monotone. "You want a lift home?"

It was raining and Peter had no interest in walking until he became a soggy wet dog. So he accepted.

The car was a vintage cherry red Jaguar, which Roman explained had belonged to his father. Peter wasn't sure what he was meant to do with this information but nonetheless continued to listen. The ride was relatively quiet and the radio hummed in the stretches of silence between admittedly one sided conversations.

"You're new in town," Roman said, making small talk.

"Are you a Gypsy?" he asked, but surprisingly not in that sneering way most other folk did.

"People at school say you're a werewolf. Is it true?" he questioned, as if Peter hadn't heard the rumours already, much like a subtle interrogation.

All of those things were correct, but Peter scooted around the last question by declaring that he was just an obscenely hairy teenager.

The car stopped on the side of the road near a slope that rolled down into a clearing, pulling up just in front of a rusted mailbox.

"You're related to Vince," Roman evaluated, seeming to recognize the dwelling. "He used to work for my mom at one point."

Peter had not known about that, and briefly found himself wondering what exactly his uncle had been doing with Olivia Godfrey. A strange, unnerving woman indeed.

As he thanked the rich boy and got out of the car, retrieving the mailbox, a car drove by.

Peter jolted.

In the seconds it had taken for the other vehicle to pass, a girl had appeared sitting in the passenger seat of Roman's car, where Peter had only been sitting seconds ago. In the small window of time he caught a glimpse of her, he saw black and blue and gray skin and teary, blood-filled eyes.

He saw Judith Evergreen, and then she disappeared.

"Something wrong?" Roman asked, viridian eyes narrowing.

After taking a moment to settle himself, unconvincingly the werewolf shook his head. The Upir left, but not without staring at Peter for a little longer than what was considered a normal duration of time to stare at someone.

He descended the old wooden staircase and into the clearing by the river where his home, previously Vince's, sat overlooking the water. He entered, greeting his mother, and opened the fridge to pop open a beer.

"So what's up with the Godfreys?" he asked, swigging from the bottle as he went over to plunge into the couch, stretching lazily to reach the remote and flicking on the TV.

"Bad business," Lynda said as she sipped on her cup of tea, already seated on the couch. "You should steer clear of them."

"The boy, Roman. He's an upir. I don't think he knows it himself," he sighed. All he could think about was the sinking feeling he got when he was near him, the feeling of drowning slowly, or being buried alive beneath the burning weight of his stare alone. Despite this, Peter couldn't deny his nagging intrigue. Call it morbid curiosity.

"He dropped you home?"

"He offered. It was raining."

Lynda said nothing in response, but Peter knew what she would have said.

Be careful with him.

That night Peter sat down on the edge of his bed and found himself staring through his window and out into the woods. In those woods, he thought he saw a girl.

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