The severed powerline was still in Chase's hand when Caitlin found her.

As soon as Paris and Henry freed her, Caitlin had climbed out the basement window and immediately ran for the cover of the trees. Once there, and once she felt safe enough to move, she began sneaking discreetly around the cabin, watching for some sign of Chase. She got it in the form of all the lighted windows in the cabin going dark simultaneously.

She thought she had seen power boxes on the rear wall of the cabin, so she crept around through the bushes to the back yard.

The blood soaked blonde had been digging in the dirt. An underground power line had been unearthed by her, and was freshly cut.

Caitlin was overcome with relief to see her. She rushed out into the open. “Chase!” she called in a hushed voice.

Chase looked up in surprise, then stood just in time to properly accept the incoming hug. She hugged Caitlin back, and Caitlin was surprised to hear Chase start to cry.

“Chase?”

“Cait, you still live. Them not kill you yet,” mumbled Chase. “Much good. Much good. To find Cait dead...so bad. Worst thing.”

“I'm glad you're alive too, Chase,” said Caitlin. She stepped back and looked Chase up and down, her eyes particularly drawn by the axe. “God, your back...Chase, how...? You're so bloody...”

“Most blood of voll girl,” said Chase. “Get hurt but not blood much.”

Caitlin took her hand. “Chase, let's get out of here.”

“Out?”

“You saved me, you've done enough. We'll tell my mom about the ones who are left and they'll go to prison for the rest of their lives. You don't need to kill anybody else.”

Chase looked surprised. “Cait want them spared? Them bad girl. Them not should live in priz. If Beck not live then them not live too.”

The wind had died down, and the snow was falling more leisurely now. The night was quiet except for an owl hooting. Caitlin thought her response over carefully. “It's true. They are bad. They've killed a lot of innocent people who've done nothing wrong. They killed a friend of mine. They're monsters. But Chase...I know this isn't what YOU want. I know that you want to live a peaceful, normal life. You want to be like me and Alicia and Lindsey. I know that if you kill them at all, then tomorrow, when it's all over...you'll feel bad about it. You'll regret how this turned out. You'll wonder why it always ends this way for you. You'll wonder if there's just something wrong with you. I don't care about them, I care about you, and I don't want you to hurt that way.”

Chase thought on Caitlin's words, dumbfounded. She had no idea Caitlin knew her self-doubts on the matter of fitting in, how alien she felt. She hadn't told any of her friends about it except Miss Cha, and a bit to Alicia after Halloween. Was it that obvious?

“We've been hanging out for months now. I feel like I know you so well,” said Caitlin, as if to answer Chase's unspoken question. “I know when you're hurting. And you've been hurting a lot lately. Lindsey and Alicia can tell too.” She hugged Chase again, more tenderly this time. “It's the last thing we want, Chase. We all want the same thing, for you to be on the squad with us, to be happy, to be...at peace.”

Chase sniffled. “Love Cait. Love Leash and Lin.” She squeezed Caitlin, then turned away. “Not feel bad from keep them safe.”

She didn't believe it, but she said it anyway. She felt she had to. She walked to the back door of the cabin and kicked it open. The board which had been nailed up on the other side cracked and clattered to the floor, and there were a few staggered pings of nails on hardwood.

….

When the square of light above the ladder went dark, Paris was initially the only volleyball girl who noticed.

“What's that?” she asked. Was it Henry? Why would he turn the lights out?

London glanced at the hatch without ceasing her chanting. She closed her eyes and continued. Denver reached up over David's body and tugged on the pull chain of a bare lightbulb. It didn't turn on.

“It's her,” said Denver calmly. “She cut the power.”

“I thought you killed her,” London replied.

“I thought I did too,” said Denver. “I put an axe to her. But there's no one else it would be.”

“How is that possible?” asked Paris. She tried to think about how she would feel after someone 'put an axe to her'. Even if she did live, she would definitely not be up and ready for round two. “What kind of girl is this?”

Denver walked to the ladder and began to climb. “A dumb one. Wait here. I'll take care of this.”

“N-no way,” said Paris, approaching the ladder. “Henry. I-I gotta find Henry.” She was out of time. All she was thinking about was getting away, as far away from this cabin as she could.

Paris jumped at the feeling of a pair of hands on her arm, stopping her. Girl's hands. London's. Paris hadn't heard the chanting stop. “You're safer here,” said London. Her voice was dreamlike, far away. Far gone. Still holding her arm, London gently guided Paris back to David's body.

As Denver pulled herself up, she called down, “I'll find him. Don't worry.”

The kitchen was pitch black. Falling snow caught the moon outside the window, but aside from that, Denver could see barely anything. There were no city lights out this deep in the woods, nothing outside that could lend a little illumination. The counters and appliances were black shapes against more black. The dark color of the logs which comprised the walls did not offer much contrast.

Just as there was little to see, there was little to hear. With the air outside still, the cabin was deathly quiet.

Denver crept through it, listening to her feet on the floorboards. She hadn't realized how squeaky they were before. She checked the bedroom where Henry had been working on boarding up the windows. He wasn't there. She could dimly see that the white bedsheets were still wrinkled from the weight and movement of London's and David's bodies.

When she turned to leave, she bumped into a figure in the dark. She was about to punch it when it told her, “Shhh, it's me.” Henry.

“Oh. Hey,” she whispered, relaxing. She joined him in the living room, closing the bedroom door behind her.

“I was looking for you guys,” said Henry. “Where the hell is everybody? What's going on?”

“I think the cheerleader's still alive and cut the power. Paris and London are in the basement, they're fine.”

“What about David?”

Denver was silent. “He's in the basement too.”

“Good.”

If Denver wasn't the way she was, maybe she would have wondered why Henry didn't sound surprised about the existence of a basement. Then again, maybe not. It was a tense situation, and she couldn't really afford to give too much thought to anything but the possibility of the cheerleader attacking her at any second.

It was a possibility that did not remain merely a possibility for long. Chase kicked the front door open, the boards nailed across it offering next to nothing in the way of defense. Denver looked.

The moon behind Chase rendered her in silhouette. The pale light filtered through her blonde hair in a way that was almost angelic, like an aura of light surrounding her head. As Chase leapt into the room, the light glinted off something behind her. Denver realized it was the axe, still embedded in her back.

Chase threw a charging punch at Denver. Denver twisted under the punch, grabbed Chase's extended arm, and flipped her over her shoulder. Chase flew towards the closed bedroom door. She spun in the air, hit it feet first. The door made a cracking sound but held as she launched herself off of it. She hit Denver with a soaring punch in the jaw that toppled her to the floor.

Chase hit the floor herself and instinctively tried to break her fall with a roll. The axe made this a poor choice. When the back of its metal head hit the floor it stopped her abruptly with a jolt of pain.

She crumpled to her side. Instincts. If she'd only used her head instead...but in that moment, that night, more and more with each passing second, her instincts were the things that moved her arms and legs, decided her actions. Rational thought was inaccessible to her right then.

As she painfully rose and turned for another attack, Henry seized her from behind. Chase reached up and grabbed him, throwing him frontwards over her. He hit the couch from the front, tipping it over backwards. He spilled across the floor behind it and didn't rise right away.

Whack. Denver hit Chase in the side of the head with a kick that felt as heavy as a lead pipe. Chase was thrown across the floor, and hit the wall a lot less gracefully than before. When she tried to rise, her head swam, and she almost blacked out.

This girl was a monstrosity. Chase knew her own kicks weren't exactly butterfly kisses, but this kind of power was something else.

Her lip burned. She licked blood off it as she forced herself up.

….........

Down in the basement, Paris listened to the thumps on the floor above her, the crashes muffled by it. It sounded like quite a struggle.

Who was winning? Was Henry involved? Was he already taken out of the fight? She didn't know, and that scared her. They needed to get out of this together. She needed him to be fine. God, let him be fine.

The plea crossed her mind unbidden. It made her feel ill. If there was a God, would he even listen? Could he forgive what she had done? Maybe he wanted to, but couldn't. If there was a God, that meant there was a Satan too. And if there was a Satan, her soul was his now. She was his, and God couldn't help her.

David's corpse still lay on the table. London chanted over him without pause, her rhythmic words continuing to stir the basement into a cauldron of fear and darkness. Paris wished she'd shut up.

Then, all at once, the noises overhead stopped. London went quiet, and both girls looked up at the ceiling.

They waited in the candlelight. Waited and listened. They didn't hear a sound.

Perhaps they could have stayed in the basement. Waited to see what would happen, who the winner was. But they knew, on some level, that if the winner was the cheerleader it wouldn't matter where they hid. They went to the ladder.

London went up first. As she climbed, Paris looked at the altar, at the red candles huddled together on top of it like a melting, shrinking choir. Those candles were just like them, Paris realized. Burning hot and bright...and very briefly. She looked at those candles and saw Brooklyn, Venice, Sydney. Dead so young. She saw herself and London, and Denver too. When they lit those candles that afternoon, none of them thought they would be dead before those candles completely melted. The wax pooled around them like blood.

She went up the ladder after London, who had turned her phone into a flashlight. It was a good thing, because when they entered the living room, they saw the fire had been extinguished.

London cast the light from her phone around the room. They saw the overturned couch, the kicked open door. The coffee table was broken, a smashed pizza box on top of it.

Then, she heard Paris scream. In an instant, London turned the light to her. Paris was looking up toward the ceiling, eyes wide with terror. With her phone, London followed Paris' gaze.

It led her to the mounted elk head. Denver and Henry hung impaled from its pair of broad, sharp antlers: Denver on the left and Henry on the right.