The world had shrunk to the four walls of the motel room. The silence was a physical presence, thick with the smell of sweat, fear, and the coppery tang of the thing that had been Mark.
Leo sat on the floor, his back against the door, staring at the bat. The single golden vein pulsed with a soft, malevolent light. One kill. The words echoed in his head, a cold, factual epitaph for his best friend.
A shuddering breath escaped him, and he squeezed his eyes shut. Behind his eyelids, he didn't see the monster in the woods. He saw Mark. Not the one he'd put down, but the one he'd known.
The memory surfaced not as a dream, but as a ghost, vivid and painful.
It was two summers ago. The air was warm and smelled of cut grass and charcoal from the grill. They were in Mark's backyard, the three of them—Leo, Mark, and Chloe—laughing as Jake tried to explain the intricate rules of a video game none of them would ever play.
Mark was at the centre of it all, as always. He wasn't just the organiser; he was the anchor. He was the one who remembered that Leo hated potato salad, so he'd made a separate portion without onions. He was the one who noticed when Chloe's laugh didn't reach her eyes after her breakup and quietly handed her another soda without a word.
"Hey, Leo," Mark said, nudging him with his foot. "Help me grab more drinks from the garage?"
Inside the cool, dim garage, surrounded by the smell of oil and old wood, the mood shifted. Mark leaned against his dad's workbench, his easy smile fading.
"You okay, man?" he asked. "You've been quiet all day. Quieter than usual."
Leo shrugged, picking at the label of a beer bottle. "Just stuff. You know."
"The 'stuff' with your dad?" Mark's voice was gentle, never pushing.
Leo nodded, the familiar knot of anxiety tightening in his chest. His father's disappointment was a constant, low-frequency hum in his life. "Another lecture about potential. About how I'm wasting my life. The usual."
Mark was silent for a moment. Then he said something Leo had never forgotten. "You know that's his shit, right? Not yours. His expectations, his failures he's projecting on you. You're not wasting anything. You're just... figuring it out. And that's okay."
He said it with such simple conviction that Leo almost believed it.
"Easy for you to say, Mr. Perfect," Leo mumbled, but there was no heat in it.
Mark's face did a strange thing then. The unshakeable confidence Leo envied so much flickered. A shadow passed behind his eyes, quick but deep.
"Nobody's perfect, Leo," he said, his voice quieter. He looked down at his hands. "Sometimes... sometimes the person who seems like they have it the most together is just the best at hiding how lost they really are."
It was a crack in the armour. A glimpse of something Leo had never seen before. He wanted to ask, to push, but Mark was already clapping him on the shoulder, the moment gone as quickly as it had come, the easy smile back in place.
"C'mon," Mark said, heading for the door. "Jake is probably trying to set something on fire by now."
Another memory, sharper, more recent.
The week before the trip. Leo was sulking in his dorm room, replaying Troy's latest humiliation on a loop in his mind. Mark had let himself in.
"Weekend. Woods. No service. It'll be good for you," Mark had said, his tone brooking no argument.
"I don't know, man. I just want to disappear."
"You can't," Mark said, his voice uncharacteristically sharp. Then, softer: "Look, I get it. The feeling of wanting to just... stop. To let go. But you can't. We need you."
"Need me for what?" Leo had laughed bitterly. "To be the group screw-up?"
Mark's expression was serious. "To be our friend. That's it. That's enough." He hesitated, as if weighing a heavy decision. "There's something I've been meaning to tell you. After this trip, when we're back... we should talk. Really talk."
Leo, wrapped in his own misery, had just nodded dismissively. "Yeah, sure. Whatever."
He hadn't seen the fleeting look of disappointment on Mark's face. He hadn't recognised it for what it was: a cry for help from the guy who was always the helper.
Back in the motel room, Leo's eyes snapped open. The truth hit him with the force of a physical blow.
It wasn't just that Mark had a low will to live. It was that he was tired.
The confidence, the stability, the unwavering support—it was a performance. A brilliant, exhausting performance. Mark had been holding everyone else together for so long, he'd been neglecting the cracks in his own foundation. He was the anchor, but an anchor is just a weight that keeps everyone else from drifting away, while it itself is buried in the dark, under immense pressure.
The curse didn't create his giving up. It simply found the door he'd already left unlocked. The fever didn't burn away his mind; it just turned down the lights on a room that was already filled with a profound, hidden exhaustion. Letting go wasn't a fight he lost. For Mark, in his deepest, most secret heart, it might have felt like a surrender he'd been craving.
And the thing he wanted to talk about? The secret he was carrying? It died with him in those woods. A confession never made. A burden never shared.
Leo's guilt curdled into something more profound, more desolate. He hadn't just killed his friend. He had killed the one person who always held them together, without ever knowing how badly he himself was falling apart. He had extinguished a light that was already struggling to stay lit, and he would never, ever know why.
A raw, silent sob wracked his body. He wasn't just a murderer. He was a failed friend. And that was a pain the bat could never exorcise.
The golden vein in the bat pulsed, warm against his leg. It had fed on Mark's body. But it would never know the weight of the soul it had released.