Shadowkissed (A Hemlock Grove fan fiction)

stalking isn't polite, didn't you know?

The sun is setting on Hemlock Grove, and Norman Godfrey is pacing again. Someone in the past few days has told him that pacing is bad for your concentration, and somewhere in the back of his mind he knows that it's true. But he can't remember who told it to him or where he learned it, and at the moment he really doesn't give a fuck. Not when Olivia is missing and Roman is off doing God only knows what, Shelley is quite possibly dead someplace in the woods, and Letha . . . Oh, God, Letha.

All of the pain and anguish of the last month comes rushing back to him. Losing Letha had been like a knife to the chest, and then to lose Olivia right after that? It twists the knife farther into a point of no return. There is nothing Norman can do about the hole he has fallen so far into. How is he supposed to counsel others on their problems when his own are more vast and encompassing than the sea?

There is a soft knock at his office door. The new hospital receptionist, a young college freshman at UPenn named Breanne, comes skittering into the room. He assumed the jitters were the side-affects of too much coffee consumption, but now he's beginning to think that's just how the girl is. "Dr. Godfrey," she says, her voice shaking. "I-I'm sorry to have b-bothered you, but t-they've found a body."

The blood in Norman's veins turns to ice. Not again. "Who found a body, Breanne?"

"The new police chief and that fancy detective from New York. In Hemlock Acre Forest, behind the White Tower, somewhere along Route 443." She is talking very fast and scared, almost like a child. Then she adds, quietly, "They were two hikers from Philly. My mother knew the girl's parents. We grew up down the street from one another . . ." She trails off into silence.

Norman exhales slowly. It is always best not to familiarize yourself with the dead, he reminds himself. Less pain. "Animal attacks?"

Breanne nods. "But not like the other ones. The only marks were found on the victim's throats. Bite marks. The coroner's report said that the bodies had no blood left, and their wrists had been slit."

He hides the shudder that passes over his skin. "What does this have to do with me?"

"Detective Laurentis wants you to talk with the boy who found them." She pauses, then takes a deep breath and drops the bomb: "He's one of your old patients. Tyler Holcombe."

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Tyler fucking hates psychiatrists.

Or psychologists, whatever the fuck they are. It makes no difference what fancy ass title they paste on their résumé, he hates them all the same—and he's been analyzed by many since his ex-girlfriend (sort of) got murdered and his sister got depressed (completely). The most recent doctor, the one he is seeing today, Dr. Godfrey, is probably the most bearable, but that doesn't mean Tyler likes coming to Hemlock Acres Hospital any more than he has to—which is, preferably, never. But he's the one who found the dead hikers on the walk home from Stoner's Hole, and that makes Tyler a signature away from a trip to the loony-bin, according to the conversation between Dr. Godfrey and that asshole detective who questioned him. A conversation that he was not supposed to overhear.

But Tyler knows what he saw. And it was enough to make a kid who stood still through bad acid trips nearly piss himself.

The Hole is his favorite place to hang out, sometimes with friends, but usually he likes to chill and smoke a joint on his own, just listening to the leaves rustling in the wind, watching clouds pass across the sky through slits in the trees. It's just so fucking peaceful. He hasn't felt peace like that at home in a long time. His parents are so obsessed with trying to make everything perfect that now nothing is, and Macy is still so depressed without even realizing she's depressed, it's practically suffocating him. Their presence is fucking toxic.