After That Night: Until Dawn Fanfiction

Chapter Eight

Sam

When it's time for another round, we all put our hands into one of the boxes again. Instead of going for Hannah's box, this time I go for Josh's.

When I pull it out, I see that it's a stack of pages with burnt edges put together by a metal spring paper clip. The first paper has, "Annual Blackwood Winter Getaway Prank" in bold letters.Curious, but also afraid, I flip to the next page. This page is titled, "Chris and Ashley" and has pictures of the saw contraption Chris told me about and the gun trap I saw them hooked up to. Next to the sketches, there were instructions on how that piece of the prank would be executed. Underneath the pictures and instructions were the words, "Test his loyalty." In bold, it said, "Help him get the girl!"

I smile slightly. Josh was trying to help Chris in his own, twisted way. I nudge Chris who's at my left, showing him the bolded words. He smiles sadly. "That was Josh," he says.

I nod and flip to the next page. This one was for Mike and Jess. I look at the sketch of the other, smaller cabin the Washington's had as well as creepy spooks and drawings of cameras. I grit my teeth as I read the instructions. Josh was apparently planning on filming Jess and Mike in the cabin before the craziness happened.

With Mike to my right, I hide the paper from his view and decide not to show Mike what Josh had planned for him. There's no point. Mike already knows that Josh never wanted to physically hurt Jess.

The next page is what Josh had planned for Matt and Emily. He had sketches of Emily's bag, different spooks along the path to get back to it, and a picture of a heart with "Mike and Em" carved inside on a table. Once again, there were instructions, indicating that Josh had stolen Emily's bag to send them on a hunt to go get it, where Josh had put things to scare them, but also where Matt would find out some of Em's secrets, like the carved heart. To further illustrate this, the bottom of the paper said, "Show him her true colors" in bold. Looking at all the illustrations and instructions, it was apparent that Josh had intended Matt and Emily to get farther along his path then they did.

With everyone else taken care of in Josh's scheme, the only one left was me. Biting my lip, I turned to the last page.

Not surprisingly, this page was titled, "Sam." Suddenly, as I begin to look further down the page, I become more engrossed in what Josh's mindset for me was on that night. Unlike the other pages, mine is chock full of sketches. There are sketches of the movie room, the water heater, the bat, the broken concrete step, the chair he tied me to, the flashlight, the candles, the balloons he left for me, rope, my clothes, the tool he used to put me to sleep, his psycho costume, and my backpack.

Then I begin to read the instructions. Several things jump out at me, such as, "Leave the water off so that you can show Sam around the basement. Warn her about the broken step."

What?

I keep reading. "Make sure the bat isn't locked away so that Sam can use it to defend herself if she finds it. Leave Sam directions on where to go. Make sure she has enough light. Give her a flashlight. Catch her, but if she gets away and gets to the part of the hotel, at least she has enough light so she won't get hurt."

Further down the page, it says, "When you try to catch her, go slow. Be gentle. Once she's caught, tie her up in the chair to lure Chris and Ashley, but leave her backpack of clothes nearby. Leave her there as bait away from the rest of the drama and out of harm's way."

Finally, at the bottom in bold, there are the words, " Do. Not. Hurt. Her. At. Any. Costs."

"Josh," I whisper. I was only meant to be the bait. I was meant to be kept away from most of the danger. Yes, he did want to give me a scare, but he didn't want to hurt me. He did all that for me? The step, the water heater, the flashlight, the bat... it was all meant for me? Even after I was unable to stop the prank on his sister the year before?

I want to cry again.

I close the little booklet and look up. "So, what did we all find this time?"Mike looks again into Josh's box, fishing out a container with a big stack of tapes. We all look at him with our eyebrows raised. He holds up a small tape player to explain. "I needed to find the other part of my item."

"Wait," I say, "I think there's one already in there."

Mike looks inside the tape player. "Shoot. You're right."

He presses play and Josh's psycho voice begins to speak. "Hello and thank you all for joining me. Tonight, we're going to conduct a little experiment." The psycho voice then breaks and starts to sound more like Josh. " Hello... Hello, children. Nah, that's not right." He clears his throat. "Greetings, pilgrims."

"It was him practicing the psycho voice," Ashley notes, shivering.

"But then what are all the other tapes?" Matt asks.

"Let's find out." Mike opens the tape player and takes the psycho tape out. He then puts the first tape from the box into it, pressing play.

This time, Josh's normal voice speaks up immediately. "Hey...Hey, Sammy."

Everyone looks at me. I just stare wide-eyed at the tape player. Mike hands it to me.

Josh continues, "You know how girls typically keep a diary? Well, I decided that I should invent a new thing. You know, so us guys don't feel left out. Okay, so this new thing I invented was one where you record yourself talking about things, like a diary, except it's to a certain person, so it's not as girly, you get me? Anyway, I could have chosen Chris, but you're a girl, so that means you're more in touch with your feelings or whatever, right? Anyway, yeah. That's why I'm doing...this. So...hi, Sammy. I-"

Chris reaches over and pauses the tape recorder. "This seems like something just meant for you, Sam. You should listen to the rest of them on your own time."

I nod and everyone begins showing what items they retrieved from the box. In the end, I get the booklet I found, the tapes and tape recorder Mike found, Chris gets Josh's senior yearbook that he found as well as Josh's favorite movie set that Ashley found, Mike got back the now burnt up invitation he gave to Hannah a while back that Matt found, Emily got Beth's favorite top that she found, and Ashley got Beth's favorite flower necklace that Jess found.

With the boxes being so big, there were many rounds before we got to the bottom of the three boxes. Chris got out individual boxes for us who don't live with him to take all of our personal stuff home. There were many things in my box, but the most noteworthy items of sorts other than what I received from the first two rounds were Hannah's diary with lightly burned edges, a detailed diagram of how Josh pulled of the saw trick, a memory board of Hannah and Beth that Josh owned, the almost completely burnt invitation I gave Hannah, Beth, and Josh to my Halloween party in 2013, and the friendship bracelet I gave Hannah years ago. Even though some of the things were slightly or almost completely damaged, it was still a piece of our friends. And we weren't ready to give that up.

With our boxes of things packed, we decide that there is enough time to make the Washington's a card before dinner.

We all head to the kitchen, grabbing what supplies we need.