Chapter Text
Time wasn't quantifiable anymore. What's a minute, or an hour, or a day to the infinite abyss? The only way to measure time was through breaths. By no means accurate, but steady and regular. It was all he had when opening his mind to the pool.
Frank let's out his two thousandth breath since he started counting, and opens his eyes to look at the endless night sky above him. The stars were wrong. Always were here. Everything was wrong. He sits up and stands, walking aimlessly towards the chalet. Maybe Jules or Joey were back from a hunt. Distantly he can hear Susie sniffling in the upper room she had claimed. She had been nothing but a fuckin' downer since getting here. Wherever here was exactly. And however long they were here either.
"Susie!" Frank calls in a singsong voice, causing her to pause in her weeping, "Shut the fuck up!"
Her cries immediately die down to soft whimpers. Annoying but he could deal with it. After all she was in pain, it wouldn't hurt to cut her some slack. He sits on a new looking couch circling the area where a generator sits during hunts and considers what to do now that he was done traversing the mental pool.
The darkness hums at him, asking nicely for him to go on a hunt.
Tempting, a good way to pass eternity with nothin' but killing randos.
Except he didn't like the fucking rules.
He could only run so fast or miss a swing and a blistering pain would shoot through his skull and slow him down. As much as he wanted to he couldn't gut those fuckers like fish to his heart's content.
There was a sort elation he felt when stringing them up at least.
A scratching noise emanates from one of the many out of place red armoires that were scattered around the hunting grounds. Stuck out like sore thumbs, but he had a knack for finding victims in them. He stands and approaches the red armoire and the noise changes. Switching from a scratching noise to the whispers of the darkness creeping.
It asks him nicely to open the armoire.
Frank does as he's asked, opening the creaking door and looking down at a single charm sitting at the bottom. He stoops and picks the item up. It was round rough hewn wooden skull on a keychain that was about the size of a loonie. It had a strange feeling too it. An object that came from nothing natural.
As he stares at the skull the darkness speaks to him directly.
"You worked well, the last one is yours."
He shivers, feeling all the bones in his body buzz with unease as he breaks into a sweat. Frank never liked when the darkness spoke to him in words he understood. Much preferring the vague whisper that he felt its meaning more than understood the phrases.
The darkness did drive a hard bargain, however. Frank pulls his knife out, and clips the charm to the conveniently placed loop on the hilt. The wood has a menacing glow to it as he returns the knife to his belt and walks out of the chalet.
His shoes crunch the snow on the ground, leaving no footprints in his wake as he turns on his walkman. Letting the violent noises of his mixtape fill the dull air as he marches towards the gates. The same gates the lucky victims always ran out.
The fog swirls so thick at the end of the concrete it looks almost solid. To traverse this realm all he had to do was step out, think of a hunt, and eventually the haze would lessen and he would find himself in the playing field.
There were many more places than just Ormond. Endless corn fields, abandon junkyards, rainy forests, slaughterhouses, neighborhoods.
He knows that there are other beings out in the fog. Sitting in their own little haunts until going on their own hunts. Frank has seen a few of those boogeymen walk into Ormond through the gates. Tall tree like beings and humans in masks. Passing through with interest.
While he wasn't exactly hiding from these visitors, he wasn't making himself easy to find. The small brush with the other inhabitants of the fog had made him more and more weary if what else roamed the plains between hunting grounds.
More specifically, it made him weary of what Ghost's were out in the mist.
Danny wasn't dead. Not by a fucking longshot.
Frank steps into the fog, having stood at the edge of safety and unknown long enough.
Ghostface was out there, out in the mist. That much Frank was sure of.
He wasn't afraid of him, no. He was utterly fucking livid.
The fog condenses around him, whiting out his vision as he feels himself being taken away. Warmth dances on his skin, and his rage is eaten by the darkness bit by bit.
The victims aren't Danny, but they die and scream just the same as he would.
---
The good thing about being so short was that more often than not the dumber victims would think he was like them.
Especially when he took his mask off.
He jogs after the taller victim as they run through, ironically enough, Ormond. It's always a bit different during hunts. Less furniture in the chalet, and more stupid walls with fucking pallets everywhere.
The victim jumps through a window, and he follows close behind. Watching it press against a wall, panting heavily. The victim offers him a quick nod and smile. Frank returns the nod as it looks out the window cautiously.
Frank hadn't seen this sneaky fuck all trial. Picked off the other three easily enough, and this was the last. This one was his.
He quickly pulls the mask on as the victim relaxes, letting out a sigh of relief. It pants a few times before turning its head to look at him. Fear and recognition lights up in those brown eyes, but it's too little too late.
He buries his knife into its liver, earning a pained cry as it stands and pushes him away. Stumbling and falling to the ground.
The skull keychain glitters with blood as Frank kicks the things stab wound, earning another guttural cry as it turns on his back. Still scrambling away.
First time doing it himself, he wanted it to be special.
Frank wipes the blood on his mask, and crouches down. Stabbing the knife onto the wood of the floor, blade barely cutting the tender flesh of the bodys neck.
The eyes stare up into his eyeholes, calm and dark. It knew there was no mercy to be found in the smile above.
But Frank could see, ever so slightly in those dark eyes, a hint of hope.
He pulls the blade left, slashing the victims throat in one smooth motion. He feels the blade hit bone, and wet choke as the corpse struggles momentarily before going limp. Head nearly detaching completely from its body.
The darkness buzzes around him, and he feels warmth in his fingertips. A job well done.
He watches the charm burn to ashes and rises. Stepping over the still warm body and making his way to the gate. He flips the switch, waiting five breaths until the metal screeches and the gate opens up to the fog. He thinks about Ormond as he walks into the fog. The correct one.
When he reenters the gate, he immediately catches sight of Joey. The man was sitting under the switch box and staring off into the distance. He can hear the tunes of his mixtape in the oppressive silence.
The rest of the gang was relatively new to this stuff, having arrived later than him. Apparently a few weeks had passed on the outside. Frank was a full fledged fucking Martyr to the press, it was absolutely hysterical to think about.
Him? A helpless moron caught under Ghostface's thumb? Utter bullshit. What they had was much more complicated. But he'd rather kept that on the down low when it came to the other three knowing that.
"Hey Joe." Frank calls, crouching down next to his dower looking friend.
Joey's eyes glance over to him from under his mask, resting on the still fresh blood dripping off Frank's before sliding away.
"Hey Frank." Joey replies distantly, "That yours?"
"Nah. Big guys."
"Black big guy, or white big guy?"
"White."
He didn't really care much for the victims, but there really wasn't much else to talk about between hunts besides who killed who. He tried to keep them as impersonal as possible.
"I like that one. He's a real moron, eh?"
Frank snorts, "Huh, huh. Sure you don't like that he runs around without a shirt?"
"It doesn't hurt my opinion of him, that's for damn sure." Joey says with a slight laugh. Frank can almost hear the smile behind the mask and pats his friends shoulder comfortingly. Smearing blood on the thick black fabric.
"Oh I'm sure he likes you too, daffodil."
Joey flips him off and Frank rises to his feet, "Jules back yet?"
"With Susie."
"Figures." Frank huffs, walking towards the chalet with a wave.
Joey was doing fine, now he had to touch base with the girls. Julie had been very hard to read through this whole ordeal. Keeping him at arm's length at best, doing her hunts and sitting with Susie in silence. No way she was enjoying this shit, but she was putting up with it as best she could no doubt.
"Knock knock." He calls, walking through the door frame into Susie's room.
She sat in the corner on a couch cushion, hood up and face down as blood, tears and saliva dripped from the cracks of her mask onto the floor. It was hard to look at, so he focused on Julie next to her.
"Hey." Julie says softly, trailing her knife idly over the floorboards.
"How was your hunt?" Frank prods, leaning against a far wall.
"Fine."
Susie gasps and sniffles, more blood flowing from her mask as she sits up to look at him. The jagged cracks of her once cutesy mask leaked fluids and stares holes into him. The mere sight of it made him sick, but he forces a smile.
"How you doin' Pinky?"
"Okay." Susie forces out, the sound of unseen teeth clacking metal makes him shudder.
They could take their masks off, not that they ever did anymore. Just wide eyes and grinning skulls. But for some reason Susie couldn't. He assumes its the darkness punishing her for not going to hunts. Whatever was going on under the mask was no doubt a monstrous sight. Better her than him.
"Susie...you might feel better if you just-"
"No." Julie cuts in, looking up from the floor. Her masks eyeholes stare into him with a certain determination.
"It'll make her go eventually. Might as well get it over with." Frank replies with a shrug, letting the implication sink in before adding more.
"I mean, if she doesn't go what's stopping the darkness from making her a victim, eh?"
Susie sobs and Julie jumps to her feet, marching towards Frank and pointing her knife at him.
"Shut your fucking mouth." She growls angrily. Frank can see her hand shaking, and smiles under his mask.
He flippilanty knocks her hand away, and with little resistance it falls to her side.
"Don't hate the messenger, Jules." He whispers softly, "No one can protect her from the darkness but herself. Babying her will just make it angry."
"How do you know? How do you fucking know!" Julie had dropped her voice to a similar whisper, not wanting Susie to hear.
"Think about it, Jules. If you're not a killer here, what else are you?"
Her mask stares at him, the x'd out mouth and eyes a crude expression of surprise compared to his smile.
"A victim..."
"So get Pinky's fucking act together before we start stringing her up with the rest of 'em." Frank pushes off the wall and shoulder checks Julie on the way out.
He can hear Susie trying to force out garbled sentences to Julie as he jumps the railing to the second floor. Landing without so any twings of pain. Once Susie got off her morality high and starts doing hunts she would feel better. The darkness would stop making her suffer like this just because they tried to help him.
Frank quickly pushes the small shred of guilt he felt to the back of his mind. He didn't ask them to look for him, hell he would've been just fine alone here. Or as alone as he could get.
Y'know what? He needed some peace and quiet.
He turns towards the other exit gate, walking quickly into the fog and concentrating on what he wanted to see most. Ignoring the chills that ran up his spine as the milky fog collected around him.