c h a p t e r e i g h t .
Roman Godfrey
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IF THERE WAS A SUMMER CAMP FOR SERIAL KILLERS, Roman and friends would fit right in.
It was midnight when the trio hiked out to Hemlock Grove's cemetery, moonlight glowering down. Clad in black and hoodies and beanies, it seemed they were all following in the steps of Peter's everyday example.
Hidden in the dead grass, crickets welcomed them on site as the teens scaled the fence one by one, dropping onto the limestone path beyond it.
"Fuck!"
"You okay?" Roman stopped to ask when Jude jerked her hand away from the wire with a string of obscenities, a gash across her palm. The blood seeping from the wound wasn't red, but a foul black jelly clotting around the edges of the tear like tree sap. He took her hand in his to inspect it, forcing aside both his natural instinct to gag and his intrusive one to lick it.
"I'm good," she tucked her hand in her pocket, as if embarrassed by the sight of it.
Roman did not feel welcome on these grounds.
The cemetery sprawled before him, a labyrinth of graves both new and neglected, some with nothing to mark them but mounds of dry, cracked dirt the group tried not to tread on.
The air here seemed to hold its breath, and shadows crawled in ways they shouldn't have, slipping along the corners of his vision only to vanish when he turned to look. Even the crickets, despite their relentless song on the way in, fell quiet in this place as though they were afraid of what lay beyond. Roman's stomach twisted. It was as if the graveyard itself resented their presence as if it weren't just a resting place. As if it were alive, watching, waiting.
It wanted them out.
Roman shoved his hands into his pockets, his fingers brushing against the cool metal of his lighter, a comfort of a sort as he walked just a step behind Jude and Peter.
"Alright, gang, this is where we split up and search for clues," he said, making light of the moment as he glanced around the expanse of the cemetery. "Peter, you take the creepy crypt over there. Jude, you've got the haunted mausoleum. I'll just hang out here by the gate and make sure no vengeful spirits follow us home."
Jude snorted despite herself, the tension in her posture softening. "Real brave of you, Fred."
"Hey, someone's gotta hold down the fort," Roman shot back, shrugging as though he wasn't bothered by the oppressive atmosphere. He nudged Peter with his elbow. "Besides, you're the werewolf here. Shouldn't you be sniffing for clues or whatever it is you do?"
Peter rolled his eyes, adjusting the shovel on his shoulder. "If I'd known digging up graves was part of the job description, I'd have sniffed out a different curse."
"Well, you're stuck with it," Roman said, his voice lighter than he felt. He scanned the gravestones, smirking like he wasn't cataloguing every shadow. "But hey, if a zombie pops out, feel free to take the lead."
Peter laughed under his breath. "Pretty sure you're the first one who's gonna run screaming."
Roman put a hand to his chest in mock offence. "I'll have you know I have nerves of steel. Just last week, I killed a spider."
"Heroic," Jude deadpanned.
It wasn't long before they found the grave.
New and shiny, with a wreath of plastic flowers set beside it and some shrivelled-up ones laid across it.
Judith Evergreen, loved daughter of Lance Evergreen, taken too soon.
That was it. That was all they had to say about her, about the girl he cared for, about the friend he loved. He wanted to carve out those words and write his own, all the things that came to mind when he looked at her. The audacity of her resting place being marked with things so trivial and meaningless, with no visitors and no love, drove an icy claw through his heart.
If it was hard for him to look at it, he couldn't imagine what it was like for Jude to see it. He imagined it would be something akin to a sudden dunk into icy water. Like you were seeing something you shouldn't, a place that was meant for you but a place you never found.
The three of them stood there staring at the engraved words, silence spanning the distance between them. Peter hesitated for a few moments more before driving his shovel into the ground.
The first cut into the earth caused Roman to flinch. He pulled his lighter from his pocket, lit up a cigarette and offered one to Jude, to which she strangely declined. Roman wanted to say something—crack a joke, maybe—but for once, he couldn't find the words. Eventually he grabbed a second shovel and joined the effort. Jude stayed back, her arms tightly wound around herself.
At last, what seemed like hours later, steel hit wood with a hollow thunk. Peter and Roman bent down to brush aside the dirt, gripping the lid of the coffin from either side. With much effort, the two of them hauled it aside.
Roman peered into the casket.
Jude's corpse stared back at him.
"Shee-it!" Peter gasped.
"Shee-it," Roman agreed.
Rotted flesh bloomed over a once beautiful face, wearing away at once freckled, sun-kissed skin and those delicate lips. Her auburn hair fanned around her like a halo, her eyes closed and sunken.
Jude took one look at it, turned away, and hurled her guts up on the nearest patch of weeds.
Roman grimaced, and after a few minutes, he went over to her.
She was crouched on the ground, trembling. Her eyes seemed to be stuck, wide and terrified, her chest heaving as though she had just completed a marathon. She sunk onto the balls of her feet, shovelling her hands through her hair in a repetitive, self-soothing motion. Her face was pale, as though she had seen a ghost.
"Hey– look at me," he whispered. "You're okay, you're okay– what happened?"
Jude's gaze, swelling with tears, met his frantically.
"I–" she choked, "I can't do this," her voice wobbled. Her eyes darted everywhere– everywhere but the girl in the box in the ground. "Please Roman– can you take me home?"
Things had been boiling to a breakdown for days now, and it made sense that her catalyst was now. The days following the visit to her house, and the encounter with her father, had been filled with a version of Jude that was much more resigned and quiet. Oftentimes she would space out when they were talking, eyes glazed wide open as though she had suddenly died again. Then she would zone back in, unable to recall what it was they were talking about. When she did talk, it wasn't about much, always deflecting his concern whenever he asked how she was doing.
He knew she wasn't fine, and that wasn't the worst part about it. The worst part was that she wouldn't talk to him. Not like she used to. Not like how she would always pester him whenever he was in a mood.
A hand smoothing gently over her back, he parted his lips to speak, unsure of what to say.
"We won't stay for much longer," he tried to reassure her, "but we shouldn't leave Peter here alone. You think you can wait a bit?".
After taking a few minutes to calm herself, she nodded. "Mmjust gonna sit over here for a bit," she mumbled, pulling up a pew on a nearby patch of lawn.
Roman didn't like the vacancy in her expression. He never wanted to see it again. He stayed to make sure she was okay, and eventually wandered back over to where Peter had set to work.
"Leaving me to do all the dirty work," the Werewolf chuckled from inside the grave, but there was no ill intent behind his light-hearted teasing as he plucked a blade from his pocket and set a large glass jar down beside him.
"You know me. Wouldn't wanna break a nail," Roman answered.
"She okay?" Peter asked, genuine concern in his tone.
"I'm not sure. I think seeing this really freaked her out. Or she saw something else."
"I don't blame her. Shit, I can barely look at it."
It. Like this corpse wasn't hers. Like it wasn't part of Jude, like it didn't belong to her, like it was something else.
Peter said some prayers, and performed the grotesque surgery as quickly as he could, piling intestines into the jar. At this point, Roman declared it best to look away himself, and once again found himself trailing back to his best friend's side.
"Hey–" he reached over, squeezing her hand with a smile. "How about we go to my place after this? We can have a couple of drinks, just hang out like we used to. Better than being stuck at Peter's place all the time right?"
She nodded, too worked up to speak.
In the early hours of the morning, the two of them were lying down on Roman's bed.
"So, what happened back there?" he asked, his tone a gentle, hushed reprieve from the usual smugness that it carried.
The girl opened her mouth to speak, staring at the ceiling with pretty, troubled eyes. It was a look of shame, of uncertainty that he knew well.
Nimble fingers moved without hesitation to push a strand of hair behind her ear, his hand dropping to squeeze her shoulder. "You can tell me."
Jude took a breath, her body stilling as though it took all of her just to conjure a worthy answer. When she exhaled, it released in fractures as though broken glass were spitting out of her throat.
"I was alive," she whispered. "I was alive when he left me in that ditch. When I saw.....," she cleared her throat, "when I saw her in the coffin, it's like it triggered a memory. I was seeing through her eyes, and I could feel myself dying. Lying there, in pain, slipping"
"That must have been awful," he whispered.
Roman had a complicated relationship with the idea of death. He fantasized about it often enough that he couldn't say it particularly scared him, but after seeing what it had done to his girl– his friend, he felt his heart bleed for her. It was one thing for him to sit there and watch her waste away, and it was another for her to have lived and then died so horribly, so terribly that it forced her spirit to stick around and relive it all again if she wanted to remember what happened.
Jude didn't reply. Roman couldn't blame her for being so mentally exhausted after everything she had been through over the last few days.
"Who?" he asked after a while.
"Huh?"
"He. You said when he left you there. Who was it, do you know?" Roman asked. A stupid question.
"If I knew, we would be out there looking already," she whispered.
It was true and Roman hated it. Whoever did this to her would see a fate worse than death, he would make sure of it. Whoever took her, whoever killed her, desecrated and brutalized her. Part of him wanted to race out there into the night and find the bastard.
The other part of him was a scared little rich boy who didn't know what to do. Who didn't know how to help her. More than she needed justice, she needed solace, and that came first before anything he wanted. The only thing he could do for now was let her get some rest.
Roman pressed his face into her hair, and stayed with her until she fell asleep.