Spending time in the forest didn’t always make Jughead so scared.
Sometimes it was nothing but calm. Sometimes it was the lovely Sunday afternoon light that broke through the trees and warmed Jughead’s face and arms as he walked through it’s endless, winding trails and got lost in the shade of the trees. It could be a place to do nothing but read a book for the entire day, the quiet was otherworldly and a rarity in the town of Riverdale so much so that despite the life-threatening experiences that Jughead had in the woods?
He came back, time and time again. It called him as much as it was foreboding to him, and he couldn’t ignore the siren song that filled his mind sometimes. Maybe while he was with Betty he could ignore it; the feeling of her hips under his fingertips more scintillating that the idea of meeting a bigfoot face to face. No mystery in the woods could compare to the he wanted to explore on Betty’s lips, but he still came back when he had nothing else to do, when her allure wasn’t available to him. Instead he indulged in the draw of the the secrets that he was dying to hear from, and the whispers still echoing inside the empty forest.
Backpack filled with the essentials, and more, he trudged past the well-worn paths of the locals and the tourists alike. Anywhere people went often, and he would turn down the opposing way no matter how much the underbrush would fight against him and hold his legs down.
Getting lost was a danger, even in the middle of the day. People had found themselves going the wrong way for days before, and Jughead had been hearing stories of the police calling in helicopters and dogs in order to try and find all the hikers and campers going missing. The forums were filled with threads onthe influx of disappearances picking up in the last few months. Those missing tourists on his mind, Jughead would tie bits of fluorescent ribbon to the trees as he walked further away from any semblance of a path.
Eventually he would find a comfortable enough clearing to set up camp; a mostly-charged laptop was enough to keep him entertained for the length of its battery. Tapping away at the keys at the location that he was so obsessed with felt like what he needed. After locking himself away in the trailer, it felt good to breath in the warm air and even better to have the sun shining vitamins into his skin to dissipate some of the seasonal depression that had settled in as Riverdale would go from snow, to slushy mess, to somewhat livable conditions.
Such livable conditions that the Vixens had taken his girlfriend for the day.
Jughead liked to imagine he was good at being alone by now, but instead he found himself with the gentle ache in his chest when he was away from Betty. Maybe it could fade in time, but Jughead was pretty sure it would be constant and likely for the rest of his life. It felt a little like a tug in her direction, some instinct in his body that pained him, just a little, to constantly have to fight while heading further away from her. While also being well-aware what the term ‘codependent’ meant and how it wasn’t exactly healthy for a relationship and trying to battle it.
He was supposed to be good at this, he could remember a time when the only thing he really needed in a day was the chance to write. Being alone was okay as long as he could release all the pent up emotions into the void of just writing it all down; journals and articles. His book.
Writing had been a salve for some of the problems in his childhood, and had it made it easier to get through the days when his stomach pained for more food he knew wasn’t in the fridge yet. After another screaming argument in the small space they had downsized into as a family, it was often the only way to get away from his parents dysfunctional marriage.
It had circulairly been a way to deal with being so isolated, something to feed into when he felt like nothing else in the world would ever really get him.
It was like a badge of honour, right? Getting to be like one of the greats, a Hemingway or a Wilde who only needed a drink in his hand and a pen in the other to keep going. Of course many of the men who only ever had those things ended up dead early, or otherwise destitute and alone. So while he loved to indulge in being a brooding author, the reality was that Betty kept him from going too dark.
He wouldn’t spend his Sunday lurking outside of the rehearsal waiting for his girlfriend, though. Besides the fact that being apart was, according to some textbook or pamphlet he’d been forced to read, “healthy for relationships” (a fact he treated much the same way children treated their greens; with disgust, and great hesitance) but Jughead wouldn’t listen to whatever belligerent comments that Cheryl had been saving up for the next time she saw him. It drove him away from Riverdale High, and right into the waiting arms of Fox Forest.
Out into a clearing, he spotted a hammock hung in the midst of a sunbeam, carefully between trees which brought him to a stop. The dusty, rusted-out camping accessories that littered the ground beside it, like a campsite that had been abandoned. Lit in the midday, he tried to make out some of the labels on the cans; sunbleached and from an era he wasn’t alive for. The logos unrecognizable to Jughead, making him toss them back on the ground.
“Well, might as well take a nap, right?”
Which was how he tossed his bag down with the abandoned gear of someone else’s now long gone, before flipping himself into the warm embrace of the fabric around him. Immediately relaxed despite himself, he found his eyes getting heavy immediately...
They closed to the sunbeam warming him, but he opened them seemingly moments later to the pitch blackness of the middle of the night. Immediately the state of relaxation that the hammock brought melted away and was filled instead with the ominous noises of the forest that surrounded him. The cracking of the trees in the far, far distance filled him with the dread the came with an immediate flash of the thing he’d taken a photo of before. Panic was in his veins, but Jughead forced himself to breath in to calm it all down and soothe it away.
It was far away, he was fine. He’d just fallen asleep... looking at his phone though, it had seemingly been for hours, upon hours and frankly he wasn’t sure that the hammock was comfortable enough to justify sleeping for over a day. “What the hell--?” All the way through Monday, all his classes missed and an errant phone call from school also wondering where he was. Which was nothing in comparison to the amount of missed calls from his girlfriend.
“I was supposed to pick Betty up from practice--!” Jughead shouted aloud, struggling to get free from the midair nap that he was tangled inside of. The hammock’s fabric wrapped tight around his body as he wiggled out from inside and let it drop him onto the ground with a thud.
Dazed from the forced sleep and missing time, he stumbled on his feet and felt the Earth shift under his feet. Woozy and barely able to keep standing, Jughead moved towards the backpack he had left on the ground and reached to pick it up,
The feeling of being watched is too strong of one to ignore, it’s enough to make him straighten his body and ready himself. Though he hadn’t seen anyone initially when standing, but that didn’t negate the horrific nagging on the back of Jughead’s neck. Instinct, like when prey is being watched by the lion in the serengeti;
He turns quickly when he spots someone else running into the woods. Their blue sweater a blur in the branches, impossible for Jughead to make out any kind of face. “Hey!” he yelled instead, attempting to get them to still. “Hey! I just want to talk--!”
Pitching his bag onto his shoulder, he takes off running into the forest after the figure. They keep running, fast and faster and seemingly never losing a step as Jughead struggles his way through the underbrush, teetering his bag on his shoulders and yelling after them, to stop, to just listen, who are they?
They run, and they run; some of the trail markers Jughead made whizzing by until they all disappear, and it’s only the two of them running through the woods.
Until someone starts chasing Jughead; he hears the cracking of the woods behind him, long enough to glance back and see the brilliant red hair streaking behind him. “Archie?” Jughead falters as he stares back, stopping for a moment until he sees it,
No features, just the almost-familiar sight of the Riverdale High letter on a too-old letterman jacket and the glint of a knife in hand. Where Archie Andrews’ face should be is nothing but an empty blur, something you could look into endlessly. It would still you. Make you easy prey.
Instead Jughead turns and runs; away from what’s behind him and towards what he had been chasing after initially. When he tumbles close enough, speeding up as they turn a corner, he launches himself to tackle them to the ground. Both falling with a thud, he fights their lanky arms to the ground as they thrash underneath the weight of his body, struggling to get a look at them in the face.
“What the fuck--” Staring at an almost-mirror of himself now, if not for the total absence of features. An old felt whoopee cap lay on the ground above his dark hair, as it’s hands bend and reach for the missing piece, while the rest of it’s body inhumanely squirms underneath Jughead’s weight to try and gain freedom.
Then it screams; though Jughead is unsure where the noise comes from, it rings in his already-damaged ears and makes him cover them with a cringe. The movement is enough to pitch his weight back, as the doppelganger kicked him off and slithered away from him. It’s body serpentine as it moved into the brush and vanished from sight.
Alone, breathing heaving in his chest as he sits on the ground. Glancing back, the threat chasing behind him has also gone. After a moment of the silence of the forest, nothing but the distant cracking of trees and the hooting of owls above him, Jughead finally reaches into his pocket and gets out his phone again.
He really needed to call Betty back.
