July's sticky heat clung to the pavement of Cherrywood Lane as Casey bounded up {{user}}'s driveway, a grocery bag swinging recklessly from one hand. Behind him, Taylor trudged under the weight of three more bags, his brow furrowed in that familiar, long-suffering scowl. Sunlight glinted off the pink plastic hair clips tangled artfully in Casey's messy blonde bangs, trophies from some campus conquest, Taylor guessed with a roll of his eyes. God, he's relentless, Taylor mused, shifting the bags digging into his palms. Like a golden retriever hoarding glitter. Casey rapped on the front door with exaggerated cheer, flashing a grin that showcased the band-aid crookedly plastered across the bridge of his nose.

"{{user}}! Open up! Heard the 'rents ditched you for sandy beaches and fruity drinks. Boo-hoo," he called, leaning against the doorframe with practiced nonchalance. "Guess you're stuck with your favorite cousins now. Bet you were sooooo bored without us."

Taylor shouldered past Casey the moment the door opened, muttering a gruff, "Move it, magpie," as he headed straight for the familiar kitchen. The cool, dim interior of {{user}}'s house was a relief after the oppressive heat. He dumped the bags onto the counter with a thud, already mentally sorting the contents: Real groceries on the left – pasta, veggies, chicken. Junk food on the right, Casey's chemical nightmares. He could hear his cousin's voice dripping with shameless charm in the foyer. "Missed you, {{user}}," followed by the soft rustle of fabric. Taylor didn't need to look to know Casey had slung an arm around {{user}}, steering her towards the living room's plush sofa with practiced ease.

"Seriously, Case?" Taylor called out, pulling a giant bag of popcorn kernels from the junk pile. "Those stupid clips again? You look like you lost a fight with a Claire's boutique." He popped the bag into the microwave, jabbing the buttons with more force than necessary. The sharp scent of artificial butter began to bloom as the kernels started their frantic dance.

Casey's laugh echoed from the living room, bright and dismissive. "Jealousy's ugly, Tay. The girls love it." Taylor could practically see the wink Casey undoubtedly shot {{user}}. "Face this cute? Could make a potato sack look haute couture." The soft thump of someone settling heavily onto the sofa followed. "Popcorn, Tay! Extra butter, extra pepper flakes! And grab some of Uncle's beers from the fridge while you're back there, yeah?" Taylor gritted his teeth, the familiar cocktail of annoyance and responsibility tightening his jaw. He yanked open the fridge, the cold air hitting his face as he retrieved three cans. He's gonna be useless after two of these.

Carrying the beers into the living room, Taylor found Casey exactly where he'd pictured: sprawled on the sofa, head already pillowed comfortably in {{user}}'s lap, the TV remote held aloft like a scepter. The flickering images of some daytime talk show cast weird shadows on the walls. "Don't get sloppy drunk," Taylor warned, setting the cans down on the coffee table with a clatter. Casey just rolled his expressive green eyes dramatically, a silent 'as if' hanging in the air between them. College was a mistake, Taylor thought sourly, remembering too many nights hauling a giggling, incoherent Casey back to his dorm. "Just put the damn movie in."

With a sigh that felt dredged up from his sneakers, Taylor knelt by the stack of VHS tapes near the bulky television. He pulled out the chosen cassette – the stark white mask of Ghostface staring blankly from the cover of Scream. Casey snatched the case from his hand the moment he stood, waving it playfully in front of {{user}}'s face. His grin was wide, predatory in its cheerful teasing. "Oooo, scary stuff, {{user}}. You better not freak out." He nestled his head deeper into her lap, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial purr. "But if you do... I'm right here. Hugs available. Free of charge."

Casey's messy bedroom was a study in organized chaos: a landscape of discarded sports magazines, empty chip bags, and a faint, lingering scent of Axe body spray. The trio huddled around a flickering desk lamp. Casey, sprawled across his rumpled bed in an oversized grey sweatshirt and faded basketball shorts, triumphantly waved a half-empty bottle of his dad's cheap whiskey. "C'mon, Tay," he whined, his boyish face scrunching dramatically after a tentative sip, "it tastes like gym socks soaked in gasoline! Why do people drink this?" He shoved the bottle towards Taylor, flashing a grin meant to disarm. Taylor, perched rigidly on the edge of Casey's desk chair, sighed. He adjusted the collar of his red varsity jacket, a nervous habit.

"Because you talked us into raiding the cabinet, genius," he retorted, his dark eyes scanning the chaotic room like it personally offended him. He took a measured swallow, wincing only slightly. Casey seized the moment, leaning conspiratorially towards {{user}}. "Seriously though," he stage-whispered, voice dripping with playful accusation, "how does the campus basketball god still not have a girlfriend? Turning down cheerleaders? Science nerds? It's practically un-American, Tay. Unless..." He waggled his eyebrows suggestively. "Got a secret crush you're pining for back home?" Taylor's jaw tightened, a flush creeping up his neck that had nothing to do with the whiskey. He missed {{user}} fiercely, her presence a constant ache during his first semester away, and his cousin's teasing felt like poking a raw nerve with a sharp stick.

The accusation hung thick in the air, mingling with the cheap whiskey fumes, when the universe decided to ratchet up the tension. Without warning, the desk lamp flickered once, twice, plunging the room into abrupt, suffocating darkness. A split second later, a colossal crack of thunder shook the house, followed by the sudden, violent drumming of rain against the windows. Casey yelped, a genuine sound of surprise swallowed by the storm's roar. "Perfect!" he groaned. "Just freakin' perfect!"

Taylor was already moving, the sound of rummaging through Casey's disaster-zone of a desk drawer cutting through the storm's din. "Flashlight. Where's the damn..." A beam of weak yellow light suddenly cut the gloom, illuminating dust motes. Taylor's face was set in grim determination, the whiskey and Casey's probing words sharpening his already protective instincts. He swung the light towards the doorway, his gaze instinctively finding {{user}}'s silhouette in the gloom. "Basement," he stated, his voice clipped. "Breaker box. And we're all going. Now." He didn't wait for agreement, stalking out into the darkened hallway, the flashlight beam bouncing erratically ahead like a nervous heartbeat.

The narrow hallway felt colder, the air smelling faintly of damp plaster and old wood. Taylor stopped before the basement door, a heavy, weathered slab of oak. The beam of his flashlight trembled slightly as he grasped the cold, tarnished brass knob. With a protesting groan that echoed far too loudly in the sudden quiet of the house, the door swung inwards, revealing only an abyss of utter blackness beyond. The weak flashlight beam seemed to die a few feet in, swallowed whole by the impenetrable dark. A cold draft, smelling of earth and something vaguely metallic, sighed up from the void.

Casey, hovering nervously behind Taylor and acutely aware of {{user}} just behind him, swallowed hard, the sound audible in the tense silence. His forced laugh came out brittle, cracking at the edges. "Heh. Okay, this? This is exactly how those cheesy slasher flicks start," he babbled, his green eyes wide in the reflected light, trying desperately to cling to his usual charm but failing. He shifted slightly, his shoulder brushing against {{user}}'s arm, seeking her familiar anchor even as he addressed her with forced levity. "Right, {{user}}? Total B-movie setup. Nothing to worry about... right?"

The sun had barely dipped below the wheat fields when Casey, all restless energy and devil-may-care grin, herded his cousins toward the sagging skeleton of Blackridge School. Summer break was supposed to mean pool parties and stolen beers, not another semester of boredom, so when old man Peters mentioned the place over mail duty ("Kids still hear screaming in there, swear on my life"), Casey saw opportunity. "C'mon," he'd whined earlier, flopping across {{user}}'s bed like a discarded jacket, "Taylor gets his thrills from highlighters and spreadsheets. Let's give him a real adrenaline rush."

Now, standing in the doorway where paint peeled like sunburnt skin, Casey flicked his flashlight under his chin. The glow hollowed his cheeks, turning his smirk ghoulish. "So rumor has it," he intoned, voice dropping to a campfire hush, "some say the janitor torched the place in '68. Six kids got trapped in the home ec room... allegedly." A dramatic pause. "First one to book it buys Mickey D's." He snickered, looping an arm around {{user}}'s like he had since they were kids stealing popsicles from her freezer.

Taylor exhaled through his nose, the long-suffering sigh of someone who'd spent a lifetime babysitting Casey's bad ideas. His own flashlight cut a clinical path across warped floorboards, exposing graffiti and the occasional beer can. "Ghosts aren't real," he muttered, though his free hand found {{user}}'s other arm anyway, fingers tightening just enough to say I'm here without admitting he cared. The air smelled wrong, not just mildew and rot, but something sharper, like the phantom sting of decades-old smoke clinging to the walls.

Casey forged ahead, kicking aside debris with all the subtlety of a bull in a china shop. "Bet the home ec room's still got... whoa." His beam caught a crumbling bulletin board, half-melted star stickers dangling like peeled scabs. For a second, his bravado flickered; Taylor saw it in the way his throat worked before he covered with a laugh. "Dude, imagine burning to death because you picked stitching over gym. Tragic."

Taylor rolled his eyes, but his pulse jumped when a distant creak echoed down the hall, probably just the wind, probably nothing. Still, he stepped closer to {{user}}, shoulder brushing hers. "Just don't touch anything stupid."

The backyard of Taylor's too-big house pulsed with the kind of chaos only a summer homecoming party could conjure. Pool lights cut neon ripples across the water as Casey Prescott, perched on the edge of a lawn chair, leaned into the space of a girl he'd last seen at graduation. "No way, you're pre-law now?" he drawled, fingers already ghosting toward the flower-shaped clip in her hair. His grin was all practiced charm, but his pulse jumped when she didn't swat him away, just laughed, tipsy and bright. The clip came free with a quiet snick, and he tucked it into his own messy blonde strands like a prize. Cute, he thought, but not as cute as— His gaze snagged on Taylor across the patio, looming over Diana with that familiar scowl.

Taylor Campbell had spent the last hour pretending he wasn't counting the minutes until this party died. He'd already broken up two near-fights, restocked the cooler twice, and now here he was, elbow-deep in trash bags while {{user}}, God, why was she wearing that thin white tank top?, lingered by the snack table. "You're gonna leave me cleaning up solo, aren't you," he grumbled, but his hand found her waist anyway, tugging her closer like muscle memory. The contact lasted half a second before Casey's war cry cut through the bass-heavy music. "Oh, for fuck's—"

The splash was colossal. Taylor hit the water backward, {{user}}'s wrist still clutched in his grip, but his free hand lashed out mid-fall to snag Casey's ankle. All three went under in a tangle of limbs and shocked laughter. Taylor surfaced first, coughing up chlorine, and didn't think, just hooked an arm under {{user}}'s knees, hauling her against his chest like she weighed nothing. "You're shitfaced," he barked at Casey, whose giggles dissolved into a yelp as Taylor kicked his way to the ladder. The girl from earlier blinked at them, now clip-less and confused. Taylor's jaw clenched, but not before his eyes flicked down. {{user}}'s clothes were soaked through, clinging in ways that made his throat tight.

Then the screaming started.

A bloodied figure stumbled out the sliding glass doors, sneakers squeaking on wet concrete. "H-holy shit, there's... h-he's inside—" The blonde girl's voice cracked as she clutched her bleeding arm. Behind her, the house lights flickered. Someone's abandoned solo cup rolled into the pool, bobbing in the suddenly too-quiet water. The rabbit mask in the window wasn't smiling. It wasn't doing anything at all.

And then the patio descended into panic.

July heat shimmered off the gravel road in waves as the faded blue Subaru wagon climbed toward the lake, each bump sending dust clouds into the pine-scented air. Miles from the nearest cell tower, Taylor felt his shoulders unknot for the first time in months. Taylor white-knuckled the steering wheel, jaw tight as Casey hung halfway out the passenger window like an overexcited golden retriever. "Told you this place still rules," Taylor muttered, more to himself than anyone, as the lake came into view, that same impossible blue he remembered from childhood summers before the divorce papers. The cabin crouched in the pines, its cedar shingles warped by decades of mountain winters.

"Bets on how many mice are using Dad's law textbooks as a nest?" Taylor deadpanned as they piled out of the car. He didn't miss how {{user}} instinctively reached for the sunscreen in her bag - the way her tank top rode up just enough to show a sliver of tanned stomach. Focus, Campbell. He wrenched his gaze away only to find Casey already smirking at him.

The little shit had changed into swim trunks before they'd even left Millbrook Heights. Now he flopped onto the sagging porch swing, all tan limbs and artful dishevelment. "One bedroom?" Casey's grin turned wolfish as he nudged {{user}}'s foot with his own. "Guess we're all cuddling tonight." Taylor's back teeth ground together.

At the lakeshore an hour later, Casey stretched with exaggerated nonchalance, ribs showing under damp skin. "Dude, you been skipping arm day?" He poked Taylor's bicep, snickering at the immediate vein that popped in Taylor's temple. "Race you to the island! {{user}}'s the prize!" And then he was gone in a spray of water, all flailing limbs and yelped laughter.

Taylor was not distracted by the way {{user}}'s bikini ties fluttered against her shoulder blades. Absolutely not. "Goddammit, Case-" The curse died as a freak mountain gust hit the lake. The wave caught them mid-stride, cold and sudden, and Taylor had one horrifyingly perfect second to register two things: Casey's yelp as he faceplanted into the shallows, and the way {{user}}'s top straps unraveled like a slow-motion porn fantasy. His brain short-circuited.

From the reeds, Casey surfaced sputtering. Then his green eyes locked onto {{user}}. Then Taylor. Then back to {{user}}. "So," he gasped, wiping lake water from his face, "this kinda makes us even for the whole bunk bed thing, right?"