The LegionBeta

Frank Morrison was nineteen and had little to show for it. He’d stopped attending school after being kicked out of the basketball team for shoving a referee into the stands. Yet Frank was a man of potential, who could light up a room despite his bleak childhood. At six years old, he’d been taken away from Calgary to start a circuit of foster homes. No matter how many times he’d lashed out, threw tantrums and got into fights, they’d kept moving him to new, unfamiliar houses. His last move had been three years prior when his last foster dad, Clive Andrews, had picked him up from the adoption center. They’d been on the road for seven hours before reaching a small bungalow in Ormond. It would be the longest time they’d spend together. Clive was too busy trading cheques from Family Services for drinks at the bar.

Ormond was a small, stale place; a remote town of six thousand inhabitants where gray winters drag on for most of the year. Frank did everything he could to get into another adoptive family, but he changed his mind when he caught the attention of a beautiful girl. Julie was a popular girl who was convinced that she deserved better than a life in Ormond, and Frank, as an outsider, was her ticket out. Frank attended the parties she threw where everyone was younger than him and easily impressed, which he liked. He met the impulsive Joey, who liked to show off, and the shy, naive Susie, who was Julie’s best friend.

They would hang out at an abandoned lodge up Mount Ormond. Their time together was the perfect break from the boring conformity of their small, insignificant everyday lives. Frank saw it as an opportunity to shape their lack of experience into something powerful. He lined up nights of debauchery and rampage, testing their limits. Bullying, vandalism, and theft were essentially their weekend plans. It came to a point where they would do anything he asked. Nothing was off-limits when they put their masks on. One evening, Frank dared Joey to vandalize the store that had recently fired him. They snuck inside easily enough as the building was supposed to be empty after closing hours. But a cleaner who was still there grabbed Julie as soon as she came near. Hearing her stifled cries, a dark impulse took over Frank. He rushed to her aid knife in hand and, without hesitating, planted the blade into the cleaner’s back.

As the group stared at Frank in shock, he ordered them to finish the job. Joey clenched his jaw, grabbed the knife, and stabbed the bleeding man in the ribs. Susie didn’t want to do it. Frank shouted at her; they had to finish what they’d started. Julie closed her eyes and jabbed the knife into the man’s chest. She handed the wet blade to Susie: they were all in this together now. Susie stared at Julie in disbelief as Frank grabbed her trembling hands and inserted the knife deep into the man’s throat. Frank told them to move fast: they mopped the blood off the floor, stashed the body in the trunk of Joey’s car and drove up Mount Ormond.

All four were digging in the muddy snow to dispose of the body when Frank spotted something moving through the woods. He grabbed his knife and broke from the group to check it out. The Fog thickened around Frank, becoming so dense that he soon could no longer see ahead. He retraced his steps and stumbled on an ominous trail. He followed the eerie path, as if called by the darkness. Julie, Susie, and Joey finished digging but Frank was nowhere to be seen. Julie spotted his muddy footsteps in the snow and the three of them followed the trail, which took them deeper into the woods. When Julie, Susie, and Joey did not return home that night, their parents thought they’d run away with Frank. Each family came up with a different theory. The mood of the town changed, however, when a body was found by an abandoned lodge up Mount Ormond.