Our story starts when Lena Stillinger, a child of 12, didn't want to walk back home by herself. 

It's 1912, June 9th, and she's going with her 8-year-old sister Ina to the house where the Moore family lives. Josiah and Sarah Moore are walking them back, along with their four children. The sky is dark, as though a rag had been dipped in a pot of blue ink and smeared along the light blue sky of earlier that day. The cornfields are waving in the wind, and soft chitters come from the underbrush as animals move along the dirt path much like the people are. 

The night is cold, and Lena pulls her coat closer to her shoulders, shivering slightly. She's had a bad feeling all night, and it scares her enough that she doesn't want to walk home with just her sister. Josiah had offered to walk her and her sister home, but it's far away, and she just wants to go to sleep. 

However, the bad feeling seems to have followed her down the dirt trail. It's cold, almost bitingly cold, and she can't quite shake the thought that someone had been watching her. She tries to forget about it, but it's a creeping fear she can't discard. 

Katherine, the Moore family's second-youngest child, notices that Lena is trembling from the cold and offers her own coat as well. Lena gives her a smile but refuses, and they continue down the trail. 

The Moores live in a large, second-story house with an elevated porch and a barn just outside the house. Chickens are squawking as the family approach the house, and Josiah sends Herman, the oldest child, to lock them up before it gets too dark. 

The house door is pushed open-- there's not much of a need to lock doors in rural Iowa-- and the children are sent inside. The house is quiet and dark, which is comforting to Lena's nerves at first, but as her eyes adjust, she begins to flinch at every noise and jump at the nearest movement. Ina tugs on her sister's sleeve, asking in a quiet voice why Lena is nervous. 

Startled, Lena replies that she does not know, and she promptly shakes her sister off and asks Mrs Moore where they could sleep. They're directed to a small room, containing only one bed, and it's the only bedroom on the ground floor. 

Ina giggles and flops on the bed, her once-carefully arranged curls spilling everywhere. She turns over, half of her face pressing against the linen bedsheets, and asks Lena again why she seems so scared. 

Lena shakes her head and sits on the bed, ruffling her sister's hair. She does not know, she repeats, and it would be better for Ina not to ask her again. They would wake up in the morning and go straight to their parent's house, how about that? 

Apparently satisfied, Ina nods, and grabs at her sister, trying to tug her down onto the bed. Lena laughs and lays down, snuggling down underneath the covers, and pulls her sister close to her chest. Her hands run through Ina's hair, slow and comforting, and Ina quickly falls asleep. 

Lena takes longer to settle, as she knew she would. She keeps twitching at every sound, and the loud creaks from upstairs as Sarah and Josiah prepare for bed do not help. The curtains on the window are pulled wide, and she can't figure out if that's comforting or not, but she stares defiantly into the darkness, fear seizing at her chest. 

Then she looks down at her sister, cuddled into her, and smiles. She presses a kiss to Ina's forehead and tugs gently at a tangled curl, prompting a sleepy murmur of distress, and tries to close her eyes. 

Finally, lured by the sound of her sisters' soft breathing, she falls asleep. 

The night is peaceful as the rest of the Moore household are lulled into slumber, the only sound outside foxes yowling and bats chirping. Lena still holds her sister tight, the covers pulled up over Ina's sleeping face. 

Ina would not wake up again. 

A soft creak is the first and only warning that Lena gets before she is suddenly soaked in something warm and wet. 

She's tugged back to consciousness by a loud, dull crack, and slowly blinks awake. She's in a different position than when she had fallen asleep, curled up in a ball with her back to her sister. Normally, an arm would be thrown over her shoulder as it's always Ina's way to cuddle close, but Lena feels no warm body pressing against her back. 

Instead, she's greeted with a freezing-cold night breeze and something uncomfortably hot soaking into her dress. She grumbles a complaint, turning to face her sister. "Did you throw water over me again? Mum said that's not a right way to wake a body up..." 

She freezes, greeted with a truly terrible scene.

The moonlight is reflecting off of a blade-- an axe. It's buried deep into the covers-- no, into the blankets-- no, into... her sister? 

Lena is overcome with nausea and terror as she realizes that the axe blade is digging into Ina's back. It's spattered and drenched in blood, and someone is gripping the handle tight enough to cause splinters. The liquid seeping into her dress? That's blood. More than a fair amount of it, more than she ever needed to see in her lifetime. 

A hand is clasped over her mouth and she's briefly overcome with panic before she realizes the hand is her own, fingers knotted together to try and stop puke from dribbling out of her mouth as her stomach flees the scene. 

She cries out, stumbling back from the bed, and a silhouetted head whips around at the sound. 

Eyes. Hazel-- dark grey, blue, brown, no-- it's too dark. A crooked figure, a whispered damn. 

Who?

She's on her feet and trying to run before she can think, her entire world gone into a blur. Desperately, her hands scrabble at the doorknob, but something slippery is smeared over the handle, and her fingers can't get a good grip. 

Lena whirls around and presses her back to the door, a scream building in her throat. The figure of a shadow is raising an axe-- it's coming down on her--

She hurls herself to the side, but the blade catches her by the forearm and slices a deep gouge through the skin. She's sobbing now, scrabbling for anything, any weapon, but fear makes it impossible to think clearly. Her chest rises and falls rapidly, she's gasping for air without realizing it. 

She darts to the other side of the room, crawling rather than running, and a loose floorboard catches her knee and draws a sharp gash through it. Lena lets out a cry of pain, clutching at her knee, her legs drawn up tightly against her chest. She's hyperventilating now, and can't take her eyes off of the axe held in the shadow-dark hand. 

Footsteps sound on the old floorboards. The blackened figure is drawing closer, and with each footfall, it feels as though an age passes. 

A hand lowers itself onto her shoulder, stilling her struggles. Her breath freezes in her throat. Time seems to almost slow down, and a smile finds its way to Lena, not unkind, illuminated only by the barest streak of moonlight. 

"And this is for all ye sinners," a voice whispers, barely a breath, but Lena hears it. "May you rot in this house until God hears your cries." Male or female, she can't tell, but it is spoken so quietly she knows it wasn't meant to be heard. 

Her eyes meet the shadow-sticky irises of her attacker. She lifts her chin, trying to put on a brave face despite her heart already stuttering to a halt as fear digs freezing-cold claws into her chest. 

Defiance will be her last expression, and if this is how her life ends, then so be it. She'd rather die accepting than afraid. 

"Kill me," she breathes. It may be childish, but she is a child. "Go on. I dare you." 

Obligingly, the axe falls. 

It splits her skull cleanly in half. Death is instantaneous. But this isn't the last strike that the killer will land on Lena Stillinger's face, as the axe is hammered into her, smearing together facial features until she will be, definitively, unrecognizable. 

There's silence, and then...

"...amen." 

109 years later (2021) . . .

A/N: Okay but Bench Trio are all cuddle bugs bc I  love cuddle scenes :D !! even if they're platonic !! which this scene absolutely is, there is no minor shipping in this!

If you didn't read the description: if you're here because you're hoping to catch some minor shipping... well, the only thing you'll be catching are these hANDS--

Ranboo, Tommy, and Tubbo were in a cuddle pile when Ranboo had what he thought was the idea of the century.

Tommy was snoring softly, wrapped around Ranboo like a python slowly constricting its victims, while the taller one was laying on his side with his arms curled around Tubbo's torso, his head laid on the brunette's lap. Tubbo tried to disentangle the messy snarls in Tommy's hair with an old plastic comb and ate popcorn as an old Halloween movie spat out dialogue that buzzed with static. The lights were off, the curtains pulled down. Quiet welcomed the room with open arms.

"I have an idea!" Ranboo shouted, his head shooting up from Tubbo's lap.

Tommy let out an indignant squawk as he fell off the couch. He rubbed his head and hissed grumpily, giving Ranboo a pained look. "Great job, Boo. Can you kindly ask it to wait till after movie night?"

"Ghost murder investigators!" Ranboo declared, decidedly ignoring Tommy. "We'll be ghost murder investigators!"

Tubbo finished swallowing some popcorn. "And by that, you mean..." he waved his hand, expecting clarification.

Ranboo pointed to the TV as Tommy clambered back on the couch, slinking behind Ranboo and wrapping his arms around the American's shoulders to pull him close. Ranboo yielded to the cuddle god without any complaint and even made a happy noise when Tommy gave him a head pat. "I mean we'd go around places and see what there is to see! Go experience horror as we never have before!"

"I still don't know what you mean," Tubbo deadpanned, popping another piece of popcorn in his mouth. He set the bowl aside after deciding there was nothing in it except butter and regret for eating it so quickly.

"I mean..." Ranboo paused. "You know how ghost stories... y'know, have some truth to them most of the time? And like, they came from murders?"

Tommy stretched lazily behind Ranboo, yawning widely. "Um... yeah?"

Ranboo grinned, his eyes sparkling with excitement. "What if we solved those murder mysteries?"

"Ranboo, Tommy, and Tubbo, going around the country and visiting haunted houses with the sole purpose of..." Tubbo paused, feeling the words in his mouth. "Of finding the truth of the matter, is it?"

Even Tommy was looking more awake. "That could be fun."

"Oh," Ranboo said with wicked excitement, "it will."