Jim & Carrie Pressley

Splat: Mortal

Public Information:

Jim and Carrie Pressley have spent their entire lives in Gatlinburg, their names familiar in town even to those who don’t know them personally.

Jim was the golden boy of his high school years—star quarterback, hometown hero—who never quite let go of those days. He still talks about “the big game” like it happened yesterday, reliving the highlights for anyone who’ll listen. Now, he works as an assistant manager at an auto parts store, coaching the local pee-wee football team and drinking just a little too much when the memories get too heavy.

Carrie, on the other hand, was the bookish valedictorian—the nerdy girl who somehow ended up with the town’s most popular boy. She’s sharp-witted, pragmatic, and stubborn, a woman who speaks her mind and always has a plan. She’s worked as a librarian at the elementary school for over twenty years, and there isn’t a single kid in town she hasn’t helped find the perfect book. When tragedy struck their family, she didn’t break, but she hardened, throwing herself into work, into community projects, into anything that kept her moving forward.

Their daughter, Olivia Pressley, fell into a coma on Christmas Eve after what was ruled a failed suicide attempt. They don’t talk about it in public—the gossip is unbearable—but at home, it lingers in the air like smoke. Jim avoids it, Carrie confronts it, and neither of them truly knows what to do.

Jim sits by Olivia’s bedside in the hospital and tells her stories, pretending she’s still that little girl who cheered with him from the stands at the local high school football games. Carrie reads to her from old books, her voice never wavering, her fingertips tight against Olivia’s cold hand.

What they don’t know is the girl in that hospital bed isn’t Olivia at all. Their daughter escaped Arcadia weeks ago, wearing a different name, walking the same streets as a stranger to her own family. And the Fetch—the thing that took her place—is slowly starting to wake up.