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And so there we were, mortal enemies, hopelessly in love, trying to save a town we both hated.
From “The Notes of Forsyth Pendleton Jones III”My best friend Archie Andrews died on the 12th November 2018, deep in the woods, by the bank of Sweetwater River, seemingly alone, with poisoned blue kool aid dripping from his lips. I’ve known Archie since I was a kid, knew everything about him, even about his secret crush on our Music Teacher Miss Grundy, but I had no idea how he’d arrived in the woods. No idea why he was covered in esoteric markings and hunched, half-naked, in front of some hideous shrine, fingers still laced around a silver chalice. Sheriff Keller hadn’t believed me at first, but I knew his kids – Kevin and Josie from school – and they could tell I didn’t have a clue from the moment I set foot in his office that grey morning. The twins were always smart like that.How did Archie die? Well, on the simplest level that’s easy: poison, seemingly voluntarily ingested, from one of two empty chalices, both of which had contained the same blue kool aid. But who had drained the other? Archie’s fingerprints weren’t on it, after all. Well, that fact became abundantly clear when, three days after Archie’s death and one day after he had himself been declared officially missing, our other best friend Jason Blossom stumbled out of the woods and collapsed at Thornhill manor, raving about goblins and monsters and some game they’d been playing. Gryphons and Gargoyles. That, I found out, was a name that made my dad bristle with fear when I mentioned it over a solemn dinner, and it didn’t take long to find out why.In the late 90s my dad’s classmate, Stanley Mantle, had died in a bathroom at school, in the middle of the night, in the exact same way. Alice Smith, the town’s biggest troublemaker, and now the elusive Serpent Queen of the South Side had done time for the death but Archie’s dad Fred, New York Yankees baseball legend Fred Andrews, that is, had insisted she was innocent. My dad, Fred’s wife Hermione, the Kellers, Penelope Blossom and Hiram Lodge didn’t agree: in the end one baseball star’s word only accounts so much against his own wife, the town sheriff, a member of the house, the wife of Riverdale’s largest employer, and the state Governor. The whole thing was brushed under the rug, Alice Smith did her time, and that was that. Until whatever it was came back to kill my friend.The town, of course, already knew who’d done it, as small towns always do: it was Alice Smith, the bitter crone of the South Side, whose blood Veronica Andrews, Archie’s adoring twin, and his mother Hermione were baying for. But Alice had an alibi: she’d been in her trailer, all night, with her daughters Polly and Betty and her right-hand man, some goon called “Tall Boy”. Even with Hal Cooper’s Riverdale Register preaching the necessity of “revenge” against the South Side, Alice Smith was untouchable with that kind of alibi. Untouchable and, in all likelihood, innocent. So, who killed Archie, and why? And had they been the one to kill Stanley Mantle all those years ago?The obvious one to look to for clues was Jason Blossom… until he flung himself from a hospital window late one night, muttering something about “ascending” to “the next level”. So that was one lead gone, and another friend dead. And as always, the adults of Riverdale closed ranks, both deaths had been tragic accidents, but nothing more… tragic accidents which perfectly matched a ritual murder committed decades ago. None of it added up: none of it ever had done with the original murder, as I found out, but the waves of tension which rippled through the town all led back to one, chillingly alliterative, name: Gryphons and damn Gargoyles.Only Fred Andrews would even talk to me about the game, and even then it was only late in the evening after Archie’s funeral, with his breath stinking of whiskey, that he took me aside. He fixed me with that hard earnest gaze my dad said he’d had since he was a kid, full of benevolence and melancholy since the day his dad died. “Don’t go looking into that game, kid.” He’d said with a long, drawn-out, sight. “Trust me on this, even if no one else is willing to admit that they know what happened, that game was bad news, probably still is, and it ruined more lives than you know.” Then the sharp, sorrowful, clarity in his eyes had clouded over with drunkenness, and Fred had excused himself to wail mawkishly into his wife’s shoulder.It was two weeks later, brooding over a milkshake at Pop's, that she walked out of her mother’s alibis and into my life. Betty Smith. If Riverdale girls were exquisitely, softly, feminine, South Side girls like Betty were sharp and harsh, and beautifully fierce. And from the moment she walked into the Chocklit Shoppe I knew that she was everything I’d been brought up to hate. The world my dad had left behind to become a pillar of the community: from gangbangers to construction magnates in a single generation: not bad, Governor Lodge had remarked with a chuckle in one of his yearly photo opportunity visits to his leafy little home town. That world had become Alice Smith’s, and it was going to be Betty Smith’s one day too. She was everything I hated… and everything I wanted.“You’re Andrews’ friend?” She asked as she slid into the booth across from me.“Yeah, why?”“Because whoever framed my mom killed your friend.” She replied.“What,” I scoffed, “And you want justice?”She laughed at that, but her husky laugh was hollow and bitter. When she was done she fixed me with a fiery, determined, look, “Oh Forsyth,” She laughed again, this time with all the humour the original had lacked, “You Northsiders don’t know a thing about us Serpents do you?” She paused, pulled by milkshake across the table delicately and took a long slurp, “I don’t want justice, I want revenge.”That was where and how it all began: how an unlikely partnership was forged between the likeliest of enemies and unlikeliest of friends. I had no idea at the time what would come to pass because my friend died at the edge of the river.
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I'm not sure I can trust Forsyth: mom always taught me that any brat of F.P. Jones’ was the least trustworthy kind of creature: a snake pretending to be anything else.
From “The Journals of Betty Smith”He was always eating, that’s how I knew that he’d be at Pops. Forsyth Pendleton Jones III: all-American boy wonder, student council president, aspiring writer, on track for Harvard or Yale or Columbia or wherever the hell he wanted his life to take him. The son of Riverdale’s golden son F.P. Jones, and the god-son of town legend Fred Andrews. He could have been anything in the world that he wanted to be, but he had an edge: I knew that, somehow, from the moment I first saw him hanging around with Archie Andrews, Jason Blossom and Kevin Keller after football practice when we went to slash their tires. I hated boys like that – entitled, whiny, brats who’d had their life handed to them on a silver platter and hated the world for not making them struggle for some fucking reason.“How very Shakespearean of you.” He laughed as I drank his milkshake, one eyebrow cocked provocatively, “Revenge! A curse on the house of whoever framed your mom, right?”I narrowed my eyes but didn’t say anything for a moment, studying the mocking smirk on his thin lips for any sign of sincerity. Before I could respond the door to Pop’s slammed against the wall with a crack and in walked those two north side bitches: Cheryl Blossom and Veronica Andrews. Preppy, arrogant little princesses the both of them, and if I didn’t know why it was I’d have been so happy to see Veronica’s perfect makeup tear smudged and ruined. She wasn’t crying anymore, but her eyes were ringed with red as Cheryl whispered soothingly into her ear. She seemed hardly put together herself, and all things considered that was hardly a surprise.“Well, if you want to know more there’s where we should start looking.” Forysth said, smirk gone and replaced with a furrowed brow.“Only problem is I don’t know them, genius.” I retorted. “Well lucky for you I do.” He was grinning again now, as if there was some little joke I didn’t know about here. I didn’t grin back, and he seemed to get the message, “But now might not be the best time.” He winced, “I think they’re obviously both still cut about it.”“Yeah, no shit.” He scowled and it was my turn to smirk.There was a long pause as I slurped on his milkshake, and I could sense a frisson of tension ripple between us. In any other circumstance, I’d have worked with anyone but him: anyone but the brat of one of the men who framed my mother for murder all those years ago and destroyed our lives. But I didn’t have a choice. The whole town had gone mad trying to cover it all up, and he was the only one apart from me who wanted to find out the truth about what had happened to Archie and Jason. That was the only way to find out what happened all those years ago.“Do you know anything about Gryphons and Gargoyles?” He asked at last, I could tell the question was genuine, and so was the worry that filled his eyes.“That’s the game right, the one mixed up in both sets of deaths?”“Yeah.” He paused, and gazed over at the two north side princesses, and I wondered if he was in love with one – or both – of them. When he spoke again his voice was quieter, “My Dad won’t talk about it, Fred Andrews won’t talk about it, and I’ll bet you any money none of the rest of the Riverdale Nine will.” The Riverdale Nine, that was what the press had called the group of kids, both our parents included, who my mom only ever called the Midnighters.“Maybe my mom will.” As soon as I said it I knew it was what he’d been fishing for, but I couldn’t help myself.“Oh yeah?”“Yeah. If Polly isn’t there and she has a whiskey or two in her she’ll talk, I know it. She’ll tell us everything.”“Great.” He smiled, flashing a row of perfect white teeth, “Well I guess there isn’t much more we can do, but I’ll see you back here tomorrow and we can share what we’ve learnt?”“What we’ve learnt?” I asked, “And what exactly are you going to learn Forsyth?”“Whatever I can.” He replied with a roguish wink, “Maybe I’ll try and get something from Cheryl and Veronica.” And with that he stood, swept up his letter jacket, and walked away, leaving me alone in the booth.I didn’t wait to slink out like a coward. I held my head high and strolled, quite confidently, out of the shop and into the cool Autumnal evening. The sun was setting over Riverdale, and I smiled as I breathed in the cool air. The sky was a magnificent vista, a bruised purple ringing the sun as it dipped low in the distance behind Thornhill, as if promising some wonderful escape from Riverdale – from my life. And off in the distance, I could see the darkness of the woods where Archie Andrews had died. I could have sworn I saw a figure that blended in with the trees. There was movement, almost imperceptible but unquestionably there, and then whatever it was fell back into the darkness.I didn’t linger long in the north side, I never liked to, even then, and I sure as hell wouldn’t now. For a gang lord my mother had always been strict – discipline girls, she would say, is what my kingdom is built on… some kingdom, I always thought. Still Forsyth was right, if anyone would tell us what had really happened years ago it would be my mother. As I mounted my bike I looked again towards the edge of the woods, and a primordial chill swept down my side as I swore I made eye contact with… something… something ancient and rotten staring back at me from the shadows. But it was only a tree, it had to only be a tree, because if it wasn’t then what was it?