Arc 4 | Last Resort (25)

Arc 4 | Last Resort (25)

LAST RESORT

Part 25

SCENARIO 4

2:03 AM

5 Hours Until Dawn

5 Delvers remaining…

They ran until their lungs burned, until every muscle screamed, until the black maze of the trees blurred together into a single suffocating wall. And still they ran, herded by Nina’s shrieks and dying screams fading behind them.

They catch their breath once they reached a shallow creek a mile away from the main road. They had been running for more than twelve minutes nonstop. Kate and Kevin were the lookouts since they were the only ones who bothered to grab flashlights from the wreckage; their only source of light in the dark. Sheila dropped where she stood, clutching at the earth as though she might anchor herself to it. Vivian slid down beside her from exhaustion, fighting the urge to puke. Lope loomed just a few feet apart, shield dragging at one side, the silver knife clenched loosely in the other. Luckily, he found it in the rubble inside the truck cabin before they fled for the woods. He looked like a knight in some cruel parody, his “sword” was a little more than a kitchen utensil. It was their only weapon they knew was effective against the werewolves.

Kevin broke the silence first. “Hey, if we cross the water, we might be able to lose them. Running water will mask our scent.”

Kevin frowned at him, the beam of his flashlight aimed on Lope’s damp face. “You seriously watch that nerdy shit?”

“Helps drown out the noise at work,” Lope muttered. “Leaf blowers. Engines. You.”

A ghost of a smirk moved across Kevin’s face, but it died quick. The silence moved back in.

Kate finally spoke up. “Something’s not right. I think we’re going in circles. We’ve been running blind for a long time—and God knows in what direction. For all we know we’re deeper into their territory. Are we even close to the campgrounds?” She turned to look at Vivian.

Vivian’s cheeks flushed. “Hey, it was one time and I didn’t go to the woods at all. It was Xavier who drove me there, so I don’t remember much.”

Kevin shook his head. “Then we have no choice but to continue. Stay together, stay quiet. If we keep moving, they can’t pin us down.”

Lope spat into the mud. “Or we burn ourselves out, and then when they decide to stop playing with us, we start dropping like flies.”

“Better than sitting out here waiting,” Kevin shot back.

Kate’s voice cut between them. “What if we split up?”

Sheila stared at her, bewildered. “Split up? Are you insane? That’s what they want. That’s what predators do—scatter the herd so they can go for the kill.”

“Could it be possible that they lost track of us?” Lope asked.

“I don’t think so,” Kevin said. “They have the perfect opportunity to take us out in that truck, but they didn’t. Why?”

They let the question lingered in the air for a long moment.

Sheila answered, “Because they’re toying with us. They just don’t want to kill us…they want us scared. Desperate. Making mistakes…and to give up.”

“The reward better be fucking worth it,” Kevin muttered.

“Seriously, man. That doesn’t matter right now,” Lope said.

“Of course it fucking matters. Daryl, Ray, Xavier, and Nina died for nothing if it doesn’t matter.”

“Uncle, I’m not really comfortable staying out here for too long,” Vivian said. “We should keep moving.”

“Alright, sorry. Break time’s over, folks. Let’s keep it moving.”

They started walking again.

The forest loosened its grip on them the further they went. The press of trees began to thin, the claustrophobic latticework of branches opening into something wider, finally allowing them to see the partly-darkened sky and moon above. The delvers stumbled forward, their boots dragging through damp leaves, until suddenly the woods spat them out onto a wide clearing.

Ahead of them was THE CABIN.

It rose out of the dark like some great slumbering bear, hulking, patient, waiting. Its windows were like dead-black eyes; no lights glowed within, no cars sat in the muddy parking space, no evidence that anyone had been around recently. There was a garden shed hunched not far from the west, stooped in the shadows. Even the stream of moonlight, weak as it was, seemed to shy away from touching either structure.

Kevin finally said what all of them were thinking. “Looks like nobody’s home.”

“This isn’t the campgrounds,” Kate said. “I was right. We must’ve turned around and took the wrong trail.”

“Maybe if we follow the shore around the lake, we can reach it,” Sheila suggested.

Vivian shook her head hard, hair sticking to her damp cheeks. “We’re going to keep walking? Nope. No freaking way. I don’t want to walk in the dark anymore. Not with—” she stopped herself, shuddering. “Not with those things still after us.”

Kevin nodded. “My niece got a point. This cabin’s a blessing.”

A howl echoed faintly in the woods behind them; the sound pushed them forward like a cattle prod.

“Oh, shit,” Lope jerked back from the tree line. His voice cracked, betraying the bravado he had been holding ever since Nina was taken by the werewolves. “Am I tripping or did that sound really fucking close?”

Kevin grabbed Sheila and Vivian by their wrists, tugging them toward the porch. “Everybody in the house. Now.”

They crossed the muddy lot, their steps muffled, hearts thundering louder than their footfalls. The cabin loomed larger with each stride, its darkness pressing on them, daring them closer. The porch creaked under their weight as they mounted the steps. Lope raised the knife instinctively, though it looked pitifully small in his hand. Kevin reached for the door, expecting it to be locked. He turned the doorknob, and, to his surprise, found it unlocked.

“Go, go, go.” Kevin shoved the door wider and herded them through, closing it after Lope crossed the threshold.

Inside, the darkness welcomed them with the air smelled faintly of old woodsmoke. Their flashlight beams cut through in slices, revealing the various furnitures in the living room: a couch, a couple of reading chairs, a coffee table, the hulking shadow of a fireplace, the faint traces of two hallways leading deeper into the belly of the house. Familiar things, rendered alien by their silence.

Sheila’s hand hovered near the switch by the door, but Kate slapped her hand away. “Not a good idea, sis,” Kate said.

Sheila’s cheeks blushed red. “Sorry. Force of habit.”

“Stay away from the door and windows,” Lope ordered.

Sheila, Kate, and Vivian scurried behind the couch like puppies hiding from a thunderstorm. The cushions loomed over them like a barricade, threadbare but reassuring. Lope and Kevin laid down on the floor next to the coffee table and stayed very still, fearing that even their thundering hearts and ragged breaths would alert the pack of predators stalking them from outside.

They listened. Listened so hard the silence became a roaring torrent against their ears. The house creaked, settling against the gentle breeze, and every pop of the wood sounded like a footstep or a gunshot. They didn’t hear the howls anymore, but that didn’t mean the werewolves had left them alone. After a long, taut moment, Lope rose slowly and crawled toward the nearest window. He tugged the curtain aside a careful inch, breath held, and peered into the clearing.

Again, nothing.

Lope let the curtain fall. “I don’t see anything out there.”

Relief washed over them, spared another moment to breathe. Sheila leaned her head against Kate’s shoulder, whispering, “We’re gonna be okay, right?” But Kate didn’t have the guts to answer her. Vivian hugged her knees tighter, but her eyes no longer darted with rabbit terror.

Kevin straightened his back, chest swelling with confidence. He glanced around the room, nodding with approval from what he had seen. “Listen up,” he said, still whispering, but loud enough for everyone to hear. “We got real fucking lucky finding this place. Let’s make sure it’s safe. We make sure we lock everything, okay? Windows, doors, whatever you find that those things can get into.”

They moved with newfound purpose, splitting off into the cabin like roaches. Kate checked the back door, fingers fumbling at the latch until it clicked shut with satisfying finality. Sheila moved through the hallway, tugging curtains closed, rattling knobs to test them. Vivian crept upstairs, latching each window one by one. Kevin closed the shutters, and Lope made sure to take account of all the weapons he could find around the cabin and piled all of them on the dining table.

They gathered back at the dining room.

“None of the phones are working,” Kate reported, much to everyone’s disappointment. Kevin wasn’t.

“What do we do now?” Sheila asked.

“I think we just sit tight. That’s all we can do right now, really,” Kevin said. “We have the advantage here and I can see ourselves protecting this cabin until dawn. And then…we win the game.”

“And will that be enough?” Kate asked, doubtful. “There’s four of them and five of us, and they’re pretty strong, Kev. It’s like a bunch of rabbits fighting off an enraged bear.”

“Why don’t we make it harder for them then? We’re just as tough.” Kevin gestured to the dining table. “Lope found some useful stuff around the house. Everyone grab a weapon. I need you all armed. If those werewolves get in, at least we can fight back, maybe even make them regret it.”

“I’ve got first dibs on this one,” Lope said.

He grabbed the pump-action shotgun, the kind that had seen better days but probably still worked: twelve-gauge, dark walnut stock nicked and oil-blackened where a hundred palms had gripped it. He found it at the second floor in one of the closets (one of the loot drops scattered across the dungeon). The pump slid back with a pleasant, mechanical click when Lope tested it; it smelled faintly of oil and age. It was far better than the silver knife he had, but he was saving that for emergencies. He was sure a couple of buckshots right on the chest was going to make the werewolves think twice of attacking him. It might not kill them, but at least it would give them enough time to run away.

There were also kitchen knives, a baseball bat, a couple of fire pokers from the fireplace, two fire extinguishers, a hatchet, and a bundle of ropes from the back room. Sheila took the chef’s knife, Kate grabbed the baseball bat, and Vivian chose the hatchet. Kevin didn’t bother with any of them, trusting the gun in his hand.

“So, here’s the plan,” Kevin started, “Someone has to stay by the window on the second floor’s master bedroom as our lookout. It has a better vantage point than anywhere in the house. The rest of us, we stay by the TV room. It’s central to the house on the ground floor and there aren’t any windows in there.”

“Yeah, but it only has one exit,” Kate said, not liking that part of the plan.

“Better than staying near the windows for one of those things to peer through and grab us,” Kevin said.

“What about the library? It’s small, but I think I saw a computer in there. Can’t we call the police from there?” Lope asked.

“It’s not working,” Vivian said. “I mean, it is, but I think it needs a password? It keeps putting me on the same screen and asking me if I want to play a game or something. I just turned it off. I didn’t want the screen lights to attract the werewolves outside.”

“And the room gives me the creeps. Feels like I’m being watched,” Sheila interjected. “I like the TV room plan better.”

“Seems like we’re still cut off from the outside world, so it’s still down to us to survive,” Kevin said. “One or two should check around the perimeter every fifteen minutes. Make sure the windows and doors remain locked. If you hear or see anything funny or weird, you warn the others, you all understand?”

They all nodded.

“Good. Dawn’s only four, maybe five hours away. It’s not a long wait, but it ain’t no picnic either.”

“What if there’s no reward?” Sheila asked. “What if…what if that woman, or monster, whatever you call her, was just screwing with us?”

Kevin thought about it for a moment, but then shook his head. “Still the same, baby. We wait for daylight and then maybe we can start planning on how to get the hell out of this forest.”

“Why aren’t we attacking?” Were-Xavier’s voice was a wet snarl, his muzzle trembling with hunger. He had been pacing in the undergrowth, claws carving little channels into the mud. “We have been watching the cabin for more than half an hour. They are in there. My sister is in there. I can smell their fear.”

Alan did not answer right away. His eyes were on the cabin. Not focusing on the shape of the logs or the cracked shingles, but something behind the wood, inside, where his comrades slumbered. Alan turned his head, and even in the dark Xavier shrank from the ancient yellow eyes of his. “There’s two in there,” Alan said. His voice was steady, calm, like a schoolteacher explaining fractions. “Oracle and the Demon.”

“So what?” Xavier pawed at the ground like a nervous bull. “They’re meat. They’re scared meat. Let’s go in and eat before they bolt.”

Alan’s lips peeled back, showing teeth. “Patience, welp. You’ll follow my lead or you’ll follow your guts hanging from a branch. Understood?”

That shut Xavier up, though he still twitched in place. Alan went quiet again, staring at the house.

The werewolves knew that Oracle and Demon had struck a mutual pact in sharing the cabin as their lair. After all, it was the heart of the domain, the first structure erected in this new home, and sometimes, the archetypes can be sentimental. Oracle was more than content with sharing one since he’s already doing double duty trying to block all communications to the outside world, setting up all the scenarios for success by gathering the delvers, and also helping other archetypes as their personal monster-killing assistant. Both Demon and Oracle had been good friends from the beginning, if friendship could ever be found in a dark and unforgiving place such as this, but the Sawyer brothers could hardly ignore the bond between the dungeon’s first archetypes, which Alan had admitted a couple of times to being jealous of.

I was also curious on why Alan waited, and so I floated close to him, and asked, “Really. Tell me. Why are you not attacking them?”

Alan was quiet for a moment. “Resolve, my lord.”

“Resolve?”

“Hunting and hurting them won’t be enough to shed Resolve quickly before daybreak,” Alan said. “I need something…more potent.”

Ahh. I get it now. My gaze returned to the cabin too. Demon was one of my strongest archetypes in the dungeon and one of my greatest asset. Of all the archetypes, they were the most dangerous and the most consummate butcher of Resolve, death, and suffering. If I was in the delver’s shoes, they were the one monster I refused to face. I knew how they operated, how adept they were at inflicting unnecessary and over-the-top violence only a resident of Hell could deliver. I’d probably off myself before I even opened any archetype doors at the Selection Chamber. Demon’s aura and methods always, always, drained the delver’s Resolve faster than any other archetype in the dungeon.

To face them was almost a death sentence.

Alan was smart enough to know it. He was waiting for the delvers inside the cabin to make a mistake of “summoning” the entity.

Because the Demon always set the bait. They had a flair for theatre, that one. They always loved to play their games. Didn’t want to attack the plain and boring way; no, they wanted to be asked. They’d planted their little toys in there, cursed relics dressed up like props from a drive-in horror flick: the cursed black book made out of human and pig flesh, the creepy VHS tape, and the dusty old Ouija board. All humming with that promise: pick me, play me, I’ll make it frighteningly fun.

They craved the theatricsofit all.

Someone had seen too many horror movies as of late, which was partially my fault. The archetypes had taken inspiration from my favorite collection. I’d told Demon once they didn’t need to go through all of this effort if either the Selection door or an unfortunate delver stumbled onto their lair. Just go in swinging and hunt the delvers. But that wasn’t their way. They wanted the delvers to choose the hangman’s rope themselves, knot it, and slip it over their own pretty necks.

And inside, Vivian just found the hangman’s noose.

Vivian found the tapes.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Vivian squatted in front of the media cabinet. Dust coated the wood, thick enough to draw her name in, and for a second she thought of her mom hollering at her for getting into things she shouldn’t, or for touching her father’s prized Star Wars collection. But that was back when she was nine or ten, back when she thought her parents were saints. Back before everything.

There were tapes stacked in neat little bricks, labels scrawled in Sharpie or peeling off. Top Gun, Beetlejuice, Deep Impact, Mulan, and The Parent Trap, among many others. She pawed through them, not really looking for anything. Just killing time.

She turned around to see Kate still sitting by the reading chair, a thick blanket swaddled over her, asleep and snoring quietly. She had been in that same position for the past twenty-five minutes now, and Vivian couldn’t summon the strength to sleep in a time like this. Not when there’s monsters outside the house. Lope was upstairs taking the first watch and Kevin was out patrolling around the house, making sure none of the werewolves decided to go near any of the windows or doors. Sheila left a couple of minutes ago to the bathroom so that she could wash the blood and dirt off her face.

Then she saw it.

Her hand froze on a black cassette with a label that didn’t look quite right: WELCOME YATES FAMILY.

Her heart did a little belly-flop. She turned the tape in her hands and told herself it was nothing, just a funny coincidence and it belonged to a different Yates, but she knew better. There were so few people in town named Yates. As far as she knew, they were the only ones.

The tape was calling her.

She grabbed it from the pile and slid it into the VCR with a faint plastic snick. The TV was connected to a VHS, DVD, and blu-ray player, but at least her time hanging out at grandma’s house for the past few years and a whole year with the AV club in middle school paid off because she knew how to operate the VHS. The machine whirred to life, a mechanical little growl that made her flinch. The TV screen bloomed into static, then cleared to an image that nearly stopped her heart.

Her parents.

Ashley and David Yates stood in what looked like somebody’s living room, arms linked, beaming like newlyweds. Behind them, people clapped. A small crowd. Faces she knew—faces she recognized. Coach Hodge, grinning handsomely. His wife Melanie, her hair teased high, clapping along. More neighbors, more townsfolk, more people she had known her whole damn life. Now, all dead in the massacre.

Vivian’s throat closed. She watched her parents bow their heads as a funny looking black book was pressed into their hands. Definitely not the Bible. The crowd cheered, hands rising, some in prayer, some chanting.

It couldn’t be real.

It wasn’t real.

Her parents had been victims, framed by the cult, swallowed up by lies and lunacy of the town desperate to blame anyone they disliked and pinned the massacre on them. That’s the truth she desperately wanted to believe. They weren’t…they weren’t smiling and enjoying all of this, weren’t taking strange vows, and weren’t joining hands with the killers. Except here they were. And she could see the bizarre joy in their faces. Her fingers dug into her thighs until her nails bit through the denim. She wanted to vomit. Wanted to run. But she couldn’t look away.

She found more tapes.

“Kevin!” she shouted, voice cracking. “Kate! Lope! Sheila! You need to see this! You need to—”

The words broke off as the tape went on, the crowd’s chant rising in warped chorus.

Welcome, Yates. Welcome. Welcome to the family.

I enjoyed the look of horror plastered on Vivian’s face as the realization dawned on what her had done. These videos on the tapes were all fake, of course. This has Oracle’s fingerprints all over it. Oracle could craft a totally fake scene or reality from as simple as a CCTV camera feed to as elaborate as a fake scene within an already released movie. In minutes, he produced something so realistic the police or other internet sleuths couldn’t even tell the difference. Half of those evidence were heavily used against the cult’s case for the massacre. At Demon’s request, Oracle made these tapes for them, tailoring the videos with Demon’s abyssal guidance and morbid ideas to the nature of its contents.

Vivian took out another tape from the cabinet and slid one in.

Kevin had walked the same circuit three times now: both porches, the back window and the front, the kitchen doors, the windows by the dining area and the library, and then looped back to the front. He didn’t catch any movement outside nor in the forest. That was what worried him. Werewolves were like animals, right? So what the hell were they waiting for? Staying in this cabin was like a very big target. It should tempt their attackers to at least try and lay siege, right?

So far, he hadn’t seen any of that.

Kevin realized this entire mountain was making him crazy and swore never to return here again. He paused by the fireplace, sweat itching under his collar, when his boot caught on the frayed edge of the rug. He swore under his breath and stooped to fix it—then froze. The rug had slipped back just far enough to show the square outline of a trapdoor.

“What in the hell?” Kevin muttered under his breath.

Kevin crouched, brushing some of the dirt off it with his hand, and his stomach sank. It was really the entrance to the cellar. Christ, we hadn’t checked the cellar. If there was an entry point anywhere inside, it might be down there. The latch came up with a groan, and Kevin pulled the door open, a damp draft rising from below. The wooden steps looked soft with rot, but they held his weight as he crept down, flashlight beam cutting through the darkness.

The cellar was nothing special at first—stone walls slick with moisture, racks of old jars clouded with filth, a rusty bike missing its front wheel. Some old furnitures, decorations, and other random stuff stored here and left to be forgotten by the cabin’s owners. He was pretty sure he spotted the outline of a very old boiler that must be at least sixty years old.

Kevin swept the beam along the far wall, and saw a door there. His breath caught in his throat. He didn’t know why, but a strange feeling suddenly seized his knees as if he had seen that door before. He pressed a hand to it. The wood felt dry and solid, and his palm tingled a little when he slid them down toward the doorknob, like the surface grain was breathing under his skin. The knob turned easily enough, and Kevin pushed the door open.

What lay beyond knocked the senses out of him. The cellar dissolved into stone, cut smooth and black, a vault stretching wider than the cabin itself had any right or ceiling space to have. A chamber lay waiting with a high ceiling arched above like a domed cathedral. In the center, perched on a faintly glowing pedestal, sat the familiar tall hourglass, its sand pouring into a large pile to the bottom.

Kevin staggered back, struck dumb, and the beam of his flashlight wobbled across the chamber walls that were carved with odd sigils, drawings of faces, and other things he didn’t have names for. He went down on his ass, back scraping the damp stone, lungs heaving like he’d sprinted a mile.

What the fuck.

What the actual fuck.

This was the vault.

This was Henry’s vault.

This was supposed to be miles behind him at a totally different corner of the mountain. Why was it here?

He stared at the werewolf door on the far side, wide open. The silhouettes of their wax-like doppelgängers slightly visible from where he had fallen. He wanted to scream for the others, but his throat had closed up as fear grappled him. And then, slashing sharp through his terror, Vivian’s voice carried down from upstairs, urgently calling their names.

Kevin scrambled to his feet, one last look at the hourglass before slamming the vault door and the cellar door shut behind him, as if that might keep the impossible room sealed away forever.

The VCR made that soft, mechanical cough as Vivian pushed the next tape in. The digital grainy snow on the screen cleared, lines rolling upward until a steady image formed. She sat cross-legged on the carpet in front of the TV. Kevin came in just then, looking like he’d seen a ghost. His eyes darted around unfocused, like he was still down there in whatever hole he’d stumbled into. He wanted to forget that room.

Kate noticed immediately. “What the heck happened to you?”

“Nothing.” The word rolled out of his tongue too fast. He dropped into one of the lounging chairs, elbows on knees, trying to steady his breathing. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Did you fall or something?” She looked down at the dirty marks on his pants when he fell.

“I said don’t worry about it.”

Lope gave him a long, curious look but said nothing.

Kate just rolled her eyes and regarded Vivian again. “Okay, what did you wake me up for?”

“I might have found something.” She gestured to the cabinet beneath the TV. Its doors were still open, showing a neat row of VHS tapes, DVDs, and Blu-Ray boxes. “There’s a whole set of them. I got bored and decided to peruse their collection, you know? And I found all of this weird stuff.”

“They’re probably like old family vacation and holiday videos or something,” Lope said. “And who the heck uses VHS tapes anymore? You know how to use these?”

“I was in the AV club once in middle school,” Vivian admitted. “It was for extra credit.”

The screen flickered, the sound of Coach Hodge’s familiar drawl rising out of the speakers. He was maybe five years younger, though not by much—hair fuller and with a mustache instead of a beard. He stood before a semicircle of people in some kind of seance room. Behind him, a chalkboard scrawled with symbols and crude diagrams peeked over his shoulder.

“Tonight,” Hodge was saying, “we call upon Astaroth, Lord of Hell, Keeper of Knowledge and Secrets.”

He had the cultists repeat the words, the camera jerking as if whoever was holding it couldn’t keep their hands still.

Lope frowned, leaning closer. “Who the fuck is Osta-ri-of?”

“Asta-Roth,” Kate corrected him and shrugged, not having a clue.

The demonstration ended with Hodge lifting his hand. A knife, glinting under the overhead fluorescents, floated six inches above his palm. Gasps rose from the circle of cultists. Then a glass bowl rose too, dangling in the air like a puppet on invisible strings.

The tape whirred to an end and to a black screen.

The delvers couldn’t believe what Coach Hodge had done, too. I had seen him personally use magic, but I kept forgetting how shocking it was to the mortals of Earth when they witnessed it firsthand. Vivian pushed in another tape. Kevin wanted to say no. Wanted to tell her to leave it. But the words wouldn’t come, and so he watched her feed the tape into the hungry slot, and the VCR swallowed it down.

This one didn’t open with Hodge’s lessons or another footage of a backyard gathering; the cult’s version of the BBQ Sunday brunch. Instead, the screen snapped to a shaky camera panning across a dark chamber. Hodge again, eyes glowing with fanatic heat, was surrounded by his ardent supporters, including Vivian’s parents.

Then, the camera tilted down.

There was a bound girl, maybe fifteen or sixteen. She tried to crawl, but the cultists, wearing dark hoods and robes, held her firm. The all carried ornate-looking knives which they used to butcher her, quick and furious, one blade going down after the other. Her screams thudded against the gag. When her body sagged, Ashley Yates leaned forward with calm hands and scooped one of the girl’s eyes and placed it into jar filled with translucent liquid.

“Mom…?” Vivian whispered.

The tape cut again to another scene, clearly from another night. The footage in this tape were spliced together.

This time, it was a boy of about twelve with his mouth taped shut, begging behind the gag for the cultists not to hurt him. They killed him anyway. The camera lingered on the knives rising and falling, the sound of blades slicing meat. A scream tore loose under the tape, muffled, then cut short. When his head lolled, two of the cultists leaned in with practiced hands. They plucked his eyes, his tongue, and the camera followed the dripping organs being placed into another set of jars.

The third cutaway showed another boy, much older, probably around seventeen or eighteen. He fought until his wrists bled through the ropes. He managed to get the binds off his mouth and bit one of the cultist’s hand, but all that earned him was a hard punch on the face from Mr. Gamble that knocked him out cold. They stabbed him harder, longer, until his body twitched no more. Someone lifted his head and sawed, clean and ugly, until his tongue came free. Another set of jars. Another prize.

Kevin’s hands gripped the armrest so hard his knuckles went white. He recognized David, his brother, in every frame sporting the maniacal grin of a believer as he cut and hacked those children to death. He was never the victim Kevin thought he was. Vivian sat on the carpet, knees pulled close to her chest, rocking ever so slightly. Her lips moved but no sound came as she watched her parents leaned into the firelight again on the fourth cutaway of the murder of another girl that awfully looked like her when she was thirteen.

The tapes only showed these four murders (and mine), but the cultists murdered several others before they got to me. I didn’t have an accurate count of how many they had killed. The last confirmed count was four ritual killings (and I was the fifth). It was possible there could be more they buried in the woods. After all, Hodge had joined the cult since he was young, and Jonas groomed him to be a powerful sorcerer when Earth has a notoriously weak magical wey-lines and conduits seeping into the planet.

Throughout all of this, Kate had her hand over her mouth. Not just because of the killings—though Christ Almighty, that was fucking rough to watch—but something deep in her gut prickled what the cabin represented.

“Oh my God,” she whispered, her voice barely audible over the hiss of the VCR. “It’s here.”

Lope glanced at her. “What?”

“This—this is the place. Where it happened. The massacre.” She gestured with a trembling hand around the room. “We’re in the same fucking cabin.”

“Wait…you mean the Cedar Lake Massacre?” Lope also whirled around, eyes darting to every corner. “Didn’t the police tore it down?”

Kevin stood so fast his chair shrieked against the floorboards. “That’s enough,” he said. “Vivian, stop the goddamn tape.”

Vivian didn’t move at first. Her eyes were fixed on the screen. Kevin came around the coffee table and crouched beside her, placing a hand on her trembling shoulder. Her skin was cold and clammy.

“Viv,” he said, softer now, “stop it. Let’s not watch this anymore.”

“They…they killed them. Mom. Dad. They did it, uncle. I…I was wrong. They’re monsters.”

“We don’t know that.”

“Look at it.” A tear fell down her cheek as she pointed at the images on the screen. “Look at it.”

Suddenly, the static cut sharp and instant. The next image flickered into being of another fire, another chamber, and another bound figure. But this one they all recognized. Mark Castle. The local boy from town who’d gone missing three months ago.

Vivian’s hand snapped back to her mouth and gasped. “That’s Mark.”

The tape’s sound was clearer this time. The chanting was low and rhythmic, the camera swaying slightly as if the person holding it finally learned how to handle a camera. They did what they did before, slicing and stabbing Mark—the fake version of me anyway—and killed him.

I looked away. Seeing a reenactment of my murder like that still twisted my guts. Demon had a sick sense of tribute when she told me about this.

The cultists circled him, the camera catching flashes of ecstatic faces. Coach Hodge’s mouth gaped open, chanting like a man possessed. Someone in the back began laughing.

“I can’t fucking take this anymore. Turn it off,” Kate hissed. “Vivian, turn it off!”

But none of them dared to move, transfixed to the screen.

After I was dead, the cultists turned to Hodge and formed sort of a prayer circle around my fake digital body. Coach Hodge stood in the center, knife dripping. For a moment, he just stared down at Mark, then lifted his face toward the others.

And then he spoke.

“DURATH…”

The word rippled out of the television like a stone dropped in water. The sound reverberated as if the walls of the cabin themselves had caught the vibration and amplified it.

“YORAK…”

Outside, the trees swayed from a strong gust of wind. The surface of the nearby lake puckered, then went still again, as if something beneath it had stirred and settled back down.

“ESTRAGA…”

A low and heavy hum passed through the floorboards.

Kevin took a step forward. “Okay, that’s enough.” He jabbed the stop button on the VCR but the tape kept rolling and rolling. He tried to push the button again, but the screen never cut to black. “What the fuck?”

“AMBION CALLIA…”

Outside, in the woods beyond the cabin, the werewolves lifted their snouts in unison. The syllables reached them like an intoxicating scent. Were-Luke’s eyes rolled back, his jaws splitting into a grin of pure animal delight. The others said nothing, but their claws dug deep into the earth, trembling with anticipation.

Back inside, the word made the TV rattle against the wall. Kevin crouched from behind and yanked the plug from the socket, causing sparks to fly, but the scene stayed on the TV. He lifted the cable up for the others to see. This TV shouldn’t be working right now.

This TV should be dead.

“INDOCTUNE NOSFERATIS…”

Now even the wind had joined in the symphony, keening through the chinks in the walls, circling the house like something sniffing for a way in. Inside, Vivian, Lope and Kate backed away from the TV. Kevin shook the TV, and shouted, “Stop! Stop!”

“AVE, AVE…

…ASHEROTH.”

The last word hit like a hammer blow. The sound cracked through the house, rolled out across the clearing, and vanished into the woods.

Then, silence.

The television went dead, the screen collapsing into a black square that reflected five pale faces back at themselves. The sudden silence was heavy—so heavy you could almost hear everyone’s breaths and heartbeats. For a long moment, no one spoke.

Then Kate broke the stillness. “Where’s my sister?”

Lope blinked. “Um, she went to clean up in the upstairs bathroom, I think. That’s the last place I left her.”

Upstairs, Sheila leaned over the sink, staring at herself in the mirror, and barely recognized the woman looking back. What little mascara she put had melted into faint smoky tracks, her cheeks were blotched and streaked with grime, and the dried blood at the corner of her mouth had turned a deep, rusted brown.

She let the faucet run—just to hear something. Anything. The sound of water trickling was the only noise that didn’t make her skin crawl. The steady hiss drowned out the pounding in her ears, the memory of the howls in the trees, the crack of bones, the screams that Nina, Daryl, and Ray made before they died.

She washed her face and scrubbed at it with a hand towel she found on the rack until her skin burned pink. She’d raided the medicine cabinet and found a half-empty box of bandaids. She pressed one onto the raw skin at her elbow, around the cut on her left middle finger, and another on her knee.

After all that, she sat down on the toilet lid, arms wrapped around herself, and let the tears come. Quiet at first with these little hiccups that made her shoulders shake. She’d been running for hours, it felt like. Running from the impossible. Now, sitting in the sterile brightness of this bathroom, it was all too much. The relief of safety hurt. The silence was even worse.

Her Resolve was at a sweet, sweet dark red-orange.

And an orange Resolve was ripe for a possession.

“Get a grip,” she whispered to herself. “Get it together.”

Behind her, the bathroom door slowly inched shut with a whispering creak. All the windows were closed and there was no wind to glide over until the latch clicked close. The woman inside never realized it moved.

Sheila wiped at her eyes with the heel of her wrist and got back up. “Get it together,” she told herself again. “Get it together.”

She opened the medicine cabinet again and found a half-used bottle of Tylenol. The label was curled and sticky, but she reckoned they were still good enough even though the label said it was a few months past the expiration date, and shook two tablets into her palm. She gulped them down.

Then she closed the cabinet—

—and Nina’s face was there, peering over her shoulder.

Rotten, mutilated, jaw hanging askew, eyes rolled white, teeth slick with blood. Her head twitched in the reflection, a marionette pulled by invisible strings. The skin of her neck was torn in long, wet strips.

Sheila screamed and stumbled backward into the wall, clutching her chest. The Tylenol bottle clattered into the sink, bounced, and fell into the basin with a hollow plink, and the rest of the pills spilled out and down into the drain. The apparition lasted less than a heartbeat.

When she looked again, Nina’s ghost was gone. The mirror showed only Sheila—wild-eyed, hair clinging to her temples, a single tear tracking down her cheek. She took a deep breath. “Oh my fucking God! Calm the fuck down. Are you fucking kidding me with this shit?”

She realized the bathroom door was closed and remembered that Vivian called for everyone to come downstairs earlier. Lope said he’d check it out, but he hadn’t been back yet. Turning off the faucet, she walked toward the door, but it was locked.

Sheila frowned, twisted the knob again. “Lope? Hey! Lope! I’m stuck in here!”

No one answered.

She yanked harder, using both hands. The doorknob rattled, clinked against the inside plate, but the door didn’t move. Didn’t budge.

Fffffsssssssshhhhh.

The faucet turned itself on again. The water came down in a steady stream, hissing with steam. Within seconds, the mirror fogged completely over.

Sheila looked over her shoulder. “What the hell…”

Then the shower head sputtered to life as well. The pipes coughed, choked, then erupted hot water blasting down, filling the air with thick, suffocating steam. She reached for the shower control but yanked her arm back immediately. Some of the water splashed on the back of her hand and it was boiling.

“Goddammit!” she hissed, clutching her hand to her chest.

Something moved from her periphery.

At first it was just a a subtle rustle of plastic. Then, before she could turn, the shower curtain lashed out for her. The plastic wrapped tight around her wrist with a snap and yanked her toward the tub.

She fell to her knees, clawing at the curtain, but it was like wrestling something alive and with a mind of its own. The slick vinyl twisted around her arms, looped over her shoulder, and slithered across her throat and then tightened. Her scream came out strangled and desperate.

Sheila tried to grab and claw at the fabric, to tear her arms and head free, but the harder she pulled, the tighter it cinched around her flesh. Her vision went watery as the air stank of sulfur and scorched hair. Then the towels came next. They slid off their racks one by one, serpentine-like, stretching impossibly longer and longer. They coiled around her legs, her waist, and hauling her upward like a writhing puppet. Her bare feet kicked helplessly, toes scraping the tiles.

“Help! Help me! Somebody!”

She screamed again and again, but no one downstairs could hear her, muffled by the demonic presence, blocking any sound from coming out of the bathroom. Demon has initiated the brutal process of Sheila’s possession. Kate was just about to go check up on her with Kevin; both delvers climbing up the stairs.

Catching another movement, Sheila’s gaze went to the mirror.

Through the fog, her reflection looked wrong. It wasn’t copying her movements or her position anymore, suspended in the air by the shower curtains and the towels. It was standing still, covered head-to-toe with mud, tangled hair, head cocked, eyes gleaming black through the condensation. Then it made a hideous and wide knowing smile, black liquid pouring out of her parted lips. Her reflection raised a mud-streaked hand and pressed it against the glass…

…and her finger went through it.

“No…” Sheila choked out. “No, no…”

The figure in the mirror leaned forward and pressed its face against the glass. The surface rippled like water and the thing began to push through into the real world. It emerged slow. Its hair hung in clotted strings, its skin glistening like it had just crawled out of the ground. Its grin didn’t fade as it pushed through one dripping hand and grabbed hold of the sink’s rim, and then pulling herself out of the mirror.

Her reflection crawled toward her on all fours and then got up, stopping inches from her face. That awful grin splitting wider. Then it grabbed its own jaw and pulled down hard, unhinging its mouth wide open to expose the back of their throat. A torrent of black, muddy water shot out and blasted Sheila’s screaming face.

Sheila’s body convulsed as the black liquid poured into her and forced its way down her throat. Her eyes rolled back. Her legs kicked once, twice, and then went very, very still.

The steam swallowed the entire bathroom whole.