It’s the middle of the night at the abandoned castle, no one seems to know how old it is, who built it, or who owns it, we all just stay away. Brave teenagers with nothing to do on a Friday night don’t even attempt dares to go inside. All around the entrance at the top of the grand stairway, there are various lumpy stone statues of vampires and gargoyles with erect, mishappen penises. Some are lazily splayed out with their legs open, leaning back with their arms resting on a step, and others are standing with palms and arms open, welcoming newcomers. The horns atop their heads are far apart and pointed at unequal angles, grimaces of malicious pleasure on all of their faces. The smell of copper is in the air as I walk up to the scene.
Now and then, an agent bolts outside in what were once pristine white hazmat suits, now painted in splashes of blood, mainly at their feet, soaking its way up. Some were not lucky enough to get their hoods off before throwing up. Red and blue lights paint the air in a purple, disorienting haze.
Whatever has happened is big. After suiting up, I walk into the cold stone castle through what must have been a butler’s entrance. The inside looks nothing like you’d expect, wide, cavernous, and empty, a long deep ravine runs through. Unnaturally smooth, straight, and deep, you can see the bottom with light, but the darkness and magic permeating the air is barely penetrable with the flashlights. The stale copper decay in the air becomes raw. The ravine runs to a grate of bars that opens to the cliff the castle was built on, light from the moon glows softly, and below a river of blood flows. I look up and see a long row of butcher hooks lined above the ravine, hung from a mechanical system that pulls them along. The source of the blood. Flayed, mangled bodies of what looks like hundreds of men, women, and children with expressions of horror on their faces, if they have faces, dangle lifelessly from the hooks. Some sway softly back and forth. Below in the ravine I see movement, there are survivors, but they are wounded and feral from the horrors they’ve experienced. They run from the light of our flashlights toward the grate, desperate for escape and with renewed fear of our presence, they slip through the bars to jump to their deaths, the river of blood sloshing stickily as they scramble.
My mind flashes to the triumphant smiles on each of the stone vampires and gargoyle’s faces, had they always been smiling? If no one ever comes to this castle, how were the authorities called? I rush through so many questions I barely notice the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. The awareness of being watched from above makes my face prickle with fear and adrenaline. I look up and swear for just an instance I see a crouched unnatural body grasping the cavernous dark ceiling of the castle, then it’s gone, but the feeling remains. Whatever did this wanted us to find it, they wanted us here. It may have been a trap. We are not safe.