Throughout my childhood, I had many babysitters and maids. The majority of them never really caught my attention, all but one; Alma — a maid who had worked in our house ever since I can remember. You are probably thinking that she had a striking appearance or strange habit of some sort. Well, you are not wrong about that, she appeared extraordinary young for her age with deep azure eyes that stared into your soul, fiery orange curls that snaked down her back as well as had a rather peculiar interest in the supernatural and different colourful stones that I can’t even name.
Beside that fact, she was the closet thing I had to family as I am an only child and my parent were absent - on constant work trips, so I didn’t really mind when she did rituals in the basement. For all I knew, other people did them too and as a child I found the activity amusing . As I got older though, I learnt that ‘normal’ people did not chant in unheard of languages and did not in fact sleep with animal bones under their pillows.
I’ve seen her do everything from talking to herself and cleaning her gems in some concoction she’d made to full on ‘summoning a spirit’ rituals where she would speak in the voice of a deceased person. Occasionally she asked for my help which I reluctantly gave her. However, any time that that occurred, she never gave me an explanation of what was about to happen or what the final outcome would be, it was more of “come hold this black candle while I’ll summon the devil himself” Most of the time though, nothing scientifically unexplainable happened while I was around. I off put her unusual interests as a weird but in theory a healthy leisure activity. It’s not like she summoned evil spirits instead of doing the work she was payed to do.
At some point, she put me into knowing that she got an invitation to a secret society holding meetings every other week and that I was welcome to join her if I felt like it. At first I never went as spending a weekend with less adults closely surveying me seemed like a blessing. A few weeks ago, my curiosity got the better of me because Alma always came in with a wide bright smile, shining with satisfaction; when questioned of the reason to her good mood, she replied with ‘the world just became a little bit cleaner’ I thought that she finally chose a new hobby, that her group cleaned the beaches or something. That was mainly the reason why I chose to tag along Alma the next time she went, but it never occurred to me that her words meant something much more sinister than I previously thought.
Two weeks ago Alma drove me to what she described as the life changing location. To my surprise it turned out as a dilapidated large building on the outskirts of a major city. It could have been an unfinished storage structure or an abandoned factory. The location felt somehow wrong, but I brushed off that feeling. A rusty iron gate creaked slightly as my accompany eagerly flew up to the towering door that looked like it could have seen the dark ages. She knocked loudly four times which I figured was their secret code. Not long afterward a man that introduced himself as Harry stood in the doorway, gesturing for us to come inside. He was a man in his thirty’s wearing a rose pink jacket and sky blue trousers ,a wide smile plastered across his face.
I should have figured that something wasn’t exactly right at the moment we walked into the hall filled with middle-aged people dressed in childish colours all smiling like they were waiting for the birthday boy to walk in to start the party. Hell, my alarm bells should have sounded the moment I saw Harry. I looked out of place there in darker, pastel tracksuit. The hall itself could be what you’d see if you walked into a church, just without the gold and paintings of saints. The only source of light came from the window in the back; its coloured glass forming some type of symbols on the wooden plated floor in the centre of the room. Alma and I made our way towards the welcomingly soft pillows or mats or whatever they were, aligned in an almost perfect circle.
After we were sited for a while, I remember being in a daze when I heard a quiet soft voice beside me. Startled, my eyes fell on the young girl to my right. She was the only child in the room and alike me didn’t fit in with the crowd. The opposite actually, her appearance was model like, but specifically for a fashion magazine for goths. Her skin was a sickeningly white, as if she were a porcelain doll. She showed no emotions and her icy expressionless eyes fixed onto the already fading shape of sunlight at the centre. “Could you repeat that” I asked her my voice not louder than a whisper. “You are next after I’m gone” she replied in monotone “You’ll soon see them too and then they will want you gone” “The blue people are good and the red are bad”Her words didn’t make sense to me. I wanted to know more but before I could ask her anything Alma whisked the girl away. I was surprised at how the girl didn’t resist being led away by a stranger, but then again I couldn’t know for sure if Alma was indeed a stranger to her. Maybe they were close after the countless meetings the group held.
At that moment a thought crossed my mind that the whole situation had a striking similarity to a gathering of a cult. Harry came up to the speaker desk and started with a loud voice “ I am so glad to see you all here today. We are in luck to be celebrating together another step closer to achieving piece and harmony in this world” he continued for a few moments before retreating back into the audience leaving just Alma and the little girl. It’s then that I noticed a thin silver rope that bound the girls minuscule hands. Suddenly, hustle erupted across the viewers as they moved to join their palms. They begun to hum; quietly at first soon growing into chorus of synchronised voices chanting in an alien language. I think I was too overwhelmed by what was happening to notice the girls body that rose to a considerable height. Her palms grasping at air, desperate for something. Then I saw her face tilted slightly upward and contorted into silent agonising horror. The muscles in her little body twitched with strenuous pressure that seemed to corse through her body. I was frozen, unable to move or speak even though every muscle in my body wanted to scream for help, tell them to stop, tell myself that none of this was real. As quickly as the action arose, it concluded before I could utter a word. The girls unconscious now grey little corpse floated back down to the ground while the people around me cheered loudly. I felt the urge to leap over to the centre to check on the girl, but somehow that action came over as unreasonable, she clearly wasn’t alive anymore. “We cured another one!” Alma exclaimed.
On spur of the moment, I felt sick. What have they done?! I have to report this! Were the words that rang in my head. I stumbled outside; my own body incapable of following commands of my brain. There in the bitting twilight air I sank onto closest wall. I could feel its ridged surface rub on my skin, but I could not feel any pain. A sense of powerlessness overtook me. My arms were filled with gallons of water; useless to even hold a phone. Nonetheless, it’s not like I could get police involved anyhow. I doubt they could do much when faced with the cult I just witnessed. I mean it was a cult right?
I spent the next few weeks trying to come to terms with the events of that evening avoiding any and all contact with Alma and her little group of deranged psychopaths. Just when I finally felt like I could move on with my life, today while walking in the mall I noticed a faint blue light outlining figures of some people and red of a single old woman who positioned herself in a neat corner of a cafe. “You’ll soon see them too and then they will want you gone” Echoed in my mind as if on cue. I’m writing this because I just received a message from Alma trying to convince me to return to their hall for their periodic rituals, because she wants to ‘talk’ to me about that girl they killed. I know that it is unwise to go, but I have to know what is now happening to me.