It took me about 32 minutes to arrive at Archon Arena. The whole place is as dirty as an abandoned wasteland. Houses rotten and destroyed with a bunch of spray paintings. The spray paints were one of those pagan symbols, even though they are similar, something just doesn’t add up with the design. The road is empty. Nobody came in or out of the place. Bushes and trees all dried up into husks. The sky was covered by dark grey clouds, as if covering this place in secret.
I kept driving until I arrived at the front of the gate entrance. The rusty doors are wrapped in vines and twigs. The mansion was massive and full of calligraphy. Windows broke into pieces. The walls rotten by ash and filth. It’s obvious that cults would inhabit a place dirty and abandoned. Where no other civilian would care to investigate it. I got out of the car, pulled out my bag, and locked the door shut with my car keys.
I went to the gate with my bag over my shoulder. I started to push the gate, making a terrible ear-piercing noise that shakes my brain violently. The doors are kinda heavy to push, felt like I was pushing some sort of door to hell or something. I got through the gate and started walking to the mansion. At the center of the area is a fountain of nothing. No water nor anything. Just weeds and twigs filled the fountain. At the center of the fountain was a statue of a woman wearing a cloak, looking up at the sky with those eyes of the damned. I couldn’t stand to look at it, so I just kept walking. But I couldn’t help but to look back at it. When I did, a jolting sensation immediately vibrated my whole body. The statue was looking at me in the eyes. I nearly dropped my bag but caught it quickly.
I quickly looked away and kept going. When I turned around again, to see if she moved closer to me. But she just returned to her proper position. I wanted to believe I was hallucinating but I saw it with my very own eyes. I shook my head, dismissing the statue.
The door I’m looking at does not fit with the whole picture of the mansion. It was bright white, clean as new. They probably just replaced the ugly door of this mansion few days ago. I climbed up the short stairs and was going to grab the shiny golden knob. “Hey! What do you think you’re doing?”
Before I could lay a hand on the knob, a man came out of nowhere behind me. It wasn’t Darwin nor my dad. I turn around to see a man standing before me. I’m not good at describing people’s looks but I’ll try the best I can. He wore a white shirt beneath his brown woolen coat. His dark circular glasses shields his eyes that I couldn’t see where’s he’s looking at. His dark orange hair consumes the light around us. His boots looked nothing else from this world but fiction. There’s even some sort of a large weapon held by his back. A sort of gun or a flamethrower.
“Who are you?” He walked closer, now standing behind the stairs. “The names Billy West. I knew that you didn’t call Darwin, so I came here to stop you from doing something stupid.”
I groaned in annoyance. How does people like them know that I’m not going to need their help? I don’t know what they’re thinking. This is my business and this is important to me. “Of course you’re with him. Can you just let me do my own thing?”
“Yeah, no. You have no bloody idea what you are dealing with. These kinds of people are far more dangerous and they are the kind of people you don’t believe. I know you wanted to save your daughter, but let me do the work.”
I still stood by the door with my hand holding the door knob. I stared at him, trying to read his mind. But his glasses covered most of it. “Who are they?”
“They’re servants of a god from ancient times. They perform hideous actions and performances to please the spiritual world. Some of them are human but some aren’t really anymore.”
“What do you mean not anymore?” Billy faces me with a cold serious expression on his face. “Trust me, Donovan, you don’t want to know.” His response chilled my whole body to the core. I looked to the bright vanilla door and thought of what’s behind that mask. Will it just be a mansion or something else like a torture chamber.
What was I supposed to do now? Convince him to let me go or convince him to help me out? I don’t really like those ideas. He won’t let me continue my rescue journey. Then I thought of something, but I have to make it quick. “What’s with that statue over there?”
“The statue?” By the time Billy turned around to take a look, I immediately opened the door, ran in, and locked it behind my back. “What the bloody hell!” The interior of the mansion isn’t what I had expected. Instead of dust and mold, everything is clean and modern.
Basement…I jolted up, hearing a voice whisper in my ears. I turn around to face whoever it was. There was no one other than myself. Billy is now banging on the door with force. Yet the door still stands without a single sign of a crack or tear. He then tries to break through the windows but they didn’t break. It was as if the windows are made out of metal. Then, to my panic, he ran to the left side of the mansion.
I dropped the bag and bolted to the left hall, running as fast a I can to be the first to lock the door. I didn’t have the time to look around the room. There were no doors there. I ran to the right hall to find the next room to be the kitchen. There, a door at the right corner. I bolted to the door, hoping he wouldn’t make it. Before I could lay a finger on the lock, Billy jumped out of the left side, making my heart explode. “Donovan, stop! I’m trying to help you!!” His voice panicking but furious that I got goosebumps all over my flesh.
Billy was shaking the door knob and yet the door didn’t open. “What in the bloody hell?!” I looked at the lock to see it was already locked. Someone already locked it before they left. He then ran to the right, I followed in pursuit. The door at the library room was locked too. “Dammit!” Again, he ran to the next and I followed. The door was wide open and I was getting tired that I couldn’t catch up. I tried to keep up, but the beat of my heart was hard and my breathing was getting shallow every running step I make. I knelt down in defeat as my heart keeps pounding a hollow beat. He’s going to come in and stop me from rescuing baby Bonnie.
“Donovan!!” Right before my eyes, just before he got through the door, it immediately shuts itself up. There was so much sweat on my brow, yet I felt my hair rise and the chills crawling in my veins. There wasn’t any wind or anyone else who could’ve closed it. So that means I’m definitely in a haunted house right now. “Donovan!! Don’t move! I’m going to find my way in and bring you out of there!”
The basement…Again, that whisper in my ears. I can hear the whisper’s voice clearly. It was of a woman but familiar. I went to my starting point and picked up my bag. I’m very glad that my stuff is still there. Far away from my starting point, Billy was yelling out. “Hey! I said don’t move!” But I ignored him anyway. I explored the interior of the mansion, finding wherever the basement is. I don’t trust the voice but how am I supposed to get to my daughter.
I’m at the 2nd floor, introduced to 2 optional hallways, left and right. I chose the left hall without a single thought. While on a walk, there were large frames held on the dark crimson wall. I can tell the paintings were a story of the same woman as the statue. Instead of empty color, her caramel flavored milky skin reflects the shining light above from the heavenly plane, and her cherry crimson robe covers most of her body. Her face though, I have no idea how to describe. Maybe I could say, her face of godhood gave the people below beauty and heaven.
I kept walking, hoping the voice would tell me that I’m getting closer. Nothing. I kept walking forward until I stopped to a corner. I kept walking and walking and walking, looking at the frames. I think that the more I kept walking, the story of the woman keeps going on and on. Throughout the stories displayed in the frames, the woman seemed to be guiding a secret club of her own. Once looked upon as a whore, then to a disciple.
She was at the center of a literal orgy of men and women. I immediately looked away from it in disgust and kept walking to the next frame. I guess I got the painted detail of what my dad told me about the whole orgy thing in the cult. Throughout history, many things have changed. But still, history repeats itself.
She was being worshiped by nearly a thousand people at the crimson pyramid in the dusk of night. The moon shining before her and the pyramid. I swear when I looked closer, her shadow had the exact same eyes as the statue’s. I shook my head and kept going.
She was at a long dining table with her other servants. They were bitting, chewing, and tearing human flesh with those mad eyes and twisted smiles on their faces as blood drips from their chins. The woman was holding a wooden cup of blood. A bright shining milky circle lightens behind her head as if she’s some sort of angel from heaven. I can’t deny it as a hallucination. When I saw her face, Her expression was cold, then, before my eyes, she made a warm smile on her face, staring at me. There’s more things I never know about the cult, and they must have hidden a terrible secret. A secret from the world. I think we are dumbfounded by their appearance. I immediately looked away and kept on going through the halls.
Here…Here….Open…Open…. Finally, the voice has spoken. Before me was a large circular shape hatch. About 2 people tall. At the center was a rusty and molted wheel with fingerprints exposed on it. And on it was the drawing I made as a child. A coward young me hiding behind the trees. I can tell they stole my other arts and my wife’s but why this? Why would they be interested in a useless piece of garbage? Was it to mock me or something else?
I put down the bag, tore the paper off, grabbed the wheel, and started forcingly turning the wheel to the left. Turning the wheel makes a loud and roaring sound of metal being twisted. It was so loud that it echoed the halls and could even reach downstairs.
Then, I was stopped to a halt, and I pulled the hatch open as much as I can. The hatch is wide open, revealing a dark hallway with torches at the sides to lighten the way. I grabbed the bag and took a look at the dark hall.
I’m not a big fan of the dark in places like these. I get chills and thoughts of unknown creatures just taking me deeper into the darkness. I was beginning to hesitate. But I thought about my baby bonnie safe at home and my wife sleeping by my side unharmed. My hands bold to fist, ready to take the risk. I will risk everything to save my daughter. Even having fears behind my back, I’ll still keep going.
And then, I went deep into the dark halls. I know there’s no going back, I’m not willing to. As I walk deeper, chills were crawling all around me and the thoughts of demons and terrifying faces pops up in my head. I tried my best not to think so much of them, but they just keep popping up one by one. Looking deep into the darkness far away, I began hallucinating faces appearing in there, waiting for me to walk into their trap. I kept walking and walking and walking.
I then arrived at a disgusting putrid door. I can smell the hideous odor which I think came from the door itself. I’m introduced to a door with muscle tissue. I held my stomach, preventing myself from puking. There was no door knob anywhere to be seen. I felt disgusted to push it open, but I tried my best to ignore it.
I placed my hand on its fleshy surface and started pushing it. I kept pushing, hoping it would open, but it didn’t move a single inch. How am I supposed to open this door if there isn’t a knob for it? Before I retract my right hand, The door forms a hand of its own and grabbed my arm tight. I tried to pull it off but it kept its strong grip on my arm. A sudden jolt of extreme pain courses my whole entire body that I screamed in agony. It was a pain I never felt in my life.
A bunch of sharp scalpels protruded out of the fleshy hand and started digging inside of my flesh. The sound of crunching bone and squishing made my stomach sick. The smell got even more worse, like I was in some sort of dumpster full of rotten meat and shit. I had the urge to vomit, yet I couldn’t let out a single stomach acid.
When I looked at the door, it was shrinking. No. Not shrinking. It was digging its way inside the socket of my arm. I felt my whole body is burning. Tears swell beneath my eyes rapidly and my voice breaks. I looked at my arm to see the fleshy door crawl like a parasite, whilst the sharp scalpels keeps slicing parts of flesh, bone, and tissue. My blood drips rapidly to the floor as my life drowns to death.
Then I blacked out.
Part 3