{ PART 1 }{ PART 2 }{ PART 3 }{ PART 4 }{ PART 5 }{ PART 6 }{ PART 7 }{ PART 8 } {PART 9}
[INCLUDES SEXUAL VIOLENCE]
“How did you find us?” I whispered.
“I followed the people who dragged you here,” she answered while cutting the rope on my arms.
I noticed that she was keeping her look away from the cult members and Hector. However, the screams got to her as well. It felt so good when the rope fell off my arms, and as soon as it did, I hugged Kaley. Clara was already cutting Johnatan loose and I knew she didn’t want to talk to me at the moment. Both because of my and her secret. Kaley quickly moved to cut the captain’s ropes when Helen saw her.
“Free me!” she shouted at Kaley.
The cultists didn’t react. Through all those screams, they probably still heard her, but none of them reacted. Kaley looked at her and then continued cutting the captain’s rope. This infuriated Helen and she screamed at Kaley. Then out of nowhere, her screams were the only ones echoing through the cave. I looked at the circle of cultists and realized that all of them were done with their job. Hector stood in the middle with the symbol carved into his chest while all the other cultists stood around him holding their flayed arms over the pile of dirt. The skin they carved off fell onto the dirt.
The dirt started to… absorb the skin and blood that fell onto it. It was like all of it just started sinking into the dirt making it seem like a dense liquid. Hector spread his arms as wide as he could and the cultists did the same by putting their right arm in front of the next cultist and putting their left arm behind the cultist before them.
“Take us, queen Zalon toch’l,” Hector shouted looking at the floor.
All the cultists repeated after him and lifted their heads, and then all of them in unison, including Hector, lifted their knives up to their necks and started cutting in deep. One by one, they started to drop onto the dirt in front of them. We didn’t even have time to react before they started to sink into the dirt below. Helen continued screaming, but the screams of anger changed into those of fear while the rest of us couldn’t even react. What was happening in front of us was beyond horrifying. When all of the cultists fell, the last one standing was Hector. He took one last look at us and grinned. He lifted his knife and brought it down piercing his chest and falling onto his back. His body started to sink into the dirt immediately.
Kaley snapped out of it and walked back to the captain to cut the rest of the rope. I kept my eyes on the dirt pile. Exactly when Kaley cut through the rope on the captain’s arms, we heard the sound of cracking bones coming from the dirt pile. There was a slight rumble, and something appeared right under the surface of the dirt. There was a long bump that pushed the dirt upwards and no one but me seemed to notice. I took a step forward and as soon as I did, everything went to hell.
The thing under the dirt sat up and revealed the upper part of its body. Its torso was very skinny and it clearly missed parts of skin and muscle. Most of it looked very old, rotten, and decomposed. Most of the ribs were exposed. The part below the rib cage was barely half of its width. Its shoulders were jagged and the skin around them was tightly wrapped. The arms were incredibly long but skinny and ended in long sharp claws. The skin on them was loose and hung from the elbows. Its neck was long and thin and had barely any flesh attached to it.
The head… its head consisted of two parts. The lower jaw looked like an elongated version of the lower human jaw but with much bigger and sharper canines. It definitely had much more teeth than a human does. The upper jaw was like an elongated ram skull. Everything looked like a ram skull but the snout was elongated and instead of just having teeth in the back, it had sharp pointy teeth in the front with two large fangs on each side. The teeth in the back were the same as those rams have. In those jaws, there was a long snake-like tongue it used to test the air around it. Its eye sockets were empty and revealed the flesh behind them. Even though it had no eyes, it turned its head directly towards me. The sound it made was like some sort of weird echoey clicking, whispering, and an insanely deep rumbling that made my entire body shake.
I only got the full picture of the creature when it stood up. Its legs were just like its arms, thin and the skin was hanging loose from its knees. It also had a tail. A long thin boney tail ending in this sharp sword-like structure formed from the bone. Standing straight up it must have been at least 8 feet tall. It bent down to crouch putting its arms between its legs. Suddenly, with all the force it could gather it threw itself towards Kaley and Helen.
Kaley managed to dodge in time by jumping toward the rest of us. The creature’s head collided with Helen and she exploded. The blood and flesh flew all over the wall and covered the captain and Kaley totally red because they were standing close to Hellen. Kaley gasped, spat out the blood that got into her mouth, and pointed the shotgun at the creature. Before she shot, I noticed something. The creature stood straight up and looked towards the ceiling. The rotten flesh started to heal and more of it started to appear all over its body. The skin started to attach itself back as well.
Suddenly, Kaley pressed the trigger on the shotgun and the bullets hit the creature just above its right hip. It made the creature stumbled to the side and fall onto the floor screeching. I noticed that a bit of spit started to form inside its mouth and flesh started to grow in its eye sockets and on its skull. I took a look at what remained of Helen. Her legs and hips were laying on the floor with her left arm next to it. The guts run down her legs while her entire torso was either smooshed up against the wall or sprayed all over the floor. The lower part of its head got completely obliterated, but it looked like the part above the middle of her nose stayed whole. After the creature moved its head from the body, what was left of Helen’s head fell and rolled a foot away from her legs.
“Run!” Kaley shouted while turning around.
She took a few steps forward and grabbed Johnatan by his arm. He had a really hard time standing up since he was still hung over. I took a look at Clara and saw that she focused on the creature. It was like she was in some kind of a trans. She must have been hearing the same whispering and rumbling I did. I stepped closer to her and took her hand. Her eyes quickly darted towards me as she gasped out of fear. After seeing me stand there, she calmed down and I started walking towards the opening from where the cultists came.
“Is the exit over there?” I asked Kaley.
She nodded and handed me a handgun she carried in her belt. I immediately gave it to Clara as we started going through the cave. Clara and I were first, followed by Johnatan and Kaley, and the captain was following us in the back. While walking through the much darker passages which had a torch only about every 100 feet, we could hear the wailing of the creature. We thought we got rid of it, that we killed it. Oh, we were so wrong. The wailing stopped at some point and we stopped to get a bit of rest. Whatever they injected us with still had some effect on us.
We stopped next to a torch and I tried to take it out, but I couldn’t. It was jammed right into its holder. We all bent down to catch a breath. Kaley tried begging us to continue further, but we just couldn’t. From our perspective, it was either die from the creature here or a few 100 feet away.
“What was that thing?” Clara asked.
“Zal… eh… Zalantoch?” I replied. “I don’t know. Probably the thing Hector mentioned earlier.”
“We need to go, now,” Kaley begged.
“Okay,” I replied. “Clara and you go in front. I’ll help Johnatan.”
She nodded and started walking away. Clara followed her but stopped right next to me. She hugged me and disappeared after Kaley.
“Come on, Johnatan,” I said helping him stand up. “Let’s go.”
“You guys go,” the captain said leaning on the wall. “I’ll stay behind.”
“What the hell are you talking about? We’re not leaving you here,” Johnatan burst out. “Even after all the bullshit we learned about you.”
“I’m old and I’ll only be a burden. I’ll slow the creature down a bit.”
“Thank you,” I told him. “See you on the other side.”
We turned around and started walking through the cave. After walking for about 2 minutes, we came to a place where the tunnel split into two. At that moment, I thought everything was lost when I noticed something on the floor of the left tunnel. It was the shotgun. The left path was the right path. We walked up to it and Johnatan picked it up. As soon as he did, we heard a scream coming from behind us. It was the captain. Johnatan and I looked into each other’s eyes and started running.
I could also hear the creature let out this scream of joy and assumed it killed the captain. Somehow, this thing survived a point-blank shot from a shotgun. We had no idea how it did it, but if it can survive one, it can probably survive a few more as well. We almost tripped a few times while running, but you can only imagine our joy when we came to a part of the cave that didn’t have a ceiling. Sunlight shined through the hole and we could even see the canopies of some trees. There was no way we could climb up to it, but its presence meant that we were close to the exit.
However, stopping there for a second was our biggest mistake. We continued stumbling further through the narrow hallways of the cave and we could hear the whispering and rumbling coming from behind us.
“Come on, Johnatan,” I told him trying to encourage him. “We can do it!”
He replied with a deep scream as he let go of me. I started running and he followed me. We burst out into another opening. There was a slight slope and Johnatan I stood on the bottom of it. On the other side of the opening, there was a hole in the wall. Through it, we could see trees and the sky. We reached the exit.
“Johnatan… Elijah…” Kaley called from our left.
I turned my head and saw her and Clara peering from behind a large rock. She stepped out and started walking toward us.
“I heard the scream and I thought it was one of you,” she stopped talking for a second and noticed that the captain was missing. “The captain?” she asked.
I nodded.
“I’m so happy to…” Johnatan said.
“Watch out!” Kaley screamed pointing behind us.
We both turned around, but Johnatan didn’t react fast enough. I ducked while Johnatan stayed standing upright. The creature swiped at us with its left arm. On both of its hands, it had four fingers of which one was its thumb. Each of them ended in long sharp metallic claws. The three fingers of its left arm connected with Johnatan’s torse while its thumb connected with Johnatan’s head. The claws managed to cut through more than half of Johnatan’s torso and the thumb claw pierced all the way through Johnatan’s skull and brain. At least it was a quick death. Johnatan’s body stayed stuck to the creature’s fingers and it dragged him with it.
As soon as its hand passed me, I stood up and pointed the shotgun at it. Before I could shoot, the creature swiped with its right arm. I jumped backward, but it still managed to hit the shotgun out of my arms and cut my arm with one of its claws. It pierced quite deep and I started bleeding. The creature took a step towards me, I tripped and fell onto my ass. At that moment I was ready to die. I took one last look at the creature. It looked upwards and spread its arms making the weird sound it made after killing Helen and the captain. It looked like it regenerated. Now, its body started to resemble that of a woman much more. It was still very skinny and there were places where the skin was missing, but most of its flesh was there. Its entire body, although thicker, was still very skeletal and unnerving. The flesh and skin around its skull started to appear as well and one of its eyes was in its place. The other hung from the socket connected with a thin string of flesh.
It looked right into my eyes. I closed mine expecting to die. I believed that the next thing I’d hear would be it ripping me apart, but instead, it was a loud boom, a thud, and a wail. When I opened my eyes, I saw the creature laying on the floor with a wound on its shoulder. The wounds started to heal instantly, but the creature needed some time to stand up. I looked to my right from where the loud sound came and saw Kaley standing there and pointing the shotgun at the creature.
“RUN!” she screamed at me while crying. “Take Clara with you! ESCAPE! NO!”
“I’m not leaving you here!” I shouted standing up.
“You have to,” she replied. “We’ll all die if you don’t. This way, it’s only me.”
“No…” I started.
She pointed the shotgun at me.
“It’s not a request,” she told me. “Take Clara and run. You have the scars. It wants you.”
At that moment, I realized everything. It was slowly regenerating each time it killed one of us and the more of us it kills, the more powerful it becomes. Hector mentioned that it needs to kill us all meaning that if it gets its hands on all of us, the world is over. Ewan Loringer spoke of taking over the world before he was killed by the cops. This was it. This was what he was trying to do in the first place. He was trying to summon this monstrosity that would be the end of humanity or life as we know it. All of this told me only one thing. I needed to run. No matter how hard or unfortunate it was to leave Kaley, I needed to do it.
“I love you,” I told her as my eyes teared up. “Clara, we need to go,” I said taking a look at her.
The creature started to stand up and Kaley shot it once more. I looked at it to see its reaction and it seemed like with each shot, it started to adapt to take it with less and less damage. The first time it was shot, it took it much longer to stand up. This creature was beyond dangerous with its regenerative and adaptive abilities. I’m not sure that there’s anything in this world that could kill it.
Clara ran up to me and grabbed my hand. I looked into her eyes and then at Kaley. She smiled at me and then turned back towards the creature to shoot it once more. Four bullets. The shotgun had 8 bullets in the magazine and four of them were already used. I turned around and started running up the slope while still holding Clara’s hand. When we stepped outside and felt the fresh air, we heard another shot. We continued running through the forest. The wasn’t too much foliage or bushes so we could run without a problem. There weren’t many roots or rocks we could trip on but they were still there. The next shot boomed shortly after the last one. Kaley had only two bullets left.
Clara and I reached a stream and I stopped for a second. I washed my face and the wound and recognized the stream. It led just behind my house and we could easily get into my house through the backdoor. Kaley used the second to last bullet right after I called after Clara who was about 50 feet away on the other side of the stream.
“We can get to my…” I started.
The last bullet was shot out and only a few seconds after it, we heard Kaley’s screams.
“Follow the stream!” I told Clara. “It’ll lead us to my house.”
Both of us started running down the stream. I was right next to it, and Clara was about 50 feet away. Running on the shore wasn’t the best idea since it was stony and filled with branches. I could trip easily, and that was just what happened. While trying to jump over a root, I didn’t jump high enough and I fell. My legs hurt like hell and I tried to stand up, but the pain was just unbearable. Nothing was broken since u could move my legs, but standing up was incredibly painful and I couldn’t do it. Clara started to run up to me.
“NO!” I shouted at her. “Go to the town. Go to my house. You’ll find the key for the backdoor in the dirt of the plant on the window. “
“I’m not leaving you,” she shouted walking closer when she noticed something in the distance.
I looked in the direction she was looking in and saw the creature running at us. After seeing it, I realized something. It killed Kaley for sure, but after doing it, it didn’t let out that weird sound it did after killing Helen, the captain, and Johnatan. For it, Kaley was just an obstacle to getting to us. If we needed to kill us all to regenerate completely, what would happen if one of us died before it got to us. I looked back towards Clara and saw her holding the gun I gave her earlier. She had it pointed towards the creature.
“Clara,” I told her smiling. “Don’t shoot at it. It won’t do anything.”
“I don’t care. I’m not leaving you here.”
“Clara, listen to me,” I tried saying as softly as I could. “You need to kill me,” I told her.
“Wh… What?” she asked. “No, I’m not going to kill you.”
“You have to. If this thing kills the two of us, nothing will be able to stop it and it will kill us. I’m sorry that I have to tell you this, but we can do nothing else. This is the last thing we can try.”
I could hear the creature getting closer. Despite being extremely thin, it was still heavy and its footsteps proved that.
“No…” she said.
“Clara, point the gun at me. All will be okay.”
“No… I can’t…” she sniffed.
I knew this approach wouldn’t work so I tried something else.
“Did it feel good to know that you didn’t kill Cameron? Did you like how I lied to you?” I asked her.
Her eyes widened and her mouth opened slightly. She pointed her gun toward me. It was a success. I nodded at her and closed my eyes as I heard the creature much closer than before.
“I’m sorry,” Clara said before she screamed and pressed the trigger.
The sound of the gunshot echoed through the forest. When I heard it, I shook and expected to feel pain, but I didn’t. I thought that I have died so quickly I didn’t even feel it. A second after hearing the gunshot, I heard something fall onto the forest floors. I opened my eyes. I was still there without a bullet wound. I was alive. I looked towards the creature and saw it shaking on the floor. Its mouth was foaming and the sight was terrible no matter how inhumane that thing was. It kept wailing and I noticed that its legs and tail slowly started to sink into the ground. It screeched and tried to keep itself above ground by jamming its claws into the ground. It tried to pull itself without success. When its head started to sink, it let out this haunting woman-like scream with that deep rumbling in the background. It sounded so terrible. When the had sunk down below the ground, only its right arm poked out of it trying to grab something and hold itself in this world. I watched all the way until the tips of its claws disappeared underground.
“Clara,” I whispered to myself and turned around.
She wasn’t standing there anymore. Her body was laying on the floor. My eyes teared up and I started to cry. Now that the creature was gone, I finally got the moment to do so. Despite all the pain, I forced myself to stand up and I stumbled up to Clara. The foliage below her was covered red with blood and the hole in her head explained everything. I sat down and leaned on a tree nearby as I watched her corpse while sobbing. I lost so much that day. Kaley and Clara, Johnatan, the captain… It was also terrible to see the cultists and Helen die in a way they did no matter how much I hated them. I had no sympathy for Hector though.
I must have been sitting by that tree for about an hour before I stopped crying. I knew this wasn’t the last of it, but I needed to act fast before I started sobbing again. I picked up Clara’s body in my arms and carried it back to the cave. I decided to gather all the bodies except Helen’s, put them on a pile, and burn them. The four of them were good people. Well, at least the parts of them that I knew, even the captain. I put her body just before the cave and went inside.
Johnatan’s body was folded on each of the cuts on his torso. He was bent so much that his head was almost touching his knee. His guts were spilled all over the floor and his blood was sprayed all over the wall. The brain matter poured out of his head where the creature pierced it. No matter how short we were friends, I let a tear for him. He was a genuine friend, but it is, after all, most likely that you’ll meet the most genuine friends in hard situations.
I could barely look at Kaley’s body. It was too hard. I almost fell to the floor and cried for another hour, but I stayed strong. She had three large holes in her torso. Two in her chest and one in her stomach. I could see the cave floor through them. Her face had an expression of terror and I just couldn’t look into her lifeless eyes. I sat down next to her and went through her hair with my hand. I was looking away because it was too hard to look at her. After I gathered myself, I dragged both of their bodies to where I put Clara’s.
I returned to the cave while holding the gun Clara used. I didn’t know if someone survived or if the creature can somehow return back to life through the pile of dirt. I found the captain’s decapitated body leaning on the cave wall. His head was cut into two pieces and the line ranged from below his right ear, over his nose, through his left eye to above his left ear. The combination of the sight and the smell made me puke. I somehow managed to pick up both parts of his head and carried them as I dragged his body to where I put the rest.
I found some leaves, branches, and other flammable parts of foliage and gathered them onto a pile around the bodies. In Johnatan’s pocket, I found a lighter. I surrounded the pile with rocks and lit one of the branches on fire. After taking a step backward, I stood there looking at the burning pile. I cried while watching them burn and decided that I’ll find a place to bury them if there was anything left of them. Burning them was the best thing I could do. If the bodies were found or if I reported anything, I would probably be arrested as the biggest suspect and I’d be proclaimed a lunatic for mentioning a creature with a woman’s body and a head between a wolf and a ram.
All the flesh burned off of the bodies but the skeletons were left. I brought them into the cave behind the rock where Kaley and Clara were hiding earlier. After that, I returned home and grabbed a shovel. Before going back to bury them, I took care of my wound. The bleeding wasn’t too bad because the claw didn’t hit any vassals. I checked the time, and to my luck, it was morning. A bit past 10 AM. I had enough time to dig up a hole and fill it up before nightfall.
After returning to the cave, I decided to dig the hole where I buried the bodies. I decided to put the burned foliage and ash at the bottom of the pit to hide it. It took me a few hours to do all of this and I was crying the entire time. When I covered the pit, I put some foliage over it to hide it. In the end, I stood there for another half an hour. It was so hard to leave them there. I didn’t even want to leave them there.
“I’m so sorry I couldn’t save you,” I cried. “If I had known, I would have killed myself immediately.”
I returned to my house and started drinking. Since it was Saturday, I had a day off. I usually had days off on Saturday instead of Sunday. I preferred that for some reason. Micky came up to me while I was sitting by the table and he meowed. I picked him up and hugged him. The rest of that day I spent in my bed drinking and crying. Micky would come up to me here and there and he’d either snuggle up to me or ask for food and honestly, it made me feel a bit better. However, going from feeling like you were in the worst situation ever to feeling like you are in the second worst situation ever wasn’t really the best.
The next day, I called in sick. The captain was dead, and I needed to act like I didn’t know it. I called Elliot and told him that I’m sick and that the captain isn’t answering my calls. I spent that Sunday the same way I spent the Saturday afternoon, crying in bed. I somehow managed to go to the office on Monday and acted like I didn’t know what was going on when the captain and the twins didn’t come to do their jobs. We reported them missing and the investigation started. Somehow, none of the bodies except Helen’s were found.
The search lasted for weeks, but they were never found and because the killings stopped, people assumed that they were the murderers. The cultists and Hector were also put up as suspects since all of them disappeared as well. After hearing that the twins, the captain, and Clara were suspected to be cultists as well, I hated myself so much. I wanted to say the truth so badly, but then Clara’s sacrifice would have been for nothing. I kept that gun with me and I look at it every night. I’ve put it and the shotgun on the wall in my basement. Sitting on a chair in front of them, drinking, and crying became a daily activity for me.
I thought of blowing my brains out with one of those, but again, Clara’s sacrifice would have been for nothing. I literally cannot do anything without taking away the importance of every good person that died that night. So, the best thing is drowning in sorrows and alcohol.
All of this happened almost three months ago and ever since then, I’ve been noticing people dressed in black suits and sunglasses staring at me while I’m in public. I don’t know if they know that I noticed them. Despite sounding like they stick out like a sore thumb; they blend in perfectly. The only reason I noticed them is because I have a keen and have been trained to notice little details since I’m a detective. I’ve also seen them waiting outside my house or at places where I spend more time. They sit in black cars with blackened windows and I believe they bugged my house and are listening and watching my every move.
They knew about this cult and what they tried to do, but they probably didn’t know where it was happening. Somehow, they found out. Maybe it was the number of missing people after so many were murdered or some other stuff, but they know what happened. Maybe not all of it exactly to detail, but they know most of it.
The last thing I’ll mention before ending this once and for all is a book. A book that belonged to Ewan, to Cameron who never read it, and lastly to Hector. It’s the book Hector held during the ritual. I mentioned its covers looking weird… well… they’re made of human skin. The book is ancient and I don’t know how it stayed in such perfect condition for so long. The covers are actually wooden but covered with human skin, and the paper is old and thick. The letters used for writing are weird and unlike that of any language known to me. There are paintings of different entities and guides on how to summon them. The one Hector summoned, Zalon toch’l is the most powerful and the most dangerous one.
There are also drawings and explanations of some creatures that, by the pictures, look like they need no rituals to be summoned, and instead, they roam this world freely. After reading the book for the first time, I tried burning it, but nothing happened. I tried ripping out the pages, cutting them off, and destroying the book with an ax, but nothing worked. I tried many other ways to destroy it after I heard it whispering to me one night, but once again, nothing worked. I’ve also woken up while walking towards the book a few times and decided to lock it in a safe.
Now, I’m jammed into a sandwich between some organization that clearly deals with stuff like this and doesn’t want the public to know anything about it and a manipulating evil ancient demon-summoning book. I’m locked in a stalemate between two sides that probably want to use me and discard me when I’m not needed anymore. My life is a living hell, and honestly, I only wish it ends soon.
This is a farewell. Look out for yourself.