{ PART 1 }{ PART 2 }{ PART 3 }{ PART 4 }{ PART 5 }{ PART 6 }{ PART 7 }{ PART 8 }
[INCLUDES SEXUAL VIOLENCE]
I woke up to ringing in my head. As my eyes started to open up slowly, I started noticing my legs and the floor below them. Some flickering lights made me distinguish the shape of my legs and the rope tied around my ankles. At that moment, my eyes widened and I shook a bit trying to get the rope off of my legs. I realized that my arms were tied behind my back. Everything was still a bit fuzzy and the ringing started to get better. While trying to wiggle my hand out of the rope, I started to hear someone calling my name from my left.
“Elijah,” a soft female voice broke through the ringing.
I turned to my left and saw someone sitting next to me in the same position as me. Her arms and legs were tied as well.
“Elijah, can you hear me?” she asked.
“Cl… Clara?” I asked. “Is that you?”
“Yeah, it’s me. Are you okay?”
The ringing stopped at that point, and my eyesight started to get better. I pulled myself backward and leaned on the cold stone wall behind me so that I’d be sitting straight up.
“What the hell is going on?” I asked her.
“I don’t know,” she answered. “I woke up here and haven’t seen anyone other than you guys.”
“You guys?”
“I’m here as well,” Johnatan said from my right.
I took a look at him. He was looking at the ceiling as the orange light shined on his face.
“Do you know anything about this?” I asked him.
“I don’t have a fucking clue,” he replied turning his head towards me. “I have a bad hangover and I’ve been kidnapped. Amazing.”
The bags below his eyes were huge and he was clearly barely able to function.
“Oh, by the way, the captain and some woman are here?” he told me quickly moving his head towards them.
“Why would all of us…” I stopped when I realized what was going on. “Fuck.”
“Dude, did you realize something?” Johnatan asked me.
“Those psychos captured us. How far away are the captain and the woman?” I asked Johnatan. “Can you get to them and lift up their right sleeves?”
“Why would I… Oh…” he looked up when the realization hit him. “Give me a second.”
He turned towards the captain and the woman and inhaled. He started to lean to the side and fell to the ground. Somehow, he wiggled his way to the captain who was maybe 6 feet away from him. He was just about to start trying to pull up the captain’s sleeve when his eyes opened.
“Ugh… Johnatan?” the captain mumbled. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Do you have the scar?” Johnatan asked the captain.
“What?”
“The scar on your right arm. Do you have it? A circle and a stickman?” Johnatan was persistent.
The captain’s eyes widened and he looked at me.
“They got us,” he whispered. “It’s over.”
“We can still escape, captain,” I told him. “If you calm down, we could escape and get them arrested.”
“You don’t understand,” he replied. “You can’t escape. We can just buy ourselves more time and that isn’t worth it.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Johnatan asked him.
“I’m scared,” Clara whispered to me.
“You don’t have to be,” I told her. “We’ll get out of this.”
I could hear Johnatan and the captain having a conversation in the background. The captain was acting insane and Johnatan was barely able to perceive the world around him due to the alcohol and whatever the hell we were drugged with.
“How?” Clara asked me.
“I’ll find something to cut the rope with. I’ll free you guys and then we go straight to the station, okay?”
She sighed and let out a soft and quiet whimper.
“I hope you’re right.”
Suddenly, I heard the captain say something that surprised me.
“Holy shit. That’s Helen Waynewood. She’s Cameron’s daughter.”
“What?” I asked him.
“The woman next to him,” Johnatan replied. “It’s Helen Waynewood.”
“Does she have the scar?” I asked.
“She does,” the captain answered. “She’s knocked out and I can’t see it, but if all of us have scars, then she does as well.”
“You seemed weirdly surprised when you mentioned Helen’s name,” Clara told the captain.
Johnatan and I both looked at her surprised how she noticed it but the two of us didn’t. We turned back towards the captain and expected an answer.
“I knew he was a cold bastard, but I didn’t expect him to do this, but I guess we didn’t know her secret,” the captain said.
“You know something about this,” I came to the conclusion. “You know what the fuck is going on and you’re not telling us.”
It took a few seconds for him to turn back towards me, but he wasn’t looking at me, he was looking at something behind me.
“You’ll learn everything now,” he told me.
I turned around and saw an opening in the stone wall. A human figure stood there, but I could not see it properly because of how the area was lit. Only then, I realized that my sight stopped being fuzzy and I took a look around. We were in a cave. We were put in a chamber about 20 feet tall. It was a big open space with torches placed all over it. Those torches allowed me to see the entire floor of the cave. It was entirely stone, but in the middle of the chamber, there was a pile of dirt flattened to be only a bit taller than the surrounding stone floor.
“Who are you?” Johnatan shouted at the figure in the opening.
It just stood there looking at us. We heard some commotion and then saw sparks flying around next to the figure. Accompanying the sparks were the sounds of two stones hitting each other. Suddenly, the torch the figure was holding lit up and exposed the figure entirely. The orange light from the torch shined onto his naked body.
“Hector?” Clara asked looking at him.
It all made sense now. After Cameron died, Hector and Helen inherited most of his possessions. Somehow the cult stuff must have come into Hector’s hands.
“That’s right,” he answered taking a step inside the chamber.
“You know him?” I asked Clara.
“We went to primary school together, detective,” he told me while walking further into the room. “We were born in the same year.”
I noticed that he was holding a torch in one hand and a book in the other. It looked like a very unusual book. The covers were plain and stitched up together. At that moment, I realized that he wasn’t the one who lit the torch and looked back towards the opening. Just when I laid my eyes upon it, a group of people started entering the room. It was all kinds of people. From the young to the old, from men to women, they were all naked. They all walked up to the center of the chamber where there was dirt on the floor. All of them were holding knives in their left hand. Hector, however, was standing much closer to us.
“You know why you are here?” he asked us. “Did he tell you?” he looked at the captain.
Johnatan and I took a quick glance at the captain while Clara kept staring at the ground under her legs.
“What is that supposed to mean?” Johnatan asked the captain.
The captain stared at Hector with eyes full of hatred… but also fear.
“Should I tell them, or will you?” Hector kept looking at the captain.
The captain took a deep inhale, shook his head, put his hands on his forehead, and looked at the ground.
“I was in the cult,” he told us.
“Not only in the cult, but he was also a highly positioned individual. All the way up to yesterday evening, when he got the scar,” Hector smiled.
I was furious at the captain, and so was Johnatan. However, we knew that there was more important stuff at that moment.
“Why the hell did you mark him?” I asked Hector.
“He had a big bad secret,” Hector chuckled. “This entire thing is about big bad secrets.”
“Big bad secrets? What do you mean?” Johnatan asked.
“All of you have them,” Hector replied. “You, for example, have your cocaine addiction. You’re a corrupt cop ready to arrest anyone who’s in possession of the drug, but instead of confiscating it, you take it for yourself. It’s your big bad secret. Your captain’s secret is… well, was the fact that he is a part of this cult. He even took part in some of the sacrifices people found around the town.”
“But why aren’t all of you marked?” I asked myself. “You’re a part of the cult. It’s your big bad secret.”
His head jerked towards me and a terrible grin appeared on his face.
“But we are just casual citizens. Your captain is supposed to uphold the law and keep the people safe. He did exactly the opposite of that,” his grin somehow even widened. “But the most fun part today will be the two of you,” he switched between looking at me and Clara.
Clara realized he was talking about her and she lifted her head to look at him. There were trails of tears on her cheeks.
“What?” she said softly and slowly before looking at me. “What did you do?” she asked me.
I couldn’t look at her while telling her what I did so I looked straight into Hector’s eyes.
“I was the one who killed Cameron,” I told her. “When you left, he was still alive. I didn’t want you to go to prison so I killed him. I hid the evidence and never told anyone but Johnatan before. I’m so sorry,” I said as my eyes started to get teary. “I just couldn’t admit it to you. I tried too many times, but I couldn’t do it.”
Clara was silent. She didn’t reply. I even knew that she wasn’t looking at me, but at the ground again. I continued looking at Hector, and his grin made me furious.
“It felt so fucking good to kill your father. He was such a fucking piece of shit,” I told him. “You should have seen how his skull crushed and brain spilled all over the floor.”
“You won’t achieve anything with that. No matter how hard you try to scare me or make me emotional, you won’t succeed,” he said in an eerie voice. “I don’t work that way. But you know what, you still haven’t learned Clara’s secret,” he laughed. “Oh, you’ll like this one.”
I looked at her. She had her head pointed away from me.
“Clara,” I called after her. “Please…”
“I… I can’t,” she sobbed while still looking away.
I knew she felt betrayed by me. She didn’t mind the fact that all this time she taught she was the one who killed him, but she did mind the fact that I lied.
“Oh, you can’t say?” Hector asked. “Then I’ll tell him. She…”
“No!” she cut him off. “I’ll say it.”
“Good girl,” he told her.
At that moment, I wanted to kill him just like I killed his father. Clara turned her head forward, wiped off her tears, and then looked at me. Her eyes were red and she was on a brink of sobbing.
“Cameron was there because I blackmailed him,” she told me.
“Wh… What are you talking about?” I asked her.
“Hector and I were good friends when we were younger. Our friend group and I visited his house often and Cameron would always creep at us girls from a corner. He managed to get one of our friends to sleep with him when we were 14. Her family tried to sue him, but he won the case. We continued going to the house and when we were 16, I decided that blackmailing him was a good idea. I tried seducing him and acted flirty when no one else paid attention to us. Later on, I started sending him pictures of myself and got screenshots of our conversations. I threatened him with sending those to the police and asked for money. There were different requests here and there and, in the end, he got frustrated and tried to attack me in that wooded area.”
I didn’t reply. I just kept looking at her. Cameron was a piece of shit and what he was doing shouldn’t have happened. However, Clara messed up as well. I didn’t mind to who she did it, but I do mind that she didn’t tell me about it.
“Well, that was fun, wasn’t it?” Hector chuckled. “And now, for my sister,” he took a look at her. “Oh, big sis. You wanted everything for yourself so you planned on killing me,” he said walking up to her.
She was still unconscious, but Hector didn’t care. When he got to her, he crouched down and run his hand through his sister’s hair. He was looking at her for some time before he slowly stood up. After a few seconds of looking at her, he lifted his leg and brought it down on her stomach. Her body shook and she woke up screaming.
“Where the hell am I?” she yelled. “What is this?”
“Calm down, big sis,” Johnatan grinned. “It’ll be all over soon.”
He turned around and started walking towards the center of the room while Helen screamed after him. He stopped in the middle of the dirt pile and turned back towards us.
“As you know, after Ewan Loringer died, all his possessions went to my father. He never really mentioned it nor did he mention who should be his inheritor. When he died, my mother and sister made sure that I got nothing important…”
“That’s because you’re a piece of shit!” Helen shouted cutting him off.
“However, they didn’t know what was actually important,” he lifted the book into the air. “It was this!” he shouted. “The book of Zalon toch’l. The greatest book that was ever written, the way to invite her into this world. She will conquer it and we who worship her and summon will be granted an entrance into the beautiful afterworld where we will get all the power we ever wanted.”
“Hail Zalon toch’l,” everyone said in unison.
Everyone started to let out this hissing sound while Hector was doing some weird dance-like moves. The naked people bent their arms at the elbows and stopped hissing. Only a few seconds after that, Hector was done with his dance. He took a few steps backward and walked off of the dirt. He put the book down on the floor and took a knife that has been put there by one of the naked people. He heated it up on the torch, and when that was done, he threw the torch away. He spread his arms and walked back into the middle of the dirt pile.
He whistled, and after that… after that was the most frightening thing I have ever seen. Hector started to carve the symbol into his chest while the others started carving their skin off on their right arms. They started to skin their right arms and elbows down and they screamed. Clara, Helen, and Johnatan started to scream as well, but their screams were out of fear. The captain was crying and I simply didn’t know how to react to something so horrific. I just kept looking at them and started feeling dizzy. Their screams seemed like they were out of this world. The pitches they reached were insane and it made me sick.
All this looked and felt more than just insane. Hector mentioning the summoning of Zalon toch’l made it feel even worse. What the hell was he talking about? They were going to kill themselves for nothing, and leave the five of us here. I knew that all of this was going to scar all of us for the entirety of our lives.
“Psst,” I suddenly heard from my left.
When I turned my head, I was filled with joy. Kaley was crouching behind Clara and cutting the rope on her arms. The shotgun I took from the captain’s car was sitting on the floor next to her. I knew I needed to keep quiet so that I don’t alert the cult members even though I believe they wouldn’t have reacted even if they heard her. When she freed Clara’s arms, she gave her another knife which she used to cut the rope off of her legs. While she was cutting the rope, Kaley crouched up to me, hugged me, and kissed me.
[ FINAL ]