by Bryan, JL
Chapter Thirty-Two
I woke slowly in a clearing, with a smell like rotten eggs stinging my nose. My entire torso ached, bruised and cut.
A mask covered my face, narrowing my vision like horse blinders, making my breath echo back into my ears.
My utility belt with all my gear was gone, along with my phone and my boots. Soft moccasins enclosed my feet instead, to make me a quieter and more challenging quarry.
I lay still, playing possum as a precaution. I moved only my eyes as I strained to see and hear whatever might be happening around me.
Something tall and dark moved at the edge of my vision, and I gradually inclined my head slightly that way, hoping the mask hid my open eyes.
The dark figure hunched over an unconscious girl who lay not far away, blonde hair spread across the dirt, a now-familiar style of fox mask concealing her face.
She also wore jeans, a green work shirt, and a denim jacket, so I realized it was Stacey and not a chambermaid. This wasn’t another ghost’s memory, infecting me like a mosquito’s saliva as it fed on me. This was happening right now.
The figure bending over her wore camouflage coveralls and a black balaclava. The guy who’d tranquilized us. It wasn’t really a surprise seeing him here.
I probed my fingers through the dirt until I found a sizable sharp rock. Before I could plan the best way to sneak up on the guy without him hearing, Stacey snapped to life with a gasp behind her fox mask, one leg kicking like a tickled puppy.
The guy took off into the woods. I breathed a sigh of relief but held on to my sharp rock in case he returned.
“Stacey!” I scrambled to her side. “Wake up!”
“I am extremely awake right now. I think. Did a cat pee on my clothes? Or yours, maybe? Or both of us?”
“Those are smelling salts. The secret lodge society special.”
“I just had the weirdest dream.” Stacey yawned and reached up, then jumped as she found the mask affixed to her face. “Okay, no, this is weirder. How do you get this thing off?”
“You don’t. They glue it to your face and then kill you and throw you in the underground sacrifice pit.”
“Right.”
“Except for Marzena. Maybe a long fall off a cliff will shake it loose.”
“Good to know.”
We got to our feet, listening for any hint that our kidnapper was returning.
In the distance, a long, low horn note sounded.
Dogs and men howled. Hooves pounded the earth.
“Now the hunters are coming for us,” I said. “This is the real sacrifice. I bet Adrienne wasn’t even trying to hit us when she shot at us. She was just getting us running.”
“Flushing us out like rabbits,” Stacey whispered. “Speaking of rabbits, is there a place we can hop to for safety? Or a hole where we can hide? We’re kind of helpless without our gear.”
“Against a girl with an automatic rifle and her most ruthless dead ancestors.” I studied the clearing where we’d been deposited, the trees growing around it. “It’s a little different, but I think I saw this area of the woods before, in Marzena’s memory. She escaped through here. There’s a path that way. Or there was a hundred years ago.”
“It’s probably heavily overgrown since then, though.”
“Hopefully it's been long enough for a tree limb to grow back. Let’s go.”
We hurried through the woods as best we could, but the sounds of the ghostly hunting party approached faster than we could run. It was hard finding our way with just the meager moonlight that dribbled through the thick, low forest canopy.
“It’s not fair,” Stacey panted at one point. “Ghosts don’t trip over rocks and roots.”
The deafening maelstrom of the hunting party grew ever closer, crashing through the woods. Unholy light flashed like lightning, giving us glimpses of hooded figures atop skeletal horses. The hooves filled the night with a sound like iron hammers striking anvils.
At one point, Stacey and I slid down a steep, rocky slope that I didn’t remember from the dream, though it seemed like a major feature. We regained our feet and kept running in the same direction, but I’d lost a lot of my confidence about being on the right path.
The hunting party approached, breaking through branches and slender tree trunks, a storm that would soon pour down on us from all sides, so changing course wasn’t a very realistic option.
We hit an impassible thicket of vines and thorns.
“Which way?” Stacey whispered as the supernatural hunting party thundered toward us. I could hear the voices of the dead men louder and clearer than ever, as if they were thrilled with the prospect of live souls and fresh meat after so long.
I stared blankly at the wall of vegetation, trying to remember scraps of a dream now mostly forgotten, like a story printed on flash paper, burned away when touched by daylight.
“Ellie!” Stacey hissed.
“This way,” I said. I wasn’t sure at all, but we had to keep moving. Staying still was certain death.
We fought around the dense thicket…and there it was, the sprawling live oak from which Marzena had made her daring escape to the sea. While the portion of the limb extending over the wall had been broken back then, many years had passed, plenty of time for the tree to regrow so it could once again offer passage over the wall.
Unfortunately, the tree hadn’t done that, but instead lay on its side on the ground, smaller trees crushed beneath it, its fallen trunk covered in years of ferns and fungus.
“Why are we stopping this time?” Stacey whispered, as the cacophony of the hunting party approached.
“That tree was supposed to be our way out.”
“Oops.” Stacey looked at the stump, as large as a kitchen table. “Looks like they chopped it down.”
“Maybe because Marzena escaped that way.”
“They didn’t have to blame the whole tree. What do we do now, Ellie?”
I took a breath, trying to draw together a new plan. “The wall’s right over there. If we can follow it to that crack over the crumbling side of the bluff, we can get out.”
“The place where you almost fell to your death?” Stacey asked as we approached the wall.
“Right. We can get outside the wall that way.”
“Then what?”
“I guess we swim across to Jekyll Island and try to get help.”
“Through the sharks?”
“How many people actually die in shark attacks each year, Stacey?”
“I don’t know, but swimming through a major shark hangout spot like The Hole is a great way to join that group, Ellie.”
“Who do you trust more, the sharks or the people on this island?” I asked.
“Gotcha. The sharks it is.”
We scrambled as fast as we could alongside the wall, thick with layers of vines, some thorny, others poisonous. Climbing up and over it was plainly a hopeless idea, even without the spikes at the wall’s top.
“I think we’re almost there,” Stacey said.
Ahead, moonlight leaked through the wall. Not much, but enough to mark the place where I'd fallen. We slowed, watching for the treacherous ground where the bluff’s edge had crumbled away beneath the wall.
The hunting party burst out of the wilderness, as if realizing we were on the verge of escaping.
A trio of oversized boarhounds stalked out and blocked the way to our planned escape. Their empty sockets and open jaws glowed with an infernal, fiery light, as if brimstone burned deep inside their guts.
They advanced on us, flames licking out of their eye holes, jaws wide to display their teeth, their drool boiling and steaming in the heat of their demonic inner glow.
Hooded riders on rotten horses surrounded us, gripping their reins with skeletal hands.
We were trapped against the wall, with no way out.
One rider came forward, a particularly strong apparition on a horse that didn’t look skeletal at all.
I expected Garit Grolman,
the bleach-white ghoul who carried the oliphant horn to announce the hunt, leader of the lodge, son of Count Hackelberend and murderer of his own half-brother.
Instead, the rider’s black hood fell back to reveal Adrienne Grolman. She smiled a little at our obvious shock.
“Wait,” Stacey said. “Are you…dead? You’re with the ghosts?”
“No, I’m not dead, you fluffy-brained child,” Adrienne replied.
“Then where did you get a horse?” Stacey looked outraged. “Shouldn’t we all get horses?”
“This big fellow leads the island’s wild herd.” Adrienne smacked the stallion hard, maliciously. The horse rolled its head and twisted from side to side, as if warring with itself. “But at the moment, he is possessed by the hunting party.”
“You mean that live wild horse is possessed by one of these weird dead horses?” Stacey asked. “Is that a thing now? Do we have to watch out for that in the future?”
“You will indeed be watching out for these horses,” Adrienne said. “As you spend eternity here, hunted for sport by my ancestors. They grow weary of the same hunts, and they will be so pleased with me for replenishing their afterlife with fresh blood.”
“There must be easier ways to make your family proud,” I said.
“Yeah, like arts and crafts,” Stacey said. “There's a whole world of glitter glue out there.”
“You’re insipid.” Adrienne slipped off the horse she was riding bareback and dropped to her feet. She still wore the riding boots under her hooded black robe.
“Nice robe,” I said.
“Nice mask,” Adrienne countered.
“It wasn’t my choice. Unlike your robe.”
“All that we do tonight follows ancient tradition,” she said. “We should all be honored.”
“I wouldn’t say that’s how I feel. What’s next? You draw a gold-plated dagger and stab us through the throat? Sacrifice us to your god?”
“Don’t give her ideas, Ellie!” Stacey hissed. “At least, not ideas like that. Encourage her to go in a different direction.”
“We don’t have much choice but to sacrifice you, do we?” Adrienne asked. “It’s not as though we could allow the two of you off the island after all you’ve seen. Fortunately, tonight calls for a double sacrifice.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, but my answer arrived before she had to say a word.
Gary emerged from a narrow path in the woods, dressed in camouflage coveralls.
Wyatt followed, and Adrienne beamed at her fiancé’s arrival.
“That’s it,” Stacey whispered. “We are dead.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
“You’re all in it together,” I said. “But why bring us here at all, then? You just needed victims?”
“Darika hired you,” Gary said. “By the time I knew about it, I couldn’t do much to stop it.”
“But Darika hired you, too, right?” I asked Gary.
“You might say she was steered into hiring me,” Gary said. “I told you, I’m from Wyoming. My family’s worked for the Grolmans one way or another for generations, going back to the Old West days. I even mentioned a little of that to Darika when she interviewed me, or at least that my grandfather worked on a Grolman ranch. She probably figured it helped qualify me for the job, since the island was going back to the Grolman family, once these two got married.”
“Wait, what are you talking about?” Wyatt asked Gary.
“Gary is a Knight of the Lodge,” Adrienne said.
“What’s that?” I asked. “A title you give to lowly servants who do your dirty work?”
Adrienne glared at me. “Brother Gary has been keeping an eye on this little restoration project for my family, making sure nothing happened that could embarrass us. Unfortunately, you two happened. But now I’ll make it all work out for the best.”
“By killing us,” I said. “And dumping our bodies with all the others.”
“It’s actually true?” Wyatt asked Adrienne. “All of it? Your family used to do those things?”
“We still do, just not in this old wreck of a place.” She moved close to him and caressed his chest and stomach, making little claws with her fingernails. Then she drew a long, gold-plated dagger from her robe. “And you’ll join us, Wyatt. Like you always wanted.”
“Why…do you think I would want to do this?” He looked somewhere between surprised and mystified.
“You don’t fool me, Wyatt,” Adrienne said. “You want to belong to the very elite of society. That’s why I’m such a trophy to you.”
“You’re not—”
“You gave it away when you bought this place for our wedding, Wyatt. You didn’t do that for me. You did it for yourself. Wyatt Lanigan, strolling halls once inhabited by American aristocracy. That would certainly show the people back home, like your stupid, oafish brothers, forced to watch you rise into the most rarefied air, transmuted into royalty like lead into gold. You have the money, but you wanted the status symbols to really let everyone know you’re at the very top. Like this island. And me.”
He gaped at her for a long moment before saying, “Adrienne, you’re not just some status symbol to me—”
“Yes, I am. Don’t give me that garbage about respecting my art. My art is stupid. You look at me and see a chance to wear a crown. And you know what? I can live with that, Wyatt. I know what I am, and what I have to offer.” She pushed the hilt of the dagger into his fingers. “You can join us. You will be my king, and we will build an empire together. But you must make the sacrifice. Usually, there is more ritual than this, but it doesn’t matter. You must bind yourself to us in blood before we can be bound in marriage. But our god will provide all you need. Not just wealth, but protection against the turning wheel of fortune. And a favored place after death, so you won’t have to suffer like all the common souls.”
Wyatt looked from the dagger, which Adrienne was still trying to make him accept, to Stacey and me. “Really? Your god can provide all of that?”
“We’ll make the double sacrifice together, Wyatt,” Adrienne said. “You can even kill the pretty one if you like. I’ll do the other one. This will be our true wedding, Wyatt, in the eyes of my ancestors.”
Wyatt looked from her to us. After a moment, he nodded slightly, like he’d reached a decision.
“Okay,” he said, voice trembling.
“Wyatt, don’t,” Stacey said.
“Shh.” Adrienne scowled at Stacey, then extended the dagger to Wyatt.
Wyatt’s fingers closed around the jeweled golden hilt of the dagger as he accepted it from Adrienne.
The shadowy hooded riders moved in closer, seemingly eager to watch us become their latest quarry as we lost our lives and our afterlives for their benefit.
I tensed, preparing to fight back, to attack Wyatt once I saw which way he was going to move, and who he planned to sacrifice.
Wyatt looked from me to Stacey, as if trying to pick.
“Don’t do this,” I told him. “Haven’t you heard the one about gaining the whole world but losing your soul?”
“But that’s not what’s happening here,” Adrienne said. “In this deal, you get to keep your soul. That's the beauty of it.”
“I’m ready,” Wyatt declared, his voice strangely flat, as if he’d repressed his emotions in advance of the violence he was about to perform.
He looked right at me.
“I’ll say the prayer.” Adrienne closed her eyes.
Wyatt took a deep breath, then took a step forward and stabbed the gold-plated blade through Gary’s throat.
Gary’s eyes widened, and he staggered back, lips moving silently as blood leaked down the front of his neck. He tripped over a live oak root as thick as a steel beam and collapsed to the ground, hitting his head on another root of the same tree.
Angry whispering rose among the hooded riders. Their skeletal horses stamped and shook, reflecting their discontent. The demonic dogs snarled, their faces glowing with infernal inner f
ire.
“What?” Adrienne’s eyes snapped open. She drank in the scene, then bared her teeth at Wyatt. She backed away from him, toward her possessed horse and the dead hunters. “You betrayed me, Wyatt. After everything we’ve done together. After all our plans for the future. How dare you?”
“You never mentioned any of this,” he said.
“I was going to, before the wedding. And this is what you wanted. You wanted to be the elite…but you’re not. You’re garbage. A peasant. A nobody from nowhere, sad because your poor mommy died early and left you to be bullied by your father and your brothers. So pathetic to hear. Especially the second and third and fourth time. I could have made you strong, Wyatt.” She climbed onto the possessed stallion. “But you made your choice. And now all three of you will be fresh quarry for the ancestors.”
The dogs and mounted men closed in around us, each rider armed with a blade.
The riders flowed down from their skeletal mounts to the ground like liquid shadows, advancing on foot, preparing to stab us as they’d once stabbed Heinrich Grolman to death on Garit’s command.
“Wyatt, give me your phone!” Stacey said, grabbing his arm.
Wyatt passed the phone over automatically, as though barely aware of what he was doing. He stared at Gary, the man he’d stabbed, like he couldn’t believe he’d done such a thing. Maybe that ninjutsu training had been worth something, after all.
“Don’t be stupid,” Adrienne said. “Gary and I disconnected the satellite, obviously.”
“That’s okay.” Stacey accepted Wyatt’s phone and swiped the LookyLoon app.
“You’re…taking a Looky right now? Seriously?” Adrienne asked, back up on her high horse again.
“I’m hoping Wyatt saved it locally after I sent it…Okay, everybody, listen up!” Stacey turned the phone outward.
On the screen played the video Stacey had taken of the ghostly hunting party at the cemetery, one of the clips and images she’d sliced out and sent to Wyatt and Darika.
The cloaked form of Garit, leader of the hunt, rode forward, his white blur of a face featureless on the video.
I looked from the phone to the version of him that was on skeletal horseback in front of us.
