Chapter 24 - Hell is Chrome

They'd gone beyond the wooden staircase that led under the abandoned church. It was all stone, mud, and roots that formed the narrow hallway leading toward flickering lights. There wasn't enough room to fully extend one's arms to either side of the dank passageway. One's head had barely enough room without scraping the ceiling. Lane was in front, followed by Luna, Nina, and Franki. Jordan had stayed behind with Gracie. So, now there were four that traveled the length of a five-minute hallway towards an ever brightening orange glow.

    "Lane," Luna whispered.

    Glancing over his shoulder to where she pointed, Lane did indeed notice the broken stone that incrementally lined the hallway. As they approached the glow, Lane had counted twelve in total. He carefully stepped over one last broken pile of stone; "Yeah. Thirteen barriers, or maybe walls at one point? Looks like they'd all been smashed inward. Someone didn't want anyone else down this hallway."

    "Remind me again," Nina asked, voice shaking, "Why are WE down here?"

    "We need answers," Lane said definitively.

    Luna reached back for Nina's lithe hand and held it tight, "I promise you, we're going to get out of here. But, if we're not armed with the knowledge to beat whatever's in our way, the odds of that happening-"

    "It's Jude though," Franki breathed out in a cold, measured breath, "Right? It has to be."

    "I mean, he's been doing fuck knows what this whole time, sure. But, how does one guy control ghost animals or whatever the hell they are?" Nina pondered, voice a little less shaking as she wove her fingers in between Luna's.

    "I think this might give us a clue," Lane said, pointing at what lie at the end of the tunnel.

    Stretched taut within a wooden frame was a deer hide illuminated by a large rack of antlers with wax candles stuck on each of the tips. Lane reached into his vest pocket and flipped open the notebook. He didn't recognize the writing, or glyphs scrawled over the hide. If he had to venture an educated guess, it was the language of the native tribe that originally occupied these grounds: the Cowlitz.

    Luna had squatted down and wedged herself on the right side of Lane, "Do you mind?"

    Lane shuffled sideways so that both of them could occupy the same space.

    "Jesus," Nina whispered.

    "Probably not," Franki snorted. "Then again; Lion, Wolf, and..." She grimaced, "Panther. They were all omens, heralds of things to come in Dante's, "Divine Comedy." So maybe this is something from above or below?"

"Franki," Lane said, still studying the markings, checking them against known occult glyphs and writings he'd documented in The Journal, "Remind me again, what's the difference between a herald and omen?"

"Yeah, and how do you know that exactly?" Nina added, almost accusingly.

Franki rolled her eyes, "I read comics, okay? Silver Surfer mostly. He's kinda like Marvel's 'Doctor Who,' a bit." Off Nina's scrunched face, she clarified, "I'm a nerd, a'right? I love stories. The ones where dark shit happens are interesting an' whatever."

"Okay," Lane said, trying to calm her down, "So, if those things are heralds..."

Franki shrugged, then mimed a pair of antlers with her hands above her head, "Then there's something bigger coming-"

"-Like the Deer Woman?" Nina interrupted. She paused then shivered, "Okay, but are you saying this is... like, the devil? How? I don't remember a Deer Woman in the Bible."

With a  heavy breath, Luna replied, "It's all the same hell." Luna tapped the toe of her shoes to Lane's boot, "Any luck with a translation?"

Lane shook his head, "I wish I'd had the forethought to study the Cowlitz written language, but it'd never occur to me that you and I would be back in Washington for THE worst summer camp ever."

"That can't be Cowlitz," Nina said leaning in between the gap in front of Lane and Luna.

Luna raised an eyebrow, "Why do you say that?"

"I told you I'd been studying languages. Specifically, dead and dying languages. One of the reason a lot of Native American languages die out is because what record the tribes had of a written language was either lost, destroyed, or... If you're the ancient Cowlitz, it didn't exist."

"You're a hundred percent certain they didn't have a written language," Lane asked.

Nina thought for a moment, "By the time white settlers arrived, the Cowlitz had adopted multiple languages, mostly a form of Salish..." Nina traced her fingers just above the hide being careful not to touch the deer skin, "But these markings, this isn't any form of Salish that I've studied. This is... unique. If this is authentic, this may be the first, the only record of a Cowlitz specific written word."

Lane and Luna glanced at each other exchanging a horrified spark of recognition.

Franki was the first to catch The Twins' simultaneous disturbed exchange, "What? Jude really breaks in here and disturb some ancient Indian Burial ground? Is that why all this shit happening?"

Lane rubbed his temples, "When our other sisters and I were in Scotland, we picked up Alchemy from..." He waved his hands, "Long story short; developing a language, or code to bridge the gap between physics and chemistry was alchemy in a nutshell."

"If the Cowlitz, or whoever wrote this, invented a language then buried it behind thirteen stone walls underground, it was probably never meant to be seen or spoken."

Nina turned her head and covered her eyes, "Shit! And we just kept staring at it?"

Luna touched the girl's shoulder, "It's okay. Look but don't touch."

Nina still remained facing the other direction.

"Alright, so what are the odds that Jude busted through walls and learned how to speak ancient Cowlitz? Nina said it herself, ''It's a dead language, right?"

Lane continued to stare at the symbols, going over each line, each stroke. Then, whether it was the dim light of the hallway, or simply being too close to the hide, he went cross eyes. He shut his eyes tight, rubbed them, and leaned back from the deerskin. As his pupils readjusted to the light, he remembered his standard operating procedure: start with the edges.

No longer focusing on the symbols themselves, but the picture as a whole, Lane nearly cried out, "Holy shit."

"What?" Nina asked, startled.

Luna studied her brother's face, then took a step back and gasped, "It's the camp."

Franki tilted her head and squinted; "Yeah, I guess I sorta see it now. There's Spirit Lake. That looks like Potter's Field, or I guess it'd still be a pond. Those little etchings are probably elevated, yeah?"

"Yeah," Luna acknowledged, tracing a finger along with a particularly thick series of lines, "Are these... These look like the trails that lead around camp. But, this camp was built when? Early 1930's?"

"About that time, yeah. Maybe they were outlined by whatever tribe settled here first?" Franki suggested.

Lane followed Luna's finger as it began forming a path between four symbols; "Even if I didn't know Cowlitz, this looks like a pictogram of fire... this one is water, or maybe blood? Shadow... Two people together... Sex, flesh...?"

Luna stepped in, "Lane, look at the edges here: thirteen stick-figure people."

"There were thirteen of us during the morning 'Team Building Activity..." Franki thought aloud.

Lane set his jaw, "No. Not a team-building activity. It was a ritual, a summons." He pointed to a rough pictogram of a fire pit surrounded by four pillars. with a crude figure of a woman in the center: a human woman; "This is how they summoned the Deer Woman."

"Or," Luna offered, "It's how they captured her?"

"Alright, then why leave instructions on how to bring her back?" Nina asked.

Lane traced the thick lines again. Leaning in a little closer, he noticed incremental markings, arrows. They were going, loosely speaking, counter to the direction the councilors had marched. Hypothesizing out loud, "If this were a ritual to capture the Deer Woman, performing the ritual in reverse might set her free? One way summons her, the other way release her--"

"--Into the wild," Luna added gravely.

Nina threw her hands up, "Okay, somehow, Jude learns how to read Cowlitz, performs a ritual to summon the Deer Woman, Demon, or whatever? Can we just do the opposite of what he did to send her back to wherever the hell she came from?"

"It's all the same hell, darling," Luna said again, "And if what little we can gather from this thing is accurate, we'd need at least thirteen people."

"So, we can't put Pandora back in her box," Franki said dryly. "We just kill her then? How 'bout that. Do you two ever kill demons or just write about 'em in your journal?"

    Jordan's distressed voice came from the secret door far back at the head of the five minute hallway, "Lane, if you're still alive, get the fuck back here!"

    Franki turned on a dime and sprinted toward the dim glow of Jordan's phone from the opposite end of the hallway. Nina followed along with Luna and Lane pulling up the rear. As they got closer to the wooden staircase, they could hear the rhythmic banging against wood. They heard the snarling and gnashing of teeth. The wolf was making another attempt to force its way inside the chapel. Apparently, they weren't on hallowed ground. Or more accurately, the land the church was built on had originally, and currently belonged to that of the beast.

    By the time Lane emerged from the hole behind the pulpit, Franki and Nina had already joined Jordan at their makeshift barricade against the chapel door. The rotted wood had begun to splinter. The rusted screws attached to the frame had begun to bow outward as the beast rammed its massive head against the door.

    Lane quickly scanned the room; the boarded-up windows, the rotted and broken pews, the stage he stood upon. At last, his first bit of fortune this evening. Like any early twentieth-century protestant church, there was an ornate metal cross leaning against the corner of the wall. He quickly flipped through the pages in his Journal to 'Alchemy and Practical Application.' As fast as his hand could scrawl his charcoal pencil inscribed the necessary formula along the edge of the cross. The formula included six atomic elements, twelve transmutation characters, and a shit ton of math. He nearly ran out of space on the rusted cross. He'd repent for the sacrilege performed upon the Christian icon later... if he survived.

    Gracie was sobbing, wailing, "I don't wanna die!"

    Jordan, Franki, Nina, and Luna ignored her, pushing with all their might against the considerable strength of the otherworldly beast trying to force its way in from the other side.

    Lane approached the barricade, bearing the cross in hand like a sword.

    "Everybody cover your eyes," Lane shouted over the continued banging, scratching, and monstrous growling, "This is gonna be bright!"

    Jordan was about to protest, but Luna covered her eyes and forcibly turned the redhead's face away just before Lane touched the tip of his lighter to the cross. In an instant, the interior of the chapel burst into daylight. There was a deafening BOOM that shook the dust from the walls and ceiling. It felt as though the old chapel would collapse on top of them. At the tail end of the explosion, as the collective ringing in the councilors' ears died out, there was a pathetic, longing howl. The wolf's cry then came to an abrupt end.

    Franki rubbed her eyes. Bright spots still flooded her retina. She strained to see the outline of Lane standing in the door frame. The door itself had been blown outward into splinters scattered across Potter's Field. Her vision continued to return as she witnessed Lane pull something glowing white-hot out from the ground, out from the wolf's neck. When Franki's vision returned, she saw gripped tightly in the young man's hand was a bright, silver cross.

    "Werewolves," Nina whispered in awe.

    Lane shook his head using his shirt to wipe off the tar that'd been stuck on the tip of the cross, "Don't think this qualifies as a traditional werewolf, but I figured silver was worth a shot." He looked down at the steaming carcass of the wolf. It continued to dissolve into bubbling black tar and ink that sank into the soil.

    "To answer your question from earlier, Franki," Luna added breathlessly, "Demons? Yeah, we kill 'em."

---

    They'd run from the ruined church and found the path clear of any other obsidian beasts: the heralds of something terrible to come. The remaining councilors' eyes darted nervously, desperately trying to peer through the darkness and thick archway of branches and brush that encased the path to the staff parking lot. With each switchback, their nerves snapped at the unknown predatory waiting for them. Even as no predator revealed themselves, those who remained wound themselves up ever tighter, waiting for death to snatch them up at a moment's notice.

    Even armed with his newly forged silver cross, Lane's consciousness was on a razor's edge. Exhaustion, hunger, and the sheer amount of carnage packed into such a short time pushed him beyond his limits. One snap of a twig, or rustle of a branch, and he'd simply let instinct kick and start swinging.

    Luna on the other hand was busy digesting information. She was as equally drained as her twin, but full of new information, data. They'd found out something about the opponent they hadn't known before. This Deer Woman could be summoned AND banished. The native people of these lands had established some element of control over this deity or being. They'd made the ancient equivalent of a light switch for their god; turn the light on, and the Deer Woman appears. Perform the ritual the other way around and they send her away.

"If the summons works both ways," Luna wondered aloud within earshot of Lane, "What must have happened that made those people want to bury that ritual?

Lane's mind jerked away from survival mode to that empty canvas where billions of puzzle pieces get sorted into one, clear picture. As he'd trained himself to do, Lane started at the edges and worked his way inward. They'd encountered three heralds. Those three beasts preceded a supernatural entity: The Deer Woman. Someone or people had discovered a way to summon and banish that entity through ritual means. Why would you summon an entity in the first place?

"Enough with your higher power, bullshit," Jordan panted out in a hushed voice, "You really want another one of those things to hear us?"

Thanks to Jordan, some of those loose puzzle pieces snapped into place.

Still, in that almost dreamlike state of contemplation, Lane asked aloud, "What if they wanted a higher power to hear them?"

"That's not what I said," Jordan snapped, "Just... god... would you please stay quiet?"

Lane stopped running.

They'd reached the edge of the trail.

They'd reached the parking lot.

All of those that remained stood just within the archway of the path. They squinted into the nearly dark lot to see the cars, trucks, and vans that had delivered them to this godforsaken camp. All of them remained in the lot. This brought about two conflicting feelings within the six remaining councilors; neither Cole, Brandon, or Doc appeared to have made it out, contrasted with the fact that Lane and Luna's Jeep would provide them with an opportunity of escape the others would never get.

Lane's mind was still a canvas of puzzle pieces morphing into a complete picture as he whispered again, "They wanted a god to hear them."

Luna touched her brother's shoulder, mulling the words over in her mouth, "No, not they, or them. Him. HE wanted a god to listen."

Lane followed his sister's finger as she pointed just beyond the parking lot. There sat those same collections of rustic family cabins they'd noticed upon their arrival to Trillion Pines.

Only one cabin had its lights on. 

The Abidalli House.