Page 90 of Into the Dark, We Go

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Chapter Twenty-Five

September, 2020

"I’m still tryingto wrap my head around it." Mitchell, like the rest of us, was struggling to put the pieces together. "So you think it’s some kind of cult or something?"

"Possibly," Nick said half-heartedly, his attention riveted to the laptop screen.

We’d gathered in the living room after dinner, wide awake despite the late hour, thanks to Mitch’s insistence on a group discussion. June lolled on the couch, her elbow digging into the armrest, her head resting in her hand. I sat opposite her, mirroring her pose, my eyelids heavy with fatigue.

"And they’re out there worshippingsomethingin the woods?" Her brother paced the room.

Nick grunted a brief, "I guess", still deeply engrossed in his reading.

Mitchell halted in his tracks. "And what’s with the blood? Is this some kinda twisted self-hypnosis deal?"

"Maybe it’s magic," June said behind a yawn.

Nick shot her a disapproving look over the rim of his laptop.

Mitchell, ever the skeptic, rubbed the back of his neck. His years of military service had occasionally brought him into contact with weird stories. Still, as he said himself, he had never encountered anything that couldn’t be explained by logic and reason.

"Let’s think about it," he suggested, "If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it must be a duck."

"So?" June said with a heavy sigh. "What kind of fucked up duck is that?"

That was a good question—one I’d been asking myself, too. What would drive people to vanish, make blood rituals effective, and inspire that kind of terror?

"If that’s just a cult," I asked, "why was the Reverend scared of the symbol?"

"He wasn’t scared of the symbol." Nick closed his laptop, either not finding what he was looking for or giving up altogether. "He was scared of what’s behind it."

Mitchell chuckled. "Like what? A demon or something?"

Nick got up without a word, and at first, I thought he was leaving the conversation, fed up with Mitchell’s skepticism. But he returned, napkin and pen in hand. He clicked the pen a few times, then drew two perpendicular lines on the crumpled square of paper.

We all watched, holding our collective breath, as if Nick had taken it upon himself to perform magic tricks to convince us.

He held the drawing up and asked, "What do you see?"

June scrutinized the piece. "It’s just a cross," she replied dismissively.

"And what does it mean to you?"

The girl shrugged. "I dunno... Jesus?"

"God?" I added.

"We see a symbol and we give it meaning," Nick pointed at the cross on his paper. "Or we have an idea and we give it a form.And then it shapes our thoughts further, gathers power as more people believe it, protect it, kill for it, even."

June was fidgeting uncomfortably.

"Are you talking about crusades?" I asked.

"That’s one example," Nick put the paper back on the table. "Symbols help channel belief. Focus intent. If enough people believe in the power of a sigil, it becomes something more."

"It’s just a drawing," June winced.