Page 11

CHAPTER 11

Tasha.

She tilts her head, and her gaze flits to me and then to the others. She turns her attention back to the fireplace without uttering a single word. I rush forward, my arms outstretched. But she doesn’t reach for me. As soon as I touch her, a long, agonized cry escapes her throat, and then a terrible silence engulfs us.

Bezi rushes up, but I wave her away and slowly put my hands up in front of me. I take one step forward.

“Tasha. It’s okay. It’s me. It’s Charity.”

She steps back, and her bare feet against the wooden floor make a wet sound. That dark substance smeared across her body is blood, and her bare feet are trailing it across the floor. She holds her stomach with her bloodied hands.

I approach her slowly, speaking softly. “Tasha?” I whisper. I try to keep my voice calm, but I’m failing. “Tasha. I’m here. You’re safe now. What—what happened to you?”

“Char—Charity?” she asks like she’s unsure she recognizes me—one of her oldest friends. Her voice is hoarse, like she’s been crying or screaming for hours.

She angles herself toward me. The light from the kitchen illuminates the part of her body that had been in shadow, and I’m so utterly horrified by her horrendous injuries that I have to stifle the urge to vomit. Her right eye is swollen shut, the lid purple and bulging like the orb is trying to escape its socket. Blood and dirt are smeared across her entire face. Her bottom lip is split clean open, the pulpy pink insides pushing out. Her hair is caked with mud, and it’s hard to tell, but I think she’s missing some teeth.

I slowly put my hands on her bare arms as she holds them close to her body. She tenses at first, then relaxes just enough for me to see a long horizontal gash to her belly, and even though it’s caked with mud and bits of leaves and dead grass, I see something fleshy and pink and wet beneath. My heart sinks. Her insides are showing through the injury, and I’m having trouble understanding how she’s alive, much less on her feet.

Bezi clamps her hand over her mouth, stifling a sob. Kyle grabs a blanket from the couch and slips it around Tasha’s bare shoulders. She doesn’t flinch away or cry out, just tilts her head back and looks up at the ceiling. I grab the edges of the blanket and pull it closed in front of her, covering her horrible injury as if that will make it go away.

“What happened to you?” I ask again.

Tasha wobbles and as her legs buckle, Javier swoops in and catches her before she hits the floor. I grab her legs and help him lower her onto the couch. Her chest rises and falls in an erratic pattern, and a halting rasp gurgles from her throat.

“What the hell happened to her?” Javier asks as he kneels at her side, his hands trembling as he props a pillow under Tasha’s head.

Kyle rushes to the lodge doors and locks them. I eye the pile of chairs over the secret hatch in the kitchen.

“They’re right where we left them,” Kyle says, following my gaze.

“We gotta call the police,” Bezi says as she dabs at Tasha’s face with the sleeve of her sweatshirt.

“I—I think she’s in shock or something,” I say.

“No shit!” Javier says. “You see her stomach?”

“Shut up!” Bezi says through broken sobs. “Don’t talk about it.” She puts her hand on Tasha’s forehead. “Tasha, babes, you’re gonna be fine. I promise. Just hold on. We’re gonna get you some help.”

I take out my phone, but I already know what I’m going to see. “I don’t have a signal.” Tasha’s blood sticks under my nails, and my hands are shaking so bad, I can barely keep hold of my phone. “We have to go to the office to make the call from the landline.”

“No,” Tasha whispers.

I lean over her and gently take her face in my hands. “What? Tasha, what happened? We gotta get you some help.”

“No,” she says without looking at me. “Don’t . . . ?go. It’s—it’s out there.”

“What?” I lean in and put my ear close to her mouth to try and catch every word. The smell of blood and dirt wafts off her and turns my stomach over. “What’s out there?”

“The . . . the . . . the owl.” Tasha’s one visible eye rolls back until only the white part is showing. Her breathing becomes shallow.

“The owl,” I repeat.

“Ms. Keane was talking about an owl,” Javier says.

Bezi nods. “What are we going to do?”

“We can drive out now, right?” Javier asks.

Bezi perks up. “Get my keys out of my bag. We’ll take my car.”

Javier rushes to Bezi’s bag and dumps it on the floor. Kyle joins him and helps paw through the stuff.

“Where are they?” Kyle asks frantically. “Bezi, the keys. I can’t find them.”

Bezi leaves Tasha’s side and searches around in her bag, turning it inside out.

“I—I must have left them in the cabin?” she stammers in a haze of confusion.

“We cleared the cabins,” I say. The hair on the back of my neck stands on end. “Check your pockets,” I say as panic grips me. “Check the bag again!”

Unconscious, Tasha whimpers. I squeeze her hand. Something isn’t right, but we don’t have time to figure it out. Tasha doesn’t have time.

“Tasha?” I say gently. But it’s no use. She’s completely out of it. “We have to call an ambulance. Everybody, check your phones. Anybody have a signal?”

We all check our phones.

“I got one bar!” Bezi squeals. She immediately dials 911.

I hold my breath, praying that the call will connect.

“Hello?” Bezi says frantically as she practically jumps up and down in relief. “Hello? We need help! We’re at Camp Mirror Lake. Please!” She pauses and her brows push together. “What? Hello? No. Mirror Lake. The camp! Please!” She holds the phone away from her face, and tears fill her eyes. “The call dropped.”

“Do you think they heard anything you said?” Kyle asks. “Will they send somebody?”

“I—I don’t know,” Bezi says.

Kyle slumps onto the recliner with his head in his hands. “This cannot be happening.”

Javier moves toward the door, slipping on his coat. “I’m going to the office to call an ambulance from the landline.”

Kyle looks up. “Whoever did that to her is still out there, and you’re just gonna go for a fuckin’ stroll?”

“What else are we supposed to do?” Javier asks angrily. “Just let her die?”

Kyle shakes his head. “No. But—”

“But nothing,” Javier says. “I’d go look for Bezi’s keys, but I feel like I’d be wasting time. I’m going to the office. You all keep looking. I’ll be right back.”

For the first time in the last few days, it seems like he’s genuinely concerned about somebody other than himself.

“I’ll go with you,” Bezi says.

I start to protest, but Javier beats me to it.

“Nah,” he says. “I’ll be okay. Stay with her.” He moves to the front window and peers out into the dark. “I’ll take a flashlight. Once I’m inside with the door locked, I’ll flash the light on and off three times; that way you know I’m safe. I’ll call an ambulance and the police; then we’ll all get outta here and never come back. Sound like a plan?”

I nod as Javier slips a flashlight in his pocket and tenses his entire body like he’s getting ready to run a race. Kyle gets up and opens the door for him, and Javier bolts down the steps, disappearing into the dark. Kyle slams the door shut, locking it, and I crane my neck at the window to try and track Javier. I see the reflective yellow stripe on the back of his coat as he books it to the front office. A few moments later, three flashes come from the window and I exhale a sigh of relief.

“He’s in,” I say. “He’s safe.”

Tasha stirs, and I rush to her side as Bezi takes hold of her hand. Tasha groans, and her hands open and close into fists.

“I know it hurts,” Bezi says. “Try not to move too much.”

I grab a stack of hand towels from the kitchen and bring them back to the couch. I gently lift the blanket covering Tasha’s belly. A terrible sinking feeling settles over me as I get a good look at the wound. I make my face a mask, but inside I want to scream. I press the towels against the wound, and Tasha groans.

Tasha is dying.

If we don’t get her some help soon, she is not going to make it.

“Por—Porter and Paige,” Tasha whispers through her swollen and bloodied lips. Her eye flutters open, and she tries to turn over, but the pain steals her breath, and she rests her head back against the couch cushion.

“Where are they?” I ask gently. “Tasha, please. What happened to them?”

“They—they’re out. They’re still out there.”

“Where?” I ask. “Where are they, Tasha? You went to Ms. Keane’s house, right?”

She nods, then winces. “Somebody was watching. We ran . . . the other way. The trees . . . were . . . black. Little owls . . . ?on the trunk.” She takes a deep, wavering breath. “Then there was—this place. In the trees.” She grips my arm. “The owl. It’s killing us.”

She lapses into unconsciousness and I sit back, my throat tight, my mind racing.

“Paige and Porter are out there,” Bezi says. “If the same thing that happened to Tasha is happening to them, Charity . . .” She covers her mouth with trembling fingers.

She doesn’t have to say anything else. I’m sure I’m thinking the same thing she is. Paige is our friend and so is Porter. They are in trouble, and whatever happened to Tasha wasn’t an accident. Somebody did that to her, and our friends are still out there.

I go back to the window and look toward the office. I can see the glow from Javier’s flashlight bouncing around inside, but I can’t see him. He’s had plenty of time to make the call.

“Help is on the way,” I say. “But I don’t think I can wait. Paige and Porter are out there right now.”

“What are you saying?” Kyle asks. “You want to go back out there?”

Bezi looks at me quizzically. “Charity, I know you wanna help, but maybe we should wait for the police.”

“Paige and Porter can’t wait,” I say, feeling like I don’t have any good options left. “It’s gonna take forty minutes for the police to get up here and then who knows how long to organize a search. We don’t have that kind of time.”

Bezi shakes her head. “We don’t even know who or what is out there. Why does Tasha keep talking about an owl? And Ms. Keane said the same thing. What does that even mean?”

I slip a flashlight into my pocket and pull on a cardigan. “I don’t know. But I’m going.”

Bezi jumps up. “You can’t go alone.”

I turn to Kyle, who looks like he’s about to be sick.

“You stay here with Tasha until Javier comes back and the ambulance shows up, okay?” I say to Kyle. “Keep the doors locked and stay away from the windows.”

“This is a bad idea,” he says.

“I know,” I say. “But I don’t have any better choices.”

“Just stay here till Javier gets back,” Kyle says. He’s on the verge of tears. “Please just stay.”

I squeeze his arm. “We’ll be okay. We’re gonna retrace Tasha’s steps, but we’re not going anywhere near Ms. Keane’s property. Tasha said they went the other way, so I’m thinking they continued on toward the next mile marker. We’ll go see what we can find and get back here as soon as we can. When the ambulance shows up, just go with Tasha and Javier to the hospital, okay?”

He shakes his head and stands up. “No. I want to stay and make sure you come back.”

“No,” I say firmly. “Get Tasha out of here. Don’t wait for us. Just tell the police where we went and send them after us. Hopefully we’ll run into them on the way back.”

Kyle leans down and gives me a hug, and I can feel his heart pounding out of his chest. I move toward the door, and as Kyle unlocks it, I glance back at Tasha.

“I got her,” Kyle says. “Please. Be careful.”

Bezi and I go out onto the front steps. I glance toward the office, and Javier’s light is gone from the window.

“Let’s go,” I say to Bezi. “I want to find them and get back.”

We sprint to the path behind the supply shed, squeeze through the gate, and make our way down Route 710.

As we approach mile marker seventy, we turn off our flashlights and move in absolute silence as Ms. Keane’s partially obscured driveway comes into view. My heart rattles around in my chest as a thin film of sweat blankets my brow. We’ve been alternating between running and walking, trying to get to wherever it is we’re going as fast as possible. As we approach Ms. Keane’s drive, I struggle to keep my breaths quiet.

Bezi grabs hold of my jacket as we stay close to the tree line on the opposite side of the road. When we clear the immediate area, we switch on our flashlights and continue on.

I’ve never been so far down Route 710. In my mind, I expect that it will continue for miles and miles into the vast wilderness beyond Camp Mirror Lake, but as we pass mile marker seventy-one, the paved road comes to an abrupt end. The broken concrete crumbles away and transitions into a flat stretch of dirt road littered with fallen trees and overgrown underbrush.

“You think they would have gone that way?” I ask, shining my light into the trees. I squat down and try to catch my breath. “What do we do? They could have kept going, right? They’re on foot, so maybe they went that way? A car couldn’t make it but on foot . . . maybe.”

I turn to Bezi, who’s pointing her light into the trees just to the right of the main road.

“Bezi?” I ask.

She’s got her light trained on a single tree. It’s an oak, but its trunk is so black that it looks like a void in the already darkened forest. There is something carved into the base of the tree. I swing my light to the same spot and see a pair of carved eyes staring back at me.

“What is that?” Bezi asks.

I move closer to examine the carving and find that the blackened bark of the tree isn’t natural. Some kind of pigment coats the trunk from the root to about twelve feet off the ground. I run my hand over the bark.

“I think it’s paint,” I say.

Near the base, the pale inner flesh of the tree is exposed where a small owl is carved. Its features are worn but it’s clearly an owl—the oversize eyes, hint of a beak, wings tucked close to its sides.

Something stirs in the deepest part of my memory—that place where only images exist and not in a way that makes any real sense. In my mind’s eye, I see the painted face of an owl. It’s in a sketchbook done in pencil. There’s someone there and then—nothing.

“You okay?” Bezi asks.

I shake my head, and the images dissolve like smoke in the open air.

“I think I’ve seen this before.”

Bezi’s brows push up. “What? Where?”

“I don’t know. I can’t remember.”

Bezi and I stand in silence for a moment before I decide it doesn’t matter.

Bezi crouches down and runs her fingers over the carving. “What do you think it means?”

“No clue,” I say. I sweep the light around, and it falls on a path about the width of a sidewalk that leads directly into the woods behind the tree with the owl carving.

“Where do you think that goes?” Bezi asks.

“I don’t know, but if Tasha and the others got turned around out here, maybe she followed the path? She mentioned the owls. This has to be the way she went.”

Bezi shrugs. “I don’t want us to get lost. You might be the final girl, but that’s not really making me feel better right now.”

I grasp her hand. “If you wanna go back, I understand.”

Bezi shakes her head. “I’m not leaving you. Me and you till the end of the world, right?”

I kiss her gently on the cheek, taking just the smallest pause to feel the tenderness of this moment. I have a terrible feeling about what lies ahead, but Bezi and I are in this together, to whatever end.

We keep our fingers laced together as we step onto the path. The forest is a black void on either side of the trail. The noises echoing out are familiar—the beating of bird wings, the scurrying of tiny feet through the underbrush. But every few yards, there is a break deep in the woods where the light from my flashlight cannot reach. I tell myself it’s a deer, a fox, something that belongs here and not the images my mind has conjured of some unnaturally large birdlike creature. Bezi is squeezing my hand so hard that my bones ache, but I don’t say anything. The pain keeps me alert, reminds me that I’m out here with one thing to do—find Porter and Paige.

We trudge down the trail for thirty minutes before coming to another oak tree whose trunk has been painted black, a small owl carved at the base. Another trail extends beyond it, snaking off into the blackness.

“Somebody put these carvings here,” Bezi whispers. “Why?”

“I think they’re like the mile markers on the road,” I say as we push on down the new stretch of pathway. “Like guideposts or something.”

“Leading where?” Bezi asks.

I shrug. “I don’t know, but Tasha was out here, running from something, and she was terrified. She was injured so bad. Something happened. I just—” I suddenly feel like I can see a little farther into the trees. I can see a little more of the night sky overhead. “The trees are thinning.”

Ahead, there’s a flickering orange light. I gently squeeze Bezi’s arm and quietly lead her off the path into the cover of the trees. I click off my flashlight and press my finger to my lips in a plea for silence. Bezi covers her mouth with her hands and crouches down as I switch off her flashlight for her. Just ahead, there is a clearing and what looks like some kind of wooden platform illuminated by a large torch.

“Somebody is out here,” I whisper against Bezi’s ear.

Keeping close to the ground, I inch forward, crawling on my stomach across the dirt and dead leaves. After a few minutes, I have a clear view of the opening among the trees. It’s a large open airspace. A wooden platform in the shape of a crescent stands beneath a massive oak tree. It reminds me of an outdoor amphitheater. Opposite the stagelike platform are three tiers of wooden risers—seating for at least a hundred people.

I press myself flat against the ground as Bezi crawls up beside me.

“What is this place?” I ask.

Bezi shrugs and sinks lower in the brush. We watch in complete silence for several long minutes. There is no movement, no sound, and after a while, I slowly stand up.

“What are you doing?” Bezi whisper-yells. “Get down!”

I’m only thinking about how much time we’ve already wasted by hiding in the bushes. Porter and Paige can’t wait around for us to work up the courage to find them.

“Come on.”

The flashlight stays off as I lead Bezi out of the brush and into the open space ahead. The path leads us right into it. The blazing torch casts a hazy orange glow all around. I scan the area again, listening. There’s no one here, but somebody had to have been, and recently. The torch snaps and crackles as the fire consumes the end of it.

“Charity,” Bezi says, her voice nothing more than a whisper. “We shouldn’t be here. This is all wrong.”

I climb onto the crescent-shaped platform and walk from one side to the other. The trunk of the giant oak that stands directly behind it is carved—a pattern of overlapping triangular eaves. The torchlight illuminates only the very bottom part of the tree, so I switch on my flashlight and swing the light up where a pair of shining black eyes stares back at me. I stumble back and Bezi gasps. The tree trunk has been carved into the likeness of a giant owl. It looms over us. Set in its eye sockets are polished black stones, and the firelight reflected in them gives them a lifelike appearance. Part of me wonders if it’s alive, if this is the figure Ms. Keane spoke of. I picture it opening its pointed beak, grasping me in its taloned claws.

A shudder runs through my body, and as I step back to take in the entirety of the massive carving, my foot nearly slips out from under me. I steady myself and point my flashlight at the wooden planks beneath my sneakers.

“It’s wet,” I say. “This whole area right here.” I crouch down and touch the damp planks, a watery substance coating my fingers, and as I examine it in the light, I’m almost 100 percent sure it’s blood that somebody has tried to clean up by flooding the area with water.

“Look,” Bezi says. She’s got her light pointed at another path that snakes off the opposite side of the outdoor amphitheater.

I wipe my hands on my jeans and march toward the path with Bezi at my heel. This pathway is paved and much narrower than the others. The trees and shrubbery that run alongside it are neatly trimmed.

Ahead, a large structure unfolds out of the darkness. Bezi and I find ourselves in the shadow of a massive lodge. Three stories high, it looks similar to the Western Lodge but is triple the size, and its entrance is flanked by two massive carved owls. The upper windows are dark and some are boarded up. A tangle of twisted thorny vines snakes its way up the facade of the building. The path leading to the front steps is smooth and even. Lying directly in the center of it is a shoe.

I rush forward and snatch it up. It’s covered in mud and the laces are undone, but I recognize it as soon as I wipe it off with the hem of my shirt. It’s a red sneaker with a yellow swoosh on the side.

“Porter.”

I take a step toward the building, but Bezi grabs my arm and pulls me back.

“We cannot go in there,” she says.

“Why not?”

Bezi shakes her head. “Think about what happened to Tasha. Maybe the person who did that to her is in there. What do you think they’ll do to us? Nah. We gotta get out of here and get some help.”

“We don’t have time to go back. We’re here right now.” I glance around. I hold up the shoe. “This is Porter’s. He was here. He might be in there. Maybe Paige too.”

Bezi runs her hands over the sides of her face. “I know. I just—”

“You’re scared,” I say. “Look at me. I’m scared out of my mind right now, but we gotta get Paige and Porter, and then we’ll get as far away from here as we can. I don’t care if we have to walk out.”

Bezi nods. “If we’re going in, let’s not just walk through the front door.”

We switch off our flashlights as we bypass the main entrance and move around the side of the building. I peer through the dingy windows, but the screens are so caked with dust and debris that it’s hard to make out anything inside. At the rear of the building, there is another entrance, a doorway whose actual door has long since disappeared.

Stepping over the threshold, the scent of rot fills my nose. My eyes water and my throat feels tight. I hold still, hoping no one is here to notice our presence but also desperately praying that Porter is hiding somewhere inside.

A half dozen rooms occupy the first floor of the massive lodge. We sweep through a maze of empty sitting rooms and linen closets, almost all of them bare except for dead leaves and mice. The long center hall opens into an expansive foyer. A broken chandelier hangs from a rusted chain, and portraits of various pompous-looking men in strange black robes hang on the walls.

To the right of the double-spiral staircase that leads to the upper floors, there is a room whose intricately carved double doors sit slightly ajar. I push them the rest of the way open and find an office with a massive desk in the center. A taxidermic snow owl is perched on top of it. The room is ringed by built-in shelves, and they are all filled with moldering books.

I run my hand along the spines and read some of the titles aloud. “Geological History of Upstate New York. Myths and Legends.” I glance at Bezi, who is standing in front of a large, framed photo hung on the wall. “Who the hell was living out here?”

“The Owl Society,” Bezi says.

“Who?”

Her gaze doesn’t move from the photo, and I join her in front of it.

Bezi runs her fingers across a dusty silver plaque set into the bottom of the framed photograph. “It says The Owl Society, 1840.”

The black-and-white photo shows a bunch of men standing on a large platform. As I lean in and shine my flashlight on the picture, I realize that it’s set in the same location we’d just come from—the outdoor amphitheater in the grove. The photo is blurry, darker around the edges and lighter at the center. The men stand in three rows, but the faces of the ones in the back are unrecognizable. The owl carved into the oak looms over them, and a bright spot on the edge of the frame matches up to where the burning torch had been positioned.

“This has to be what Ms. Keane was talking about,” I say. “She kept saying them. It’s gotta be this Owl Society, right?”

Bezi nods as she circles the room. “It’s a secret society?”

“Looks like it. But what are—were they doing?” It occurs to me in that moment that maybe this so-called Owl Society isn’t some relic of the long-forgotten past. Somebody hurt Tasha, and Porter and Paige are missing.

On the wall next to the large photograph, there are smaller portraits in heavy brass and silver frames. Individuals in the same seated pose, all of them wearing black cloaks. The photos go from black-and-white to sepia to full color. Each portrait adorned with a small plaque.

Henry Woodsworth Hayward

Grand Owl, 1856

Johnathan Laurens Montevallo

Grand Owl, 1867

Lawrence Ulrich Davis

Grand Owl, 1872

More portraits ring the room, each of them featuring a man in the same pose, the same steely look in his eyes.

“What’s a Grand Owl?” Bezi asks. “I don’t like the way that sounds at all.”

I’m not sure, but it looks like each of the men was a leader of this Owl Society at some point. The newest portrait is dated 1973.

“I wonder what happened after 1973,” Bezi says. “They just disappeared?”

I think about Tasha and about what Ms. Keane said. Is it possible they’re still here? I suddenly feel the urge to bolt from the lodge and run as fast as I can back to the camp. I take Bezi’s hands and prepare to do just that when something stops me.

A sound.

I hold my breath and angle my head toward the hall. “Do you hear that?”

Bezi stares at me wide-eyed, listening.

A muffled shriek sounds from somewhere nearby. I glance toward the window, still not daring to breathe. It sounds again and sends a bolt of unfiltered terror straight through me. It is the sound a person makes when they’re in pain—when they’re terrified. Tasha had made that noise when I approached her in the lodge, and someone else is making it now.

I glance down at my feet. The sound bleeds out of the cracks between the wooden floorboards, as if the house itself is screaming.

Bezi takes out her phone, glances at the screen, and shakes her head. Still no signal. We are alone and I have to make another snap decision. Everything in me is telling me to run away from this place as fast as I can and never look back, but the scream sounds again, and I swear there are words mixed in with the agonized cries. Help me.

I take a deep breath and try to put my thoughts together. “I need to find a way downstairs. Let’s look for some stairs or a door or something.”

Bezi nods, but I can see the hesitation in her pinched expression.

I lead her out into the hall and tiptoe through the corridor, looking for a way to the lower levels of the lodge. We move silently past a dated kitchen and I stop.

“What’s wrong?” Bezi asks.

I duck inside the kitchen and approach the center island. It’s strewn with bits of decayed leaves and broken sticks. Above me, the beams inside the ceiling are exposed, and the plaster that once covered them is scattered across the floor. I step through the pieces and pick up the thing that had caught my eye. It’s a camera.

“Oh shit, Charity, is that Paige’s camera?” Bezi asks.

I turn it over in my hands and press the “On” button. The little LED screen flickers to life, and I press the left arrow to scroll back through the photos. There are pictures of Bezi and Paige in the car. They’re making faces and smiling wide. A knot crawls up my throat. I press the arrow over and over until I come to a series of photos taken in the dark without a flash.

There’s a torch in the foreground, and a few hooded figures are gathered together. Trees crowd the frame. I press the button again, and the next photo shows the wooden platform in the grove. The hooded figures are standing atop it, and they have their hands raised in front of a man who is shirtless and bound at the wrists. I use the camera’s zoom feature to look closely at the shirtless man’s face. His eyes are wide, his mouth is slightly parted, and there is blood on his neck.

“Who is that?” Bezi asks as she peers down at the screen.

My mouth suddenly feels dry, and my hands begin to tremble. “I—I think it’s Felix.”

Bezi looks at me. “Felix?”

“He was supposed to run the office.” My mind runs in circles. “He missed his shift. I thought he quit.”

Bezi puts her hand on my shoulder, and I press the button to look at the next picture even though I’m scared to death of what I might see. The photo’s a blur. The hooded figures are hazy, and Felix is lying on his back on the platform in the exact same spot where we’d found the bloody spot someone had tried to wash away. There’s nothing after that. I turn the camera off and set it back down. I have to grip the edge of the counter to steady myself as a terrible thought claws its way to the front of my mind. “Heather and Jordan were no-shows too.”

Bezi blinks once, twice, and then three times before she makes the connection.

“We need to keep moving,” I say, pushing all those other thoughts aside. “Let’s find Porter and Paige and get out of here.”

Bezi nods, and we leave the kitchen, continuing down the hall. I find a narrow doorway near the rear of the lodge that is fitted with a series of dead bolts, but each of them is in the open position.

I exchange glances with Bezi, then put my palm against the door, grasping the handle with my other hand. I ease it open, hoping it doesn’t protest too loudly. As I slowly pull it open, a faint orange light permeates the dark somewhere below. A narrow flight of stairs leads down into a hallway.

I take the steps one at a time, easing myself onto each one, then pausing as Bezi follows behind me. When we emerge into the hallway below, there is only one door at the very end, and it is sitting open.

A chorus of voices filters out, and the sound echoes down the hall. I can’t make out what is being said but it sounds rhythmic, almost like a song. I grip my hands together to steady the trembling. From where I’m standing, I can just make out the subtle movement of shadows against the rear wall of the room at the end of the hall.

I duck down, pressing my back to the wall. “There are people in there,” I whisper as Bezi ducks down beside me.

“What are they doing?” she whispers back.

I slowly stand and, keeping my back to the wall, make my way to the open door. Peering around the corner, I expect to find myself looking into another room, but instead there is a large rough-cut void, a cavernous opening that looks like it was carved out of the bedrock. It’s sunken even lower than the hall we’re standing in. A sloping ramp leads down to the floor of the cave-like room lit by a series of torches. There’s a large structure in the center of the earthen floor. It looks like a wide wooden plank sticking straight out of the ground. Four figures in hooded black robes stand staring up at it, but from my position, I can’t see what they’re looking at. A strong odor of burned wood and something sweet, like incense, wafts into my face.

An unintelligible chant erupts from the room and Bezi jumps, knocking her knee against the open door. We duck back and try not to move or breathe. The chanting continues in a language I don’t understand. And then someone begins to speak.

“Come forth,” a gruff voice says.

One of the hooded figures steps forward and raises their arms toward the wooden structure. The chanting gets louder, becomes a frenzied loop of sounds. A hum permeates the air. The person’s head drops, and I look at the ground in front of them. A dark substance is spilled across the earthen floor.

The deep, gruff voice speaks again. “Claim your power. Know that it will be yours. Accept no other outcome.”

The hooded figure who had stepped forward begins to tremble under their robes.

“We have suffered terrible losses,” the deep voice says. “But we will recover what once was ours. Through the blood. Through the ritual. Through the water.”

I slowly lean forward to look into the cave again. The other three people in the robes have circled up in front of the wooden structure. They’re entranced by whatever is on the side that’s facing them, but I still can’t see what it is. Suddenly, a figure steps into view, unfolding out of the shadows like a ghost materializing from the ether. I cup my hand over my mouth to keep from screaming.

An owl the size of a very tall person stands in the dancing firelight. Its mottled white and brown feathers are luminescent in the low light. Its eyes are like the ones in the carved effigy behind the crescent-shaped wooden platform in the grove—black and glinting. It moves to the center of the room.

“We have suffered losses, but our time has come once more,” it says in the same gruff voice.

It takes me a moment to register that this is a man in a costume, but somehow, understanding that doesn’t make it any better.

“We will reclaim our glory through blood, ritual, and the water,” he continues. “Can you feel it?” He stretches out his bare arms and opens and closes his hands. “We are already on our way. We will return to the camp and use the ones who remain to solidify our position. We will feed the ravenous land. We will take what is rightfully ours.”

The four onlookers bow low as they pull away their hoods and train their gazes on the strange wooden structure. There is suddenly a terrible ache in the pit of my stomach, an ominous feeling that takes my breath away—a crushing and all-consuming dread.

The people approach the structure and place their hands on it. With a groan, it rolls back, exposing the forward-facing side. There is something affixed to the front of it. Bezi gasps, and then the rush of blood in my ears blots out every other sound.

Porter’s broken, bloody body is pinned to the wooden structure.

His eyes are open and blank, staring into nothingness. His gut is slit open, and everything that was inside is now on the outside. I begin to scream. I cannot stop myself.