Chapter Five
October 30th, 11:28 PM
She went in and out of this world, unsure what was real and what was a dream, trying to hold onto reality but being beaten back, again and again, by her brain...
They had given her something... drugs... they'd held her in place and he'd tugged up her spandex and he... stuck her... with...
A demon hissing... a werewolf howling... a zombie moaning... a vampire cackling...
The old man... Randy... a face now larger than her, it was chasing her through the corn, it was chomping at her heels, he was going to get her... oh god... oh god...
They held her tight, picked her up... took her downstairs... outside... put her down...
The low rumble of an engine... a truck... the cool air... ropes sinking into her bare flesh...
Her mask being removed, over and over... her arms pinned behind her... her taser being rammed into her thigh... her lips pushed apart by a gag... her gloves being used as a gag... her costume ripped too shreds... no... no...
The cry of a raven, the crack of thunder, something passing across the moon, the sinister formation of clouds...
Four others...
Margot...
A pause... and more holding, more moving... standing up straight... her wrists and ankles bound... all over... all over...
Erin blinked rapidly. She was awake. She was alive. She was... frightened.
"Stop it," she thought to herself. "Stop it!" The Blue Lynx wasn't supposed to feel this way! And yet, she couldn't prevent her heart from racing, her head from pounding, her teeth from chattering. She couldn't help being scared, and she couldn't move, either: she had been fastened to a sort of wooden scaffold, her bare hands lashed over her with thick rope, her bare feet bound together where the structure met the dirt. Wherever she was, she wouldn't be going anywhere, and her captivity only made her heart race even faster, her head pound ever harder...
She looked around. The night was dark, but a large fire some twenty feet ahead of her illuminated a series of figures. There were the men who had overpowered her, of course: the four oversized goons dressed as Halloween monsters, joined now by the hockey-mask-wearing man at the start of the maze (where did he come from?). They stood near the fire, looking out at the five other figures arranged around the flames in loose pentagon: Erin, Margot, and the three other women, each tied to her own scaffold. Parked in front of one of the blonde women, shamelessly ogling her unconscious body, was Randy, now dressed in a loose-fitting black tunic.
Erin screamed at the top of her lungs, but the cloth gag stuffed in her mouth made it come out as "MMMPH!" Nobody could hear her cries for help-- nobody except for the men who had gagged her, who turned their heads in her direction-- and, scanning the scene again, Erin wasn't sure if even an unmuffled shout could be detected out here. They were in a round, flat circle of dirt, surrounded by closely packed trees. They had been moved to a forest, and though Erin couldn't see anything past what the ring the fire illuminated, she suspected it was far away from houses, people... from anyone who might be able to help them.
She'd had a chance to save the day. She could've been more careful about freeing Margot-- the two of them together could've easily defeated the bad guys. But even on her own, in a four-on-one... the Blue Lynx had been there before. Taking down scores of guys twice her size was practically a routine for her. So what was different about this time? Had Erin just been too cocky, too reckless, too invested in "Halloween fun" to see how dangerous these men were? Or had the Blue Lynx just finally met her match: a team of men, working together like a hive mind, who were strong enough and smart enough to capture her? She couldn't believe how tightly they'd held her, how effortlessly they'd twisted her body to their liking, how decisively they'd taken off her mask...
A word appeared in the fog of her brain, at first dim and poorly outlined, and then, through repetition, bold and impossible to misread: DOOMED. She was doomed. Margot was doomed. They were all doomed.
She had been so lost in a dark reverie that she didn't see Randy approach, his hands clasped behind his back.
"My finest prize of all," he drawled, giving Erin his signature once-over. "I feel happy for the one who gets to have you." He laughed to himself. "Though I reckon I get to have all of you, in due time."
Erin blinked. "Mmph?" she asked. What the hell was this old creep talking about?
"I'm an old, old man, Miss Steele," he continued. "I've been peering at an abyss for decades now. I was pretty dang certain I'd be goin' there soon, too, until earlier this year, I found this..."
From behind his back, Randy pulled a grey hardcover book with gold letters.
"It was in the basement of the spook house. Didn't look like much, at first-- just some ol' tome of my daddy's. But I got to readin' in, yes ma'am, and lemme tell you, it's got some ideas in it. Ideas about life and death. Ideas about forestalling death in exchange for young lives..."
Erin instinctively shook at her ropes fastening her limbs to the wooden structure, but to no avail. Doomed. Doomed. Doomed.
"The Master Ritual can only occur within the hour of Halloween. The Master Ritual requires the gathering of five girls. The Master Ritual will convert your youth and vitality into my youth and vitality."
"MMMPH!" Erin cried. Her eyes were frantically darting between Randy, the other goons, and the bound women. She could see that Margot was awake now, that she was been ogled by the zombie and the demon; that she was wriggling in her bonds, but with no more success than Erin had.
Doomed. Doomed...
"Beginnings and endings. Birth and death. Sex and sacrifice. Climax and falling action. These are the elements of the Master Ritual. These are the dualities that will cure me of my... mortality..."
Randy removed a pocket watch from a fold of his tunic and squinted at it in the low light. "A quarter till. We should begin."
He turned around toward the thugs and raised his hands. No words were spoken, but the message was loud and clear: the five men dispersed, each moving quietly toward one of the bound and gagged women. As Randy walked away from Erin and situated himself near the fire, the vampire marched past and took his place admiring the helpless, squirming Blue Lynx. It took less than ten seconds for her new suitor to have his right hand behind her back and grabbing her ass.
"MMPHH!!!" Erin screamed, feeling sharp fingernails knead into her skin. "MMMMPHH!!!" She put all of her strength into shaking him off, but her jiggling form only seemed to intensify the vampire's touch, his cruel hand already exploring the tenuous boundary between her costume and her most secret places...
Erin heard shouting. She looked up and saw Randy, the grey book open in his hand, his body a dark silhouette against the raging fire. He was screaming at the top of his lungs, using sounds that didn't seem like words-- an incomprehensible babble thrown up to the night sky.
"HAGUNGA! HAGUNGA RANGA RANGA ROW! HAGUNGA RUNGA RUNGA RAG!"
The old man fell to his knees, dropping the book to the dirt. His hands clamped down on the ground, and he began to chant with a slow, hypnotic rhythm.
Five women for the sacrifice
Five men to make them come
Five times five times all a life
A neverending sum
Erin's heart raced, her head pounded, her body shook, her voice shuddered. It was all arriving with devastating clarity: the purpose of the ritual, and her role within it, and that word again and again impressed itself on her brain: Doomed. Doomed. Doomed.
She looked down and saw the vampire slowly float his left hand between her legs.
OR
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