Ritual

Invocamus diabolum...

Kierra opened her eyes. Her head was pounding.

Invocamus diabolum septum espiritus...

The world around her was dark. She was wet and cold.

Invocamus diabolum septum espiritum nobis tribuat...

She breathed deeply. Too deeply. Fetid water exploded into her nose and shot into her lungs with the force of a fire hose. She sat up quickly, coughing and sputtering. Brown sludge expelled from her nose and mouth, a shotgun of snot and rancid water.

The water left a coppery tang on her tongue. It tasted of fish poop, dirt, and rot. Although she had spat as much of it out as she could, the offensive taste still stung.

A quick glance around did little to calm her nerves. She was sitting in a pond of stagnant water. Moss covered so much of the surface that it would be easy not to realize it was a pond until you fell right into it.

Is that what happened? She wondered. Did I fall into the pond and hit my head?

Drums pounding, voices chanting, words she didn't recognize intoned over and over, guttural words, words spoken rapturously, voices that bounced off the

Trees were sprinkled throughout the pond, thrust upward through its murky face like the fingers of some ancient titan that had drowned underneath an ocean of filth. There were no leaves on the trees. Crooked, naked branches twisted off from each trunk at wicked angles, knives poking out of the titan's flesh. The leaves that once adorned the trees lay rotting on the pond, choked by the mulch that covered the surface.

"I'm in the bogwood," she said aloud.

Her fingers scrabbled at the ground, trying to stop them, they were dragging her, taking her deeper into the bog, pulling her down with them, and they were strong, so strong, so

So still and quiet was the air around her that her own voice startled her. Her words felt like an intrusion, as though she was little more than an invasive species that had wormed its way into a perfectly content and peaceful world. The woods around her seemed to lean in, knife-branches reaching for her, infuriated at her for breaking the silent spell. The stillness of the water was broken up only by the ripples that she created when she sat up. The sound of creaking wood echoed all around her, giving chase after her spoken words as if to arrest them and force them back down her throat until she choked on them.

She had to get out of here.

Kierra told her body to get on its feet and leap up out of the water. Instead, what happened was slow. Her legs lifted her out of the water, but at a snail's pace. Rather than leaping out of the pond, she turned slowly and trudged up through the mud and onto the shore. Something was wrong. Why couldn't she move faster?

Something liquid, something burning, forced down her throat, the drums thrummed on and on, the voices rising to a cackling cry, and then she heard one voice, the voice of the

One foot up, the other foot after. Kierra was doing her best to trudge up the short embankment, but her body still wasn't cooperating. Her mind felt like it was sloughing through just as much mud and muck as her body was. Every thought, every command felt like fighting uphill through a slow-moving mudslide. It was like she was in a dream where she was getting chased, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't run any faster.

Rough ropes on her wrists, cinching her tight; no, not rope, vines, coarse vines that abraded her skin, wearing her wrists raw, imprisoning her on the

Rock stabbed up through the sludge and into the soft meat of her bare foot. She pitched forward. Her left hand found a briar patch as she tried to catch herself. Thorns stabbed into her palm and scraped along her fingers. Mud and moss softened the impact on her face, but flooded into her mouth and nose as if they required a grotesque tax for cushioning the blow.

Mud and blood rubbed all over her, covering her skin, slicking her hair, long, gray fingers all over her, long-dead fingers, corpses preserved by the bog but betrayed by their cold skin, that cold flesh touching hers and now her skin was

Crawling gingerly through the briar patch, Kierra made her way out of the mud surrounding the pond. She clambered back to her feet and tried to decide which way to go. She couldn't get her bearings. Most people in town didn't venture into the bog; they were too scared of the way the trees whispered. She had lived near these woods her entire life, and yet had absolutely no clue where she was...or which direction lead home.

Kierra picked a direction and started walking (or, more accurately, shambling). The ground became hard for a few yards, and then soft again. Thick green moss stretched across every inch of earth in front of her. The moist ground gave way with each step, sinking in and rising up, swelling around her foot as her weight pushed the underground water away. It felt like hiking across the world's largest waterbed.

She tried not to think about where she'd been. Tried not to remember. Flashes of memory lit up her mind like torches exploding fingernails fireworks searing painting pain the night midnight.

Ten yards, twenty yards, a hundred. Each step felt like it took a lifetime, but she made progress. Through the reaching branches she could see light. Well, not light exactly. It was more like the sky was becoming lighter. The dark around her was thick and pervasive, like a blanket of parasites that fed on sunlight and kept the bog trapped in eternal night. On the horizon, the sky was turning gray and light blue, with a slight tinge of orange. Sunrise.

The full moon staring down at her, the harvest moon, its orange light mocking her, pretending to be the sun, but the sun was gone, and she would never see it again, she knew she'd never see the sun, all hope was lost, she lost all

Hope blossomed in Kierra's mind. She pushed forward with a newfound vigor. Her legs pistoned faster and faster, finally beginning to break through the fog in her head. She was like a steam train that took a while to get going, but was finally gaining speed, finally a racing demon of steel and fury.

Soon she was charging headlong through the brush. Vines and branches whipped at her face and arms. Some of them even seemed initially to be out of her path, but she got whipped by them anyways. It was like they were reaching forward, grabbing at her, trying to trip or ensnare her. She even thought she saw one of the trees twist and lean forward over a foot to scratch at her, but she was going so fast she figured it must've been a trick of the mind.

Finally, Kierra burst through the tree line and into the early morning light. She sprinted out of the bog and did not stop running until she had fully cleared the tall grass and landed on a gravel road that cut through the woods like a knife.

This was a road she recognized. It was Old Mill Road. As its name suggests, this was an ancient road that broke off from the main paved streets in town. It used to run all the way to the abandoned grain mill that sat skulking in an overgrown lot on the other side of the bog.

The mill was down the road on her left. Home was up the road on her right.

Kierra went right.

* * * * *

Her house was a quaint two-story A-frame with a red brick facade and a wraparound porch. It needed a new paint job, and her dad always let the grass get just a little out of control before mowing it again, but today it was the best-looking house she had ever seen.

It was an arduous journey back to town. Kierra was sure it took her almost an hour to make it back to her house, but that couldn't be right, because the day had not gotten any brighter. Though it was just before sunrise when she escaped the bog, the sun had risen no higher in the sky. It must have been a much shorter journey than she thought.

The door was unlocked. Her roommates had left the door open for her. She wondered where they thought she'd been. Had they been trying to find her? Or did they just assume she was out with friends? She still couldn't remember how she'd ended up in the bog, or even if she had left with anybody earlier that day.

Kierra grimaced at the screech that emanated from the door's hinges. She opened it just wide enough to slip her body over the threshold, doing her best not to wake her roommates. The living room was inky black. No light penetrated the blackout curtains that her mom had insisted on installing, so Kierra was used to the darkness. The only light in the room was the sliver of gray that shot straight as an arrow from the crack she'd left in the front door.

Still, this darkness was different. It felt alive heavy. Like the shadows were a thick tar that sat on top of her chest and forced her to breathe in desperate, rasping gulps. Her heart started to pound like a drum jackhammer against her ribs. She peered hard into the dark, but she could see nothing at all. It felt like trying to find an unknown object while her face was covered in black blood mud.

Kierra squeezed her eyes shut tight and pressed the palms of her hands into her eye sockets, trying to get her eyes to adjust to the dark. She removed her hands and opened her eyes wide.

Illuminated by the gray spike of light, one of the shadows moved.

All the air left her lungs, as though the viscous tar-like darkness had run out of patience with slowly suffocating her and had decided to just rip the oxygen from her body instead.

Small, beady little pinpricks of green light erupted all over the room. Over a dozen pairs of inhuman eyes peered out at her from every direction. Their sickly glow illuminated the gray, decaying flesh around the eyes. The pinpricks were set far back in each face, as though each eyeball was sinking backwards in its socket. This gave the illusion that each set of eyes was a pair of grotesque green flashlights that spit venomous light from tormented bulbs.

Kierra tried to scream, but there was no air left in her chest. The shadowsludge was crawling down her throat now, into her nose, forcing its way into her ears. She was drowning in black mud.

She flung her arm out to the side of the door, desperately groping the wall to her right. The light switch had to be there somewhere. If she could only find the light switch, she could dispel this parasitic darkness, and hopefully rid herself of whatever monsters those eyes belonged to.

There! The light switch!

Kierra flicked the switch up.

Torches ignited in a circle all around her. Red firelight pushed back the darkness, banishing it outside their perimeter. She felt grass between her toes and cool air on her face. The moon added its smooth light to the fire's angry flickering. Any sense of hope she'd had vanished as the realization hit her like a baseball bat to the face.

Her house was gone. She was back in the bog.

She heard those infernal drums begin beating, and suddenly all the memories came rushing back. The ritual was tonight. She'd tried to escape, but it was impossible. This had been set in motion before she had even been born. She never asked to be part of the coven, but they gave her no choice. She was the one from the prophecy.

It was foretold that the sacrifice of the High Priestess' own firstborn daughter would unleash an eldritch horror of untold power upon the world. Once the One, Yazolthe, wiped the face of the earth clean, their coven would be given sole domain over everything.

Your sacrifice will mean the salvation of the world through fire.

But mom, I don't wanna die. I'm too scared.

The pain won't last, sweetheart. It'll be quick, I promise.

But what about my baby?

...

What about my baby, mom?

The prophecy is very clear, Kierra.

Kierra's hand went instinctively to her belly.

No.

Thirteen figures dressed in black robes stepped out of the shadows. They each carried long white blades carved from animal bones. Chipped and splintered, some of the bones still had teeth attached.

Kierra stared past the torches and saw other sets of eyes. Each pair was as green as the moss that covered the bog. There must've been hundreds or even thousands of garish orbs. Underneath each set of eyes, a new flame bloomed. Candles held in sharp fingers that bent at odd angles. More and more wicks ignited. The forest was alive with candlelight as far as the eye could see.

The thirteen witches were drawing closer. They were lead by her mother. Kierra looked up into her mom's hooded face. The pale visage that stared back was stony, expressionless. The only indication of her grief was a single wet track down her cheek.

Her mother leaned in and whispered in her ear: "I'm sorry honey. There was no other way."

Kierra closed her eyes and wept. The tears that spilled across her cheeks felt hotter than the torches' flames; hotter, even, than the flames of hell itself. As the first bone blade plunged into her chest, Kierra uttered one last, pleading prayer to any deity that would listen:

Please have mercy on my baby.