As the captives rush toward us, they’re greeted by walls of thick glass. The barriers appear to slide upward when unlocked, but without a method of triggering the doors, there’s absolutely no way for us to aid an escape. Not yet, at least.
Next to me, a preteen boy is pounding against the barrier, crying out as tears stream down his face. I can’t hear a thing despite standing no more than a foot away from this terrified child. His mouth hangs wide, but not so much as a muffled scream can be heard.
Willow and I immediately get to work searching for a lever that could trigger the release of these captives, but it quickly becomes apparent that whatever we’re looking for must lie in the chamber beyond. Meanwhile, Saul pulls a metal hammer from his bag, raising it to shatter one of the panes before I reach out to stop him. “Too loud!” I warn.
Saul hesitates, then insists. “We’ve gotta get them out of here.”
“It’s not gonna work,” I explain, shaking my head. “Look at them banging away from the inside. These are polycarbonate panels, and they’re thick.”
Saul’s anger and frustration begrudgingly dissolves into crushing defeat. By the time we’re ready to search the next room our friend is standing in utter silence, eyes blurry and lips curling back in an expression of searing emotional pain.
“I can’t believe I was part of this,” he moans, the words barely understandable as they emerge from his mouth in a quivering mess.
“You didn’t know,” I reply, hoping to reassure him.
“Didn’t I?” he blurts, then shakes his head as he redirects the question inward. “I can’t remember. For all I know, I was the one who brought them down here.”
Technically, he’s right, but right now the last thing he needs is to parse technicalities. My friend needs support.
I step toward Saul, placing a hand on his shoulder. “And now you’re trying to get them out.”
Willow chimes in supportively. “You were in a cult.”
Saul clenches his jaw, still deeply troubled. Around him, terrified children hammer against their glass prisons in utter silence, crying for help.
“That’s the thing about Kingdom of the Pine,” he finally admits. “The stuff they believed, the messages they pounded into our heads … none of it was that weird. They’re just the thousandth little twist on the exact same book.”
Saul’s right. While the congregation is clearly up to something deeply troubling, the basic foundation of their beliefs is not much different than that of any sect to come before. They may be a little more hard-nosed and a little more open about their utilitarian approach, but their principles are, well, pretty average.
That’s the scariest thing about them: they’re not that special.
“Let’s just fix what we can,” I suggest. “Rose 15:30. For the righteous sword of truth is so sharp that even half swings will graze a bone of incredible depths.”
Saul just stares back at me, and in the moment of silence I realize how unusual that was. “Are you making up your own Bible verses?” he asks.
“Uh, yeah,” I admit. “Up until this point I hadn’t said any out loud, though.”
Saul considers this a moment, then nods, wiping away his welling tears. “Sick. That was super metal.”
It’s going to be a while before he can work through his guilt as a piece in this macabre puzzle, but right now he’s found enough strength to stay sharp and focused on the mission at hand.
As we continue onward the prisoners call out in mute terror, their mouths agape and their eyes flooded with tears as they no doubt beg us not to abandon them.
“We’ll be right back,” I mouth, struggling to communicate this relatively simple message that has been rendered nearly impossible to transmit.
I’m so torn up about leaving that I briefly lose focus on where we’re headed. As we push through the large metal door at the end of the hallway my perception is a scattered mess, but it’s yanked back into a state of high alert when the horrifying contents of the new chamber reveal themselves.
The room is perfectly square, with a door positioned on both the left and the right walls. The strips of blue illumination have fallen away, replaced instead by a sterile overhead fluorescence. The centerpiece of this chamber is an enormous glass tank that sits along the entirety of the back wall, each section partitioned into several internal compartments. Some of the chambers are empty, while others teem with little black flies that swirl like a dark, undulating hurricane. Others host masses of webbing—wispy cocoons in various sizes affixed to the glass.
The remaining tanks, however, are the most alarming.
I step forward, the familiar, curious part of my brain overloading as it struggles through a sludge of disgust that might otherwise keep my thoughts at bay.
Held within this partitioned tank are collections of large, foot-long invertebrates, the groups spaced out and paired off in a way that seems deliberate.
I’ve grown up near enough farms to recognize a selective breeding arrangement.
The creatures themselves are plump and round, like gray, football-shaped worms. They’re moist and glistening, and although the tanks are just as soundproof as the ones in the hallway, I can only imagine the awkward squish their moist bodies make as they crawl around in these barren habitats.
“What are they?” Willow groans, too revolted to draw any closer to the strange creatures.
I continue approaching the back wall, overwhelmed with both terror and wonder.
This species is unlike anything I’ve witnessed in the animal kingdom, yet there’s something strangely recognizable about them. While there’s little about their features that relates to our natural world, they do sport qualities of the demons from somewhere else. Their skin is the same wretched pale grey, sagging and sick, and a small line of dark, stringy hair runs along the ridges of the apparent invertebrates. It’s matted against their wet bodies in an awkward, broken line.
“Demon larvae?” Saul questions from behind.
“Could be,” I reply, taking a moment to consider. “Or maybe just another species from the same place. There’s plenty more than Homo sapiens in our world; I don’t see why there would only be demons in theirs.”
I draw closer still, leaning down to the glass for a better look. I’m no more than a foot away from one of the bizarre creatures when the pudgy worm turns toward me, noticing my presence.
We stay like this for a moment, frozen in a curious standoff.
Slowly, the tip of the strange organism begins to expand, opening to reveal a dark, four-fanged mouth that stretches into a distinctly square orifice. The maw is dripping with thick, glistening mucus.
“Oh wow” is all I can think to say, the inquisitive part of my mind fully overriding any good sense I might otherwise harness to pull away.
Before my friends have a chance to call out and remind me, a purple tube erupts from the creature’s mouth in a quick snap, slamming against the side of the tank and prompting me to stumble back in shock.
The hollow proboscis, which features a frighteningly sharp point, rubs against the glass for a moment as it struggles to catch hold. When this doesn’t work, a cascade of tiny white eggs begins pumping forth, spilling across the bottom of the tank. I can only assume those were intended for placement somewhere deep beneath my skin.