The Summoning

“This way!”

Derek clasped his girlfriend Greta's arm so hard as they ran that she thought he might pull it out of its socket. The wind was blowing at their backs so hard that they were practically flying.

“Where did that storm come from?” Greta yelled. “It was supposed to be sunny today!”

“How the hell should I know?” Derek hollered over his shoulder. “I'm not the weatherman!”

Though they ran as hard as they could, the thunderstorms threatened to overtake them. Meanwhile, they were still a couple miles from home. Suddenly, Derek stopped, making Greta plow right into him.

“What... are you... doing?” Greta panted.

Derek pointed up a hill on the left. Greta looked that way. There was an old barn that looked like it had been around for decades and hadn't been maintained for almost as long.

“We can hide there till the storm passes,” Derek yelled over the wind as he started to clamber up the hill.

“You sure?” Greta called as she followed. “It looks like it could fall apart at any moment!”

“It hasn't yet!” Derek replied.

Greta couldn't argue with that. Both kids pulled themselves up the hill toward the barn as fast as they could, stumbling a couple of times on the sharpening incline. The harsh winds made staying upright almost impossible. Greta was knocked onto her knees mere inches away from Derek who reached the door first. Though it was unlocked, Derek had to fight the gales to yank the door open. Greta crawled through the door, and Derek fell forward, barely avoiding landing on her, as the winds blasted the door closed.

Derek and Greta stayed where they fell for a few moments, panting as if they had just run a marathon. Finally, Derek pulled himself to his feet, though it took every ounce of strength he had to do so.

“Are you okay?” Derek asked, looking down at Greta's fallen form.

Greta groaned, “I banged my knees up, but I'll live. Can you help me up?”

Derek dropped to his knees, locked his arms underneath Greta's armpits, and pulled her up, almost falling backward in the process. He pulled her over to a nearby hay bale to hold herself up. Though she was visibly weak, she was able to stay on her feet. The constant rattling of the walls from the gales outside kept them tensed up.

“Are you sure this place will stay up?” Greta asked fearfully.

Derek lit up an old oil lantern he found on a nearby shelf. “Looks like it. The walls are making noise, but they don't look cracked or warped.”

“What about the doors?” Greta asked. “Are they holding up?”

“They look like they're holding, but I'd better bar 'em, just in case,” Derek replied.

Looking around, Derek spotted a rack on one of the walls with a selection on garden tools. Derek pulled a shovel out of the middle bracket, barely noticing a faint click sound as he did so. As he slid the shovel into the barn door to bar it, a scream behind him made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. He ran back to the hay bales where he left Greta... only to find they had disappeared. In their place was an open trapdoor descending into darkness.

“GRETA! ARE YOU OKAY?” Derek yelled down.

“I'm fine,” Greta coughed back. “I was just leaning on this hay, and it just fell down here, taking me with it. At least it broke my fall.”

Derek grabbed the lantern and shined the light down the hole. There were no steps or a ladder to climb down. Adrenaline pumping, Derek jumped down.

It wasn't long before Derek landed on the hay that fell down previously. He had landed in what appeared to be an old storm cellar. A passageway continued into the darkness. Looking up, he couldn't even see the hole he fell through. The broken remnants of a ladder littered the floor nearby. Greta was on her feet, leaning against one of the walls. With the light of the lantern, Derek could see that her knees were darkening into ugly bruises, and she had a small cut on her left thigh.

Derek hobbled to his feet. His legs quivered from the fall, but, fortunately, they were not broken. He turned to Greta.

“Can you walk?”

“I can barely stay standing,” she groaned. “I'll just stay here while you try to get help.”

Looking down the dark passageway again, Derek shook his head. He grabbed the longest fragment he could find from the broken ladder and handed it to Greta.

“We're not splitting up. There's a walking stick for you.”

~-~-~-~

The passageway was unnaturally dark. The lantern in Derek's hand barely lit a few feet around him. Greta hobbled slowly on her wooden plank. Derek was lucky to find one that could support her weight. After several agonizing minutes of slowly walking in almost total darkness, Derek stopped. Before Greta could say anything, Derek put a finger to his lips to signal silence.

“I thought I heard someone up ahead,” he whispered. “You sit down and stay here while I check it out.”

“Okay,” Greta quietly replied. “Just don't take too long.”

Greta sat down next to a wall, and Derek left the lantern with her. He crept through the dark, hugging the wall to maintain his bearings, and following the sound he heard earlier. As he approached, the sound became clearer. It was mumbled chanting in a language he didn't recognize, and there were several voices doing it rather than just one. Although every instinct in his body was telling him to turn around and return to Greta, his practical mind reminded him that there was no way back up the hole they fell through nor were there any other routes. So, he continued quietly toward the chanting.

After silently sneaking down the dark passage for what felt like the longest three minutes of his life, Derek caught a glimpse of a reddish glow coming from an open door on the left wall. The chanting sounded like it came from the open door, as well. By that point, his instincts were screaming for him to get out of there, but his curiosity was siding with his practicality. He dropped to his knees as quietly as he could, though his right knee creaked loud enough to wake the dead, and he peered in the open door.

The room was a large chamber barely lit by red lanterns on the walls. There were a dozen cloaked figures facing an altar at the end of the room and chanting. A pentagram was ablaze on the other side of the altar. A cloaked figure in a red mask appeared from a dark corner of the room to stand in front of the altar, and the chanting stopped.

“The day has come,” a low voice uttered, clearly by the masked figure at the altar. “Our master will be reawakened.”

Mumbling picked up from the cloaks in the audience. The masked figure raised his hands, and the mumbling quieted down again. Derek wanted to get up and run, but fear and curiosity glued him to the spot where he was spying.

“There is one thing left to complete the summoning,” the low voice continued. “We need a young sacrifice. Fortunately, we have our victim. A youth just entered our domain.”

Derek almost screamed. They're gonna get Greta, he thought. His instincts took over. Derek got up and started running back, not concerning himself with how much noise he was making, barely noticing a scream of rage coming from the evil chamber.

After a painful few minutes of following the passageway back in the dark, Derek spotted the lantern he left with Greta and the silently sitting form of Greta herself.

“Greta!” Derek urgently whispered. “We've gotta get out of here!”

Greta's head was hung down between her damaged knees. “We can't.”

Derek continued. “I'll carry you! We'll find someway back up through the trapdoor! Whatever it takes! We've just gotta get out of here now!”

“You don't get it,” Greta replied. She raised her head to look at Derek, and he stumbled backward. Her eyes were completely blackened, and there was a fresh brand of a pentagram on her forehead. Her mouth was twisted into an evil grin. “You're just in time.”

Before he could react, Greta reached out and jabbed a syringe into Derek's leg. Within seconds, Derek passed out.

~-~-~-~

When Derek reawakened, he was in the chamber. His clothes were all gone. His arms and legs were tied to the altar. He couldn't move. His head was in some kind of bracket; he couldn't look any direction other than straight at the ceiling. The chanting had continued. Two faces were looking down at him, the masked leader on the left and Greta on the right.

Greta whispered, “You chose to come here willingly.”

Derek argued, “No, I didn't. I was just trying to get away from that storm.”

Greta replied, “You could've escaped it anywhere. You chose to come here. You accepted your fate.”

“It's time,” the leader cut off the argument. His mask left Derek's view as did Greta's face. After a painful few seconds of staring at the ceiling, the head of an executioner's ax came into view on his right.

The leader growled, “With this fresh blood, our master will come!”

The crowd roared as the ax came down.

Sorry if you were hoping for a happy ending. Horror doesn't have that often. Send a message to my Twitter if you want to complain. Hope you have a better day than Derek had.