Chapter 8 – Chap 8

“What…what have I done?” Chris said, slowly walking away from Jame’s corpse.

“To be fair, he kinda deserved it…” Jack said in a failed attempt at conforting her, that instead resulted in her bursting into tears , but she wasn’t crying for James, but for herself, for what she had become.

I tried to get close to her to confort her.

“No! Stay back! I don’t want to hurt you!” she said while backing away

“But Chris…”

“I’M A MONSTER!” she cried

We then heard several cultists down at the mountain, it sounded like they were coming to the temple.

We could see their shadows and hear their footsteps echoing to the wide chambers of the temple as we were hiding under a table that was leaning against a wall, trying not to make a sound as to not get spotted. We were hiding well, until sunlight shined through one of the windows, revealing our shadows as a pair of cultists were passing by. We ran. The two cultists were right behind us as we sprinted through the temple, we came across a room with stairs that seemed to lead down a basement, we took the stairs without a thought. We ended up in a dark room that had a pile of…something, it was very hard to make out in the dark. We hid behind that pile and strangely, the men didn’t come to look for us, despite they very clearly had seen us descending to the lower level.

“Thsi pile of things..whatever they are, they’re very soft!” I pointed out

“They’re…they’re clothes!” Chris said

I held one of the hundreds of shirts that were piled up there, they were children’s clothes, that most likely belonged to all the horned kids that had lost their lives there.

“Does anyone else smell burnt or is it just me?” Jack asked

It wasn’t just him, the smell was coming from another room right next to that one, it was an incinerator with a bunch of disturbing child-sized bags beside it.

“We’d better get out of here, or else we might end up inside one of these…” I suggested

“Yeah, I can’t hear the cultists anymore, now’s our chance!” Chris added

“That’s what they want you to think! What if it’s a trap?” Jack complained

“But we can’t stay in this basement forever.” I said

And so we went up the stairs, the cultists were nowhere to be found…We quietly got outside the temple, and that is when they all came and surrounded us…we had been ambushed.

The cultists collectively gasped once they saw Chris, but unlike the children at the bungalows, the men weren’t afraid, but fascinated. Chris growled at them attempting to scare them away, but it didn’t work…One of the men did take out a nightstick just in case, which resulted in Chris jumping at him, killing him in the process. The rest of the cultists swarmed at us right after that.

“Peter…Hey,Peter!” I heard Jack call my name as I woke up

“Huh?…Where are we? What happened?…”

“We are in a prison cell,pal! Remember the ones in the cave?”

“Oh crap! Where’s Chris?”

“No idea, she wasn’t here when I woke up, just you and me.”

We both started banging on the door of our cell, hoping to open it and escape, but to no avail. We heard a cultist approaching, he had most likely come to choose the next horned kid to kill, he was carrying a key in his pocket, that acted as a master key for the prison cells.

“I think I’ve got a plan…” I whispered to Jack

Jack then began growling and moving arround the cell on four legs, not unlike Christine, catching the cultists attention, who walked to our cell, getting closer and closer to the prison bars, until…

“Got it!” I exclaimed after slipping my arm through the bars, picking the men’s pocket and stealing his key.

He started violently banging the prison door as Jack and I taunted him with our stolen keys, but there was nothing he could do. Suddenly, he stopped paying attention to us, and focused on what sounded like the screams of terrified and agonising cultists in the distance. He dashed there to see what was wrong, a few seconds later, we heard one last scream…

“So…is he gone?” Jack muttered

“Pretty sure, yeah…” I replied

So we broke out of our cell with our stolen key, which gave us a chance to see the other captive children, almost all of them weren’t there when we first came to the cave. That Spanish girl: Judith, as well as those three Italian kids, they were gone. We freed all the kids using the master key, and they all ran towards the exit, Jack and I, however, went through the opposite way, in search for Chris, through a path that led to the source of the mysterious screams from before.

“Holy fuck…” Jack said as we contemplated the path filled with at least a dozen dead cultists, including some cult kids, that extended before us.

We continued through that bloody path, until we heard someone, or rather something, approaching us…

“Chris?” Jack asked

“No…it’s not Chris, it’s him!”

The demon dog was back, we immediately ran away before it got a chance to see us, but that didn’t matter, cause it had heard us, and thus it began chasing behind shortly after.

As we were running for our lives, away from the dog, I felt something pouncing at me from behind, knocking me to the ground, had it been the dog? No, it was Chris! Everyone stopped running, even the dog.

“Chris, what are you doing!?” Jack loudly asked her, but Chris did not respond

The dog stared at Chris. who was sitting on top of me, it looked as it was mad her for having stolen its prey. She responded with a menacing stare of her own, and the dog collapsed to the ground…just like that, with just a stare. It wasn’t dead, just unconscious, but still…that was impressive. After having dealt with the demon dog, Chris stared back at me, growling, she was unrecognizable, acting as if she didn’t know who we were.

“CHRISTINE, NO!” I shouted

She then stood still for a few seconds, she then stared at us again, but this time her face wasn’t menacing, she instead looked frightened or suprised.

“Hi, Chris…It’s me, Peter! We’re Peter and Jack, remember?”

She remembered and let out a faint, sad animalistic howl.

“You can’t speak anymore?” I asked, she shook her head.

“Damn it! I liked your Australian accent! What am I gonna do without my daily dose of mates?” Jack said. All three of us laughted

I tried to get close to her, but she rapidly jumped back, trying to keep a distance.

“It’s okay, Chris…” I said as I continued to walk towards her, slowly as to not startle her. But my plan failed, she ran away. Jack and I went after her without a second thought.

We finally caught up with her in a big, circular chamber with many branching pathways. Chris took out her claws and growled, not at us…but at the huge group of cultists tha came out of the branching corridors, surrounding us in an instant.

Chris was about to attack, but the more than fifty men began chanting the same words that James had recited a while back, causing Chris to scream in pain like before, no… this time it was much worse.

Some cultists began doing some sort of dance while the others kept reciting those words, there were even some that bowed to her, or at least that’s what I first thought… They weren’t bowing to Chris, but to the puff of green smoke that started emanating from her body as she agonised, which started taking shape as her growls reverted back to her normal human screams.

She stared at us with tears in her eyes, they were normal once again too.

” HELP…ME…MATES…” That was the last time Jack and I heard her voice.