It was not a decrepit cabin. In fact, it looked pretty nice, and fairly new. Quite a few rich city people had their summer getaways in the Sunnycrest area, and that was kind of what this looked like. It didn't look lived in, not in any permanent sense. There was a lawn which probably looked nice in the summer. At this time of year it was brown and dead, and the lines between the slabs of sod were easy to see.

There were no vehicles parked outside.

Chase jumped down. She stood in the clearing, put her hands on her hips, and looked at the building, as if thinking about how best to get into it.

Alicia, Lindsey and Caitlin emerged and walked over to her. “What is this place, Chase?” asked Alicia.

“Them bring dead Reb from here,” Chase replied.

“Them?” asked Alicia.

“Bad guys,” said Chase. “Six bad guys.”

Lindsey and Caitlin looked at each other. Chase could tell there were six of them, just from following their trail?

“Well, what are we waiting for? Let's break in!” said Lindsey.

They looked around for a spare key. This was where Lindsey's expertise came into play. She quickly found one under a loose piece of sod by the front steps, then slipped it in the lock and turned it. The door opened without creaking. She reached around the inside wall for a light switch, and found one.

The inside was as clean and inviting as the outside. Also like the outside, it was too clean and uncluttered to possibly be occupied. The front door opened into a spacious living room. There was a couch there, a TV, and a pool table. Hanging on one wall was a mounted elk head, with broad antlers. On the floor was a massive bearskin rug.

They moved through the living room, their footsteps loud on the hardwood floor. In the rear of the cabin they found a bathroom, kitchen and two bedrooms, each with two king size beds. The beds were bare. Like trees, they had shed their foliage for the winter. The cheerleaders found the sheets and blankets in the bedroom closets.

They found no sign that anything inappropriate had taken place there. No sign of a struggle, not a drop of blood. It just looked like an ordinary cabin.

“Are you sure this is the place they carried Rebecca's body from?” Alicia asked Chase.

Chase was standing in the living room, looking up at the elk head thoughtfully, arms crossed. “Yes. This is place.”

Lindsey voice called out from one of the back rooms. “In here!”

Alicia and Chase quickly left the living room. They met up with Caitlin in the hallway, as she was leaving one of the bedrooms.

The kitchen was big enough to accommodate a walk-in pantry. This was where they found Lindsey. At her feet, set in the pantry floor, was a wooden trapdoor with a rope handle.

They looked at each other. An ominous sense of dread settled over them. In their hearts, they all knew they had just found what they were looking for. None of them wanted to open that door and see it.

Chase was the one to finally do it. The door swung heavily up and open on its hinge. Chase let it rest against the wall of the pantry. Beneath it was a ladder which stretched downward, only three rungs visible before it was swallowed by blackness.

They searched the walls of the pantry for a switch that might turn a light on down there, and also felt around inside the opening. There was nothing. On one of the shelves in the pantry, however, they did find a box of red candles.

A search of the kitchen produced a gas lighter. They each took a candle, lit it, and descended into the basement.

The air was warm. A lot warmer than a basement of an unoccupied building should be. It seemed likely that somebody, or a group of people, had been there recently and had heated the place up with their presence. The air also felt heavy, somehow. Heavy with something awful. It was as though screams and evil chants were still trapped there, polluting the atmosphere like smoke.

Their lights fell on the dark altar first. The demon portrait, the shining silver pentagrams, the black curtains. Alicia whimpered when she saw it. “No way,” said Lindsey.

Then, they saw the floor.

A pentagram was drawn there in white chalk. A sea of red candles had burned down inside it, with the rough shape of a human outlined between them. The floor was stained dark red there, where the blood of a few sacrifices now mingled.

Chase crouched there and touched it. Rebecca's blood was no longer warm, but it was still slightly wet.

“Oh God. Oh God,” stammered Alicia. “You guys, this is crazy.”

“L-let's get the hell out of here,” agreed Caitlin.

They quickly climbed back up the ladder and shut the door.

Alicia was shaking. Chase held her. “Leash,” said Chase. Her voice was serious.

“Y-yeah?”

“Must go home and be safe. Lin and Cait too.” Chase nodded at them.

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“Wh-what are you gonna do?” asked Alicia.

“Stop bad guys,” said Chase. She hugged each of them in succession, then turned and ran out the front door.

“Chase!” shouted Alicia.

They quickly followed her, but by the time they got outside, she was gone.

…...........

Alicia, Caitlin and Lindsey searched the surrounding woods for a little while, but Chase was nowhere to be found.

“What...what do you think she meant?” asked Alicia worriedly, after about an hour. They were sitting on a fallen log, feeling exhausted. “Stopping the bad guys? How is she going to do that?”

“She definitely has her ways,” replied Lindsey.

“It's hard to say what she's thinking, Alicia,” said Caitlin. “She's hurt and angry. She's acting on instinct and a need for revenge.” She looked up at the trees, and at the moon partly hidden by their branches. “Oh, Chase...”

“So what can we do?” asked Alicia.

“I don't know,” said Lindsey. “If Chase doesn't want to be found, we won't find her.”

“She could be a mile away from here by now,” said Caitlin.

Lindsey looked at her phone. It was around two in the morning. “Maybe...we should do what she said and go home.”

“What?” asked Alicia, looking up at her with sad eyes. “Leave without her?”

“We have to trust her,” said Caitlin rationally, putting a comforting hand on Alicia's back. “I'm worried about her too, but whatever she's up to, she can take care of herself.”

“And we, on the other hand, can't,” said Lindsey bluntly. “What if the killers come back here and catch us looking around? That's the last thing Chase would want.”

Alicia looked down at her lap. “I guess you're right. I just...Wish she knew she didn't have to do this alone.”

Caitlin got an idea. She took out her phone. “She won't.” She set a waypoint on her GPS app. “We'll look into this cabin, do some research. Then, when Chase turns up, we'll have information for her. We're going to help Chase whether she likes it or not.”

And so the trio reluctantly got up off the log and made the long walk in the dark back to Alicia's car. The cop was still lying where they left him. Together they heaved him up into his patrol car and closed the door. With any luck he'd think he just fell asleep on the job and had a bad dream.

It was about four in the morning when Alicia finished dropping off Caitlin and Lindsey and got home. Her parents weren't awake yet so she was able to sneak in undetected.

She took a shower and tried to get a couple hours of sleep. However, Chase's empty sleeping bag on the floor weighed too heavily on her. This was the first time in months she tried to sleep alone. She found she couldn't do it.

That morning at breakfast, her mom said, “You look terrible. Were you girls up all night?”

Alicia looked at her. “Huh?” Then, she remembered her cover story about studying at Caitlin's. She had forgotten all about it. “Oh. Yeah. It kind of turned into a sleepover, I guess.”

Her mom nodded. “You wanted to be together after what happened to Rebecca. I understand that. But I wish you would have texted me to let me know you weren't coming home.”

Alicia knew she must have worried a great deal, and was sparing her the details. “Sorry, mom.”

“Where's Chase?” asked Alicia's dad.

Alicia's throat knotted. “She's...still there. She's going to school with Caitlin. I just came home to get something.”

Sensing something off with her and considering everything that had happened, her dad suggested that Alicia take the day off of school. Alicia accepted the offer.

When Alicia told Lindsey and Caitlin about this, Lindsey skipped school, and with some effort they convinced Caitlin to skip as well. They met up at the public library around nine in the morning.

It was time to do what they said they'd do and help Chase, any way they could. Alicia realized she didn't have the luxury of feeling forlorn or worried. That wouldn't do Chase any good at all. There was a goal in front of them, and Alicia was going to throw optimism at it until they achieved it.

“Alright, so what's the plan?” asked Alicia with enthusiasm.

“Well...” said Caitlin, taking out her phone. “I still have that waypoint. So we know where the cabin is. We just need to find a way use the information we have to get more information.”

For a while they weren't exactly sure how to do that. The GPS app listed the latitude and longitude of the waypoint, but not much else. Then, they got on one of the computers. They looked at the waypoint Lindsey marked, and with some effort, found the same location in Google Maps. With that, they were able to get an address.

“Nice,” said Lindsey, as Caitlin hit print. The printer spat out a page depicting an aerial view of the cabin, with the address labeled.

“We're one step closer!” agreed Alicia.

Caitlin took the map in hand and looked at it thoughtfully. “But now what?”

“What about the town hall?” asked Lindsey.

Caitlin looked at her. “Hey, yeah. They might have something. They keep all kinds of county records. With an address, we might be able to find out who owns that cabin.”

“Will they let us go in and look at that?” asked Lindsey.

“They should. I think it's open to the public,” said Caitlin.

“Oh! That's awesome!” said Alicia. “Let's go!”

Caitlin stood up from the computer and pushed the chair in. “You guys go ahead,” she said. “I'll see what else I can find here. The library might have stuff town hall doesn't.”

“Alright,” said Alicia. “We'll meet back here at noon.”

.........

Alicia and Lindsey walked the couple blocks to town hall. There were a number of different departments inside, and they really had no clue where to begin. After a couple false starts, they were directed to the county recorder's office.

Even though Caitlin said the things there were public record, they still felt somehow like they were doing something wrong, and so when they explained to the county recorder what they were trying to do, they were unnecessarily vague. He understood enough, however, to suggest, “Well, we keep deeds here for every tract of land in the county...if you know what tract you're looking for, the deed will have the owner's name on it.”

“Yes!” said Alicia. “That's exactly what we want!”

So the county recorder let them into the vault of records and showed them how to navigate the filing system there.

It wasn't as simple as typing in an address and getting a name, however. They had to look at maps and sift through drawers full of documents.

“Caitlin really should be the one doing this,” complained Lindsey, leafing through a folder. “This is smart person stuff.”

“Oh, come on. We're smart enough for this,” said Alicia, looking up from a map. She sighed. “Although I will say this seems right up her alley.”

“She's pretty cute though, huh?” asked Lindsey. “With that secret guy she's texting?”

Alicia grinned. “You noticed that too?!”

“Duh.”

“I wonder wh-” started Alicia. Her thought was abruptly derailed by the discovery of the deed. “Aha!”

“You found it?!” asked Lindsey, getting up and looking over her shoulder.

The name on the deed was ARTHUR L. COSTAS.

“Costas?” asked Alicia, trying to place that name.

“Wait...” realized Lindsey. “Isn't that London's dad?”

….......

Caitlin leaned back from the book of town history open on the table in front of her, stretched in her chair, and yawned.

“Shouldn't you be in school?” asked a female voice from her left.

Caitlin jumped in shock and opened her eyes. She frantically looked in the direction of the voice, then relaxed. She smiled in relief. “Oh. Hi.”

It was just London.