HELLS GRACE
Part 12
“I’m gonna go and check up on Danny,” Eliza told Zack.
It had been almost ten minutes now since they entered the cabin. Zack and Maxine were too busy reminiscing about some of their glory days when Hodge made a funny speech during another friend’s wedding, or when they went on a camping trip, and no one brought a map and how pissed everyone was, lost in the woods for hours. Eliza knew what Zack was doing. He was trying to distract Maxine from thinking about her late husband, Adam, or what happened at Green Hill.
But Eliza felt like a third wheel throughout the conversation, the outsider who would never belong. She was surprised that Zack would be friends with them anyway. They didn’t look like his kind of crowd, at least from what she had known about him since they started dating. Zack missed being with them, like getting a taste of nicotine after quitting for a few years, a euphoric burning inside him. Not that Eliza would know. She hadn’t touched a cigarette for over six years, but she reckoned that must be what it felt like.
From what little [Glean] I mustered out of her earlier, she felt like Zack had a foot on the wrong side of the tracks and kept it like a safety net. Eliza wished he had gone all the way and never looked back. Healthier that way, she thought.
Better for him.
Better for her.
Most of all, it's better for Danny. She never liked his mother.
I went rigid when Eliza asked Maxine if they had met earlier. However, the demon quickly shut it down by saying she made workout and health videos on YouTube that often circulated around TikTok and Facebook by her thousands of followers. The demon even pulled a vague memory from Maxine when she was invited to an event called Voices of Tomorrow in San Francisco a few months back.
Fortunately, Eliza dropped it at that, nodding as if she should know that by now. She didn’t strike me as the athletic type or had a TikTok addiction.
I wondered if she placed two-and-two together that Maxine was the wanted woman by the police. Her face was beginning to circulate all over social media and the nightly news as a person of interest in the massacre. Like Zack, she wasn’t following the news too closely, only that a woman was a suspect. I studied her for a minute, but she never let the facade (if there was any) slip.
If Eliza had mentioned it to Maxine, laid everything down on the table, and accused her of being the wanted woman, well, it would be a death sentence for her and Zack.
Eliza stood up and left Maxine and Zack to discuss another funny memory with Hodge. She knocked on the bathroom door, echoing laughter from Maxine, and Zack traveled down the hallway. “Danny, are you okay in there? Do you need tissue paper?”
No answer.
Strangely, she found the door already unlocked and pushed it open. Even though he was young, Danny was a stickler for privacy. He always locked the bathroom door when he was using it. She couldn’t remember if she saw Danny slip past her. But the boy was nowhere to be seen; the door to the dark adjacent bedroom was ajar. Only the lights from the bathroom illuminated a sliver of what’s beyond.
“Danny, get out of there. This is not your house,” Eliza whispered through the cracked door. Some part of her wanted to turn back and grab Zack. Danny listened to him more than her, anyway. “You better not touch anything in there,” she added, pushing the door wider.
Eliza reached in, looking for a switch along the wall next to the bathroom door. I learned that she had an intense, irrational fear of the dark. She found the switch, but I quickly ordered Oracle to cut off the lights in that bedroom.
Eliza flicked the switch.
No lights.
She flicked it a few more times—still nothing.
“Fuck. Fucking cabins.” She took her phone from her pocket and used the flash as her flashlight. She pushed the door wider, letting in more light from the bathroom.
“Danny, are you in here? This is not funny.” Danny loved hide and seek. He also loved tag, running around the house, and jumping out of the corners to scare her. It’s what little boys do when they’re bored. She was in no mood for his games right now. The cabin was creepy enough, and the darkness outside was not helping.
Eliza looked behind the door. Maybe Dany hid there? The boy was not there, and she stepped further into the bedroom. “If you’re going to jump out and scare me again, it won’t work, little man. So, quit it. Your dad will be so angry if you do, especially if you break something again.”
She slowly walked toward the closet across the room. “I know where you are hiding, by the way. There’s no use drawing this one out.”
Closer. Closer. Closer…
A creak.
Soft and subdued.
Eliza gasped and turned her phone to the right, illuminating the bed and the window, looking out into the forest. She was sure the noise came from where the bed was until she realized it was coming from underneath it. She smiled. Of course, Danny thought of hiding there instead, pretending to be the monster underneath the bed.
“Okaayyy,” she said in a sing-song way. “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”
Once she reached the left side of the bed, she quickly dropped to her knees and lifted the hanging duvet out of the way. She aimed her phone’s flash underneath. “BOO—!” But her breath caught up inside her throat, and she immediately recoiled away from the bed.
A bound and gagged man screamed, muffled by the thick wrap of silver gray duct tape around his mouth. Tape wrapped his torso and legs like a snake, constricting his movements, and bound his arms behind his back. Their eyes were so bloodshot, and he had a bleeding gash on his forehead, and Eliza knew he was badly hurt.
“Zack! Zack! Zack!” Eliza screamed, her back against the dresser. She couldn’t move, fear taking hold of her. No! She shouldn’t have called for him as realization dawned on her where she was. She was in Maxine’s house. Did she do this? How could she overpower a grown man like that and bind him in a whimpering state?
Another fear took hold.
What was she doing with Zack right now? Did she hear the scream? Did she think she had been found out? What if she killed Zack already to silence them? She shook her head. I reckoned that she must be thinking she should have shut her mouth and not alerted the murderess in the living room.
But then she heard Zack’s footsteps running in the hallway, trying to open the bedroom door, but it wouldn’t budge. Eventually, he ran into the bathroom and the connecting door.
“El, what the fuck? Why are you screaming?”
She pointed at what’s underneath the bed. She looked behind but didn’t find Maxine following them. “Your friend fucking tied someone up!”
“What?”
“Down there! Look!”
While Zack knelt beside the bed, hesitating to take a peek below, Eliza already scrambled back to her feet and slammed the bathroom door shut, locking it. She then dragged the drawer nearby to block the entryway. She did the same thing to the door leading to the hallway by pulling the end table next to the bed.
“What are you doing?” Zack asked, distracted.
“We can’t let her in,” Eliza said.
“Who? Max? She’s a nice woman!”
“Not when she has a guy tied up underneath the bed!”
Zack finally looked underneath, shocked by what he had heard. His mouth hung open. “Chris? Is that you?”
Zack reached in and pulled the man out by his legs. Eliza helped him. “You know this guy?” Eliza asked.
Zack nodded. “He’s Rebecca’s husband. What the fuck was he doing down there?” He pried the tape off his mouth, and Chris let out a muffled yelp. “Sorry, bud. It’s too sticky.”
Once the tape was out of his mouth, a large glob of saliva poured out of Chris’s lips, and he hurled it to the side. “We gotta get the fuck out of here!” Chris screamed. “Where is she?”
“Maxine did this to you?” Zack asked, sounding like he didn’t—couldn’t—believe it.
“It’s not Max,” Chris said, then paused. “Er, I don’t know what she is, but it’s not Max. Like she’s…” Chris trailed off.
“Like she’s what?” Zack pressed him.
“—like she’s possessed.”
Eliza’s heart skipped a beat. She struck me as a superstitious woman, and her hand instinctively grabbed something around her neck, but there was no jewelry there. It dawned on her that whatever she was wearing there before, she must have left it at home. I guessed she was reaching for a religious pendant for whatever religion she believed in.
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“Saint Michael, protect us,” she muttered under her breath. Zack and Chris didn’t hear her, but I did. Saint Michael, the archangel. The angel who fought Satan, trampling him under his heels. The patron saint to ward off evil…the demonic-kind.
I looked around the cabin, around my domain. I’ve never had a religious delver before. For a moment, I thought God was going to part the heavens and let his angels storm my world and kill me. But the dark clouds hang where I last saw them, the divine light far from reach.
No gods.
Just me.
“What do you mean? Is Rebecca here, too? Did she do this to you?” Zack asked. At least that made sense. Rebecca’s a cop, and she’s been training for a few years at the local gym since she got the job. That would explain how she could overpower a big man like Chris—
Chris shook his head. “No. Not her. I don’t know where she is.”
“I knew it was her,” Eliza muttered. “I recognized her from TV.”
“What?” Zack asked.
“The news,” Chris answered for her. “Maxine was a person of interest after the massacre. I was surprised to find her here.”
“The massacre at Green Hill? You think our Maxine did it? I thought she was one of the survivors. The perpetrator was a guy, didn’t they say that?”
“No. Suspect,” Chris said, shaking his head. “It was all over the news tonight before I drove here. The cops announced it.”
As if a signal had been lit, Eliza yelped. “The cops! We gotta call the cops!” She fished out her phone again and dialed 911, but she only made it through two rings before the signal was cut short.
“Anything?” Zack asked.
Eliza looked at the missing bars on the upper right corner of her screen. “The heck? There was a signal when we were driving up here. Three bars.” She tried again just in case, but the same thing happened. “Shit. No signal.”
“Wait, what happened to your car?” Zack asked Chris. “We didn’t see it when we drove up here.”
“They must have stashed it somewhere.” In truth, Chris stashed half a mile away from the cabin. Whatever his intentions were with Rebecca and Clay Havert, he didn’t want his tire tracks left in front of the cabin.
Eliza pulled Zack’s arm and whispered, “Danny…”
“What?”
“Danny!” Eliza pointed at the window.
There, Danny leered against the glass, smiling from ear to ear. He giggled sharply before waving his hands and dashed back into the shadows. “Come and get me! Come and get me!” Danny trilled.
Eliza gasped, and she and Zack ran toward the window. They saw Danny breaking through the narrow gap between the trees and disappearing from their view.
“Danny! Get back here!” Zack bellowed, but the boy ignored him. Eyes wide with terror, Zack was gripped by an ancient fear that all fathers would have for their children in sudden danger, clouding his mind, clouding his decisions. He ran his hands over his hair, almost tempted to pull at them, his chest heaving as panic set in. He attempted to open the window, but Eliza stopped him.
“Get out of the way, El. I’m going after him.”
“No, Zack! Something’s wrong,” Eliza, teary-eyed, barely could squeak out the words. “This fucking place is freaking me the fuck out!”
“My boy’s out there, El! Look, stay here. I’m going to go and get Danny, and I’ll be quick. I promise. I’ll be right back,” he said, reassuring her.
“Are you insane? I’m coming with you!” Eliza said, saying it like Zack had no say in the matter. She punched him on the shoulder. “And don’t you ever say that line. Haven’t you watched enough horror movies?”
“This isn’t a horror movie, El. But fine. You can come with me, but you stay right at my heel, you understand?”
“Don’t leave me!” Chris writhed on the floor, still bound by the tape, listening to the conversation. “I have a gun.” Chris paused again. “Somewhere.”
“You brought a gun?” Zack leaned in.
“I—she must have taken it. It’s not with me anymore. It could be inside any of the drawers in this room.”
“Or it’s already with her,” Eliza shuddered. She glanced at the door in the hallway, listening, but she didn’t hear any creak on the floorboards signaling that Maxine was approaching the room. For all Eliza knew, Maxine was still sitting in the living room doing fuck-all.
She wasn’t far from the truth. I told Maxine to wait in the living room for a few minutes, letting them “settle in” on the scenario I’d presented them, but the demon was already getting bored. Maxine had her palm pressed on her right cheek, elbow propped against the sofa’s armrest, sighing like a grounded teenager on a Saturday night.
“Patience,” I said to the demon.
The demon shrugged, which could be alluded to take as much time as you need, or I don’t have a choice.
At some point, Zack and Eliza found the boxcutter I had planted inside one of the vanity drawers just for this occasion. I was hoping that Rebecca would find Chris bound underneath the bed, hoping to elicit some marital drama between her cheating ways and Chris finding out. But some paths require a bit of improvisation. Zack and Eliza used the boxcutter to cut Chris out of the tape.
No matter. I have plans B, C, D, E, and all the way to fucking Z anyway, I thought.
The best thing about being a dungeon was the almost limitless supply in my arsenal to freak people out. At least I didn’t have to worry about how to scare elves, dwarves, or orcs. Do they have those people in other worlds? It’s not hard to imagine when more than half of the things on the System’s market were clearly for a more medieval fantasy-inspired worlds.
And Earth gets the boring stuff. That didn’t mean I couldn’t purchase them, but they would look out of place. Alien.
“Do you have the keys to your car?” Chris asked Zack. They crouched behind the bed, thinking Maxine might be outside, watching them through the window. It didn’t have any curtains to block her view.
Zack patted his left jacket’s pocket. “Right here, man.”
“And you said your son’s out there? You brought Danny here?”
“I was going to drop him off with Jenna’s.”
Chris gulped. “Rebecca told me to come here,” he said. A lie, of course. He was here to either threaten the lovers with the gun he brought with him or kill them out of jealousy or pride. Maybe Chris was embarrassed that Rebecca cheated on him. He always had that face when he thought he was hot shit—the Alpha—when he was strolling through downtown. After all, he’s rich, a city council member, and with a well-respected cop wife. Didn’t he plan to run for mayor? What’s the obvious next step after becoming a city counselor? That’s the last I heard about him before…well…this.
As for Rebecca’s lover, he’s safely tucked and gagged in the boathouse, waiting for his time to shine once she arrives.
“What are you saying?” Eliza whispered. “That they lured you two here? Why?”
“I don’t know,” Zack said. “But there’s no use thinking about that now. We gotta grab Danny and get out of here.”
Chris nodded. “I heard him talking in the bathroom. Even though he’s far away, I could tell it was a kid talking.”
“Talking to who?” Eliza asked.
“I don’t know. I couldn’t hear the other guy at all.”
Eliza and Zack both shared a look. “But…” Zack started. “We were both talking to Maxine at the same time. In the living room.”
That’s it. That’s what I wanted—that deep, succulent orange glow emanating from all the three delvers’ bodies.
It’s time.
The demon nodded and walked toward the bedroom. The loud (and deliberate) creaking of the floorboards alerted the others that Maxine did not go outside at all.
She was still inside the cabin.
“Guys? Is everything alright in there? Did you find Danny?” Maxine called out behind the door leading into the hallway.
Eliza’s face scrunched up. She was screaming a while ago. Why didn’t Maxine run to her aid? One look at Zack told her he was in the same room as their host when he heard her scream. Something was not right.
“Are you in there?” Maxine asked again, wiggling the doorknob. She knocked. “Why is my bedroom door locked? Can you please open it? This isn’t funny.”
Her bedroom. I smiled when I saw Zack and Eliza’s eyes widen from the realization. They already suspected that Maxine was behind it, even though Zack couldn’t believe his former friend could do such things. Chris whimpered beside them. He wanted to leave the cabin right now.
“Try the window,” Zack whispered to Chris.
Maxine’s knocking increased.
Chris crawled toward the window and tried to open it, but it wouldn’t budge. “It’s stuck,” he hissed, panicked.
Maxine’s knocking grew louder and louder. “Guys? Are you in there? Open the door! Open the door! OPEN THE FUCKING DOOR!”
Zack went over to the window now, helping Chris to open it. But even with the two men’s strength, it would not budge. I designed it that way, I thought. No one’s escaping through the window on this level. It would be a different matter if they were on the second floor. The second floor had a balcony, and I’ve allowed delvers to escape through it, though with broken ankles from the significant drop below and no grass or loose soil to cushion them. Running through the woods would become difficult—a death sentence.
“Hurry up!” Eliza squeaked.
The knocking stopped; A dead silence choked through the space it left behind. Eliza could still see Maxine’s shadow peeking from underneath the door frame.
“Did you open my surprise present?” Maxine asked as if she didn’t just scream her head off not a second ago. It's like she was just making chit-chat over dinner. “Did you open him up?”
Eliza visibly shuddered. This woman was crazy, she probably thought. She latched on tight to Zack’s arm. They’ve stopped trying the window and huddled next to the bed, afraid that Maxine might shoot through the door with Chris’s gun. She doubted she could even open the window herself with her twig-like arms and lacking years of strength conditioning if these two men couldn’t. She’s no longer twenty.
They were trapped.
“Aww, I wanted to see that look on your faces,” Maxine continued, excited. “I wanted to see you two gut him up and watch all that warm blood spill out of his beautifully ripped abdomen. Don’t you drink a lot, Christian Timothy Torres? Your liver will make for a nice souvenir for these soon-to-be newlyweds!”
Chris stiffened, letting out a shaky breath.
“Ah, I see. I don’t smell any blood in there yet. Did you wait for me, Zack? Did you want me to do it, Eliza? How sweet of you! Well, I am the expert at cutting people up. Leave it to the pros, I guess. Don’t worry. I’ll make it worth your time!”
A heavy weight barreled through the door, breaking through the lock instantly. Eliza could hear the clink of metal hitting the wooden floor, the slice of light from the hallway illuminating the dark bedroom.
“Shit!” Chris exclaimed and clamored over the bed.
Zack followed after him. Eliza desperately wanted him not to leave her from behind the bed, clawing at his arm before he reeled it back and hauled over toward the door. Chris got to it first, putting all his weight on the door while Zack pressed his back against the end table that Eliza put there earlier. He tried to sit on the floor and wedged his feet against the bedpost, bending his knees and hoping that should stop her from getting in.
Maxine screamed through the gap. “Let me in! Let me in, piggy-fucker!”
“Fuck you!” Chris screamed back at her.
I saw an opening. Chris propped his left arm a little too close to the gap than he realized, too busy putting his weight against the door and panicking with each inch he lost. He never expected that a small woman like Maxine could have the strength of ten people. I could see it in his eyes. He wanted to run.
“Chris! Look out!” Eliza yelled.
But it was too late.
Maxine reached through the gap, grabbed Chris’s arm, and yanked it out to the hallway. Chris flailed as the weight he had been pushing back suddenly vanished. Zack didn’t know it, though. He still thought that Maxine was still pushing against the door, and with one strong thrust with his legs, he leaned hard against the end table, pressing against the door.
An unimaginable scream escaped Chris’s throat, pinned through the gap, Maxine still gripping him.
Zack scrambled away, confused at first, until he realized what he had done. “Oh, shit! I’m sorry!”
Like that’s going to make it all better, I thought.
“She’s got my damn arm!” Chris hollered. He tried pulling himself off the door, but Maxine held him back. Eliza and Zack ran over to him, the latter pulling at his arm while the woman tugged at the hem of his shirt, almost ripping at it.
But Maxine was too strong.
The demon turned to me, waiting for orders. For the first time, the demon wanted to know what she should do to the man. She had been quite decisive since I met her, using what she learned in Hell to inflict despair on her victims, and I rarely interjected with her job. As she said earlier, leave it to the pros. Yet, she waited for me. I realized what she was thinking. Chris was not part of the cult. He didn’t even know that his wife was murdering children for his—and her—success.
But what would Rebecca do if she saw her husband broken beyond belief? I could see her aura dropping like flies, her essence close to my reach.
I triggered [Telekinesis], pulling and dragging the device I wanted from the kitchen into the hallway and Maxine’s grasp.
[Power: 8/10]
“Cut off his arm,” I said. “Below the elbow.”
The demon grinned.
Chris stopped shouting, jaw hung open when he saw the glint of the blade pass his line of sight. He recognized the device instantly. One of those electrical meat knives, a bone saw, was now in Maxine’s hand. A new horror washed through his face. “Get me out! Get me out!”
Maxine flicked the switch on, and the—whiiiirrrr—of the device startled Zack and Eliza.
And then the blood came.