Witch of the Wild Woods

Chapter 24 - Hell is Chrome

Chapter 24 - Hell is Chrome

They'd gone beyond the wooden staircase that led under the abandoned church. It was all stone, mud, and roots that formed the narrow hallway leading toward flickering lights. There wasn't enough room to fully extend one's arms to either side of the dank passageway. One's head had barely enough room without scraping the ceiling. Lane was in front, followed by Luna, Nina, and Franki. Jordan had stayed behind with Gracie. So, now there were four that traveled the length of a five-minute hallway towards an ever brightening orange glow.

    "Lane," Luna whispered.

    Glancing over his shoulder to where she pointed, Lane did indeed notice the broken stone that incrementally lined the hallway. As they approached the glow, Lane had counted twelve in total. He carefully stepped over one last broken pile of stone; "Yeah. Thirteen barriers, or maybe walls at one point? Looks like they'd all been smashed inward. Someone didn't want anyone else down this hallway."

    "Remind me again," Nina asked, voice shaking, "Why are WE down here?"

    "We need answers," Lane said definitively.

    Luna reached back for Nina's lithe hand and held it tight, "I promise you, we're going to get out of here. But, if we're not armed with the knowledge to beat whatever's in our way, the odds of that happening-"

    "It's Jude though," Franki breathed out in a cold, measured breath, "Right? It has to be."

    "I mean, he's been doing fuck knows what this whole time, sure. But, how does one guy control ghost animals or whatever the hell they are?" Nina pondered, voice a little less shaking as she wove her fingers in between Luna's.

    "I think this might give us a clue," Lane said, pointing at what lie at the end of the tunnel.

    Stretched taut within a wooden frame was a deer hide illuminated by a large rack of antlers with wax candles stuck on each of the tips. Lane reached into his vest pocket and flipped open the notebook. He didn't recognize the writing, or glyphs scrawled over the hide. If he had to venture an educated guess, it was the language of the native tribe that originally occupied these grounds: the Cowlitz.

    Luna had squatted down and wedged herself on the right side of Lane, "Do you mind?"

    Lane shuffled sideways so that both of them could occupy the same space.

    "Jesus," Nina whispered.

    "Probably not," Franki snorted. "Then again; Lion, Wolf, and..." She grimaced, "Panther. They were all omens, heralds of things to come in Dante's, "Divine Comedy." So maybe this is something from above or below?"

"Franki," Lane said, still studying the markings, checking them against known occult glyphs and writings he'd documented in The Journal, "Remind me again, what's the difference between a herald and omen?"

"Yeah, and how do you know that exactly?" Nina added, almost accusingly.

Franki rolled her eyes, "I read comics, okay? Silver Surfer mostly. He's kinda like Marvel's 'Doctor Who,' a bit." Off Nina's scrunched face, she clarified, "I'm a nerd, a'right? I love stories. The ones where dark shit happens are interesting an' whatever."

"Okay," Lane said, trying to calm her down, "So, if those things are heralds..."

Franki shrugged, then mimed a pair of antlers with her hands above her head, "Then there's something bigger coming-"

"-Like the Deer Woman?" Nina interrupted. She paused then shivered, "Okay, but are you saying this is... like, the devil? How? I don't remember a Deer Woman in the Bible."