Things Not Meant to Be

The red, scented candles provided flickering illumination to the ritual, as the circle of hooded, red-robed figures chanted.

“Sheh, igran, neregi, laba, ithel.”

Cherrie had no idea what the words meant, but she chanted them along with the others. She was beginning to feel decidedly out of her depth here and would have long-since left the Ruby Club and its strange, cult-like rituals if she wasn’t so afraid. She had first came here with Bethany, poor Bethany who had disappeared only last week and been declared officially missing two days ago.

Cherrie and Bethany had grown up in the same neighborhood, the gated community of Ivy Ridge, pampered and indulged modern-age princesses. Bethany had always been the leader, shepherding the younger girl into such mysteries as alcohol, illicit drugs and the awkward, tentative sex of teenagers. So it was only natural that Bethany be the one to discover the club. As with every other fad she had pulled Cherrie into, she plunged headlong into it before initiating the other girl, for she loved nothing more than showing off her knowledge to her friend.

“Sheh, igran, neregi, laba, ithel.”

Poor, lost Bethany…Cherrie shuddered to think what may have become of her. The last she had seen of her childhood friend had been when the High Priest, Harland Quinn, had led her away through the red velour curtain behind the intricately carved, white marble alter that lay in a nook just off the ritual chamber. The way to the inner chapel.

She had subtlety attempted to question Quinn, but she feared he had seen through her, for not far into the conversation he had answered her cautious questions directly, assuring her that Bethany had left the club safely the night of her disappearance, that he had already reported as much to the police and that it would not be a good idea for her to talk to the authorities herself. As he talked, voice light and pleasant, his mouth had curved in that smug, knowing smile of his that she found so unnerving, the sinister smile that promised terrible things might befall her should she investigate further. She had known immediately that he lied, he wouldn’t have talked to the police and they would never have known to ask him, as the Ruby Club was secret and it’s members forbidden to mention its existence.

“Sheh igran neregi laba ithel”

Cherrie had been sick with terror since that conversation, afraid of Quinn and the others, of what might happen to her if she stopped showing up at the Club and taking part in their strange rituals.

Her apprehension was not a new thing, however, for she had been growing uneasy even before Bethany’s disappearance. She had been initiated into the Ruby Club two months ago and it had begun harmlessly enough.

One night, Bethany had driven them to the old colonial mansion where the Club met, along winding roads through the woods outside town. The house itself was in a clearing surrounded by tall, silent pines. They had pulled up to the house next to several other nondescript cars and exited the vehicle. Bethany had been wearing the dark red velvet robe of the Club and as they approached the door of the house she drew up the hood.

“Really?” Cherrie remembered saying, as she gestured to her friend’s strange garb. “What’s with that thing?”

“It’s part of the Club, like a uniform. It makes it feel more…special. Anyway, Quinn will show you.”

By that time they were drawing close to the door of the house, which was open to the night air. As they passed the elaborately carved door, Cherrie caught sight of one particular carving that stood out amidst the others. A face, maybe the size of a balled up fist, slightly cocked to one side. It was a hideous thing; gaunt, emaciated and feral. Its expression was somewhere between a snarl and a leer, lips pulled back from the gums to reveal horrible, crooked fangs, thin nostrils flared and low brow ridges were drawn down over the pit-like eyes.

Cherrie had looked at it no longer than a second as she walked past, but it was still etched into her memory a month later.

She had followed Bethany into the hallway, a wood-paneled room with a large staircase along one wall leading up to the next floor and three heavy oak doors. From behind one door, Cherrie had faintly made out the sound of rhythmic chanting.

“Wait here” Bethany had said, before disappearing through the door from behind which the sound came. As the great wooden portal swung open and then closed again, Cherrie had seen flickering candlelight and shadowy figures, swaying in time with the chant they recited.

“Sheh igran neregi laba ithel”

Cherrie hadn’t been able to make out the words at the time but that is what she now knew the chant to be.
Not long after, another door had opened and Bethany had poked out from behind it, motioning Cherrie to follow her. She had been led into another wood-paneled room, this one lit only by a roaring fireplace at the other end. Before the fire were two leather armchairs and in one of them sat a man.
He was older than them, maybe in his forties, and Cherrie had found him attractive in a Pierce Brosnan kind of way.

Bethany had introduced him as Harland Quinn and called him “the real thing.” Cherrie hadn’t quite understood what that meant but took the excitement with which her friend said it and the joyous look in her eyes to mean it was something good.

“Please, sit” Quinn said by way of introduction, and Cherrie sank down into the other armchair. The leather was smooth and warmed by the fire, and the padding beneath was soft and yielding. Bethany pressed a glass of dark red wine into her hand.

“So, what has Bethany told you about our little club?”

“Not much, she just said it was…special.”

“It is indeed. We are a place of freedom. Tell me, if the question isn’t too rude, is your family Christian, like Bethany’s?”

“Yes they are.”

“Devout?”

“Yes.”

“But what about you? Do you enjoy your parent’s religion, with its rules and sins and its obsessive focus on guilt and shame? Indeed, were you ever even asked?”

“No…I go to church but I don’t really listen…I don’t believe.”

Quinn spoke with a passion that easily swept up the listener, leaning forward in his seat and gesturing with his hands, a gleam in his eye. Cherrie had never thought about this before and had never really cared…but his words made her think. She was seventeen now, effectively an adult, why hadn’t her parents asked her if she still wanted to go to their moldy, stone building and sit with them on hard, uncomfortable benches while some old man droned on about Jesus this and Noah that? The old priest had never invited her to sit in a nice, warm, comfortable chair and had never asked her what she thought. Her thoughts and feelings weren’t important to them, they only cared that she did what they said. She had already felt herself warming to this intense, charismatic man, despite his kooky cult with its tacky robes.

“I bet they’d be…angry…if they heard you say that.”

Cherrie’s brow knitted in deep thought. They probably would be angry, she’d concluded. She remembered becoming angry herself at the thought. Why? Why couldn’t she make her own choices? It was…unfair.
She had sipped some of the wine, it had been rich, fruity and strong, making her shiver involuntarily as she swallowed.

“We follow a different faith here, something older, something purer.” He had reached out and laid a hand on her knee. “I won’t ask for blind obedience, we won’t get angry here if you ask questions or want to give your viewpoint. If you’re interested, I can tell you more.”

Cherrie had looked into his eyes, into the eager face of Bethany and at the half-glimpsed opulent chamber. The Club’s strong undertones of secrecy, exclusivity and the occult tantalized her pleasantly; to be part of something her parents could never know about, something blasphemous, something they would never approve of, had excited her in an almost sexual way. High on the feeling of defiance and the power of exerting her own will, Cherrie had taken a deep gulp of the wine and asked him to go on.

That very night, drunk on wine and a sense of empowerment, she had agreed to join the Ruby Club. She had sworn on her own life to keep their secrets and never betray their trust and had been initiated with a ritual involving nudity, strong-smelling candles and vaguely ominous symbols traced onto her skin with some startlingly bright red paste.

Since that night she had been a member of the Club, enjoying the lavish mansion, taking part in the rituals and quietly looking down her nose at those around her in the outside world who didn’t know. She had something special, something that made her feel elite and valued. But the feelings of unease hadn’t taken long to set in.

She had joined the Ruby Club for the way it made her feel, the superiority, exclusiveness and sense of belonging, she didn’t care about the faith and she hadn’t really listened that first night when Quinn had explained it.

The rituals glorified beings called the Once Ones, who had supposedly once been worshipped openly across the globe and dominated human society. They had been overthrown and driven underground by the new, upcoming pagan religions that had secretly spread under their very noses and in a twist, they had become secret cults themselves. They had endured, Quinn claimed, over the millennia and now they were worshiped by the chosen faithful in every country. For now they were venerated in secret but he claimed that one day the time would come for them to reclaim dominance.

That was the first thing that made her think twice…what did he mean by that? Reclaim their dominance? By what means? On what timescale? Why would the world just suddenly go back to worshipping shadowy beings they had never heard of? It sounded a little crazy to her, but she said nothing, chalking it up to wishful thinking and fantasy on Quinn’s part.

The second thing that she found a little creepy was the feeling she got from Quinn’s many stories and histories that the Once Ones weren’t actually human. Quinn never described them as gods, but as physical beings, however there was no reference to them dying and he gave the idea that there were only a handful of them in each country. On the rare occasions that their number increased, he spoke of them choosing a new member and raising them. He promised this as an eventual reward for the faithful when they returned, so it was obviously something they could do to a human, somehow changing them.

Of course, the Once Ones couldn’t be real, that would be absurd, but there was some part of her that felt a quiver of fear at the thought of actively worshiping and venerating these vague, inhuman beings, no matter how fictional.

Another thing that troubled her from time-to-time was the mansion itself, the building was old and creaky, ceilings and floors were not quite level, and some door frames were a little crooked, causing the doors to stick or jam occasionally. There were carvings everywhere, if you looked, tucked away into corners and dark nooks where the eye might easily miss them. They were like the face on the front door, angry, snarling and hostile. Each one she found caused her a jolt of shock and made her feel distinctly unwelcome.
The house made all the usual sounds of an old house settling, but sometimes she thought she heard others; distant, muffled, moaning when she was in a room alone, or growls so low and far away that they could barely be heard. Then, the final nail, Bethany had vanished.

“Sheh igran neregi laba ithel”

Cherrie snapped back to the present as the ritual incantation was spoken one last time, loudly and with force. It signaled the end of the ritual, now was the time for the Club to gather in close around Quinn and share the ceremonial wine.

“Tonight we honour the Once Ones” intoned Quinn, holding the large goblet of wine over his head. “In the dark of night, just as they have been relegated to the dark of mankind’s memory. Now we kneel in darkness, soon we will walk in the light.”

He passed the cup to his left and the cultist there drank then passed it on. As the cup approached her, Cherrie tried to claw together the will to promise herself that this was her last night, that tomorrow she would go to the police and tell everything. She had little hope of it working, it hadn’t so far.

The cup passed to her and she sipped unenthusiastically, taking in as little as she dared. She passed it into the eager hands to her left and shuffled back to the outer edge of the group. When she looked up to see if he’d noticed her, she found Quinn staring right back and hastily averted her eyes.

“Remember, children, the glory that will be ours when the Once Ones walk free again.” He said as the last cultist drank and handed the cup back to him.

“We remember.” They intoned back to him, the ritual now complete.

Slowly, so as not to draw to much attention, Cherrie began moving towards the door to the entrance hall and her escape.

Her fear and stress were weighing on her, she felt tired and drowsy. She was only feet away from the door when she felt the hand catch her arm.

“Don’t go so soon, my dear.”

It was Quinn. She tried to tense up and pull her arm away, intending to flee, but all she succeeded in doing was stumbling and almost falling. She was dizzy and disorientated.

“Oh no, has someone had a little too much wine?”

When she tried to look into his face her vision blurred and swam but she could tell from his voice that he was laughing at her. Her vision cleared a little but she couldn’t keep her eyes focused and the room seemed to spin.

“Let me go.” She begged.

“Young, pretty Cherrie is due a special honour tonight, children” he said, louder than when he had been talking to just her. “She has been chosen to visit the inner chapel.”

“No…” She said, trying to shout but only managing a slurred whisper.

That was what he had said the night he had taken Bethany. She didn’t remember much of that night, but she remembered the words he had spoken before he took her friend through the curtain behind the carven alter.

“No…” She mumbled again.

As he started dragging her along, she grasped at one of the other cultists, but he fell loosely to his knees as Quinn dragged her on. She had briefly caught sight of his eyes, they had been glassy and he had been staring into space smiling slackly.

The wine, Quinn had drugged them all. Now he could remove her with minimal effort and no one would remember if he had to be rough. As he dragged her along and she tried to pull against him, some detached part of her mind supposed that he had faked his own sip, either letting the liquid dribble back out his mouth or just keeping his lip pressed against the rim of the cup. She wished she’d had the guts to do the same.

As he dragged her into the alcove where the alter sat, she put all her strength into struggling to break free but by now her limbs were numb and droopy; she couldn’t even stand, he was now holding her by the armpits.

Her blurred vision focused enough as she was maneuvered around the alter for her to pick out one of those hideous faces amongst the carvings, it leered ravenously out from the marble. Then the velour curtain closed around her, and she tried to scream but only managed a pitiful moan.

“You know, I quite enjoy this” she heard Quinn say as he carried her down a flight of stairs. “Have you ever known what it feels like to be smarter than everyone else around you? To do whatever you want and get away with it? No, I guess not.”

The terror and shock was building inside Cherrie, even in her dazed state she could feel her racing heart and the cold dread in the pit of her stomach. She was already dead, she knew it. What could she possibly do now? Why hadn’t she ran to the police? Why had she kept coming to the meetings? She knew the answer, fear, she had been too terrified to run, but now as she was dragged down a cold, dim, stone hall by her murderer she realised how stupid her fear had been. What had she been afraid of? Death? Well, it was going to happen anyway.

Stupid, stupid, she cursed herself. What was he going to do? How long would it take? Her guts coiled up in fear. Would she be awake to watch it done? Awake but unable to move? She felt hot tears slide down her face. At last, he dragged her though a door and dropped her down onto a low, padded bench.

The room was small, the walls stone with decorative silk hangings, light was provided by three tall candle stands, standing in three of the four corners. There was another door opposite the one they had entered by, a heavy thing reinforced with iron strips bolted into the wood.

Her eyes were beginning to focus better, she realised. Suddenly hope flared in her, she’d only had a small sip of the wine, maybe it would wear off enough for her to make a break for it before he tied her up or something.

A horrifying vision of him hacking off her legs at the knee came into her mind. She silently begged God not to let that happen. She didn’t believe in him any more than Quinn’s Once Ones but she had found that skepticism quickly went out the window when horrible death loomed large.

“Ah, are we comfy?” Quinn said, stroking her cheek in an intimate way that disgusted her. He looked down at her body and licked his lips. She felt a twinge of a new kind of fear inside her. No, not that, she thought, don’t touch me!

He groped her through her robe, going so far as to playfully snap the elastic of her underwear. Through it all she held what little of her body she controlled still. She was beginning to regain feeling in her fingers but if he went any further than just touching her through the robe, she knew she would have to fight whether she was ready or not. She knew she’d likely only get one chance at escape, and she wanted to be as strong as possible when she took it.

He leered down at her as he spread her legs apart, his face reminding her unpleasantly of those carvings that infested the mansion. She couldn’t stop herself letting out a weak whimper.

As he hiked her robe up she hit the point of no return. She had to fight now, she couldn’t let him get any further. Gathering what pitiful strength she could, she drew one leg up as far as she could, coiling it against her chest for maximum force.

She lashed out as violently as she could, but she missed her intended target, hitting his thigh instead. She groaned with frustration and wretchedness and tried to bring her leg back again, but Quinn grabbed her ankle and dragged her off the bench roughly, dumping her onto the stone floor. He actually looked shocked, taken aback that she would dare defend herself against being violated. Then his face changed for the worse and she realised she was in big trouble.

“I’m sorry!” She managed to shriek. It was a desperate, irrational thing to say; the only thing she was sorry for was that her foot had missed his crotch.

Face red, eyes bulging and teeth bared, he kicked her in the stomach three times, each time pulling his foot back as far as he could.

“Stupid, fucking, ungrateful WHORE!” He bellowed, spittle flying from his lips. He kicked her one last time then took a moment to compose himself.

“You know” he said nastily “if you’d been good, I might have just kept you. At least for a while. Now you’re going to fucking die.”

He dragged her to her feet by the hair and manhandled her over to the heavy door as she struggled weakly. She could move all her limbs now but with little strength and zero co-ordination.

He opened the door and tried to push her through but she somehow managed to get a foot against the doorframe. She was getting her voice back and she threw her head back and let loose a raw, agonised howl.

Quinn must have realised how weak her body still was, because he hauled her back until her foot fell from the wall then heaved her through before she could get it back up.

Puzzlingly, he didn’t follow her through, he just hurled her into the cold black space to sprawl on the rough stone floor there.

This chamber was cruder than the last, more natural cave than constructed room, there were deep recesses in the walls, untouched by the light that came through the door behind her.
At the foot of one recess she saw a disturbingly human-sized bone, then another, then others tucked away in corners. With a jolt she recognised a human jawbone.

Not far from the jawbone was a heap of ripped up red cloth the same as the robe she was wearing. Poking out from this heap she spotted an arm, still with its flesh, though the skin was discoloured and bloated with decomposition.

Cherrie let out a horrified gasp when she followed the arm with her eyes and saw the head, also bloated and rotting. Then she realised who it was.

She screamed, a sound of undiluted terror, grief and pain. Bethany.

“Take a good look” said Quinn mockingly from the doorway “it’s your future.”

She turned to face him, sobbing. He still hadn’t entered the room, instead he leaned around the side of the door like a nervous child, face excited. Numbly, she decided he probably starved his victims to death.

“Get it over with” she mumbled brokenly.

He laughed.

“You think I’m going to kill you? Dear girl, I just wanted to fuck you,” he paused for effect before pointing past her. “They are going to kill you.”

Slowly, anticipating a trap, Cherrie turned her back on him. At first she couldn’t see anything back there and she tensed up as she awaited some manner of deathblow. Then she saw it, movement in one of the recesses. A pale hand groped its way into the light and took hold of the rocky edge of the recess. She actually felt her heart skip a beat.

The hand was grey and skeletal, the dry flesh taut over bone and wiry muscle. The fingers were too long and they were topped by black claw-like nails, the knuckles reminded her of knotted wood. Searching the stone for a good grip, they quested about like a spider’s legs.

Then the face followed and she opened her mouth to scream but only managed a strangled wheeze.
The head was oddly shaped, bumpy and a little longer than a human head, with a handful of lank, grey hairs stubbornly clinging to the desiccated scalp here and there. Its face was gaunt, with tightly stretched skin like the hand. The brow ridges were drawn low above black, slit-like eyes. The skin was so tight it looked like the thin, lipless mouth could never entirely cover the tangle of yellow fangs that lay within it, but when the thing sighted Cherrie, those non-lips drew back anyway, gradually exposing the full, grotesque length of the twisted fangs within. From between those jagged teeth leaked a dark brown, pus-like fluid that rolled viscously down it’s chin and dripped to the floor in long strands. In the black pits of its eyes, malevolence glinted. Behind her, Quinn let out an involuntary nervous giggle.

As others of its kind stirred in their alcoves, the first one started towards Cherrie. It moved slowly with jerky inhuman motions. It squinted in the light and hissed. There was a sickeningly foul stench, like an open, festering wound.

The thing was wrong. It was a feeling in her bones, this creature did not belong. Looking upon it’s emaciated and wiry body, with its dry, shriveled, grey skin, she felt a revulsion so deep as to be primal. This thing should not be, some dark, animal corner of her brain told her.

With a sudden jolt, Cherrie bolted to her feet and charged for the door. Quinn was ready for her and he closed it swiftly, throwing her into darkness, but the door stopped short, hitting the jamb with a bang. Warped by the cold and damp, the door wouldn’t quite close.

Quinn pulled back the door to slam it into place, but she got her fingers through in time and it slammed on them instead.

She felt something crack under the impact of the heavy door and a shock of pain raced up her arm, but she could hear the things moving in behind her and feel an icy current of air, as if they were radiating it. That foul smell of things rotten and tainted intensified, making her gag.

Quinn pushed against his side of the door, pinning and grinding her fingers. It was angonising, but things not of this world were reaching out to her with their skeletal talons and she was driven by a fear that transcended pain and injury.

Screaming and roaring wordlessly, like a madwoman, she threw herself against the door repeatedly.
Quinn stepped back to brace himself better and she seized her chance, thrusting her left arm through the gap and clawing at him furiously. She felt flesh then wet, slippery blood, then one of her fingers plunged up to one knuckle into something soft and gelatinous.

Quinn let out a hideous squeal and his weight was gone from the door. As she fell through the sudden gap, Cherrie felt something lightly slash across her right shoulder. Her whole arm went numb for a few seconds as if thrust into ice and a terrible pain like nothing she had ever felt before shot down the limb.

She cried out as she collapsed, then awkwardly scrambled over Quinn, catching sight of the furrows she’d gauged in his face and the blood pouring from one of his eyes as she did so.

Rolling onto her back, she saw one of the creatures hesitantly poking its head into the brighter room, and she lashed out with her foot but it dodged her in a liquid, snake-like motion. It grasped for her foot but she yanked it back, crying out with revulsion at the thought of it touching the bare skin of her leg. As she desperately scrambled backwards her hand came to rest on something smooth and hard. Without thinking she grabbed it and hurled it towards the abomination.

It was one of the candle stands and as it fell short of her target, the candles came loose and landed around Quinn where he moaned on the floor. One of them set light to his robe and then he was rolling about madly, limbs thrashing.

Scrambling to her feet, Cherrie snatched up another of the candle stands and poked it at Quinn, feeding the fire. He began to let loose wild, high-pitched shrieks as the fire spread and began to envelop him.
As she ripped the silk decorations from the wall and threw them onto him to feed the flames, the creature in the doorway darted back from the fiery obstacle before it and growled at her. It’s face scowled with such menacing evil that she stood transfixed for a moment before tearing her gaze away and running from the room.

As she raced down the corridor outside she heard rapid footsteps behind her and looked back to see one of the creatures coming after her on all fours with frightening speed. As she turned back she caught sight of another one emerging from the room, crawling around the side of the doorframe and along the wall.
As she reached the bottom of the stairs and began to climb something snatched at her hair and jerked her back.

She cried out with fear and revulsion then whipped her head forward as hard as she could, ripping out a hank of hair and probably a chunk of scalp if the pain was anything to go by.
As the creature behind her hissed furiously she bolted up the stairs and ripped down the velour curtain as she charged through it.

Cherrie leapt over the horrible, carven alter, pushing off from it with a foot and felt it move. On the other side of it she turned around and noticed it was set on smooth pads of felt that made it easier to move it around on the stone floor. Suddenly she had an idea.

Turning it, she roughly lined the shorter side up with the staircase and was coiling herself behind it to push when two of those spidery hands grasped the sides of the doorway and one of the things loomed up from below.

It hissed horribly, jagged teeth opening wide and drops of thick, foul fluid spattering the floor. Deep within that cavernous maw Cherrie glimpsed needle-like fangs protruding from the sides and roof of the mouth and a long, wormy tongue covered in weeping pustules.

Howling with fear, disgust and exertion, she heaved the solid marble alter as hard as she could and it slid across the stone on its smooth pads.

She drove the alter into the creature’s chest with all the force she could, breaking its grip on the doorway and knocking it down the stairs. She glimpsed two more behind it before the altar followed with a cacophonous crashing and smashing.

Running out into the ritual chamber she had another idea. It came from the same primal, animalistic part of her brain that told her those things should not exist and it was a weapon as primal as her fear.
The ritual chamber had always been lavishly furnished, with carpets, rugs, silken tapestries and heavy wooden furnishings.

Muscles fired up by adrenaline and fear, she heaved a bulky armchair over to the alcove and then came back for one of the bronze stands that held the ritual candles. The other cultists were still sprawled around on the floor in various states of stupefaction.

“If you want to live, get the fuck out of here” she shouted hoarsely as she returned to the alcove.

She looked down the staircase to see the creatures wrestling their way out from under the shattered remains of the alter. They seemed to have taken some minor injuries and were having difficulty freeing themselves. Cherrie smiled triumphantly and let out a demented cackle.

She took some of the candles and placed them on the thickly padded seat of the armchair and waited until the back rest had caught alight before she shoved it down the stairs. The rest of the candle stand followed and then so did the voluminous velour curtain.

Cherrie looked down that staircase one last time. All that was visible was the bunched up velour, now starting to catch fire. Beneath it she could hear howls and roars or rage and pain. No fear though, even now they were more enraged at her than afraid and undoubtedly trying to claw their way free. Her victorious and maniac smile evaporated. She had to do more, had to make sure.

She dashed back to the ritual chamber and began setting other chairs alight, then the carpet itself.
Some of the other cultists had noticed what she was doing and one of them started towards her as if to stop her. Their eyes met and he faltered then turned and ran. Several others followed him.

She ran from room to room, setting things on fire. As she was torching the chairs in the room where she had first met Quinn she came across a cigarette lighter. After that she was like wildfire.

“Have to make sure” she chanted, like an insane mantra. “Have to make sure.”

Running into one of the bathrooms by mistake, Cherrie caught sight of herself in a mirror. Her eyes were wide and staring, she had a terrible, crazed smile frozen on her face and blood from her scalp wound matted her tangled hair and had dribbled down her face in three long trails. She looked tribal, wild and feral. There was also blood running down her back where she had been clawed. Snapped out of the trance she had been in, she realised her left hand was wounded too, her ring finger hung at a strange angle, she couldn’t move it and it sent a sharp shock of pain through her arm when she touched it. Quinn had probably broken it in the door. The nail on her middle finger was also damaged, most of it ripped off exposing the raw flesh underneath. She numbly supposed she must have left it in Quinn’s face.

The roar and crackle of fire distracted her from the reflection, and she left the room. The air was smoky now, and she could hear fire everywhere. She decided it was time to get out of there, hopefully she had done enough to ensure the whole house came down on their misshapen heads.

As she arrived at the head of the stairs down to the hallway, she found the hall already ablaze and she was forced to retreat coughing. As she made her way to the rear stairs, she found her way barred by a corridor that passed over the ritual room, the floor of which had already collapsed into the flames below. As she retreated once more, she heard a horrific wailing coming from the alcove, just about audible above the inferno. She shivered and ran. Finally, she found a room with exterior windows and spent a minute desperately struggling to open one before giving up and smashing the glass with a chair.

Briefly looking down at the one storey drop to the ground, she took a deep breath then hurled herself into open air, sharp splinters of glass in the frame nicking her arms and legs.

Cherrie felt as if she was flying for a moment, then she landed heavily on her feet. Something snapped like a dry branch in her right ankle, and she fell the rest of the way to the ground as intense agony shot up her leg.

All her wounds and pains came back to haunt her as she crawled across the grass to a safe distance from the blazing mansion, her shoulder and right arm, her scalp, her left hand, her stomach and her right ankle, all throbbed and ached.

The entire ground floor was aflame now, and half of the next. The whole thing would collapse in on the ritual chamber at its heart and the staircase in the alcove.

If she listened carefully, Cherrie could just hear them above the flames, the death agonies of three beings from a time beyond ancient, the Once Ones. She curled up into a ball and quietly cried.

Quinn had said branches of the Ruby Club existed in every State in the US, in every country of Europe, that they were practically worshiped openly in Southeast Asia. How much was true? Did the shriveled and revolting Once Ones lie at the centre of every cult? How long before they returned from their centuries of exile to ‘walk in the light’?

Cherrie’s sobs slowly trailed off. Who knew about them? Who would fight them? Who was there to root out their lairs and bring the fire to burn them away?

As she watched the mansion burn as night became dawn, a self centred and petty girl became a woman scoured free of fear and alight with purpose.

Perhaps there was someone after all, someone to hunt, find and destroy the things not meant to be.

Credit: DM Roberts

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