Page 5 of Sinful

I nodded. “Yes.”

“When?Where?” His voice had thickened, and the look in his eyes had turned wild and frantic with fear.

“I don’t know where they took her. They left just before you got here.”

My father set me down and lay a firm hand on my shoulder, crouching to meet my eyes. “Try to remember, son. Did any of them say anything about where they were going? Something that could help me find them?”

I swallowed hard. “I… I think one of them said something about another road that leads away from here. They were going to go that way so you wouldn’t see them when you came down the driveway.”

“Okay. Good boy. I need you to do something for me now,” Dad said in a low voice. “Go back to bed, close your eyes, and go to sleep. Don’t leave your room until I come back. Got it?”

“Yes.”

With that, he dashed outside. His tires squealed on the gravel, and I was alone again.

I did as I was told and trudged back upstairs, a heavy feeling in my stomach. I was bad tonight. I did everything wrong. Now my mom was in trouble.

I crawled back into bed and yanked the blankets over my head, squeezing my eyes shut. Maybe this was just another nightmare. Maybe I’d wake up in the morning and Mom would be right there with a plate of blueberry pancakes and tea with honey. Our favorites.

I smiled at the thought, but then I remembered the sound of her cries through the big man’s hands. The smile instantly dropped. This wasn’t a nightmare with a monster in a cave. This was real.

The monsters had come right into my house, and now my mother was gone.

2

Sebastian

September 4th,2024

I drove slowlyalong the winding road, navigating the sharp turns and steep inclines. Towering trees lined the way, their branches forming a natural archway that allowed only slivers of light to penetrate the canopy. It made the whole area seem as if it were bathed in perpetual twilight.

“So, I noticed a few anomalies in the records, but I don’t know if it’s a big deal or not.” My friend Jesse’s voice played through the car speaker, coming out slightly tinny from the shitty reception in this area. “It’s from the nineties, so it probably doesn’t even matter anymore.”

I glanced at the GPS. “You’ll have to tell me about this another time, man. The reception on this stretch is spotty as hell. We’ve probably only got two or three minutes before it drops out.”

As I spoke, intricate symbols began to appear on the trees around me, carved deeply into their trunks. Some resembled ancient runes while others depicted crude humanoid figures; aclear sign that I was entering a place shrouded in lore. Antlers hung from branches above, swaying gently in the breeze.

The arcane symbols and hanging antlers, eerie as they were, were merely a sign of the lengths that Pinecrest Falls locals went to in order to attract tourists seeking a brush with the infamous cultists that lived in the area.

The real cultists—otherwise known as the Covenant—kept to the most remote parts of the forest, away from prying eyes and curious tourists. They rarely ventured this far down the mountain, and they didn’t carve their symbols into trees alongside the road.

Just into the bodies of those who crossed them.

“No problem,” Jesse replied. “Like I said, it’s probably not a big deal, anyway. I’m just bored as hell.”

“Looking for any old issues, huh?”

Jesse had attended law school with me, but after failing the bar exam multiple times, he’d taken a job as an archivist at my father’s hospital in Manhattan.

“Yup. Anything to make the days go by quicker.” He coughed and went on. His voice was beginning to sound fuzzy. “So, you’re up in creep country again, huh?”

“Yup. About ten minutes away from the house.”

“When are you coming back?”

“Honestly? No fucking idea.” I gripped the wheel tighter as I steered around another sharp turn. “I took a month off, but I might end up taking longer.”

“Must be nice being a fancy foundation lawyer with all that paid time off. Doesn’t hurt that your dad owns the joint, either.”

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