Page 70 of Beneath the Dirt

He sighs. “Fucking Christ, Araceli! Seriously? I know you make a living off lying on paper, but even now you’re going to? Why did you come back to me last night, just to leave me again?”

“But I didn’t.” Tears begin to line my eyes.

He wags his finger at me. “Don’t you dare cry, not yet. I only want your tears when I’m close enough to lick them off your face.”

“I’m only going to repeat myself one more time. Why did you fucking come so close, yet leave me again? Again, Araceli! You left me again!”

“I don’t,” I fumble my words. “I don’t,” I repeat, butbefore I can say anything else, Harlan yanks my wrists, dragging me across the dirt until I’m at the entrance of the shed. He moves inside, leaving me on the ground and as he walks to retrieve something.

A few moments later, he reemerges, and the entirety of his cloak is filthy. Dirt mucks it everywhere. He stares up at the moon, seeing the cracks of daylight infiltrating the sky.

“We don’t have much time,” he says.

“For what?”

“The initiation to be complete.” He deadpans, swiping at a small monitor in his hands. “Here we are. Look.”

Time stamped in front of me, October 30th, 2024—last night—I’m met with the view of me, dirty, full of mud, walking through the graveyard, in an almost catatonic state. I watch in horror as I drop to the ground, clawing at the ground—screaming. He presses fast forward and the time lapses, but there I remain just digging my hands into the ground until I stop with something white in my hand.

“See!” he exclaims. “Youwerehere. You got what you wanted, and then you left. You weren’t supposed to leave. Tell me. What did you forget?” He roars his question.

“I don’t know.”

“Liar!” His words are like a whip.

“Since you are conveniently forgetting every-fucking-thing. Let me help jog your memory.” He tosses the camera down, and his hands latch onto me, dragging me back through the tombstones. He doesn’t stop, or let go until we near a loaded dump truck. The red buttons glare at me. “Look familiar?” Harlan asks.

“No. Not yet.” I try to fight him, but Harlan holds me in place with his possessive grip. Forced to look at what he’s showing me as he turns my head away from the truck, I now see a six-foot-deep hole in the ground. Paired with a temporary marker next to it with my name on it… written in blood.

I gasp, but my reaction is overruled as a sharp pain shoots into my thigh before a warm, wet sensation trails down, and my legs go weak. I peer down at the intestines only to see they aren’tintestines at all—they’re gone. Harlan’s snake has laced himself around my legs, locking me in place. His fangs sinking deep in my thigh, pumping his venom into me. “Good boy,” Harlan coos before clapping, and the snake leaves me as fast as it slithered onto me.

Harlan laughs. “You really thought those were intestines, didn’t you? That’s the drugs tricking you. Hallucinogens have a funny way of messing with the truth.”

“I hate this place. It’s fucking haunted,” I breathe out. Relieved that the snake is off me, but now I have Harlan to contend with.

He shakes his head, mumbling a no. “It’s not the house that’s haunted, it’s your heart.”

Harlan reaches over to my neck and yanks my necklace. I watch, stunned, as Harlan pushes aside the pentagram pendant as his fingers graze the large, curved bone hanging low enough that it becomes lost between my breasts.

“Good choice,” he praises, rubbing the bone, getting an unexpected level of arousal from it, judging from the primal grunt that just echoed from beneath his mask. “You should add actress to your repertoire. Pretending to come back for your ‘necklace’. Clearly, you came back forme… and oh, have I been waiting foryou.”

Harlan reaches into his back pocket, taking out my journal from it. “We won’t be needing this anymore. All that was written is, and will come to fruition.” He grins, tossing it over my head. The thud on the ground impossible to ignore.

“You know what makes me hard, Araceli?”

I roll my eyes.

Bones and death, clearly.

“I don’t know… anything with a pulse?” I blurt, my sarcasm reemerging.

“Wrong,” he quips. “Your fear, because in it lies your truth, and I intend after tonight to exhume your truth as you have exhumed mine. I want to terrorize you until your screams turnyour throat hoarse. I want to taunt you like putty in my hands. The same hands that will gladly strangle the life out of you, until that pulse that you think is the only prerequisite I have to get my dick hard withers away.That’swhat gets me rock fucking hard.”

Without warning, Harlan moves his hands to my waist, lifting me high enough that he can push me into the open pitIstupidly dug in the ground.

Dust clouds form as my body crashes into the earth and he continues on. “That, and fantasizing of how pretty you’ll look when the olive of your flesh morphs into a lifeless array of purple and blue. All while those pouty lips of yours remain on mine until they turn cold and lifeless.”

He starts humming to himself as he turns around, “Blood for blood. Eye for an eye.” His voice trails off and he moves for a moment, out of my sight.

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