Chapter 18 - The Anchor
Elias used a thick piece of white chalk to draw a massive hexagram on the dusty wooden floorboards.
He placed Madison dead center and told her to close her eyes.
Rachel sat directly across from her daughter, gripping the little girl’s freezing hands with all the strength she possessed.
Detective Aris stood by the broken front door, holding a lit road flare, ready to buy them time.
"Here we go," Elias muttered, smashing a small clay vial onto the floor.
A thick, gray smoke erupted from the shattered clay, instantly filling the room.
The cabin began to shake violently, as if a localized earthquake had just struck the mountain.
The cracks in the floorboards began to bleed that blinding, brilliant violet light.
Madison’s eyes snapped open, but the whites and irises were completely gone, replaced entirely by glowing violet energy.
"Madison! I'm right here! Look at me!" Rachel screamed, feeling an impossible, magnetic force trying to rip her daughter from her grip.
But Madison wasn't looking at her; her mind had already crossed the threshold.
Outside, the shrieks of a hundred shadow entities echoed through the trees as they descended upon the cabin.
Aris threw his flare into the mud, firing his gun blindly into the dark to distract the swarming monsters.
Inside Rachel’s mind, the physical cabin completely melted away.
She found herself floating in an endless, terrifying expanse of gray fog and violent purple lightning.
Madison was floating a few feet away, wrapped in chains made of black smoke, slowly being dragged toward a bottomless, screaming chasm.
"Madison!" Rachel screamed in the void, reaching out desperately.
But the chains were too strong, pulling the little girl closer to the edge.
May you like
Just as Rachel thought she had failed, a blinding, warm beam of golden light sliced through the suffocating gray fog.
A figure stepped out of the gold.
