“Kelly, um, where are we goin', exactly?” Kate Allegheny turned towards her friend and asked quietly, wringing her hands.  Kelly was driving the two of them up a heavily wooded two-way mountain road, going a bit faster than she should have.

 

“There’s some kinda little abandoned cult...eh, meeting place?  Something like that in these woods a couple classmates told me about.  I’ve always wanted to check it out.  They said one person saw, like, weird angel-ish creatures here and was never the same again, totally lost their mind,” Kelly explained, keeping her eyes on the road.

 

“You realize you are a walking parody of a missing persons’ special,” Kate complained, shaking her head.  “Or an inane horror drama.  You told me we were just goin' hiking.”

 

Kelly scoffed and grinned. “You should’ve figured ‘hiking’ meant something like this coming from me!”

 

                “Yeah, shoot, guess I should have.  I didn’t exactly want to spend my first day of break pokin' around a Satanic crack-house, though.  I’m not exactly in high school anymore.”

 

                Kelly found a grassy area where she could pull to the side and park her small, dingy car.  “It’s not Satanic!  It’s something else, they said.  Something no one’s ever really seen anything like before,” she said excitedly.

 

                “That wasn’t exactly my point,” Kate huffed, exiting the car with Kelly.  “How long do you think we’ll be walking?” she asked, accepting her fate.

 

                “Prob'ly like... pff, hour and a half, altogether,” Kelly answered.

 

                Kate pulled a hair tie out of the pocket of her jeans and lazily pulled her thick, black hair back and tied it in a messy ponytail.  It was unseasonably warm out for the first week of April.  Sunlight scattered through the trees, which had just begun to sprout leaves for the first time all year.

 

                “This way, c'mon,” Kelly called, motioning towards a small path (if it could really be called a “path” – it was amateurishly cleared, mostly just from people walking on it.) They walked into the woods, with Kelly in the lead.  Kate walked somewhat slowly compared to her friend.  As she walked, she looked at the ground, where tiny blue and yellow flowers were beginning to bloom, peeking out from beneath a sheet of damp, brown leaves.

 

                “You good?” Kelly called back to Kate after about fifteen minutes of walking, stopping to allow her to catch up.

 

                “Yeah, I’m fine,” the dark-haired girl said.

 

                “I brought a couple water bottles if ya need one,” Kelly said, grabbing a water bottle out of her small shoulder bag and opening it up.

 

                Kate shook her head.  “Maybe later.”

 

                The two of them continued walking, this time with Kelly at a slower pace.  “How’s your art project coming along?” she asked Kate, taking a sip from her water bottle.

 

                “Pretty good.  I think I’ll have it done in the next two weeks – well before it’s due, for once in my life.  How are your classes?”  Kate asked, trying to keep her breath even, still struggling a bit to keep up with Kelly despite the fact that the shorter girl had slowed down for her.

 

                “Great!  Actually, I’ve been doing so well in one of them, the professor might be hooking me up with a job, like, helping out in the chemistry labs, shit like that,” Kelly stated.

 

                “Oh, that’s great!”

 

                “Yeah, maybe I can cook batches of glass and sell them around finals!” Kelly said, her child-like face lighting up.

 

                “Yeah, throw your future away to become the campus drug lord, I’m sure that’ll work out great,” Kate said, laughing.

 

                “What future?  One way or another, everything’s gonna go to hell soon - I give it, eh, ten years,” Kelly said casually – a bit too casually for one to think she really believed what she had just said.

 

                Kate rolled her eyes.  “Let me guess – the pesticides running off of the crops when it rains will turn the oceans to blood and the genetically modified food and vaccines will turn us into reptilian monsters and then aliens will descend from the sky to do battle with us?”

 

                “Kate, I’m tellin’ ya, it’s not gonna do you any good to take this stuff lightly,” Kelly said, shaking her head.  “We’re really on the brink of something epic.”

 

                “Yeah, they've been sayin' that for years.  It never happens, we just keep changin' the date,” Kate mused, pushing a piece of hair away from her face.

 

                Kelly shrugged and continued walking, quickening her pace as the path steepened.  Kate followed as closely as she could.

 

    “So, anyway, tell me about the creatures someone said they'd seen around here?” Kate spoke up again.

 

                “Oh!  Yeah!  So, like, they had faces and bodies like human women, but, like, they were all different colors, and they had some kinda wings.  Oh, yeah, and insect antennae,” Kelly explained.

 

                Kate narrowed her dark green eyes and tilted her head up.  “And you really believe that?  You’ve done every hallucinogen you could get your hands on, and you figure whoever saw these things wasn’t just trippin' in the middle of the woods?”

 

                “I’ve never done anything that made me see something like that.  I’m not even sure such a drug exists,” Kelly said matter-of-factly, and then paused, sensing that she was getting on her friend’s nerves.  “Come on, I get it, you think it’s silly. You’re still having a good time, though, right?”

 

                “Yeah,” Kate said, smiling genuinely.  “It’s beautiful out.”  Kate was not entirely disinterested in the urban legends and conspiracy theories Kelly was so enthralled by.  She found it inspiring, and her artwork derived heavily from such ideas.  Unlike Kelly, however, she did not believe they were anything to live by.

                The path evened out once more, and the two young women spotted a tiny, run-down shack in a clearing. Kelly’s face lit up and she sprinted towards it, getting her tiny digital camera out from her bag as she ran. Kate strolled behind her, smirking. “See any creatures yet?” she called sardonically, snickering as she came up behind Kelly, who was already taking photographs in rapid succession, kneeling very close to the door of the tiny structure.  “What are you even taking pictures of?  This is just an ordinary little shack.”

 

                “Nah, look at this,” Kelly said, momentarily putting the camera away and pointing to some faint carvings that looked kind of like runes or sigils of some kind. “Ever see something like this? I know you have tons of books about esoteric symbols.”

 

                Kate knelt down and squinted at the carvings.  She shook her head.  “No, never, but it isn't exactly hard for somebody to just draw some crap they made up,” she droned as she casually examined the walls and cautiously ran her fingers over the sigils.

 

Kelly said nothing and simply snapped a photo of them, standing up immediately afterwards.  “I’m gonna go in, how 'bout you?”

 

Kate shook her head.  “I’ll pass.”

 

Kelly snorted.  “I thought you figured there was nothing special about this place.  Now you’re hesitant all of a sudden?”

 

Kate shrugged.  “It probably stinks in there.”

 

“So?  Come on,” Kelly urged, pushing the small door open and walking inside.

 

Kate sighed.  “Fine,” she said, ducking her head slightly as she walked in.

 

The inside of the shack was dingy and unfurnished, as expected.  Dust floated all around and broken glass littered the floor.  Sunlight illuminated the tiny building from two small, dirty windows – just enough for Kate and Kelly to see their surroundings and avoid hurting themselves.  Kelly immediately began examining the walls, which bore several drawings and other markings.  “Hey, Kate, look, it’s the sigils from outside!” she exclaimed, pointing at three markings in the upper left hand corner of one of the walls.  She scrolled to the picture she had taken of the carvings on the outside of the door to compare – they were identical, just much bigger and drawn in black ink.

 

Kate said nothing – her attention was elsewhere; namely, on the inside of the door.  Someone had painted a portrait of a woman there, in a style reminiscent of religious iconic art.  The image was chipped and cracked, but Kate could make out the likeness’ features – she was surrounded by sunbeams and adorned with large, pale pink flowers.  She had a striking and statuesque, yet somehow childlike face with thick, dark eyebrows.  Most notably, however, the woman in the painting had what appeared to be a tourmaline crystal embedded in the center of her forehead.

 

“Kate?”  Kelly called.

 

“Oh, um, sorry, did you say something?  I was lookin' at this,” Kate said, motioning towards the painting on the door.

 

“Whoa, fuckin' cool!  I wonder who that’s supposed to be,” Kelly gushed, taking a photograph of it immediately.  “Wait, look, there’s something written underneath, and it’s actually in English,” she said, squatting down to get a look at the tiny scrawling underneath the painting, taking a picture of that as well.

 

“Watch out for the glass,” Kate muttered.

 

“It says... ‘She who dwells on the precipice of the unconscious will deliver us.’  The hell does that mean?”

 

Kate shrugged.  “I dunno.  I guess if there was actually a cult that used to hang out here, maybe this lady is their Messiah figure or something.”

 

“Yeah, probably!  Shit, I wonder how many other places like this there are, like, how big is this cult?  D’you think it’s still around?”

 

“I have no idea,” Kate said indifferently, putting her hands in her pockets.  "I still think someone just put all this stuff here just to mess with people."

 

“I’m gonna post this stuff on my blog and see what people say,” Kelly announced as she got up and started examining the walls again.  “Maybe I’ll find some information, wow, holy shit, this is so cool!”

 

“You do that,” Kate said with a wry expression.

 

“Aw, you wanna go back, I can tell.  Just let me get a few more shots, okay?”

 

“Okay.”

 

Kelly snapped about six more photos, and nodded to Kate.  The two of them left the shack and began hiking back to Kelly’s car.

 

Next Chapter.