HANGMAN

THE CRATES WERE STACKED three or four layers deep. Jeremy moved the front one just enough to squeeze through the gap, and waved for me to follow. He kept going, shifting stacks and sidestepping through. At the final row, he stopped and motioned for me to turn off the flashlight. I did just as he lifted a top box and stacked it on another.

Darkness fell. Feet clanked down the ladder. The swoosh of another moving box. A hand slid around my waist and guided me in farther.

The lights went on, and I saw that he’d cleared all but one box from a stack against the wall. A cubby seat. The crate was too small for us to sit side by side, so he gestured for me to turn and back onto his lap.

“You think that’s going to save you?” the ghost sneered, his head sticking out from a crate. “They can still see you.”

I was about to pull back farther, then took a better look. The path Jeremy had carved for us was zigzagged, meaning we couldn’t see the main room from here…and no one in the main room could see us.

“Liar,” I mouthed.

The ghost stalked off, probably hoping to alert the cult. Good luck with that.

The group filed in, chatting about their kids’ baseball tournaments, layoffs at work, trouble with a broken dishwasher. I counted at least six distinct voices.

Scrapes and thuds followed, as if they were setting up something, probably an altar. They kept talking, the man with the appliance problem now soliciting advice on whether it was more cost-effective to hire a repairman or just replace the unit.

I wriggled back onto Jeremy’s lap. He readjusted his hold on me, arms going around my stomach, as if reassuring me I was safe.

“They can’t see us,” he whispered.

His breath tickled the back of my ear and I shivered, thoughts of discovery vanishing as I became very aware of his body against my back. I shifted again, squirming in his lap, and felt him harden beneath me. I went still and concentrated on what was happening on the other side of the room instead. Wasn’t easy, but after a moment, I made out the slap and hiss of matches being struck.

A faint smell of smoke, then the pungent scent of musky incense. The clink of thin metal. The glug of liquid. I pictured hammered chalices being filled with blood-red wine. In the background, one woman told the horror story of a recent appliance repair encounter—paying more to fix a ten-year-old stove than she’d have spent on a new one.

The low rumble of authority. Botnick. The voices faded, shuffles and clinks taking over as they arranged themselves, probably in some ritual circle.

Botnick intoned something in a foreign language—presumably an invocation to Asmodai. I’d spent enough time in spiritualism to know how these pseudorituals worked, and Botnick seemed to have it down.

When he finished, the Disciples took their turns pledging their body to Asmodai in English one by one. Eight people, including Botnick. Four men and four women.

I listened carefully to each voice, on the off chance I’d recognize one. Unlikely, but I listened anyway. From Jeremy’s shallow breathing behind me, I suspected he was doing the same.

The ritual resumed with more foreign chanting from Botnick, his voice rising now to an impassioned boom. I longed to ask Jeremy what Botnick was saying—whether he could translate—but doubted it was more than gibberish.

Botnick’s voice reached a fever pitch, then stopped, and all went silent.

“Now,” he began. “We dedicate ourselves to the demon of lust, king of hell, prince of revenge, our Lord Asmodai.”

Footsteps sounded, then a few foreign words, a sharp intake of breath, a choral chant, receding footsteps. The sequence repeated, then again, and I pictured each member walking to the middle of the circle for the dedication. Jeremy sniffed behind me and made a guttural noise, as if confirming a suspicion, and I knew what they were “dedicating.” Blood. Dripped into a communal chalice, most likely.

The last member took her turn. Then a match was struck. More chanting. A faint, oddly metallic smell wafted over. Jeremy exhaled sharply, as if expelling the scent from his nose. The blood. It must have been dripped into a censer, not a chalice, and burned in dedication.

The chanting stopped.

“We receive the blessing of Asmodai,” Botnick said. “And in return, we offer the mortification of our flesh, for his pleasure.”

The glug-glug of wine being poured from a bottle. Then a scraping sound. Stirring—metal on metal. A gulp. The burned blood scraped and stirred into wine, then drunk. I shivered. Jeremy’s arms tightened around me.

“Spirit of Asmodai!” Botnick cried. “I am yours to command.”

Chanting from the group, rising in pitch. Then a snarl from Botnick.

“You,” he said, his voice guttural, the word almost indistinguishable. “Prepare her.”

The clink of chains, the click of locks, the slap of leather. Then it began.

The snap of the whip, the muffled cries of the gagged woman, smell of blood so strong even I could recognize it. And, worst of all, the shouts of the others, egging Botnick on, by turns ecstatic and enraged, lust perverted into bloodlust.

Hearing them earlier, chatting about broken appliances and children, I’d relaxed. Just repressed suburbanites playing S & M games. But now it was chillingly real. I could picture that woman, bloodied and writhing in pain—real pain, not the put-on horror of that woman on the magazine cover.

My stomach twisted, bile rising. I started to squirm, but Jeremy’s hands went to my hips, holding me still. I flushed.

When I swallowed hard, Jeremy raised his hand to cover my left ear and leaned into my right, whispering, telling me to ignore it, to block it, but as hard as I tried, I couldn’t. It was like upstairs, trying not to imagine accidentally reanimating those parts.

I thought of the ghost, tried concentrating on that pathetic spook getting his voyeuristic jollies, but then I heard his words again, about them finding me—a real prisoner—and my heart started hammering.

While that woman was genuinely in pain, presumably no one had coerced her into coming here. She’d submitted without protest. Maybe, in sexual dominance, that was the goal—willing submission. Or maybe it was just the closest facsimile they could get to what they really yearned for—an unwilling victim. If they found me here…

I tried not to think about it, but of course I did. I pictured that whip with the lead ends, that horrible mask, smelled the metal going around my head, felt the cold of it against my skin, the engulfing blackness, stealing my light, my breath, my screams…

“Shhh,” Jeremy whispered, pulling me against him, his lips at my ear. “Block it out.”

I tried. Really tried. Then I saw those jars, those bags, envisioned them not as magical aids stolen from graves and morgues—like my necromantic artifacts—but as body disposal, like hunters making use of every piece—

“They can’t find you.” Jeremy rubbed goose bumps from my arms. “I won’t let them. You know that.”

I nodded, but kept hearing fresh noises from beyond, grunts and whimpers, the sounds ping-ponging in my skull, refusing to leave, throwing up images…

I started to squirm again, then caught myself and stopped.

“Here,” Jeremy whispered. He shifted me forward and took something from his jacket. His notepad, the pen stored in the coils. He flipped open the pad, past a few pages of notes to a clean sheet. He drew four lines—two horizontal and two vertical. Then he shifted me again, until I was leaning back against him, head in the dip of his shoulder as his chin rested on my shoulder, looking over it. He made an X in the center square and handed me the pen.

I stared at the paper, the layout he’d drawn so familiar I should recognize it, but my brain refused to work, still filled with unwanted sounds and unwelcome images. I blinked…and gave a silent laugh, seeing a tic-tac-toe board. I put on my O.

Every kid over the age of eight knows the trick to the game, but I was so preoccupied it took me a few rounds to remember how to win.

Once I remembered that, of course, the game lost its challenge. So he switched to hangman, starting with a four-letter animal. Got that one pretty quickly, and he doodled a wolf for me, then drew out a fresh game. On it went, with Jeremy challenging me with ever-tougher puzzles and making me smile with his doodles and intricate hanged-man sketches.

The sounds beyond seemed to fade into background noise, like an annoying neighbor playing his porn video with the volume jacked. My world narrowed to this little cubby, to the warmth of Jeremy’s arms, stretched around me as he wrote, to the whispers that tickled my ear and vibrated down my back, to the scratch of his cheek against mine as he shifted, to the spicy smell of his breath—tacos or burritos grabbed on the run. I leaned against him, solved his puzzles and laughed at his drawings.

Who else would do this for me, play hangman while an S & M cult was in full swing only yards away? Who else would know it was exactly what I needed—a distraction so innocent, so innocuous, that it couldn’t help but make what was happening out there seem equally harmless?

I didn’t even notice that the ritual had ended, I was so engrossed in solving a hangman puzzle. The Disciples’ conversation was sparse and subdued now, no one in the mood to discuss dishwashers. Chains rattled as they were unclipped. A hoarse voice asked for the wine. Chalices clinked as someone gathered them.

I went on to the next puzzle: a nine-letter American city. Minutes later, the basement light clicked off and the puzzle went dark.

The voices and footsteps receded as Jeremy put away his notepad. I slid from his lap, found the flashlight and turned it on, then picked up my shoes and slung them over my arm.

I whispered, “Do we wait for them to leave or try to find that alternate exit?”

“The latter is probably safer. Do you remember where you left off searching?”

I nodded, and slipped from the box maze. As I crossed the main area, I looked around it, ignoring the flecks of blood on the walls as I searched for the ghost. As unpleasant as he was, I might be able to blackmail him into telling us where to find that door, by threatening to “report” him. But there was no sign of the ghost. Typical. Always there when you don’t need them, never when you do.

I found my place along the wall and resumed searching. I moved aside one box stack myself, then hit an immovable crate. Glancing toward Jeremy, I saw him crouched beside a dark square inset in the wall just on the other side of the ladder.

“Is that—?” I whispered, stopping as he heaved on the cover.

The crack of breaking metal. He pulled back the cover and stuck his head inside. I headed toward him.

As I neared the ladder, a foot appeared from the bottom of the chute. I stumbled back. Jeremy spun, seeing the foot appear and waving for me to take cover. I swung the flashlight along the nearest wall, stopping at the first stack tall enough to hide me. I turned off the light and raced forward, my hands out, measuring the distance and praying I was right.

My fingertips touched cardboard just as the main light came on. I swung behind the stack, my pulse racing, waiting for a shout.

When footsteps headed toward the other wall instead, along with a deep mutter of “where did I leave that?,” I could breathe again. I hadn’t been seen. Now I just had to relax while Botnick found whatever he’d left behind—

A shadow appeared across the floor, moving slowly, and I realized my mistake. I was hidden from the stairs, but not from the other half of the room. I glanced over my shoulder. Behind me was another box, on my other side. If I could wedge between the two, the shadows should hide me. I backed up into the gap. Too narrow. Using my hip and shoulder, I eased the one box over—

It scraped along the concrete, the soft whisper as loud as a shot. I froze. So did the shadow, now halfway into view.

“Hello?” Botnick called.

As he spoke, I eased back into the gap, wiggling and squeezing until I was—

Slap, slap, slap.

I looked down to see my dangling shoes swinging against the box.