I came to my senses because of a strange noise. The fog in my head began to thin, and the sound resolved itself into a chorus of voices, several of them, drawn out and interwoven into a single, droning chant that seemed to fill the entire space. I was certain I was inside a building: the air was warm, dry. My head felt as though it were splitting in two, and opening my eyes was almost impossible. I tried again and again to lift my eyelids, but the moment light broke through, a fresh wave of searing pain struck, forcing me to squeeze them shut.
"Mark," a quiet voice called from within the chanting. "Mark."
With a greater effort, I finally managed to open my eyes. A familiar ornate chandelier hung directly above me, its light aimed straight at my face. It took a while to endure the pain and stop flinching from the brightness.
I was lying on something smooth and hard. When I tried to move, I immediately realized how stiff my back had become. My feeble attempts to sit up or look around led nowhere. My arms and legs were spread apart and tightly restrained. Slowly, I turned my head and saw a frayed gray rope trailing from my wrist, disappearing somewhere beyond my field of vision. I tried to flex my hand and felt just how firmly the rope bit into my skin.
I didn't panic. I froze. A dull, overwhelming confusion settled in—no understanding of how I had gotten here, or why.
"Mark," the woman's voice called again, louder this time. I shifted my gaze as much as I could, searching for its source, and soon my eyes met Yesenia's.
"Thank God," she said with relief. "You're awake."
She lay on a tall oak table, bound just like me. Candles stood all around us on wrought-iron holders. Their warm flames cast shadows in which figures hid—people dressed in long, dark robes that fell in heavy folds to the floor. Their hands were concealed by wide sleeves that swayed with every movement. The figures chanted, rocking back and forth like trees in a strong wind, and the sight was as mesmerizing as it was terrifying.
"How did we get here?" I whispered to Yesenia, hoping the ominous figures wouldn't hear.
"I don't know. Everything's tangled in my head," she whispered back. "I only remember a knock at the door. When I opened it, two people in black cloaks rushed at me. I tried to fight them off, but then everything went dark, and I woke up here. And you?" She looked at me with desperate hope. "Do you remember anything?"
"The local manager—what was her name?" I forced myself to think through the pounding in my skull. "Elena. She lured me into the backyard and pressed some foul-smelling cloth over my mouth. I didn't even have time to react."
"We have to get out of here," Yesenia said.
A surge of anger flared inside me, so sharp I nearly snapped at her.
"Oh really, Sherlock?" I waved my hands as much as the ropes allowed, drawing attention to them. "Never would've guessed."
"Listen," she hissed through clenched teeth, "this is not the time for hysterics. Check the ropes. Pull harder. Maybe one of them will give."
"As if I haven't already tried."
"Try again," she insisted. "You're a guy. Come on. Use your strength."
I tried once more, but it felt as though the rope only dug deeper into my skin with its coarse fibers. Biting my lower lip, I forced myself to ignore the pain and twisted my right hand within the loop. It felt like sandpaper scraping against my flesh, but I endured it, continuing to work at the rope, trying to stretch it. When I sensed the loop loosen—though I couldn't be sure it wasn't just my body numbing to the pain—I clenched my hand into a fist and jerked with everything I had.
There was no miracle, but something did change. Gritting my teeth, I repeated the same crude motion over and over, hoping to succeed before Yesenia and I found out why we had been brought here at all.
"Good, keep going," Yesenia encouraged me. I noticed she was doing the same, but with the restraints on her legs. There was a difference, though: my arms were bound with simple rope, while she had been shackled in strange metal cuffs. The circular bands around her wrists were connected by a long iron plate.
Something told me these people were well prepared—and that this was far from the first time they had staged a spectacle like this.
The voices around us fell silent at once. The chant broke off on a long, piercing note. Somewhere behind our heads, a door creaked open, followed by the sharp echo of heels striking the floor. The hooded figures dropped to one knee and bowed their heads in deep reverence.
"Oh, Great Mother!" they trembled. "Pass judgment and restore order. Guide the lost back onto the true path!"
When the figure before whom they knelt finally entered my field of vision, a shiver ran through me. Her attire set her apart from the rest. The wide hem of a velvet cloak slid across the floor like a royal mantle. Beneath it, a severe, dark dress—something archaic in its cut—cinched tightly at the waist with a rigid corset. It was unmistakably a woman. A dark hood concealed her hair completely, and her face was hidden behind a mask. It was the sight of that mask that made my stomach knot.
I recognized it. I recognized the entire costume. We had examined it in old photographs displayed in the lobby.
A deer skull mask concealed the wearer entirely. Its surface was veined with cracks—whether from age or careless handling, I couldn't tell. Grime had eaten into the porous structure of the teeth; some of them were chipped and broken. Through the empty eye sockets, I could just make out the woman's eyes, though not clearly enough to read them. The bone cast shadows that kept the light from reaching her face.
She waited until her retinue rose from their knees.
"My children!" she proclaimed, raising her hands solemnly toward the ceiling. "Today we enact the sentence and cleanse the world of the blight of two faithless souls who succumbed to temptation and defied the natural order. The order chosen by Nature herself—by the Mother."
She moved toward what looked like an altar, her garments whispering as she walked. Towering above it was a carved image of a woman holding a radiant sphere in her open palms, its long rays spilling outward. It might have been taken for the sun, if not for its scale: what kind of giant could cradle a star of that size with a serene smile? What struck me as even stranger was how close the burning candles stood to the carving. If these costumed fanatics had been careless enough about fire safety, then maybe—just maybe—I had a chance of freeing myself from the ropes. Who knew? Perhaps the knot on my left wrist was poorly tied, and I'd wasted all this time torturing my right.
"Mark, focus," Yesenia hissed, and I hurriedly returned to the exhausting, painful routine. The skin on my hands burned as though pressed against hot metal, making me want to stop, to surrender to the pain. But I suspected the price of doing nothing would be far worse.
As the masked woman drew closer to the altar, I noticed the tips of the mask's antlers gleaming in the candlelight, glinting with a noble shade of gold. With a graceful motion, the figure adjusted her sleeve, and a familiar, heavy wristwatch slid into view. I swallowed hard, realizing that the woman standing before us was none other than the owner of the glamping park.
She didn't even glance in our direction. Why would she? We weren't going anywhere as long as the damned ropes held—and even if they gave way, I wasn't sure Yesenia and I could escape.
I wanted to scream. To hurl every curse I knew into the face of that arrogant old crone, fueled by rage and fear of the unknown. Why was she doing this to us? Was this some twisted joke—a grotesque lesson meant to scare our generation out of premarital sex? I couldn't comprehend what drove this bizarre group. For a mere performance, drugging people with some foul-smelling rag sounded like a spectacularly bad idea—one that would land any prankster in court.
The problem was, I knew this wasn't a joke.
Elena lifted a slender iron-stemmed chalice from the altar with her left hand and gripped a long dagger in her right.
"Tonight, there will be a feast," she said as she moved between the tables to which Yesenia and I were bound, "and the blood of traitors will be spilled—those who defiled themselves by binding their lives to other species."
Elena leaned over Yesenia and raised the dagger above her arm. With a single sharp motion, the blade pierced her skin.
Yesenia screamed.
From among the dark figures came low, satisfied laughter.
Elena took her time, drawing the blade along Yesenia's arm with undisguised pleasure. The pain made the girl tremble violently. She tried to pull away, but the ropes held her fast. Elena placed the chalice against the edge of the table, and I watched as drop after drop of blood fell into it.
If I had thought until that moment that I wasn't prepared for what I was seeing, I was wrong. What I truly hadn't expected was that, by some miracle, Yesenia's leg would finally slip free of the rope. In the blink of an eye, her face changed, becoming utterly unlike her former self. Narrowing her eyes, she locked her gaze on the bone mask hovering above her and said,
"Hey, granny," her leg shot upward, "catch!"
The blow landed squarely between the empty eye sockets of the skull that had once belonged to a deer. A sickening crunch echoed through the hall, followed by a bestial howl of pain.
Well, if we were going to be executed today, at least Elena had clearly broken her lovely nose first.