Каарон Уоррен - The Best Horror of the Year Volume Ten

Professor Price waits for an answer. None comes. She asks, Are you still there, Agatha? The stone does not move.

Megan asks, What happened? George says, We lost her. He sits back, lifting his hands from the stone. Megan does the same. The professor maintains contact for a few seconds more, then she sits back, too.

Kristi says, What the fuck was that? Carmen says, Yeah, Isabelle, what’s going on?

Isabelle Price starts to speak, but her answer is interrupted by George shouting, Shit! and scrambling backward. Megan screams and stumbles to her feet. The professor raises her hands, startled.

The planchette stone is bleeding. All over its surface, drops of blood appear, swell, and collapse into streams that trickle to the edges of the stone and spill onto the floor. Kristi shouts, Fuck! Megan turns and collides with Ben. Blood pools around the planchette stone. Professor Price stares at it. Carmen says, Isabelle, what the fuck is happening? Blood spreads over the words and letters of the Ouija board. Ben mumbles something. George is praying, Our Father, Who art in Heaven. Blood flows to the edges of the trench in the center of the cave and slides into it. Kristi says, What is this? What is this? What are we seeing? What? Carmen tells everyone to move away from the blood, to come over beside her. The crew does, except for the professor. Carmen says, Isabelle. Come here, Isabelle.

Professor Price turns around. Her face is blank. Her left eye is red, blood pouring from it down her cheek.

The third and final scene is, of course, the movie’s climax. By now, the movie’s title has been realized, as the film crew has emerged from the cave to discover that their panicked flight has carried them off Isabelle’s map. Despite following several seemingly familiar paths, they have remained lost. Their complaints have grown more hysterical.

In the meantime, Carmen has succeeded in coaxing Isabelle out of the trance-like state into which she fell. The sclera of her left eye is still stained red with hemorrhages, but it’s no longer actively bleeding. Prompted by Carmen and Kristi, she has revealed some of the secrets we’ve suspected her of harboring. Her research on Agatha Merryweather, she says, led her to a website that’s kind of a clearing house of weird information. There was an entry for the Bound Woman of the Mine that sounded as if it might connect to the information she’d already gathered. The site kept crashing her computer, so she wasn’t able to read all of the listing, but the portion she finished was intriguing. It concerned a fourteen year old girl who had been responsible for a series of terrible murders in northwestern New Jersey during the early nineteen sixties. This was farm country, near the Pennsylvania line. For some reason, after her apprehension by the sheriff, the local Catholic priest was brought in to consult on the case. This led to another pair of priests being summoned, an older man and a younger one, whose accents no one recognized. They said they were members of a small order, the Perilaimio. Eventually, the girl was released into their custody on the condition she remain confined to her house. At some point thereafter, she, her parents, and the priests were discovered to have fled for an unknown destination. There was talk of a search for her, but it came to nothing.

When Kristi asks what any of this has to do with anything, Isabelle reveals that the website gave a name for the girl: Agatha Merryweather. Obviously, with the assistance of the Church, she and her family fled east, where they were resettled in Weehawken. The question was, why?

This Agatha was possessed, George says. That’s where the story is heading, isn’t it?

That is what she thought, Isabelle says, until she looked into the order to which the priests belonged, the Perilaimio. It’s an old, old group, maybe older than the Church itself.

What is she talking about? Megan wants to know. How can there be a part of the Church that came before it?

Like Christmas trees, Ben says, or Yule logs. Pagan things the Church folded into it.

That’s it exactly, Isabelle says. The Perilaimio were charged with managing the Keres .

Which means what? Kristi asks.

Death-spirits, Ben says.

Death-spirits? Megan says. How does he know this stuff?

He took Greek in high school, Ben says.

Does he mean ghosts? Megan says.

Sounds more like devils, George says.

No, Isabelle says. These are beings of the primordial dark, beyond the Church’s sway. They depend on blood to maintain their presence in this world. They can’t be cast out, or destroyed, only contained.

Which is what happened here, George says. Agatha Merryweather was brought to this place to imprison her.

That’s the theory, Isabelle says. At first, she read this entire story as a case of a mentally ill girl subjected to a prolonged victimization by religious maniacs. The mine, she assumed, was intended as a jail, primitive but low profile. Most likely, the men who transported her to upstate New York planned for her to die in these tunnels, of malnutrition or disease.

Why would they have thought this? Kristi says. Didn’t Isabelle just say the death-spirits couldn’t be killed?

It’s complicated, Isabelle says. The Keres are fundamentally violent; they can’t be killed by violent means. However, if their host dies of natural causes, they lose their hold on it.

This makes no sense, Kristi says. How does any of this make sense?

The point is, Carmen says, Isabelle thought they were dealing with a crazy person.

Honestly, Isabelle says, she was sure Agatha had been dead for years. The most she expected was to find her remains.

Instead, Kristi says, they have… this. What they have.

“Us,” George says, “lost. In the Dark. With a monster.”

Their wandering has brought the crew to another unfamiliar location, a small chamber whose rough walls recede at regular intervals to what appear to be doorways. This is the IMDB summary of what ensues:

Ben shines his flashlight on the recess furthest to the right. It shows solid rock. He swings the light to the left. The next recess opens on a passageway. He swings the light to the left, to the recess directly across from him. It is solid, too, but there is something on the rock at approximately head level. It is the same portrait the film crew saw at the beginning of the expedition, a woman’s face, the left half a skull. Megan shrieks. Kristi says, What the fuck? Ben says, It’s only another drawing, and crosses to it. He reaches out his free hand to touch it. He says, See?

His flashlight goes out. Megan shrieks again. Carmen says, Ben? George says, Now is not the time for screwing around, kid. He aims his flashlight at the recess.

There is a flurry of motion. Ben screams. George’s flashlight beam swings from side to side, trying to keep up with the action. Kristi shouts. Carmen points her flashlight in Ben’s direction. She says, There! There! Ben continues screaming. There is someone grabbing him from behind. White arms wrap around his neck and chest. White legs encircle his waist. A head with long black hair presses against his neck. Ben grabs at the arms. He slaps at the head. He stumbles back into the wall. Megan screams, Someone do something! Professor Price shouts, Agatha! Agatha, stop!

Agatha growls and tugs her head back. There is the sound of flesh tearing, followed by a hiss as blood sprays from Ben’s open throat. He drops to his knees, slaps at Agatha’s hands, and falls forward, Agatha still clinging to him. She drops her head to his neck. There is the sound of her slurping his blood. Kristi says, Holy shit. Megan screams, You fucking bitch! and runs at Agatha, raising her flashlight as a club. Agatha ducks her swing and leaps onto her. She knocks Megan onto her back, and rips her throat out. Kristi says, Jesus Christ.