"Twilight Madness"

The moonlight filtered down through the canopy and provided us with most of our illumination. The hour was late, and other than the pulse of orange fire down in the ravine, the world around us was bathed in shadow. The moon was full that night, and where it's influence wained popped the heavenly host of stars.

It was cold on top of that menacing peak. The wind wasn't constant, but periodically it would become excited, and cut right through you. I remember hearing there rythmic chanting and feeling the most horrible sense of forboding and death. Over and over, in a low monotone, we heard filter up through the trees the most bizzare and unholy things. Standing there looking down, and beginning our study of this unknow horror, several human figures began to resolve out of the near blackness. At first glance we had missed them, but as our eyes adjusted to the light of the distant fire, individual forms began to appear. We counted seven members of this demonic group. All were sitting cross-legged at some distance from the central fire, and after completely acclimating we consulted each other on what to do next.

I spoke first, and in a barely contained whisper I remarked to my colleague about the disbelief I felt at finally attaining to the object of our quest. "The villagers were correct. We found them at long last!" My excuberance bairly contained. "Indeed" he replied cooley. "Seven of them just like the old women said there would be." Compared to my own, my companion's speech was measured and steady. We knew from a previous scouting expedition that a path down the ravine lay just off to our right, and after another few minutes of watching, we proceeded a bit closer. We also knew from that previous trip that a good size rock sat about 20 paces down this path and would work as a blind from which to gather information in even greater detail.

So, with infinite care, we began to plod silently down the dirt pathway. The chanting we heard from the coven's ritual grew louder both because we were moving closer with each step, but also because the fiends themselves grew more excited with each phrase uttered. As time passed we noticed that the blasphemous words began to repeat themselves, and each time they did the fire they clusterd around seemed to glow more brightly. It was unknown to us just how the fire seemed to grow. No one from the group seemed to add any fuel, but the words of the creatures made it dance before our eyes. The mysterious way this happened was a strain on my mind, and lent a sinister aspect to the whole affair.

"Is there any way you think you can translate what they are saying?" I whispered this closely into the ear of my friend. He had been studying the language of this ancient group for the past year hoping that he might effect a translation if we did indeed encounter them. "Possibly" he responded. "The way they parse each sentence seems evident, as I suspected it would be, and..." He paused briefly to hear the end of one round and the beginning of the next. "...there seems to be four distinct lines comprising there chant..." He again stopped to listen.

It was at this point he begain to mouth the words we were hearing. Akwardly at first, but with more and more precision as each hooded figure repeated themselves, until at last he was able to mimic the entire chant. "Yes I think I can make sense of what they are saying." He waited until a new verse begain. All the while that unholy fire growing brighter and brighter. "We meet at night beneith ancient stars/ Our worship is as you have commanded/ A full moon is looking down from above/ We know that you too are their." My colleague stopped transfixed by what he had just said, and we both just stared, rendered speechless by the mystery of it all.

After several more rounds of this demonic lay the chanting came to an abrupt stop. What hidden signal prompted such cooridinated behavior we'll never know. The final verse was nearly shouted by the frenzied acolytes, and the fire had risen concurrently to an intense conflagration. I remarked to my partner in wonder about the way the flames seemed to grow with the volume of there voices, but his response was interupted by the unexpected silence. The sudden lack of there evil intonement came as suprising too us, and the spontaneous dimunition of the flames startled me and sent my imagination whirling.

We were quite close to the group now, behind that large rock and we had feared that any talk between us would reveal our position. Time passed with no movement or sound from anyone in our ghastly clan. After what felt to me as an eternity one of the demons reached into the folds of his cloak and pulled out a small leather pouch. As he did this, the sputtering fire that was, just a second before, barely alive seemed to respond to his gesture by growing taller and more robust, and gaining substantially in size.

With this, all seven of them stood up and began to pace counter-clockwise around the flames. The man who produced the pouch opened it, removed something from its volume, and passed it along to the ghoul behind him. This proceeded until all seven had removed what they had and the leather bag returned to its original owner. They then stopped pacing, turned again to face there fire, and kneeled. The fire itself flared briefly in response and my eyes grew even wider. One of the men, someone other than the holder of the pouch, but we couldn't tell exactly who, spoke then in that ancient and horrible tounge. After which all seven of them ate whatever foul substance they had removed from the pouch.

I happened to glance at my companion then as they were ingesting that disgusting venom and he appeared busy writing down a copy of the satanic words the man had just spoke. Unnoticed by me as transfixed as I was, my colleague had produced a small notebook and had begun to write down his observations. When he noticed I was looking, he graciously tilted the page towards me so I could see what he was writing. He had positioned himself behind the rock in such a way as to catch a bit of firelight on the paper and I could just barely make out what it said.

The previous effort spent by my linguistically minded friend, in his study of this secret language, had apparently paid its second dividend because on his paper was a translation of this new grotesquery as well. In quotes to indicate what it was, and in a slightly larger script as if the professor was showing a rare display of emotion, read the following: "We recieve this into ourselves as a gift and a blessing/ We are your humble and loyal servents/ We are eager for your arrival and pledge our loyalty to you alone."

The pouch, then, surely contained the sacrament that the coven was reported to use, for we had read about this, at the run down library in the town. It was a rare volume of little known origen that wasn't listed in any catalog, but was shelved there anyway. We had found out about its existence from the same old women who spoke to us of this cult, and other obscure things, and who pointed us to this terrifying place high up in the mountains. This book, written by a purported survivor of an attempted sacrafice, was a way for the victim to spread awareness of these evil fiends and there horrible ways. The drug these ghouls ingested was said to allow them to have visions of there goddess and interact with her, and was used on the most significant occasions. It was said to be a combonation of wild plant leaves and dessicated human blood.

We stood quietly and observed as the noxious material they swallowed was slowly metabolised by there bodies. At some point the seven members started to sway back and forth and also to hum in a low monotone. As the dark ritual progressed we could tell that what they ingested was having a greater effect because the swaying became more violent, and the humming grew in volume and intensity. What astonished us the most about this was how the fire too started to grow just like it had before. The demonic illumination became so bright that it reflected off every tree and lit the ravine like it was daytime. Simultaneously, it's golden-yellow color changed and was now a mixture of blue and white that indicated a drastic increase in temperature.

Under the influence of that concoction the humming also reached to an incredible pitch and the air itself came alive with that wretched vibration. I recall the most depressed feeling take hold of me at that time, thinking that I had some how become degraded by exposure to those rippling currents of air. The idea that my body was, in a way, now connected to there ritual through mutual sensation was quite disturbing to me and I hoped that it would end soon. In my aweful state, though, it occured to me that there was some croscendo building and that this might provide some relief. I could only wonder how my friend beside me was doing as the seconds crept by.

Suddenly, as anything that strains one's reason has tendency to be, the fire began to take on a fluid, swirling character and started to rise up out of it's stone encircled pit. I couldn't believe my eyes! I glanced at my companion in disbelief, wanting to say something, but any attempt at speech would have been preempted by the overwhelming humming sound. I noticed that my friend had temporarily halted his note taking and was starinig fixedly at this insane happening. I turned my stare back to this fantastic scene just in time to notice the swirling mass of energy, having at that point risen a meter or so into the air, slowly but distinctly begin to take the shape of a beautiful women. My mouth hung open, and I was struck dumb by what I was witnessing. I could only watch and wonder.

It took about a minute or so for the female figure to fully resolve. She stood with her back to us, floating there facing the man whom by then we considered the leader of this group. At the moment her naked body took its final shape the humming stopped but the intensity of the light persisted. Though still glaring we could now somehow look at her form directly and she was beautiful indeed. She spoke then in the same language as the acolyte before her, and while I myself was unable to understand, I noticed that the professor had resumed his writing.

She paused her speech as the members of her cult shifted into a lying position around the fire, and began again after all of them had readjusted. After several more minutes of hideous diatribe the women floated from her original position around the circle of prone worshipers, stopping above each in turn. While hovering over each member, all the while continuing her monolouge, she performed a series of gestures with her hands that illicited an audible groan from that person, and after she was finished she returned to the center of the group, just above the fire, as before.

At that point she ceased talking, and as if on cue each of the seven monsters sat up and stood. The women then slowly moved towards each person and gave them what appeared to be a kiss directly on the forhead. Each kiss caused the person to burst into a blinding pulse of light and then disappear! I could hardly contain a gasp as I saw her progress through each one of the seven members. Surely we would have been recognized if I hadn't covered my mouth with my hand. How fantastic! As she approached the seventh and final man her kiss caused her to vanish aswell and myself and my colleague were suddenly alone in that nighted ravine. The fire too was extinguished by that final departure.

I could hardly speak! My heart was racing in my chest and my body was shaking with a mild tremor. I turned to the professor, usually much cooler then myself, and he too was visably shaken by what we had just saw. "From what I gather," he started "the women from the fire began by speaking of some other world that they would be travelling to, and all though they would feel a bit of discomfort, they shouldn't worry. There loyalty was unquestioned and was about to be rewarded." All I could respond with was "My God...." My mouth left hanging open. The professor continued "After this, she started intoning some type of spell or incantation, presumably to effect this transfer to that other world. Some of the words she spoke I was unable to decypher, but I should be able to figure them out with a return trip to the library." I replied "Do you think they will return here?" I could feel my words shake as I spoke them from the fear I felt. "Im not sure he said, but I think we've seen enough for the evening and we should return to our lodging in town, and revisit the old women tomorrow..."

After a thourough search of the area, where in which nothing was found, we started back. Both of us stunned and exhausted. The sudden disapearence of those 7 hideous people and that demonic fire allowed us a partial return to our rational world. I felt drained and utterly bewildered by what we had just experienced and was content to walk a few paces in silence. I felt that drowsy feeling one has after a huge on-rush of adrenaline has ebbed away, and has left you feeling hollow. Slowly though, as we put a bit of distance between us and the sight of that foul ritual, my daze abated, but my mind was still reeling. I glanced at my companion in an attempt to guage his mental state, and he seemed lost in thought. He noticed my bewildered expresion though, and half shrugged his shoulders and shook his head in response.

The trip up here at the beginning of the night took us roughly three hours. We had ascended to this remote patch of land by way of a little known trail that the old women had described for us, and arrived to the sound of there chanting just after midnight. We used this remote path previously as well to scout the area before tonight, but now that we had finally gained our objective we were returning by way of a more direct route. It was fortunate for us that the professor had ties to this region from his childhood and knew a large section of these wooded mountains from the many excursions of his youth.

I had learned, over the past years I have known him, that he grew up just South of this area in a Large city named "....". The professor had remarked on occasion how he would come up during his summers as a boy to visit his Mother's family. In fact, when we spoke to the old women a couple of weeks ago, she told us that although the professor may not remember, she knew his Uncle and had met the professor several times while he was a toddler. The Uncle had disapeared under suspicious circumstances when the professor was about eight years old, after which the old women her self stopped coming around.

The professor broke our silence "I've been searching for them for years now, and I'm not quite sure what to make of it. Up until now, there was a little part of me that had remained unconvinced of there existence, but as I now see, that part of me was wrong." I nodded my head in agreement. The clear sky allowed the fullness of the Moon to reveal enough of me so the professor could see. I replied, barely contained "I can barely believe that we just witnessed that!" A shudder ran through my body "I too had my doubts, but no longer. It seems the villagers, including that old women, have proven to be trustworthy. I wonder what more they could tell us about there history." Again, the professor shrugged, and we walked on further.

As we continued to move closer to the old town from my companion's youth, my mind, already taxed to its limit, began to wander in the most disconcerting way. The fresh memories of that unholy ceremony swirled as we plodded on, and they kept me feeling like I was teetering on the edge of hysteria. As we neared the end of our hike back we began to hear an owl hoot over head, and her call inundated my mind. Over and over again she voiced herself and the bizzarre quality of the sound proceeded to have the most powerful hypnotic effect. It was at this point a vision of that wretched and beautiful women sprang into my mind as vivid and real as if she were again floating in front of me, and it was all I could do not to collapse in terror. It was as if the owl's voice had called her back into existence.

The look on the professor's face turned into one of concern as he undoubtedly saw the look on my face change to fear. It was obvious to him, under the moonlight, that something had suddenly come over me. "You hold on." he whispered to me. "We are almost there. We should head back to our room at the inn where we can eat and rest, and revisit the old women when we can." I mumbled as I walked. Pleading to be left alone. I felt at any moment I could bolt strait into the woods like a terrified animal, but I managed somehow to make it back to our quarters.

Our hike through the early morning hours returned us to the village well before dawn. This particualar rite was observed by the cult late in Autumn, under a full moon, so the days had already shortened considerably. The still heavy darkness worked with us now, as my desperate condition would have stuck out to any passers-by. We slipped through the empty streets towards the Inn on the far side of town and when we finally arrived I threw myself on the bed. The image of the she-demon still swirled in my mind, and I had started to sweat profusely. I felt my condition deteriorating. What unimaginable horror we had been exposed too! July 21, 2022