Introduction Part 5

“What the fuck was all that?”

Marcus paced about, shaking his head and cursing. The three of you had run as fast and far from the mayor’s house as you could, eventually taking refuge in the old poolhouse in Tina’s backyard.

“Seriously,” Marcus insisted, “what the actual fuck was going on there?”

“Seemed to me that those guys were involved with all those missing women,” Tina replied in a muted voice. “And I’ll bet Stacy’s prick dad is one of the ringleaders of the whole operation.”

Marcus shook his head in disbelief and continued to pace around, muttering under his breath how insane the whole situation was. You couldn’t really blame him. A strange kind of numbness had taken hold of you which might have been shock.

“Mike?” Marcus looked at you hopefully, expecting a lifeline of sanity. “What do you think?”

“I think that was our teacher out there getting dragged off,” you said slowly, as if trying the words out for size, “and I think we should probably go to the cops.”

Tina smacked you lightly behind the ears. “Seriously, did you not realise whose house we were at? We can’t go to the cops. The mayor is running this Eyes Wide Shut thing, he probably has people everywhere. For all we know the entire police **** is in on it. The second we speak to the wrong person it’ll be us that goes missing and sacrificed to the devil or whatever the fuck is going on out there!”

“We can’t just sit around twiddling our thumbs!” You retorted angrily.

To your surprise Tina nodded along. “I agree, which is why we need to gather hard evidence of this shit and then try to figure out who’s involved in this and who’s not. Right now...” She looked at Marcus and then back at you, “we can’t trust anyone but ourselves.”

“So we...what?” Marcus asked, “just play Nancy Drew and snoop around?”

“We need to get some solid evidence, and we know at the very least Stacy and her family are at the centre of it.” Tina sat back in her chair, watching the two of you closely, “that’s where we’ll start. Find out as much dirt as we can, figure out who exactly is involved and then get the truth to the right people.”

The three of you sat in silence and processed that. You felt like you were caught in one of those old spy movies, with an enemy conspiracy going on all around you. It felt like there was a whole other world that had been living underneath your own.

And what was going on with your new ring? Ever since that ...ritual or whatever it was, your whole hand felt a pulsing warmth shoot up from within it. Your head was spinning, things were insane.

“Look, it’s getting late and this shit is heavy,” Marcus said, rising to his feet, “I think we’d all be better off sleeping on this and discussing this tomorrow. I’m gonna hit the road, hopefully dodge the cops while I’m at it.”

Tina nodded and then looked at you. “You gonna chance it too, Mike?” She nodded at her house, “you’re welcome to crash here if you want, we can wake up early and get you home at the crack of dawn.”