He slid the bolt free. The trapdoor slammed open, and the wave of noxious hatred rolled out across the room. Ms. West clutched her hand to her chest, pressing against her heart.
“Oh,” was all she said. “Oh, my.”
My eyes watered as the god’s presence wrapped around me, pressing and sliding against my skin, oozing obscenely into my pores. As I struggled for breath, I tasted hatred on my tongue – tart and bitter and strangely enticing. Even in this dream, I experienced the god as if I was right inside that room with him.
“It’s been trapped in there for centuries.” Vincent’s body dripped with tension, his back and shoulders rigid as he stood beside the hole, taking the brunt of the god’s oozing aura. “The man who built what is now the school discovered the god while digging his underground tunnels, and he managed to trap it inside this prison.”
Ms. West tried to peer into the hole, but Vincent slammed the trapdoor shut, his shoulders visibly relaxing as the vulgar sensation of the god disappeared. “Has the entity been studied?”
“How can a god be studied? We know that if we give him a sacrifice, he will reward us with a share of his power.” Vincent gestured to the scaffold above the trapdoor. “However, that surge of power lasts only a short time.”
“What does this power do?”
“It’s like taking on his essence,” Vincent replied. “You felt just now what it is to be in the presence of the god. But when you receive his power, you hold a piece of his godliness within yourself. You appear radiant to those around you. Everyone in a room looks to you for leadership. Whatever you say will become truth.”
“That sounds addictive.” Ms. West licked her lower lip. “What do you want from me?”
“I want you to find a way to take the god’s power and give it to the Eldritch Club. Permanently. We cannot keep the school open much longer. Students are having strange nightmares and complaining to their parents. We’ve been burying the bodies in the caves under the gym, but now there’s a smell… if the school is closed down or authorities investigate, we may lose access to the deity.”
“I see. And you believe that I alone could grant what you seek?”
“I read all the eyewitness accounts of your experiments in the mortuary,” Vincent fixed her with an intense stare, “including the ones that aren’t on public or police record. I read that you raised a cadaver from the dead, that a man who expired in his bed three hours before got up from the slab and walked around the room before collapsing in a messy pile at the feet of a now mentally-impaired pathologist.”
Ms. West smiled. “If you’ve done so much homework on me, you must know that I would approach this in a scientific manner. All this talk of gods and sacrifices muddies the process, makes it okay to cut corners, and that’s not how I do things. Tell me, does the entity favor any type of sustenance?”
Vincent frowned. “I don’t understand the question.”
“Well, must this ‘sacrifice,’ as you say, be human?”
“Yes. We’ve tried with many other animals, but the effect is negligible. And the human must be freshly dead – even a body two hours old will not please the god. We now slit their throats right here, above his chamber.” Vincent jiggled the chains hanging from the scaffold. “We lower the bodies down and lift them out some time later.”
“Intact?”
“For the most part.”
“Excellent, then we can already control one of the variables.” Ms. West walked slowly around the room, her gaze flickering from the scaffold to the other features of the cavern. “And the sacrifices need to die? Have you tried throwing in a live one?”
Vincent’s face turned dark. “We have not.”
“Hmmm. Something to ponder. And does the entity respond more favorably to a certain age group? A skin color? A mental state?”
“The only thing we have noticed is that he seems to prefer them young and when they’ve lost all hope.”
“Young and hopeless? Oh, that’s interesting,” Ms. West said. “Very interesting indeed. Thank you, Mr. Bloomberg, for your kind job offer. I think I could be very interested. Let us head up to the board room and we can discuss my terms.”
* * *
I woke in a cold sweat, Ms. West’s words like sandpaper on my tongue. Beside me, Trey snored gently, his arm draped over two snoozing poodles.
I hated to wake him, especially when his mouth curled up into such a contented smile as he slept. But this wasbig. It was fucking monumental. Trey would kill me if I casually told him over scrambled eggs in the morning that I’d seen his dad and Ms. West make their deal.
“Trey.” I shook his shoulder. “Wake up.”
“Mmmmmf.” He moaned, rolling over to snuggle even harder into Leopold’s fur.
“Trey!” I kicked him.
“Owwwww.” He flipped over, hugging his leg to his chest. “What was that for?”
