WTF.
“Nate?” Colby’s mind spun with a million, out-of-control questions. First and foremost was making sure he was okay. “Nate? Brother, you all right? How’d you get here? What happened to you?”
Nate’s eyes rolled into the back of his head. Nate was not home.
Trey took his wrists and tied them to one set of ropes with little to zero resistance on Nate’s part. “Kick him!” Colby tried instructing him. “Nate, get his nuts!”
With Alex’s help, Trey tied Nate’s feet to the inner ring. Colby couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Alex had completely lost it. When the ropes were lifted, Colby saw the undersides stained dark red from previous use.
“Now we live forever?” Alex wiped his hands on his shorts.
“I can’t believe this.” Colby squatted and rocked back and forth. Dear Lord, please get me out of here.
Trey wiped his brow and headed for the stairs. “Now we reap what we’ve sown. I’ll let Georgia know we’re all here.” He disappeared up the set of stairs by the rusted machine in the corner, the one Kalani said Georgia used to grind up bones—her daughter’s.
Colby’s stomach heaved at the thought of a dismembered young woman, murdered by her own mother. How sick did a person have to be to do that?
Once Trey had left the basement, Colby and Sam started barking questions at both Alex and Nate. “What the hell are you doing? You want us to die? How come Nate’s back? Did he ever leave? Nate, brother, look at me…”
Nate groaned a few unintelligible sounds and then writhed before falling back to unconsciousness.
Colby turned a glare on Alex who smartly avoided his gaze. “Nobody lives forever. It’s a lie. They’re using you. I don’t know how, but you fell under the same influence as Trey. You need to wake up, Alex. Alex, look at me.”
He thought maybe if Alex would just meet his gaze, he might snap out of it. He might remember who he was, where he came from, who his friends were. This was what happened to people without a strong sense of identity—they got easily swayed by historic hippie witches.
“The rewards are bountiful,” Alex droned, shifting to the desk.
Colby shouted. “Because of you, we’re all going to die! You want that on your conscience? You’re going to have to live with that fact all your life if you don’t change course right now. You hear me? Alex, are you even listening?”
Alex stood hovering over the Book of Shadows again, reading and blocking out Colby. Through the bars, Sam threw a tiny pebble at Nate. “Actually, if we die, we die because of Nate’s niceness to people. Just saying.”
“Pfft, truth,” Colby scoffed. “Thanks for making us come, man.” Even though he knew Nate couldn’t hear him, even though he’d already forgiven Nate, who couldn’t have possibly known this was going to happen.
The basement grew quiet and cooler as the sun dropped in the world above them, the world Colby wasn’t sure he’d ever see again. With Alex studying the book with instructions to kill them, Kalani quietly muttering to himself, Pauahi out cold, and Nate muttering under his breath, Colby felt desolation slide into his bones and heart, dissolving his tissues. He chewed on his lip and urged himself not to cry.
This was the end.
How would his parents feel when they found out? Would they blame each other? Would they say, “I told you so,” when talking about how their son left to find fame and fortune in L.A., only to meet this bitter end while on vacation? Would his disappearance remain a mystery?
What about Corey and Jake and all his friends back home? Life would go on for them after a while. Colby thought back to the amazing life he’d lived in his twenty-two years. Never did he think it’d be over this soon, but that’s how it was, wasn’t it? One day you were walking along, minding your own business. The next, you were gone. He wasn’t ready. But if he had to go, he was just super thankful to God, the universe, or whoever was in charge that he’d had such a great time while here. He’d really, truly lived life to its fullest.
Colby pressed his fist against his face to push back the tears.
“What do you think happened to him?” Sam stared at Nate. “I thought he was already back in Kansas.”
Colby sniffed. “I’m guessing he never left. We must’ve dropped him off at the airport and either he forgot something back at the Airbnb, took an Uber back to get it, at which point Trey must’ve grabbed him, or…” Colby shook his head. There were so many possibilities.
“Trey intercepted him,” Alex mumbled from his spot at the desk. “He told Nate he wanted to ask him something in person and would meet him at the airport, since his flight wasn’t for another few hours. Not that complicated, really.” He flipped a page.
Colby seethed.
No wonder Trey was late to picking them up at the convoy after the helicopter tour. He was kidnapping Nate. Where had he put him? Had he been in the van when Trey picked them up at the convoy spot? In the trunk? Hidden in the undercarriage? Could Nate’s hidden body have been the reason why the van had failed?
“Tell us the truth. Was your phone ever really missing?” Sam asked.
“Of course not. Neither was Nate’s iPad. I have both upstairs,” Alex replied.
Colby stared at Alex with mounting rage in his heart. How dare he talk so casually? “Bro, I could live sixty more years and be just fine if I never heard your voice again.”
Alex turned, looked at Colby through a narrowed, hurt gaze. Burnt edges of their friendship lingered there. Deeply buried, but there. “Necessary ends require necessary means,” he spoke with a lifeless tone. Something told Colby not to give up on him just yet. He was under a spell, not entirely liable for their situation.
“All right, Alex.” Colby nodded. “I see you. I see you.”
The whole thing had been orchestrated. Colby had never felt so played in his life. Georgia had been planning this for a ridiculously long time. When she met Trey on her cruise, she’d found the perfect idiot, and now whatever magic she’d woven over him, she’d woven over Alex, too. For two years, she’d been training Trey, getting him to comply with her antics down to the minute, as evidenced by their detailed schedule on the fridge, making it a game to keep him motivated. Meanwhile, she was creating her own personal assassin. Colby wondered if she’d perform the slayings herself, or if she’d have Trey do them.
Neither, he stopped himself.
He wouldn’t be dying at anyone’s hands today. Not today, not tomorrow, not if he could help it.
Yes, he wished he would’ve been quick enough to put it all together earlier—Trey’s blank stare, the house’s macabre art and furniture, (obviously now) made of human bones and skin, the flesh paintings, the bowl in the living room (someone’s skull), all remains of good, clueless people who’d fallen for the deception, the hospitality, Georgia’s Southern charm. They’d been steeped in the energy of the dead, all of them warning Colby to leave.
Who knew how long she and Clint had been luring friends into their home, talking about the Dark Lord on moonless nights, romancing them with visions of fame and fortune, if only they’d do the Dark Lord’s bidding? How many of those clueless, hopeful hippie friends had believed her lies and ended up in this very basement? How many failed rituals, wasted sets of five young men at a time, had they burned through?
No wonder the house was full of ghosts.
If Colby could hang onto one scrap of pride, it was this—he never fully fell for Georgia’s charades. Once here, he and Sam had spent the better part of their stay acting on their instincts, trying to make sense of the negative energy they felt, trying to get away. Once back in Koloa, they’d tried to stay away. They’d only come back because of the lost items. Then, to help Trey.
They’d almost made it.
All along, they’d known something was wrong. The Belle Estate hid horrors in a basement built beside a sea cliff. If that wasn’t hell wrapped up in heavenly packaging, he didn’t know what was. Their training about different types of energy at haunted locations over the last couple of years had prepared them for this. If they ended up in the basement today, it was only because their good faith in mankind had put them here.
In the end, kindness had been their weakness. Colby wouldn’t change anything about that.
“We should’ve left the devices,” Sam croaked, as he sank lower against the bars. “Our lives were worth everything. iPads can be replaced.”
“We were trying to help,” Colby told him.
“We were stupid.”
“We didn’t know we’d end up here, Sam. Our two sides were at war with each other—follow our instincts or help our friends. We tried to do both.”
“Colby, I had a freakin’ demon pin me to a wall.”
“Yeah, and I had ghosts telling me to leave.”
“You had neither.” A new voice spoke from the cell next door.
Colby and Sam both turned to look, but Kalani was asleep. The other kid, Pauahi, was up. He moved on his side, picking at his scabby legs. “Sorry, what?” Colby asked.
“There’s no demon. No visions,” the young man spoke, his voice creaky from disuse. “She’s been drugging you from the moment you arrived. You, your friend who’s passed out, your other friend who can’t think for himself…”
“What do you mean, drugging us?” Colby asked.
Pauahi looked at them, dark circles around black eyes warned of deep levels of hopelessness Colby hadn’t reached yet and hopefully never would. “With salvia.”
“What the hell is that?”
“A potent native plant. Weed, basically. It grows all over the property, a type of sage from the mint family. Causes hallucinations, deep feelings of euphoria, out-of-body experiences. As strong as LSD. She puts it into all the food and drinks, uses it as incense. All those candles…” He lifted a craggy finger to the unlit pillars lining every corner of the basement. “Laced with salvia. She makes them down here.”
Understanding hit Colby like a brick over his head. That minty smell throughout the house, the one that smelled like hay burning—that had been a drug?
“The hippies smoked it the whole time they lived here,” Colby whispered to Sam. “Alex read that the other day. It was the least of the drugs they did, but it’s powerful.”
“We’ve been inhaling it,” Sam said. “We’ve been drugged for days.”
“Inhaling, drinking, eating…” Colby shook his head slowly. They’d eaten so much of Georgia’s food, drunk her lemonade, her “homemade” craft beers.
“I got sick right after lunch that day,” Sam said. “Remember? After we took a dip in the lagoon, the first buffet she made? That was the first time I saw the shadow being. So all this time, she’s been killing people, it hasn’t been to please a real demon, but over a hallucination?”
Colby absorbed the truth of it. Of course there was no real demon. The last few years of investigating haunted places, weird shit had happened, sure, but never had there been any evidence of actual demons. Not that they still couldn’t exist, but it was more likely that Georgia was chasing dreams. Literally dreams.
Of demons.
Of riches.
Of youth.
Whatever she believed in, all exacerbated by a mind-altering substance.
“That’s more fucked-up than anything. Makes sense. She’s lived here fifty years, Sam. She breathes it in daily. She’s immersed in the stuff.”
“Wouldn’t that make her immune after a while?” Sam asked.
Pauahi chimed in. “Over time, it changes the composition of your brain.”
Colby rubbed his face. He wished he could stop breathing the air, just throw on an oxygen mask and reclaim his clear mental faculties. Even drugged, they’d managed to know something was wrong and had made careful decisions. Still, for two days, they’d all, in one form or another, been under the influence.
As much as Colby wanted to believe in the paranormal, there always seemed to be an explanation for most supernatural phenomena, something to debunk them, and in this case, it had a name—salvia. Too bad what would kill them tonight at 11:11 PM if they couldn’t think on their feet fast enough wouldn’t be the weed, hippie ghosts, or demons.
It’d be the greed. Despicable human greed.