Chương 50: Arc 4 | Last Resort (Prologue)

THE CABIN IS ALWAYS HUNGRY PART II LAST RESORT Prologue Somewhere outside of London 7 Days After the Death Core's Birth Blood, oil, and rain. Those were the first things he smelled when Henry opened his eyes. The cold, muffled rain pattering against the driver's broken side window echoed above him. Wait, why is it up there…? He blinked into the gloom and felt the cold droplets of water on his cheeks cascading down the cracks. The chill in the air crept under his skin, nauseating and piercing.

A familiar smell wafted into his nostrils, something like burnt rubber and gasoline. And blood. His blood. Henry reached out, grabbed the headrest, and propped himself up from his almost twisted and crumpled position against the passenger seat, his face pressed against the leather dashboard. And was that blood splattered all over it? He could taste something metallic inside his mouth and under his tongue, and he was afraid to swallow it. He had cut his lower lip pretty bad.

Dull lights from the nearby streetlight illuminated enough of the chaotic cabin that he could see his charcoal-fitted suit and white shirt, also stained with blood. Jesus Christ, how fucked up do I look? But he was alive. That was all that mattered. His head pounded, felt like a jackhammer going to town at the base of his skull. Dancing lights prickled at the periphery of his vision. He needed a moment to shift his weight.

To support himself from the fucking pain that snaked up his spine, radiating from his tailbone. He needed to think. Needed to gasp for fresh air. To breathe. God, he needed to breathe, but his lungs felt like it was on fire. Mixed with the cold winter air, it was like tumbling through sandpaper. He shifted his weight again, struggling to stand and squeeze in such a cramped space, but then his world spun. The car shifted, too, as if it sensed his waking presence.

He paused, waiting for something terrible to happen, but the stillness returned. The rain kept on falling. Good, good. He looped his arm around a sturdy headrest close to him and lifted himself higher, steadied himself for a beat against his own weight, but he couldn't keep it up for long, and he fell on his butt again. Spitting out a curse, Henry got up, paused to gather enough strength, and then climbed out of the broken window. He recognized the car's interior as his vision adjusted in the dim light.

This was his car. He blinked, pushing the blurry haze. No, he wasn't imagining it. This was his car now lying on its side, and he was in an accident. Am I in a ditch? It looked like it. The rain fell harder, drumming against his car in an angry staccato as if taunting him. Everything felt wrong. Looking around from the top of the car, he found himself stranded on the side of the road he didn't recognize. He could barely hear any sounds of life. No cars passed or lights from distant towns.

Only the dark and the rain surrounded him. He regained enough of his strength and senses to climb down the wreck. His feet hit the pavement, legs still unsteady. Panic slowly swelled as his mind swam with questions. How did I get here? What happened? What was I doing? Why… Why is everything so cold? Broken glass lay scattered around the wreck like confetti, and he was careful not to step on it when he realized he was missing a shoe. Every breath he took burned in his lungs as he stumbled away from the car.

Cold, cold. Everything is so cold. He shivered uncontrollably. Henry looked around the empty road, saw the tires' skid marks on the asphalt, and froze. Oh, no. Did he hit something during the crash… or someone? He didn't see any other wrecked car around, and if he killed someone, he didn't see a body. Or maybe it fell somewhere else? He ambled toward the ditch, peering into the dark just to glimpse a crumpled silhouette of a person.

He listened carefully just in case he would hear their gurgled gasps as they fought for their life. Or maybe they were already dead, and what Henry really needed to do was flee. He thought he heard the sirens approaching, but it must be the wind. And nothing. Only silence and the rain. And his shallow breaths. He didn't know if he should be relieved or puke his guts out for imagining that he might have killed someone. Henry staggered back.

The mere thought of puking already bubbled all sorts of things up his throat. He could taste the burnt tang of whiskey, vodka, meats, and soda at the back of his tongue. God, was I drinking? His head swam and spun again. I need to lie down. He needed to find his phone.

As he sat down cross-legged in the middle of the road, picking up the pieces of his scattered memories about how he ended up here, it took him a second to notice the translucent gemstone floating ten feet away from him, hovering just above his wrecked car. He held his breath. No, that's impossible. He didn't know how to react at the sight of it, or perhaps he had a bad concussion, and he was starting to see things. That's not good. Fuck running, he might need to get to a hospital soon.

Rocks don't float, he thought. Then, he saw it. There was a body inside the car, folded like paper in the back seat. Oh no. No, no, no, no. Henry got back up to his feet. Did he have a passenger with him? Whoever was inside was not moving. He tried calling out, but his throat felt like grinding his vocal cords against gravel. He limped back toward the wreck, and gravity grabbed him by the ankles of where he stood. That… that can't be… The person—the man—inside the car had his face.

He had short black hair, empty blue eyes, a crooked nose, and the same suit he wore from work. He was as tall as him at six feet and had the same athletic build. Only this man gazed blankly back at him, blood all over his face and clothes. His bones bent unnaturally backward. Some tore through his muscles and ligaments and pierced through his sleeves. The man was him. And he was dead. The translucent gemstone let out a kaleidoscopic flash, and Henry took a cautious step back.

It hummed as it approached him, calm and inviting. Everything's going to be okay. He didn't know why he thought of that, but it made him feel… better? Relieved? This was not the end, he thought. Stolen story; please report.

With each kaleidoscopic flash, he could see something inside the gemstone: a green expanse with a towering mountain range on the horizon, a quiet cabin in the woods, the glint of a double-sided axe carried in the man's hand, the smile of a bloodied woman, the mountain of bodies on the earth, and the looming form of a towering, twisted tree with javelin-like arms. A scroll unfurled in mid-air.

Then, a strange vision appeared in his mind filled with all sorts of rules, a powerful being he'd worship, a system he'd serve, and something… greater. Something divine. Something that would finally bring meaning into his life. It was an invitation. He realized that now. An invitation to a power he had never known existed. All it would take was for him to become a beast from the myths. A monster. And Henry accepted it without question. He blinked, and everything vanished.

The gem, the scroll, the wreck, and the road were all gone. He found himself in a strange forest. All the blood on his clothes was gone, exceptionally clean and spotless. Even his wounds disappeared. He could no longer taste something coppery under his tongue. But that darkness here was different. It adhered to his command and wills like a pet, even afraid to approach him with malice—a power promised within his grasp. And it was exhilarating.

"I summon you, Duke." A familiar voice in the darkness, just beyond the tree line. Soft. Absolute. Fatherly. Henry knew he should follow. He should obey without question. He knew what he was now and what he must become. And he would play his part with conviction. He stepped out into the open grounds before the cabin and smiled at his new family standing before him.

"I am at your service, my Lord Dungeon." Los Angeles, California"Are you ready to see some fucked up shit?" That was the first line of Dylan Griffin's Dead Pacifica, a true crime podcast about strange murders all along the Pacific Coast that catapulted Dylan into online superstardom.

Sure, he had a few hiccups leading up to the podcast's debut, from almost getting canceled due to filming a dead body in the Oregon woods to getting into multiple relationships and crypto-currency dramas with other famous influencers and sycophants. That didn't mean all of his haters went away, but at least the bad press died down significantly, and it never bothered his wallet any longer. The Griff always finds a way to crawl back to the top! Hell yeah, baby!

Dylan Does Stuff, his YouTube channel, grew from only 800k followers to almost three million in the past eight months and nearly twelve million across TikTok, Spotify, Facebook, and Instagram. All thanks to Dead Pacifica and its growing listeners and fanbase. It only needs to cover some gnarly murders and several missing cases. The more tragic the backstory, the better! Dylan thought.

Ever since the show's debut, he had been earning close to fifty thousand dollars a month from ads, views, merchandise, and sponsorships. That was just from the podcast alone and not the other random content and streams he provided for his followers, which averaged around four million views. He had found the elusive golden goose, and it was still not done laying golden eggs. Who knew that covering the topic of the Green Hill Massacre would lead to one of the largest massacres in the past three decades?

And what made it extra juicy was that the second spree of murders only happened twenty miles from where Point Hope was. Dylan already got tons of views from that video covering the Green Hill Massacre, only to be blessed by the breakout news that another massacre occurred. And that they were fucking connected. And voila, Dead Pacifica was born.

"We need to do something big," Dylan told Retto Kearns, his co-host and a popular Twitch streamer, after taking a big bite out of his burrito. They had just dropped the episode about Anna Fuhrmann and her four other friends going missing in the same woods where Dylan and Kearns found that park ranger's body. The episode has garnered half a million views since it dropped last night.

"Like what?" Kearns asked.

"I don't know, just something. We're running out of missing cases and may have to repeat old topics. Maybe cover more of the previous victims? Get a Part Two, you know? Usually, viewer retention is not that great in that kind of videos, but it's still popular. We should cover our most viewed case."

"What brings this on? We're doing great. We're not going to run out of cases, Dylan. Did you see the news yesterday?" Dylan's brows furrowed.

"Uh, what?" Kearns grinned and pulled out his phone, tapping something on the news app. He slid his phone across the table toward Dylan.

"Another missing case just got reported two days ago. A young couple from Seattle hiking the mountains. A nearby cell tower pinged their last known location as McLaren Forest. See? We're not gonna run out of cases. Whatever's happening in those woods is more content for us."

"We've covered other couples before…"

"So? We will do all that scary shit that ghosts, chupacabra, or even Bigfoot killed them. But we can also provide some realistic content that the boyfriend might have killed his girlfriend because he was abusive or jealous, you know? A guy takes her lady into the woods or the mountains, and thirty percent of the time, with the intent to murder. See how easy that was? It's like you're not even a true-crime podcaster, Dylan. Relax. We're going to be fine." Dylan didn't look convinced.

"I don't know. Paul got that AI stuff. He put in some algorithm, and for the past twelve episodes, we've been shedding listeners by one to two K each."

"That's not much."

"But it adds up eventually. I hear on Reddit we're getting boring. They're already accusing us of exploiting the victims and their families."

"Fuck the haters. That's why we have you and your dad's lawyer."

"I don't really want to get canceled again. It's not fun, Kearns."

"Yeah, yeah. I remember."

"Not. Fun."

"We're not, okay? Do you know how many copycats keep popping up on my algorithm lately about McLaren Forest and North Cedar Lake? They have significantly lower views than us, okay? You don't have to worry about anything, Dylan. We're still popular. We're the OG. Seriously, there's nothing much to say when the cops don't even know what happened to them. You know there's like two families trying to sue us—""They can't sue shit. My dad already said it's not gonna land, and it'll get thrown out of court.

Something about free speech." Kearns smirked.

"I did warn you not to cover that other girl. She was never near the area. Or that Texan guy and his sidepiece—""But what if they were?"

"…but they weren't. The Texan guy and the hooker were found in Salem from a drug overdose inside an Airbnb. Literally sixty miles away from Point Hope." Dylan shrugged.

"Their car was found in the same woods, though. You don't think that's weird? Anyway, it makes for a good story. That's all that matters. Look, plenty of people have gone missing in the area ever since that satan-worshipping cult merc'd themselves. I can't blame that many of our viewers see something weird about that." Kearns nodded.

"People loooovvve the spooky shit." Dylan's eyes widened. An idea formed.

"Maybe that's what we should give them."

"Huh? You do know Halloween's like four months away?"

"We can go to North Cedar Lake ourselves." Kearns stopped crunching on the nachos.

"Er, what?"

"I don't know why we haven't done it yet. It's actually brilliant!" Dylan said excitedly.

"Because you got in trouble for filming a dead body?" Dylan waved him off.

"They probably forgot about it."

"And what should we do there exactly? You know the woods are not really my thing. We've got a good gig going, man. We just sit back and talk about these people, and then we raked in the cash."

"I don't know. Maybe walk around the woods, find the spots where the last missing people were seen, and get our commentary? I mean, think about it, Kearns. Our boots are on the same ground where these people were seen last. What happened to them? What did they see during that day? We can film the woods, the lake, the cabin… everything. It's gonna be cathartic. We get our own footage. We can make it creepy and fucking terrifying. Oh my god, do you know how many views we will get? You said so yourself.

People love the spooky shit. Come on. Say it's a good idea."

"Okay, okay, I do see the value of us going up there and filming original content…"

"Ah…and…"

"And that the novelty of it would bring in a lot of viewers…"

"And…and…come on…"

"And yes, it's actually a good idea." Kearns stifled his smile.

"Yes! Yes! Thank you! I can't believe we haven't thought about this before." Kearns continued, "But we'll have to maximize what content we film up there. I think I have several ideas already."

"Oh? Like what?"

"We can stay up there for three days. Film blocks of footage that we'll spread out in a four-part series, get interviews with the locals, and on the last night, we'll film a live feed of us in the woods." Dylan thumped his chest.

"Fucking brilliant, bro! And I can already see it. We should get some famous influencers with us, too. Scare them shitless. Let's make our own Blair Witch Project. Oh, man, I can already see us cutting a deal with Netflix or some shit. You know how they fucking love their documentary series."

"So, when do you want to do this?" Kearns asked. Dylan paused, and a broad smile crept on his face.

"At the anniversary."

"Anniversary to what?"

"The cult's murders. You wanna make Dead Pacifica big? Let's film it exactly one year after the murders, on the same exact night. Extra creepy. More money. Everyone's happy, eh?" Kearns scooped up more nachos from his bowl.

"I hope you're right."

"And I already know who we should center the episodes about."

"Who?"

"Mark Castle. The cult's original victim."