Abaddon

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. The single light was too dim to make out the walls, so Megan lit another and placed it on the dust-covered table. A third, fourth and fifth light took their places around the room in relatively even spacing. They would be her guideline to mark the points of a pentagram and begin the ceremony. As she pulled the chalk from her bag to draw the symbol, her hands shook. The chalk shattered to the floor, split cleanly in two.

Just like me, thought Megan. Just like the last time I was here.

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11 years ago

The small town of Abaddon in Kentucky’s cave country had two well-known natural wonders. The first was the honeycomb of hidden caverns scattered like lost treasure beneath the lush expanse of overgrown forest. The second was the breathtaking beauty of the Grace twins. The delivery nurse would tell everyone who listened that a beam of light streamed through the window on the moment that the first one drew breath.

The girls were like the Kentucky woods themselves; indescribably beautiful and untameably wild. While this could be controlled to some extent during the school year, the summer was entirely different. The twins would be gone at dawn from the home that they shared with their parents and grandmother. They explored every corner of the local hills, foraging on pawpaw fruit and wild berries until sunset and dinner brought them home. Sometimes they would bring a fishing pole or a flashlight, depending on the adventure. They were never without a pair of stuffed bunnies, an embroidered name on the left foot of each, there to show which identical animal belonged to which identical owner. Ashley had stitched her name in emerald green like the Kentucky hills and Megan had chosen to use crisp red like fall apples.

The summer of their tenth birthday, they discovered a portal to another world. Many of the caves in the Kentucky hills had more than one entrance, so it was no surprise when they were deep in the bowels of their latest discovery to see light up ahead. When they came out, however, the world was different, magical. Rocks glittered like gems and fairies hovered around flowered bushes like honeybees.

The world here was full of wondrous creatures. Bears danced with them and juggled apples. Trout swam in streams that smelled like caramel and told riddles. They would give glittering shells to the girls as prizes for the right answer. When day began to turn to night, the creatures would beg the girls to stay past sundown, to see the night rainbows and watch the glowing waterlilies create their light show. They always refused, knowing that their parents would be expecting them.

On the day of their birthday, the creatures threw a party for them. They made the stuffed bunnies come to life and play games. Together they ran and hid, climbed trees and swung from flowered vines, dropping into the caramel river with sticky splashes. The twins stayed much later than they typically did. Only when they noticed the deep light and long shadows of the setting sun did the girls pack up to go. One bunny, still in the middle of a game of hide and seek, was missing as they packed their backpacks. Go and save me some cake, said one sister to another. I’ll grab that scamp and be right behind you.

The girl never returned that night. When her sister brought the police and her parents to the cave that they had traversed every day that summer, they found a shallow pit with no through tunnel. There was no cave-in, just a wall of limestone that suggested there was never a cavern here at all. The Grace family searched for their missing daughter for a year before the grief became too great and they moved far away.

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one year ago

The last time she had been in this valley, she had been half of a pair. Megan and Ashley. Ashley and Megan. They were never without one another and had even insisted on sleeping in side-by-side beds, holding hands.

When her parents gave up and moved them far away, Megan saw her sister every time she looked in the mirror. She had spent the last ten years erasing those pieces from the glass. She shaved her hair, tattooed her scalp, pierced her ears and face in every place that could hold a post or ring. She wore glasses, not because she needed them but because it hid her cheekbones just a bit from that accusatory mirror. But she couldn’t throw away the bunny. After all, she was still holding it for Ashley like she had done all those years ago. She often talked to her sister, tracing the green thread of Ashley’s stitched name as she vowed to finally find her.

It had been Megan’s bunny that night that was hiding. She should have been the one to go back for it. But Ashley had pressed her own bunny into Megan’s hands and assured her she’d be right behind. Ashley knew that Megan loved birthday cake and she didn’t want her to miss a minute of the celebration. She was like that, always putting her sister first. Since she turned 18 and left her parents’ home, Megan had been trying to return the favor.

The first clue of how to help her sister came at a séance that she had been invited to with a boyfriend at the time. The medium, Miss Foxglove, was talented, but she thoroughly vetted all of her guests before bringing up the spirits of the dead. She sent out detailed questionnaires to ensure that she could provide the right protections if you were the unexpected victim of a generational curse; if your ancestor had been a genocidal Nazi, a Mongol warlord or a brutal plantation owner, she did not want to open the door to a legion of revenge-seeking spirits.

Miss Foxglove called her a day before the ritual. Megan should not come, she said, because Abaddon, where she had grown up, was believed by many to be the location of the gateway to the underworld. There was no telling what may have connected with her, marked her. It would put the entire group at risk when the veil was pulled back.

Megan shared the story of the missing Ashley. She expected the medium to be skeptical or sympathetic, but something else glittered behind her eyes.

Do you want to get her back?

Miss Foxglove’s offer shocked Megan, but she did not hesitate to say yes.

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now

The past year had taken careful planning and diligent research under the tutelage of Miss Foxglove. While the medium could teach her, each act needed to be performed by Megan’s own hand in order for the magic to respond.

Over the past few months, she had dug graveyard dirt from the site of a known hoodoo priestess, talked a confused new mother out of a baby’s first fingernail clippings, infused holy water with the first sunbeam of dawn and hand-gathered the herbs required.

She waited until the stroke of midnight to begin; it would not work one second before this. The door to hell would only open at midnight to those not invited and it would close behind her forever at the first ray of dawn, which would be at 5:47 a.m. Her window would be short, especially since she couldn’t know how long it would take to find Ashley. As she drew the chalk pentagram, stretching her points from candle to candle, she steadied her breath.

The cabin was known to Miss Foxglove through her connections to the spirit world. It had been owned by a priestess of the dead during the Great Depression. It was this conjurer who had once opened a door to Hell in this landscape; it was here that the ritual must begin again.

After the candles and the pentagram came some chanting. Megan kept her satchel close; if the process worked, she would need it.

After the ritual, a guide will be called to lead you. Miss Foxglove’s words rang through her memory.

The last syllable had not fully finished escaping with her breath when the knock came on the door. She stood and answered to find a drowned wraith with hair of seaweed covering its face, a gray soiled dress and a child’s body. It reached out a hand, now just tight skin over bone, no muscle to speak of. Wraiths were neutral spirit guides; they were lost, drowned souls who could not find their way to heaven but were too pure to be corrupted by the evil around them. Not that the evil didn’t try, however; these creatures began as ghosts and over time and through torture were transformed into something more twisted but also immune to the cruelty of the dark.

You must go where it sends you without question. If it senses that you are hesitating, it will leave you behind and you will be forever lost.

Megan took the cold, clammy fingers in her hand and began to follow. The woods behind her looked different now. Fireflies hovered above a nearly invisible game trail hidden beneath the trees. Glowing mushrooms, called firefox, lit up the inside of turns to make it easier to navigate. The walk was long but dreamlike- she followed without fear of a thorn or scraping branch.

The entrance of the cave seemed darker than the velvet night around her. It was as if it was pulling all the light around it out of existence. She grasped the clammy hand harder, surprised that it hadn’t warmed under the presence of her constant body heat, and followed on, not daring to stop and ask for a flashlight.

Three turns left, four turns right. The pattern from her childhood came back to her like a dream long forgotten. Past the final opening, the world began again.

The moonlight here was brighter. At first glance, there were indeed the glowing waterlilies and night rainbows long-ago promised in the magical night-world of her forgotten land. However, she had rubbed holy water and rosemary oil on the left lens of her glasses to see the truth of things, and when she did, the world was not at all what it had appeared to them as children.

Dancing bears were in fact glittering demons with dripping jowls and malicious, too-large grins. The caramel river ran thick with blood; the trout were stinking corpses and the shells, precious prizes for their guessing games, were floating pieces of body parts too rotten to recognize. Each step further brought something new and more disturbing.

Her old friends called to her, begged her to play, not knowing that she could see them in their true form. She spoke to none of them, not even with polite refusal, in case a quiver in her voice might betray the depth of her fear or, worse yet, she might fall behind the wraith enough to let go and remain forever trapped.

Deeper in the forest, in a place she had never gone, the sound of birds was replaced with the sounds of screams intermingled with whips on flesh. The path turned in this direction, and though she could barely contain her tremor, she walked on.

Her watch was on the hand holding the wraith, but she could see the time with the too-large numbers she had chosen for this purpose. It was 4:30 already and she didn’t know how much further she had to go. How had so much time slipped away already?

The sky around her was beginning to lighten and gray when they reached the altar. It was here that the wraith dropped her hand and waited. It was here that the invocation had asked for help to go.

Bring something that means the world to you and reminds you of your sister- Miss Foxglove had been insistent on this part. Place it on the altar and wait.

The stone altar was flat in the middle with a drain ridge on the outside that collected in a single spot just big enough for a goblet. It appeared the perfect size for sacrifice and blood collection. Yet, the table was perfectly clean. Megan was unsure if this meant it had never been used or if not one drop of the spilled blood was wasted when it was. On the outside, ritual symbols in several different apparent languages wrapped around every vertical surface on the table, a cacophony of sinister spellwork in dozens of languages.

5:30 a.m.

Her watch vibrated silently on the half-hour, letting her know that it was time to do something, quick. She turned to grab her satchel, to leave her token. But the wraith was holding the bag, looking inside, one finger stroking the bunny ear that was carelessly flopping out.

She was sure the creature would run with her bag, trapping her here forever. Instead, it whispered to her with a sound that was much like bone grinding against rock.

Someone is trying to trap you. If you place this token here, you will lose your tie to the world above and you will forever belong to this place. There is much power to gain in the overworld by returning a soul to hell who escaped its trap. Someone is in the cabin where you began, waiting to collect the bounty.

The wraith took an ashy finger and drew on the sulfur-yellow cave wall. A window of sorts appeared, showing Miss Foxglove busily erasing any sign of Megan’s chalk markings.

You called me to help you, the creature continued. Your quest cannot be fulfilled, she has been gone much too long and there is nothing of the girl left. If you let me, I can save you before the first ray of dawn hits the cave.

Megan looked at her watch. 5:45 a.m. Moments to decide.

Ashley’s voice echoed in her head.

Go!

It was as if her twin, her other half, was right next to her.

Megan half swallowed her tears, half nodded. The wraith took this as assent, drew another portal and pushed Megan, hard, through it as the sun peeked over the horizon. She landed roughly on her side along the cut-out side of a hill, the satchel thudding softly on top of her calf. By the time she looked back, there was just a wall of rock. She cried softly at first, and then harder, as she finally reacted to the fear of what she had seen, the grief of failing to save her sister again and the guilty relief of surviving the ordeal herself.

Dawn surrounded her as she picked herself up and opened the satchel to pull out Ashley’s bunny and hug it tight to her. In the early light, the toy appeared newer than she remembered, as if it had gone back in time.

It was then that she noticed the bright red stitching on the foot.

M-E-G-A-N