The door creaked as Rachel pushed it open. She peered inside to see if anyone would reveal themselves. However, the intruder had no one to welcome her inside the isolated mansion. Her nose coiled as she walked inside. The pungent stench from an unknown source caused her to gag and cover her face. Not even her time in war zones near rotting carcasses prepared her for that. Whatever was rotting away caused her stomach to churn. Something, or someone, had recently passed away.

  Rachel couldn’t bring herself to turn on the lights or her torch. Doing so might alert her presence. Instead, she turned on her camera she used the night vision feature as a pair of eyes to see in the dark. She made sure to press record in case she had to hand it in as evidence to the police.

  Everything was a mess. The place looked like it had barely survived the aftermath of a frat party. Floorboards torn out, curtains ripped off, spilt liquid of some kind all over the floor, and rubbish everywhere.

  ‘What happened here?’ She mumbled to herself as she investigated the nightstand near the entrance. On it were condom packets, half of a bottle of lube, and a few wet phallic objects. Some were ornaments while others were used sex toys.

  ‘Dammit, Henry, what did you get yourself into?’ Rachel whispered before opening the top drawer, finding a quest list next to it was a short thread of rusted barbed wire. Why it was there, Rachel couldn’t understand. At the back of her mind, she reasoned it was just waste material from a project the cult had recently done and was too lazy to throw it away.

  Rachel looked through the guest list, trying to see if there were any names she knew. Unfortunately, she couldn’t recognise any of them, even though she hoped there would be someone high profile on the list. What surprised her was her husband’s name being on that list at the bottom. Henry Abernack, 7th of February 2015.

  He was here? Rachel thought to herself. Deep down, she was grateful that her husband was still alive and in the mansion. However, she couldn’t understand why he was a guest and why he didn’t bother contacting her after disappearing for so long. Henry was there, in that mansion. But the question remained: what happened? If he got there three days ago, it would imply that the place would be operational before being turned into a mess.

  Her eyes darted back to the condoms and lube. If there were items like that casually lying around and at the entrance. It could imply that the cult was holding an orgy or that the cult was a sex cult. While it was a common characteristic for cults to use sex as a form of control over their members, an orgy would imply that the mansion was only reserved for trusted members or leaders of that cult. A sex cult, on the other hand, would mean that the place was open for every member and not an exclusive event. To her, it was all about control and the intent as to what the cult wanted to do with its members and those outside of its community.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  However, Rachel admitted that even that was a stretch, as it would entirely depend on the cult and their practices. She knew better than to jump to conclusions with only surface-level evidence. However, what was clear was that the place was once occupied and abandoned after being torn apart. How or why that was the case was left in the air, but she suspected it was a regular party or a festival the cult performed that got out of hand.

  It was also possible that the mansion wasn’t theirs but a place they broke into for a temporary gathering they would periodically go to. Strange for the cult to leave behind a guest list, but it wasn’t unusual in her line of work for people to accidentally leave something behind. But given that her husband was the latest person to turn up, the cult gathering must be recent.

  Feeling that there wasn’t any danger, as every cult member should be gone and believing that the smell was perhaps rotten food or a dead rat. She turned her torch on. But before she could call out for her husband. She froze in place, her hands quivering at the sight of it. Blood. Fresh blood.

  Rachel’s heart raced as she immediately turned her torch off. ‘Shit!’ She squirmed, eyes wide open as the situation dawned on her that she had stumbled into something foul.

  She dipped a finger into one pool of blood. ‘Warm,’ she bitterly remarked. Realising that whatever trashed the place was recent, possibly moments before she arrived at the mansion. With the blood being warm to the touch, she looked around with her camera, trying to find the source or at least a trail. Unfortunately for her, all she could find were isolated pools and no bodies or blood trails. Her mind figured that someone might’ve poured the blood near the entrance as a statement, but that couldn’t explain why it was warm.

  Either way, she knew it wasn’t as safe then she originally suspected. There was a chance that she was alone, but she couldn’t risk it. The place was dangerous, so it was time to get out and get help. She had evidence that her husband was there, and the crime scene was fresh enough that the authorities could come in and immediately investigate it.

  But what if he was still in there? What if Henry needed help, and leaving now would put him at risk or worse? He was gone for months, and he could be right there! No one else bothered to look for him but her, and she knew that walking out of that door was the safe option, but one that could make her unable to see the man she had lost.

  Biting her lip, Rachel turned around to head into the mansion. Focusing on her surroundings and ensuring that each step she took was as silent as the last. Stepping over the pool of blood while the stench becomes overpowering the deeper she heads into the mansion.

  ‘Don’t worry, Henry. I’m coming for you.’ She said to herself, though already she feared the worst had already happened.