The Caverns of Carnage

The next morning we all walked down to the hotel dining hall for breakfast. There was a huge buffet, but I really didn’t feel like eating, so I just sat there, watching as everyone else stuffed their faces with waffles and toast.

“Where’s Lorraine?” I asked, noticing her absence from the table.

Jared looked around. “I think she’s probably asleep.” he yawned, spreading butter on his toast.

All throughout breakfast, Lorraine didn’t turn up. Jared went up to her room to find her.

A few minutes later, we saw him darting down the staircase.

“She isn’t in the room!” he panted.

“Well, call her then!” Ryan exclaimed. We all looked on in anticipation as he rang Lorraine on his phone. He put it down.

“She isn’t picking up…” he said, in an anxious voice.

We rushed towards the elevator and frantically pressed the UP button. My stomach sank. What if BloodLust had gotten to her? The elevator door opened out to the long and vacant corridor. We sprinted towards room 432, and Jared unlocked the door. The room was empty, the beds were unmade, and the window was open.

“Lorraine!” Nakia called out, but there was no response.

“Look!,” Ryan said, and pointed to the closet door.

A piece of paper, folded in half, was fastened to the wood with a thumbtack. He pried the paper loose and unfolded it.

“What is it?” Jared asked, and we all craned our necks to see.

“It’s a note,” Nakia said, and Jared read it aloud:

My dear Jared, and Nakiaa, Ryan, and Gabraael-

By the time you read thhis note, my life will be at it.s end. After the death of my father I find life inbearable,. I know your children may not unnderstand this, or whhat would have leaded me to thiis wretched akt, but plaese know that I am much happeir this way. Please think of me kindly even though I’d dune this terrible thing.

-Lorraine Henderson

There was an empty silence echoing throughout the room.

“No” was the first thing Jared spoke when he had finished reading. He turned the piece of paper over and over as if he had read it incorrectly, as if it said something different.

* * *

My dear Jared, and Nakiaa, Ryan, and Gabraael-

By the time you read thhis note, my life will be at it.s end. After the death of my father I find life inbearable,. I know your children may not unnderstand this, or whhat would have leaded me to thiis wretched akt, but plaese know that I am much happeir this way. Please think of me kindly even though I’d dune this terrible thing.

-Lorraine Henderson

“Stop it!” Nakia cried. “Stop reading it out loud, Ryan! We already know what it says!”

We were sitting cross-legged on the bed in the hotel room, playing board-games as Jared was completing his shift. We had ordered room service for lunch, and ate our mashed potatoes with sorrow in our hearts.

“There’s something weird about this note, but I can’t put my finger on it.” said Ryan, sitting up. “For one thing, Lorraine spelled our names wrong.”

Nakia scoffed.

“Wait he’s right, Nakia,” I interposed, peering over at the note. “There’s all sorts of weird errors, like repeated letters and random dots.”

“Well, she was about to kill herself, so can’t say I’m surprised, can I?” yelled Nakia.

Ryan said nothing, but looked annoyed. We sat in silence for another twenty minutes, Ryan gazing at the note over and over, Nakia scrolling through TikTok, and me staring out the window, at the city at night, rows of palm trees lining the side of the hotel parking lot.

“Okay, I’m gonna go sleep now,” said Nakia, yawning, and she lay down on her mattress.

Ryan turned off the lamp, and the three of us fell asleep, me laying on the sofa, and Ryan on the bed.

That night I had another dream.

I stood once again in the giant cave ablaze with torches, but this time I was unable to move. It was as if I was a security camera built within the walls.

In the top left of where I was looking from, was a person tied to the wall with what looked like scarlet cords curled around their ankles and wrists. The person seemed to be struggling, wriggling, trying to escape…

Suddenly there was a clanking sound; someone was walking down the hallway.

As the clanking grew vociferous, the shadow of the man appeared, and as he walked into the light of the torches, his shiny black armor gleamed in the light, and as BloodLust walked closer towards the person tied to the wall, the gleaming red crevices of his armor came nearer towards the persons face, and it illuminated the face of the person struggling to wriggle free.

It was Lorraine.

BloodLust grinned. He flicked his finger, and a abstruse whirring sound came from within the walls.

Lorraine let out a ear-splitting scream of pain, writhing through the red cords binding her to the wall. BloodLust was laughing. Watching for a while, as if he was entertained, he the raised his finger, the whirring stopped, and Lorraine groaned and became immobile.

“You’ll be with your father soon…” BloodLust drawled in his raspy, hoarse voice.

“I know you k-killed him.”

“Do you, now?”

“Pietro…please…You don’t have to do this… please, stop…”

BloodLust reminded me of a cat toying with a helpless mouse before devouring it. He flicked his finger yet again, and from the elevated ceiling of the cavern, held up by chains, lowered a wide stone display stand, with three objects on it.

Lorraine let out another horrified shriek, as the stand grew closer to her face.

Nailed onto the stone display were a trio of severed heads, the eyeballs torn out, and with dried blood at the edges of the tattered flesh. Beneath each head was a small metal plaque reading the name of each victim; Ezra Henderson, Jason Henderson, and Bruno Henderson

“Your ill-fated grandfather, your beloved father, and your poor brother,” stated BloodLust.

Lorraine stared in horror at the heads, and then averted her eyes and gazed at the stone floor.

“Soon enough,” continued BloodLust, “Your head will be among these.”

He pointed his finger at the stone display, and next to the third head, another plaque appeared, reading: ‘Lorraine Henderson’

BloodLust let out a long, raspy, and cold laugh, and the dream ended.

I opened my eyes. It was morning, and sunlight was pouring through the window.

I hastily woke up Nakia and Ryan.

“What happened?” Ryan asked, sleepily.

“Lorraine,” I wheezed, my chest heaving. “She’s alive, but…”

“But what?” asked Nakia uneasily.

“She’s with BloodLust in some cave,” I said, “I met him in the same cave in the dream a few days ago… she’s being tortured…”

“Then we need to save her!” Ryan yelled.

Nakia looked at him, exasperated. “How? We don’t even know where this ‘cave’ is.”

Ryan looked on thoughtfully, and his eyes widened. “But what if we do?”

“What?” Nakia and I exchanged confused looks.

Ryan picked up Lorraine’s note.

“I think this note contains more than we think,” he said, with a serious expression, and he got up from the bed.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“I might be wrong, but…” his voice trailed off.

“What?” Nakia asked.

But Ryan had already left the room.

* * *

Hours later, Jared opened the door, clutching the note and looking considerably cheerier. Ryan walked in behind him.

“We found something…” Jared declared.

Nakia and I looked up from a game of Monopoly.

“Why have you drawn circles all over Lorraine’s note?”

“Researching,” Jared answered.

“Researching what?”

Ryan explicated impatiently, “I think Lorraine left us a message in the note.”

“She was miserable after her father died, and she killed herself” Nakia said. “What other message could there be?”

“There are too many obscure letters in it,” Jared replied. “I knew Lorraine, she would never do something like this without a reason.”

“So that’s what we’ve been doing, counting up the errors.” added Ryan.

They both sat on the bed and showed us the note.

“The first error is the second ‘A’ at the end of your name Nakia,” explained Ryan. “The second and third are an extra ‘A’ at the end of your name, Gabe, and an extra ‘H’ in ‘this’”.

“Can you get to the point, please?” Nakia requested.

“Okay, Okay,” said Ryan impatiently “If you add up all the errors, you get two things.”

He unfolded the bottom of the note. With a blue felt tip marker, Jared and Ryan had written two things:

-AAH.IRNHIKAE CD.VEUCAINE

Nakia rolled her eyes. “Is this the ‘secret message’ you were talking about?”

“We aren’t finished,” said Jared. “If you convert the letters to their number counterparts, you get ’-118.91814891115’ and ’34.22521319145’. These are map coordinates.”

“Where do they lead to?” I asked, but I already knew the answer.

“A cave,” replied Ryan. “Not far from this hotel. The cave from your dream, perhaps?”

“Most definitely.”

“Well then we have to go, now!” Jared yelled.