by BOLA ILUMOKA
On his way back from the court house, he sat quietly in chains cogitating over the events of the past few days. He felt helpless, but he also felt that there must be something he could do. Should I pray? But he had forgotten how to pray, he didn’t remember how to. The last person he had seen pray close up was his father.
The only words that came out of Dennis’s mouth on the way back to the prison were “God help me, God help me.” He didn’t know how many times he said it, but he knew he must have said it enough for the Big Man up there to take notice of him. At this moment in his life, he was ready to believe in anything or anyone that could solve his problems.
While musing in the armoured vehicle he noticed that the vehicle swerved a bit, but thought nothing of it as he briefly glanced at the armed FBI agents sitting next to him. He was too involved in self-pity to prepare for what happened next. Then everything happens in a flash and Dennis loses consciousness oblivious of his surrounding environment.
There was a white unmarked civilian van driving not too far behind the armoured vehicle. There were three men and a woman inside including the driver. The driver was one of the men, while the woman sat at the front next to the passenger.
The driver said, “It’s time Lucy.” as he gave her a quick side glance.
“Okay,” Lucy replied. She then began to chant some words that would sound like gibberish to the untrained ear. She then lifted up her right hand open palmed and the chants became accelerated and louder. At that very moment a car three vehicles ahead of the armoured vehicle had a tire burst on motion and the driver lost control. Two vehicles behind it crashed into the car and they all went up into flames.
There was just no way the armoured vehicle driver could avoid the collision. It was too late. He also rammed into the burning vehicles and ended up on its side. Several other vehicles joined in. Within fifteen seconds there had been a pile up of mangled vehicles and death everywhere. It was a horrific multiple car accident scene.
The white van parked on the hard shoulder of the road like several other good Samaritans to help out survivors. The two men at the back of the van got out and headed towards the armoured vehicle while Lucy and driver waited inside. After making their way to the vehicle, they met no resistance at all. All the occupants were either unconscious or dead. They were able to easily pry open the back of the vehicle with a crow bar and they saw Dennis lying in chains unconscious. The two hefty men carried him out of the vehicle and headed straight for the white van.
As soon as the driver of the white van spotted them, he starts the vehicle and waits for them to come in and drives off with Dennis Riley without a trace. When Dennis begins to regain consciousness, he starts to groan in pain, obviously not knowing where he was. Lucy lays her right hand on his forehead and immediately he sleeps back off.
Within a space of two hours, they arrive at their destination, Dennis was still asleep. The property was a secluded location with only trees and vegetation as the surrounding environment. It was some sort of large country home with a fenced compound and at least two dozen armed security guards patrolling the premises. Several closed circuit television cameras were placed in several locations in and around the premises almost making it impossible for a blind spot to exist. The compound comprised of three houses, with the one in the middle being a large mansion while the two other smaller buildings where on the right and left of the mansion. There were several exotic vehicles in the compound and there was a vast amount of open field attached to the back of the property.
Lucy looked at the men in the back. “Carry him inside, and keep him with the others, but handle him with care, he’s special, understood?” The two men nodded and carried him away. Then Lucy and the man who had driven the van walked hand in hand into the central structure.
“When do we do it?” asked the man.
“We’ll wait for instructions from the master,” replied Lucy.
“What do you mean he’s gone?” SSA Gates was on the phone discussing with the US Marshalls. “If it was a multiple car accident, and if it was as terrible as you say it is, he should have been found alive, injured or even dead. It just doesn’t make sense.”
Dennis remained silent as the man at the other end of the phone spoke. “The US Marshalls, is equipped to track down the fugitive. We’ll be coordinating with other agencies to recover the prisoner,” said the US Marshall. “As soon as we hear anything, we’ll let you know.”
“Please do,” said Gates and he hung up the phone. He was enraged. He turned to one of his subordinates. “Get me the Director on the phone, we have a manhunt.”
Dennis woke up two hours after arriving at the secluded compound with a very painful headache. He was lying down on the ground and he sat up placing his right hand to his head. He was highly disoriented and he was trying to recollect how he got to his current strange surroundings. It looked nothing like his prison cell room. He noticed that all his chains were gone but he was still wearing the orange prison overalls. He began to remember that he was being conveyed back to the prison on his way back from court when the armoured vehicle he was being conveyed in was suddenly involved in a ghastly motor accident and that was all he remembered. He looked around where he had been sleeping and realised he was enclosed in a cage with the top reaching the ceiling. The cage had a door but it was locked. The environment within the cage was filthy and it had a very bad odour.
He saw that he wasn’t the only one in the cage. There were about a dozen other captives in the cage with him. They looked underfed and unkempt. They also looked very scared and Dennis wondered why.
Dennis looked at the environment outside the cage and realised he was in a basement. He suddenly felt a serious pang of hunger in his stomach and realised that he was extremely hungry. He wearily stood up tried to get his balance and realised he was still a bit dizzy as well. “What is the place?, Where are we and what am I doing here?”
A man answered. “We don’t know more than you.”
“What?” Dennis asked.
Another person said “None of us know how we got here. All of us were brought here at different times and we were all asleep or half awake.”
“Are you saying we’ve been kidnapped?”
“What do you think? Nobody tells us anything. When they need someone, they come and get us.”
“What do they do with you?”
“None of us know, when they take you, you don’t return.”
Dennis was frightened, but he tried not to show it. “What? How long have you been here?”
“I lost count, but I have been the longest here. Some don’t last up to week. What’s your name?”
“Dennis. What’s yours?”
“Lucas.”
“Does anyone come around?”
“Only when they bring our meals.”
“We’ve got to find out why their keeping us here against our will and what they’re doing with the others.”
“How do you want to do that?” asked Lucas.
Dennis just looked at Lucas and the others. He could see worry and fear in the expressions on their faces. He had nothing to say to that question, he kept quiet and decided to have a seat.
Chapter 7
After a few hours in captivity, a door that led out of the basement of cages finally open and four men make their way inside. One of them carried packs of food, two carried firearms while one that seemed to be their leader was the last to come in side.
The one carrying packs of food started distributing the food packs to each person including Dennis. The captives hurriedly receive the packs of food and start consuming the food. They were obviously very hungry.
Dennis wasn’t so keen on the food, he wanted answers. “What am I doing here, who brought me here?”
The armed men and the meal man gave him a brief sideways glance and ignored him. Only their leader gave him attention. “You’ll find out soon enough Dr Riley. Why don’t you just sit down and relax.”
“I demand to know now.�
��
The armed men now gave him attention and pointed their firearms at him.
Dennis immediately keeps quiet and he steps back very frightened.
“I wasn’t given a pack.” One of the captives claimed. “Where’s my pack?”
The meal man looks at the leader, as if waiting for him to speak, the leader glances at the two armed men, then nods at them.
The armed men proceed to release the man who hadn’t been fed.
The hungry man was alarmed that he was being led out of the cage. “What’s happening, where are you taking me to.”
None of the men respond to his questions.
He began to resist and struggle with the armed men and refused to move. “All I asked for was food. Please I’m sorry. Somebody help me.”
The other captives didn’t raise a finger to help him. Some continued with their meal, while others briefly stopped eating to look as he was being dragged away. They were all scared and nobody knew who was next.
Dennis was terrified and wondered where they were taking the wailing captive to. He wondered why it was that whoever was taken was never returned.
All the four men left immediately. Once Dennis heard the basement door shut he asked Lucas, “Where are they taking him to?”
“Nobody knows, all we know is that he isn’t coming back.”
“I hate to think what they might be doing to him, probably this is an illegal medical facility and their performing tests on people.” Dennis proposed.
“What kind of tests?” Lucas asked.
“I can’t tell, but it gives me the creeps.”
“What bothers me is the way they come down here and look at us as if we’re turkey or something, feeding us until they think we’re fat enough and then they pick us off one by one anytime they feel like it. It makes me sick to my guts.” said Lucas.
“When you put it that way, that sounds really scary.” Dennis replied.
“How come that guy knows your name? He spoke to you in a direct kind of way. They never speak to any of us like that.”
“I really don‘t know.” Dennis said. “It kind of bothers me.”
“It sounds to me like they have special plans for you.”
All Dennis could do was just sigh heavily.
The hungry man continued lamenting as he was being dragged away. The two armed men dragged the hungry man along a corridor of the main house. On their way they came across Lucy. She signalled for them to stop. The hungry man became quiet.
She looked at the hungry man with a mixture of disdain and amusement. “Prepare him for the ceremony, it’s almost time.”
The two men nodded in obeisance.
The hungry man shouted a question at Lucy with his eyes glaring. “What ceremony!?”
Lucy smiled. “They haven’t told you? It’s the time for the sacrifice.”
The man was dumbfounded and lost for words.
Lucy gestured the men to move on.
The two men continued dragging their captive along the corridor while his lamentations became louder.
Within a matter of moments they entered a very large room that served as a place for assembly. The seats at the back were raised high while the seats at the front were lower. At the front was a raised platform that was visible to everyone in the room. On the platform was a large marble alter that a full grown adult could lie down on.
The room was completely filled with men and women wearing black hooded robes and they were all standing. All of them had their hands stretched towards the altar and they were chanting inaudible words.
The hungry man couldn’t say a word because he was highly terrified. The room was filled with some kind of perfumed scent that made him sick to his stomach. Tears were beginning to stream down his cheeks from his eyes as he began to breathe more heavily out of fear and extreme anxiety. He was taken to the front of the assembly room and his back was placed on the altar. His clothes were stripped from his chest as his legs and arms were securely fastened to the altar with ropes.
“Why are you doing this to me? Please stop this.” He was completely ignored. The only thing that he could move was his head and he turned it from right to left. He looked up at the back of the room and saw Lucy enter with four other people behind her in a single file as they made their way to the platform. They were wearing black robes as well. The only thing that distinguished Lucy from the others was that she had a gold chain placed over head.
Once she got to the platform she stood in front of the hungry man and raised her right hand up. Immediately, everybody stopped chanting and the whole room was totally quiet. The only thing that you could hear was the hungry man’s heavy breathing.
The hungry man looked right and left repeatedly and anxious about what was going to happen next. He noticed a small table that had several small golden bowls and he saw a knife with a serrated blade placed next to the bowls.
Lucy spoke out in a sonorous voice. “My fellow witches of the coven, the time has come again for another sacrifice to master Lucifer and the drinking of blood to renew our strength in order to serve him with all available might. We must expand our ranks in order to win our battles against those Christians and gain more control of this world for our master, Lucifer. As the High Witch of this coven, I declare the beginning of the season of the Feasts of blood, as instructed by lord Lucifer.”
All the witches in the assembly begin to roar and cheer in unison.
The hungry man begins to scream and cry.
Lucy smiles and looks at the other witches at the podium and immediately one of them gets a thin piece of cloth and uses it to bind the hungry man’s mouth. Another one of the podium witches picks up the serrated knife and hands it over to High Witch Lucy.
Lucy raises the knife up into the air for everyone to see and plunges straight into the hungry man’s chest where his heart is located. She methodically cuts out his heart and raises it up for everyone to see and they all cheer. Lucy then takes a bite out of the heart and begins to chew it. One of the witches on the podium approaches Lucy with a gold platter and collects the heart from Lucy onto the platter. The remainder of the witches on the podium share the heart and consumes it. The honour of eating the hearts of the sacrifice were reserved for the most senior witches in the coven.
Lucy then receives a golden bowl from one of the podium witches and puts the knife to the dead man’s neck. She cuts open a vein in the neck and begins to collect the dripping blood into the golden bowl. After she had collected an amount of blood she lifted it to her mouth and drank from the bowl. After she had drunk, she passed the bowl to the other podium witches and they also drank of the blood one by one.
After the witches on the podium had taken of the blood, they took the remaining bowls and collected more blood and passed the bowls around the whole assembly. One by one every witch in the assembly part took of the drinking of the blood and they all felt rejuvenated.
At the exact time of the sacrifice of the hungry man, Dennis fell asleep in the cage and had another dream. He dreamt about what happened to the hungry man. Everything that happened in the assembly including the witches and the sacrifice was revealed in a dream to Dennis. It was as if Dennis himself was present at the sacrifice, but nobody could see him. It was apparently a lucid dream for Dennis and he was fully aware of everything that was happening in the dream.
Dennis didn’t know how, but he knew the dream was happening in reality at that moment in time, and it made him terrified. I thought witches were a myth.
Once the sacrifice was over, Dennis awoke from his brief slumber terrified. Lucas looked at him from across the cage and Lucas could visibly see the fear written all over Dennis’s face.
“Are you okay?” Lucas asked. “You look like you just had a nightmare.”
“You have no idea.” said Dennis.
“You want to talk about it?” asked Lucas. “It’s not like I’m doing anything. I have all day.”
Dennis looked at Lucas with a certainty. “I think I know
why we’re here and what they’ve been doing with the others and what they’re going to do with us.”
Lucas was surprised and sceptical about what Dennis might have to say. “You had a dream about what they do here?” The few other captives which were just a handful of people showed interest for the first time in what Dennis had to say.
“Yeah.”
“So what did you see in your dream?” asked one of the others.
Dennis didn’t want to mention the word witches so that he wouldn’t be ridiculed. He wanted them to take him seriously. “There are a bunch of devil worshippers here. They’re going to sacrifice us and drink our blood. That’s what they’ve been doing with the others. That’s why the others never come back. They’re feeding us fat so that we would be juicy enough for the sacrifice, for their evil feast.”
For the first time, the normally calm looking Lucas looked terrified and horrified all at once. For no certain reason at all, Lucas believed Dennis, and it all began to make sense to him.
Chapter 8
The man hunt was on. It was a joint effort between the FBI, US Marshals Service, State Marshals, State Troopers and local law enforcement officers. Dr Dennis Riley was a wanted man, a fugitive and one of the FBI’s most wanted. Normally, the US Marshals Service would have taken the lead in this man hunt, but due to the sensitive nature of the case, the FBI was taking the lead and Supervisory Special Agent Marcus Gates was coordinating the hunt with all instructions and orders going through him. He had been given the full support of the Executive branch of the government to go to any length to recover Dennis Riley before he leaves the country through any internal or external assistance.