“Alright girls, stay close. This place is very big. We don’t want to get seperated now. It could take ages to find each other again.” Miss Thompson told her class. Hearing that, Mary started looking for an opportunity to slip away from the others and go exploring.

Mary’s teacher, Miss Thompson was at the head of a group of fifteen young girls from Hillcrest Academy for Girls. The girls ranged in age from 12 to 15. They were dressed in their school uniforms: white blouses over blue pleated skirts, white stockings and black patent leather shoes. Erica was fourteen, with red hair she wore to one side with a hair band. Most of the girls were chatting to one another, giggling and generally ignoring their teacher.

“As I was saying...” Miss Thompson continued, for the benefit of the two or three girls at the head of the group that were actually paying attention to her. “This house was built in the early 1920s by Horace Wilson who had made a fortune selling armaments during the Great War. Wilson was an avid art collector who amassed a considerable collection of paintings and sculptures, most of which is still on display here.”

As Miss Thompson talked on, the girls filed through the large room, looking around, curious, at the art on display. “He was also very interested in the occult and there were rumors and and his fellow believers held meetings underneath the house where the conducted strange rituals, though few put stock in such nonsense. Anyway, Wilson was ruined in the stock market crash of 1929 and was found dead alone in the house soon after, presumably suicide. In his will, he left this mansion and his entire collection to the art foundation that runs it as a public museum to this day.”

Standing next to Erica walking beside her  was Erica’s close friend Abigail. She grinned, running a finger through her long, dark hair. “boooring!” Abigail whispered into Erica’s ear, pointing towards Miss Thompson who was explaining the origins of one of the sculptures to one of the other students.

Erica nodded. “Why couldn’t we have gone someplace interesting for our class field trip?” she whispered back. “Like a chocolate factory or a-” she fell silent as Miss Thompson glanced in the direction of the two girls.

“What are you two girls thinking?” Erica’s second friend, Kelly said, walking up behind them. She was tall for her age, and had been the first of the girls to start developing, a fact which they’d teased her about considerably. At least until they’d begun to fill out as well and realized, shockingly, they didn’t really mind having the boys pay attention to them now. Her light blonde hair was braided in pigtails.

“Let’s try and sneak away, see if there’s anything fun to do around this place.” Erica suggested. The others nodded. They slowed their pace, drifting to the back of the crowd of school girls. Carefully, they watched Miss Thompson, waiting for a moment when her back was turned.

“Now!” Erica whispered. Moving as quietly as could, they doubled back, ducking through a door into a hallway. They listened for a moment, expecting Miss Thompson to call them back, but she didn’t appear to have noticed them missing just yet.              

Giggling with excitement at their mischief, the three girls scurried down the hallway. At the back of their minds, they knew sooner or later they would have to rejoin the class and then there would be punishments for running off, but for the moment, all they cared about was having as much fun as they could before they inevitably got caught.

At the end of the hallway was a small side door. A sign was attached to it that read “Guests Not Permitted Past This Point.” Immediately Erica reached forward and tried the door knob. It was locked.

“No fair!” Erica pouted. She was sure there must have been something exciting behind a door this mysterious.

“Here, let me try!” Abigail said, pushing Erica out of the wait. Reaching up, she pulled a hair pin out of her hair and bent it. Bending over, she began fiddling with the locks.

“That’s never going to work, Abigail!” Erica said.

“Will to!” Abigail replied, turning and sticking her tongue out at her friend. “I’ve been practicing at home. Besides, this lock looks pretty old. I’m sure it won’t be hard.” Sure enough, she turned the hair pin with a loud click. “See!” She said, turning the door knob. This time, the door opened, on rusty hinges.

On the other side was a narrow, brick-lined shaft. Filling it was a wrought-iron spiral staircase, going up and down. The windows into the room were dirty. Only a dim, fading light illuminated the secret staircase.    

“Well?” Erica said, poking her head in. “Up or down?” she asked. The others thought for a moment before saying together, “Down!” Hand in hand, the three cautiously descended down the staircase.

“How far down does this go?” Kelly said in amazement. It seemed like they’d been walking down it for half an hour! “We were only on the third floor. We must be underground now! Some sort of basement?” By now, there were no more windows and the stairwell was getting dimmer and dimmer.

Finally, they reached a landing at the bottom. The walls and floor and ceiling were made of smooth stone. There was a single, metal door in front of them. Fortunately, it was unlocked. On the other side were a long hallway, made of the same material. There were electric lights along the hallway, giving off an eerie red light. They were spaced far enough apart, though, that most of the hallway was left in shadows.

There was more art here, too, but it wasn’t like the dumb paintings or classical sculptures upstairs. They were bizarre looking, some covered in strange writing or depicting fierce looking demons. The dim red light gave everything a fierce look to it.

“I’m scared.” Abigail said, huddling close to her two friends. “Let’s go back!”

“Come on, you baby.” Erica said, hoping she didn’t sound as scared as she actually was. “We’re going to look around a bit more. You can go back by yourself if you’re too chicken.”

“No!” Abigail wailed. Secretly Erica sighed in relief. She didn’t want to be left alone either.

The girls were about halfway down the hallway. Another passage, lit the same way, filled with similar strange artifacts and paintings, cross it in an intersection. Near the meeting point where several large statues of men in robes. They were holding strange, bladed weapons, locked in some sort of stylized combat. The three stopped to look at the tableau for a moment.  

Suddenly, one of the statues began to move! In the dim light, it took a moment for the girls to realize it as a cloaked figure turned to face them. It lunged forward. Erica screamed as it grabbed at her. Her two friends screamed as well and took off running in opposite directions down the side passageway.

“Let me go!” Erica cried, beating her fists against her attacker’s arm as he lifted her up into the air. Lowering her head, she sank her teeth into the cloth covering his arm.

“Ow!” The man cried. He howled, but managed to keep a grip on Erica. “Son of a bitch!” He swore, his voice muffled by the hood and mask covering his face.

Two more men came running down the hallway, dressed in similar masks and robes. “What’s wrong?” One of them asked.

“This bitch bit me!” The man complained. In his arms, Erica continued to kick and struggle. One of the men held a knife up to her. Erica glared, but stopped fighting.

“Come on.” he said, turning. “Bring her. The time of the Great Aligning is almost at hand!”

Erica complained, loudly, as she was dragged down a labyrinth of  hallways. Suddenly, they came into a large, open room. Three more men in robes were standing around a large altar, ornately carved from some odd, greenish colored stone.

“Soon!” One of the men chanted. “Soon the time of the Great Aligning will come. Our days of humbly running this museum will be over. We shall succeed where our founder failed and attain the ultimate power of the cosmos!”

“Yes!” Another shouted. “No more putting up with tour groups of obnoxious students, messing things up!”

“No more begging money from stuck up philistines who would recognize great art if you tattoed it to their asses!” Another added.

“Yes, yes.” The leader of the cultists said. “The ultimate power shall be ours and all shall bow before us.”

“What the hell is going on here!?!” Erica said as she was dragged into the room.

“The time of the Great Aligning is close at hand.” The cult leader told her. “Soon the stars will align, weakening the boundaries between our world and those beyond. We shall cross those boundaries and gain ultimate know-”

“You idiots!” Erica interrupted him. “It’s the day time! How can the stars align when the sun it out!?!”

The cult leader shook his head, with an exasperated sigh. “Look, just because the sun is out doesn’t mean the stars aren’t there. Yeah, alright, having them align at night when we could see it would be better, but the Great Aligning only happens every 85 years. You can’t be choosey about your great cosmic events.”

“That’s dumb.”

“Hey guys,” The cult leader said, looking around. “You know how I said we didn’t need a virgin sacrifice for this deal? Yeah, no, I think we’re gonna go with the virgin sacrifice.”

“uh...actually, she came down here with two other friends…” The cultist holding Erica said, sheepishly.

“What! Kevin! Why didn’t you say something!?!”

“Sorry…”

“ugh...alright fine. We’ll be doing three sacrifices. Go get her friends.”

“Ha!” Erica said, grinning. “I’m sure my friends have already escaped! They’ve probably got the cops to come this very minute and bust you losers!”

“uh...nope. Security systems says the two are still running around in the hallways down here…” A short cultist said, looking at a tablet. “Besides, cell phone reception is lousy down here anyway, so they can’t have called the cops.”

“oh…” Erica said sheepishly.

“Alright fine!” The cult leader said, shaking his head. “Steve, take Louis and Roger, run and go pick those two girls up, bring them back here. Kevin! Take Little Miss Bitch here to the cells and chain her up until it’s time for...THE GREAT ALIGNING!” He laughed, evilly.

“Hey! Wait!” Erica squirmed, complaining as she was dragged through another door. She found herself in a small room. The walls were lined with shackles. Erica’s wrists were locked into a pair of cuffs, hanging from short chains a few feet off the ground. Two more cuffs, attached to a long wooden bar were locked around her ankles.

“Let me go! Let me g-MMMPPPHHH!!!” The cultist grinned as he shoved the rubber plug of a large ballgag in Erica’s mouth.

“Finally! That shut you up!” The cultist muttered, tightening the straps. Erica soon proved him wrong, grunting through the gag loudly. “Well...at least you won’t be biting anything but that plug from now on. See you later...” He tied a band of dirty cloth over ERica’s eyes, plunging her into darkness.

ERica sat on the stone floor, listening. Outside, the cultists were getting ready for their stupid ritual, practicing the mystical tongue-twisters.

“No no no!” Their leader shouted. “Bob, stop slurring the vowels! Do you want a demon from the world beyond to rip us all apart!?!”

Erica sighed. She could only hope her friends managed to find her and rescue her… “What was that?” Erica sat up as she heard footsteps. She could hear voices. It sounded like her friends! They were coming towards the dungeon where she was chained up! Only it didn’t sound like they were coming willingly...