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  “Y’all shouldna done that. Not good manners at all. Sure ain’t the done thing, sure as shit. Comin’ in here and throwin’ a big shindig without havin’ any kinda courtesy to invite the kindsa folk ‘round these parts who love getting’ fucked up and partyin’ on is one thing, but layin’ into a fella doin’ the polite thing and givin’ y’all a friendly piece of advice is just downright rude. Since its gots to be the way y’all want it ta be, then best believe, your fancy-ass party is gonna be our party now.”

  He didn’t look like he possessed any capability for rapid movement-he’d been walking with a limp when Renetta first saw him, and that could only have been amplified by the beating he took-but one second the bloodied man was standing right there admonishing his attackers and their cohorts, the next he’d taken a swift turn and vanished into the thick woods beside the makeshift track.

  The abrupt disappearance took everybody by surprise, with Nestor eventually the first to recover and the quickest to react.

  “Fuck this, I’m going to finish that bastard. Don’t know about any of you, but I took that as a fucking threat. He’s a fucking dead man.”

  He was gone almost as quickly as his victim, even as Stacey despairingly called out after him, again, before anybody was with it enough to halt his progress. He blundered right off into the woods, crashing through the undergrowth with far less finesse, and far more noise, than the injured man.

  This time around, Wilson was quickest on the uptake.

  “He’s right. We gotta stop his ass before he gets wherever it is he’s going. At least to keep him here or something.”

  Then he too, launched into the woods, blindly following the racket being made by Nestor.

  “Jesus Christ!” Quen shouted, but he made no effort to follow and apprehend them. Instead he turned to face the others assembled, as a series of questions came flying at him.

  “Aren’t you going to stop them?”

  “What are we gonna do?”

  “What d’you reckon that weird fucker meant by ‘make it our party’?”

  “I reckon we oughta get the fuck outta here, pronto!”

  “Hold up!” Quen blared for silence, though the levels of drugs and alcohol running through the systems of all here meant remaining quiet was an impossible ask. “First, we need to cut that fucking music. Somebody, shut that shit down. Secondly, what’s the point in a bunch of us running around in the woods chasing them? You all know what Nestor’s like, and besides, they’ve got a point. Whatever that creepy fucker was inferring doesn’t sound good. Sounds like he means for us to have a bunch of weird backwoods, hillbilly inbreds or something crashing the party.”

  “And what if Nestor and Wilson end up beating the guy to death?” a woman Renetta knew only as Jeanne interjected. “Then we’re all in deep shit. For not trying to stop them or whatever.”

  “I’m telling you,” another member, Andrew, a fellow so fond of cocaine he was mostly referred to as Candy Andy joined in. “We need to be hauling ass outta here. Whatever that fucker was talking about isn’t good, and worse, if those two kick his ass into a coma or some shit, he ends up dead or whatever, none of us want to be here. We don’t even want it known that we were here. At all.”

  “Solid idea, Andy,” Quen said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Bet you can’t manage to count on one hand the amount of people here who are in any condition to drive. “Cause I can’t either. Everybody is fucked up. Everybody. Any one of us who gets behind the wheel is in no condition to drive.”

  “Fuck that, I couldn’t care about being over the limit, seeing double, triple, fucking whatever. If I have to drive outta here, I’m driving the fuck outta here.”

  “That’s sensible. Got a goddamn death wish do you? You’ll crash, you’ll get pulled over by the cops, there’s a million fucking things that can go wrong with any of us getting in a car to drive while we’re all fucking loaded.”

  “Bit late for you to start getting a conscience, or talking about responsibility Quen. If that was a concern, shoulda had some fucking designated drivers stay off the gear to make sure we could get the fuck out of here! Way to have a back-up plan, idiot!”

  “Look, everybody, back in the house!” Quen ordered. “We’ve got to figure this shit out.”

  ***

  Heath needed to piss. He didn’t fancy his chances of being able to get up and walk too far in a straight line, more like a series of very short straight lines, angling back and forth in a zigzag, but as fucked as he was, he didn’t want to piss himself.

  He was off his head, and in a tiny back corner of his mind, he acknowledged that. The rest of his thought processes were a scattered mess, most of them pushed down under that overwhelming need to get up and find somewhere to piss.

  Half the place had cleared out for some reason he had no idea about, then abruptly the music was gone and they’d all come clamouring back inside, in a barrage of voices that washed over Heath like so much background noise.

  Ignoring everybody and whatever the fuck they were all babbling about, Heath finally stumbled up and weaved out of the now crowded room, fumbling his way through the wreckage of the house. Even in his state, he didn’t fancy trying to locate the facilities inside; he wasn’t sure they even worked or were even there any way. Besides, he didn’t have the time to fuck around looking for them, this bladder needed evacuating immediately, if not sooner. It was piss in the corner of one of these messed up rooms or go outside. In his drugged, beer-sodden fugue, Heath went with the outdoors option.

  It was a miracle he was able to find his way out, but he did. He hadn’t gone out the front, since it was pretty choked up by the influx of High Society folk charging back inside, but instead made his way to the back of the house.

  Just like the front, there was no door in the rear, just a wide open aperture, as if the door had long ago been ripped from its hinges, and was either lying under leaf litter and refuse a distance away, or was one of the odd doors propped up against barely-there walls inside.

  None of that was relevant to Heath, he was just glad he hadn’t had to fuck around any longer fumbling with an uncooperative door. He wandered right out on unsteady, wobbling legs.

  In contrast to the front, where there was abundant open space, the trees marched right up to the buildings rear, encroaching on it to the point where branches managed to knock out windows and stretch leafy fingers inside, as well as hanging heavy on the sagging back roof. That suited the scattered Heath fine. Plenty of trunks out there in which to direct his urgent spray.

  A handful of steps free of the dishevelled husk of an abode, he weaved in amongst the trees and picked a suitable sizeable beast of a thing to be his pissing post, fishing inside his still open zip to locate his cock.

  Taking a piss was his most pressing concern at hand, but he still needed to cum too. Fucking Kelsey hadn’t finished off the blowjob she’d been administering earlier. Just when it was building up to the point he was going to blow, some jackass came along with more party favours, suggesting more lines needed to be racked up. All of a sudden Kelsey thought that was more important than him blowing his load, and she up and left him cold, carried away in the host of takers for the line-snorting session. In a rare moment of clarity and self-consciousness, Heath swiftly tucked his dick back in his jeans, though belatedly he thought he should have just left it poking out and asked the nearest female to jump on and finish the job.

  Fucking Kelsey. He oughta ditch her completely. He needed somebody new. Didn’t matter how willing she was to do whatever, if she was just going to opt for drugs over him…

  He pissed with gleeful abandon, splashing loudly against the trunk in a haphazard spray, barely able to stand straight. He needed to hang onto the tree with one hand to keep his balance, and after a while he needed to lay his head on that hand, vaguely wondering how many litres of beer he was ejecting. The relief was immense and he voiced it as such, aloud, to nobody in particular.

  The last thing he was expecting was f
or myriad hands to come snaking out of the thick of the woods, grabbing him around the throat, the arms, even by the hair, and rapidly yanking him into the dark pools of shadow.

  ***

  “So, that’s your big plan is it, Quen? That’s the plan? To just sit around and wait for somebody to be sober enough to drive vehicles, or for Nestor and Wilson to come back? Because one of those is gonna take hours and the other has already taken too long! They shoulda been back by now. And we should just be hauling ass. At least away from here!”

  Candy Andy was holding court and his paranoia was spreading like wildfire around the collective, touching all those who weren’t too utterly drug-fucked or inebriated to acknowledge the situation. The mood in the room had long ago completely shifted; the party vibe was dead and buried, the buzz killed by the widespread panic and concern in the place. This wasn’t anything like their usual haunts or party zones, where back-up and contingency plans could always be adhered to, where there were avenues of escape if things happened to go pear-shaped. This was the unknown. Out in the middle of fucking nowhere with not a one of them anywhere near safe to drive without registering some bad numbers on any police alcohol or drug check.

  A deluge of fears came in a flood, swamping one another into a maelstrom of panicked sound, so most people were fundamentally shouting over each other. Those who’d been previously euphoric and blissful in their drug reveries were now uber-paranoid, edgy and apprehensive that they were about to suddenly get raided by a police squad, or worse. Drunks were replacing their friendly boisterous behaviour with more fearful aggression, and those who were most with it, were attempting unsuccessfully, to instil some semblance of calm.

  The unknown situation, their remote unfamiliar location and the cocktail of substances imbibed by all was making what would have been a reasonably normal scenario had they been in familiar surrounds a calamity.

  Kelsey’s voice managed to shrill over all the others, in a strident blare.

  “Has anybody seen Heath? He’s been gone a long time too, and I can’t remember him going anywhere for anything!”

  Eyes traded the standoff between Andy and Quen, for Kelsey, fixing on the short blonde instead as she made her own concerns heard louder than anybody else.

  “He was fucking wasted,” Yvette scoffed. “Probably just wandered off into one of those jokes of rooms and passed out.”

  “When did you last see him?” Quen asked.

  “I…well,” Kelsey flushed red and gazed down at her feet. “Well, he was just sitting over there and Scott brought out some more lines…and I guess I just left him there…and well…he’s been gone from there a long time, it seems.”

  “Let’s check the whole place out. Everywhere. Round up anybody who has passed out, or are otherwise occupied. Let’s get everybody together,” Quen decided. “Heath’s probably somewhere here, like Yvette says.”

  “Fuck that,” Andy snorted. “Sticking around here any longer is a bad idea. For all we know that fucking weirdo hick has already managed to call the cops and they’re on their way to shut this shit down and fuck us all up.”

  “If Nestor and Wilson didn’t catch him and beat him to death,” Stacey murmured.

  Neither idea was good as far as Renetta was concerned, not with so many of them incapacitated, or at least in no fit state to drive without attracting unwanted police attention. But she definitely wanted to get the hell out of here, almost to the point where she was prepared to risk that potential bust by cops out on the road. She didn’t want to die in any drunken, drugged car crash, but being out here in this creepy ass decrepit house with a strange backwoods individual smiling despite copping a flogging out there vowing cryptic promises wasn’t any better.

  He might just be some woods-dwelling hermit, rambling on with a bunch of crap, but somehow Renetta didn’t think so. Replaying his words and the way he’d just kept on grinning that crooked, bloodstained toothy grin, made her feel all squirmy inside. The joyous feelings of her high were so distant now, she could barely recall having ever been feeling good over the course of the evening. Now, it was just a wash of bad feelings; trepidation, paranoia, unease, fear.

  Quen was dreaming if he expected to be able to coordinate all these folk here enough to be able to do anything, let alone trying to round up any of their less sober, passed out compatriots.

  “Nope. Not happening. I’m not hanging around here anymore and any of you smart enough will be catching that same train!” Andy was suddenly ramming his way through the High Society throng and exiting the ramshackle house. Well aware that each of the vehicles stationed outside still had their keys in them for the purposes of cranking up their respective stereo systems, Andy headed in an unerring line directly for them. He ignored the hubbub of noise that followed him.

  As he neared, Nestor’s old sedan abruptly roared into life, headlights switching on with twin beams of light that pierced the façade of the dilapidated house. Then it jerked forward in a sudden forward burst, the engine shrieking, and before the horrified eyes of all those spectating, the nose of the vehicle collected Andy with a solid brutal blow that flipped him up and onto the bonnet.

  Suddenly it wasn’t just the shocked barrage of sound from folks reacting to what they’d just witnessed, but there was a torrent of noise issuing all around. It swarmed from the woods surrounding the house and it blared in through the back door. Insane gibbering, hooting, whooping, in conjunction with a stampede of pounding, rushing feet and banging against walls.

  The ramshackle residence was no longer full of just High Society members. It was being invaded by a flood of newcomers. Freakish strangers in flannel shirts, dirty jackets, slickers, boots, some with hats or caps tugged down over their heads. Leering, crazy faces, some bearded with forests of whiskers and others covered with what could only be some sort of grotesque Halloween masks. Monsters, animals, classic horror movie villains, as well as less inspired efforts such as simple balaclava coverings or hessian sacks, loomed all around, pouring not just in through the back door, but the front as well, even crashing through the remnants of largely destroyed walls. They came out of Nestor’s car too, hands grabbing Andy’s stricken figure off the bonnet of the car, before disappearing into the woods with it.

  Some of them came with weaponry too. Bats, two by fours, knives, tyre irons, lengths of chain, other tools. All which were wielded with ruthless and brutal efficiency, cutting down the stupefied, trapped members of the High Society in a cavalcade of blows.

  Screaming, Renetta went for the front door, aiming for a gap opening between somebody in a furry werewolf mask and another with a face squashed under a hessian sack when it closed rapidly. She did a swift about face, to head back the other way and met a swinging baseball bat. The lights went out for her.

  ***

  When she came out of it, cracking eyes painfully open, Renetta didn’t need all her faculties about her to realise she was no longer in that abominable house. She’d be willing to guess she was somewhere infinitely worse.

  She couldn’t tell whether she was in some sort of cave, or just some building with brick walls so rough and rudimentary that they looked like rock, but she could definitely tell that she wasn’t free to roam around the place. Nor were any of the other members of the High Society also in this strange new location and as her eyes gradually swam back into focus, allowing her eyesight to adjust and see more, she acknowledged that there were several of them here. All restrained like her, tied to basic wooden chairs or chained to walls around the place. What light illuminated the interior was thrown off by myriad candles and old -fashioned lanterns, and their sporadic creepy glow hurled perpetually moving shadows along the rough-hewn walls.

  Renetta didn’t need to examine her own situation to know she was one of those tied to a chair, her wrists bound to it behind her, her ankles in a likewise state.

  She saw Quen sitting over there, head slumped against his chest, also tied to a chair, while Stacey and Yvette were among those chained to the walls
. None of them were gagged and seeing that made Renetta a whole lot more concerned than she’d have been had they been gagged. As her hearing came back she heard a few ragged, hoarse screams coming from some of the captives, but they lacked effort or intensity, as if they’d been doing a lot of it already, to no avail.

  The High Society folk weren’t the only ones present. The place-she’d come to accept that it must be an enormous cave, or at very least, some simple room carved out through rocks-was choked with those freakish invaders she’d last witnessed swarming the party abode with swinging bats and bludgeoning weapons. Some were still clad in their deliberately frightening masks, while others had taken the liberty of pushing their cheap Halloween props up atop their heads. Nonetheless, the faces exposed underneath these masks weren’t any more attractive than the face adornments themselves; Renetta would have almost preferred these unusual looking men elected to keep their faces shrouded.

  There was music present as well, swelling through the area, but nothing like that Renetta was familiar with or a fan of, certainly none of the rave trance dance style music the High Society were all keen on playing at optimum volumes. Instead, this was some kind of sludgy doom metal, something that sounded horrifying and ominous to her, crawling around her head with ponderous droning emanations of sound and sluggish, sinister guitars. She supposed the soundtrack to an eventual apocalypse would sound akin to this noise, and it induced further claustrophobia and nausea in her.

  Other sounds reverberated around this hellish conglomeration of winding drones and cataclysmic rhythms, the sounds of raucous laughter, harsh voices and possibly, glasses being clinked together.

  As Renetta realised that the vast majority of their captors were all toting mason jars, old cracked coffee mugs or other basic drinking containers, she also observed that most of the other High Society members were now awake or coming out of their comatose states, if they’d been in them in the first place. Then she saw the very same weirdo who’d been beaten down by Wilson and Nestor, making his way around the place, slapping the faces of High Society folk still slumped or out of it, checking others, ensuring all were awake.