The sound of metal clinking against metal drove itself into Angela’s consciousness, piercing through the dark fog. She groaned and opened her eyes, only to find that nothing had changed—it was just as dark as it had been when her eyes were closed. She almost panicked before she realized that her eyes were starting to adjust. It was still pretty dark, as the light in the room was quite dim, but now she could see that she was looking up at an adobe ceiling.
Angela attempted to prop herself up on one elbow, only to find that she couldn’t. She was strapped to a table or workbench of some sort, with ropes keeping her wrists and ankles in place. Panicking, she pulled and struggled desperately, her breaths becoming quick and shallow. It was hard to breathe, and she began to gasp and wheeze.
“Calm down.” Hogan’s voice came from behind her head, just out of her sight. “You’ll end up having an asthma attack.”
As frightened as she was, the man spoke good sense. She closed her eyes and tried to relax a little to steady her breathing. When she opened her eyes, Hogan was standing over her to her right.
“Better?” he asked.
She nodded and swallowed, her throat dry. “What do you want with me?”
“Quiet,” he said, his voice cutting and sharp, but not angry. He set something down on the table next to her with a clunk. He then picked up a pair of scissors and proceeded to cut her shirt open at the shoulder.
“What are you doing?” she asked in horror.
He paused. “I will gag you if I have to.” He tugged her torn shirt and her bra down until her entire right shoulder was left exposed.
Angela bit her lip and tried to keep herself from crying. What was he planning to do with her? Did he plan on raping her or something? If he was, why was he trying to get to her shoulder?
Hogan reached over somewhere behind her head and set down the scissors, picking up a Sharpie. He felt along her skin until he came to a fleshy spot just beneath her collarbone. Keeping his fingers on her skin, he put the Sharpie in his mouth and pulled the lid off with his teeth. He then carefully marked the spot on her shoulder using the Sharpie. He stepped back to study it, before nodding and recapping the Sharpie. He stepped away from the table, out of Angela’s sight.
Angela realized she was shaking, not only with terror but with the effort to keep herself from panicking. Was he one of those serial killers that liked to harvest organs or something? But if that were the case, wouldn’t he be working on her chest or her stomach? As far as she knew, there was only muscle and bone in the spot he had marked.
Hogan returned and picked up the object that had been lying on the table next to Angela—she gasped involuntarily when she saw that it was a small hunting knife. Hogan examined the knife carefully before testing the sharpness with his thumb.
He leaned over Angela, his breath hot against her face. “Now, it’s imperative that you keep quiet for this next bit,” he said. “If you make one peep, one whimper, I’ll have to do it all over again, understand?”
She didn’t really understand, but she nodded anyway.
He straightened. “Good.” He closed his eyes and took a couple of deep breaths before opening them again. He brought the knife up in front of his face, the blade parallel to his face, almost as if he were using the shiny metal as a mirror. And then, he began to chant.
“Testes spiritibus hodie caelum et terram, ut ineam foedus cum virgo,” he recited. Slowly, ceremoniously, he flipped the knife over in his hands until he was holding it blade-down. He brought the knife down and placed the tip on the marked spot on her shoulder.
He continued chanting. “Miscetur sanguis sanguinem deberet virgo sic me.” He pressed the tip of the blade down until it broke her skin.
Angela inhaled sharply with the sudden pain but managed to keep quiet by biting her lip and tightening her fists. No matter how much it hurt, she did not want to go through it all a second time.
Hogan pulled the knife up and used it to slice his own palm. He clenched his injured hand directly over the cut in her shoulder until several drops of blood dripped onto her. He set the knife down and used two fingers to mix his blood into hers.
“Caelum et terra, sanguinem et sanguinem, superius et inferius, interius et exterius.” Using the blood mixture, he reached over and drew several marks on her forehead, cheeks, and chin. He then made a few more marks on her shoulder around the cut.
“Sicut locuti estis, ita erit.” He clapped his hands together twice and then relaxed. He grabbed a towel and wiped his hands, then pressed it to the wound on Angela’s shoulder. Holding it in place with his left hand, he picked up the bloodied knife in his right hand and cut the ropes binding her left hand.
“Here, put some pressure on this,” he said, guiding her hand to the wound. She did as she was told, and he quickly severed the rest of her bonds, freeing her other hand and her ankles. “All right, you may sit up.”
She did so with some effort, wincing as pain shot through her shoulder and across her chest. She swung her legs over the side of the table and sat on the edge, still holding the towel against the cut. Now that she was upright, she had a better look at the room she was in. It was a small, dark room, the only lighting provided by a few candles on her side of the room and a camping lantern on the other side of the room. The table she was sitting on was actually a workbench; there were several piles of papers, boxes, and tools dumped on the floor to her left. Hogan had probably cleared the workbench in a hurry.
Angela watched as Hogan rummaged through a First Aid kit. He quickly and expertly wrapped gauze around his injured hand. He then grabbed a few things from the kit and brought them over to Angela.
“Take the towel off,” he said. She complied, and he carefully cleaned the cut before applying gauze and medical tape. “All right,” he said, taking the bloody towel from her. “There’s a bathroom just down the hall.” He pointed to the door, indicating the right side. “Go wash your face and change your clothes, then come back here.”
Angela blinked in surprise, not sure she understood. Was he really going to let her out of his sight? Just like that, when before she had been tied to the table? It seemed almost too good to be true.
Hogan gave her a look, one eyebrow raised, when he saw her hesitation. “Go on now. Unless you like having blood on your face.”
“Sorry,” Angela mumbled. She slid off the table and headed for the door, trying not to go too fast and appear too eager. This could be her only opportunity—if it was one—and it was just too good to pass up. She didn’t want to blow her chance.
Her first impulse when she got out into the hall was to take off running and not look back, but she decided to go and wash up first. The bathroom was rather easy to find: it was the first door on the right. She pushed the door open further and flipped the switch, blinking in the sudden bright, fluorescent light.
Her eyes adjusted, and she looked down to see her luggage in a pile on the bathroom floor. Why was her luggage here? How had Hogan gotten it off the bus? Did he steal it? More importantly, how did he know it was hers? Angela shook her head and knelt down to unzip her suitcase. She had lots of questions, but now was not the time to worry about that. She grabbed her washcloth and stood at the sink to wash her face.
And stared. Her face had strange, squiggly symbols drawn on her forehead and both her cheeks and two vertical lines drawn from her mouth to her chin. It made her look like some kind of living blood sacrifice. She shuddered. Quickly, trying not to think about it too hard, she turned the water on. Water gushed into the sink on full blast, drops of water spitting all over the mirror and her shirt front. She turned the water down a bit, then soaked the washcloth in the warm water.
Angela scrubbed at her face furiously, intent to erase any sign of the still-drying blood marks. She rinsed out the washcloth, trying to not watch the rust-colored runoff as it swirled down the drain. Again she wet the washcloth, and again she scrubbed, repeating this even after she could see no more blood in her reflection. Washing away the blood was easy. Washing away the memory of the knife cutting into her flesh and his cold, wet fingers stroking her face was not.
She only stopped when the runoff from her washcloth was no longer tinged red. She sighed and turned off the water, drying her face on the towel hanging up next to the sink. She hung the wet washcloth over the towel rack to dry—she didn’t care if she left it behind. Now she just needed to change her shirt. She grabbed a dark blue shirt, the closest to black that she had. Angela had always hated wearing black, and now she regretted it. For some reason, in her mind, she needed to be wearing black for an escape.
Angela pulled her shirt off, wincing as the movement pulled at the cut on her right shoulder. She dumped the ruined shirt on top of her suitcase and slipped into the clean dark blue one. Aware that she was running out of time, she shifted through her luggage and grabbed some of her hidden cash, stuffing it into her pocket. She didn’t bother looking for her purse or her cell phone—Hogan had most likely confiscated them.
Taking a deep breath, she gathered her courage and opened the bathroom door. The hinges creaked, sounding like grinding metal gears in the silence of the hallway. She winced. Checking to see if the coast was clear, Angela slipped out of the bathroom and into the hallway, heading in the direction opposite from the workshop she had woken up in.
The hallway was dark and cool, lit only by an occasional flickering light embedded in the groove where the ceiling and the wall met. The entire place had a rather musty smell, much like her parents’ food cellar back home. The walls and the ceiling were made of concrete—which probably explained the musty smell. The floor, though, was tiled; a good thing, considering the fact that she was only wearing socks. In her haste to leave the bathroom she had completely forgotten to grab some shoes—it was too late to turn back now.
At the end of the hallway was a double door with an emergency exit sign. Angela pushed open one of the doors, coming out onto a wide stairway leading up. She climbed the stairs and soon realized that she was on the ground floor to the annex, in the same hallway where Hogan had kidnapped her. She had been underneath the annex the entire time!
The whole place was a lot more eerie with the lights off. It must have been past closing time. Angela glanced around before heading towards the restaurant. Maybe there would be a payphone there; she didn’t have much by way of change, but anybody could dial 911 free of charge, right? And even if she couldn’t, she could always try to get hold of an operator. If they even had those anymore—she couldn’t remember. The last time she had used a payphone was back in sixth grade, and that was at the airport in Chicago when she had gone to visit her cousin and her uncle hadn’t shown up at the gate where he was supposed to pick her up.
The restaurant was a lot different than she had expected. It looked more like a high school cafeteria than a restaurant, what with the high ceiling and the many windows lining the ceiling. There were half a dozen round tables scattered around the room, and there was a large gated window where they probably served the food cafeteria-style.
To her dismay, she could not find a single payphone. She had thought that perhaps the building was old enough that it would have one, but it looked like there never had been any payphones. So now what? Maybe there was a phone at the front desk. But she was running out of time—Hogan would probably wonder what was taking her so long. At this point her best bet might be to just find a door and leave, walking along the road until she could find the nearest town. It was a bit risky, considering the fact that she wasn’t wearing any shoes, but anything was better than sticking around here.
Determined, she found the nearest door to the outside and shoved. It was locked. Her heart sank before she remembered that most businesses used a deadbolt on the inside rather than a regular lock. She felt along the edge of the doorframe until she found the knob. Heart thumping wildly against her chest, she turned the knob, feeling the deadbolt slide away with a click.
That was as far as she got. Suddenly she felt her body slam to the floor as if she weighed a thousand pounds and something invisible had yanked her to the ground. Instantly she was face-down on the floor, completely immobilized.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Hogan asked.
At first, Angela thought Hogan had tackled her, but now that she heard his voice from several feet away she realized this wasn’t the case. Besides, she wasn't just pinned down to the floor—she actually couldn't even move her pinky finger, let alone try to get up.
“What…” Her voice was a little choked up from the pressure and from trying not to cry. “What did you do to me?” she asked.
Hogan’s feet came into her line of sight, and he crouched down so she could see her face. “It's a spell of sorts, although contract would probably be more accurate.”
“Spell?” she asked, not sure she heard right. “Contract?”
“That's right,” he said. “Basically it's a contract between you and me. A shackle spell, if you will.”
If Angela weren't currently immobilized face-down on the floor, she would have thought he was insane. Now she was starting to question her own sanity. “You mean that whole thing with the knife? …and the blood? That was…?”
“The contract. You catch on quickly.”
“Can … can you let me up now?” Angela’s body was beginning to shake under the pressure of the spell.
“In a minute. I want to be sure you understand your position first.” He rocked back on his heels a bit.
She swallowed. “What else does this … this spell do?” she asked.
He nodded, looking pleased. “Good girl. You're asking the right questions. Basically, the spell keeps you confined within a defined area. It also allows me to restrain you whenever I need to.”
The pressure of the spell was starting to crush Angela’s lungs, making her gasp and wheeze. “Like … now?”
Hogan nodded. “Exactly.” He must have noticed her labored breathing, because he flicked his fingers and said, “Dimitto.”
Immediately the pressure was released. Angela gasped and started to cough from the sudden intake of air. Once she regained her breath, she pushed herself to her knees, shaking with the exertion. Her jaw ached a bit from hitting the floor so hard, and her entire body felt like it had been buried beneath a huge rock pile.
Hogan watched her efforts with the same interest one would watch an insect crawling across the floor. There was no sympathy in his eyes; Angela realized he thought of her not as a person, but an object. She shuddered.
“Recovered yet?” he asked.
She nodded, even though she still felt like she had been in a car wreck. She didn't like the way he was looking at her with impatience. So she gritted her teeth and scrambled to her feet, determined not to show him any more weakness.
She cleared her throat. “You said this spell keeps me in a certain area. How big is it?”
He shrugged. “Just stay inside the building and you’ll be fine.”
“Oh.” Well, so much for trying to find the nearest town. Or, well, escaping at all, for that matter. At least not until she found out a way to break this contract. Or spell. Funny how both of those were things that could be “broken.”
“Come with me,” Hogan said, heading back in the direction of the stairs. “I’ll show you where you’ll be sleeping.”
Angela followed without protest. What else could she do?
Hogan led her back down into the underground level, immediately turning right after the door instead of going straight. Angela hadn’t even noticed there was another hallway—she had been too busy trying to escape last time. He opened a door into a small storage room, where a cot had been set up right in the middle. The room was so small that there was barely enough space to walk in between the cot and the shelves that lined the wall, even though the cot was pushed up against the wall on the other side. On the cot were a pillow and a folded fleece blanket.
“Stay here,” Hogan instructed. “I’ll go get your luggage from the bathroom.”
Angela stood in the doorway, not wanting to enter the room—if you could call it that—but not wanting to disobey, either. It was more of a closet than a room, a closet with various foodstuffs and emergency supplies. There were no tools, though, at least nothing she could use as a weapon. Which made sense, but it was still frustrating. Besides, she wasn’t even sure if knocking him out would even make a dent in the spell he had put on her, let alone actually break it.
“All right, here are your things.” Hogan came up behind her, carrying her heavy suitcase and backpack with ease. Angela scooted out of the way, and he dumped them on the floor next to the cot.
“Um, how did you get my luggage, anyway?” she asked, not entirely sure she wanted to know.
He grinned. “Easy. I told your professor you weren’t feeling well and had decided to stay here until a family member came to pick you up.”
Angela couldn’t help it; her mouth hung open. “And they actually believed you?” No one in their right mind would allow some stranger to speak for one of their students, especially if that student had mysteriously disappeared.
He shrugged, looking unapologetic. “Okay, so I may have sprinkled some dried althea into her food when she wasn’t looking. It leaves people open to suggestion and persuasion.”
She sat down on the cot, hard. “So you’re saying it’ll probably be until after the tour is over before anybody comes looking for me.”
“Pretty much.” He leaned against the doorframe. “And by that time I’ll have moved you somewhere else.”
Angela took in a large, shuddering breath. “What is it you want me for, anyway?”
He straightened, and his eyes grew cold. “It’s getting pretty late, so stay in this room until I come get you in the morning. You have my permission to open something to eat in here since you didn’t have lunch or dinner. But only for tonight; starting tomorrow you will go to the kitchen for your meals.”
“But—”
He continued as if she hadn’t spoken: “You may leave the room to use the restroom if needed, but if I catch you outside the room for any other reason, there will be hell to pay. Understand?”
“Yes,” she said, her voice quiet.
“Good. Now go to sleep.” And with that, he closed the door.
Angela would have sat there on the cot wallowing in self-pity until she fell asleep if she weren't so hungry. She probably wouldn't have even noticed her hunger if Hogan hadn’t pointed it out, there was so much going on, but now that he had her stomach growled and grumbled in the quiet of the little room.
With a sigh, Angela pulled herself up off the cot, the sigh turning into a groan as her sore muscles burned. She didn't have to do much more than stand, though, the room was so small. She scanned the selection of food—most of it was MREs and canned food, which didn't do her much good since she didn't have a can opener, and she had no idea how to prepare an MRE. She finally settled on a bag of tortilla chips and a can of Dr. Pepper. The chips were stale and the Dr. Pepper was a little flat, but she was so hungry she didn't care.
After eating half the bag and drinking most of the soda, Angela found herself lying on the cot staring at the ceiling. How had a fun trip touring haunted houses and abandoned buildings turned into such a nightmare? And nobody even knew she was missing. There were still four days left of the tour, which meant it would be four days before her parents stayed worrying about her. They'd probably wonder why she hadn't called or texted during those four days, but they would probably figure her phone had died or she had lost her charger or something—after all, it had happened to her before. It wouldn't be until the bus got back to the University in LA and she wasn't there that they would wonder what had happened. At least they would know exactly where she went missing, but if Hogan had moved her by then as he planned, how would anyone know where to find her?
What did Hogan want with her, anyway? Despite her interest in the morbid and the creepy, she had never believed in things like spells and sorcery and all that—until now. Even now she still had a hard time believing it, but her bruised body and the cut on her shoulder reassured her that she hadn't imagined what had happened upstairs just before.
And why use a spell when he could just lock her up? It seemed like a lot of trouble to go through just to keep her under control. Then again, the spell was certainly a lot more effective than any lock or chain. If it were ropes or locks or chains she could use something to get out of them eventually. But a spell? She had no idea what she was supposed to do to break it.
Eventually, her battered, exhausted body took over, and Angela fell asleep, leaving nearly all of her questions unanswered.