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I've got loads of football shirts although I don't consider myself a collector and over the years I've noticed a lot of snobbery around fake shirts which I personally don't get. I appreciate selling a fake claiming it's the genuine article is wrong but this idea that people won't buy something if it doesn't have the right tags to me seems ridiculous for the following reasons. 1) I'm not convinced knowing the product code guarantees authenticity. What's stopping the fake producers from finding it out and putting it on their jerseys? 2) As someone who's bought a lot of authentic shirts and a lot of fakes I don't believe the difference in quality is as significant as people make out. I've had fakes that lasted years and spent £100 on shirts that have started falling apart after three washes. It seems to be the luck of the draw and also I've now learned to hand wash my shirts which helps. 3) Football shirts are unjustifiably expensive. The price of football shirts continues to outstrip inflation and fans are clearly getting ripped off. 4) I also don't understand why someone would rather buy a 'real' vintage shirt that's damaged and probably been sat in someone's loft for 20 years for hundreds of pounds when you could buy a perfectly good looking fake for £12. I saw that Away Days guy on YouTube spend £500 on a Holland 1988 shirt that had a knackered collar and stunk of cigarettes. This seems completely insane to me. Thoughts or anyone care to counter me?

I am working on a documentary about a girl who disappeared in 1980 in a small town in southern NH. She was 15 when she disappeared. I discovered her through one of the better true crime videos on YouTube in 2017, but since then I have seen just videos of recycled newspaper articles with some facts that are misleading or incorrect facts. ‘Psychic’ videos, which with respect to believers, are not helpful in anyway and at least one tabloid style podcast where she was mixed in with a “Lizard man” cryptic story.
I am in the area. I am speaking to people who knew her. I am trying to speak to police officers but I am not getting any response. I am also trying to get friends that are willing to speak on camera to give her more personality.
The story is: In late March of 1980, Rachael Garden left her house and told her mother she was going to spend the night at a friends house.
Between 9 and 9:30 pm, she was seen at Rowe's Corner store, a small general store near her house, where she bought gum and cigarettes.
She was last seen leaving the store and heading south away from where she was supposed to be staying but towards where her friends partied.
At 10 am the next morning, she was reported missing. The friend had no idea that Rachael was supposed to be staying at her house. The police treated Rachael as a runaway.
Years later. A couple of witnesses came forward and said they had seen Rachael with three individuals in a dark car. Apparently those three were where friends of Rachael and were 'trouble'. One of the individuals was convicted of rape.
Later another one of those individuals reportedly drunkenly confessed to murdering Rachael, and set of a search for her in 1989. Nothing was found.
Those are the bullet points. The story has a few more twists and turns, but no answers.
My question is this: what would you want to know more about in this case?
Currently, I am tackling it from a community perspective. Because I am local, I can get videos of all of the areas where she was. I can show what the terrain is like in the area where she went missing and I can map it on google earth pretty easily. While I doubt I can get police to comment on this investigation I am hoping I can get someone to talk about how a case like this might be handled today. Her family has asked media to leave them alone, so I won’t reach out to them, however I hope to find some of her friends that knew her to give her, some personality beyond the three lines in the newspaper reports. What else should I be looking for do you think?

First I want to deeply apologize if my text seems bad to you. I’m mentally disabled to an extent and I’m doing the best I can.
Honestly my love of horror was always there. Growing up in the 2000s ( I was born in 2000 and I’m 24 now. ) I would watch goosebumps, courage the cowardly dog etc. ( I remember before I was homeschooled I remember taking the goosebumps books back home from elementary school but I remember nothing about them. However I know I took them back home because I remember they had one with a snowman cover on it. One of my disabilities is bad memory. ) I remember every Halloween season excited about goosebumps, watching a double Halloween special and watching a haunting hour don’t think about it. ( now don’t get confused with the haunting hour tv show. I’ve definitely seen it on the hub that show was a more mature version of goosebumps for older kids/teenagers. I’m talking about the movie. It was about a two headed monster and had Tobin bell in it. He was a mysterious shopkeeper in it and the protagonist was a goth girl who buys a book from him. ) in 2007 I found another classic I loved seeing. On Cartoon Network they advertised a film called Batman vs Dracula being played later that night and it drew me in. ( I’m not into superheroes like I seen another Batman cartoon but it was just whatever was on tv at the time. The actual reason why I was drawn to the movie was because I love vampire stuff. I’ve always preferred them over werewolves I’m sorry werewolf fans but I’ve never seen the appeal of. I don’t remember very much of when I use to dress up just a kid just a few but I definitely remember one being a vampire. My favorite goosebumps episode was vampire breath and even growing up my favorite Scooby-Doo movie was about a vampire. ) I watched the movie and loved it and it was added to my tradition. Unfortunately as years went on they stop playing these shows because they weren’t exactly new anymore.
In my later kid years watched the haunting hour tv on the hub and in 2013 I kept hearing about slenderman but didn’t know much about it and I ended up stumbling on markiplier’s ( sorry I butchered the name. ) video on a Pokémon slender game and was scared by it for a few days. I eventually did research on slenderman and was scared for three days but got use to it and became obsessed about him. ( back then you either liked slenderman or you liked Jeff the killer. I never liked Jeff or the serial killer creepypastas. They’re all bad to me but that doesn’t mean I hate serial killers in horror. That’s very far from the truth. My horror movie genre though I try different genres slashers it’s my thing. My favorite horror charactemy favorite character in general is William afton and his springtrap versions. I’m just someone who prefers villains over heroes. So this shows I’m perfectly fine with serial killers in horror. I’m just not into monster movies. Tremors is fine, but I’m not crazy about creature features like aliens and stuff. However I find real life, monster legends like Wendigos etc very interesting and slender man fell into that interesting monsters to me. ) I’ve always had an interest in mysteries, and since the creature was very mysterious, that’s why I liked it. In October nan ( I live with my grandma and not my mom/parents. ) Was going through channels and found AMC’s fear fest and they were playing Friday the 13th part three. She wondered what it was and the first thing I remember, is Ollie getting attacked by Jason in the barn and nan saying I should be getting into stuff like this since I was getting older. October I watched the Jason films and accepted my Gothic nature.
In 2014 creepypastas was ruined forever for me. While I was getting bored of it What happened was kind of the final nails in the coffin me. ( While I go back if I feel nostalgic for the past, just like top 10 list or reviews, it just doesn’t feel the same. Though because of my love of horror is why I even use my profile pic. I did enjoy the SCP side of the creepypastas. I love the plague doctors 049 because of him I grew an obsession with plague doctors because of how they look and I’ve always loved animals and they had this bird almost animal like appearance. It’s hard to explain. Because of this, I use plague doctors mainly as my profile pic. ) However, I moved onto horror games mainly the fnaf series. While I will admit 1-Ucn is the best the newer games or either good or disappointing and I don’t care about the new story compared to the old one it’s still my franchise. ( I love this series because of its mystery. It’s characters and I will admit I was always into robots. I used to collect bionicle sets, transformers all that. Like I said, I love animals so everything just fit together perfectly. However, that doesn’t mean I like M3gan. I found that film boring. ) That and I never understood the popularity like resident evil etc. ( I have the original resident evil six movies. I only have them because my friends are crazy about it. I will admit 2,4,5,6 was good The only thing I like about the series is nemesis and that’s why I have resident evil three on my Steam account. I don’t find zombie games or anything to do with zombies interesting. That and games with guns don’t interest me either. That and I’m not allowed to play tons and tons of violent games because now things video games cause violence they don’t, but I have to live with that and I’m not allowed to play tons and tons of violent games because nan thinks video games cause violence they don’t, but I have to live with rules. ) Besides the fnaf series, I also love outlast stuff like that. I just have one of those minds that it takes a lot to surprise me and interest me for something interest me it consumes me.
Like for years, I couldn’t get into my bloody valentine though I knew about it because I remember seeing a trailer for it when I was nine years old and when I got my Texas chainsaw 3-D Blu-ray disc, it advertised my Valentine 3-D, and I loved the miner’s design. Seen both versions on TV and didn’t care about it apart from the coal miner design, but after something called out to me last year, something clicked in my mind and I fell in love with the movie mainly the remake. ( 2009 my bloody Valentine along with the 2009 Friday the 13th and the five Freddy’s movies are my favorite. I just love the mystery and the mysterious miner. I’ve always loved mysterious characters as a child and as an adult. ) It’s like how outlast didn’t click to me when I was younger, though I watched videos on it when I was younger and security breach was disappointment. I watched videos and fell in love with the outlast series. There are times I can remember some stuff, but I can’t tell you how old I was or anything so please forgive me. Whenever my mom was visiting and found some Chucky films like bride of Chucky was playing on TV I would see stuff from the movie like I remember seeing the RV scene and parts of seed of Chucky. One year( this definitely had to be when I was an older kid. ) Nan watched orphan and I really like that movie became obsessed with watching it whenever it was on. That and I remember seeing glimpses of saw here and there throughout my life. like I remember being really young and seeing the bathroom in the first movie, when I was a bit older, remembering the John Kramer operation scene with a skull in the third movie, I believe in 2011 I remember seeing Billy on TV talking to Amanda about the reverse beartrap. I obviously also watched tons of scary horror videos on YouTube about monsters, facts, even horror channels like sir spooks, top 15 ( backward top 15 was good. I wonder what went wrong? )
Basically, I’m a mix of everything. If I don’t like something, I can at least compromise for the most part. Don’t like monster movies very much, loves real life, monster, legends. Don’t like serial killer creepypastas I enjoy them in movies and video games. Don’t ghost movies because they’re boring. I watch ghost videos online and paranormal documentaries. Don’t like body horror like Hellraiser? I can respect the cenobites I enjoy body horror if it’s done right in the Five Nights at Freddy’s series. Don’t like psychological like psycho? Like it’s all in your head honestly, I don’t think I like psychological stuff. Same with zombies and werewolves. I think that’s the very few things I can’t really compromise here. That and I don’t think I can compromise in video games like I can with the other horror stuff because when it comes to my horror games, it has to really special to me like five nights at Freddy’s and outlast and a lot of the games I have that’s on my Steam account is just so I can play with my close friends and that’s really it though. I also enjoyed dead by daylight because I find it so cool to have all these horror characters in one place, however, i usually just get the horror stuff I like like if I know a character, like them or an exception, if I like the dlc. However, at the moment, I’m saving up for something truly special and I don’t have money to really blow, however since the fnaf movie came out and William Afton is obviously my favorite character. I’ve been super hyped when it comes to the Matthew lillard stuff. Because right next to the fourth closet Five Nights at Freddy’s novel with William being a mad scientist character, movie William Afton is my favorite version of the character. I even have his autograph on my wall in my Five Nights at Freddy’s collection. My entire room is covered in fnaf merch I’m not joking. ( I have actually seen him a long time ago in One of the live action, Scooby Doo films because back in the early 2000s when Cartoon Network was actually good. They kept playing the monsters unleashed one which is where I seen him from though apart from barely remembering a few things I remember nothing of the film and I may have actually grew up with him with another Scooby Doo property, but I could be wrong. Though I seen scream four a few times but I remember nothing of it apart from the ghostface being a female called Jill. Trying a little bit of scream three I hadn’t touched an actual scream film on until after the Five Nights at Freddy’s movie earlier this year after I found a three pack for five dollars at Walmart, which contains the original three films. Mainly because I knew Matthew was in the first one since I seen obviously YouTube videos of when he was on screen and pictures here and there. I heard he’s in another horror film 13 ghosts so something like that. I’m thinking about trying it someday if the film is actually worth it just for him. )
I also just remembered something i used to watch something called lost tapes on animal planet, which was like these monster shows. I wouldn’t necessarily call it a part of the found forage genre. However, it was this monster show it had Wendigo, vampires, jersey Devil, you get the idea all these terrifying monster documentaries it was a good show.
How did you get into horrohow did you get your start?

Part I - Part II - Part III - Part IV
I am the last guard of Earth.
When the sun sets on me, it’ll set on you.
I was told that, an age ago, there were thousands of us. Protectors scattered across the world, forever casting horrors back to the black realm. For darkness can never truly be killed. Only ever kept at bay.
Fernsby often talked of a time before recorded history. Early humans were shielded by their knowledge of forces beyond our world. Gifted men and women practised spiritual arts. They formed the Guard. An order founded on the basis of standing against the darkness which had long consumed the Earth.
For millennia, the Guard brought life into the light. We no longer bent to the whims of horrid beings from the hungry world adjacent to ours.
However, as is nature’s way, prosperity invited growth. Humans multiplied. People spread to even farther corners of the Earth, and the threads which bound all tribes started to thin. Many people failed to teach their descendents of the Guard. They forgot about the spiritual world. The black realm became nothing but a ghost story.
And then it became nothing at all.
Over the following centuries, the once-mighty order of Earth’s guards shrank from thousands to hundreds. From hundreds to dozens. Men instead waged wars under the banners of individuals, and they abandoned the one true war against the darkness.
By the twenty-first century, only Whitlock remained. The man who gave me this gift — this curse. After he was gone, Fernsby spun fresh fables of the Guard for my yearning ears, but I still felt alone. She was devoted to the order, but she was not splintered.
I know I must start from the beginning, but that feels like dreaming of an alternate self.
Eight years ago, Evie and I moved to an island off the coast of England. Newly married and driven by naivety.
We docked at a humble wooden pier, which was held together by rotten beams and misplaced faith. With a youthful spring in my step, I dropped onto the makeshift dock and ignored the disapproving groan of its ancient planks. And then I delicately lifted my wife over the edge of the small ferry, softly pecking her lips as we embraced.
“This feels like home,” She softly said.
I smiled. “It does. We belong here.”
There was an elderly man at the end of the modest pier. He wore a well-ironed police uniform and an unpractised smile — beaming from a face that hadn’t known joy for a long time. But I thought little of his sullen expression. Evie and I were surprised to see anybody waiting for us. We hadn’t expected a welcoming party — even a party of one.
“I’m Chief Constable Arthur Whitlock. Kane Foster?” The man broadly asked, extending a calloused hand.
I nodded, shaking it. “Yes, that’s me. It’s lovely to meet you, Arthur. This is my wife, Evie.”
“Pleasure to meet you both,” The man said, eyeing me strangely. “Welcome to the island.”
It was a nondescript isle in the North Sea. At first glance, no more than a sleepy haven. I was an unobservant boy. My eyesight has worsened over the years, but I see so much more clearly. I’m thirty-six, and I feel twice that age. On the day of my arrival, however, I was young. Mind boundlessly optimistic. Face fresher than the stiff boots on my feet.
“Look at this place, Kane!” Evie gasped.
Whitlock kindly drove us to our new home, and we admired the island from the passenger windows. The main town was quintessentially British, in a modern sense — rows of branded shopfronts and supermarkets desperately tried to tie the forgotten isle to the twenty-first century. I didn’t care about any of that. It was the isolated setting of the idyllic place which set it apart from the mainland. It would be Evie and me. Nobody and nothing else. That was all we wanted.
Our mouths hung loosely as our household appeared on the horizon. We’d seen pictures, of course, but no photo did it justice. The eyes of young lovers may have romanticised the view, of course, but the building was a spectacle. A striking three-storey farmhouse at the outer rim of town. And it belonged to us. Neighbouring farmlands bordered the property on all four sides, but we had abundant space. For the first time in years, I would actually be able to breathe.
“So, the farming life beckoned you?” Whitlock asked.
“Aye,” I said.
“You’ve chosen a rough season to start,” The man replied.
I shrugged, cheerily eyeing Evie. “It’ll be a challenge, but we’ve been through worse. Not that Evie ever shies away from hardship. This one thrives with her back against the wall.”
“So do you,” My wife whispered, chuckling as she suggestively raised an eyebrow.
I stifled laughter, but Whitlock either missed or ignored the comment.
“Are you prepared?” The police officer asked. “I’ve lived here for fifteen years. Don’t let appearances deceive you. Island life is not like country life. It’s brutal. Unrelenting. This isle is no more than a glorified ship. We’re stranded at sea, fending for ourselves.”
I nodded politely, believing Whitlock to be needlessly theatrical.
“We’ve been through tougher things,” I repeated.
“I don’t doubt it, corporal,” Whitlock replied.
My stomach tensed, and Evie’s fingers clenched mine. Whitlock briefly glimpsed me in the rear-view mirror, before returning his eyes to the road ahead.
“Sorry, Mr Foster. It’s my duty to vet newcomers. I protect every last person on this island,” He explained.
I shifted my eyes downwards. “I understand, but I’m no corporal anymore. I’d rather forget those days.”
“Which regiment?” Whitlock pressed, lacking any semblance of social etiquette.
I sighed. “The Duke of Lancaster.”
“And why did you leave?” He asked.
“Listen, we really appreciate the warm welcome, sir,” Evie interjected. “But Kane doesn’t like talking about that part of his life. It was an obligation forced upon him. He never really wanted to be a soldier.”
“Only fools do, Mrs Foster,” The man whispered.
Whitlock rolled the car to a stop at the entrance to our farmhouse. Expressing uncomfortable gratitude, Evie and I hurriedly collected our belongings. I waited until the police cruiser was halfway down the dirt track to speak.
“What an idiot,” I muttered.
Evie smiled, rubbing my back. “It’s over now, honey. You’ll only have to see him… well, every single time you leave the house, knowing what small-town officers are like.”
“Huh. Good point. We shouldn’t ever leave the house then,” I grinned, lifting my giggling wife off the porch and carrying her across the threshold.
We had nothing to our name but four walls and a roof. Years of savings had been poured into that fresh start. After enduring the horror of serving my country, farming provided an opportunity to find peace.
War, however, always seems to find me.
The first year on the island was a struggle, but we quickly learnt the ropes of farming. The following year, our crop yield improved, as did our standing in the community. Even Whitlock, over time, became more of a bemusing grandfatherly figure than a grouchy recluse. I found our new existence a little strange at first, but I quickly adjusted — quickly switched off. And Evie could teach Geography anywhere, so she was more than happy. If I could’ve lived that life until my dying day, I would’ve been buried with a smile.
That life — the only real life I’ve ever lived — lasted for two years. Two cruelly brief years.
On an evening of belligerent rain and thunder, I pulled into Jerry’s petrol station. A rest-stop that bridged the gap between the main town and our farmhouse. Usually, the jolly owner would emerge from his shop to greet me. On this fearsome night, he did not appear, but I didn't blame him — the weather was vile. Still, I did find it a little peculiar to see a brightly-lit shop area with an unattended till. Though he received little custom, Jerry practically lived behind the counter.
He must be taking a break, I decided.
As I fiddled with the petrol pump, rain soaked my clothes and chilled my flesh. Even the canopy for the station’s pumps didn’t shield me from the near-horizontal downpour. Once my car’s tank was full, I repeatedly tapped the drenched self-checkout touchscreen. It didn’t register my finger. Every time I dried the screen with my jacket’s sleeve, a fresh curtain of water coated it seconds later.
“Come on,” I huffed.
A sudden crash sounded.
Jolting backwards fearfully, my credit card flew from my hand, landing in a puddle. Once I’d overcome the initial shock, I was surprised that I’d heard anything over the booming weather. Curious, I peered around the petrol pump, and I saw that the store’s power was out.
“Jerry?” I called.
My voice was drowned by a pistol-whip of thunder. Something about the lightless shop filled me with unease. I wish I’d driven home, grabbed Evie, and fled to the mainland. Foolishly, however, I crept towards the shopfront — propelled by a wilful breeze. The canopy’s fluorescent lights cast enough light for me to distinguish a faint outline in one of the aisles. A man was kneeling on the floor, hunching over something. And when I reached the automatic double doors, I was surprised to find that they opened.
It can't be a power cut, I realised.
“Jerry?” I called again.
The man didn’t turn. He continued to kneel, making an awful munching noise. The visceral sound of unnatural chewing. I could’ve assumed the man to be a thief, but I recognised that red, chequered shirt. It was definitely Jerry.
What’s he eating? I wondered. Is he okay?
The automatic doors closed behind me, and the rain became a muted, distant backdrop. Seeing no more than a few feet ahead of me, I walked through the silent shopfront towards the man on his knees. When I reached him, I crouched down and placed a hand on his shoulder.
“Jerry, what are you doing?” I asked.
In a sudden snap that sent me sprawling backwards, the man’s head twisted – twisted beyond bodily limits. And he revealed the source of the feasting.
The owner was eating shards of glass.
Jerry sat in a pile of shattered tube fragments, and I looked above to see a burst light fixture.
“I like the feeling of it...” He panted in a garbled, barely-audible voice.
Jerry leant forwards, inching out of the shadows. His face was finally illuminated by the lighting from the outdoor shelter.
And it was not a face at all.
Holes tunnelled through the cavities that should have revealed his eyeballs and mouth, but those openings instead continued to the other side of his head.
I wailed, scrambling to my feet, and Jerry inexplicably rose in mirrored unison – as if I were puppeteering him.
Is he puppeteering me? I fearfully wondered.
The man howled, widening the tunnel that had been burrowed through the back of his mouth, revealing the blackened shopfront beyond. Without waiting for an explanation, I turned on my heel and sprinted to the exit.
As the two doors parted, I returned to the weighted blanket of a thunderous night. And I immediately noticed that a vehicle was parked alongside mine — a police cruiser. Beside it, Arthur Whitlock was standing in the rain with a bulky, grey pistol raised.
“MOVE!” He yelled over the downpour.
Driven by a soldier’s instinct, rather than conscious thought, I dropped to my knees.
There sounded a crack more deafening than thunder. I shuddered at the cold familiarity of a gunshot. With my head between my hands, and sodden jeans pressed into a puddle, I momentarily returned to Nigeria in my traumatised mind. It took a while for Whitlock’s voice to permeate my thoughts.
“Kane?” He shouted over the rain. “Are you hurt?”
I looked up at the man and silently shook my head, before turning to face the store behind me. I expected to see a slaughtered man — or once-man — lying in the puddle outside the doorway, but I did not. Jerry’s hellish form was hobbling into the forest, oozing a silky, shadowy substance from the headless stump that Whitlock had created.
“Quickly,” The officer said, grabbing my arm to pull me to my feet. “It might come back.”
We climbed into my car and eyed the rainy windscreen for a few quiet minutes.
“What was that?” I eventually whispered.
“Not Jerry,” Whitlock eventually said. “It was the thing that killed Jerry. It needs a host to remain in our world, and it forever flits from rotting corpse to rotting corpse.”
“Jerry didn’t have a face…” I mumbled.
“It wasn’t Jerry,” Whitlock repeated. “There is a world beyond ours, Kane. I wish you hadn’t seen that. However…”
The man ruffled his grey beard thoughtfully. “We’ve become close, Kane. Is it fair to say that?”
“What?” I asked, still not entirely present. “Aye. We’re friends… You were a little abrasive at first.”
“Abrasive?” He grunted. “You will soon see what I’ve seen, and you’ll understand. After all, you must take my place. You’re splintered.”
“Pardon?” I questioned.
“You carry it in your eyes, mostly,” Whitlock explained. “Splintering is a birth-defect. The tell is an innate look. I saw it on the day you arrived. You were always broken, weren’t you, Kane? Long before you fought for your country.”
I turned away, eyeing the woods from my side window. I thought Whitlock to be a madman.
The man continued. “It’s not purely about strength or intelligence. It’s not even about the cobalt bullets that send them running back to their world. After all, those dark things return. They always return.”
“What are you saying, Arthur?” I irritably asked. “I don’t understand.”
“I am a guard of Earth, Kane Foster,” Whitlock explained. “And I am the last of my kind. I have long searched for someone to take my place, and you are the first splintered soul I have met in a long time. I want you to take the Oath of the Guard. I want you to fight the dark realm.”
I turned to face him, narrowing my eyes. “I’ve just seen something that has made me question the very essence of reality. I never want to see anything of that nature again, and you’re asking me to actively pursue such things.”
“Guards don’t pursue,” He said, shaking his head. “We defend.”
“I will forever be grateful to you for saving my life, Arthur. But you need to get out of my car. I’m going home to my wife. And I’ll forget this night, just as I’ve forgotten countless nights of horror.”
The officer sighed. “You’ll change your mind, Kane. The day will come.”
The Chief Constable stepped into the rain, shutting the passenger door behind him, and I immediately slammed my foot onto the accelerator. I wanted to put some distance between myself and that haunted station — that haunted man.
I was enraged. After two years of tranquillity, I’d finally started to heal — finally reached a point of happiness in my life — only for a new nightmare to rear its head. Unable to process what I’d just witnessed, I turned to my old coping mechanism. Suppress and forget.
“What’s wrong?” Evie asked.
I’d barely taken my damp coat off, and my wife was already anxiously eyeing me in the front hallway. She could see the whiteness of my face. I never mask trauma as well as I like to imagine.
“Just a bad day. I… hit a deer on the drive home, and I had to call Arthur. He put it down,” I lied.
Evie knew I was hiding something, but she didn’t press the subject. Like me, she was afraid — neither of us wanted to face the possibility of a psychological relapse. We fled from my pain on the mainland, and I planned to leave it there.
I resolved to move past the horror of the petrol station, and I thought Evie had forgotten all about it. But she surprised me a couple of days later.
“Come in here, Kane!” My wife giggled from the living room.
I put the food in the fridge and strolled into the lounge to see something entirely unexpected. On the sofa, Evie was sitting cross-legged with a golden bundle in her lap. A Labrador.
“He’s called Benny, and he’s thirteen weeks old,” Evie gushed, playing with the dog’s floppy ears. “Somebody abandoned him outside the high school. Isn’t that horrible? Anyway, I asked Laura at the vet, and she gave us permission to foster him until she finds a new owner… Unless…”
I lifted an eyebrow and grinned. “Unless…?”
Evie chuckled. “We keep him.”
I attempted to muster a stern stance, but my disposition softened upon locking eyes with little Benny. The glistening, golden furball in my wife's lap. Before I was conscious of doing so, I found myself sitting next to Evie and petting the loveable Lab.
“So, that’s a ‘yes’?” She laughed.
I sighed, rolling my eyes. “Sure. Will it delay the talk about kids for another few years?”
It might sound strange to those who’ve never had a pet, but Benny changed me. His calming presence on the farm help to mend old wounds in my battered mind. Evie, essentially, brought a therapy dog home. She knew exactly what she was doing, and I loved her for it. After all, it worked.
A ‘splintered’ man, I thought, scoffing. Arthur’s got it wrong. I’m better now.
And I was getting better. But all good things end.
A week later, on a night that I have long sought to forget, a noise woke me. Two noises, actually — Benny’s barking, and the crunch of gravel beneath flat feet. I groaned, slipped into a T-shirt, and sleepily shuffled out of the bedroom.
“I’m coming, Benny!” I whispered loudly, attempting to calm him whilst not waking Evie. “Mum’s teaching in the morning, and she won’t appreciate…”
I stopped mid-sentence. Benny was growling at the living room window. The motion-sensor had activated our property’s exterior lights, and something was standing motionlessly in the driveway.
A headless man.
“Jerry…” I whispered.
Keeping my eyes on the horrifying creature, I side-stepped towards the living room door. The headless abomination didn’t even sway in the wind. It was glued rigidly to the spot. And then the outdoor lights turned off — only to return after a skittering sound filled the still night.
The man on the driveway was gone.
And the foundations of our house began to whine under a sizeable weight. Something was crawling up the outer wall. I could hear it, and I could sense it. Jerry had scurried out of sight in less than a second. Before I could think of what to do, however, there came the sound of an upstairs window breaking, followed by a shrill scream.
“Evie!” I shouted.
I ran upstairs, and Benny overtook me, barking wildly. We flew across the landing and burst into the bedroom. Inside, I witnessed a scene of dread. The corpse of Jerry Black, mutilated by a force from another world, was slowly digesting the body of my half-living, wholly-seizing wife.
As her upper body was consumed, she immediately became limp.
I fell to the floor in a detached state as Benny lunged at the abomination. Events passed in a haze – I refused to comprehend what I’d seen. The hellish being effortlessly kicked my courageous puppy aside. Not that my wounded friend was deterred, of course, as he quickly clambered to his feet and began tearing at Jerry’s trouser leg.
The creature didn’t care about the Labrador. Though it had no face, I could tell it was looking at me.
Waiting on my knees, tears staining my face, I watched the undead devourer lumber towards me. I closed my eyes and braced for death. Prayed to be reunited with Evie. The monstrosity took measured steps, relishing in the build leading to my demise. The stale breath of the demon rose from the depths of its stump-like neck opening. A sickening stench billowed against my face.
Inches from me, the footsteps stopped, and I heard floorboards creak on the landing. And then came a guttural bellow. A squelching tussle followed, and the brief encounter ended with a human yelp of pain.
When I opened my eyes, I saw the blade that had been driven through the corpse’s abdomen. A medieval sword which glistened in the moonlight. Jerry’s undignified corpse began to twitch violently, and ethereal matter evaporated in black streams from his near-fleshless body. The hilted blade and the unearthly thing crumpled into a lifeless mess on the ground.
Leaning against the door frame, Whitlock was clutching his pained side. A dark, bloody wound stained his shirt, and black vines were spreading quickly across his flesh. I wanted to say something. Do something. But my eyes were drawn to the empty bed.
Evie was gone.
“I… I’m sorry…” Whitlock wheezed, coughing. “She… I tried to stop it…”
I didn’t want to live anymore. Benny was sadly surveying me, whilst whimpering softly, but I barely registered him. I barely registered Whitlock. I thought only of Evie — of life without her.
“I’m so tired…” Whitlock spluttered. “Earth needs a true guard, Kane Foster.”
“She’s gone…” I sobbed, disconnected from the conversation.
“I know, Kane. I know,” Whitlock croaked. “But we’re here. The world is turning. And you–”
“– It’s up to you, Kane,” I whispered. “You must fight. A man who doesn’t fight for his country? That’s no man at all. My father said those words to me. That was how he justified his coercion — forcing me into the Army at the age of sixteen. That was how he justified beating my mother and me too.”
Whitlock spluttered.
“You were right when you said that only fools want to be soldiers, Arthur,” I continued. “I was a fool. They might teach me how to put Dad in the ground for good, I thought. So, I did as my father asked. And the cigarettes took him in the end. Meanwhile, I became an expendable pawn in someone else’s war. I’ve always been a footsoldier because my life has never been my own.”
“Kane, I’m…” Whitlock began.
“– I loved this island, Arthur,” I interrupted. “We were living for ourselves. I had a life here. And I’ve just watched it die in front of me. Evie was the only person who made the world seem a little brighter.”
Benny whined and padded towards me, brushing his soft head against the back of my hand.
Whitlock heaved heavily, inspecting the wound on his rapidly rotting flesh. “It left Jerry’s corpse… It’s trying to claim me as its host. We can’t kill it–”
“– Can’t kill darkness,” I absent-mindedly muttered.
“No… But if it has no host, it can only flee to the black realm,” He whispered. “I must be killed before it spreads…”
“Killed?” I repeated.
The old man wearily nodded. “You must do it, Kane. First, however, you must take the Oath. A spiritual binding that will open your eyes to the black realm, as it did for thousands of guards before you.”
“It’s over, Whitlock…” I whispered.
“NO!” The man roared violently. “This is about everything, Kane. Everything. Reality as we know it. Will you condemn billions of souls to eternal blackness because you lost your–”
“– Don’t…” I sliced into his sentence. “Don’t diminish her death.”
“I’m not,” Whitlock grumbled, lowering his voice. “But our world is dying, Kane. For decades, as the last of the guards have perished across Earth, the black realm has widened its reach. I have scarcely kept it at bay. Horrors skirt past me, and they take innocent lives. Without a guard of Earth, the terror will be tenfold.”
The man collapsed, clutching his wound, and we sat in silence for a while. I was thinking. Processing. Contemplating ways in which I could take my life and join Evie.
A supernatural realm exists, so there must be something after all of this, I thought.
But what would she say? My wiser voice asked. Would she smile? Would she forgive you for condemning friends and loved ones to an eternal torture?
I knew the answer, but I did not like it.
“I will take the Oath, but I will not be the last to do so,” I finally said.
Whitlock’s weary, near-lifeless eyes welled. “You are a good man, Kane Foster.”
“A splintered man,” I gruffly said.
“To be splintered is not an evil thing,” Whitlock explained. “It is a reflection of your inner turmoil, not the character of your heart.”
The man tossed his firearm to the carpet.
“Cobalt-laced bullets,” He coughed. “You know Fernsby, don’t you? My dearest friend. She manufactures them for me. Cobalt repels darkness. It’s in the sword. The bullets.”
I picked up the rusty handgun, realising I hadn’t held a weapon in three years. It felt too natural. Too easy. Everything else faded away. When the body is at war, the self dies.
“The Oath…” Whitlock whispered, removing a hefty book from his coat and placing it on the carpet. “I don’t have much time… Place your hand on the cover.”
I obliged, placing my unarmed left hand atop the cobalt-bound book.
“Do you swear to uphold this realm, Kane Foster?” Whitlock hoarsely asked.
“I do,” I answered.
“Will you protect every inhabitant of Earth? Man or creature? Good or evil?”
“I will,” I said.
“Kane Foster…” Whitlock coughed, spluttering blood with a black tinge. “I… grant you the title of Guard.”
An unexpected pressure pierced my palm – as if the book were binding me to it. The world changed. As if I’d unlocked a previously forbidden nook of my brain, I suddenly saw Earth’s darkness. Saw every rip in reality. Every opening through which horrors had entered.
And then the pain ceased. I lifted my hand, and I felt peaceful. As if a weight had been lifted.
“What does it mean to be a guard?” I asked, noting Whitlock’s fading eyes. “I… don’t know what’s required of me.”
“You were a decorated soldier, Kane Foster. You already have the brawn and the intellect to face hostile enemies,” He said. “Following the Oath, you’ve gained sight. But wisdom? Well, that can only be earned. You will come to understand your role. Trust your sight. Trust…”
Whitlock lost the strength to talk, and his breathing grew increasingly laboured. The blackened vines were clawing at his cheeks.
I rose to my feet, preparing myself for what had to be done. It was hard to be present — even harder to take note of my friend’s death. All I saw was the swirling darkness enveloping our world — the ever-multiplying cracks in reality, inviting unimaginable horrors.
Exhaling deeply, I lifted the handgun and aimed at the dying man’s temple.
A single shot filled the room with a mighty spark of light and sound.
I am the last guard of Earth. I search for others so that, one day, I might end my lifelong war. On that day, I will be Kane again.
And I will be with Evie.
Part II
dominiceagle

Stylevana has dramatically increased prices for Beauty of Joseon sunscreen. ~18$ a tube, even buying in bulk. :( this is so much more than what I’m used to paying. I mean.. yeah, inflation.. but omg!!
Walmart has it listed for $8.88 for two tubes, which is 4.44 a tube… but I’m worried it’s fake.
Where do you buy your BOJ sunscreen?

I'm new to orchids and they totally intimidate me! I got this orchid from Walmart about a month ago. It's a Just Add Ice brand. We give it 4 ice cubes once a week. Our ice cubes are a little small. It had flowered and then they dropped about a week ago. I've watched YouTube videos and they suggested to repot plants from big box retailers like Walmart as soon as you can. The pot it came in didn't have any ventilation slits or holes. I watched several YouTube videos on how to repot it. I got a ceramic pot with ventilation slots. I used sterilized clippers and cut back the stems down to inch in above a node. I then carefully removed it from it's pot and removed the old bark that appeared moist but not soaking wet. It had one of those little baskets in the middle with some kind of dense medium. I learned from the videos that those aren't good for the roots as they don't have enough room fir them to grow. I carefully cut away the plastic basket and very gently and carefully cut the medium away from the roots. I then ran the roots through running water to clean them from any old bark. I examined the roots and found them to be firm and white or green. There were very few that I needed to trim dead ends from. I then put it into the new pot and filled with the new bark, tapping gently as I went to remove any pockets. I used Better Gro Special Orchid bark. I admit I had a hard time telling the air roots from regular roots. I think I got most of the air roots above the bark. I had read that it wasn't detrimental to the plant if a few air roots were put in the bark. I then watered it and misted the roots with Miracle Grow Orchid food. Not much though. This was 3 days ago.
The plant is near a north facing window that is mostly shaded but bright. About a foot to the right of it is an east facing window that has frosted cling on it and a sheer curtain. So the corner is bright but not direct sun. It's in my bedroom. We turn down the temp on the air conditioner at night to 69° and then 73° during the day. I was worried that because of the air conditioning that it might not be humid enough so I put a small diffuser next to it that I run at night.
The stems have continued to yellow, so I clipped them again but today they yellowed more. The leaves have remained limp but today they feel softer and like they are wrinkling or shriveling.
Am I killing this plant? What have I done wrong? Can it be saved? I thought I did the research and could handle this but I guess not.

Hello all, I built my first PC about two years ago, without any knowledge of PCs, just research of my own, countless YouTube videos, and the help of a friend who's no PC expert, but more experienced than me. I love my PC and I'm very proud of it, but I wonder sometimes if I may have chosen some parts wrong in my tech ignorance, especially since I've heard about "bottle-necking" when you pick parts that ruin the potential of others.
Right now, I'm planning on upgrading my storage since I've finally nearly filled up the 500GB I originally purchased. I knew this would happen eventually, I just couldn't afford something more expensive at the time since I was buying so many parts. I currently have a Western Digital WD Blue SN550 NVMe M.2 2280 500GB, and I'm thinking of upgrading to a WD_BLACK SN850X NVMe M.2 2280 2TB. Another thing I sacrificed in my original purchase due to budget was WiFi and Bluetooth capabilities on the motherboard, and while I would like to upgrade it, I've already worked around with an ethernet connection and USB Bluetooth receivers, so it's not life or death for me. I'm also slightly unsatisfied with my monitor, since I invested in a good graphics card and I'd love to see it in action a little better.
As for my use of the PC, I mostly do work for university, and play games. As far as I understand, the games I play aren't as demanding as others played by big-time gamers, but I do love setting the graphics to full capacity since the visuals of the world and characters are some of my favorite aspects of the games. They run pretty well as of now, I don't usually notice any issues except the occasional lag and fans getting a little louder. I have noticed that AMD Adrenalin Software rates the performance as "marginal" for some games, and I'm not sure if that's bad or not.
I'll leave my PC Part Picker list below, please let me know any suggestions you may have for upgrades or anything I may have picked wrong and should improve on for my PC to shine to the best of its potential.
Thank you :)
I will follow the instructions:

• New build or upgrade?
  • Upgrade
• Existing parts/monitors to reuse? (List with models/links)

[PCPartPicker Part List](https://pcpartpicker.com/list/vkNNbL)
TypeItemPrice
:----:----:----
**CPU** [AMD Ryzen 5 5600G 3.9 GHz 6-Core Processor](https://pcpartpicker.com/product/sYmmP6/amd-ryzen-5-5600g-39-ghz-6-core-processor-100-100000252box) $137.55 @ Amazon
**CPU Cooler** [Corsair iCUE H100i ELITE CAPELLIX 75 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler](https://pcpartpicker.com/product/99Tp99/corsair-icue-h100i-elite-capellix-75-cfm-liquid-cpu-cooler-cw-9060050-ww) $189.99 @ Amazon
**Motherboard** [ASRock B450M Pro4 Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard](https://pcpartpicker.com/product/dQgzK8/asrock-b450m-pro4-micro-atx-am4-motherboard-b450m-pro4) -
**Memory** [G.Skill Ripjaws V 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory](https://pcpartpicker.com/product/Cf98TW/gskill-ripjaws-v-series-16-gb-2-x-8-gb-ddr4-3200-cl16-memory-f4-3200c16d-16gvkb) $37.25 @ Amazon
**Storage** [Western Digital Black SN850X w/Heatsink 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive](https://pcpartpicker.com/product/sfwypg/western-digital-black-sn850x-with-heatsink-2-tb-m2-2280-nvme-solid-state-drive-wds200t2xhe) $173.57 @ Amazon
**Video Card** [MSI MECH 2X Radeon RX 6700 XT 12 GB Video Card](https://pcpartpicker.com/product/7whFf7/msi-radeon-rx-6700-xt-12-gb-mech-2x-video-card-radeon-rx-6700-xt-mech-2x-12g) $738.00 @ Amazon
**Power Supply** [Corsair RM850 850 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply](https://pcpartpicker.com/product/9KGbt6/corsair-rm850-850-w-80-gold-certified-fully-modular-atx-power-supply-cp-9020232-na) $124.99 @ Amazon
**Monitor** [Samsung C24F390 24.0" 1920 x 1080 60 Hz Curved Monitor](https://pcpartpicker.com/product/YsL7YJ/samsung-monitor-c24f390) $99.99 @ B&H
**Speakers** [Logitech Z200 10 W Speakers](https://pcpartpicker.com/product/bv38TW/logitech-z200-10-w-20-channel-speakers-980-000800) $52.05 @ Walmart
*Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts*
**Total** **$1553.39**
Generated by [PCPartPicker](https://pcpartpicker.com) 2024-05-30 16:33 EDT-0400

• PC purpose? (Gaming, editing, etc. List apps/games)
  • Schoolwork (Microsoft apps)
  • Adobe Creative Cloud apps
  • Games: Genshin Impact, Honkai Star Rail, Reverse 1999, Sims 4, Wakfu, Wuthering Waves.
• Purchase country? Near Micro Center? (If not US, list local vendors)\
  • US, nearest Micro Center about 13 miles (30 mins)
• Monitors needed? (Number, size, resolution, refresh rate)
  • One monitor, not sure about specs since I'm a noob about the numbers, but whatever suggestions my graphics card could handle.
• Budget range? (Include tax considerations)
  • Less than $180 for the SSD preferably, between the monitor and any other upgrade preferably no more than $300, though if you have better recommendations, I'd still love to see them, since it can help me get an idea of using my PC's full potential.
• WiFi or wired connection?
  • Wired
• Size/noise constraints?
  • Monitor can't be more than 30" since my desk is small.
• Cololighting preferences?
  • None
• Any other specific needs?
  • Just making sure I'm not bottle-necking what I already have.

After high school, having no better ideas, I joined the Navy SEALs. I never really liked any of it, but it was a job, after all. I loved the guns and airplanes and grenades, but having to run all the time while some scumbag with a chip on his shoulder yells in my face isn’t my idea of fun.
Things got a lot more interesting after my term of service ended. I still had a high-security clearance, so I used it to take temporary jobs as a mercenary, a hired gun. I did some stints in Iraq with Blackwater, where they set me out in the middle of the desert. A watchtower and oil refinery loomed over the burning sands. Along with a few other guys, they told us, “Guard this area with your life.” While better than the SEALs, working for Blackwater was extremely boring. The other mercenaries and I would mostly just chainsmoke cigarettes and drink coffee all night, staring out across the dead, empty desert.
Over time, I worked my way up. Things started to get more interesting when a job offer arrived in my email one freezing cold winter’s morning. This is what it said.
“Mr. Chase,
“I am the head of security for a private group of entrepreneurs and investors. Through some mutual contacts, I have heard of your professionalism and experience. We are currently putting together a small crew to guard a private event on [REDACTED] Island out in the Pacific Ocean that will run from January 9th to January 26th. Would you be interested in this job? The pay rate is $900 a day.
“Once you are on the island, it will be impossible to leave until the period of employment has ended. If you are interested, please respond to this email as soon as possible.
“Sincerely,
“Mario Antonin, Head of Security.”
I was working piecemeal jobs like this one at the time, but none of them were paying that well. At most, I would usually get $350 to $500 a day, which was still good money when I was working seven days a week until the job finished. I instantly responded and said that yes, I was interested. In response, they sent me a non-disclosure agreement that was the size of a small novel that I had to sign.
That was how I found myself on a private jet, flying out to an island in the middle of the vast blue ocean. I was never told the coordinates of the island or saw it on a map. It was all kept very secret.
A few hours later, we landed on a private airstrip. I looked out the window of the jet, seeing the tropical waters of the Pacific Ocean stretching off to the horizon in every direction. Below me stood an island with palm trees and sandy white beaches. An enormous Victorian mansion loomed directly in the center of it all. The mansion was painted black and looked like something straight out of a horror movie. It had no windows, and the turrets spiraled into blade-like points.
That was my first inkling that something might not be quite right about this trip.
***
As the stairs from the private jet descended, I looked out on this strange new world. Employees waited to greet us, looking like beaten dogs. Some had their heads down, their eyes blankly scanning the ground. Most of them were women wearing red dresses, reminding me of stewardesses on a plane. The jet strip was surrounded by palm trees and tropical brush. The chirping of insects sounded all around us, high and resonant.
I saw a strange patch engraved on all of the employees’ uniforms and jackets. It looked almost like a stick figure drawing of a man, the bottom of its body ending in a C. Its arms were long and jointed, almost spidery. Three symbols like repeated iron crosses connected to the left side of its body in a line. I wondered if it was the logo of some company. I put it out of my mind for now, but I would see that symbol again all over the island, painted on the sides of the mansion and even cut into the trees with a knife. It would only be later that night that I realized its connection to Moloch.
“Good day, sir, and welcome to the Island,” the server on my left said with glassy eyes and a fake smile plastered across her face. They all looked up at once, but it was like the workers all looked through me rather than at me. Their eyes looked flat and dead, like the painted-on eyes of a doll.
“The Island, huh?” I asked, curious. “They wouldn’t tell me where I was going. They said it was a secret. Is that what you call it?” The woman just nodded, the doll-like smile never leaving her lips.
“Officially, this island is unnamed and uninhabited,” the woman said. “In fact, all traces of it have been scrubbed from the internet. You won’t find it on Google Maps or in any publicly available satellite imagery.” She leaned forward towards me with heavily mascaraed eyes and ruby-red lipstick slashed across her lips. “This is a very special place. Only very special people are allowed here. You should be honored to work here under our Savior.”
“I hope you’re talking about Jesus or something,” I said jokingly. She just smiled blankly and motioned me forward.
“Just follow that trail for a few hundred feet-” she said, pointing at an opening in the palm trees where logs were laid down horizontally over the muggy jungle- “and you’ll find the mansion. Good luck!” I thought it was a somewhat strange thing to say, wishing a random stranger good luck.
But, by the end of that night, I realized that simply to make it off this island alive, I would need lots of it.
***
I followed the woman’s directions to the back of the brutalist mansion. A heavy metal door stood there with a small bullet-proof window built in the top. A tanned, Spanish face glowered out at me then rapidly drew back and disappeared. A few heartbeats later, the door slid to the side with a grinding of hidden gears.
The head of security at the Island was a heavily-tattooed ex-Marine named Mario. He wore a dark Kevlar vest over a black outfit, making him look like a walking shadow. I found the security had their own private complex in the mansion as he showed me around the site. Hundreds of hidden cameras covered every angle of the mansion and the surrounding parts of the island. Dozens of black-clad security agents swarmed over the screens, checking the monitors and computers constantly.
“Quite a set-up you have here,” I said to Mario, nodding at him. He smacked me on the shoulder, giving a confident grin.
“Money is no issue here, Richard,” he responded. “Security is paramount. There are things on this island that could rip apart the world if they ever escaped.” I raised an eyebrow.
“Like what?” I asked. “Nuclear weapons or something?” He laughed at that.
“You’ll see for yourself tonight,” he said, his dark eyes flashing with something cold and alien.
***
Mario led me and a couple other new hired guns around the Island. The place was certainly strange. It reminded me of some combination of a secret black-ops site and a playboy billionaire’s private heaven. All of the doors in the mansion looked like they were made of thick steel. They had wheels that would spin, like those on a submarine door. The mansion also had no windows at all that I could see, except for the small, shatter-proof glass openings on the steel doors. I didn’t want to ask too many questions, however. I couldn’t resist asking him about a couple small things, however- or at least, they seemed small to me at the time.
“What are those hatchways?” I asked Mario, pointing to rectangular covers built into the concrete walkway. They had heavy handles. “Are those manholes or something?”
“There are tunnels under the Island,” he responded vaguely. “Just for maintenance and security, you understand.”
“Wow, this place is certainly… well-developed,” I said. We came out through a grove of palm trees. A stone walkway led down to a white beach. Dozens of yachts were moored all across the shore, some of them looking like they must have cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
“There’s a lot of money and power here,” Mario said. “That’s why it’s important you never talk about what you see here. These are the people who control the world, the ones behind the government and the media. Not the elected officials who the people see, but the actual power.”
“Like who?” I asked. “You mean the Rothschilds and Soros?” He laughed again, a sarcastic, grinding laugh that grated my nerves.
“Trust me, the truly powerful ones don’t even have public personas. If you know their name, then they’re just one of the puppets.” I just shook my head at that, then asked the real question that had been bothering me since I first arrived here.
“Who is the Savior?” I asked. “Is that some codename or something?” Mario froze in place.
“He’s the one who runs everything here,” he whispered conspiratorially, looking around nervously. “But don’t be mentioning that kind of shit. You’ll probably see him tonight anyway. He’s the one who runs the show. He’ll be on the stage in his normal outfit.”
***
By the end of the day, I was suited up like the rest of the security staff, wearing the pure black pants and shirt with the symbol of Moloch engraved over the heart. Hundreds of the world’s most famous politicians, actors, businessmen and artists had gathered, streaming in the front doors with a soft, diffident susurration.
I stood by the open doorway of a side exit with an AR-15 and full body armor, next to one other soldier. They had also given me a sidearm. Every entrance or exit was manned by at least two armed men. The security at this place was some of the most intense I had ever seen. Beyond the door, there were rows and rows of the most comfortable seats, all gathered in a semi-circle around a massive stage made of pure mahogany. Blood-red curtains stood closed at the front of the room, concealing their secrets- for now, at least.
“Hail Satan!” I heard the elites cry inside in unison. I didn’t want to look in at the rows of high-ranking politicians, celebrities, influencers and artists, but my curiosity was high. I peeked around the corner of the stone archway, seeing the red curtains on the stage drawing apart. I saw one of my favorite actors standing in the front row, clapping excitedly and jumping up and down.
The crowd cheered as a naked female strapped to an obsidian altar lay there. She was beautiful and blonde, probably no older than twenty with the face of a supermodel. Her mouth was gagged, her arms outstretched like Jesus on the cross. Thin leather cords were tied around her wrists and ankles, biting deeply into the skin. Her eyes rolled wildly as she shook her head from side to side. She froze, and her eyes met mine for a brief moment. I saw the pleading expression there, the mortal terror and absolute horror.
A man in a goat mask wearing black robes slunk out from the side of the stage, carrying a wavy silver dagger engraved with strange symbols. The crowd erupted into a primal roar of pleasure and excitement that sounded like it came from one monstrous mouth.
“Worthy is the Lamb!” the man in the goat mask screamed with electronic amplification. He had a deep voice, as if he had rocks rolling around in his throat. The crowd roared and clapped. Scattered cries of “Hail Lucifer!” and “Ave Satanas!” echoed down the massive auditorium.
“Hey, pay attention,” the other security agent at my side said in a thick Finnish accent. He was a tall Scandinavian-looking guy named Kolmek. “You’re not getting paid to watch the show, new guy.” I tried to rip my gaze away from the stage, but it held my attention with an obsessive horror.
“The burnt bones of children and women have been offered to the ancient ones, to Moloch,” the man on the stage cried. “Under our feet, the burnt bodies of hundreds lay dreaming. This victim will be the 666th. Her blood will bring about the Gnosis that we seek, the direct experience of the divine held by the gods, by Lucifer and Moloch and Baal…” The roaring of the crowd temporarily drowned out his electronically-magnified voice. “Tonight, we will rip open the veil!”
I had stopped watching the show, instead staring blankly out at the beach and palm trees. At that moment, another black-clad security agent came up to my partner, whispered something in his ear, then immediately disappeared, heading off back in the direction of the main security office. Kolmek shook his head grimly.
“I’ll be right back,” he said. “Stay right here. Don’t move from this door no matter what. And pay attention.” I nodded and watched as he walked off in the same direction.
I immediately took the opportunity to continue watching the ceremony. I had missed something important, apparently. The woman now laid dead on the sacrificial table, a gaping hole in her chest. Blood spurted from the crater as the man in the goat mask held her beating heart grasped tightly in his hand, letting the blood stream down his naked fingers. The crowd cheered with a rising bloodlust and insanity. Most of them were standing, their eyes gleaming and wide with fanatical adoration. The entire spectacle reminded me of some kind of ancient Aztec ritual.
As the woman’s sightless eyes stared vacantly up in death, the man in a goat mask pulled out a can of gasoline. The clear liquid gurgled as he up-ended the canister over her pale, bloodless face, over her naked stomach and long legs. A moment later, he lit a match and dropped it. I heard the whooshing of the flames as they rose up.
The crowd went deathly silent as they watched the rippling flames. The man in the goat mask began chanting in some strange language I had never heard before. It sounded Semitic, but I knew it wasn’t Arabic or Hebrew. I felt something like electricity ripple through the air, almost like a feeling of falling pressure before a storm. I looked down at the hairs on my arms, seeing them rise up. I looked back up at the stage, and my eyes widened in horror.
The flaming body of the sacrificial victim had started to morph before my eyes and the eyes of the crowd. The dripping, blackening flesh jumped up and down, as if there were rats trapped in her body trying to escape the fire. There was a deafening hissing as if thousands of snakes were being burned alive.
The dead woman’s arms jerked up, the skin splitting open as if she had seams running along her skin. Something dark and muscular with curving, black talons ripped its way out of the dead, burning flesh. Behind it, a head appeared with long, curving horns and eyes that spun with whorls of fire. It looked like the offspring of a bull and a demon. Its imposing body rose up from the inferno, appearing like magic from the solid stone. It raised itself to its full height, looming over the crowd. The last of the woman’s blood hissed and boiled away, her flesh dissolving into ashes.
“Behold, Moloch rises!” the man in the goat mask screamed in a fanatical voice. The crowd’s cheering had stopped, though. Many of the faces in the crowd looked chalk-white with terror. The bull-god surveyed the crowd, its horns nearly scraping the ceiling twenty feet above the stage.
At that moment, I knew death was on its way with eyes of fire and a grin like a skull, ready to reap a field of human bodies.
***
I heard running behind me, but I didn’t dare turn away from the horrific sight in front of me. The last of the fire’s embers died, sending up thin wisps of gray smoke that spiraled around the bull-god’s monstrous face. Moloch stood as still as a statue, and if it weren’t for one thing, I might’ve thought it was some sort of sculpture or art project. He had two nostrils like a serpent’s. As his great lungs inhaled, the smoke billowed in and out of his mouth and nose.
Some of the people at the edges of the crowd had gotten up, hurrying towards the doors. Moloch’s head ratcheted to face them, his fiery eyes narrowing into slits.
“Do not leave!” the man in the goat mask pleaded. “Those who have fear are not worthy of life. Do not prove yourselves unworthy of life!” As the first of the fleeing men and women got to within a few steps of the door, Moloch gave a primal roar. In a blur of primal strength, he reached down and ripped the blackened sacrificial altar off the stage. It ripped from the wooden stage with a tremendous crack like a bullwhip. He hurled the heavy mass of stone at those heading towards the opposite exit from the one I guarded.
I watched it curve through the air. The people started screaming and clawing to escape as it smashed down on their heads with a grating crash. I could feel the floor shake from where I stood outside. Blood exploded from their smashed bodies. I saw arms and legs jerking and seizing under the heavy stone, but within a few moments, they slowed and then stopped.
Others were running towards the door I guarded, but Moloch leapt off the stage in a blur. In a few bounding steps, he reached the pale, terrified faces on the other side of the threshold. His massive clawed hand came down. I heard bones shatter as blood sprayed my face and the wall. Bone splinters and pieces of brain exploded from the screaming bodies. I backpedaled, wiping at my eyes, trying to get the blood off so I could see. No one had told me what to do in this situation. I didn’t know if I was supposed to shoot that massive abomination, or if this was all just part of the show.
“Richard!” a familiar voice cried from behind me. Panic oozed from every word. I spun, seeing Mario and Kolmek standing side by side, their pupils dilated and expressions grim.
“We have a major problem.” It was Mario. I recognized that voice, the one that sounded as if he had been gargling with rocks.
“I know,” I said, holding my rifle tightly. I pointed behind me at the scene of rampant death and destruction.
I had seen bloodshed and war before, but this was different. The Island itself seemed to feel it. The wind, which had been calm when I first landed, now whipped the Island in fast, circular currents. The breeze smelled of burnt matches and coppery blood. The static electricity which had caused the hairs on my arms to rise rippled over everything with tiny blue flashes, increasing in power by the second.
“No, no, not Moloch,” Kolmek said, looking much calmer than I felt. “The Savior lets Moloch thin the herd every year.”
“It’s Leviathan,” Mario continued grimly, “the beast from the waters. The smell of blood is drawing it from the depths of the ocean. We picked up the first blips on radar a few minutes ago. When it gets here, it won’t stop until everything is rubble. It will kill every single person on the Island.”
“All security personnel must report to the south beach immediately,” a cool robotic voice cried out over hidden loudspeakers all over the Island. The screaming from the auditorium had quieted behind me. I was afraid to look inside.
“There it is,” Kolmek said, his head jerking up as the emergency alert read. He motioned for me to follow. “It’s time to fight.”
***
We sprinted over curving trails of smooth logs between deathly quiet forests. All the insects and birds had gone silent. Ahead of us, the palm trees opened up onto the Pacific Ocean. But it was no longer a beautiful tropical blue. A black, swirling whirlpool like an ulcerous wound had opened up on its surface. It stretched hundreds of feet across, drawing closer to the shore by the second. Dead fish, sharks, dolphins, squids and even whales spun in the filthy, dark water.
Twenty black-clad security agents waited for the three of us on the beach, their eyes wide, their faces pale with terror. Like myself, they all had AR-15s and Glock 22s with extra magazines for both. I guess the Glock might be useful for blowing my brains out as a last resort if some beast from Hell rose out of the simmering waters, but I didn’t think it would stop anything from another dimension.
The clouds swirled overhead in a thick curtain as black as smoke. Flashes of blue lightning detonated every couple seconds. Mario raised his hands, screaming over the roaring of the wind. Kolmek stood by my side, his face grim and eyes narrowed.
“Your job is to fight off anything that tries to get on the Island,” he said, looking from one face to another with rapt attention. “Nothing can stand against high-caliber rifle fire. Shoot at the face and eyes when it comes up. We’ve dealt with creatures like this before, and they will retreat if you injure them badly enough.” I had the sense of being fed a line of bullshit as my mind processed this.
“What exactly is coming up?” one of the doe-eyed security men asked. He barely looked old enough to drink, a young, muscular hulk with a Marine Corps tattoo on his neck.
“They call it Leviathan,” Mario responded. “Sometimes the rituals here and the smell of blood can draw… strange things. Leviathan is one of those. We have encountered it before. The most important thing to remember is…” His voice was suddenly drowned out by a terrible cacophony that came from the center of the black whirlpool.
A screech like the detonation of a nuclear missile shook the ground. The ocean jumped and bubbled frantically. The beach heaved and cracked, the white sands disappearing in fissures that opened up like greedy mouths underneath my feet. I lost my balance, falling forwards. The screeching continued rising into a primal roar.
A green dragon head the color of an infected wound erupted from the surface of the thrashing water, rising up dozens of feet in the air. It had two enormous slitted eyes that dilated and constricted quickly as it glowered down at us. The screeching abruptly stopped, the pointed mouth of the dragon slamming shut with a sound like a gunshot.
Within moments, another cancerous green head shot up in a blur, its skin looking as hard as stone. Ridges that looked as sharp as swords ran the length of its reptilian skull, arcing over its eyes and pointed snout. More heads erupted from the ocean until all seven heads of Leviathan loomed over us.
Not one of us fired. No one even seemed to breathe as we surveyed the beast across the no-man’s land of the white sands. The slitted eyes and yellow irises of the seven heads had a demonic hunger, a reptilian coldness. Far behind us, I heard distant screams still echoing from the auditorium where Moloch held sway.
“Fire!” Mario cried. Instantly, a cacophony of gunshots exploded all around me. I jumped up on my feet, scrambling up as the seven-headed dragon leapt forward. Thousands of gallons of saltwater streamed down its massive body as it came up on the beach. Long, black paws with bone-white talons shot out of the surging ocean, followed by a tapering tail like that of a water snake.
I brought the rifle up and emptied my magazine as fast as I could, pulling the trigger over and over as I aimed at the many slitted eyes of Leviathan. But the bullets seemed to ping harmlessly off of its hard, obsidian-like scales.
It scrabbled onto the shore, the heads coming down in a blur. Rows and rows of vampiric fangs gleamed dully in each of the mouths. One security agent was bitten in half, the spurting stump of his lower body still standing for a long moment even as the rest of the body disappeared down the throat of the dragon.
Mario ran forwards, slamming another magazine in his rifle and opening fire point-blank. One of the heads came down in a blur towards him. Its great, staring eyes exploded in a shower of blue blood and thick vitreous fluid. The dragon head pulled back, its mouth opening in a primal scream of agony.
As I reloaded, I scanned the area around me, realizing that nearly half of the security agents were either dead or critically injured. I backpedaled away, keeping my eyes on the dragon. It continuously drew forward, killing more of its enemies with every step. I turned and ran into the forest, the sounds of shattering bones and dying men ringing through the air with a sickening clarity behind me.
Once I had reached the border of the trail, I heard Mario yell, “Retreat!” behind me. But by that point, it was far too late.
***
“Hey! Wait up!” a voice whispered from behind me. I turned my head, seeing Kolmek. Spatters of drying blood covered his face and uniform. As far as I could tell, none of it was his. “Mario’s dead. They’re all dead. We need to get out of here. We need to get off the Island.”
“How?” I asked.
“Find the Savior,” he answered, panting and out of breath. “We must find him. He can get us out of here.”
“I don’t even know what the guy looks like,” I muttered. “He was wearing a goat mask.”
“You’ll know him when you see him,” Kolmek said. “His body is covered in scars. Everything except his face. Stay close to me. We need to watch each other’s backs. It’s our only chance of survival.”
***
A trail of twisted, broken bodies led from the mansion to the surrounding trails and beaches. A decapitated woman with solid gold necklaces embedded with diamonds lay in front of me. It was strange on the Island, the way oblivion and ineffable wealth coexisted side by side. But everything was deathly silent, even in the mansion’s auditorium.
“Where’s the Savior?” I asked through gritted teeth. I peeked my head into the auditorium, but nothing moved. Hundreds of smashed and bloody bodies littered the floor.
“He’s around somewhere,” Kolmek answered. We started circling the mansion, looking for any signs of life. Kolmek went in the lead. As he turned the corner, an enormous black hand with sharp claws of fingers flitted forward in a blur, wrapping itself around his chest. Kolmek gave a strangled cry as it closed around him. I heard his bones crush as a spout of blood and gore flew from his mouth and nose, as if he were a toothpaste tube being squeezed.
I backpedaled away as Moloch threw the twitching corpse aside like a discarded toy. It smashed into the wall of the mansion, exploding wetly. A human-shaped, bloody stain languidly dripped down the wall above Kolmek’s mangled body.
Moloch slowly turned his head towards me, the fiery eyes flashing with hunger. He gnashed his fangs together, taking a step forward with a leg the size and shape of a tree trunk. With every step he took, I felt the ground tremble.
“Stop!” I cried, moving away from the monstrous creature. “Why are you doing this?”
“There is no why,” he gurgled, his voice monstrous and inhumanly slow. “There is only power. The weak deserve to die. Only the strong are worthy of life.” I raised my rifle in a last-ditch effort to save myself. Moloch saw it and started running towards me, every footstep crushing the paved walkway around the mansion into rubble and dust.
I aimed for his eyes and nose, emptying the entire magazine as quickly as I could. The bullets smashed into Moloch’s face. Dark red, clotted blood dripped out of the wounds, writhing with maggots. Drops of it fell around me, landing on my hair and face. I felt the small larvae twisting all over my skin. Moloch’s blood smelled nauseating, like some combination of stinkbugs and rotting bodies. He slowed, giving a roar of pain. I turned to run in the opposite direction, but as I looked out in the direction of the beach, my heart dropped.
Leviathan was moving in our direction, the giant dragon heads looming over the trees. Quickly, it swept towards me like a dark wind.
***
“You will suffer for that, worthless slave,” Moloch growled, wiping blood from his fiery eyes with his sharp talons of fingers. A sudden idea came to me. I ran in the direction of Leviathan. Moloch followed closely at my heels, only a few steps behind me.
Leviathan slithered forward over the sands and trees, its enormous body undulating like a water snake’s. I screamed at it, an incomprehensible wail of terror. Its seven heads snapped towards me. Its slitted eyes widened as it saw Moloch.
I heard the crashing of Moloch’s footsteps stop behind me, only feet away from crushing me into a paste. His massive lungs breathed quickly, exhaling the odor of sulfur and smoke.
“Leviathan,” Moloch growled in his demonic voice. “These are my tributes.” Leviathan’s dragon heads looked straight up at the Sun and screamed in response, their many voices rising and falling in a dissonant wail. As I sprinted into the trees, Leviathan and Moloch ran at each other, colliding with an ear-splitting crash. I glanced back, seeing Moloch ripping one of the dragon heads off its neck with his sharp fingers. The head screamed as blue blood exploded from the spurting stump. After a long moment, the neck fell limply forward.
The other dragon heads bit Moloch in a unified attack. They ripped deep holes in his shoulders and arms, snapping over and over like rabid dogs. As the two eldritch monstrosities attacked each other in fierce combat, I lost sight of them, but the sounds of fighting echoed over the entire island, crashing like lightning.
***
I felt like the survivor of an Apocalypse. I couldn’t find a single other living person on the Island. Hundreds of crushed, broken and decapitated bodies surrounded me. Over the cacophony of fighting, I heard a new noise: the whirring of helicopter blades nearby. It was coming from the other side of the mansion.
Frantically, I sprinted around the other side, seeing a Black Hawk helicopter getting ready to leave. A man in black robes sat at the pilot’s seat, his green eyes gleaming and a wide smile plastered across his face. I smashed my fist into the door over and over until he opened it.
“Holy shit, you’re still alive?” he asked. I hadn’t seen this man before. He had a face like a Calvin Klein model, all sharp angles and high cheekbones, perfectly proportioned in every way. But his scalp looked melted and scarred, as if someone had thrown gasoline on his hair and ignited it. His ears were stunted, twisted growths of scar tissue. His hands, too, were covered in deep, folding burn scars.
“Are you the Savior?” I responded quickly. “Please, get me out of here.”
“They do call me that,” he said wistfully. “The Savior. Yes, I guess I am. Get in.”
***
The Savior stared at me with his strange green eyes, the color of swamps where monstrous things swam under the surface.
“Some people just need to learn the hard way,” he said. The helicopter took off into a dark night covered with bright, twinkling stars. “There is no great power without great responsibility, after all. Those of us who seek the ancient ones know it comes with a cost.” I just stared out the window, gazing down at the countless mutilated, broken bodies that littered the beach.
Below us, the face of a bull stared up with eyes of fiery cyclones. The broken, still body of Leviathan lay at his feet. As we made it over the great waters of the Pacific Ocean, the bull-god raised a hand and waved. At that moment, I thought I could almost see a hurricane of translucent souls circling around him, spiraling up into the sky.

After high school, having no better ideas, I joined the Navy SEALs. I never really liked any of it, but it was a job, after all. I loved the guns and airplanes and grenades, but having to run all the time while some scumbag with a chip on his shoulder yells in my face isn’t my idea of fun.
Things got a lot more interesting after my term of service ended. I still had a high-security clearance, so I used it to take temporary jobs as a mercenary, a hired gun. I did some stints in Iraq with Blackwater, where they set me out in the middle of the desert. A watchtower and oil refinery loomed over the burning sands. Along with a few other guys, they told us, “Guard this area with your life.” While better than the SEALs, working for Blackwater was extremely boring. The other mercenaries and I would mostly just chainsmoke cigarettes and drink coffee all night, staring out across the dead, empty desert.
Over time, I worked my way up. Things started to get more interesting when a job offer arrived in my email one freezing cold winter’s morning. This is what it said.
“Mr. Chase,
“I am the head of security for a private group of entrepreneurs and investors. Through some mutual contacts, I have heard of your professionalism and experience. We are currently putting together a small crew to guard a private event on [REDACTED] Island out in the Pacific Ocean that will run from January 9th to January 26th. Would you be interested in this job? The pay rate is $900 a day.
“Once you are on the island, it will be impossible to leave until the period of employment has ended. If you are interested, please respond to this email as soon as possible.
“Sincerely,
“Mario Antonin, Head of Security.”
I was working piecemeal jobs like this one at the time, but none of them were paying that well. At most, I would usually get $350 to $500 a day, which was still good money when I was working seven days a week until the job finished. I instantly responded and said that yes, I was interested. In response, they sent me a non-disclosure agreement that was the size of a small novel that I had to sign.
That was how I found myself on a private jet, flying out to an island in the middle of the vast blue ocean. I was never told the coordinates of the island or saw it on a map. It was all kept very secret.
A few hours later, we landed on a private airstrip. I looked out the window of the jet, seeing the tropical waters of the Pacific Ocean stretching off to the horizon in every direction. Below me stood an island with palm trees and sandy white beaches. An enormous Victorian mansion loomed directly in the center of it all. The mansion was painted black and looked like something straight out of a horror movie. It had no windows, and the turrets spiraled into blade-like points.
That was my first inkling that something might not be quite right about this trip.
***
As the stairs from the private jet descended, I looked out on this strange new world. Employees waited to greet us, looking like beaten dogs. Some had their heads down, their eyes blankly scanning the ground. Most of them were women wearing red dresses, reminding me of stewardesses on a plane. The jet strip was surrounded by palm trees and tropical brush. The chirping of insects sounded all around us, high and resonant.
I saw a strange patch engraved on all of the employees’ uniforms and jackets. It looked almost like a stick figure drawing of a man, the bottom of its body ending in a C. Its arms were long and jointed, almost spidery. Three symbols like repeated iron crosses connected to the left side of its body in a line. I wondered if it was the logo of some company. I put it out of my mind for now, but I would see that symbol again all over the island, painted on the sides of the mansion and even cut into the trees with a knife. It would only be later that night that I realized its connection to Moloch.
“Good day, sir, and welcome to the Island,” the server on my left said with glassy eyes and a fake smile plastered across her face. They all looked up at once, but it was like the workers all looked through me rather than at me. Their eyes looked flat and dead, like the painted-on eyes of a doll.
“The Island, huh?” I asked, curious. “They wouldn’t tell me where I was going. They said it was a secret. Is that what you call it?” The woman just nodded, the doll-like smile never leaving her lips.
“Officially, this island is unnamed and uninhabited,” the woman said. “In fact, all traces of it have been scrubbed from the internet. You won’t find it on Google Maps or in any publicly available satellite imagery.” She leaned forward towards me with heavily mascaraed eyes and ruby-red lipstick slashed across her lips. “This is a very special place. Only very special people are allowed here. You should be honored to work here under our Savior.”
“I hope you’re talking about Jesus or something,” I said jokingly. She just smiled blankly and motioned me forward.
“Just follow that trail for a few hundred feet-” she said, pointing at an opening in the palm trees where logs were laid down horizontally over the muggy jungle- “and you’ll find the mansion. Good luck!” I thought it was a somewhat strange thing to say, wishing a random stranger good luck.
But, by the end of that night, I realized that simply to make it off this island alive, I would need lots of it.
***
I followed the woman’s directions to the back of the brutalist mansion. A heavy metal door stood there with a small bullet-proof window built in the top. A tanned, Spanish face glowered out at me then rapidly drew back and disappeared. A few heartbeats later, the door slid to the side with a grinding of hidden gears.
The head of security at the Island was a heavily-tattooed ex-Marine named Mario. He wore a dark Kevlar vest over a black outfit, making him look like a walking shadow. I found the security had their own private complex in the mansion as he showed me around the site. Hundreds of hidden cameras covered every angle of the mansion and the surrounding parts of the island. Dozens of black-clad security agents swarmed over the screens, checking the monitors and computers constantly.
“Quite a set-up you have here,” I said to Mario, nodding at him. He smacked me on the shoulder, giving a confident grin.
“Money is no issue here, Richard,” he responded. “Security is paramount. There are things on this island that could rip apart the world if they ever escaped.” I raised an eyebrow.
“Like what?” I asked. “Nuclear weapons or something?” He laughed at that.
“You’ll see for yourself tonight,” he said, his dark eyes flashing with something cold and alien.
***
Mario led me and a couple other new hired guns around the Island. The place was certainly strange. It reminded me of some combination of a secret black-ops site and a playboy billionaire’s private heaven. All of the doors in the mansion looked like they were made of thick steel. They had wheels that would spin, like those on a submarine door. The mansion also had no windows at all that I could see, except for the small, shatter-proof glass openings on the steel doors. I didn’t want to ask too many questions, however. I couldn’t resist asking him about a couple small things, however- or at least, they seemed small to me at the time.
“What are those hatchways?” I asked Mario, pointing to rectangular covers built into the concrete walkway. They had heavy handles. “Are those manholes or something?”
“There are tunnels under the Island,” he responded vaguely. “Just for maintenance and security, you understand.”
“Wow, this place is certainly… well-developed,” I said. We came out through a grove of palm trees. A stone walkway led down to a white beach. Dozens of yachts were moored all across the shore, some of them looking like they must have cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
“There’s a lot of money and power here,” Mario said. “That’s why it’s important you never talk about what you see here. These are the people who control the world, the ones behind the government and the media. Not the elected officials who the people see, but the actual power.”
“Like who?” I asked. “You mean the Rothschilds and Soros?” He laughed again, a sarcastic, grinding laugh that grated my nerves.
“Trust me, the truly powerful ones don’t even have public personas. If you know their name, then they’re just one of the puppets.” I just shook my head at that, then asked the real question that had been bothering me since I first arrived here.
“Who is the Savior?” I asked. “Is that some codename or something?” Mario froze in place.
“He’s the one who runs everything here,” he whispered conspiratorially, looking around nervously. “But don’t be mentioning that kind of shit. You’ll probably see him tonight anyway. He’s the one who runs the show. He’ll be on the stage in his normal outfit.”
***
By the end of the day, I was suited up like the rest of the security staff, wearing the pure black pants and shirt with the symbol of Moloch engraved over the heart. Hundreds of the world’s most famous politicians, actors, businessmen and artists had gathered, streaming in the front doors with a soft, diffident susurration.
I stood by the open doorway of a side exit with an AR-15 and full body armor, next to one other soldier. They had also given me a sidearm. Every entrance or exit was manned by at least two armed men. The security at this place was some of the most intense I had ever seen. Beyond the door, there were rows and rows of the most comfortable seats, all gathered in a semi-circle around a massive stage made of pure mahogany. Blood-red curtains stood closed at the front of the room, concealing their secrets- for now, at least.
“Hail Satan!” I heard the elites cry inside in unison. I didn’t want to look in at the rows of high-ranking politicians, celebrities, influencers and artists, but my curiosity was high. I peeked around the corner of the stone archway, seeing the red curtains on the stage drawing apart. I saw one of my favorite actors standing in the front row, clapping excitedly and jumping up and down.
The crowd cheered as a naked female strapped to an obsidian altar lay there. She was beautiful and blonde, probably no older than twenty with the face of a supermodel. Her mouth was gagged, her arms outstretched like Jesus on the cross. Thin leather cords were tied around her wrists and ankles, biting deeply into the skin. Her eyes rolled wildly as she shook her head from side to side. She froze, and her eyes met mine for a brief moment. I saw the pleading expression there, the mortal terror and absolute horror.
A man in a goat mask wearing black robes slunk out from the side of the stage, carrying a wavy silver dagger engraved with strange symbols. The crowd erupted into a primal roar of pleasure and excitement that sounded like it came from one monstrous mouth.
“Worthy is the Lamb!” the man in the goat mask screamed with electronic amplification. He had a deep voice, as if he had rocks rolling around in his throat. The crowd roared and clapped. Scattered cries of “Hail Lucifer!” and “Ave Satanas!” echoed down the massive auditorium.
“Hey, pay attention,” the other security agent at my side said in a thick Finnish accent. He was a tall Scandinavian-looking guy named Kolmek. “You’re not getting paid to watch the show, new guy.” I tried to rip my gaze away from the stage, but it held my attention with an obsessive horror.
“The burnt bones of children and women have been offered to the ancient ones, to Moloch,” the man on the stage cried. “Under our feet, the burnt bodies of hundreds lay dreaming. This victim will be the 666th. Her blood will bring about the Gnosis that we seek, the direct experience of the divine held by the gods, by Lucifer and Moloch and Baal…” The roaring of the crowd temporarily drowned out his electronically-magnified voice. “Tonight, we will rip open the veil!”
I had stopped watching the show, instead staring blankly out at the beach and palm trees. At that moment, another black-clad security agent came up to my partner, whispered something in his ear, then immediately disappeared, heading off back in the direction of the main security office. Kolmek shook his head grimly.
“I’ll be right back,” he said. “Stay right here. Don’t move from this door no matter what. And pay attention.” I nodded and watched as he walked off in the same direction.
I immediately took the opportunity to continue watching the ceremony. I had missed something important, apparently. The woman now laid dead on the sacrificial table, a gaping hole in her chest. Blood spurted from the crater as the man in the goat mask held her beating heart grasped tightly in his hand, letting the blood stream down his naked fingers. The crowd cheered with a rising bloodlust and insanity. Most of them were standing, their eyes gleaming and wide with fanatical adoration. The entire spectacle reminded me of some kind of ancient Aztec ritual.
As the woman’s sightless eyes stared vacantly up in death, the man in a goat mask pulled out a can of gasoline. The clear liquid gurgled as he up-ended the canister over her pale, bloodless face, over her naked stomach and long legs. A moment later, he lit a match and dropped it. I heard the whooshing of the flames as they rose up.
The crowd went deathly silent as they watched the rippling flames. The man in the goat mask began chanting in some strange language I had never heard before. It sounded Semitic, but I knew it wasn’t Arabic or Hebrew. I felt something like electricity ripple through the air, almost like a feeling of falling pressure before a storm. I looked down at the hairs on my arms, seeing them rise up. I looked back up at the stage, and my eyes widened in horror.
The flaming body of the sacrificial victim had started to morph before my eyes and the eyes of the crowd. The dripping, blackening flesh jumped up and down, as if there were rats trapped in her body trying to escape the fire. There was a deafening hissing as if thousands of snakes were being burned alive.
The dead woman’s arms jerked up, the skin splitting open as if she had seams running along her skin. Something dark and muscular with curving, black talons ripped its way out of the dead, burning flesh. Behind it, a head appeared with long, curving horns and eyes that spun with whorls of fire. It looked like the offspring of a bull and a demon. Its imposing body rose up from the inferno, appearing like magic from the solid stone. It raised itself to its full height, looming over the crowd. The last of the woman’s blood hissed and boiled away, her flesh dissolving into ashes.
“Behold, Moloch rises!” the man in the goat mask screamed in a fanatical voice. The crowd’s cheering had stopped, though. Many of the faces in the crowd looked chalk-white with terror. The bull-god surveyed the crowd, its horns nearly scraping the ceiling twenty feet above the stage.
At that moment, I knew death was on its way with eyes of fire and a grin like a skull, ready to reap a field of human bodies.
***
I heard running behind me, but I didn’t dare turn away from the horrific sight in front of me. The last of the fire’s embers died, sending up thin wisps of gray smoke that spiraled around the bull-god’s monstrous face. Moloch stood as still as a statue, and if it weren’t for one thing, I might’ve thought it was some sort of sculpture or art project. He had two nostrils like a serpent’s. As his great lungs inhaled, the smoke billowed in and out of his mouth and nose.
Some of the people at the edges of the crowd had gotten up, hurrying towards the doors. Moloch’s head ratcheted to face them, his fiery eyes narrowing into slits.
“Do not leave!” the man in the goat mask pleaded. “Those who have fear are not worthy of life. Do not prove yourselves unworthy of life!” As the first of the fleeing men and women got to within a few steps of the door, Moloch gave a primal roar. In a blur of primal strength, he reached down and ripped the blackened sacrificial altar off the stage. It ripped from the wooden stage with a tremendous crack like a bullwhip. He hurled the heavy mass of stone at those heading towards the opposite exit from the one I guarded.
I watched it curve through the air. The people started screaming and clawing to escape as it smashed down on their heads with a grating crash. I could feel the floor shake from where I stood outside. Blood exploded from their smashed bodies. I saw arms and legs jerking and seizing under the heavy stone, but within a few moments, they slowed and then stopped.
Others were running towards the door I guarded, but Moloch leapt off the stage in a blur. In a few bounding steps, he reached the pale, terrified faces on the other side of the threshold. His massive clawed hand came down. I heard bones shatter as blood sprayed my face and the wall. Bone splinters and pieces of brain exploded from the screaming bodies. I backpedaled, wiping at my eyes, trying to get the blood off so I could see. No one had told me what to do in this situation. I didn’t know if I was supposed to shoot that massive abomination, or if this was all just part of the show.
“Richard!” a familiar voice cried from behind me. Panic oozed from every word. I spun, seeing Mario and Kolmek standing side by side, their pupils dilated and expressions grim.
“We have a major problem.” It was Mario. I recognized that voice, the one that sounded as if he had been gargling with rocks.
“I know,” I said, holding my rifle tightly. I pointed behind me at the scene of rampant death and destruction.
I had seen bloodshed and war before, but this was different. The Island itself seemed to feel it. The wind, which had been calm when I first landed, now whipped the Island in fast, circular currents. The breeze smelled of burnt matches and coppery blood. The static electricity which had caused the hairs on my arms to rise rippled over everything with tiny blue flashes, increasing in power by the second.
“No, no, not Moloch,” Kolmek said, looking much calmer than I felt. “The Savior lets Moloch thin the herd every year.”
“It’s Leviathan,” Mario continued grimly, “the beast from the waters. The smell of blood is drawing it from the depths of the ocean. We picked up the first blips on radar a few minutes ago. When it gets here, it won’t stop until everything is rubble. It will kill every single person on the Island.”
“All security personnel must report to the south beach immediately,” a cool robotic voice cried out over hidden loudspeakers all over the Island. The screaming from the auditorium had quieted behind me. I was afraid to look inside.
“There it is,” Kolmek said, his head jerking up as the emergency alert read. He motioned for me to follow. “It’s time to fight.”
***
We sprinted over curving trails of smooth logs between deathly quiet forests. All the insects and birds had gone silent. Ahead of us, the palm trees opened up onto the Pacific Ocean. But it was no longer a beautiful tropical blue. A black, swirling whirlpool like an ulcerous wound had opened up on its surface. It stretched hundreds of feet across, drawing closer to the shore by the second. Dead fish, sharks, dolphins, squids and even whales spun in the filthy, dark water.
Twenty black-clad security agents waited for the three of us on the beach, their eyes wide, their faces pale with terror. Like myself, they all had AR-15s and Glock 22s with extra magazines for both. I guess the Glock might be useful for blowing my brains out as a last resort if some beast from Hell rose out of the simmering waters, but I didn’t think it would stop anything from another dimension.
The clouds swirled overhead in a thick curtain as black as smoke. Flashes of blue lightning detonated every couple seconds. Mario raised his hands, screaming over the roaring of the wind. Kolmek stood by my side, his face grim and eyes narrowed.
“Your job is to fight off anything that tries to get on the Island,” he said, looking from one face to another with rapt attention. “Nothing can stand against high-caliber rifle fire. Shoot at the face and eyes when it comes up. We’ve dealt with creatures like this before, and they will retreat if you injure them badly enough.” I had the sense of being fed a line of bullshit as my mind processed this.
“What exactly is coming up?” one of the doe-eyed security men asked. He barely looked old enough to drink, a young, muscular hulk with a Marine Corps tattoo on his neck.
“They call it Leviathan,” Mario responded. “Sometimes the rituals here and the smell of blood can draw… strange things. Leviathan is one of those. We have encountered it before. The most important thing to remember is…” His voice was suddenly drowned out by a terrible cacophony that came from the center of the black whirlpool.
A screech like the detonation of a nuclear missile shook the ground. The ocean jumped and bubbled frantically. The beach heaved and cracked, the white sands disappearing in fissures that opened up like greedy mouths underneath my feet. I lost my balance, falling forwards. The screeching continued rising into a primal roar.
A green dragon head the color of an infected wound erupted from the surface of the thrashing water, rising up dozens of feet in the air. It had two enormous slitted eyes that dilated and constricted quickly as it glowered down at us. The screeching abruptly stopped, the pointed mouth of the dragon slamming shut with a sound like a gunshot.
Within moments, another cancerous green head shot up in a blur, its skin looking as hard as stone. Ridges that looked as sharp as swords ran the length of its reptilian skull, arcing over its eyes and pointed snout. More heads erupted from the ocean until all seven heads of Leviathan loomed over us.
Not one of us fired. No one even seemed to breathe as we surveyed the beast across the no-man’s land of the white sands. The slitted eyes and yellow irises of the seven heads had a demonic hunger, a reptilian coldness. Far behind us, I heard distant screams still echoing from the auditorium where Moloch held sway.
“Fire!” Mario cried. Instantly, a cacophony of gunshots exploded all around me. I jumped up on my feet, scrambling up as the seven-headed dragon leapt forward. Thousands of gallons of saltwater streamed down its massive body as it came up on the beach. Long, black paws with bone-white talons shot out of the surging ocean, followed by a tapering tail like that of a water snake.
I brought the rifle up and emptied my magazine as fast as I could, pulling the trigger over and over as I aimed at the many slitted eyes of Leviathan. But the bullets seemed to ping harmlessly off of its hard, obsidian-like scales.
It scrabbled onto the shore, the heads coming down in a blur. Rows and rows of vampiric fangs gleamed dully in each of the mouths. One security agent was bitten in half, the spurting stump of his lower body still standing for a long moment even as the rest of the body disappeared down the throat of the dragon.
Mario ran forwards, slamming another magazine in his rifle and opening fire point-blank. One of the heads came down in a blur towards him. Its great, staring eyes exploded in a shower of blue blood and thick vitreous fluid. The dragon head pulled back, its mouth opening in a primal scream of agony.
As I reloaded, I scanned the area around me, realizing that nearly half of the security agents were either dead or critically injured. I backpedaled away, keeping my eyes on the dragon. It continuously drew forward, killing more of its enemies with every step. I turned and ran into the forest, the sounds of shattering bones and dying men ringing through the air with a sickening clarity behind me.
Once I had reached the border of the trail, I heard Mario yell, “Retreat!” behind me. But by that point, it was far too late.
***
“Hey! Wait up!” a voice whispered from behind me. I turned my head, seeing Kolmek. Spatters of drying blood covered his face and uniform. As far as I could tell, none of it was his. “Mario’s dead. They’re all dead. We need to get out of here. We need to get off the Island.”
“How?” I asked.
“Find the Savior,” he answered, panting and out of breath. “We must find him. He can get us out of here.”
“I don’t even know what the guy looks like,” I muttered. “He was wearing a goat mask.”
“You’ll know him when you see him,” Kolmek said. “His body is covered in scars. Everything except his face. Stay close to me. We need to watch each other’s backs. It’s our only chance of survival.”
***
A trail of twisted, broken bodies led from the mansion to the surrounding trails and beaches. A decapitated woman with solid gold necklaces embedded with diamonds lay in front of me. It was strange on the Island, the way oblivion and ineffable wealth coexisted side by side. But everything was deathly silent, even in the mansion’s auditorium.
“Where’s the Savior?” I asked through gritted teeth. I peeked my head into the auditorium, but nothing moved. Hundreds of smashed and bloody bodies littered the floor.
“He’s around somewhere,” Kolmek answered. We started circling the mansion, looking for any signs of life. Kolmek went in the lead. As he turned the corner, an enormous black hand with sharp claws of fingers flitted forward in a blur, wrapping itself around his chest. Kolmek gave a strangled cry as it closed around him. I heard his bones crush as a spout of blood and gore flew from his mouth and nose, as if he were a toothpaste tube being squeezed.
I backpedaled away as Moloch threw the twitching corpse aside like a discarded toy. It smashed into the wall of the mansion, exploding wetly. A human-shaped, bloody stain languidly dripped down the wall above Kolmek’s mangled body.
Moloch slowly turned his head towards me, the fiery eyes flashing with hunger. He gnashed his fangs together, taking a step forward with a leg the size and shape of a tree trunk. With every step he took, I felt the ground tremble.
“Stop!” I cried, moving away from the monstrous creature. “Why are you doing this?”
“There is no why,” he gurgled, his voice monstrous and inhumanly slow. “There is only power. The weak deserve to die. Only the strong are worthy of life.” I raised my rifle in a last-ditch effort to save myself. Moloch saw it and started running towards me, every footstep crushing the paved walkway around the mansion into rubble and dust.
I aimed for his eyes and nose, emptying the entire magazine as quickly as I could. The bullets smashed into Moloch’s face. Dark red, clotted blood dripped out of the wounds, writhing with maggots. Drops of it fell around me, landing on my hair and face. I felt the small larvae twisting all over my skin. Moloch’s blood smelled nauseating, like some combination of stinkbugs and rotting bodies. He slowed, giving a roar of pain. I turned to run in the opposite direction, but as I looked out in the direction of the beach, my heart dropped.
Leviathan was moving in our direction, the giant dragon heads looming over the trees. Quickly, it swept towards me like a dark wind.
***
“You will suffer for that, worthless slave,” Moloch growled, wiping blood from his fiery eyes with his sharp talons of fingers. A sudden idea came to me. I ran in the direction of Leviathan. Moloch followed closely at my heels, only a few steps behind me.
Leviathan slithered forward over the sands and trees, its enormous body undulating like a water snake’s. I screamed at it, an incomprehensible wail of terror. Its seven heads snapped towards me. Its slitted eyes widened as it saw Moloch.
I heard the crashing of Moloch’s footsteps stop behind me, only feet away from crushing me into a paste. His massive lungs breathed quickly, exhaling the odor of sulfur and smoke.
“Leviathan,” Moloch growled in his demonic voice. “These are my tributes.” Leviathan’s dragon heads looked straight up at the Sun and screamed in response, their many voices rising and falling in a dissonant wail. As I sprinted into the trees, Leviathan and Moloch ran at each other, colliding with an ear-splitting crash. I glanced back, seeing Moloch ripping one of the dragon heads off its neck with his sharp fingers. The head screamed as blue blood exploded from the spurting stump. After a long moment, the neck fell limply forward.
The other dragon heads bit Moloch in a unified attack. They ripped deep holes in his shoulders and arms, snapping over and over like rabid dogs. As the two eldritch monstrosities attacked each other in fierce combat, I lost sight of them, but the sounds of fighting echoed over the entire island, crashing like lightning.
***
I felt like the survivor of an Apocalypse. I couldn’t find a single other living person on the Island. Hundreds of crushed, broken and decapitated bodies surrounded me. Over the cacophony of fighting, I heard a new noise: the whirring of helicopter blades nearby. It was coming from the other side of the mansion.
Frantically, I sprinted around the other side, seeing a Black Hawk helicopter getting ready to leave. A man in black robes sat at the pilot’s seat, his green eyes gleaming and a wide smile plastered across his face. I smashed my fist into the door over and over until he opened it.
“Holy shit, you’re still alive?” he asked. I hadn’t seen this man before. He had a face like a Calvin Klein model, all sharp angles and high cheekbones, perfectly proportioned in every way. But his scalp looked melted and scarred, as if someone had thrown gasoline on his hair and ignited it. His ears were stunted, twisted growths of scar tissue. His hands, too, were covered in deep, folding burn scars.
“Are you the Savior?” I responded quickly. “Please, get me out of here.”
“They do call me that,” he said wistfully. “The Savior. Yes, I guess I am. Get in.”
***
The Savior stared at me with his strange green eyes, the color of swamps where monstrous things swam under the surface.
“Some people just need to learn the hard way,” he said. The helicopter took off into a dark night covered with bright, twinkling stars. “There is no great power without great responsibility, after all. Those of us who seek the ancient ones know it comes with a cost.” I just stared out the window, gazing down at the countless mutilated, broken bodies that littered the beach.
Below us, the face of a bull stared up with eyes of fiery cyclones. The broken, still body of Leviathan lay at his feet. As we made it over the great waters of the Pacific Ocean, the bull-god raised a hand and waved. At that moment, I thought I could almost see a hurricane of translucent souls circling around him, spiraling up into the sky.

After high school, having no better ideas, I joined the Navy SEALs. I never really liked any of it, but it was a job, after all. I loved the guns and airplanes and grenades, but having to run all the time while some scumbag with a chip on his shoulder yells in my face isn’t my idea of fun.
Things got a lot more interesting after my term of service ended. I still had a high-security clearance, so I used it to take temporary jobs as a mercenary, a hired gun. I did some stints in Iraq with Blackwater, where they set me out in the middle of the desert. A watchtower and oil refinery loomed over the burning sands. Along with a few other guys, they told us, “Guard this area with your life.” While better than the SEALs, working for Blackwater was extremely boring. The other mercenaries and I would mostly just chainsmoke cigarettes and drink coffee all night, staring out across the dead, empty desert.
Over time, I worked my way up. Things started to get more interesting when a job offer arrived in my email one freezing cold winter’s morning. This is what it said.
“Mr. Chase,
“I am the head of security for a private group of entrepreneurs and investors. Through some mutual contacts, I have heard of your professionalism and experience. We are currently putting together a small crew to guard a private event on [REDACTED] Island out in the Pacific Ocean that will run from January 9th to January 26th. Would you be interested in this job? The pay rate is $900 a day.
“Once you are on the island, it will be impossible to leave until the period of employment has ended. If you are interested, please respond to this email as soon as possible.
“Sincerely,
“Mario Antonin, Head of Security.”
I was working piecemeal jobs like this one at the time, but none of them were paying that well. At most, I would usually get $350 to $500 a day, which was still good money when I was working seven days a week until the job finished. I instantly responded and said that yes, I was interested. In response, they sent me a non-disclosure agreement that was the size of a small novel that I had to sign.
That was how I found myself on a private jet, flying out to an island in the middle of the vast blue ocean. I was never told the coordinates of the island or saw it on a map. It was all kept very secret.
A few hours later, we landed on a private airstrip. I looked out the window of the jet, seeing the tropical waters of the Pacific Ocean stretching off to the horizon in every direction. Below me stood an island with palm trees and sandy white beaches. An enormous Victorian mansion loomed directly in the center of it all. The mansion was painted black and looked like something straight out of a horror movie. It had no windows, and the turrets spiraled into blade-like points.
That was my first inkling that something might not be quite right about this trip.
***
As the stairs from the private jet descended, I looked out on this strange new world. Employees waited to greet us, looking like beaten dogs. Some had their heads down, their eyes blankly scanning the ground. Most of them were women wearing red dresses, reminding me of stewardesses on a plane. The jet strip was surrounded by palm trees and tropical brush. The chirping of insects sounded all around us, high and resonant.
I saw a strange patch engraved on all of the employees’ uniforms and jackets. It looked almost like a stick figure drawing of a man, the bottom of its body ending in a C. Its arms were long and jointed, almost spidery. Three symbols like repeated iron crosses connected to the left side of its body in a line. I wondered if it was the logo of some company. I put it out of my mind for now, but I would see that symbol again all over the island, painted on the sides of the mansion and even cut into the trees with a knife. It would only be later that night that I realized its connection to Moloch.
“Good day, sir, and welcome to the Island,” the server on my left said with glassy eyes and a fake smile plastered across her face. They all looked up at once, but it was like the workers all looked through me rather than at me. Their eyes looked flat and dead, like the painted-on eyes of a doll.
“The Island, huh?” I asked, curious. “They wouldn’t tell me where I was going. They said it was a secret. Is that what you call it?” The woman just nodded, the doll-like smile never leaving her lips.
“Officially, this island is unnamed and uninhabited,” the woman said. “In fact, all traces of it have been scrubbed from the internet. You won’t find it on Google Maps or in any publicly available satellite imagery.” She leaned forward towards me with heavily mascaraed eyes and ruby-red lipstick slashed across her lips. “This is a very special place. Only very special people are allowed here. You should be honored to work here under our Savior.”
“I hope you’re talking about Jesus or something,” I said jokingly. She just smiled blankly and motioned me forward.
“Just follow that trail for a few hundred feet-” she said, pointing at an opening in the palm trees where logs were laid down horizontally over the muggy jungle- “and you’ll find the mansion. Good luck!” I thought it was a somewhat strange thing to say, wishing a random stranger good luck.
But, by the end of that night, I realized that simply to make it off this island alive, I would need lots of it.
***
I followed the woman’s directions to the back of the brutalist mansion. A heavy metal door stood there with a small bullet-proof window built in the top. A tanned, Spanish face glowered out at me then rapidly drew back and disappeared. A few heartbeats later, the door slid to the side with a grinding of hidden gears.
The head of security at the Island was a heavily-tattooed ex-Marine named Mario. He wore a dark Kevlar vest over a black outfit, making him look like a walking shadow. I found the security had their own private complex in the mansion as he showed me around the site. Hundreds of hidden cameras covered every angle of the mansion and the surrounding parts of the island. Dozens of black-clad security agents swarmed over the screens, checking the monitors and computers constantly.
“Quite a set-up you have here,” I said to Mario, nodding at him. He smacked me on the shoulder, giving a confident grin.
“Money is no issue here, Richard,” he responded. “Security is paramount. There are things on this island that could rip apart the world if they ever escaped.” I raised an eyebrow.
“Like what?” I asked. “Nuclear weapons or something?” He laughed at that.
“You’ll see for yourself tonight,” he said, his dark eyes flashing with something cold and alien.
***
Mario led me and a couple other new hired guns around the Island. The place was certainly strange. It reminded me of some combination of a secret black-ops site and a playboy billionaire’s private heaven. All of the doors in the mansion looked like they were made of thick steel. They had wheels that would spin, like those on a submarine door. The mansion also had no windows at all that I could see, except for the small, shatter-proof glass openings on the steel doors. I didn’t want to ask too many questions, however. I couldn’t resist asking him about a couple small things, however- or at least, they seemed small to me at the time.
“What are those hatchways?” I asked Mario, pointing to rectangular covers built into the concrete walkway. They had heavy handles. “Are those manholes or something?”
“There are tunnels under the Island,” he responded vaguely. “Just for maintenance and security, you understand.”
“Wow, this place is certainly… well-developed,” I said. We came out through a grove of palm trees. A stone walkway led down to a white beach. Dozens of yachts were moored all across the shore, some of them looking like they must have cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
“There’s a lot of money and power here,” Mario said. “That’s why it’s important you never talk about what you see here. These are the people who control the world, the ones behind the government and the media. Not the elected officials who the people see, but the actual power.”
“Like who?” I asked. “You mean the Rothschilds and Soros?” He laughed again, a sarcastic, grinding laugh that grated my nerves.
“Trust me, the truly powerful ones don’t even have public personas. If you know their name, then they’re just one of the puppets.” I just shook my head at that, then asked the real question that had been bothering me since I first arrived here.
“Who is the Savior?” I asked. “Is that some codename or something?” Mario froze in place.
“He’s the one who runs everything here,” he whispered conspiratorially, looking around nervously. “But don’t be mentioning that kind of shit. You’ll probably see him tonight anyway. He’s the one who runs the show. He’ll be on the stage in his normal outfit.”
***
By the end of the day, I was suited up like the rest of the security staff, wearing the pure black pants and shirt with the symbol of Moloch engraved over the heart. Hundreds of the world’s most famous politicians, actors, businessmen and artists had gathered, streaming in the front doors with a soft, diffident susurration.
I stood by the open doorway of a side exit with an AR-15 and full body armor, next to one other soldier. They had also given me a sidearm. Every entrance or exit was manned by at least two armed men. The security at this place was some of the most intense I had ever seen. Beyond the door, there were rows and rows of the most comfortable seats, all gathered in a semi-circle around a massive stage made of pure mahogany. Blood-red curtains stood closed at the front of the room, concealing their secrets- for now, at least.
“Hail Satan!” I heard the elites cry inside in unison. I didn’t want to look in at the rows of high-ranking politicians, celebrities, influencers and artists, but my curiosity was high. I peeked around the corner of the stone archway, seeing the red curtains on the stage drawing apart. I saw one of my favorite actors standing in the front row, clapping excitedly and jumping up and down.
The crowd cheered as a naked female strapped to an obsidian altar lay there. She was beautiful and blonde, probably no older than twenty with the face of a supermodel. Her mouth was gagged, her arms outstretched like Jesus on the cross. Thin leather cords were tied around her wrists and ankles, biting deeply into the skin. Her eyes rolled wildly as she shook her head from side to side. She froze, and her eyes met mine for a brief moment. I saw the pleading expression there, the mortal terror and absolute horror.
A man in a goat mask wearing black robes slunk out from the side of the stage, carrying a wavy silver dagger engraved with strange symbols. The crowd erupted into a primal roar of pleasure and excitement that sounded like it came from one monstrous mouth.
“Worthy is the Lamb!” the man in the goat mask screamed with electronic amplification. He had a deep voice, as if he had rocks rolling around in his throat. The crowd roared and clapped. Scattered cries of “Hail Lucifer!” and “Ave Satanas!” echoed down the massive auditorium.
“Hey, pay attention,” the other security agent at my side said in a thick Finnish accent. He was a tall Scandinavian-looking guy named Kolmek. “You’re not getting paid to watch the show, new guy.” I tried to rip my gaze away from the stage, but it held my attention with an obsessive horror.
“The burnt bones of children and women have been offered to the ancient ones, to Moloch,” the man on the stage cried. “Under our feet, the burnt bodies of hundreds lay dreaming. This victim will be the 666th. Her blood will bring about the Gnosis that we seek, the direct experience of the divine held by the gods, by Lucifer and Moloch and Baal…” The roaring of the crowd temporarily drowned out his electronically-magnified voice. “Tonight, we will rip open the veil!”
I had stopped watching the show, instead staring blankly out at the beach and palm trees. At that moment, another black-clad security agent came up to my partner, whispered something in his ear, then immediately disappeared, heading off back in the direction of the main security office. Kolmek shook his head grimly.
“I’ll be right back,” he said. “Stay right here. Don’t move from this door no matter what. And pay attention.” I nodded and watched as he walked off in the same direction.
I immediately took the opportunity to continue watching the ceremony. I had missed something important, apparently. The woman now laid dead on the sacrificial table, a gaping hole in her chest. Blood spurted from the crater as the man in the goat mask held her beating heart grasped tightly in his hand, letting the blood stream down his naked fingers. The crowd cheered with a rising bloodlust and insanity. Most of them were standing, their eyes gleaming and wide with fanatical adoration. The entire spectacle reminded me of some kind of ancient Aztec ritual.
As the woman’s sightless eyes stared vacantly up in death, the man in a goat mask pulled out a can of gasoline. The clear liquid gurgled as he up-ended the canister over her pale, bloodless face, over her naked stomach and long legs. A moment later, he lit a match and dropped it. I heard the whooshing of the flames as they rose up.
The crowd went deathly silent as they watched the rippling flames. The man in the goat mask began chanting in some strange language I had never heard before. It sounded Semitic, but I knew it wasn’t Arabic or Hebrew. I felt something like electricity ripple through the air, almost like a feeling of falling pressure before a storm. I looked down at the hairs on my arms, seeing them rise up. I looked back up at the stage, and my eyes widened in horror.
The flaming body of the sacrificial victim had started to morph before my eyes and the eyes of the crowd. The dripping, blackening flesh jumped up and down, as if there were rats trapped in her body trying to escape the fire. There was a deafening hissing as if thousands of snakes were being burned alive.
The dead woman’s arms jerked up, the skin splitting open as if she had seams running along her skin. Something dark and muscular with curving, black talons ripped its way out of the dead, burning flesh. Behind it, a head appeared with long, curving horns and eyes that spun with whorls of fire. It looked like the offspring of a bull and a demon. Its imposing body rose up from the inferno, appearing like magic from the solid stone. It raised itself to its full height, looming over the crowd. The last of the woman’s blood hissed and boiled away, her flesh dissolving into ashes.
“Behold, Moloch rises!” the man in the goat mask screamed in a fanatical voice. The crowd’s cheering had stopped, though. Many of the faces in the crowd looked chalk-white with terror. The bull-god surveyed the crowd, its horns nearly scraping the ceiling twenty feet above the stage.
At that moment, I knew death was on its way with eyes of fire and a grin like a skull, ready to reap a field of human bodies.
***
I heard running behind me, but I didn’t dare turn away from the horrific sight in front of me. The last of the fire’s embers died, sending up thin wisps of gray smoke that spiraled around the bull-god’s monstrous face. Moloch stood as still as a statue, and if it weren’t for one thing, I might’ve thought it was some sort of sculpture or art project. He had two nostrils like a serpent’s. As his great lungs inhaled, the smoke billowed in and out of his mouth and nose.
Some of the people at the edges of the crowd had gotten up, hurrying towards the doors. Moloch’s head ratcheted to face them, his fiery eyes narrowing into slits.
“Do not leave!” the man in the goat mask pleaded. “Those who have fear are not worthy of life. Do not prove yourselves unworthy of life!” As the first of the fleeing men and women got to within a few steps of the door, Moloch gave a primal roar. In a blur of primal strength, he reached down and ripped the blackened sacrificial altar off the stage. It ripped from the wooden stage with a tremendous crack like a bullwhip. He hurled the heavy mass of stone at those heading towards the opposite exit from the one I guarded.
I watched it curve through the air. The people started screaming and clawing to escape as it smashed down on their heads with a grating crash. I could feel the floor shake from where I stood outside. Blood exploded from their smashed bodies. I saw arms and legs jerking and seizing under the heavy stone, but within a few moments, they slowed and then stopped.
Others were running towards the door I guarded, but Moloch leapt off the stage in a blur. In a few bounding steps, he reached the pale, terrified faces on the other side of the threshold. His massive clawed hand came down. I heard bones shatter as blood sprayed my face and the wall. Bone splinters and pieces of brain exploded from the screaming bodies. I backpedaled, wiping at my eyes, trying to get the blood off so I could see. No one had told me what to do in this situation. I didn’t know if I was supposed to shoot that massive abomination, or if this was all just part of the show.
“Richard!” a familiar voice cried from behind me. Panic oozed from every word. I spun, seeing Mario and Kolmek standing side by side, their pupils dilated and expressions grim.
“We have a major problem.” It was Mario. I recognized that voice, the one that sounded as if he had been gargling with rocks.
“I know,” I said, holding my rifle tightly. I pointed behind me at the scene of rampant death and destruction.
I had seen bloodshed and war before, but this was different. The Island itself seemed to feel it. The wind, which had been calm when I first landed, now whipped the Island in fast, circular currents. The breeze smelled of burnt matches and coppery blood. The static electricity which had caused the hairs on my arms to rise rippled over everything with tiny blue flashes, increasing in power by the second.
“No, no, not Moloch,” Kolmek said, looking much calmer than I felt. “The Savior lets Moloch thin the herd every year.”
“It’s Leviathan,” Mario continued grimly, “the beast from the waters. The smell of blood is drawing it from the depths of the ocean. We picked up the first blips on radar a few minutes ago. When it gets here, it won’t stop until everything is rubble. It will kill every single person on the Island.”
“All security personnel must report to the south beach immediately,” a cool robotic voice cried out over hidden loudspeakers all over the Island. The screaming from the auditorium had quieted behind me. I was afraid to look inside.
“There it is,” Kolmek said, his head jerking up as the emergency alert read. He motioned for me to follow. “It’s time to fight.”
***
We sprinted over curving trails of smooth logs between deathly quiet forests. All the insects and birds had gone silent. Ahead of us, the palm trees opened up onto the Pacific Ocean. But it was no longer a beautiful tropical blue. A black, swirling whirlpool like an ulcerous wound had opened up on its surface. It stretched hundreds of feet across, drawing closer to the shore by the second. Dead fish, sharks, dolphins, squids and even whales spun in the filthy, dark water.
Twenty black-clad security agents waited for the three of us on the beach, their eyes wide, their faces pale with terror. Like myself, they all had AR-15s and Glock 22s with extra magazines for both. I guess the Glock might be useful for blowing my brains out as a last resort if some beast from Hell rose out of the simmering waters, but I didn’t think it would stop anything from another dimension.
The clouds swirled overhead in a thick curtain as black as smoke. Flashes of blue lightning detonated every couple seconds. Mario raised his hands, screaming over the roaring of the wind. Kolmek stood by my side, his face grim and eyes narrowed.
“Your job is to fight off anything that tries to get on the Island,” he said, looking from one face to another with rapt attention. “Nothing can stand against high-caliber rifle fire. Shoot at the face and eyes when it comes up. We’ve dealt with creatures like this before, and they will retreat if you injure them badly enough.” I had the sense of being fed a line of bullshit as my mind processed this.
“What exactly is coming up?” one of the doe-eyed security men asked. He barely looked old enough to drink, a young, muscular hulk with a Marine Corps tattoo on his neck.
“They call it Leviathan,” Mario responded. “Sometimes the rituals here and the smell of blood can draw… strange things. Leviathan is one of those. We have encountered it before. The most important thing to remember is…” His voice was suddenly drowned out by a terrible cacophony that came from the center of the black whirlpool.
A screech like the detonation of a nuclear missile shook the ground. The ocean jumped and bubbled frantically. The beach heaved and cracked, the white sands disappearing in fissures that opened up like greedy mouths underneath my feet. I lost my balance, falling forwards. The screeching continued rising into a primal roar.
A green dragon head the color of an infected wound erupted from the surface of the thrashing water, rising up dozens of feet in the air. It had two enormous slitted eyes that dilated and constricted quickly as it glowered down at us. The screeching abruptly stopped, the pointed mouth of the dragon slamming shut with a sound like a gunshot.
Within moments, another cancerous green head shot up in a blur, its skin looking as hard as stone. Ridges that looked as sharp as swords ran the length of its reptilian skull, arcing over its eyes and pointed snout. More heads erupted from the ocean until all seven heads of Leviathan loomed over us.
Not one of us fired. No one even seemed to breathe as we surveyed the beast across the no-man’s land of the white sands. The slitted eyes and yellow irises of the seven heads had a demonic hunger, a reptilian coldness. Far behind us, I heard distant screams still echoing from the auditorium where Moloch held sway.
“Fire!” Mario cried. Instantly, a cacophony of gunshots exploded all around me. I jumped up on my feet, scrambling up as the seven-headed dragon leapt forward. Thousands of gallons of saltwater streamed down its massive body as it came up on the beach. Long, black paws with bone-white talons shot out of the surging ocean, followed by a tapering tail like that of a water snake.
I brought the rifle up and emptied my magazine as fast as I could, pulling the trigger over and over as I aimed at the many slitted eyes of Leviathan. But the bullets seemed to ping harmlessly off of its hard, obsidian-like scales.
It scrabbled onto the shore, the heads coming down in a blur. Rows and rows of vampiric fangs gleamed dully in each of the mouths. One security agent was bitten in half, the spurting stump of his lower body still standing for a long moment even as the rest of the body disappeared down the throat of the dragon.
Mario ran forwards, slamming another magazine in his rifle and opening fire point-blank. One of the heads came down in a blur towards him. Its great, staring eyes exploded in a shower of blue blood and thick vitreous fluid. The dragon head pulled back, its mouth opening in a primal scream of agony.
As I reloaded, I scanned the area around me, realizing that nearly half of the security agents were either dead or critically injured. I backpedaled away, keeping my eyes on the dragon. It continuously drew forward, killing more of its enemies with every step. I turned and ran into the forest, the sounds of shattering bones and dying men ringing through the air with a sickening clarity behind me.
Once I had reached the border of the trail, I heard Mario yell, “Retreat!” behind me. But by that point, it was far too late.
***
“Hey! Wait up!” a voice whispered from behind me. I turned my head, seeing Kolmek. Spatters of drying blood covered his face and uniform. As far as I could tell, none of it was his. “Mario’s dead. They’re all dead. We need to get out of here. We need to get off the Island.”
“How?” I asked.
“Find the Savior,” he answered, panting and out of breath. “We must find him. He can get us out of here.”
“I don’t even know what the guy looks like,” I muttered. “He was wearing a goat mask.”
“You’ll know him when you see him,” Kolmek said. “His body is covered in scars. Everything except his face. Stay close to me. We need to watch each other’s backs. It’s our only chance of survival.”
***
A trail of twisted, broken bodies led from the mansion to the surrounding trails and beaches. A decapitated woman with solid gold necklaces embedded with diamonds lay in front of me. It was strange on the Island, the way oblivion and ineffable wealth coexisted side by side. But everything was deathly silent, even in the mansion’s auditorium.
“Where’s the Savior?” I asked through gritted teeth. I peeked my head into the auditorium, but nothing moved. Hundreds of smashed and bloody bodies littered the floor.
“He’s around somewhere,” Kolmek answered. We started circling the mansion, looking for any signs of life. Kolmek went in the lead. As he turned the corner, an enormous black hand with sharp claws of fingers flitted forward in a blur, wrapping itself around his chest. Kolmek gave a strangled cry as it closed around him. I heard his bones crush as a spout of blood and gore flew from his mouth and nose, as if he were a toothpaste tube being squeezed.
I backpedaled away as Moloch threw the twitching corpse aside like a discarded toy. It smashed into the wall of the mansion, exploding wetly. A human-shaped, bloody stain languidly dripped down the wall above Kolmek’s mangled body.
Moloch slowly turned his head towards me, the fiery eyes flashing with hunger. He gnashed his fangs together, taking a step forward with a leg the size and shape of a tree trunk. With every step he took, I felt the ground tremble.
“Stop!” I cried, moving away from the monstrous creature. “Why are you doing this?”
“There is no why,” he gurgled, his voice monstrous and inhumanly slow. “There is only power. The weak deserve to die. Only the strong are worthy of life.” I raised my rifle in a last-ditch effort to save myself. Moloch saw it and started running towards me, every footstep crushing the paved walkway around the mansion into rubble and dust.
I aimed for his eyes and nose, emptying the entire magazine as quickly as I could. The bullets smashed into Moloch’s face. Dark red, clotted blood dripped out of the wounds, writhing with maggots. Drops of it fell around me, landing on my hair and face. I felt the small larvae twisting all over my skin. Moloch’s blood smelled nauseating, like some combination of stinkbugs and rotting bodies. He slowed, giving a roar of pain. I turned to run in the opposite direction, but as I looked out in the direction of the beach, my heart dropped.
Leviathan was moving in our direction, the giant dragon heads looming over the trees. Quickly, it swept towards me like a dark wind.
***
“You will suffer for that, worthless slave,” Moloch growled, wiping blood from his fiery eyes with his sharp talons of fingers. A sudden idea came to me. I ran in the direction of Leviathan. Moloch followed closely at my heels, only a few steps behind me.
Leviathan slithered forward over the sands and trees, its enormous body undulating like a water snake’s. I screamed at it, an incomprehensible wail of terror. Its seven heads snapped towards me. Its slitted eyes widened as it saw Moloch.
I heard the crashing of Moloch’s footsteps stop behind me, only feet away from crushing me into a paste. His massive lungs breathed quickly, exhaling the odor of sulfur and smoke.
“Leviathan,” Moloch growled in his demonic voice. “These are my tributes.” Leviathan’s dragon heads looked straight up at the Sun and screamed in response, their many voices rising and falling in a dissonant wail. As I sprinted into the trees, Leviathan and Moloch ran at each other, colliding with an ear-splitting crash. I glanced back, seeing Moloch ripping one of the dragon heads off its neck with his sharp fingers. The head screamed as blue blood exploded from the spurting stump. After a long moment, the neck fell limply forward.
The other dragon heads bit Moloch in a unified attack. They ripped deep holes in his shoulders and arms, snapping over and over like rabid dogs. As the two eldritch monstrosities attacked each other in fierce combat, I lost sight of them, but the sounds of fighting echoed over the entire island, crashing like lightning.
***
I felt like the survivor of an Apocalypse. I couldn’t find a single other living person on the Island. Hundreds of crushed, broken and decapitated bodies surrounded me. Over the cacophony of fighting, I heard a new noise: the whirring of helicopter blades nearby. It was coming from the other side of the mansion.
Frantically, I sprinted around the other side, seeing a Black Hawk helicopter getting ready to leave. A man in black robes sat at the pilot’s seat, his green eyes gleaming and a wide smile plastered across his face. I smashed my fist into the door over and over until he opened it.
“Holy shit, you’re still alive?” he asked. I hadn’t seen this man before. He had a face like a Calvin Klein model, all sharp angles and high cheekbones, perfectly proportioned in every way. But his scalp looked melted and scarred, as if someone had thrown gasoline on his hair and ignited it. His ears were stunted, twisted growths of scar tissue. His hands, too, were covered in deep, folding burn scars.
“Are you the Savior?” I responded quickly. “Please, get me out of here.”
“They do call me that,” he said wistfully. “The Savior. Yes, I guess I am. Get in.”
***
The Savior stared at me with his strange green eyes, the color of swamps where monstrous things swam under the surface.
“Some people just need to learn the hard way,” he said. The helicopter took off into a dark night covered with bright, twinkling stars. “There is no great power without great responsibility, after all. Those of us who seek the ancient ones know it comes with a cost.” I just stared out the window, gazing down at the countless mutilated, broken bodies that littered the beach.
Below us, the face of a bull stared up with eyes of fiery cyclones. The broken, still body of Leviathan lay at his feet. As we made it over the great waters of the Pacific Ocean, the bull-god raised a hand and waved. At that moment, I thought I could almost see a hurricane of translucent souls circling around him, spiraling up into the sky.

After high school, having no better ideas, I joined the Navy SEALs. I never really liked any of it, but it was a job, after all. I loved the guns and airplanes and grenades, but having to run all the time while some scumbag with a chip on his shoulder yells in my face isn’t my idea of fun.
Things got a lot more interesting after my term of service ended. I still had a high-security clearance, so I used it to take temporary jobs as a mercenary, a hired gun. I did some stints in Iraq with Blackwater, where they set me out in the middle of the desert. A watchtower and oil refinery loomed over the burning sands. Along with a few other guys, they told us, “Guard this area with your life.” While better than the SEALs, working for Blackwater was extremely boring. The other mercenaries and I would mostly just chainsmoke cigarettes and drink coffee all night, staring out across the dead, empty desert.
Over time, I worked my way up. Things started to get more interesting when a job offer arrived in my email one freezing cold winter’s morning. This is what it said.
“Mr. Chase,
“I am the head of security for a private group of entrepreneurs and investors. Through some mutual contacts, I have heard of your professionalism and experience. We are currently putting together a small crew to guard a private event on [REDACTED] Island out in the Pacific Ocean that will run from January 9th to January 26th. Would you be interested in this job? The pay rate is $900 a day.
“Once you are on the island, it will be impossible to leave until the period of employment has ended. If you are interested, please respond to this email as soon as possible.
“Sincerely,
“Mario Antonin, Head of Security.”
I was working piecemeal jobs like this one at the time, but none of them were paying that well. At most, I would usually get $350 to $500 a day, which was still good money when I was working seven days a week until the job finished. I instantly responded and said that yes, I was interested. In response, they sent me a non-disclosure agreement that was the size of a small novel that I had to sign.
That was how I found myself on a private jet, flying out to an island in the middle of the vast blue ocean. I was never told the coordinates of the island or saw it on a map. It was all kept very secret.
A few hours later, we landed on a private airstrip. I looked out the window of the jet, seeing the tropical waters of the Pacific Ocean stretching off to the horizon in every direction. Below me stood an island with palm trees and sandy white beaches. An enormous Victorian mansion loomed directly in the center of it all. The mansion was painted black and looked like something straight out of a horror movie. It had no windows, and the turrets spiraled into blade-like points.
That was my first inkling that something might not be quite right about this trip.
***
As the stairs from the private jet descended, I looked out on this strange new world. Employees waited to greet us, looking like beaten dogs. Some had their heads down, their eyes blankly scanning the ground. Most of them were women wearing red dresses, reminding me of stewardesses on a plane. The jet strip was surrounded by palm trees and tropical brush. The chirping of insects sounded all around us, high and resonant.
I saw a strange patch engraved on all of the employees’ uniforms and jackets. It looked almost like a stick figure drawing of a man, the bottom of its body ending in a C. Its arms were long and jointed, almost spidery. Three symbols like repeated iron crosses connected to the left side of its body in a line. I wondered if it was the logo of some company. I put it out of my mind for now, but I would see that symbol again all over the island, painted on the sides of the mansion and even cut into the trees with a knife. It would only be later that night that I realized its connection to Moloch.
“Good day, sir, and welcome to the Island,” the server on my left said with glassy eyes and a fake smile plastered across her face. They all looked up at once, but it was like the workers all looked through me rather than at me. Their eyes looked flat and dead, like the painted-on eyes of a doll.
“The Island, huh?” I asked, curious. “They wouldn’t tell me where I was going. They said it was a secret. Is that what you call it?” The woman just nodded, the doll-like smile never leaving her lips.
“Officially, this island is unnamed and uninhabited,” the woman said. “In fact, all traces of it have been scrubbed from the internet. You won’t find it on Google Maps or in any publicly available satellite imagery.” She leaned forward towards me with heavily mascaraed eyes and ruby-red lipstick slashed across her lips. “This is a very special place. Only very special people are allowed here. You should be honored to work here under our Savior.”
“I hope you’re talking about Jesus or something,” I said jokingly. She just smiled blankly and motioned me forward.
“Just follow that trail for a few hundred feet-” she said, pointing at an opening in the palm trees where logs were laid down horizontally over the muggy jungle- “and you’ll find the mansion. Good luck!” I thought it was a somewhat strange thing to say, wishing a random stranger good luck.
But, by the end of that night, I realized that simply to make it off this island alive, I would need lots of it.
***
I followed the woman’s directions to the back of the brutalist mansion. A heavy metal door stood there with a small bullet-proof window built in the top. A tanned, Spanish face glowered out at me then rapidly drew back and disappeared. A few heartbeats later, the door slid to the side with a grinding of hidden gears.
The head of security at the Island was a heavily-tattooed ex-Marine named Mario. He wore a dark Kevlar vest over a black outfit, making him look like a walking shadow. I found the security had their own private complex in the mansion as he showed me around the site. Hundreds of hidden cameras covered every angle of the mansion and the surrounding parts of the island. Dozens of black-clad security agents swarmed over the screens, checking the monitors and computers constantly.
“Quite a set-up you have here,” I said to Mario, nodding at him. He smacked me on the shoulder, giving a confident grin.
“Money is no issue here, Richard,” he responded. “Security is paramount. There are things on this island that could rip apart the world if they ever escaped.” I raised an eyebrow.
“Like what?” I asked. “Nuclear weapons or something?” He laughed at that.
“You’ll see for yourself tonight,” he said, his dark eyes flashing with something cold and alien.
***
Mario led me and a couple other new hired guns around the Island. The place was certainly strange. It reminded me of some combination of a secret black-ops site and a playboy billionaire’s private heaven. All of the doors in the mansion looked like they were made of thick steel. They had wheels that would spin, like those on a submarine door. The mansion also had no windows at all that I could see, except for the small, shatter-proof glass openings on the steel doors. I didn’t want to ask too many questions, however. I couldn’t resist asking him about a couple small things, however- or at least, they seemed small to me at the time.
“What are those hatchways?” I asked Mario, pointing to rectangular covers built into the concrete walkway. They had heavy handles. “Are those manholes or something?”
“There are tunnels under the Island,” he responded vaguely. “Just for maintenance and security, you understand.”
“Wow, this place is certainly… well-developed,” I said. We came out through a grove of palm trees. A stone walkway led down to a white beach. Dozens of yachts were moored all across the shore, some of them looking like they must have cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
“There’s a lot of money and power here,” Mario said. “That’s why it’s important you never talk about what you see here. These are the people who control the world, the ones behind the government and the media. Not the elected officials who the people see, but the actual power.”
“Like who?” I asked. “You mean the Rothschilds and Soros?” He laughed again, a sarcastic, grinding laugh that grated my nerves.
“Trust me, the truly powerful ones don’t even have public personas. If you know their name, then they’re just one of the puppets.” I just shook my head at that, then asked the real question that had been bothering me since I first arrived here.
“Who is the Savior?” I asked. “Is that some codename or something?” Mario froze in place.
“He’s the one who runs everything here,” he whispered conspiratorially, looking around nervously. “But don’t be mentioning that kind of shit. You’ll probably see him tonight anyway. He’s the one who runs the show. He’ll be on the stage in his normal outfit.”
***
By the end of the day, I was suited up like the rest of the security staff, wearing the pure black pants and shirt with the symbol of Moloch engraved over the heart. Hundreds of the world’s most famous politicians, actors, businessmen and artists had gathered, streaming in the front doors with a soft, diffident susurration.
I stood by the open doorway of a side exit with an AR-15 and full body armor, next to one other soldier. They had also given me a sidearm. Every entrance or exit was manned by at least two armed men. The security at this place was some of the most intense I had ever seen. Beyond the door, there were rows and rows of the most comfortable seats, all gathered in a semi-circle around a massive stage made of pure mahogany. Blood-red curtains stood closed at the front of the room, concealing their secrets- for now, at least.
“Hail Satan!” I heard the elites cry inside in unison. I didn’t want to look in at the rows of high-ranking politicians, celebrities, influencers and artists, but my curiosity was high. I peeked around the corner of the stone archway, seeing the red curtains on the stage drawing apart. I saw one of my favorite actors standing in the front row, clapping excitedly and jumping up and down.
The crowd cheered as a naked female strapped to an obsidian altar lay there. She was beautiful and blonde, probably no older than twenty with the face of a supermodel. Her mouth was gagged, her arms outstretched like Jesus on the cross. Thin leather cords were tied around her wrists and ankles, biting deeply into the skin. Her eyes rolled wildly as she shook her head from side to side. She froze, and her eyes met mine for a brief moment. I saw the pleading expression there, the mortal terror and absolute horror.
A man in a goat mask wearing black robes slunk out from the side of the stage, carrying a wavy silver dagger engraved with strange symbols. The crowd erupted into a primal roar of pleasure and excitement that sounded like it came from one monstrous mouth.
“Worthy is the Lamb!” the man in the goat mask screamed with electronic amplification. He had a deep voice, as if he had rocks rolling around in his throat. The crowd roared and clapped. Scattered cries of “Hail Lucifer!” and “Ave Satanas!” echoed down the massive auditorium.
“Hey, pay attention,” the other security agent at my side said in a thick Finnish accent. He was a tall Scandinavian-looking guy named Kolmek. “You’re not getting paid to watch the show, new guy.” I tried to rip my gaze away from the stage, but it held my attention with an obsessive horror.
“The burnt bones of children and women have been offered to the ancient ones, to Moloch,” the man on the stage cried. “Under our feet, the burnt bodies of hundreds lay dreaming. This victim will be the 666th. Her blood will bring about the Gnosis that we seek, the direct experience of the divine held by the gods, by Lucifer and Moloch and Baal…” The roaring of the crowd temporarily drowned out his electronically-magnified voice. “Tonight, we will rip open the veil!”
I had stopped watching the show, instead staring blankly out at the beach and palm trees. At that moment, another black-clad security agent came up to my partner, whispered something in his ear, then immediately disappeared, heading off back in the direction of the main security office. Kolmek shook his head grimly.
“I’ll be right back,” he said. “Stay right here. Don’t move from this door no matter what. And pay attention.” I nodded and watched as he walked off in the same direction.
I immediately took the opportunity to continue watching the ceremony. I had missed something important, apparently. The woman now laid dead on the sacrificial table, a gaping hole in her chest. Blood spurted from the crater as the man in the goat mask held her beating heart grasped tightly in his hand, letting the blood stream down his naked fingers. The crowd cheered with a rising bloodlust and insanity. Most of them were standing, their eyes gleaming and wide with fanatical adoration. The entire spectacle reminded me of some kind of ancient Aztec ritual.
As the woman’s sightless eyes stared vacantly up in death, the man in a goat mask pulled out a can of gasoline. The clear liquid gurgled as he up-ended the canister over her pale, bloodless face, over her naked stomach and long legs. A moment later, he lit a match and dropped it. I heard the whooshing of the flames as they rose up.
The crowd went deathly silent as they watched the rippling flames. The man in the goat mask began chanting in some strange language I had never heard before. It sounded Semitic, but I knew it wasn’t Arabic or Hebrew. I felt something like electricity ripple through the air, almost like a feeling of falling pressure before a storm. I looked down at the hairs on my arms, seeing them rise up. I looked back up at the stage, and my eyes widened in horror.
The flaming body of the sacrificial victim had started to morph before my eyes and the eyes of the crowd. The dripping, blackening flesh jumped up and down, as if there were rats trapped in her body trying to escape the fire. There was a deafening hissing as if thousands of snakes were being burned alive.
The dead woman’s arms jerked up, the skin splitting open as if she had seams running along her skin. Something dark and muscular with curving, black talons ripped its way out of the dead, burning flesh. Behind it, a head appeared with long, curving horns and eyes that spun with whorls of fire. It looked like the offspring of a bull and a demon. Its imposing body rose up from the inferno, appearing like magic from the solid stone. It raised itself to its full height, looming over the crowd. The last of the woman’s blood hissed and boiled away, her flesh dissolving into ashes.
“Behold, Moloch rises!” the man in the goat mask screamed in a fanatical voice. The crowd’s cheering had stopped, though. Many of the faces in the crowd looked chalk-white with terror. The bull-god surveyed the crowd, its horns nearly scraping the ceiling twenty feet above the stage.
At that moment, I knew death was on its way with eyes of fire and a grin like a skull, ready to reap a field of human bodies.
***
I heard running behind me, but I didn’t dare turn away from the horrific sight in front of me. The last of the fire’s embers died, sending up thin wisps of gray smoke that spiraled around the bull-god’s monstrous face. Moloch stood as still as a statue, and if it weren’t for one thing, I might’ve thought it was some sort of sculpture or art project. He had two nostrils like a serpent’s. As his great lungs inhaled, the smoke billowed in and out of his mouth and nose.
Some of the people at the edges of the crowd had gotten up, hurrying towards the doors. Moloch’s head ratcheted to face them, his fiery eyes narrowing into slits.
“Do not leave!” the man in the goat mask pleaded. “Those who have fear are not worthy of life. Do not prove yourselves unworthy of life!” As the first of the fleeing men and women got to within a few steps of the door, Moloch gave a primal roar. In a blur of primal strength, he reached down and ripped the blackened sacrificial altar off the stage. It ripped from the wooden stage with a tremendous crack like a bullwhip. He hurled the heavy mass of stone at those heading towards the opposite exit from the one I guarded.
I watched it curve through the air. The people started screaming and clawing to escape as it smashed down on their heads with a grating crash. I could feel the floor shake from where I stood outside. Blood exploded from their smashed bodies. I saw arms and legs jerking and seizing under the heavy stone, but within a few moments, they slowed and then stopped.
Others were running towards the door I guarded, but Moloch leapt off the stage in a blur. In a few bounding steps, he reached the pale, terrified faces on the other side of the threshold. His massive clawed hand came down. I heard bones shatter as blood sprayed my face and the wall. Bone splinters and pieces of brain exploded from the screaming bodies. I backpedaled, wiping at my eyes, trying to get the blood off so I could see. No one had told me what to do in this situation. I didn’t know if I was supposed to shoot that massive abomination, or if this was all just part of the show.
“Richard!” a familiar voice cried from behind me. Panic oozed from every word. I spun, seeing Mario and Kolmek standing side by side, their pupils dilated and expressions grim.
“We have a major problem.” It was Mario. I recognized that voice, the one that sounded as if he had been gargling with rocks.
“I know,” I said, holding my rifle tightly. I pointed behind me at the scene of rampant death and destruction.
I had seen bloodshed and war before, but this was different. The Island itself seemed to feel it. The wind, which had been calm when I first landed, now whipped the Island in fast, circular currents. The breeze smelled of burnt matches and coppery blood. The static electricity which had caused the hairs on my arms to rise rippled over everything with tiny blue flashes, increasing in power by the second.
“No, no, not Moloch,” Kolmek said, looking much calmer than I felt. “The Savior lets Moloch thin the herd every year.”
“It’s Leviathan,” Mario continued grimly, “the beast from the waters. The smell of blood is drawing it from the depths of the ocean. We picked up the first blips on radar a few minutes ago. When it gets here, it won’t stop until everything is rubble. It will kill every single person on the Island.”
“All security personnel must report to the south beach immediately,” a cool robotic voice cried out over hidden loudspeakers all over the Island. The screaming from the auditorium had quieted behind me. I was afraid to look inside.
“There it is,” Kolmek said, his head jerking up as the emergency alert read. He motioned for me to follow. “It’s time to fight.”
***
We sprinted over curving trails of smooth logs between deathly quiet forests. All the insects and birds had gone silent. Ahead of us, the palm trees opened up onto the Pacific Ocean. But it was no longer a beautiful tropical blue. A black, swirling whirlpool like an ulcerous wound had opened up on its surface. It stretched hundreds of feet across, drawing closer to the shore by the second. Dead fish, sharks, dolphins, squids and even whales spun in the filthy, dark water.
Twenty black-clad security agents waited for the three of us on the beach, their eyes wide, their faces pale with terror. Like myself, they all had AR-15s and Glock 22s with extra magazines for both. I guess the Glock might be useful for blowing my brains out as a last resort if some beast from Hell rose out of the simmering waters, but I didn’t think it would stop anything from another dimension.
The clouds swirled overhead in a thick curtain as black as smoke. Flashes of blue lightning detonated every couple seconds. Mario raised his hands, screaming over the roaring of the wind. Kolmek stood by my side, his face grim and eyes narrowed.
“Your job is to fight off anything that tries to get on the Island,” he said, looking from one face to another with rapt attention. “Nothing can stand against high-caliber rifle fire. Shoot at the face and eyes when it comes up. We’ve dealt with creatures like this before, and they will retreat if you injure them badly enough.” I had the sense of being fed a line of bullshit as my mind processed this.
“What exactly is coming up?” one of the doe-eyed security men asked. He barely looked old enough to drink, a young, muscular hulk with a Marine Corps tattoo on his neck.
“They call it Leviathan,” Mario responded. “Sometimes the rituals here and the smell of blood can draw… strange things. Leviathan is one of those. We have encountered it before. The most important thing to remember is…” His voice was suddenly drowned out by a terrible cacophony that came from the center of the black whirlpool.
A screech like the detonation of a nuclear missile shook the ground. The ocean jumped and bubbled frantically. The beach heaved and cracked, the white sands disappearing in fissures that opened up like greedy mouths underneath my feet. I lost my balance, falling forwards. The screeching continued rising into a primal roar.
A green dragon head the color of an infected wound erupted from the surface of the thrashing water, rising up dozens of feet in the air. It had two enormous slitted eyes that dilated and constricted quickly as it glowered down at us. The screeching abruptly stopped, the pointed mouth of the dragon slamming shut with a sound like a gunshot.
Within moments, another cancerous green head shot up in a blur, its skin looking as hard as stone. Ridges that looked as sharp as swords ran the length of its reptilian skull, arcing over its eyes and pointed snout. More heads erupted from the ocean until all seven heads of Leviathan loomed over us.
Not one of us fired. No one even seemed to breathe as we surveyed the beast across the no-man’s land of the white sands. The slitted eyes and yellow irises of the seven heads had a demonic hunger, a reptilian coldness. Far behind us, I heard distant screams still echoing from the auditorium where Moloch held sway.
“Fire!” Mario cried. Instantly, a cacophony of gunshots exploded all around me. I jumped up on my feet, scrambling up as the seven-headed dragon leapt forward. Thousands of gallons of saltwater streamed down its massive body as it came up on the beach. Long, black paws with bone-white talons shot out of the surging ocean, followed by a tapering tail like that of a water snake.
I brought the rifle up and emptied my magazine as fast as I could, pulling the trigger over and over as I aimed at the many slitted eyes of Leviathan. But the bullets seemed to ping harmlessly off of its hard, obsidian-like scales.
It scrabbled onto the shore, the heads coming down in a blur. Rows and rows of vampiric fangs gleamed dully in each of the mouths. One security agent was bitten in half, the spurting stump of his lower body still standing for a long moment even as the rest of the body disappeared down the throat of the dragon.
Mario ran forwards, slamming another magazine in his rifle and opening fire point-blank. One of the heads came down in a blur towards him. Its great, staring eyes exploded in a shower of blue blood and thick vitreous fluid. The dragon head pulled back, its mouth opening in a primal scream of agony.
As I reloaded, I scanned the area around me, realizing that nearly half of the security agents were either dead or critically injured. I backpedaled away, keeping my eyes on the dragon. It continuously drew forward, killing more of its enemies with every step. I turned and ran into the forest, the sounds of shattering bones and dying men ringing through the air with a sickening clarity behind me.
Once I had reached the border of the trail, I heard Mario yell, “Retreat!” behind me. But by that point, it was far too late.
***
“Hey! Wait up!” a voice whispered from behind me. I turned my head, seeing Kolmek. Spatters of drying blood covered his face and uniform. As far as I could tell, none of it was his. “Mario’s dead. They’re all dead. We need to get out of here. We need to get off the Island.”
“How?” I asked.
“Find the Savior,” he answered, panting and out of breath. “We must find him. He can get us out of here.”
“I don’t even know what the guy looks like,” I muttered. “He was wearing a goat mask.”
“You’ll know him when you see him,” Kolmek said. “His body is covered in scars. Everything except his face. Stay close to me. We need to watch each other’s backs. It’s our only chance of survival.”
***
A trail of twisted, broken bodies led from the mansion to the surrounding trails and beaches. A decapitated woman with solid gold necklaces embedded with diamonds lay in front of me. It was strange on the Island, the way oblivion and ineffable wealth coexisted side by side. But everything was deathly silent, even in the mansion’s auditorium.
“Where’s the Savior?” I asked through gritted teeth. I peeked my head into the auditorium, but nothing moved. Hundreds of smashed and bloody bodies littered the floor.
“He’s around somewhere,” Kolmek answered. We started circling the mansion, looking for any signs of life. Kolmek went in the lead. As he turned the corner, an enormous black hand with sharp claws of fingers flitted forward in a blur, wrapping itself around his chest. Kolmek gave a strangled cry as it closed around him. I heard his bones crush as a spout of blood and gore flew from his mouth and nose, as if he were a toothpaste tube being squeezed.
I backpedaled away as Moloch threw the twitching corpse aside like a discarded toy. It smashed into the wall of the mansion, exploding wetly. A human-shaped, bloody stain languidly dripped down the wall above Kolmek’s mangled body.
Moloch slowly turned his head towards me, the fiery eyes flashing with hunger. He gnashed his fangs together, taking a step forward with a leg the size and shape of a tree trunk. With every step he took, I felt the ground tremble.
“Stop!” I cried, moving away from the monstrous creature. “Why are you doing this?”
“There is no why,” he gurgled, his voice monstrous and inhumanly slow. “There is only power. The weak deserve to die. Only the strong are worthy of life.” I raised my rifle in a last-ditch effort to save myself. Moloch saw it and started running towards me, every footstep crushing the paved walkway around the mansion into rubble and dust.
I aimed for his eyes and nose, emptying the entire magazine as quickly as I could. The bullets smashed into Moloch’s face. Dark red, clotted blood dripped out of the wounds, writhing with maggots. Drops of it fell around me, landing on my hair and face. I felt the small larvae twisting all over my skin. Moloch’s blood smelled nauseating, like some combination of stinkbugs and rotting bodies. He slowed, giving a roar of pain. I turned to run in the opposite direction, but as I looked out in the direction of the beach, my heart dropped.
Leviathan was moving in our direction, the giant dragon heads looming over the trees. Quickly, it swept towards me like a dark wind.
***
“You will suffer for that, worthless slave,” Moloch growled, wiping blood from his fiery eyes with his sharp talons of fingers. A sudden idea came to me. I ran in the direction of Leviathan. Moloch followed closely at my heels, only a few steps behind me.
Leviathan slithered forward over the sands and trees, its enormous body undulating like a water snake’s. I screamed at it, an incomprehensible wail of terror. Its seven heads snapped towards me. Its slitted eyes widened as it saw Moloch.
I heard the crashing of Moloch’s footsteps stop behind me, only feet away from crushing me into a paste. His massive lungs breathed quickly, exhaling the odor of sulfur and smoke.
“Leviathan,” Moloch growled in his demonic voice. “These are my tributes.” Leviathan’s dragon heads looked straight up at the Sun and screamed in response, their many voices rising and falling in a dissonant wail. As I sprinted into the trees, Leviathan and Moloch ran at each other, colliding with an ear-splitting crash. I glanced back, seeing Moloch ripping one of the dragon heads off its neck with his sharp fingers. The head screamed as blue blood exploded from the spurting stump. After a long moment, the neck fell limply forward.
The other dragon heads bit Moloch in a unified attack. They ripped deep holes in his shoulders and arms, snapping over and over like rabid dogs. As the two eldritch monstrosities attacked each other in fierce combat, I lost sight of them, but the sounds of fighting echoed over the entire island, crashing like lightning.
***
I felt like the survivor of an Apocalypse. I couldn’t find a single other living person on the Island. Hundreds of crushed, broken and decapitated bodies surrounded me. Over the cacophony of fighting, I heard a new noise: the whirring of helicopter blades nearby. It was coming from the other side of the mansion.
Frantically, I sprinted around the other side, seeing a Black Hawk helicopter getting ready to leave. A man in black robes sat at the pilot’s seat, his green eyes gleaming and a wide smile plastered across his face. I smashed my fist into the door over and over until he opened it.
“Holy shit, you’re still alive?” he asked. I hadn’t seen this man before. He had a face like a Calvin Klein model, all sharp angles and high cheekbones, perfectly proportioned in every way. But his scalp looked melted and scarred, as if someone had thrown gasoline on his hair and ignited it. His ears were stunted, twisted growths of scar tissue. His hands, too, were covered in deep, folding burn scars.
“Are you the Savior?” I responded quickly. “Please, get me out of here.”
“They do call me that,” he said wistfully. “The Savior. Yes, I guess I am. Get in.”
***
The Savior stared at me with his strange green eyes, the color of swamps where monstrous things swam under the surface.
“Some people just need to learn the hard way,” he said. The helicopter took off into a dark night covered with bright, twinkling stars. “There is no great power without great responsibility, after all. Those of us who seek the ancient ones know it comes with a cost.” I just stared out the window, gazing down at the countless mutilated, broken bodies that littered the beach.
Below us, the face of a bull stared up with eyes of fiery cyclones. The broken, still body of Leviathan lay at his feet. As we made it over the great waters of the Pacific Ocean, the bull-god raised a hand and waved. At that moment, I thought I could almost see a hurricane of translucent souls circling around him, spiraling up into the sky.

After high school, having no better ideas, I joined the Navy SEALs. I never really liked any of it, but it was a job, after all. I loved the guns and airplanes and grenades, but having to run all the time while some scumbag with a chip on his shoulder yells in my face isn’t my idea of fun.
Things got a lot more interesting after my term of service ended. I still had a high-security clearance, so I used it to take temporary jobs as a mercenary, a hired gun. I did some stints in Iraq with Blackwater, where they set me out in the middle of the desert. A watchtower and oil refinery loomed over the burning sands. Along with a few other guys, they told us, “Guard this area with your life.” While better than the SEALs, working for Blackwater was extremely boring. The other mercenaries and I would mostly just chainsmoke cigarettes and drink coffee all night, staring out across the dead, empty desert.
Over time, I worked my way up. Things started to get more interesting when a job offer arrived in my email one freezing cold winter’s morning. This is what it said.
“Mr. Chase,
“I am the head of security for a private group of entrepreneurs and investors. Through some mutual contacts, I have heard of your professionalism and experience. We are currently putting together a small crew to guard a private event on [REDACTED] Island out in the Pacific Ocean that will run from January 9th to January 26th. Would you be interested in this job? The pay rate is $900 a day.
“Once you are on the island, it will be impossible to leave until the period of employment has ended. If you are interested, please respond to this email as soon as possible.
“Sincerely,
“Mario Antonin, Head of Security.”
I was working piecemeal jobs like this one at the time, but none of them were paying that well. At most, I would usually get $350 to $500 a day, which was still good money when I was working seven days a week until the job finished. I instantly responded and said that yes, I was interested. In response, they sent me a non-disclosure agreement that was the size of a small novel that I had to sign.
That was how I found myself on a private jet, flying out to an island in the middle of the vast blue ocean. I was never told the coordinates of the island or saw it on a map. It was all kept very secret.
A few hours later, we landed on a private airstrip. I looked out the window of the jet, seeing the tropical waters of the Pacific Ocean stretching off to the horizon in every direction. Below me stood an island with palm trees and sandy white beaches. An enormous Victorian mansion loomed directly in the center of it all. The mansion was painted black and looked like something straight out of a horror movie. It had no windows, and the turrets spiraled into blade-like points.
That was my first inkling that something might not be quite right about this trip.
***
As the stairs from the private jet descended, I looked out on this strange new world. Employees waited to greet us, looking like beaten dogs. Some had their heads down, their eyes blankly scanning the ground. Most of them were women wearing red dresses, reminding me of stewardesses on a plane. The jet strip was surrounded by palm trees and tropical brush. The chirping of insects sounded all around us, high and resonant.
I saw a strange patch engraved on all of the employees’ uniforms and jackets. It looked almost like a stick figure drawing of a man, the bottom of its body ending in a C. Its arms were long and jointed, almost spidery. Three symbols like repeated iron crosses connected to the left side of its body in a line. I wondered if it was the logo of some company. I put it out of my mind for now, but I would see that symbol again all over the island, painted on the sides of the mansion and even cut into the trees with a knife. It would only be later that night that I realized its connection to Moloch.
“Good day, sir, and welcome to the Island,” the server on my left said with glassy eyes and a fake smile plastered across her face. They all looked up at once, but it was like the workers all looked through me rather than at me. Their eyes looked flat and dead, like the painted-on eyes of a doll.
“The Island, huh?” I asked, curious. “They wouldn’t tell me where I was going. They said it was a secret. Is that what you call it?” The woman just nodded, the doll-like smile never leaving her lips.
“Officially, this island is unnamed and uninhabited,” the woman said. “In fact, all traces of it have been scrubbed from the internet. You won’t find it on Google Maps or in any publicly available satellite imagery.” She leaned forward towards me with heavily mascaraed eyes and ruby-red lipstick slashed across her lips. “This is a very special place. Only very special people are allowed here. You should be honored to work here under our Savior.”
“I hope you’re talking about Jesus or something,” I said jokingly. She just smiled blankly and motioned me forward.
“Just follow that trail for a few hundred feet-” she said, pointing at an opening in the palm trees where logs were laid down horizontally over the muggy jungle- “and you’ll find the mansion. Good luck!” I thought it was a somewhat strange thing to say, wishing a random stranger good luck.
But, by the end of that night, I realized that simply to make it off this island alive, I would need lots of it.
***
I followed the woman’s directions to the back of the brutalist mansion. A heavy metal door stood there with a small bullet-proof window built in the top. A tanned, Spanish face glowered out at me then rapidly drew back and disappeared. A few heartbeats later, the door slid to the side with a grinding of hidden gears.
The head of security at the Island was a heavily-tattooed ex-Marine named Mario. He wore a dark Kevlar vest over a black outfit, making him look like a walking shadow. I found the security had their own private complex in the mansion as he showed me around the site. Hundreds of hidden cameras covered every angle of the mansion and the surrounding parts of the island. Dozens of black-clad security agents swarmed over the screens, checking the monitors and computers constantly.
“Quite a set-up you have here,” I said to Mario, nodding at him. He smacked me on the shoulder, giving a confident grin.
“Money is no issue here, Richard,” he responded. “Security is paramount. There are things on this island that could rip apart the world if they ever escaped.” I raised an eyebrow.
“Like what?” I asked. “Nuclear weapons or something?” He laughed at that.
“You’ll see for yourself tonight,” he said, his dark eyes flashing with something cold and alien.
***
Mario led me and a couple other new hired guns around the Island. The place was certainly strange. It reminded me of some combination of a secret black-ops site and a playboy billionaire’s private heaven. All of the doors in the mansion looked like they were made of thick steel. They had wheels that would spin, like those on a submarine door. The mansion also had no windows at all that I could see, except for the small, shatter-proof glass openings on the steel doors. I didn’t want to ask too many questions, however. I couldn’t resist asking him about a couple small things, however- or at least, they seemed small to me at the time.
“What are those hatchways?” I asked Mario, pointing to rectangular covers built into the concrete walkway. They had heavy handles. “Are those manholes or something?”
“There are tunnels under the Island,” he responded vaguely. “Just for maintenance and security, you understand.”
“Wow, this place is certainly… well-developed,” I said. We came out through a grove of palm trees. A stone walkway led down to a white beach. Dozens of yachts were moored all across the shore, some of them looking like they must have cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
“There’s a lot of money and power here,” Mario said. “That’s why it’s important you never talk about what you see here. These are the people who control the world, the ones behind the government and the media. Not the elected officials who the people see, but the actual power.”
“Like who?” I asked. “You mean the Rothschilds and Soros?” He laughed again, a sarcastic, grinding laugh that grated my nerves.
“Trust me, the truly powerful ones don’t even have public personas. If you know their name, then they’re just one of the puppets.” I just shook my head at that, then asked the real question that had been bothering me since I first arrived here.
“Who is the Savior?” I asked. “Is that some codename or something?” Mario froze in place.
“He’s the one who runs everything here,” he whispered conspiratorially, looking around nervously. “But don’t be mentioning that kind of shit. You’ll probably see him tonight anyway. He’s the one who runs the show. He’ll be on the stage in his normal outfit.”
***
By the end of the day, I was suited up like the rest of the security staff, wearing the pure black pants and shirt with the symbol of Moloch engraved over the heart. Hundreds of the world’s most famous politicians, actors, businessmen and artists had gathered, streaming in the front doors with a soft, diffident susurration.
I stood by the open doorway of a side exit with an AR-15 and full body armor, next to one other soldier. They had also given me a sidearm. Every entrance or exit was manned by at least two armed men. The security at this place was some of the most intense I had ever seen. Beyond the door, there were rows and rows of the most comfortable seats, all gathered in a semi-circle around a massive stage made of pure mahogany. Blood-red curtains stood closed at the front of the room, concealing their secrets- for now, at least.
“Hail Satan!” I heard the elites cry inside in unison. I didn’t want to look in at the rows of high-ranking politicians, celebrities, influencers and artists, but my curiosity was high. I peeked around the corner of the stone archway, seeing the red curtains on the stage drawing apart. I saw one of my favorite actors standing in the front row, clapping excitedly and jumping up and down.
The crowd cheered as a naked female strapped to an obsidian altar lay there. She was beautiful and blonde, probably no older than twenty with the face of a supermodel. Her mouth was gagged, her arms outstretched like Jesus on the cross. Thin leather cords were tied around her wrists and ankles, biting deeply into the skin. Her eyes rolled wildly as she shook her head from side to side. She froze, and her eyes met mine for a brief moment. I saw the pleading expression there, the mortal terror and absolute horror.
A man in a goat mask wearing black robes slunk out from the side of the stage, carrying a wavy silver dagger engraved with strange symbols. The crowd erupted into a primal roar of pleasure and excitement that sounded like it came from one monstrous mouth.
“Worthy is the Lamb!” the man in the goat mask screamed with electronic amplification. He had a deep voice, as if he had rocks rolling around in his throat. The crowd roared and clapped. Scattered cries of “Hail Lucifer!” and “Ave Satanas!” echoed down the massive auditorium.
“Hey, pay attention,” the other security agent at my side said in a thick Finnish accent. He was a tall Scandinavian-looking guy named Kolmek. “You’re not getting paid to watch the show, new guy.” I tried to rip my gaze away from the stage, but it held my attention with an obsessive horror.
“The burnt bones of children and women have been offered to the ancient ones, to Moloch,” the man on the stage cried. “Under our feet, the burnt bodies of hundreds lay dreaming. This victim will be the 666th. Her blood will bring about the Gnosis that we seek, the direct experience of the divine held by the gods, by Lucifer and Moloch and Baal…” The roaring of the crowd temporarily drowned out his electronically-magnified voice. “Tonight, we will rip open the veil!”
I had stopped watching the show, instead staring blankly out at the beach and palm trees. At that moment, another black-clad security agent came up to my partner, whispered something in his ear, then immediately disappeared, heading off back in the direction of the main security office. Kolmek shook his head grimly.
“I’ll be right back,” he said. “Stay right here. Don’t move from this door no matter what. And pay attention.” I nodded and watched as he walked off in the same direction.
I immediately took the opportunity to continue watching the ceremony. I had missed something important, apparently. The woman now laid dead on the sacrificial table, a gaping hole in her chest. Blood spurted from the crater as the man in the goat mask held her beating heart grasped tightly in his hand, letting the blood stream down his naked fingers. The crowd cheered with a rising bloodlust and insanity. Most of them were standing, their eyes gleaming and wide with fanatical adoration. The entire spectacle reminded me of some kind of ancient Aztec ritual.
As the woman’s sightless eyes stared vacantly up in death, the man in a goat mask pulled out a can of gasoline. The clear liquid gurgled as he up-ended the canister over her pale, bloodless face, over her naked stomach and long legs. A moment later, he lit a match and dropped it. I heard the whooshing of the flames as they rose up.
The crowd went deathly silent as they watched the rippling flames. The man in the goat mask began chanting in some strange language I had never heard before. It sounded Semitic, but I knew it wasn’t Arabic or Hebrew. I felt something like electricity ripple through the air, almost like a feeling of falling pressure before a storm. I looked down at the hairs on my arms, seeing them rise up. I looked back up at the stage, and my eyes widened in horror.
The flaming body of the sacrificial victim had started to morph before my eyes and the eyes of the crowd. The dripping, blackening flesh jumped up and down, as if there were rats trapped in her body trying to escape the fire. There was a deafening hissing as if thousands of snakes were being burned alive.
The dead woman’s arms jerked up, the skin splitting open as if she had seams running along her skin. Something dark and muscular with curving, black talons ripped its way out of the dead, burning flesh. Behind it, a head appeared with long, curving horns and eyes that spun with whorls of fire. It looked like the offspring of a bull and a demon. Its imposing body rose up from the inferno, appearing like magic from the solid stone. It raised itself to its full height, looming over the crowd. The last of the woman’s blood hissed and boiled away, her flesh dissolving into ashes.
“Behold, Moloch rises!” the man in the goat mask screamed in a fanatical voice. The crowd’s cheering had stopped, though. Many of the faces in the crowd looked chalk-white with terror. The bull-god surveyed the crowd, its horns nearly scraping the ceiling twenty feet above the stage.
At that moment, I knew death was on its way with eyes of fire and a grin like a skull, ready to reap a field of human bodies.
***
I heard running behind me, but I didn’t dare turn away from the horrific sight in front of me. The last of the fire’s embers died, sending up thin wisps of gray smoke that spiraled around the bull-god’s monstrous face. Moloch stood as still as a statue, and if it weren’t for one thing, I might’ve thought it was some sort of sculpture or art project. He had two nostrils like a serpent’s. As his great lungs inhaled, the smoke billowed in and out of his mouth and nose.
Some of the people at the edges of the crowd had gotten up, hurrying towards the doors. Moloch’s head ratcheted to face them, his fiery eyes narrowing into slits.
“Do not leave!” the man in the goat mask pleaded. “Those who have fear are not worthy of life. Do not prove yourselves unworthy of life!” As the first of the fleeing men and women got to within a few steps of the door, Moloch gave a primal roar. In a blur of primal strength, he reached down and ripped the blackened sacrificial altar off the stage. It ripped from the wooden stage with a tremendous crack like a bullwhip. He hurled the heavy mass of stone at those heading towards the opposite exit from the one I guarded.
I watched it curve through the air. The people started screaming and clawing to escape as it smashed down on their heads with a grating crash. I could feel the floor shake from where I stood outside. Blood exploded from their smashed bodies. I saw arms and legs jerking and seizing under the heavy stone, but within a few moments, they slowed and then stopped.
Others were running towards the door I guarded, but Moloch leapt off the stage in a blur. In a few bounding steps, he reached the pale, terrified faces on the other side of the threshold. His massive clawed hand came down. I heard bones shatter as blood sprayed my face and the wall. Bone splinters and pieces of brain exploded from the screaming bodies. I backpedaled, wiping at my eyes, trying to get the blood off so I could see. No one had told me what to do in this situation. I didn’t know if I was supposed to shoot that massive abomination, or if this was all just part of the show.
“Richard!” a familiar voice cried from behind me. Panic oozed from every word. I spun, seeing Mario and Kolmek standing side by side, their pupils dilated and expressions grim.
“We have a major problem.” It was Mario. I recognized that voice, the one that sounded as if he had been gargling with rocks.
“I know,” I said, holding my rifle tightly. I pointed behind me at the scene of rampant death and destruction.
I had seen bloodshed and war before, but this was different. The Island itself seemed to feel it. The wind, which had been calm when I first landed, now whipped the Island in fast, circular currents. The breeze smelled of burnt matches and coppery blood. The static electricity which had caused the hairs on my arms to rise rippled over everything with tiny blue flashes, increasing in power by the second.
“No, no, not Moloch,” Kolmek said, looking much calmer than I felt. “The Savior lets Moloch thin the herd every year.”
“It’s Leviathan,” Mario continued grimly, “the beast from the waters. The smell of blood is drawing it from the depths of the ocean. We picked up the first blips on radar a few minutes ago. When it gets here, it won’t stop until everything is rubble. It will kill every single person on the Island.”
“All security personnel must report to the south beach immediately,” a cool robotic voice cried out over hidden loudspeakers all over the Island. The screaming from the auditorium had quieted behind me. I was afraid to look inside.
“There it is,” Kolmek said, his head jerking up as the emergency alert read. He motioned for me to follow. “It’s time to fight.”
***
We sprinted over curving trails of smooth logs between deathly quiet forests. All the insects and birds had gone silent. Ahead of us, the palm trees opened up onto the Pacific Ocean. But it was no longer a beautiful tropical blue. A black, swirling whirlpool like an ulcerous wound had opened up on its surface. It stretched hundreds of feet across, drawing closer to the shore by the second. Dead fish, sharks, dolphins, squids and even whales spun in the filthy, dark water.
Twenty black-clad security agents waited for the three of us on the beach, their eyes wide, their faces pale with terror. Like myself, they all had AR-15s and Glock 22s with extra magazines for both. I guess the Glock might be useful for blowing my brains out as a last resort if some beast from Hell rose out of the simmering waters, but I didn’t think it would stop anything from another dimension.
The clouds swirled overhead in a thick curtain as black as smoke. Flashes of blue lightning detonated every couple seconds. Mario raised his hands, screaming over the roaring of the wind. Kolmek stood by my side, his face grim and eyes narrowed.
“Your job is to fight off anything that tries to get on the Island,” he said, looking from one face to another with rapt attention. “Nothing can stand against high-caliber rifle fire. Shoot at the face and eyes when it comes up. We’ve dealt with creatures like this before, and they will retreat if you injure them badly enough.” I had the sense of being fed a line of bullshit as my mind processed this.
“What exactly is coming up?” one of the doe-eyed security men asked. He barely looked old enough to drink, a young, muscular hulk with a Marine Corps tattoo on his neck.
“They call it Leviathan,” Mario responded. “Sometimes the rituals here and the smell of blood can draw… strange things. Leviathan is one of those. We have encountered it before. The most important thing to remember is…” His voice was suddenly drowned out by a terrible cacophony that came from the center of the black whirlpool.
A screech like the detonation of a nuclear missile shook the ground. The ocean jumped and bubbled frantically. The beach heaved and cracked, the white sands disappearing in fissures that opened up like greedy mouths underneath my feet. I lost my balance, falling forwards. The screeching continued rising into a primal roar.
A green dragon head the color of an infected wound erupted from the surface of the thrashing water, rising up dozens of feet in the air. It had two enormous slitted eyes that dilated and constricted quickly as it glowered down at us. The screeching abruptly stopped, the pointed mouth of the dragon slamming shut with a sound like a gunshot.
Within moments, another cancerous green head shot up in a blur, its skin looking as hard as stone. Ridges that looked as sharp as swords ran the length of its reptilian skull, arcing over its eyes and pointed snout. More heads erupted from the ocean until all seven heads of Leviathan loomed over us.
Not one of us fired. No one even seemed to breathe as we surveyed the beast across the no-man’s land of the white sands. The slitted eyes and yellow irises of the seven heads had a demonic hunger, a reptilian coldness. Far behind us, I heard distant screams still echoing from the auditorium where Moloch held sway.
“Fire!” Mario cried. Instantly, a cacophony of gunshots exploded all around me. I jumped up on my feet, scrambling up as the seven-headed dragon leapt forward. Thousands of gallons of saltwater streamed down its massive body as it came up on the beach. Long, black paws with bone-white talons shot out of the surging ocean, followed by a tapering tail like that of a water snake.
I brought the rifle up and emptied my magazine as fast as I could, pulling the trigger over and over as I aimed at the many slitted eyes of Leviathan. But the bullets seemed to ping harmlessly off of its hard, obsidian-like scales.
It scrabbled onto the shore, the heads coming down in a blur. Rows and rows of vampiric fangs gleamed dully in each of the mouths. One security agent was bitten in half, the spurting stump of his lower body still standing for a long moment even as the rest of the body disappeared down the throat of the dragon.
Mario ran forwards, slamming another magazine in his rifle and opening fire point-blank. One of the heads came down in a blur towards him. Its great, staring eyes exploded in a shower of blue blood and thick vitreous fluid. The dragon head pulled back, its mouth opening in a primal scream of agony.
As I reloaded, I scanned the area around me, realizing that nearly half of the security agents were either dead or critically injured. I backpedaled away, keeping my eyes on the dragon. It continuously drew forward, killing more of its enemies with every step. I turned and ran into the forest, the sounds of shattering bones and dying men ringing through the air with a sickening clarity behind me.
Once I had reached the border of the trail, I heard Mario yell, “Retreat!” behind me. But by that point, it was far too late.
***
“Hey! Wait up!” a voice whispered from behind me. I turned my head, seeing Kolmek. Spatters of drying blood covered his face and uniform. As far as I could tell, none of it was his. “Mario’s dead. They’re all dead. We need to get out of here. We need to get off the Island.”
“How?” I asked.
“Find the Savior,” he answered, panting and out of breath. “We must find him. He can get us out of here.”
“I don’t even know what the guy looks like,” I muttered. “He was wearing a goat mask.”
“You’ll know him when you see him,” Kolmek said. “His body is covered in scars. Everything except his face. Stay close to me. We need to watch each other’s backs. It’s our only chance of survival.”
***
A trail of twisted, broken bodies led from the mansion to the surrounding trails and beaches. A decapitated woman with solid gold necklaces embedded with diamonds lay in front of me. It was strange on the Island, the way oblivion and ineffable wealth coexisted side by side. But everything was deathly silent, even in the mansion’s auditorium.
“Where’s the Savior?” I asked through gritted teeth. I peeked my head into the auditorium, but nothing moved. Hundreds of smashed and bloody bodies littered the floor.
“He’s around somewhere,” Kolmek answered. We started circling the mansion, looking for any signs of life. Kolmek went in the lead. As he turned the corner, an enormous black hand with sharp claws of fingers flitted forward in a blur, wrapping itself around his chest. Kolmek gave a strangled cry as it closed around him. I heard his bones crush as a spout of blood and gore flew from his mouth and nose, as if he were a toothpaste tube being squeezed.
I backpedaled away as Moloch threw the twitching corpse aside like a discarded toy. It smashed into the wall of the mansion, exploding wetly. A human-shaped, bloody stain languidly dripped down the wall above Kolmek’s mangled body.
Moloch slowly turned his head towards me, the fiery eyes flashing with hunger. He gnashed his fangs together, taking a step forward with a leg the size and shape of a tree trunk. With every step he took, I felt the ground tremble.
“Stop!” I cried, moving away from the monstrous creature. “Why are you doing this?”
“There is no why,” he gurgled, his voice monstrous and inhumanly slow. “There is only power. The weak deserve to die. Only the strong are worthy of life.” I raised my rifle in a last-ditch effort to save myself. Moloch saw it and started running towards me, every footstep crushing the paved walkway around the mansion into rubble and dust.
I aimed for his eyes and nose, emptying the entire magazine as quickly as I could. The bullets smashed into Moloch’s face. Dark red, clotted blood dripped out of the wounds, writhing with maggots. Drops of it fell around me, landing on my hair and face. I felt the small larvae twisting all over my skin. Moloch’s blood smelled nauseating, like some combination of stinkbugs and rotting bodies. He slowed, giving a roar of pain. I turned to run in the opposite direction, but as I looked out in the direction of the beach, my heart dropped.
Leviathan was moving in our direction, the giant dragon heads looming over the trees. Quickly, it swept towards me like a dark wind.
***
“You will suffer for that, worthless slave,” Moloch growled, wiping blood from his fiery eyes with his sharp talons of fingers. A sudden idea came to me. I ran in the direction of Leviathan. Moloch followed closely at my heels, only a few steps behind me.
Leviathan slithered forward over the sands and trees, its enormous body undulating like a water snake’s. I screamed at it, an incomprehensible wail of terror. Its seven heads snapped towards me. Its slitted eyes widened as it saw Moloch.
I heard the crashing of Moloch’s footsteps stop behind me, only feet away from crushing me into a paste. His massive lungs breathed quickly, exhaling the odor of sulfur and smoke.
“Leviathan,” Moloch growled in his demonic voice. “These are my tributes.” Leviathan’s dragon heads looked straight up at the Sun and screamed in response, their many voices rising and falling in a dissonant wail. As I sprinted into the trees, Leviathan and Moloch ran at each other, colliding with an ear-splitting crash. I glanced back, seeing Moloch ripping one of the dragon heads off its neck with his sharp fingers. The head screamed as blue blood exploded from the spurting stump. After a long moment, the neck fell limply forward.
The other dragon heads bit Moloch in a unified attack. They ripped deep holes in his shoulders and arms, snapping over and over like rabid dogs. As the two eldritch monstrosities attacked each other in fierce combat, I lost sight of them, but the sounds of fighting echoed over the entire island, crashing like lightning.
***
I felt like the survivor of an Apocalypse. I couldn’t find a single other living person on the Island. Hundreds of crushed, broken and decapitated bodies surrounded me. Over the cacophony of fighting, I heard a new noise: the whirring of helicopter blades nearby. It was coming from the other side of the mansion.
Frantically, I sprinted around the other side, seeing a Black Hawk helicopter getting ready to leave. A man in black robes sat at the pilot’s seat, his green eyes gleaming and a wide smile plastered across his face. I smashed my fist into the door over and over until he opened it.
“Holy shit, you’re still alive?” he asked. I hadn’t seen this man before. He had a face like a Calvin Klein model, all sharp angles and high cheekbones, perfectly proportioned in every way. But his scalp looked melted and scarred, as if someone had thrown gasoline on his hair and ignited it. His ears were stunted, twisted growths of scar tissue. His hands, too, were covered in deep, folding burn scars.
“Are you the Savior?” I responded quickly. “Please, get me out of here.”
“They do call me that,” he said wistfully. “The Savior. Yes, I guess I am. Get in.”
***
The Savior stared at me with his strange green eyes, the color of swamps where monstrous things swam under the surface.
“Some people just need to learn the hard way,” he said. The helicopter took off into a dark night covered with bright, twinkling stars. “There is no great power without great responsibility, after all. Those of us who seek the ancient ones know it comes with a cost.” I just stared out the window, gazing down at the countless mutilated, broken bodies that littered the beach.
Below us, the face of a bull stared up with eyes of fiery cyclones. The broken, still body of Leviathan lay at his feet. As we made it over the great waters of the Pacific Ocean, the bull-god raised a hand and waved. At that moment, I thought I could almost see a hurricane of translucent souls circling around him, spiraling up into the sky.

After high school, having no better ideas, I joined the Navy SEALs. I never really liked any of it, but it was a job, after all. I loved the guns and airplanes and grenades, but having to run all the time while some scumbag with a chip on his shoulder yells in my face isn’t my idea of fun.
Things got a lot more interesting after my term of service ended. I still had a high-security clearance, so I used it to take temporary jobs as a mercenary, a hired gun. I did some stints in Iraq with Blackwater, where they set me out in the middle of the desert. A watchtower and oil refinery loomed over the burning sands. Along with a few other guys, they told us, “Guard this area with your life.” While better than the SEALs, working for Blackwater was extremely boring. The other mercenaries and I would mostly just chainsmoke cigarettes and drink coffee all night, staring out across the dead, empty desert.
Over time, I worked my way up. Things started to get more interesting when a job offer arrived in my email one freezing cold winter’s morning. This is what it said.
“Mr. Chase,
“I am the head of security for a private group of entrepreneurs and investors. Through some mutual contacts, I have heard of your professionalism and experience. We are currently putting together a small crew to guard a private event on [REDACTED] Island out in the Pacific Ocean that will run from January 9th to January 26th. Would you be interested in this job? The pay rate is $900 a day.
“Once you are on the island, it will be impossible to leave until the period of employment has ended. If you are interested, please respond to this email as soon as possible.
“Sincerely,
“Mario Antonin, Head of Security.”
I was working piecemeal jobs like this one at the time, but none of them were paying that well. At most, I would usually get $350 to $500 a day, which was still good money when I was working seven days a week until the job finished. I instantly responded and said that yes, I was interested. In response, they sent me a non-disclosure agreement that was the size of a small novel that I had to sign.
That was how I found myself on a private jet, flying out to an island in the middle of the vast blue ocean. I was never told the coordinates of the island or saw it on a map. It was all kept very secret.
A few hours later, we landed on a private airstrip. I looked out the window of the jet, seeing the tropical waters of the Pacific Ocean stretching off to the horizon in every direction. Below me stood an island with palm trees and sandy white beaches. An enormous Victorian mansion loomed directly in the center of it all. The mansion was painted black and looked like something straight out of a horror movie. It had no windows, and the turrets spiraled into blade-like points.
That was my first inkling that something might not be quite right about this trip.
***
As the stairs from the private jet descended, I looked out on this strange new world. Employees waited to greet us, looking like beaten dogs. Some had their heads down, their eyes blankly scanning the ground. Most of them were women wearing red dresses, reminding me of stewardesses on a plane. The jet strip was surrounded by palm trees and tropical brush. The chirping of insects sounded all around us, high and resonant.
I saw a strange patch engraved on all of the employees’ uniforms and jackets. It looked almost like a stick figure drawing of a man, the bottom of its body ending in a C. Its arms were long and jointed, almost spidery. Three symbols like repeated iron crosses connected to the left side of its body in a line. I wondered if it was the logo of some company. I put it out of my mind for now, but I would see that symbol again all over the island, painted on the sides of the mansion and even cut into the trees with a knife. It would only be later that night that I realized its connection to Moloch.
“Good day, sir, and welcome to the Island,” the server on my left said with glassy eyes and a fake smile plastered across her face. They all looked up at once, but it was like the workers all looked through me rather than at me. Their eyes looked flat and dead, like the painted-on eyes of a doll.
“The Island, huh?” I asked, curious. “They wouldn’t tell me where I was going. They said it was a secret. Is that what you call it?” The woman just nodded, the doll-like smile never leaving her lips.
“Officially, this island is unnamed and uninhabited,” the woman said. “In fact, all traces of it have been scrubbed from the internet. You won’t find it on Google Maps or in any publicly available satellite imagery.” She leaned forward towards me with heavily mascaraed eyes and ruby-red lipstick slashed across her lips. “This is a very special place. Only very special people are allowed here. You should be honored to work here under our Savior.”
“I hope you’re talking about Jesus or something,” I said jokingly. She just smiled blankly and motioned me forward.
“Just follow that trail for a few hundred feet-” she said, pointing at an opening in the palm trees where logs were laid down horizontally over the muggy jungle- “and you’ll find the mansion. Good luck!” I thought it was a somewhat strange thing to say, wishing a random stranger good luck.
But, by the end of that night, I realized that simply to make it off this island alive, I would need lots of it.
***
I followed the woman’s directions to the back of the brutalist mansion. A heavy metal door stood there with a small bullet-proof window built in the top. A tanned, Spanish face glowered out at me then rapidly drew back and disappeared. A few heartbeats later, the door slid to the side with a grinding of hidden gears.
The head of security at the Island was a heavily-tattooed ex-Marine named Mario. He wore a dark Kevlar vest over a black outfit, making him look like a walking shadow. I found the security had their own private complex in the mansion as he showed me around the site. Hundreds of hidden cameras covered every angle of the mansion and the surrounding parts of the island. Dozens of black-clad security agents swarmed over the screens, checking the monitors and computers constantly.
“Quite a set-up you have here,” I said to Mario, nodding at him. He smacked me on the shoulder, giving a confident grin.
“Money is no issue here, Richard,” he responded. “Security is paramount. There are things on this island that could rip apart the world if they ever escaped.” I raised an eyebrow.
“Like what?” I asked. “Nuclear weapons or something?” He laughed at that.
“You’ll see for yourself tonight,” he said, his dark eyes flashing with something cold and alien.
***
Mario led me and a couple other new hired guns around the Island. The place was certainly strange. It reminded me of some combination of a secret black-ops site and a playboy billionaire’s private heaven. All of the doors in the mansion looked like they were made of thick steel. They had wheels that would spin, like those on a submarine door. The mansion also had no windows at all that I could see, except for the small, shatter-proof glass openings on the steel doors. I didn’t want to ask too many questions, however. I couldn’t resist asking him about a couple small things, however- or at least, they seemed small to me at the time.
“What are those hatchways?” I asked Mario, pointing to rectangular covers built into the concrete walkway. They had heavy handles. “Are those manholes or something?”
“There are tunnels under the Island,” he responded vaguely. “Just for maintenance and security, you understand.”
“Wow, this place is certainly… well-developed,” I said. We came out through a grove of palm trees. A stone walkway led down to a white beach. Dozens of yachts were moored all across the shore, some of them looking like they must have cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
“There’s a lot of money and power here,” Mario said. “That’s why it’s important you never talk about what you see here. These are the people who control the world, the ones behind the government and the media. Not the elected officials who the people see, but the actual power.”
“Like who?” I asked. “You mean the Rothschilds and Soros?” He laughed again, a sarcastic, grinding laugh that grated my nerves.
“Trust me, the truly powerful ones don’t even have public personas. If you know their name, then they’re just one of the puppets.” I just shook my head at that, then asked the real question that had been bothering me since I first arrived here.
“Who is the Savior?” I asked. “Is that some codename or something?” Mario froze in place.
“He’s the one who runs everything here,” he whispered conspiratorially, looking around nervously. “But don’t be mentioning that kind of shit. You’ll probably see him tonight anyway. He’s the one who runs the show. He’ll be on the stage in his normal outfit.”
***
By the end of the day, I was suited up like the rest of the security staff, wearing the pure black pants and shirt with the symbol of Moloch engraved over the heart. Hundreds of the world’s most famous politicians, actors, businessmen and artists had gathered, streaming in the front doors with a soft, diffident susurration.
I stood by the open doorway of a side exit with an AR-15 and full body armor, next to one other soldier. They had also given me a sidearm. Every entrance or exit was manned by at least two armed men. The security at this place was some of the most intense I had ever seen. Beyond the door, there were rows and rows of the most comfortable seats, all gathered in a semi-circle around a massive stage made of pure mahogany. Blood-red curtains stood closed at the front of the room, concealing their secrets- for now, at least.
“Hail Satan!” I heard the elites cry inside in unison. I didn’t want to look in at the rows of high-ranking politicians, celebrities, influencers and artists, but my curiosity was high. I peeked around the corner of the stone archway, seeing the red curtains on the stage drawing apart. I saw one of my favorite actors standing in the front row, clapping excitedly and jumping up and down.
The crowd cheered as a naked female strapped to an obsidian altar lay there. She was beautiful and blonde, probably no older than twenty with the face of a supermodel. Her mouth was gagged, her arms outstretched like Jesus on the cross. Thin leather cords were tied around her wrists and ankles, biting deeply into the skin. Her eyes rolled wildly as she shook her head from side to side. She froze, and her eyes met mine for a brief moment. I saw the pleading expression there, the mortal terror and absolute horror.
A man in a goat mask wearing black robes slunk out from the side of the stage, carrying a wavy silver dagger engraved with strange symbols. The crowd erupted into a primal roar of pleasure and excitement that sounded like it came from one monstrous mouth.
“Worthy is the Lamb!” the man in the goat mask screamed with electronic amplification. He had a deep voice, as if he had rocks rolling around in his throat. The crowd roared and clapped. Scattered cries of “Hail Lucifer!” and “Ave Satanas!” echoed down the massive auditorium.
“Hey, pay attention,” the other security agent at my side said in a thick Finnish accent. He was a tall Scandinavian-looking guy named Kolmek. “You’re not getting paid to watch the show, new guy.” I tried to rip my gaze away from the stage, but it held my attention with an obsessive horror.
“The burnt bones of children and women have been offered to the ancient ones, to Moloch,” the man on the stage cried. “Under our feet, the burnt bodies of hundreds lay dreaming. This victim will be the 666th. Her blood will bring about the Gnosis that we seek, the direct experience of the divine held by the gods, by Lucifer and Moloch and Baal…” The roaring of the crowd temporarily drowned out his electronically-magnified voice. “Tonight, we will rip open the veil!”
I had stopped watching the show, instead staring blankly out at the beach and palm trees. At that moment, another black-clad security agent came up to my partner, whispered something in his ear, then immediately disappeared, heading off back in the direction of the main security office. Kolmek shook his head grimly.
“I’ll be right back,” he said. “Stay right here. Don’t move from this door no matter what. And pay attention.” I nodded and watched as he walked off in the same direction.
I immediately took the opportunity to continue watching the ceremony. I had missed something important, apparently. The woman now laid dead on the sacrificial table, a gaping hole in her chest. Blood spurted from the crater as the man in the goat mask held her beating heart grasped tightly in his hand, letting the blood stream down his naked fingers. The crowd cheered with a rising bloodlust and insanity. Most of them were standing, their eyes gleaming and wide with fanatical adoration. The entire spectacle reminded me of some kind of ancient Aztec ritual.
As the woman’s sightless eyes stared vacantly up in death, the man in a goat mask pulled out a can of gasoline. The clear liquid gurgled as he up-ended the canister over her pale, bloodless face, over her naked stomach and long legs. A moment later, he lit a match and dropped it. I heard the whooshing of the flames as they rose up.
The crowd went deathly silent as they watched the rippling flames. The man in the goat mask began chanting in some strange language I had never heard before. It sounded Semitic, but I knew it wasn’t Arabic or Hebrew. I felt something like electricity ripple through the air, almost like a feeling of falling pressure before a storm. I looked down at the hairs on my arms, seeing them rise up. I looked back up at the stage, and my eyes widened in horror.
The flaming body of the sacrificial victim had started to morph before my eyes and the eyes of the crowd. The dripping, blackening flesh jumped up and down, as if there were rats trapped in her body trying to escape the fire. There was a deafening hissing as if thousands of snakes were being burned alive.
The dead woman’s arms jerked up, the skin splitting open as if she had seams running along her skin. Something dark and muscular with curving, black talons ripped its way out of the dead, burning flesh. Behind it, a head appeared with long, curving horns and eyes that spun with whorls of fire. It looked like the offspring of a bull and a demon. Its imposing body rose up from the inferno, appearing like magic from the solid stone. It raised itself to its full height, looming over the crowd. The last of the woman’s blood hissed and boiled away, her flesh dissolving into ashes.
“Behold, Moloch rises!” the man in the goat mask screamed in a fanatical voice. The crowd’s cheering had stopped, though. Many of the faces in the crowd looked chalk-white with terror. The bull-god surveyed the crowd, its horns nearly scraping the ceiling twenty feet above the stage.
At that moment, I knew death was on its way with eyes of fire and a grin like a skull, ready to reap a field of human bodies.
***
I heard running behind me, but I didn’t dare turn away from the horrific sight in front of me. The last of the fire’s embers died, sending up thin wisps of gray smoke that spiraled around the bull-god’s monstrous face. Moloch stood as still as a statue, and if it weren’t for one thing, I might’ve thought it was some sort of sculpture or art project. He had two nostrils like a serpent’s. As his great lungs inhaled, the smoke billowed in and out of his mouth and nose.
Some of the people at the edges of the crowd had gotten up, hurrying towards the doors. Moloch’s head ratcheted to face them, his fiery eyes narrowing into slits.
“Do not leave!” the man in the goat mask pleaded. “Those who have fear are not worthy of life. Do not prove yourselves unworthy of life!” As the first of the fleeing men and women got to within a few steps of the door, Moloch gave a primal roar. In a blur of primal strength, he reached down and ripped the blackened sacrificial altar off the stage. It ripped from the wooden stage with a tremendous crack like a bullwhip. He hurled the heavy mass of stone at those heading towards the opposite exit from the one I guarded.
I watched it curve through the air. The people started screaming and clawing to escape as it smashed down on their heads with a grating crash. I could feel the floor shake from where I stood outside. Blood exploded from their smashed bodies. I saw arms and legs jerking and seizing under the heavy stone, but within a few moments, they slowed and then stopped.
Others were running towards the door I guarded, but Moloch leapt off the stage in a blur. In a few bounding steps, he reached the pale, terrified faces on the other side of the threshold. His massive clawed hand came down. I heard bones shatter as blood sprayed my face and the wall. Bone splinters and pieces of brain exploded from the screaming bodies. I backpedaled, wiping at my eyes, trying to get the blood off so I could see. No one had told me what to do in this situation. I didn’t know if I was supposed to shoot that massive abomination, or if this was all just part of the show.
“Richard!” a familiar voice cried from behind me. Panic oozed from every word. I spun, seeing Mario and Kolmek standing side by side, their pupils dilated and expressions grim.
“We have a major problem.” It was Mario. I recognized that voice, the one that sounded as if he had been gargling with rocks.
“I know,” I said, holding my rifle tightly. I pointed behind me at the scene of rampant death and destruction.
I had seen bloodshed and war before, but this was different. The Island itself seemed to feel it. The wind, which had been calm when I first landed, now whipped the Island in fast, circular currents. The breeze smelled of burnt matches and coppery blood. The static electricity which had caused the hairs on my arms to rise rippled over everything with tiny blue flashes, increasing in power by the second.
“No, no, not Moloch,” Kolmek said, looking much calmer than I felt. “The Savior lets Moloch thin the herd every year.”
“It’s Leviathan,” Mario continued grimly, “the beast from the waters. The smell of blood is drawing it from the depths of the ocean. We picked up the first blips on radar a few minutes ago. When it gets here, it won’t stop until everything is rubble. It will kill every single person on the Island.”
“All security personnel must report to the south beach immediately,” a cool robotic voice cried out over hidden loudspeakers all over the Island. The screaming from the auditorium had quieted behind me. I was afraid to look inside.
“There it is,” Kolmek said, his head jerking up as the emergency alert read. He motioned for me to follow. “It’s time to fight.”
***
We sprinted over curving trails of smooth logs between deathly quiet forests. All the insects and birds had gone silent. Ahead of us, the palm trees opened up onto the Pacific Ocean. But it was no longer a beautiful tropical blue. A black, swirling whirlpool like an ulcerous wound had opened up on its surface. It stretched hundreds of feet across, drawing closer to the shore by the second. Dead fish, sharks, dolphins, squids and even whales spun in the filthy, dark water.
Twenty black-clad security agents waited for the three of us on the beach, their eyes wide, their faces pale with terror. Like myself, they all had AR-15s and Glock 22s with extra magazines for both. I guess the Glock might be useful for blowing my brains out as a last resort if some beast from Hell rose out of the simmering waters, but I didn’t think it would stop anything from another dimension.
The clouds swirled overhead in a thick curtain as black as smoke. Flashes of blue lightning detonated every couple seconds. Mario raised his hands, screaming over the roaring of the wind. Kolmek stood by my side, his face grim and eyes narrowed.
“Your job is to fight off anything that tries to get on the Island,” he said, looking from one face to another with rapt attention. “Nothing can stand against high-caliber rifle fire. Shoot at the face and eyes when it comes up. We’ve dealt with creatures like this before, and they will retreat if you injure them badly enough.” I had the sense of being fed a line of bullshit as my mind processed this.
“What exactly is coming up?” one of the doe-eyed security men asked. He barely looked old enough to drink, a young, muscular hulk with a Marine Corps tattoo on his neck.
“They call it Leviathan,” Mario responded. “Sometimes the rituals here and the smell of blood can draw… strange things. Leviathan is one of those. We have encountered it before. The most important thing to remember is…” His voice was suddenly drowned out by a terrible cacophony that came from the center of the black whirlpool.
A screech like the detonation of a nuclear missile shook the ground. The ocean jumped and bubbled frantically. The beach heaved and cracked, the white sands disappearing in fissures that opened up like greedy mouths underneath my feet. I lost my balance, falling forwards. The screeching continued rising into a primal roar.
A green dragon head the color of an infected wound erupted from the surface of the thrashing water, rising up dozens of feet in the air. It had two enormous slitted eyes that dilated and constricted quickly as it glowered down at us. The screeching abruptly stopped, the pointed mouth of the dragon slamming shut with a sound like a gunshot.
Within moments, another cancerous green head shot up in a blur, its skin looking as hard as stone. Ridges that looked as sharp as swords ran the length of its reptilian skull, arcing over its eyes and pointed snout. More heads erupted from the ocean until all seven heads of Leviathan loomed over us.
Not one of us fired. No one even seemed to breathe as we surveyed the beast across the no-man’s land of the white sands. The slitted eyes and yellow irises of the seven heads had a demonic hunger, a reptilian coldness. Far behind us, I heard distant screams still echoing from the auditorium where Moloch held sway.
“Fire!” Mario cried. Instantly, a cacophony of gunshots exploded all around me. I jumped up on my feet, scrambling up as the seven-headed dragon leapt forward. Thousands of gallons of saltwater streamed down its massive body as it came up on the beach. Long, black paws with bone-white talons shot out of the surging ocean, followed by a tapering tail like that of a water snake.
I brought the rifle up and emptied my magazine as fast as I could, pulling the trigger over and over as I aimed at the many slitted eyes of Leviathan. But the bullets seemed to ping harmlessly off of its hard, obsidian-like scales.
It scrabbled onto the shore, the heads coming down in a blur. Rows and rows of vampiric fangs gleamed dully in each of the mouths. One security agent was bitten in half, the spurting stump of his lower body still standing for a long moment even as the rest of the body disappeared down the throat of the dragon.
Mario ran forwards, slamming another magazine in his rifle and opening fire point-blank. One of the heads came down in a blur towards him. Its great, staring eyes exploded in a shower of blue blood and thick vitreous fluid. The dragon head pulled back, its mouth opening in a primal scream of agony.
As I reloaded, I scanned the area around me, realizing that nearly half of the security agents were either dead or critically injured. I backpedaled away, keeping my eyes on the dragon. It continuously drew forward, killing more of its enemies with every step. I turned and ran into the forest, the sounds of shattering bones and dying men ringing through the air with a sickening clarity behind me.
Once I had reached the border of the trail, I heard Mario yell, “Retreat!” behind me. But by that point, it was far too late.
***
“Hey! Wait up!” a voice whispered from behind me. I turned my head, seeing Kolmek. Spatters of drying blood covered his face and uniform. As far as I could tell, none of it was his. “Mario’s dead. They’re all dead. We need to get out of here. We need to get off the Island.”
“How?” I asked.
“Find the Savior,” he answered, panting and out of breath. “We must find him. He can get us out of here.”
“I don’t even know what the guy looks like,” I muttered. “He was wearing a goat mask.”
“You’ll know him when you see him,” Kolmek said. “His body is covered in scars. Everything except his face. Stay close to me. We need to watch each other’s backs. It’s our only chance of survival.”
***
A trail of twisted, broken bodies led from the mansion to the surrounding trails and beaches. A decapitated woman with solid gold necklaces embedded with diamonds lay in front of me. It was strange on the Island, the way oblivion and ineffable wealth coexisted side by side. But everything was deathly silent, even in the mansion’s auditorium.
“Where’s the Savior?” I asked through gritted teeth. I peeked my head into the auditorium, but nothing moved. Hundreds of smashed and bloody bodies littered the floor.
“He’s around somewhere,” Kolmek answered. We started circling the mansion, looking for any signs of life. Kolmek went in the lead. As he turned the corner, an enormous black hand with sharp claws of fingers flitted forward in a blur, wrapping itself around his chest. Kolmek gave a strangled cry as it closed around him. I heard his bones crush as a spout of blood and gore flew from his mouth and nose, as if he were a toothpaste tube being squeezed.
I backpedaled away as Moloch threw the twitching corpse aside like a discarded toy. It smashed into the wall of the mansion, exploding wetly. A human-shaped, bloody stain languidly dripped down the wall above Kolmek’s mangled body.
Moloch slowly turned his head towards me, the fiery eyes flashing with hunger. He gnashed his fangs together, taking a step forward with a leg the size and shape of a tree trunk. With every step he took, I felt the ground tremble.
“Stop!” I cried, moving away from the monstrous creature. “Why are you doing this?”
“There is no why,” he gurgled, his voice monstrous and inhumanly slow. “There is only power. The weak deserve to die. Only the strong are worthy of life.” I raised my rifle in a last-ditch effort to save myself. Moloch saw it and started running towards me, every footstep crushing the paved walkway around the mansion into rubble and dust.
I aimed for his eyes and nose, emptying the entire magazine as quickly as I could. The bullets smashed into Moloch’s face. Dark red, clotted blood dripped out of the wounds, writhing with maggots. Drops of it fell around me, landing on my hair and face. I felt the small larvae twisting all over my skin. Moloch’s blood smelled nauseating, like some combination of stinkbugs and rotting bodies. He slowed, giving a roar of pain. I turned to run in the opposite direction, but as I looked out in the direction of the beach, my heart dropped.
Leviathan was moving in our direction, the giant dragon heads looming over the trees. Quickly, it swept towards me like a dark wind.
***
“You will suffer for that, worthless slave,” Moloch growled, wiping blood from his fiery eyes with his sharp talons of fingers. A sudden idea came to me. I ran in the direction of Leviathan. Moloch followed closely at my heels, only a few steps behind me.
Leviathan slithered forward over the sands and trees, its enormous body undulating like a water snake’s. I screamed at it, an incomprehensible wail of terror. Its seven heads snapped towards me. Its slitted eyes widened as it saw Moloch.
I heard the crashing of Moloch’s footsteps stop behind me, only feet away from crushing me into a paste. His massive lungs breathed quickly, exhaling the odor of sulfur and smoke.
“Leviathan,” Moloch growled in his demonic voice. “These are my tributes.” Leviathan’s dragon heads looked straight up at the Sun and screamed in response, their many voices rising and falling in a dissonant wail. As I sprinted into the trees, Leviathan and Moloch ran at each other, colliding with an ear-splitting crash. I glanced back, seeing Moloch ripping one of the dragon heads off its neck with his sharp fingers. The head screamed as blue blood exploded from the spurting stump. After a long moment, the neck fell limply forward.
The other dragon heads bit Moloch in a unified attack. They ripped deep holes in his shoulders and arms, snapping over and over like rabid dogs. As the two eldritch monstrosities attacked each other in fierce combat, I lost sight of them, but the sounds of fighting echoed over the entire island, crashing like lightning.
***
I felt like the survivor of an Apocalypse. I couldn’t find a single other living person on the Island. Hundreds of crushed, broken and decapitated bodies surrounded me. Over the cacophony of fighting, I heard a new noise: the whirring of helicopter blades nearby. It was coming from the other side of the mansion.
Frantically, I sprinted around the other side, seeing a Black Hawk helicopter getting ready to leave. A man in black robes sat at the pilot’s seat, his green eyes gleaming and a wide smile plastered across his face. I smashed my fist into the door over and over until he opened it.
“Holy shit, you’re still alive?” he asked. I hadn’t seen this man before. He had a face like a Calvin Klein model, all sharp angles and high cheekbones, perfectly proportioned in every way. But his scalp looked melted and scarred, as if someone had thrown gasoline on his hair and ignited it. His ears were stunted, twisted growths of scar tissue. His hands, too, were covered in deep, folding burn scars.
“Are you the Savior?” I responded quickly. “Please, get me out of here.”
“They do call me that,” he said wistfully. “The Savior. Yes, I guess I am. Get in.”
***
The Savior stared at me with his strange green eyes, the color of swamps where monstrous things swam under the surface.
“Some people just need to learn the hard way,” he said. The helicopter took off into a dark night covered with bright, twinkling stars. “There is no great power without great responsibility, after all. Those of us who seek the ancient ones know it comes with a cost.” I just stared out the window, gazing down at the countless mutilated, broken bodies that littered the beach.
Below us, the face of a bull stared up with eyes of fiery cyclones. The broken, still body of Leviathan lay at his feet. As we made it over the great waters of the Pacific Ocean, the bull-god raised a hand and waved. At that moment, I thought I could almost see a hurricane of translucent souls circling around him, spiraling up into the sky.

After high school, having no better ideas, I joined the Navy SEALs. I never really liked any of it, but it was a job, after all. I loved the guns and airplanes and grenades, but having to run all the time while some scumbag with a chip on his shoulder yells in my face isn’t my idea of fun.
Things got a lot more interesting after my term of service ended. I still had a high-security clearance, so I used it to take temporary jobs as a mercenary, a hired gun. I did some stints in Iraq with Blackwater, where they set me out in the middle of the desert. A watchtower and oil refinery loomed over the burning sands. Along with a few other guys, they told us, “Guard this area with your life.” While better than the SEALs, working for Blackwater was extremely boring. The other mercenaries and I would mostly just chainsmoke cigarettes and drink coffee all night, staring out across the dead, empty desert.
Over time, I worked my way up. Things started to get more interesting when a job offer arrived in my email one freezing cold winter’s morning. This is what it said.
“Mr. Chase,
“I am the head of security for a private group of entrepreneurs and investors. Through some mutual contacts, I have heard of your professionalism and experience. We are currently putting together a small crew to guard a private event on [REDACTED] Island out in the Pacific Ocean that will run from January 9th to January 26th. Would you be interested in this job? The pay rate is $900 a day.
“Once you are on the island, it will be impossible to leave until the period of employment has ended. If you are interested, please respond to this email as soon as possible.
“Sincerely,
“Mario Antonin, Head of Security.”
I was working piecemeal jobs like this one at the time, but none of them were paying that well. At most, I would usually get $350 to $500 a day, which was still good money when I was working seven days a week until the job finished. I instantly responded and said that yes, I was interested. In response, they sent me a non-disclosure agreement that was the size of a small novel that I had to sign.
That was how I found myself on a private jet, flying out to an island in the middle of the vast blue ocean. I was never told the coordinates of the island or saw it on a map. It was all kept very secret.
A few hours later, we landed on a private airstrip. I looked out the window of the jet, seeing the tropical waters of the Pacific Ocean stretching off to the horizon in every direction. Below me stood an island with palm trees and sandy white beaches. An enormous Victorian mansion loomed directly in the center of it all. The mansion was painted black and looked like something straight out of a horror movie. It had no windows, and the turrets spiraled into blade-like points.
That was my first inkling that something might not be quite right about this trip.
***
As the stairs from the private jet descended, I looked out on this strange new world. Employees waited to greet us, looking like beaten dogs. Some had their heads down, their eyes blankly scanning the ground. Most of them were women wearing red dresses, reminding me of stewardesses on a plane. The jet strip was surrounded by palm trees and tropical brush. The chirping of insects sounded all around us, high and resonant.
I saw a strange patch engraved on all of the employees’ uniforms and jackets. It looked almost like a stick figure drawing of a man, the bottom of its body ending in a C. Its arms were long and jointed, almost spidery. Three symbols like repeated iron crosses connected to the left side of its body in a line. I wondered if it was the logo of some company. I put it out of my mind for now, but I would see that symbol again all over the island, painted on the sides of the mansion and even cut into the trees with a knife. It would only be later that night that I realized its connection to Moloch.
“Good day, sir, and welcome to the Island,” the server on my left said with glassy eyes and a fake smile plastered across her face. They all looked up at once, but it was like the workers all looked through me rather than at me. Their eyes looked flat and dead, like the painted-on eyes of a doll.
“The Island, huh?” I asked, curious. “They wouldn’t tell me where I was going. They said it was a secret. Is that what you call it?” The woman just nodded, the doll-like smile never leaving her lips.
“Officially, this island is unnamed and uninhabited,” the woman said. “In fact, all traces of it have been scrubbed from the internet. You won’t find it on Google Maps or in any publicly available satellite imagery.” She leaned forward towards me with heavily mascaraed eyes and ruby-red lipstick slashed across her lips. “This is a very special place. Only very special people are allowed here. You should be honored to work here under our Savior.”
“I hope you’re talking about Jesus or something,” I said jokingly. She just smiled blankly and motioned me forward.
“Just follow that trail for a few hundred feet-” she said, pointing at an opening in the palm trees where logs were laid down horizontally over the muggy jungle- “and you’ll find the mansion. Good luck!” I thought it was a somewhat strange thing to say, wishing a random stranger good luck.
But, by the end of that night, I realized that simply to make it off this island alive, I would need lots of it.
***
I followed the woman’s directions to the back of the brutalist mansion. A heavy metal door stood there with a small bullet-proof window built in the top. A tanned, Spanish face glowered out at me then rapidly drew back and disappeared. A few heartbeats later, the door slid to the side with a grinding of hidden gears.
The head of security at the Island was a heavily-tattooed ex-Marine named Mario. He wore a dark Kevlar vest over a black outfit, making him look like a walking shadow. I found the security had their own private complex in the mansion as he showed me around the site. Hundreds of hidden cameras covered every angle of the mansion and the surrounding parts of the island. Dozens of black-clad security agents swarmed over the screens, checking the monitors and computers constantly.
“Quite a set-up you have here,” I said to Mario, nodding at him. He smacked me on the shoulder, giving a confident grin.
“Money is no issue here, Richard,” he responded. “Security is paramount. There are things on this island that could rip apart the world if they ever escaped.” I raised an eyebrow.
“Like what?” I asked. “Nuclear weapons or something?” He laughed at that.
“You’ll see for yourself tonight,” he said, his dark eyes flashing with something cold and alien.
***
Mario led me and a couple other new hired guns around the Island. The place was certainly strange. It reminded me of some combination of a secret black-ops site and a playboy billionaire’s private heaven. All of the doors in the mansion looked like they were made of thick steel. They had wheels that would spin, like those on a submarine door. The mansion also had no windows at all that I could see, except for the small, shatter-proof glass openings on the steel doors. I didn’t want to ask too many questions, however. I couldn’t resist asking him about a couple small things, however- or at least, they seemed small to me at the time.
“What are those hatchways?” I asked Mario, pointing to rectangular covers built into the concrete walkway. They had heavy handles. “Are those manholes or something?”
“There are tunnels under the Island,” he responded vaguely. “Just for maintenance and security, you understand.”
“Wow, this place is certainly… well-developed,” I said. We came out through a grove of palm trees. A stone walkway led down to a white beach. Dozens of yachts were moored all across the shore, some of them looking like they must have cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
“There’s a lot of money and power here,” Mario said. “That’s why it’s important you never talk about what you see here. These are the people who control the world, the ones behind the government and the media. Not the elected officials who the people see, but the actual power.”
“Like who?” I asked. “You mean the Rothschilds and Soros?” He laughed again, a sarcastic, grinding laugh that grated my nerves.
“Trust me, the truly powerful ones don’t even have public personas. If you know their name, then they’re just one of the puppets.” I just shook my head at that, then asked the real question that had been bothering me since I first arrived here.
“Who is the Savior?” I asked. “Is that some codename or something?” Mario froze in place.
“He’s the one who runs everything here,” he whispered conspiratorially, looking around nervously. “But don’t be mentioning that kind of shit. You’ll probably see him tonight anyway. He’s the one who runs the show. He’ll be on the stage in his normal outfit.”
***
By the end of the day, I was suited up like the rest of the security staff, wearing the pure black pants and shirt with the symbol of Moloch engraved over the heart. Hundreds of the world’s most famous politicians, actors, businessmen and artists had gathered, streaming in the front doors with a soft, diffident susurration.
I stood by the open doorway of a side exit with an AR-15 and full body armor, next to one other soldier. They had also given me a sidearm. Every entrance or exit was manned by at least two armed men. The security at this place was some of the most intense I had ever seen. Beyond the door, there were rows and rows of the most comfortable seats, all gathered in a semi-circle around a massive stage made of pure mahogany. Blood-red curtains stood closed at the front of the room, concealing their secrets- for now, at least.
“Hail Satan!” I heard the elites cry inside in unison. I didn’t want to look in at the rows of high-ranking politicians, celebrities, influencers and artists, but my curiosity was high. I peeked around the corner of the stone archway, seeing the red curtains on the stage drawing apart. I saw one of my favorite actors standing in the front row, clapping excitedly and jumping up and down.
The crowd cheered as a naked female strapped to an obsidian altar lay there. She was beautiful and blonde, probably no older than twenty with the face of a supermodel. Her mouth was gagged, her arms outstretched like Jesus on the cross. Thin leather cords were tied around her wrists and ankles, biting deeply into the skin. Her eyes rolled wildly as she shook her head from side to side. She froze, and her eyes met mine for a brief moment. I saw the pleading expression there, the mortal terror and absolute horror.
A man in a goat mask wearing black robes slunk out from the side of the stage, carrying a wavy silver dagger engraved with strange symbols. The crowd erupted into a primal roar of pleasure and excitement that sounded like it came from one monstrous mouth.
“Worthy is the Lamb!” the man in the goat mask screamed with electronic amplification. He had a deep voice, as if he had rocks rolling around in his throat. The crowd roared and clapped. Scattered cries of “Hail Lucifer!” and “Ave Satanas!” echoed down the massive auditorium.
“Hey, pay attention,” the other security agent at my side said in a thick Finnish accent. He was a tall Scandinavian-looking guy named Kolmek. “You’re not getting paid to watch the show, new guy.” I tried to rip my gaze away from the stage, but it held my attention with an obsessive horror.
“The burnt bones of children and women have been offered to the ancient ones, to Moloch,” the man on the stage cried. “Under our feet, the burnt bodies of hundreds lay dreaming. This victim will be the 666th. Her blood will bring about the Gnosis that we seek, the direct experience of the divine held by the gods, by Lucifer and Moloch and Baal…” The roaring of the crowd temporarily drowned out his electronically-magnified voice. “Tonight, we will rip open the veil!”
I had stopped watching the show, instead staring blankly out at the beach and palm trees. At that moment, another black-clad security agent came up to my partner, whispered something in his ear, then immediately disappeared, heading off back in the direction of the main security office. Kolmek shook his head grimly.
“I’ll be right back,” he said. “Stay right here. Don’t move from this door no matter what. And pay attention.” I nodded and watched as he walked off in the same direction.
I immediately took the opportunity to continue watching the ceremony. I had missed something important, apparently. The woman now laid dead on the sacrificial table, a gaping hole in her chest. Blood spurted from the crater as the man in the goat mask held her beating heart grasped tightly in his hand, letting the blood stream down his naked fingers. The crowd cheered with a rising bloodlust and insanity. Most of them were standing, their eyes gleaming and wide with fanatical adoration. The entire spectacle reminded me of some kind of ancient Aztec ritual.
As the woman’s sightless eyes stared vacantly up in death, the man in a goat mask pulled out a can of gasoline. The clear liquid gurgled as he up-ended the canister over her pale, bloodless face, over her naked stomach and long legs. A moment later, he lit a match and dropped it. I heard the whooshing of the flames as they rose up.
The crowd went deathly silent as they watched the rippling flames. The man in the goat mask began chanting in some strange language I had never heard before. It sounded Semitic, but I knew it wasn’t Arabic or Hebrew. I felt something like electricity ripple through the air, almost like a feeling of falling pressure before a storm. I looked down at the hairs on my arms, seeing them rise up. I looked back up at the stage, and my eyes widened in horror.
The flaming body of the sacrificial victim had started to morph before my eyes and the eyes of the crowd. The dripping, blackening flesh jumped up and down, as if there were rats trapped in her body trying to escape the fire. There was a deafening hissing as if thousands of snakes were being burned alive.
The dead woman’s arms jerked up, the skin splitting open as if she had seams running along her skin. Something dark and muscular with curving, black talons ripped its way out of the dead, burning flesh. Behind it, a head appeared with long, curving horns and eyes that spun with whorls of fire. It looked like the offspring of a bull and a demon. Its imposing body rose up from the inferno, appearing like magic from the solid stone. It raised itself to its full height, looming over the crowd. The last of the woman’s blood hissed and boiled away, her flesh dissolving into ashes.
“Behold, Moloch rises!” the man in the goat mask screamed in a fanatical voice. The crowd’s cheering had stopped, though. Many of the faces in the crowd looked chalk-white with terror. The bull-god surveyed the crowd, its horns nearly scraping the ceiling twenty feet above the stage.
At that moment, I knew death was on its way with eyes of fire and a grin like a skull, ready to reap a field of human bodies.
***
I heard running behind me, but I didn’t dare turn away from the horrific sight in front of me. The last of the fire’s embers died, sending up thin wisps of gray smoke that spiraled around the bull-god’s monstrous face. Moloch stood as still as a statue, and if it weren’t for one thing, I might’ve thought it was some sort of sculpture or art project. He had two nostrils like a serpent’s. As his great lungs inhaled, the smoke billowed in and out of his mouth and nose.
Some of the people at the edges of the crowd had gotten up, hurrying towards the doors. Moloch’s head ratcheted to face them, his fiery eyes narrowing into slits.
“Do not leave!” the man in the goat mask pleaded. “Those who have fear are not worthy of life. Do not prove yourselves unworthy of life!” As the first of the fleeing men and women got to within a few steps of the door, Moloch gave a primal roar. In a blur of primal strength, he reached down and ripped the blackened sacrificial altar off the stage. It ripped from the wooden stage with a tremendous crack like a bullwhip. He hurled the heavy mass of stone at those heading towards the opposite exit from the one I guarded.
I watched it curve through the air. The people started screaming and clawing to escape as it smashed down on their heads with a grating crash. I could feel the floor shake from where I stood outside. Blood exploded from their smashed bodies. I saw arms and legs jerking and seizing under the heavy stone, but within a few moments, they slowed and then stopped.
Others were running towards the door I guarded, but Moloch leapt off the stage in a blur. In a few bounding steps, he reached the pale, terrified faces on the other side of the threshold. His massive clawed hand came down. I heard bones shatter as blood sprayed my face and the wall. Bone splinters and pieces of brain exploded from the screaming bodies. I backpedaled, wiping at my eyes, trying to get the blood off so I could see. No one had told me what to do in this situation. I didn’t know if I was supposed to shoot that massive abomination, or if this was all just part of the show.
“Richard!” a familiar voice cried from behind me. Panic oozed from every word. I spun, seeing Mario and Kolmek standing side by side, their pupils dilated and expressions grim.
“We have a major problem.” It was Mario. I recognized that voice, the one that sounded as if he had been gargling with rocks.
“I know,” I said, holding my rifle tightly. I pointed behind me at the scene of rampant death and destruction.
I had seen bloodshed and war before, but this was different. The Island itself seemed to feel it. The wind, which had been calm when I first landed, now whipped the Island in fast, circular currents. The breeze smelled of burnt matches and coppery blood. The static electricity which had caused the hairs on my arms to rise rippled over everything with tiny blue flashes, increasing in power by the second.
“No, no, not Moloch,” Kolmek said, looking much calmer than I felt. “The Savior lets Moloch thin the herd every year.”
“It’s Leviathan,” Mario continued grimly, “the beast from the waters. The smell of blood is drawing it from the depths of the ocean. We picked up the first blips on radar a few minutes ago. When it gets here, it won’t stop until everything is rubble. It will kill every single person on the Island.”
“All security personnel must report to the south beach immediately,” a cool robotic voice cried out over hidden loudspeakers all over the Island. The screaming from the auditorium had quieted behind me. I was afraid to look inside.
“There it is,” Kolmek said, his head jerking up as the emergency alert read. He motioned for me to follow. “It’s time to fight.”
***
We sprinted over curving trails of smooth logs between deathly quiet forests. All the insects and birds had gone silent. Ahead of us, the palm trees opened up onto the Pacific Ocean. But it was no longer a beautiful tropical blue. A black, swirling whirlpool like an ulcerous wound had opened up on its surface. It stretched hundreds of feet across, drawing closer to the shore by the second. Dead fish, sharks, dolphins, squids and even whales spun in the filthy, dark water.
Twenty black-clad security agents waited for the three of us on the beach, their eyes wide, their faces pale with terror. Like myself, they all had AR-15s and Glock 22s with extra magazines for both. I guess the Glock might be useful for blowing my brains out as a last resort if some beast from Hell rose out of the simmering waters, but I didn’t think it would stop anything from another dimension.
The clouds swirled overhead in a thick curtain as black as smoke. Flashes of blue lightning detonated every couple seconds. Mario raised his hands, screaming over the roaring of the wind. Kolmek stood by my side, his face grim and eyes narrowed.
“Your job is to fight off anything that tries to get on the Island,” he said, looking from one face to another with rapt attention. “Nothing can stand against high-caliber rifle fire. Shoot at the face and eyes when it comes up. We’ve dealt with creatures like this before, and they will retreat if you injure them badly enough.” I had the sense of being fed a line of bullshit as my mind processed this.
“What exactly is coming up?” one of the doe-eyed security men asked. He barely looked old enough to drink, a young, muscular hulk with a Marine Corps tattoo on his neck.
“They call it Leviathan,” Mario responded. “Sometimes the rituals here and the smell of blood can draw… strange things. Leviathan is one of those. We have encountered it before. The most important thing to remember is…” His voice was suddenly drowned out by a terrible cacophony that came from the center of the black whirlpool.
A screech like the detonation of a nuclear missile shook the ground. The ocean jumped and bubbled frantically. The beach heaved and cracked, the white sands disappearing in fissures that opened up like greedy mouths underneath my feet. I lost my balance, falling forwards. The screeching continued rising into a primal roar.
A green dragon head the color of an infected wound erupted from the surface of the thrashing water, rising up dozens of feet in the air. It had two enormous slitted eyes that dilated and constricted quickly as it glowered down at us. The screeching abruptly stopped, the pointed mouth of the dragon slamming shut with a sound like a gunshot.
Within moments, another cancerous green head shot up in a blur, its skin looking as hard as stone. Ridges that looked as sharp as swords ran the length of its reptilian skull, arcing over its eyes and pointed snout. More heads erupted from the ocean until all seven heads of Leviathan loomed over us.
Not one of us fired. No one even seemed to breathe as we surveyed the beast across the no-man’s land of the white sands. The slitted eyes and yellow irises of the seven heads had a demonic hunger, a reptilian coldness. Far behind us, I heard distant screams still echoing from the auditorium where Moloch held sway.
“Fire!” Mario cried. Instantly, a cacophony of gunshots exploded all around me. I jumped up on my feet, scrambling up as the seven-headed dragon leapt forward. Thousands of gallons of saltwater streamed down its massive body as it came up on the beach. Long, black paws with bone-white talons shot out of the surging ocean, followed by a tapering tail like that of a water snake.
I brought the rifle up and emptied my magazine as fast as I could, pulling the trigger over and over as I aimed at the many slitted eyes of Leviathan. But the bullets seemed to ping harmlessly off of its hard, obsidian-like scales.
It scrabbled onto the shore, the heads coming down in a blur. Rows and rows of vampiric fangs gleamed dully in each of the mouths. One security agent was bitten in half, the spurting stump of his lower body still standing for a long moment even as the rest of the body disappeared down the throat of the dragon.
Mario ran forwards, slamming another magazine in his rifle and opening fire point-blank. One of the heads came down in a blur towards him. Its great, staring eyes exploded in a shower of blue blood and thick vitreous fluid. The dragon head pulled back, its mouth opening in a primal scream of agony.
As I reloaded, I scanned the area around me, realizing that nearly half of the security agents were either dead or critically injured. I backpedaled away, keeping my eyes on the dragon. It continuously drew forward, killing more of its enemies with every step. I turned and ran into the forest, the sounds of shattering bones and dying men ringing through the air with a sickening clarity behind me.
Once I had reached the border of the trail, I heard Mario yell, “Retreat!” behind me. But by that point, it was far too late.
***
“Hey! Wait up!” a voice whispered from behind me. I turned my head, seeing Kolmek. Spatters of drying blood covered his face and uniform. As far as I could tell, none of it was his. “Mario’s dead. They’re all dead. We need to get out of here. We need to get off the Island.”
“How?” I asked.
“Find the Savior,” he answered, panting and out of breath. “We must find him. He can get us out of here.”
“I don’t even know what the guy looks like,” I muttered. “He was wearing a goat mask.”
“You’ll know him when you see him,” Kolmek said. “His body is covered in scars. Everything except his face. Stay close to me. We need to watch each other’s backs. It’s our only chance of survival.”
***
A trail of twisted, broken bodies led from the mansion to the surrounding trails and beaches. A decapitated woman with solid gold necklaces embedded with diamonds lay in front of me. It was strange on the Island, the way oblivion and ineffable wealth coexisted side by side. But everything was deathly silent, even in the mansion’s auditorium.
“Where’s the Savior?” I asked through gritted teeth. I peeked my head into the auditorium, but nothing moved. Hundreds of smashed and bloody bodies littered the floor.
“He’s around somewhere,” Kolmek answered. We started circling the mansion, looking for any signs of life. Kolmek went in the lead. As he turned the corner, an enormous black hand with sharp claws of fingers flitted forward in a blur, wrapping itself around his chest. Kolmek gave a strangled cry as it closed around him. I heard his bones crush as a spout of blood and gore flew from his mouth and nose, as if he were a toothpaste tube being squeezed.
I backpedaled away as Moloch threw the twitching corpse aside like a discarded toy. It smashed into the wall of the mansion, exploding wetly. A human-shaped, bloody stain languidly dripped down the wall above Kolmek’s mangled body.
Moloch slowly turned his head towards me, the fiery eyes flashing with hunger. He gnashed his fangs together, taking a step forward with a leg the size and shape of a tree trunk. With every step he took, I felt the ground tremble.
“Stop!” I cried, moving away from the monstrous creature. “Why are you doing this?”
“There is no why,” he gurgled, his voice monstrous and inhumanly slow. “There is only power. The weak deserve to die. Only the strong are worthy of life.” I raised my rifle in a last-ditch effort to save myself. Moloch saw it and started running towards me, every footstep crushing the paved walkway around the mansion into rubble and dust.
I aimed for his eyes and nose, emptying the entire magazine as quickly as I could. The bullets smashed into Moloch’s face. Dark red, clotted blood dripped out of the wounds, writhing with maggots. Drops of it fell around me, landing on my hair and face. I felt the small larvae twisting all over my skin. Moloch’s blood smelled nauseating, like some combination of stinkbugs and rotting bodies. He slowed, giving a roar of pain. I turned to run in the opposite direction, but as I looked out in the direction of the beach, my heart dropped.
Leviathan was moving in our direction, the giant dragon heads looming over the trees. Quickly, it swept towards me like a dark wind.
***
“You will suffer for that, worthless slave,” Moloch growled, wiping blood from his fiery eyes with his sharp talons of fingers. A sudden idea came to me. I ran in the direction of Leviathan. Moloch followed closely at my heels, only a few steps behind me.
Leviathan slithered forward over the sands and trees, its enormous body undulating like a water snake’s. I screamed at it, an incomprehensible wail of terror. Its seven heads snapped towards me. Its slitted eyes widened as it saw Moloch.
I heard the crashing of Moloch’s footsteps stop behind me, only feet away from crushing me into a paste. His massive lungs breathed quickly, exhaling the odor of sulfur and smoke.
“Leviathan,” Moloch growled in his demonic voice. “These are my tributes.” Leviathan’s dragon heads looked straight up at the Sun and screamed in response, their many voices rising and falling in a dissonant wail. As I sprinted into the trees, Leviathan and Moloch ran at each other, colliding with an ear-splitting crash. I glanced back, seeing Moloch ripping one of the dragon heads off its neck with his sharp fingers. The head screamed as blue blood exploded from the spurting stump. After a long moment, the neck fell limply forward.
The other dragon heads bit Moloch in a unified attack. They ripped deep holes in his shoulders and arms, snapping over and over like rabid dogs. As the two eldritch monstrosities attacked each other in fierce combat, I lost sight of them, but the sounds of fighting echoed over the entire island, crashing like lightning.
***
I felt like the survivor of an Apocalypse. I couldn’t find a single other living person on the Island. Hundreds of crushed, broken and decapitated bodies surrounded me. Over the cacophony of fighting, I heard a new noise: the whirring of helicopter blades nearby. It was coming from the other side of the mansion.
Frantically, I sprinted around the other side, seeing a Black Hawk helicopter getting ready to leave. A man in black robes sat at the pilot’s seat, his green eyes gleaming and a wide smile plastered across his face. I smashed my fist into the door over and over until he opened it.
“Holy shit, you’re still alive?” he asked. I hadn’t seen this man before. He had a face like a Calvin Klein model, all sharp angles and high cheekbones, perfectly proportioned in every way. But his scalp looked melted and scarred, as if someone had thrown gasoline on his hair and ignited it. His ears were stunted, twisted growths of scar tissue. His hands, too, were covered in deep, folding burn scars.
“Are you the Savior?” I responded quickly. “Please, get me out of here.”
“They do call me that,” he said wistfully. “The Savior. Yes, I guess I am. Get in.”
***
The Savior stared at me with his strange green eyes, the color of swamps where monstrous things swam under the surface.
“Some people just need to learn the hard way,” he said. The helicopter took off into a dark night covered with bright, twinkling stars. “There is no great power without great responsibility, after all. Those of us who seek the ancient ones know it comes with a cost.” I just stared out the window, gazing down at the countless mutilated, broken bodies that littered the beach.
Below us, the face of a bull stared up with eyes of fiery cyclones. The broken, still body of Leviathan lay at his feet. As we made it over the great waters of the Pacific Ocean, the bull-god raised a hand and waved. At that moment, I thought I could almost see a hurricane of translucent souls circling around him, spiraling up into the sky.

After high school, having no better ideas, I joined the Navy SEALs. I never really liked any of it, but it was a job, after all. I loved the guns and airplanes and grenades, but having to run all the time while some scumbag with a chip on his shoulder yells in my face isn’t my idea of fun.
Things got a lot more interesting after my term of service ended. I still had a high-security clearance, so I used it to take temporary jobs as a mercenary, a hired gun. I did some stints in Iraq with Blackwater, where they set me out in the middle of the desert. A watchtower and oil refinery loomed over the burning sands. Along with a few other guys, they told us, “Guard this area with your life.” While better than the SEALs, working for Blackwater was extremely boring. The other mercenaries and I would mostly just chainsmoke cigarettes and drink coffee all night, staring out across the dead, empty desert.
Over time, I worked my way up. Things started to get more interesting when a job offer arrived in my email one freezing cold winter’s morning. This is what it said.
“Mr. Chase,
“I am the head of security for a private group of entrepreneurs and investors. Through some mutual contacts, I have heard of your professionalism and experience. We are currently putting together a small crew to guard a private event on [REDACTED] Island out in the Pacific Ocean that will run from January 9th to January 26th. Would you be interested in this job? The pay rate is $900 a day.
“Once you are on the island, it will be impossible to leave until the period of employment has ended. If you are interested, please respond to this email as soon as possible.
“Sincerely,
“Mario Antonin, Head of Security.”
I was working piecemeal jobs like this one at the time, but none of them were paying that well. At most, I would usually get $350 to $500 a day, which was still good money when I was working seven days a week until the job finished. I instantly responded and said that yes, I was interested. In response, they sent me a non-disclosure agreement that was the size of a small novel that I had to sign.
That was how I found myself on a private jet, flying out to an island in the middle of the vast blue ocean. I was never told the coordinates of the island or saw it on a map. It was all kept very secret.
A few hours later, we landed on a private airstrip. I looked out the window of the jet, seeing the tropical waters of the Pacific Ocean stretching off to the horizon in every direction. Below me stood an island with palm trees and sandy white beaches. An enormous Victorian mansion loomed directly in the center of it all. The mansion was painted black and looked like something straight out of a horror movie. It had no windows, and the turrets spiraled into blade-like points.
That was my first inkling that something might not be quite right about this trip.
***
As the stairs from the private jet descended, I looked out on this strange new world. Employees waited to greet us, looking like beaten dogs. Some had their heads down, their eyes blankly scanning the ground. Most of them were women wearing red dresses, reminding me of stewardesses on a plane. The jet strip was surrounded by palm trees and tropical brush. The chirping of insects sounded all around us, high and resonant.
I saw a strange patch engraved on all of the employees’ uniforms and jackets. It looked almost like a stick figure drawing of a man, the bottom of its body ending in a C. Its arms were long and jointed, almost spidery. Three symbols like repeated iron crosses connected to the left side of its body in a line. I wondered if it was the logo of some company. I put it out of my mind for now, but I would see that symbol again all over the island, painted on the sides of the mansion and even cut into the trees with a knife. It would only be later that night that I realized its connection to Moloch.
“Good day, sir, and welcome to the Island,” the server on my left said with glassy eyes and a fake smile plastered across her face. They all looked up at once, but it was like the workers all looked through me rather than at me. Their eyes looked flat and dead, like the painted-on eyes of a doll.
“The Island, huh?” I asked, curious. “They wouldn’t tell me where I was going. They said it was a secret. Is that what you call it?” The woman just nodded, the doll-like smile never leaving her lips.
“Officially, this island is unnamed and uninhabited,” the woman said. “In fact, all traces of it have been scrubbed from the internet. You won’t find it on Google Maps or in any publicly available satellite imagery.” She leaned forward towards me with heavily mascaraed eyes and ruby-red lipstick slashed across her lips. “This is a very special place. Only very special people are allowed here. You should be honored to work here under our Savior.”
“I hope you’re talking about Jesus or something,” I said jokingly. She just smiled blankly and motioned me forward.
“Just follow that trail for a few hundred feet-” she said, pointing at an opening in the palm trees where logs were laid down horizontally over the muggy jungle- “and you’ll find the mansion. Good luck!” I thought it was a somewhat strange thing to say, wishing a random stranger good luck.
But, by the end of that night, I realized that simply to make it off this island alive, I would need lots of it.
***
I followed the woman’s directions to the back of the brutalist mansion. A heavy metal door stood there with a small bullet-proof window built in the top. A tanned, Spanish face glowered out at me then rapidly drew back and disappeared. A few heartbeats later, the door slid to the side with a grinding of hidden gears.
The head of security at the Island was a heavily-tattooed ex-Marine named Mario. He wore a dark Kevlar vest over a black outfit, making him look like a walking shadow. I found the security had their own private complex in the mansion as he showed me around the site. Hundreds of hidden cameras covered every angle of the mansion and the surrounding parts of the island. Dozens of black-clad security agents swarmed over the screens, checking the monitors and computers constantly.
“Quite a set-up you have here,” I said to Mario, nodding at him. He smacked me on the shoulder, giving a confident grin.
“Money is no issue here, Richard,” he responded. “Security is paramount. There are things on this island that could rip apart the world if they ever escaped.” I raised an eyebrow.
“Like what?” I asked. “Nuclear weapons or something?” He laughed at that.
“You’ll see for yourself tonight,” he said, his dark eyes flashing with something cold and alien.
***
Mario led me and a couple other new hired guns around the Island. The place was certainly strange. It reminded me of some combination of a secret black-ops site and a playboy billionaire’s private heaven. All of the doors in the mansion looked like they were made of thick steel. They had wheels that would spin, like those on a submarine door. The mansion also had no windows at all that I could see, except for the small, shatter-proof glass openings on the steel doors. I didn’t want to ask too many questions, however. I couldn’t resist asking him about a couple small things, however- or at least, they seemed small to me at the time.
“What are those hatchways?” I asked Mario, pointing to rectangular covers built into the concrete walkway. They had heavy handles. “Are those manholes or something?”
“There are tunnels under the Island,” he responded vaguely. “Just for maintenance and security, you understand.”
“Wow, this place is certainly… well-developed,” I said. We came out through a grove of palm trees. A stone walkway led down to a white beach. Dozens of yachts were moored all across the shore, some of them looking like they must have cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
“There’s a lot of money and power here,” Mario said. “That’s why it’s important you never talk about what you see here. These are the people who control the world, the ones behind the government and the media. Not the elected officials who the people see, but the actual power.”
“Like who?” I asked. “You mean the Rothschilds and Soros?” He laughed again, a sarcastic, grinding laugh that grated my nerves.
“Trust me, the truly powerful ones don’t even have public personas. If you know their name, then they’re just one of the puppets.” I just shook my head at that, then asked the real question that had been bothering me since I first arrived here.
“Who is the Savior?” I asked. “Is that some codename or something?” Mario froze in place.
“He’s the one who runs everything here,” he whispered conspiratorially, looking around nervously. “But don’t be mentioning that kind of shit. You’ll probably see him tonight anyway. He’s the one who runs the show. He’ll be on the stage in his normal outfit.”
***
By the end of the day, I was suited up like the rest of the security staff, wearing the pure black pants and shirt with the symbol of Moloch engraved over the heart. Hundreds of the world’s most famous politicians, actors, businessmen and artists had gathered, streaming in the front doors with a soft, diffident susurration.
I stood by the open doorway of a side exit with an AR-15 and full body armor, next to one other soldier. They had also given me a sidearm. Every entrance or exit was manned by at least two armed men. The security at this place was some of the most intense I had ever seen. Beyond the door, there were rows and rows of the most comfortable seats, all gathered in a semi-circle around a massive stage made of pure mahogany. Blood-red curtains stood closed at the front of the room, concealing their secrets- for now, at least.
“Hail Satan!” I heard the elites cry inside in unison. I didn’t want to look in at the rows of high-ranking politicians, celebrities, influencers and artists, but my curiosity was high. I peeked around the corner of the stone archway, seeing the red curtains on the stage drawing apart. I saw one of my favorite actors standing in the front row, clapping excitedly and jumping up and down.
The crowd cheered as a naked female strapped to an obsidian altar lay there. She was beautiful and blonde, probably no older than twenty with the face of a supermodel. Her mouth was gagged, her arms outstretched like Jesus on the cross. Thin leather cords were tied around her wrists and ankles, biting deeply into the skin. Her eyes rolled wildly as she shook her head from side to side. She froze, and her eyes met mine for a brief moment. I saw the pleading expression there, the mortal terror and absolute horror.
A man in a goat mask wearing black robes slunk out from the side of the stage, carrying a wavy silver dagger engraved with strange symbols. The crowd erupted into a primal roar of pleasure and excitement that sounded like it came from one monstrous mouth.
“Worthy is the Lamb!” the man in the goat mask screamed with electronic amplification. He had a deep voice, as if he had rocks rolling around in his throat. The crowd roared and clapped. Scattered cries of “Hail Lucifer!” and “Ave Satanas!” echoed down the massive auditorium.
“Hey, pay attention,” the other security agent at my side said in a thick Finnish accent. He was a tall Scandinavian-looking guy named Kolmek. “You’re not getting paid to watch the show, new guy.” I tried to rip my gaze away from the stage, but it held my attention with an obsessive horror.
“The burnt bones of children and women have been offered to the ancient ones, to Moloch,” the man on the stage cried. “Under our feet, the burnt bodies of hundreds lay dreaming. This victim will be the 666th. Her blood will bring about the Gnosis that we seek, the direct experience of the divine held by the gods, by Lucifer and Moloch and Baal…” The roaring of the crowd temporarily drowned out his electronically-magnified voice. “Tonight, we will rip open the veil!”
I had stopped watching the show, instead staring blankly out at the beach and palm trees. At that moment, another black-clad security agent came up to my partner, whispered something in his ear, then immediately disappeared, heading off back in the direction of the main security office. Kolmek shook his head grimly.
“I’ll be right back,” he said. “Stay right here. Don’t move from this door no matter what. And pay attention.” I nodded and watched as he walked off in the same direction.
I immediately took the opportunity to continue watching the ceremony. I had missed something important, apparently. The woman now laid dead on the sacrificial table, a gaping hole in her chest. Blood spurted from the crater as the man in the goat mask held her beating heart grasped tightly in his hand, letting the blood stream down his naked fingers. The crowd cheered with a rising bloodlust and insanity. Most of them were standing, their eyes gleaming and wide with fanatical adoration. The entire spectacle reminded me of some kind of ancient Aztec ritual.
As the woman’s sightless eyes stared vacantly up in death, the man in a goat mask pulled out a can of gasoline. The clear liquid gurgled as he up-ended the canister over her pale, bloodless face, over her naked stomach and long legs. A moment later, he lit a match and dropped it. I heard the whooshing of the flames as they rose up.
The crowd went deathly silent as they watched the rippling flames. The man in the goat mask began chanting in some strange language I had never heard before. It sounded Semitic, but I knew it wasn’t Arabic or Hebrew. I felt something like electricity ripple through the air, almost like a feeling of falling pressure before a storm. I looked down at the hairs on my arms, seeing them rise up. I looked back up at the stage, and my eyes widened in horror.
The flaming body of the sacrificial victim had started to morph before my eyes and the eyes of the crowd. The dripping, blackening flesh jumped up and down, as if there were rats trapped in her body trying to escape the fire. There was a deafening hissing as if thousands of snakes were being burned alive.
The dead woman’s arms jerked up, the skin splitting open as if she had seams running along her skin. Something dark and muscular with curving, black talons ripped its way out of the dead, burning flesh. Behind it, a head appeared with long, curving horns and eyes that spun with whorls of fire. It looked like the offspring of a bull and a demon. Its imposing body rose up from the inferno, appearing like magic from the solid stone. It raised itself to its full height, looming over the crowd. The last of the woman’s blood hissed and boiled away, her flesh dissolving into ashes.
“Behold, Moloch rises!” the man in the goat mask screamed in a fanatical voice. The crowd’s cheering had stopped, though. Many of the faces in the crowd looked chalk-white with terror. The bull-god surveyed the crowd, its horns nearly scraping the ceiling twenty feet above the stage.
At that moment, I knew death was on its way with eyes of fire and a grin like a skull, ready to reap a field of human bodies.
***
I heard running behind me, but I didn’t dare turn away from the horrific sight in front of me. The last of the fire’s embers died, sending up thin wisps of gray smoke that spiraled around the bull-god’s monstrous face. Moloch stood as still as a statue, and if it weren’t for one thing, I might’ve thought it was some sort of sculpture or art project. He had two nostrils like a serpent’s. As his great lungs inhaled, the smoke billowed in and out of his mouth and nose.
Some of the people at the edges of the crowd had gotten up, hurrying towards the doors. Moloch’s head ratcheted to face them, his fiery eyes narrowing into slits.
“Do not leave!” the man in the goat mask pleaded. “Those who have fear are not worthy of life. Do not prove yourselves unworthy of life!” As the first of the fleeing men and women got to within a few steps of the door, Moloch gave a primal roar. In a blur of primal strength, he reached down and ripped the blackened sacrificial altar off the stage. It ripped from the wooden stage with a tremendous crack like a bullwhip. He hurled the heavy mass of stone at those heading towards the opposite exit from the one I guarded.
I watched it curve through the air. The people started screaming and clawing to escape as it smashed down on their heads with a grating crash. I could feel the floor shake from where I stood outside. Blood exploded from their smashed bodies. I saw arms and legs jerking and seizing under the heavy stone, but within a few moments, they slowed and then stopped.
Others were running towards the door I guarded, but Moloch leapt off the stage in a blur. In a few bounding steps, he reached the pale, terrified faces on the other side of the threshold. His massive clawed hand came down. I heard bones shatter as blood sprayed my face and the wall. Bone splinters and pieces of brain exploded from the screaming bodies. I backpedaled, wiping at my eyes, trying to get the blood off so I could see. No one had told me what to do in this situation. I didn’t know if I was supposed to shoot that massive abomination, or if this was all just part of the show.
“Richard!” a familiar voice cried from behind me. Panic oozed from every word. I spun, seeing Mario and Kolmek standing side by side, their pupils dilated and expressions grim.
“We have a major problem.” It was Mario. I recognized that voice, the one that sounded as if he had been gargling with rocks.
“I know,” I said, holding my rifle tightly. I pointed behind me at the scene of rampant death and destruction.
I had seen bloodshed and war before, but this was different. The Island itself seemed to feel it. The wind, which had been calm when I first landed, now whipped the Island in fast, circular currents. The breeze smelled of burnt matches and coppery blood. The static electricity which had caused the hairs on my arms to rise rippled over everything with tiny blue flashes, increasing in power by the second.
“No, no, not Moloch,” Kolmek said, looking much calmer than I felt. “The Savior lets Moloch thin the herd every year.”
“It’s Leviathan,” Mario continued grimly, “the beast from the waters. The smell of blood is drawing it from the depths of the ocean. We picked up the first blips on radar a few minutes ago. When it gets here, it won’t stop until everything is rubble. It will kill every single person on the Island.”
“All security personnel must report to the south beach immediately,” a cool robotic voice cried out over hidden loudspeakers all over the Island. The screaming from the auditorium had quieted behind me. I was afraid to look inside.
“There it is,” Kolmek said, his head jerking up as the emergency alert read. He motioned for me to follow. “It’s time to fight.”
***
We sprinted over curving trails of smooth logs between deathly quiet forests. All the insects and birds had gone silent. Ahead of us, the palm trees opened up onto the Pacific Ocean. But it was no longer a beautiful tropical blue. A black, swirling whirlpool like an ulcerous wound had opened up on its surface. It stretched hundreds of feet across, drawing closer to the shore by the second. Dead fish, sharks, dolphins, squids and even whales spun in the filthy, dark water.
Twenty black-clad security agents waited for the three of us on the beach, their eyes wide, their faces pale with terror. Like myself, they all had AR-15s and Glock 22s with extra magazines for both. I guess the Glock might be useful for blowing my brains out as a last resort if some beast from Hell rose out of the simmering waters, but I didn’t think it would stop anything from another dimension.
The clouds swirled overhead in a thick curtain as black as smoke. Flashes of blue lightning detonated every couple seconds. Mario raised his hands, screaming over the roaring of the wind. Kolmek stood by my side, his face grim and eyes narrowed.
“Your job is to fight off anything that tries to get on the Island,” he said, looking from one face to another with rapt attention. “Nothing can stand against high-caliber rifle fire. Shoot at the face and eyes when it comes up. We’ve dealt with creatures like this before, and they will retreat if you injure them badly enough.” I had the sense of being fed a line of bullshit as my mind processed this.
“What exactly is coming up?” one of the doe-eyed security men asked. He barely looked old enough to drink, a young, muscular hulk with a Marine Corps tattoo on his neck.
“They call it Leviathan,” Mario responded. “Sometimes the rituals here and the smell of blood can draw… strange things. Leviathan is one of those. We have encountered it before. The most important thing to remember is…” His voice was suddenly drowned out by a terrible cacophony that came from the center of the black whirlpool.
A screech like the detonation of a nuclear missile shook the ground. The ocean jumped and bubbled frantically. The beach heaved and cracked, the white sands disappearing in fissures that opened up like greedy mouths underneath my feet. I lost my balance, falling forwards. The screeching continued rising into a primal roar.
A green dragon head the color of an infected wound erupted from the surface of the thrashing water, rising up dozens of feet in the air. It had two enormous slitted eyes that dilated and constricted quickly as it glowered down at us. The screeching abruptly stopped, the pointed mouth of the dragon slamming shut with a sound like a gunshot.
Within moments, another cancerous green head shot up in a blur, its skin looking as hard as stone. Ridges that looked as sharp as swords ran the length of its reptilian skull, arcing over its eyes and pointed snout. More heads erupted from the ocean until all seven heads of Leviathan loomed over us.
Not one of us fired. No one even seemed to breathe as we surveyed the beast across the no-man’s land of the white sands. The slitted eyes and yellow irises of the seven heads had a demonic hunger, a reptilian coldness. Far behind us, I heard distant screams still echoing from the auditorium where Moloch held sway.
“Fire!” Mario cried. Instantly, a cacophony of gunshots exploded all around me. I jumped up on my feet, scrambling up as the seven-headed dragon leapt forward. Thousands of gallons of saltwater streamed down its massive body as it came up on the beach. Long, black paws with bone-white talons shot out of the surging ocean, followed by a tapering tail like that of a water snake.
I brought the rifle up and emptied my magazine as fast as I could, pulling the trigger over and over as I aimed at the many slitted eyes of Leviathan. But the bullets seemed to ping harmlessly off of its hard, obsidian-like scales.
It scrabbled onto the shore, the heads coming down in a blur. Rows and rows of vampiric fangs gleamed dully in each of the mouths. One security agent was bitten in half, the spurting stump of his lower body still standing for a long moment even as the rest of the body disappeared down the throat of the dragon.
Mario ran forwards, slamming another magazine in his rifle and opening fire point-blank. One of the heads came down in a blur towards him. Its great, staring eyes exploded in a shower of blue blood and thick vitreous fluid. The dragon head pulled back, its mouth opening in a primal scream of agony.
As I reloaded, I scanned the area around me, realizing that nearly half of the security agents were either dead or critically injured. I backpedaled away, keeping my eyes on the dragon. It continuously drew forward, killing more of its enemies with every step. I turned and ran into the forest, the sounds of shattering bones and dying men ringing through the air with a sickening clarity behind me.
Once I had reached the border of the trail, I heard Mario yell, “Retreat!” behind me. But by that point, it was far too late.
***
“Hey! Wait up!” a voice whispered from behind me. I turned my head, seeing Kolmek. Spatters of drying blood covered his face and uniform. As far as I could tell, none of it was his. “Mario’s dead. They’re all dead. We need to get out of here. We need to get off the Island.”
“How?” I asked.
“Find the Savior,” he answered, panting and out of breath. “We must find him. He can get us out of here.”
“I don’t even know what the guy looks like,” I muttered. “He was wearing a goat mask.”
“You’ll know him when you see him,” Kolmek said. “His body is covered in scars. Everything except his face. Stay close to me. We need to watch each other’s backs. It’s our only chance of survival.”
***
A trail of twisted, broken bodies led from the mansion to the surrounding trails and beaches. A decapitated woman with solid gold necklaces embedded with diamonds lay in front of me. It was strange on the Island, the way oblivion and ineffable wealth coexisted side by side. But everything was deathly silent, even in the mansion’s auditorium.
“Where’s the Savior?” I asked through gritted teeth. I peeked my head into the auditorium, but nothing moved. Hundreds of smashed and bloody bodies littered the floor.
“He’s around somewhere,” Kolmek answered. We started circling the mansion, looking for any signs of life. Kolmek went in the lead. As he turned the corner, an enormous black hand with sharp claws of fingers flitted forward in a blur, wrapping itself around his chest. Kolmek gave a strangled cry as it closed around him. I heard his bones crush as a spout of blood and gore flew from his mouth and nose, as if he were a toothpaste tube being squeezed.
I backpedaled away as Moloch threw the twitching corpse aside like a discarded toy. It smashed into the wall of the mansion, exploding wetly. A human-shaped, bloody stain languidly dripped down the wall above Kolmek’s mangled body.
Moloch slowly turned his head towards me, the fiery eyes flashing with hunger. He gnashed his fangs together, taking a step forward with a leg the size and shape of a tree trunk. With every step he took, I felt the ground tremble.
“Stop!” I cried, moving away from the monstrous creature. “Why are you doing this?”
“There is no why,” he gurgled, his voice monstrous and inhumanly slow. “There is only power. The weak deserve to die. Only the strong are worthy of life.” I raised my rifle in a last-ditch effort to save myself. Moloch saw it and started running towards me, every footstep crushing the paved walkway around the mansion into rubble and dust.
I aimed for his eyes and nose, emptying the entire magazine as quickly as I could. The bullets smashed into Moloch’s face. Dark red, clotted blood dripped out of the wounds, writhing with maggots. Drops of it fell around me, landing on my hair and face. I felt the small larvae twisting all over my skin. Moloch’s blood smelled nauseating, like some combination of stinkbugs and rotting bodies. He slowed, giving a roar of pain. I turned to run in the opposite direction, but as I looked out in the direction of the beach, my heart dropped.
Leviathan was moving in our direction, the giant dragon heads looming over the trees. Quickly, it swept towards me like a dark wind.
***
“You will suffer for that, worthless slave,” Moloch growled, wiping blood from his fiery eyes with his sharp talons of fingers. A sudden idea came to me. I ran in the direction of Leviathan. Moloch followed closely at my heels, only a few steps behind me.
Leviathan slithered forward over the sands and trees, its enormous body undulating like a water snake’s. I screamed at it, an incomprehensible wail of terror. Its seven heads snapped towards me. Its slitted eyes widened as it saw Moloch.
I heard the crashing of Moloch’s footsteps stop behind me, only feet away from crushing me into a paste. His massive lungs breathed quickly, exhaling the odor of sulfur and smoke.
“Leviathan,” Moloch growled in his demonic voice. “These are my tributes.” Leviathan’s dragon heads looked straight up at the Sun and screamed in response, their many voices rising and falling in a dissonant wail. As I sprinted into the trees, Leviathan and Moloch ran at each other, colliding with an ear-splitting crash. I glanced back, seeing Moloch ripping one of the dragon heads off its neck with his sharp fingers. The head screamed as blue blood exploded from the spurting stump. After a long moment, the neck fell limply forward.
The other dragon heads bit Moloch in a unified attack. They ripped deep holes in his shoulders and arms, snapping over and over like rabid dogs. As the two eldritch monstrosities attacked each other in fierce combat, I lost sight of them, but the sounds of fighting echoed over the entire island, crashing like lightning.
***
I felt like the survivor of an Apocalypse. I couldn’t find a single other living person on the Island. Hundreds of crushed, broken and decapitated bodies surrounded me. Over the cacophony of fighting, I heard a new noise: the whirring of helicopter blades nearby. It was coming from the other side of the mansion.
Frantically, I sprinted around the other side, seeing a Black Hawk helicopter getting ready to leave. A man in black robes sat at the pilot’s seat, his green eyes gleaming and a wide smile plastered across his face. I smashed my fist into the door over and over until he opened it.
“Holy shit, you’re still alive?” he asked. I hadn’t seen this man before. He had a face like a Calvin Klein model, all sharp angles and high cheekbones, perfectly proportioned in every way. But his scalp looked melted and scarred, as if someone had thrown gasoline on his hair and ignited it. His ears were stunted, twisted growths of scar tissue. His hands, too, were covered in deep, folding burn scars.
“Are you the Savior?” I responded quickly. “Please, get me out of here.”
“They do call me that,” he said wistfully. “The Savior. Yes, I guess I am. Get in.”
***
The Savior stared at me with his strange green eyes, the color of swamps where monstrous things swam under the surface.
“Some people just need to learn the hard way,” he said. The helicopter took off into a dark night covered with bright, twinkling stars. “There is no great power without great responsibility, after all. Those of us who seek the ancient ones know it comes with a cost.” I just stared out the window, gazing down at the countless mutilated, broken bodies that littered the beach.
Below us, the face of a bull stared up with eyes of fiery cyclones. The broken, still body of Leviathan lay at his feet. As we made it over the great waters of the Pacific Ocean, the bull-god raised a hand and waved. At that moment, I thought I could almost see a hurricane of translucent souls circling around him, spiraling up into the sky.

After high school, having no better ideas, I joined the Navy SEALs. I never really liked any of it, but it was a job, after all. I loved the guns and airplanes and grenades, but having to run all the time while some scumbag with a chip on his shoulder yells in my face isn’t my idea of fun.
Things got a lot more interesting after my term of service ended. I still had a high-security clearance, so I used it to take temporary jobs as a mercenary, a hired gun. I did some stints in Iraq with Blackwater, where they set me out in the middle of the desert. A watchtower and oil refinery loomed over the burning sands. Along with a few other guys, they told us, “Guard this area with your life.” While better than the SEALs, working for Blackwater was extremely boring. The other mercenaries and I would mostly just chainsmoke cigarettes and drink coffee all night, staring out across the dead, empty desert.
Over time, I worked my way up. Things started to get more interesting when a job offer arrived in my email one freezing cold winter’s morning. This is what it said.
“Mr. Chase,
“I am the head of security for a private group of entrepreneurs and investors. Through some mutual contacts, I have heard of your professionalism and experience. We are currently putting together a small crew to guard a private event on [REDACTED] Island out in the Pacific Ocean that will run from January 9th to January 26th. Would you be interested in this job? The pay rate is $900 a day.
“Once you are on the island, it will be impossible to leave until the period of employment has ended. If you are interested, please respond to this email as soon as possible.
“Sincerely,
“Mario Antonin, Head of Security.”
I was working piecemeal jobs like this one at the time, but none of them were paying that well. At most, I would usually get $350 to $500 a day, which was still good money when I was working seven days a week until the job finished. I instantly responded and said that yes, I was interested. In response, they sent me a non-disclosure agreement that was the size of a small novel that I had to sign.
That was how I found myself on a private jet, flying out to an island in the middle of the vast blue ocean. I was never told the coordinates of the island or saw it on a map. It was all kept very secret.
A few hours later, we landed on a private airstrip. I looked out the window of the jet, seeing the tropical waters of the Pacific Ocean stretching off to the horizon in every direction. Below me stood an island with palm trees and sandy white beaches. An enormous Victorian mansion loomed directly in the center of it all. The mansion was painted black and looked like something straight out of a horror movie. It had no windows, and the turrets spiraled into blade-like points.
That was my first inkling that something might not be quite right about this trip.
***
As the stairs from the private jet descended, I looked out on this strange new world. Employees waited to greet us, looking like beaten dogs. Some had their heads down, their eyes blankly scanning the ground. Most of them were women wearing red dresses, reminding me of stewardesses on a plane. The jet strip was surrounded by palm trees and tropical brush. The chirping of insects sounded all around us, high and resonant.
I saw a strange patch engraved on all of the employees’ uniforms and jackets. It looked almost like a stick figure drawing of a man, the bottom of its body ending in a C. Its arms were long and jointed, almost spidery. Three symbols like repeated iron crosses connected to the left side of its body in a line. I wondered if it was the logo of some company. I put it out of my mind for now, but I would see that symbol again all over the island, painted on the sides of the mansion and even cut into the trees with a knife. It would only be later that night that I realized its connection to Moloch.
“Good day, sir, and welcome to the Island,” the server on my left said with glassy eyes and a fake smile plastered across her face. They all looked up at once, but it was like the workers all looked through me rather than at me. Their eyes looked flat and dead, like the painted-on eyes of a doll.
“The Island, huh?” I asked, curious. “They wouldn’t tell me where I was going. They said it was a secret. Is that what you call it?” The woman just nodded, the doll-like smile never leaving her lips.
“Officially, this island is unnamed and uninhabited,” the woman said. “In fact, all traces of it have been scrubbed from the internet. You won’t find it on Google Maps or in any publicly available satellite imagery.” She leaned forward towards me with heavily mascaraed eyes and ruby-red lipstick slashed across her lips. “This is a very special place. Only very special people are allowed here. You should be honored to work here under our Savior.”
“I hope you’re talking about Jesus or something,” I said jokingly. She just smiled blankly and motioned me forward.
“Just follow that trail for a few hundred feet-” she said, pointing at an opening in the palm trees where logs were laid down horizontally over the muggy jungle- “and you’ll find the mansion. Good luck!” I thought it was a somewhat strange thing to say, wishing a random stranger good luck.
But, by the end of that night, I realized that simply to make it off this island alive, I would need lots of it.
***
I followed the woman’s directions to the back of the brutalist mansion. A heavy metal door stood there with a small bullet-proof window built in the top. A tanned, Spanish face glowered out at me then rapidly drew back and disappeared. A few heartbeats later, the door slid to the side with a grinding of hidden gears.
The head of security at the Island was a heavily-tattooed ex-Marine named Mario. He wore a dark Kevlar vest over a black outfit, making him look like a walking shadow. I found the security had their own private complex in the mansion as he showed me around the site. Hundreds of hidden cameras covered every angle of the mansion and the surrounding parts of the island. Dozens of black-clad security agents swarmed over the screens, checking the monitors and computers constantly.
“Quite a set-up you have here,” I said to Mario, nodding at him. He smacked me on the shoulder, giving a confident grin.
“Money is no issue here, Richard,” he responded. “Security is paramount. There are things on this island that could rip apart the world if they ever escaped.” I raised an eyebrow.
“Like what?” I asked. “Nuclear weapons or something?” He laughed at that.
“You’ll see for yourself tonight,” he said, his dark eyes flashing with something cold and alien.
***
Mario led me and a couple other new hired guns around the Island. The place was certainly strange. It reminded me of some combination of a secret black-ops site and a playboy billionaire’s private heaven. All of the doors in the mansion looked like they were made of thick steel. They had wheels that would spin, like those on a submarine door. The mansion also had no windows at all that I could see, except for the small, shatter-proof glass openings on the steel doors. I didn’t want to ask too many questions, however. I couldn’t resist asking him about a couple small things, however- or at least, they seemed small to me at the time.
“What are those hatchways?” I asked Mario, pointing to rectangular covers built into the concrete walkway. They had heavy handles. “Are those manholes or something?”
“There are tunnels under the Island,” he responded vaguely. “Just for maintenance and security, you understand.”
“Wow, this place is certainly… well-developed,” I said. We came out through a grove of palm trees. A stone walkway led down to a white beach. Dozens of yachts were moored all across the shore, some of them looking like they must have cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
“There’s a lot of money and power here,” Mario said. “That’s why it’s important you never talk about what you see here. These are the people who control the world, the ones behind the government and the media. Not the elected officials who the people see, but the actual power.”
“Like who?” I asked. “You mean the Rothschilds and Soros?” He laughed again, a sarcastic, grinding laugh that grated my nerves.
“Trust me, the truly powerful ones don’t even have public personas. If you know their name, then they’re just one of the puppets.” I just shook my head at that, then asked the real question that had been bothering me since I first arrived here.
“Who is the Savior?” I asked. “Is that some codename or something?” Mario froze in place.
“He’s the one who runs everything here,” he whispered conspiratorially, looking around nervously. “But don’t be mentioning that kind of shit. You’ll probably see him tonight anyway. He’s the one who runs the show. He’ll be on the stage in his normal outfit.”
***
By the end of the day, I was suited up like the rest of the security staff, wearing the pure black pants and shirt with the symbol of Moloch engraved over the heart. Hundreds of the world’s most famous politicians, actors, businessmen and artists had gathered, streaming in the front doors with a soft, diffident susurration.
I stood by the open doorway of a side exit with an AR-15 and full body armor, next to one other soldier. They had also given me a sidearm. Every entrance or exit was manned by at least two armed men. The security at this place was some of the most intense I had ever seen. Beyond the door, there were rows and rows of the most comfortable seats, all gathered in a semi-circle around a massive stage made of pure mahogany. Blood-red curtains stood closed at the front of the room, concealing their secrets- for now, at least.
“Hail Satan!” I heard the elites cry inside in unison. I didn’t want to look in at the rows of high-ranking politicians, celebrities, influencers and artists, but my curiosity was high. I peeked around the corner of the stone archway, seeing the red curtains on the stage drawing apart. I saw one of my favorite actors standing in the front row, clapping excitedly and jumping up and down.
The crowd cheered as a naked female strapped to an obsidian altar lay there. She was beautiful and blonde, probably no older than twenty with the face of a supermodel. Her mouth was gagged, her arms outstretched like Jesus on the cross. Thin leather cords were tied around her wrists and ankles, biting deeply into the skin. Her eyes rolled wildly as she shook her head from side to side. She froze, and her eyes met mine for a brief moment. I saw the pleading expression there, the mortal terror and absolute horror.
A man in a goat mask wearing black robes slunk out from the side of the stage, carrying a wavy silver dagger engraved with strange symbols. The crowd erupted into a primal roar of pleasure and excitement that sounded like it came from one monstrous mouth.
“Worthy is the Lamb!” the man in the goat mask screamed with electronic amplification. He had a deep voice, as if he had rocks rolling around in his throat. The crowd roared and clapped. Scattered cries of “Hail Lucifer!” and “Ave Satanas!” echoed down the massive auditorium.
“Hey, pay attention,” the other security agent at my side said in a thick Finnish accent. He was a tall Scandinavian-looking guy named Kolmek. “You’re not getting paid to watch the show, new guy.” I tried to rip my gaze away from the stage, but it held my attention with an obsessive horror.
“The burnt bones of children and women have been offered to the ancient ones, to Moloch,” the man on the stage cried. “Under our feet, the burnt bodies of hundreds lay dreaming. This victim will be the 666th. Her blood will bring about the Gnosis that we seek, the direct experience of the divine held by the gods, by Lucifer and Moloch and Baal…” The roaring of the crowd temporarily drowned out his electronically-magnified voice. “Tonight, we will rip open the veil!”
I had stopped watching the show, instead staring blankly out at the beach and palm trees. At that moment, another black-clad security agent came up to my partner, whispered something in his ear, then immediately disappeared, heading off back in the direction of the main security office. Kolmek shook his head grimly.
“I’ll be right back,” he said. “Stay right here. Don’t move from this door no matter what. And pay attention.” I nodded and watched as he walked off in the same direction.
I immediately took the opportunity to continue watching the ceremony. I had missed something important, apparently. The woman now laid dead on the sacrificial table, a gaping hole in her chest. Blood spurted from the crater as the man in the goat mask held her beating heart grasped tightly in his hand, letting the blood stream down his naked fingers. The crowd cheered with a rising bloodlust and insanity. Most of them were standing, their eyes gleaming and wide with fanatical adoration. The entire spectacle reminded me of some kind of ancient Aztec ritual.
As the woman’s sightless eyes stared vacantly up in death, the man in a goat mask pulled out a can of gasoline. The clear liquid gurgled as he up-ended the canister over her pale, bloodless face, over her naked stomach and long legs. A moment later, he lit a match and dropped it. I heard the whooshing of the flames as they rose up.
The crowd went deathly silent as they watched the rippling flames. The man in the goat mask began chanting in some strange language I had never heard before. It sounded Semitic, but I knew it wasn’t Arabic or Hebrew. I felt something like electricity ripple through the air, almost like a feeling of falling pressure before a storm. I looked down at the hairs on my arms, seeing them rise up. I looked back up at the stage, and my eyes widened in horror.
The flaming body of the sacrificial victim had started to morph before my eyes and the eyes of the crowd. The dripping, blackening flesh jumped up and down, as if there were rats trapped in her body trying to escape the fire. There was a deafening hissing as if thousands of snakes were being burned alive.
The dead woman’s arms jerked up, the skin splitting open as if she had seams running along her skin. Something dark and muscular with curving, black talons ripped its way out of the dead, burning flesh. Behind it, a head appeared with long, curving horns and eyes that spun with whorls of fire. It looked like the offspring of a bull and a demon. Its imposing body rose up from the inferno, appearing like magic from the solid stone. It raised itself to its full height, looming over the crowd. The last of the woman’s blood hissed and boiled away, her flesh dissolving into ashes.
“Behold, Moloch rises!” the man in the goat mask screamed in a fanatical voice. The crowd’s cheering had stopped, though. Many of the faces in the crowd looked chalk-white with terror. The bull-god surveyed the crowd, its horns nearly scraping the ceiling twenty feet above the stage.
At that moment, I knew death was on its way with eyes of fire and a grin like a skull, ready to reap a field of human bodies.
***
I heard running behind me, but I didn’t dare turn away from the horrific sight in front of me. The last of the fire’s embers died, sending up thin wisps of gray smoke that spiraled around the bull-god’s monstrous face. Moloch stood as still as a statue, and if it weren’t for one thing, I might’ve thought it was some sort of sculpture or art project. He had two nostrils like a serpent’s. As his great lungs inhaled, the smoke billowed in and out of his mouth and nose.
Some of the people at the edges of the crowd had gotten up, hurrying towards the doors. Moloch’s head ratcheted to face them, his fiery eyes narrowing into slits.
“Do not leave!” the man in the goat mask pleaded. “Those who have fear are not worthy of life. Do not prove yourselves unworthy of life!” As the first of the fleeing men and women got to within a few steps of the door, Moloch gave a primal roar. In a blur of primal strength, he reached down and ripped the blackened sacrificial altar off the stage. It ripped from the wooden stage with a tremendous crack like a bullwhip. He hurled the heavy mass of stone at those heading towards the opposite exit from the one I guarded.
I watched it curve through the air. The people started screaming and clawing to escape as it smashed down on their heads with a grating crash. I could feel the floor shake from where I stood outside. Blood exploded from their smashed bodies. I saw arms and legs jerking and seizing under the heavy stone, but within a few moments, they slowed and then stopped.
Others were running towards the door I guarded, but Moloch leapt off the stage in a blur. In a few bounding steps, he reached the pale, terrified faces on the other side of the threshold. His massive clawed hand came down. I heard bones shatter as blood sprayed my face and the wall. Bone splinters and pieces of brain exploded from the screaming bodies. I backpedaled, wiping at my eyes, trying to get the blood off so I could see. No one had told me what to do in this situation. I didn’t know if I was supposed to shoot that massive abomination, or if this was all just part of the show.
“Richard!” a familiar voice cried from behind me. Panic oozed from every word. I spun, seeing Mario and Kolmek standing side by side, their pupils dilated and expressions grim.
“We have a major problem.” It was Mario. I recognized that voice, the one that sounded as if he had been gargling with rocks.
“I know,” I said, holding my rifle tightly. I pointed behind me at the scene of rampant death and destruction.
I had seen bloodshed and war before, but this was different. The Island itself seemed to feel it. The wind, which had been calm when I first landed, now whipped the Island in fast, circular currents. The breeze smelled of burnt matches and coppery blood. The static electricity which had caused the hairs on my arms to rise rippled over everything with tiny blue flashes, increasing in power by the second.
“No, no, not Moloch,” Kolmek said, looking much calmer than I felt. “The Savior lets Moloch thin the herd every year.”
“It’s Leviathan,” Mario continued grimly, “the beast from the waters. The smell of blood is drawing it from the depths of the ocean. We picked up the first blips on radar a few minutes ago. When it gets here, it won’t stop until everything is rubble. It will kill every single person on the Island.”
“All security personnel must report to the south beach immediately,” a cool robotic voice cried out over hidden loudspeakers all over the Island. The screaming from the auditorium had quieted behind me. I was afraid to look inside.
“There it is,” Kolmek said, his head jerking up as the emergency alert read. He motioned for me to follow. “It’s time to fight.”
***
We sprinted over curving trails of smooth logs between deathly quiet forests. All the insects and birds had gone silent. Ahead of us, the palm trees opened up onto the Pacific Ocean. But it was no longer a beautiful tropical blue. A black, swirling whirlpool like an ulcerous wound had opened up on its surface. It stretched hundreds of feet across, drawing closer to the shore by the second. Dead fish, sharks, dolphins, squids and even whales spun in the filthy, dark water.
Twenty black-clad security agents waited for the three of us on the beach, their eyes wide, their faces pale with terror. Like myself, they all had AR-15s and Glock 22s with extra magazines for both. I guess the Glock might be useful for blowing my brains out as a last resort if some beast from Hell rose out of the simmering waters, but I didn’t think it would stop anything from another dimension.
The clouds swirled overhead in a thick curtain as black as smoke. Flashes of blue lightning detonated every couple seconds. Mario raised his hands, screaming over the roaring of the wind. Kolmek stood by my side, his face grim and eyes narrowed.
“Your job is to fight off anything that tries to get on the Island,” he said, looking from one face to another with rapt attention. “Nothing can stand against high-caliber rifle fire. Shoot at the face and eyes when it comes up. We’ve dealt with creatures like this before, and they will retreat if you injure them badly enough.” I had the sense of being fed a line of bullshit as my mind processed this.
“What exactly is coming up?” one of the doe-eyed security men asked. He barely looked old enough to drink, a young, muscular hulk with a Marine Corps tattoo on his neck.
“They call it Leviathan,” Mario responded. “Sometimes the rituals here and the smell of blood can draw… strange things. Leviathan is one of those. We have encountered it before. The most important thing to remember is…” His voice was suddenly drowned out by a terrible cacophony that came from the center of the black whirlpool.
A screech like the detonation of a nuclear missile shook the ground. The ocean jumped and bubbled frantically. The beach heaved and cracked, the white sands disappearing in fissures that opened up like greedy mouths underneath my feet. I lost my balance, falling forwards. The screeching continued rising into a primal roar.
A green dragon head the color of an infected wound erupted from the surface of the thrashing water, rising up dozens of feet in the air. It had two enormous slitted eyes that dilated and constricted quickly as it glowered down at us. The screeching abruptly stopped, the pointed mouth of the dragon slamming shut with a sound like a gunshot.
Within moments, another cancerous green head shot up in a blur, its skin looking as hard as stone. Ridges that looked as sharp as swords ran the length of its reptilian skull, arcing over its eyes and pointed snout. More heads erupted from the ocean until all seven heads of Leviathan loomed over us.
Not one of us fired. No one even seemed to breathe as we surveyed the beast across the no-man’s land of the white sands. The slitted eyes and yellow irises of the seven heads had a demonic hunger, a reptilian coldness. Far behind us, I heard distant screams still echoing from the auditorium where Moloch held sway.
“Fire!” Mario cried. Instantly, a cacophony of gunshots exploded all around me. I jumped up on my feet, scrambling up as the seven-headed dragon leapt forward. Thousands of gallons of saltwater streamed down its massive body as it came up on the beach. Long, black paws with bone-white talons shot out of the surging ocean, followed by a tapering tail like that of a water snake.
I brought the rifle up and emptied my magazine as fast as I could, pulling the trigger over and over as I aimed at the many slitted eyes of Leviathan. But the bullets seemed to ping harmlessly off of its hard, obsidian-like scales.
It scrabbled onto the shore, the heads coming down in a blur. Rows and rows of vampiric fangs gleamed dully in each of the mouths. One security agent was bitten in half, the spurting stump of his lower body still standing for a long moment even as the rest of the body disappeared down the throat of the dragon.
Mario ran forwards, slamming another magazine in his rifle and opening fire point-blank. One of the heads came down in a blur towards him. Its great, staring eyes exploded in a shower of blue blood and thick vitreous fluid. The dragon head pulled back, its mouth opening in a primal scream of agony.
As I reloaded, I scanned the area around me, realizing that nearly half of the security agents were either dead or critically injured. I backpedaled away, keeping my eyes on the dragon. It continuously drew forward, killing more of its enemies with every step. I turned and ran into the forest, the sounds of shattering bones and dying men ringing through the air with a sickening clarity behind me.
Once I had reached the border of the trail, I heard Mario yell, “Retreat!” behind me. But by that point, it was far too late.
***
“Hey! Wait up!” a voice whispered from behind me. I turned my head, seeing Kolmek. Spatters of drying blood covered his face and uniform. As far as I could tell, none of it was his. “Mario’s dead. They’re all dead. We need to get out of here. We need to get off the Island.”
“How?” I asked.
“Find the Savior,” he answered, panting and out of breath. “We must find him. He can get us out of here.”
“I don’t even know what the guy looks like,” I muttered. “He was wearing a goat mask.”
“You’ll know him when you see him,” Kolmek said. “His body is covered in scars. Everything except his face. Stay close to me. We need to watch each other’s backs. It’s our only chance of survival.”
***
A trail of twisted, broken bodies led from the mansion to the surrounding trails and beaches. A decapitated woman with solid gold necklaces embedded with diamonds lay in front of me. It was strange on the Island, the way oblivion and ineffable wealth coexisted side by side. But everything was deathly silent, even in the mansion’s auditorium.
“Where’s the Savior?” I asked through gritted teeth. I peeked my head into the auditorium, but nothing moved. Hundreds of smashed and bloody bodies littered the floor.
“He’s around somewhere,” Kolmek answered. We started circling the mansion, looking for any signs of life. Kolmek went in the lead. As he turned the corner, an enormous black hand with sharp claws of fingers flitted forward in a blur, wrapping itself around his chest. Kolmek gave a strangled cry as it closed around him. I heard his bones crush as a spout of blood and gore flew from his mouth and nose, as if he were a toothpaste tube being squeezed.
I backpedaled away as Moloch threw the twitching corpse aside like a discarded toy. It smashed into the wall of the mansion, exploding wetly. A human-shaped, bloody stain languidly dripped down the wall above Kolmek’s mangled body.
Moloch slowly turned his head towards me, the fiery eyes flashing with hunger. He gnashed his fangs together, taking a step forward with a leg the size and shape of a tree trunk. With every step he took, I felt the ground tremble.
“Stop!” I cried, moving away from the monstrous creature. “Why are you doing this?”
“There is no why,” he gurgled, his voice monstrous and inhumanly slow. “There is only power. The weak deserve to die. Only the strong are worthy of life.” I raised my rifle in a last-ditch effort to save myself. Moloch saw it and started running towards me, every footstep crushing the paved walkway around the mansion into rubble and dust.
I aimed for his eyes and nose, emptying the entire magazine as quickly as I could. The bullets smashed into Moloch’s face. Dark red, clotted blood dripped out of the wounds, writhing with maggots. Drops of it fell around me, landing on my hair and face. I felt the small larvae twisting all over my skin. Moloch’s blood smelled nauseating, like some combination of stinkbugs and rotting bodies. He slowed, giving a roar of pain. I turned to run in the opposite direction, but as I looked out in the direction of the beach, my heart dropped.
Leviathan was moving in our direction, the giant dragon heads looming over the trees. Quickly, it swept towards me like a dark wind.
***
“You will suffer for that, worthless slave,” Moloch growled, wiping blood from his fiery eyes with his sharp talons of fingers. A sudden idea came to me. I ran in the direction of Leviathan. Moloch followed closely at my heels, only a few steps behind me.
Leviathan slithered forward over the sands and trees, its enormous body undulating like a water snake’s. I screamed at it, an incomprehensible wail of terror. Its seven heads snapped towards me. Its slitted eyes widened as it saw Moloch.
I heard the crashing of Moloch’s footsteps stop behind me, only feet away from crushing me into a paste. His massive lungs breathed quickly, exhaling the odor of sulfur and smoke.
“Leviathan,” Moloch growled in his demonic voice. “These are my tributes.” Leviathan’s dragon heads looked straight up at the Sun and screamed in response, their many voices rising and falling in a dissonant wail. As I sprinted into the trees, Leviathan and Moloch ran at each other, colliding with an ear-splitting crash. I glanced back, seeing Moloch ripping one of the dragon heads off its neck with his sharp fingers. The head screamed as blue blood exploded from the spurting stump. After a long moment, the neck fell limply forward.
The other dragon heads bit Moloch in a unified attack. They ripped deep holes in his shoulders and arms, snapping over and over like rabid dogs. As the two eldritch monstrosities attacked each other in fierce combat, I lost sight of them, but the sounds of fighting echoed over the entire island, crashing like lightning.
***
I felt like the survivor of an Apocalypse. I couldn’t find a single other living person on the Island. Hundreds of crushed, broken and decapitated bodies surrounded me. Over the cacophony of fighting, I heard a new noise: the whirring of helicopter blades nearby. It was coming from the other side of the mansion.
Frantically, I sprinted around the other side, seeing a Black Hawk helicopter getting ready to leave. A man in black robes sat at the pilot’s seat, his green eyes gleaming and a wide smile plastered across his face. I smashed my fist into the door over and over until he opened it.
“Holy shit, you’re still alive?” he asked. I hadn’t seen this man before. He had a face like a Calvin Klein model, all sharp angles and high cheekbones, perfectly proportioned in every way. But his scalp looked melted and scarred, as if someone had thrown gasoline on his hair and ignited it. His ears were stunted, twisted growths of scar tissue. His hands, too, were covered in deep, folding burn scars.
“Are you the Savior?” I responded quickly. “Please, get me out of here.”
“They do call me that,” he said wistfully. “The Savior. Yes, I guess I am. Get in.”
***
The Savior stared at me with his strange green eyes, the color of swamps where monstrous things swam under the surface.
“Some people just need to learn the hard way,” he said. The helicopter took off into a dark night covered with bright, twinkling stars. “There is no great power without great responsibility, after all. Those of us who seek the ancient ones know it comes with a cost.” I just stared out the window, gazing down at the countless mutilated, broken bodies that littered the beach.
Below us, the face of a bull stared up with eyes of fiery cyclones. The broken, still body of Leviathan lay at his feet. As we made it over the great waters of the Pacific Ocean, the bull-god raised a hand and waved. At that moment, I thought I could almost see a hurricane of translucent souls circling around him, spiraling up into the sky.

After high school, having no better ideas, I joined the Navy SEALs. I never really liked any of it, but it was a job, after all. I loved the guns and airplanes and grenades, but having to run all the time while some scumbag with a chip on his shoulder yells in my face isn’t my idea of fun.
Things got a lot more interesting after my term of service ended. I still had a high-security clearance, so I used it to take temporary jobs as a mercenary, a hired gun. I did some stints in Iraq with Blackwater, where they set me out in the middle of the desert. A watchtower and oil refinery loomed over the burning sands. Along with a few other guys, they told us, “Guard this area with your life.” While better than the SEALs, working for Blackwater was extremely boring. The other mercenaries and I would mostly just chainsmoke cigarettes and drink coffee all night, staring out across the dead, empty desert.
Over time, I worked my way up. Things started to get more interesting when a job offer arrived in my email one freezing cold winter’s morning. This is what it said.
“Mr. Chase,
“I am the head of security for a private group of entrepreneurs and investors. Through some mutual contacts, I have heard of your professionalism and experience. We are currently putting together a small crew to guard a private event on [REDACTED] Island out in the Pacific Ocean that will run from January 9th to January 26th. Would you be interested in this job? The pay rate is $900 a day.
“Once you are on the island, it will be impossible to leave until the period of employment has ended. If you are interested, please respond to this email as soon as possible.
“Sincerely,
“Mario Antonin, Head of Security.”
I was working piecemeal jobs like this one at the time, but none of them were paying that well. At most, I would usually get $350 to $500 a day, which was still good money when I was working seven days a week until the job finished. I instantly responded and said that yes, I was interested. In response, they sent me a non-disclosure agreement that was the size of a small novel that I had to sign.
That was how I found myself on a private jet, flying out to an island in the middle of the vast blue ocean. I was never told the coordinates of the island or saw it on a map. It was all kept very secret.
A few hours later, we landed on a private airstrip. I looked out the window of the jet, seeing the tropical waters of the Pacific Ocean stretching off to the horizon in every direction. Below me stood an island with palm trees and sandy white beaches. An enormous Victorian mansion loomed directly in the center of it all. The mansion was painted black and looked like something straight out of a horror movie. It had no windows, and the turrets spiraled into blade-like points.
That was my first inkling that something might not be quite right about this trip.
***
As the stairs from the private jet descended, I looked out on this strange new world. Employees waited to greet us, looking like beaten dogs. Some had their heads down, their eyes blankly scanning the ground. Most of them were women wearing red dresses, reminding me of stewardesses on a plane. The jet strip was surrounded by palm trees and tropical brush. The chirping of insects sounded all around us, high and resonant.
I saw a strange patch engraved on all of the employees’ uniforms and jackets. It looked almost like a stick figure drawing of a man, the bottom of its body ending in a C. Its arms were long and jointed, almost spidery. Three symbols like repeated iron crosses connected to the left side of its body in a line. I wondered if it was the logo of some company. I put it out of my mind for now, but I would see that symbol again all over the island, painted on the sides of the mansion and even cut into the trees with a knife. It would only be later that night that I realized its connection to Moloch.
“Good day, sir, and welcome to the Island,” the server on my left said with glassy eyes and a fake smile plastered across her face. They all looked up at once, but it was like the workers all looked through me rather than at me. Their eyes looked flat and dead, like the painted-on eyes of a doll.
“The Island, huh?” I asked, curious. “They wouldn’t tell me where I was going. They said it was a secret. Is that what you call it?” The woman just nodded, the doll-like smile never leaving her lips.
“Officially, this island is unnamed and uninhabited,” the woman said. “In fact, all traces of it have been scrubbed from the internet. You won’t find it on Google Maps or in any publicly available satellite imagery.” She leaned forward towards me with heavily mascaraed eyes and ruby-red lipstick slashed across her lips. “This is a very special place. Only very special people are allowed here. You should be honored to work here under our Savior.”
“I hope you’re talking about Jesus or something,” I said jokingly. She just smiled blankly and motioned me forward.
“Just follow that trail for a few hundred feet-” she said, pointing at an opening in the palm trees where logs were laid down horizontally over the muggy jungle- “and you’ll find the mansion. Good luck!” I thought it was a somewhat strange thing to say, wishing a random stranger good luck.
But, by the end of that night, I realized that simply to make it off this island alive, I would need lots of it.
***
I followed the woman’s directions to the back of the brutalist mansion. A heavy metal door stood there with a small bullet-proof window built in the top. A tanned, Spanish face glowered out at me then rapidly drew back and disappeared. A few heartbeats later, the door slid to the side with a grinding of hidden gears.
The head of security at the Island was a heavily-tattooed ex-Marine named Mario. He wore a dark Kevlar vest over a black outfit, making him look like a walking shadow. I found the security had their own private complex in the mansion as he showed me around the site. Hundreds of hidden cameras covered every angle of the mansion and the surrounding parts of the island. Dozens of black-clad security agents swarmed over the screens, checking the monitors and computers constantly.
“Quite a set-up you have here,” I said to Mario, nodding at him. He smacked me on the shoulder, giving a confident grin.
“Money is no issue here, Richard,” he responded. “Security is paramount. There are things on this island that could rip apart the world if they ever escaped.” I raised an eyebrow.
“Like what?” I asked. “Nuclear weapons or something?” He laughed at that.
“You’ll see for yourself tonight,” he said, his dark eyes flashing with something cold and alien.
***
Mario led me and a couple other new hired guns around the Island. The place was certainly strange. It reminded me of some combination of a secret black-ops site and a playboy billionaire’s private heaven. All of the doors in the mansion looked like they were made of thick steel. They had wheels that would spin, like those on a submarine door. The mansion also had no windows at all that I could see, except for the small, shatter-proof glass openings on the steel doors. I didn’t want to ask too many questions, however. I couldn’t resist asking him about a couple small things, however- or at least, they seemed small to me at the time.
“What are those hatchways?” I asked Mario, pointing to rectangular covers built into the concrete walkway. They had heavy handles. “Are those manholes or something?”
“There are tunnels under the Island,” he responded vaguely. “Just for maintenance and security, you understand.”
“Wow, this place is certainly… well-developed,” I said. We came out through a grove of palm trees. A stone walkway led down to a white beach. Dozens of yachts were moored all across the shore, some of them looking like they must have cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
“There’s a lot of money and power here,” Mario said. “That’s why it’s important you never talk about what you see here. These are the people who control the world, the ones behind the government and the media. Not the elected officials who the people see, but the actual power.”
“Like who?” I asked. “You mean the Rothschilds and Soros?” He laughed again, a sarcastic, grinding laugh that grated my nerves.
“Trust me, the truly powerful ones don’t even have public personas. If you know their name, then they’re just one of the puppets.” I just shook my head at that, then asked the real question that had been bothering me since I first arrived here.
“Who is the Savior?” I asked. “Is that some codename or something?” Mario froze in place.
“He’s the one who runs everything here,” he whispered conspiratorially, looking around nervously. “But don’t be mentioning that kind of shit. You’ll probably see him tonight anyway. He’s the one who runs the show. He’ll be on the stage in his normal outfit.”
***
By the end of the day, I was suited up like the rest of the security staff, wearing the pure black pants and shirt with the symbol of Moloch engraved over the heart. Hundreds of the world’s most famous politicians, actors, businessmen and artists had gathered, streaming in the front doors with a soft, diffident susurration.
I stood by the open doorway of a side exit with an AR-15 and full body armor, next to one other soldier. They had also given me a sidearm. Every entrance or exit was manned by at least two armed men. The security at this place was some of the most intense I had ever seen. Beyond the door, there were rows and rows of the most comfortable seats, all gathered in a semi-circle around a massive stage made of pure mahogany. Blood-red curtains stood closed at the front of the room, concealing their secrets- for now, at least.
“Hail Satan!” I heard the elites cry inside in unison. I didn’t want to look in at the rows of high-ranking politicians, celebrities, influencers and artists, but my curiosity was high. I peeked around the corner of the stone archway, seeing the red curtains on the stage drawing apart. I saw one of my favorite actors standing in the front row, clapping excitedly and jumping up and down.
The crowd cheered as a naked female strapped to an obsidian altar lay there. She was beautiful and blonde, probably no older than twenty with the face of a supermodel. Her mouth was gagged, her arms outstretched like Jesus on the cross. Thin leather cords were tied around her wrists and ankles, biting deeply into the skin. Her eyes rolled wildly as she shook her head from side to side. She froze, and her eyes met mine for a brief moment. I saw the pleading expression there, the mortal terror and absolute horror.
A man in a goat mask wearing black robes slunk out from the side of the stage, carrying a wavy silver dagger engraved with strange symbols. The crowd erupted into a primal roar of pleasure and excitement that sounded like it came from one monstrous mouth.
“Worthy is the Lamb!” the man in the goat mask screamed with electronic amplification. He had a deep voice, as if he had rocks rolling around in his throat. The crowd roared and clapped. Scattered cries of “Hail Lucifer!” and “Ave Satanas!” echoed down the massive auditorium.
“Hey, pay attention,” the other security agent at my side said in a thick Finnish accent. He was a tall Scandinavian-looking guy named Kolmek. “You’re not getting paid to watch the show, new guy.” I tried to rip my gaze away from the stage, but it held my attention with an obsessive horror.
“The burnt bones of children and women have been offered to the ancient ones, to Moloch,” the man on the stage cried. “Under our feet, the burnt bodies of hundreds lay dreaming. This victim will be the 666th. Her blood will bring about the Gnosis that we seek, the direct experience of the divine held by the gods, by Lucifer and Moloch and Baal…” The roaring of the crowd temporarily drowned out his electronically-magnified voice. “Tonight, we will rip open the veil!”
I had stopped watching the show, instead staring blankly out at the beach and palm trees. At that moment, another black-clad security agent came up to my partner, whispered something in his ear, then immediately disappeared, heading off back in the direction of the main security office. Kolmek shook his head grimly.
“I’ll be right back,” he said. “Stay right here. Don’t move from this door no matter what. And pay attention.” I nodded and watched as he walked off in the same direction.
I immediately took the opportunity to continue watching the ceremony. I had missed something important, apparently. The woman now laid dead on the sacrificial table, a gaping hole in her chest. Blood spurted from the crater as the man in the goat mask held her beating heart grasped tightly in his hand, letting the blood stream down his naked fingers. The crowd cheered with a rising bloodlust and insanity. Most of them were standing, their eyes gleaming and wide with fanatical adoration. The entire spectacle reminded me of some kind of ancient Aztec ritual.
As the woman’s sightless eyes stared vacantly up in death, the man in a goat mask pulled out a can of gasoline. The clear liquid gurgled as he up-ended the canister over her pale, bloodless face, over her naked stomach and long legs. A moment later, he lit a match and dropped it. I heard the whooshing of the flames as they rose up.
The crowd went deathly silent as they watched the rippling flames. The man in the goat mask began chanting in some strange language I had never heard before. It sounded Semitic, but I knew it wasn’t Arabic or Hebrew. I felt something like electricity ripple through the air, almost like a feeling of falling pressure before a storm. I looked down at the hairs on my arms, seeing them rise up. I looked back up at the stage, and my eyes widened in horror.
The flaming body of the sacrificial victim had started to morph before my eyes and the eyes of the crowd. The dripping, blackening flesh jumped up and down, as if there were rats trapped in her body trying to escape the fire. There was a deafening hissing as if thousands of snakes were being burned alive.
The dead woman’s arms jerked up, the skin splitting open as if she had seams running along her skin. Something dark and muscular with curving, black talons ripped its way out of the dead, burning flesh. Behind it, a head appeared with long, curving horns and eyes that spun with whorls of fire. It looked like the offspring of a bull and a demon. Its imposing body rose up from the inferno, appearing like magic from the solid stone. It raised itself to its full height, looming over the crowd. The last of the woman’s blood hissed and boiled away, her flesh dissolving into ashes.
“Behold, Moloch rises!” the man in the goat mask screamed in a fanatical voice. The crowd’s cheering had stopped, though. Many of the faces in the crowd looked chalk-white with terror. The bull-god surveyed the crowd, its horns nearly scraping the ceiling twenty feet above the stage.
At that moment, I knew death was on its way with eyes of fire and a grin like a skull, ready to reap a field of human bodies.
***
I heard running behind me, but I didn’t dare turn away from the horrific sight in front of me. The last of the fire’s embers died, sending up thin wisps of gray smoke that spiraled around the bull-god’s monstrous face. Moloch stood as still as a statue, and if it weren’t for one thing, I might’ve thought it was some sort of sculpture or art project. He had two nostrils like a serpent’s. As his great lungs inhaled, the smoke billowed in and out of his mouth and nose.
Some of the people at the edges of the crowd had gotten up, hurrying towards the doors. Moloch’s head ratcheted to face them, his fiery eyes narrowing into slits.
“Do not leave!” the man in the goat mask pleaded. “Those who have fear are not worthy of life. Do not prove yourselves unworthy of life!” As the first of the fleeing men and women got to within a few steps of the door, Moloch gave a primal roar. In a blur of primal strength, he reached down and ripped the blackened sacrificial altar off the stage. It ripped from the wooden stage with a tremendous crack like a bullwhip. He hurled the heavy mass of stone at those heading towards the opposite exit from the one I guarded.
I watched it curve through the air. The people started screaming and clawing to escape as it smashed down on their heads with a grating crash. I could feel the floor shake from where I stood outside. Blood exploded from their smashed bodies. I saw arms and legs jerking and seizing under the heavy stone, but within a few moments, they slowed and then stopped.
Others were running towards the door I guarded, but Moloch leapt off the stage in a blur. In a few bounding steps, he reached the pale, terrified faces on the other side of the threshold. His massive clawed hand came down. I heard bones shatter as blood sprayed my face and the wall. Bone splinters and pieces of brain exploded from the screaming bodies. I backpedaled, wiping at my eyes, trying to get the blood off so I could see. No one had told me what to do in this situation. I didn’t know if I was supposed to shoot that massive abomination, or if this was all just part of the show.
“Richard!” a familiar voice cried from behind me. Panic oozed from every word. I spun, seeing Mario and Kolmek standing side by side, their pupils dilated and expressions grim.
“We have a major problem.” It was Mario. I recognized that voice, the one that sounded as if he had been gargling with rocks.
“I know,” I said, holding my rifle tightly. I pointed behind me at the scene of rampant death and destruction.
I had seen bloodshed and war before, but this was different. The Island itself seemed to feel it. The wind, which had been calm when I first landed, now whipped the Island in fast, circular currents. The breeze smelled of burnt matches and coppery blood. The static electricity which had caused the hairs on my arms to rise rippled over everything with tiny blue flashes, increasing in power by the second.
“No, no, not Moloch,” Kolmek said, looking much calmer than I felt. “The Savior lets Moloch thin the herd every year.”
“It’s Leviathan,” Mario continued grimly, “the beast from the waters. The smell of blood is drawing it from the depths of the ocean. We picked up the first blips on radar a few minutes ago. When it gets here, it won’t stop until everything is rubble. It will kill every single person on the Island.”
“All security personnel must report to the south beach immediately,” a cool robotic voice cried out over hidden loudspeakers all over the Island. The screaming from the auditorium had quieted behind me. I was afraid to look inside.
“There it is,” Kolmek said, his head jerking up as the emergency alert read. He motioned for me to follow. “It’s time to fight.”
***
We sprinted over curving trails of smooth logs between deathly quiet forests. All the insects and birds had gone silent. Ahead of us, the palm trees opened up onto the Pacific Ocean. But it was no longer a beautiful tropical blue. A black, swirling whirlpool like an ulcerous wound had opened up on its surface. It stretched hundreds of feet across, drawing closer to the shore by the second. Dead fish, sharks, dolphins, squids and even whales spun in the filthy, dark water.
Twenty black-clad security agents waited for the three of us on the beach, their eyes wide, their faces pale with terror. Like myself, they all had AR-15s and Glock 22s with extra magazines for both. I guess the Glock might be useful for blowing my brains out as a last resort if some beast from Hell rose out of the simmering waters, but I didn’t think it would stop anything from another dimension.
The clouds swirled overhead in a thick curtain as black as smoke. Flashes of blue lightning detonated every couple seconds. Mario raised his hands, screaming over the roaring of the wind. Kolmek stood by my side, his face grim and eyes narrowed.
“Your job is to fight off anything that tries to get on the Island,” he said, looking from one face to another with rapt attention. “Nothing can stand against high-caliber rifle fire. Shoot at the face and eyes when it comes up. We’ve dealt with creatures like this before, and they will retreat if you injure them badly enough.” I had the sense of being fed a line of bullshit as my mind processed this.
“What exactly is coming up?” one of the doe-eyed security men asked. He barely looked old enough to drink, a young, muscular hulk with a Marine Corps tattoo on his neck.
“They call it Leviathan,” Mario responded. “Sometimes the rituals here and the smell of blood can draw… strange things. Leviathan is one of those. We have encountered it before. The most important thing to remember is…” His voice was suddenly drowned out by a terrible cacophony that came from the center of the black whirlpool.
A screech like the detonation of a nuclear missile shook the ground. The ocean jumped and bubbled frantically. The beach heaved and cracked, the white sands disappearing in fissures that opened up like greedy mouths underneath my feet. I lost my balance, falling forwards. The screeching continued rising into a primal roar.
A green dragon head the color of an infected wound erupted from the surface of the thrashing water, rising up dozens of feet in the air. It had two enormous slitted eyes that dilated and constricted quickly as it glowered down at us. The screeching abruptly stopped, the pointed mouth of the dragon slamming shut with a sound like a gunshot.
Within moments, another cancerous green head shot up in a blur, its skin looking as hard as stone. Ridges that looked as sharp as swords ran the length of its reptilian skull, arcing over its eyes and pointed snout. More heads erupted from the ocean until all seven heads of Leviathan loomed over us.
Not one of us fired. No one even seemed to breathe as we surveyed the beast across the no-man’s land of the white sands. The slitted eyes and yellow irises of the seven heads had a demonic hunger, a reptilian coldness. Far behind us, I heard distant screams still echoing from the auditorium where Moloch held sway.
“Fire!” Mario cried. Instantly, a cacophony of gunshots exploded all around me. I jumped up on my feet, scrambling up as the seven-headed dragon leapt forward. Thousands of gallons of saltwater streamed down its massive body as it came up on the beach. Long, black paws with bone-white talons shot out of the surging ocean, followed by a tapering tail like that of a water snake.
I brought the rifle up and emptied my magazine as fast as I could, pulling the trigger over and over as I aimed at the many slitted eyes of Leviathan. But the bullets seemed to ping harmlessly off of its hard, obsidian-like scales.
It scrabbled onto the shore, the heads coming down in a blur. Rows and rows of vampiric fangs gleamed dully in each of the mouths. One security agent was bitten in half, the spurting stump of his lower body still standing for a long moment even as the rest of the body disappeared down the throat of the dragon.
Mario ran forwards, slamming another magazine in his rifle and opening fire point-blank. One of the heads came down in a blur towards him. Its great, staring eyes exploded in a shower of blue blood and thick vitreous fluid. The dragon head pulled back, its mouth opening in a primal scream of agony.
As I reloaded, I scanned the area around me, realizing that nearly half of the security agents were either dead or critically injured. I backpedaled away, keeping my eyes on the dragon. It continuously drew forward, killing more of its enemies with every step. I turned and ran into the forest, the sounds of shattering bones and dying men ringing through the air with a sickening clarity behind me.
Once I had reached the border of the trail, I heard Mario yell, “Retreat!” behind me. But by that point, it was far too late.
***
“Hey! Wait up!” a voice whispered from behind me. I turned my head, seeing Kolmek. Spatters of drying blood covered his face and uniform. As far as I could tell, none of it was his. “Mario’s dead. They’re all dead. We need to get out of here. We need to get off the Island.”
“How?” I asked.
“Find the Savior,” he answered, panting and out of breath. “We must find him. He can get us out of here.”
“I don’t even know what the guy looks like,” I muttered. “He was wearing a goat mask.”
“You’ll know him when you see him,” Kolmek said. “His body is covered in scars. Everything except his face. Stay close to me. We need to watch each other’s backs. It’s our only chance of survival.”
***
A trail of twisted, broken bodies led from the mansion to the surrounding trails and beaches. A decapitated woman with solid gold necklaces embedded with diamonds lay in front of me. It was strange on the Island, the way oblivion and ineffable wealth coexisted side by side. But everything was deathly silent, even in the mansion’s auditorium.
“Where’s the Savior?” I asked through gritted teeth. I peeked my head into the auditorium, but nothing moved. Hundreds of smashed and bloody bodies littered the floor.
“He’s around somewhere,” Kolmek answered. We started circling the mansion, looking for any signs of life. Kolmek went in the lead. As he turned the corner, an enormous black hand with sharp claws of fingers flitted forward in a blur, wrapping itself around his chest. Kolmek gave a strangled cry as it closed around him. I heard his bones crush as a spout of blood and gore flew from his mouth and nose, as if he were a toothpaste tube being squeezed.
I backpedaled away as Moloch threw the twitching corpse aside like a discarded toy. It smashed into the wall of the mansion, exploding wetly. A human-shaped, bloody stain languidly dripped down the wall above Kolmek’s mangled body.
Moloch slowly turned his head towards me, the fiery eyes flashing with hunger. He gnashed his fangs together, taking a step forward with a leg the size and shape of a tree trunk. With every step he took, I felt the ground tremble.
“Stop!” I cried, moving away from the monstrous creature. “Why are you doing this?”
“There is no why,” he gurgled, his voice monstrous and inhumanly slow. “There is only power. The weak deserve to die. Only the strong are worthy of life.” I raised my rifle in a last-ditch effort to save myself. Moloch saw it and started running towards me, every footstep crushing the paved walkway around the mansion into rubble and dust.
I aimed for his eyes and nose, emptying the entire magazine as quickly as I could. The bullets smashed into Moloch’s face. Dark red, clotted blood dripped out of the wounds, writhing with maggots. Drops of it fell around me, landing on my hair and face. I felt the small larvae twisting all over my skin. Moloch’s blood smelled nauseating, like some combination of stinkbugs and rotting bodies. He slowed, giving a roar of pain. I turned to run in the opposite direction, but as I looked out in the direction of the beach, my heart dropped.
Leviathan was moving in our direction, the giant dragon heads looming over the trees. Quickly, it swept towards me like a dark wind.
***
“You will suffer for that, worthless slave,” Moloch growled, wiping blood from his fiery eyes with his sharp talons of fingers. A sudden idea came to me. I ran in the direction of Leviathan. Moloch followed closely at my heels, only a few steps behind me.
Leviathan slithered forward over the sands and trees, its enormous body undulating like a water snake’s. I screamed at it, an incomprehensible wail of terror. Its seven heads snapped towards me. Its slitted eyes widened as it saw Moloch.
I heard the crashing of Moloch’s footsteps stop behind me, only feet away from crushing me into a paste. His massive lungs breathed quickly, exhaling the odor of sulfur and smoke.
“Leviathan,” Moloch growled in his demonic voice. “These are my tributes.” Leviathan’s dragon heads looked straight up at the Sun and screamed in response, their many voices rising and falling in a dissonant wail. As I sprinted into the trees, Leviathan and Moloch ran at each other, colliding with an ear-splitting crash. I glanced back, seeing Moloch ripping one of the dragon heads off its neck with his sharp fingers. The head screamed as blue blood exploded from the spurting stump. After a long moment, the neck fell limply forward.
The other dragon heads bit Moloch in a unified attack. They ripped deep holes in his shoulders and arms, snapping over and over like rabid dogs. As the two eldritch monstrosities attacked each other in fierce combat, I lost sight of them, but the sounds of fighting echoed over the entire island, crashing like lightning.
***
I felt like the survivor of an Apocalypse. I couldn’t find a single other living person on the Island. Hundreds of crushed, broken and decapitated bodies surrounded me. Over the cacophony of fighting, I heard a new noise: the whirring of helicopter blades nearby. It was coming from the other side of the mansion.
Frantically, I sprinted around the other side, seeing a Black Hawk helicopter getting ready to leave. A man in black robes sat at the pilot’s seat, his green eyes gleaming and a wide smile plastered across his face. I smashed my fist into the door over and over until he opened it.
“Holy shit, you’re still alive?” he asked. I hadn’t seen this man before. He had a face like a Calvin Klein model, all sharp angles and high cheekbones, perfectly proportioned in every way. But his scalp looked melted and scarred, as if someone had thrown gasoline on his hair and ignited it. His ears were stunted, twisted growths of scar tissue. His hands, too, were covered in deep, folding burn scars.
“Are you the Savior?” I responded quickly. “Please, get me out of here.”
“They do call me that,” he said wistfully. “The Savior. Yes, I guess I am. Get in.”
***
The Savior stared at me with his strange green eyes, the color of swamps where monstrous things swam under the surface.
“Some people just need to learn the hard way,” he said. The helicopter took off into a dark night covered with bright, twinkling stars. “There is no great power without great responsibility, after all. Those of us who seek the ancient ones know it comes with a cost.” I just stared out the window, gazing down at the countless mutilated, broken bodies that littered the beach.
Below us, the face of a bull stared up with eyes of fiery cyclones. The broken, still body of Leviathan lay at his feet. As we made it over the great waters of the Pacific Ocean, the bull-god raised a hand and waved. At that moment, I thought I could almost see a hurricane of translucent souls circling around him, spiraling up into the sky.

I'm just wondering if the PS5 is worth the upgrade from the 4. I currently use my console almost exclusively for streaming apps to my TV, mainly YouTube. I do play the occasional game, but nothing serious since I totally suck with an analog controller.
So is the 5 worth the $400 at Walmart? Or should I just stick with the 4?