The Madness Below

The Madness Below

## Blurb

**IT WAITS...**

Alastair Stone needs a vacation.

He’s literally stepping through the portal to his home in England when an old friend calls with a horrific tale of a grisly multiple murder committed by teenagers just back from a school camping trip. It doesn’t take long to convince Stone the supernatural is involved.

Goodbye peaceful vacation, hello magical investigation.

When he teams up with a local cop who’s in the know about magic, he soon discovers the problem is a lot worse than he thought. Even more troubling, they’re not the only ones tracking its source. An organization Stone thought long dead has risen again and is determined to find it first.

With the cop’s young son in danger—not to mention countless other people—Stone has no choice but to join forces with his old enemies to prevent an ancient horror from being reborn.

If you like creepy Lovecraftian-style horror and ancient evils awakening from long slumber, you won't want to miss this one!

## Plot

On a Friday in a small town in Massachusetts, seven high school students and two teacher chaperones embark on a late fall weekend trip to a rustic, forested lakeside campground. On Saturday, the group hikes nearby trails to ‘get in touch with nature’. During a break, one student separates from the group to answer a call of nature. He’s gone longer than expected, but waves off the students’ gibes and the chaperone’s concerns, say ‘these things take time’.

That night, the same boy wakes the others once he’s sure the teachers have secreted themselves in a vacant cabin for an assignation. He leads them back into the woods, having something urgent and very cool to show them. All of the students are back in their beds before the teachers break off their tryst and check in on the kids.

The group is subdued the next day as they head back home, but the teachers chalk it up to fatigue from fresh air and exercise. That night, the students go on a spree, murdering parents, siblings, boyrfriends…

### Pause here a moment WARNING, Possible Spoilers Ahead

Before the discovery of the horrific crimes, the students are found in the school gym, bloody and oblivious. They stand in a circle, chanting strange words in a language no one knows. Local police officer Desiree Griffith and her partner respond to a call about a disturbance at the school and find them, and Desiree – Dez – records their chant.

Alastair is about to step into the portal for a Thanksgiving holiday in Surrey when his phone rings Rev. Blodgett from Lowell, MA – a rare mage clergyman – asks Stone to come to Massachusetts to look into a grisly mass murder he’s sure is magical in nature. Blodgett isn’t an alarmist, so Stone agrees, and notifies Aubrey that he’ll be late. He portals to Lowell and gets details from Rev. Blodgett that make Stone realize something horrific is going on. He reads the transcript of the video taken by Officer Griffith, a mundane from a magical family, and realizes he must investigate.

When he arrives in Treadley, Stone gets a chilly welcome. The sensational nature of the crimes has drawn reporters and gawkers to the place, and people assume he’s just another one come looking for a ghoulish thrill. Fortunately, Dez Griffith is aware of the magical world, and is grateful that Stone is someone she can speak openly to. The chanting the kids had been doing made her feel physically ill; they were all covered in blood, and they seemed disassociated from everything. She offers to show Stone the video but, before they leave, Alastair notes two men in the restaurant paying too much attention to them – his silence spell should have prevented them eavesdropping, but they seemed much too interested.

Dez’s video makes it clear that there is something arcane going on, so he has her make copies to send to Blodgett, Eddie and Ward, hoping they can identify the chant and its purpose. Dez takes him to interview Neil Warby, one of the two teacher chaperones, who is despondent and blaming himself for not seeing anything amiss with the kids. Alastair discerns a deeper upset, and determines that Warby had snuck away in the night with the other teacher, with whom he was having an affair. Their absence left time open for the students to encounter…something.

Next task is to visit the campsite, so Dez makes a quick stop at her house for some things they’ll need, only to find her house was broken into and her laptop stolen. Stone quickly determines magic was used to break in, and thinks of the two men in the restaurant, wondering at their motives. On the drive to the campsite, Stone mulls possibilities, from the Evil to another rift. The owner of the camp store doesn’t have much new to share, though he mentions the students were looking at each other strangely, with distant stares. Stone thinks they were connected and communicating somehow. Dez worries that whatever influenced them could affect her and Stone as well.

Despite worsening weather, Stone and Dez hike up the trail the kids took on their outing. They separate, hoping to find whatever is out there, but Stone finds himself muddled and turned around, his thoughts intruded on by voices…Dez finds him and snaps him out of it, and he reinforces his mental defenses; the thought of someone as powerful as he is, controlled by a malevolent force, is a wakeup call that something here is old, and very powerful. With the town full of reporters, Dez offers Stone her spare room, since her husband and boys are out of town.

Stone calls Verity to fill her in and asks if she’s free to join him, but it’ll be some time before she can arrive. Next morning, a wan-looking Dez tells him that Neil Warby has hung himself. He wonders if his questioning pushed the man too far. Eddie reports that, so far, he and Ward have determined that thee language of the kids’ chant is old, as in ancient, and seems to be a prayer of gratitude or celebration. He warns Stone to be careful with something so old.

Alastair manages to book the last available room at an inn, in the process spotting the two men from the restaurant. With a little verbal subterfuge and a generous tip, he gets the desk clerk to ‘accidentally’ reveal their names and room number. The men had left, so Stone sneaks into their room and finds Dez’s laptop. He also finds a journal with the embossed emblem of the Ordo Purpuratus, the elitist mage group his ancestors had been part of, which thought nothing of conducting human sacrifice. He’d thought the Ordo extinct.

He calls Eddie and sends him photos of the coded notes in the journal. Eddie speculates that the Ordo’s return follows, maybe not so coincidentally, the release of who or whatever had been sealed under Stone’s house. Alastair hasn’t told anyone about Aldwyn, and worries that Eddie may be right.

Stone informs Dez that the eavesdroppers from the restaurant had her laptop, and she lets him know that those same two visited Warby after they did, leaving the man in an even worse mental state. Rev. Blodgett calls with his research on the chant, saying much the same as Eddie. He adds that the language appears to be a long-dead one used by an old cult.

After Verity arrives, she and Stone join Dez and her family for dinner. After, they privately discuss the next step. Dez has gotten plans and details for the mental facility where the students are being held. Stone had originally planned to break in to the place the next night, on Thanksgiving, but the actions of the Ordo men prompt him to try immediately; he has no idea what the men are up to or what their motives are.

Using magical subterfuge, Stone and Verity manage to enter the hospital and the room of Brittany Lyons, the only one of the teens in a room alone. Like the others, she has no memory of the murders, though she does remember the small detail that the other female of the group is pregnant. Verity is able to get to the events at the campsite, though. Brittany remembers going out into the woods with the others and finding a subterranean room, where a disturbing statue communicates with them. It’s red and green – blood and rot – and is accompanied by chanting she hears in her head. Stone sings the chant she and the others used in the school gym, and Brittany freaks out, begging him to stop. She goes on to describe the thing in the room as having too many eyes and tentacles. Verity can’t do much for the girl, but she does manage to help her sleep without the horrific dreams.

As they head back to Treadley, Verity questions what the force or entity gets out of having the kids kill a bunch of people sixty miles away. Alastair reminds her that the world was much smaller hundreds of years ago. The entity couldn’t have known how mankind would spread out, putting distance between themselves and a remote stone building. It probably anticipated a surge of death energy, but was foiled by distance. They arrive to find a fire at the hotel, centered on their room. They learn too, that the Ordo men checked out just prior to the fire.

Imposing on Dez again, Stone and Verity grab some sleep, and wake to find it raining so hard, there is no way they can make it up to the campground to find the hidden building. Eddie calls and conferences Ward and Blodgett in. A small obscure cult fled England in the 1600s to avoid persecution, and settled in the area, far from others. They believed ancient chaos gods from another existence were waiting to be summoned to Earth to destroy it, and worked toward that end with sacrifices. The thing in the woods is called a Lurker, and is the herald of a more powerful nameless god. Specifically, when the time was ‘right’, the Lurker would be summoned with sacrifices then it, in turn, would call up other entities to bring the master over into the new world. All were associated with and summoned from water, like the lake at the campground. The cult itself had apparently died out, but the Lurker remained and called the teens to it when they arrived in the vicinity.

With no actionable options, Stone and Verity gratefully join the Griffiths for Thanksgiving dinner. Unfortunately, before dessert, Dez gets a call from her partner – the teens have broken out of the facility, having murdered everyone inside. Brittany was the only one not to participate, but when they stole a van to escape, they took her with them. Stone is sure they’re headed back to the campsite and he and Verity prepare to go there.

They discuss logistics with Dez in her office. The weather means Stone’s car won’t make it up to the campground, so she offers to take them up in her Jeep. She won’t help them beyond that, though – if it comes to killing the kids, she won’t be able to do it. Stone remembers that the god is summoned from water, so they hook up the Griffiths’ boat, in case. When they arrive at the campground, they discover that Dez’s 10year-old, Noah, had been eavesdropping and hidden himself under the boat’s cover, wanting to come help fight monsters. Meanwhile, out on the lake, a sickly green column of magical light is growing on a small island.

Neither Stone nor Verity know how to drive a boat, but Alastair is about to try when Dez says she’ll do it. The lake is churned to a froth, and he’d have no chance of keeping the thing upright. They plan for her to drive them out, along with Noah, then leave them and retreat to the campsite. The boat is tossed into rocks and holed, though, and Verity and Stone have to magically grab Dez and Noah and bring them onto the island before it sinks. They’re armed with a shotgun, a flare gun, a baseball bat, and magic. Needing to stay together so Stone and Verity can protect Dez and Noah, they head for the island’s abandoned campsite as a group.

On the way, they find the Ordo men – one terrified, the other near death. They’d been watching the ritual, but were attacked by twisted, mind-bending creatures and had to flee. The one, Kroyer, abandoned his partner when he was attacked, but went back for him when he realized the creatures had gone back to their ritual. He begs Verity to heal the man, but he’s too far gone. Stone, meanwhile, is beyond incensed that the men would simply watch the students being sacrificed and not help, and that Kroyer was coward enough to abandon his mate. He orders Kroyer to come with them – they’ll need all the mage power they can get.

Stone scouts ahead and sees the insane creatures for himself. One student, at least, is missing and, as he watches, another is placed on an old table and consumed by nightmarish tentacles. Out on the lake, something huge and alien is beginning to take form. A scream and shotgun blast send him back to his companions, who are fighting off two of the creatures. He manages to blast them to nothing with Calanarian power. Stone is again enraged by Kroyer, who’d made no attempt to defend anyone. His contempt for mundanes is entirely inhumane.

They creep to within a matter of yards of the ritual, hiding behind a cabin, and Stone is giving orders when three more creatures appear from the puddles and attack. They all levitate to a roof and group back-to-back with Dez and Noah in the center. The nightmare creatures seem to reform when blown apart with magic. Kroyer panics and runs, and is killed. Stone orders Verity to levitate the others and goes to disrupt the ritual, where another student is about to be consumed. Brittany is the only one who appears aware of her surroundings, looking directly at Stone for help.

A creature manifests directly from the raindrops and wounds Stone, but he hears Verity scream and blasts it with all-out Calanarian power and heads back to the cabin, where the roof has collapsed when Verity couldn’t hold the levitation spell any longer. Two more creatures are inside, and Verity and Dez are both down. Stone takes aim at one, and Noah suddenly pops up with the flare gun and fires at the other. The fire consumes the creature, much more effectively than even pure power could. Stone converts his attack to fire and fries the second creature, though he’s taken more wounds.

Finally having a weapon that should work, Stone and Verity send Dez and Noah to a more intact cabin and advance on the creatures in the ritual circle. Verity holds a flaming shield while Stone blasts the creatures and their circle with Calanarian power converted to flame. He’s near passing out from the mind-shattering screams of the creatures and the thing in the lake, when they all disappear, the lake settles, and even the rain lets up. The remaining teens are still insensible except for Brittany, who collapses into sobs, saying that she was sorry, they made her, and she couldn’t stop them.

Alastair relates the tale to Aubrey and Ian at a delayed Thanksgiving. The remaining students are little more than mannequins now, except Brittany, who they’d managed to whisk away to a new and, hopefully, better life. They hidden building, when they found it, had collapsed in on itself, and they found nothing remaining in the wreckage. Dez calls to thank Stone for the outing to a Bruins game he’d arranged for Noah. With him mother’s help and a little healing mind magic, the boy was beginning to believe the whole thing had been a nightmare.

In a secure mental facility, a pregnant student who is still trapped in her own mind to the point of not knowing her own name, smiles when her baby begins to move for the first time.