"Brent, you should get back in the car," Delia called out. Her friend was standing in the middle sidewalk of a quaint street in a residential neighborhood of Portland, Maine, drinking a Twisted Tea. Children in costumes were walking awkwardly around him, and parents hurriedly tried to get the kids to ignore his presence. He was the only member of his friend group who was not wearing a costume, having claimed to several people that his orange T-shirt and black pants were a costume enough. "You're clearly the scariest thing on Halloween."
"I needed some fresh air," Brent said. "It's fucking cramped in that thing." A small child dressed in a dragon costume tripped over Brent's foot and kept walking without either Brent or the child paying any mind to it.
Delia peered at her friends through her thick-rimmed glasses, sitting in the passenger seat of her best friend Tara's hatchback. "So what do we do now?" she asked. She was wearing a homemade costume of a green-and-teal chameleon with rainbow highlights that her mother had handed down to her. Her mother had made it based on a character from some book or TV show she liked, but could not for the life of her remember the name of. Delia had spent hours and hours trying to look it up; she hadn't found anything.
"I dunno," Brent said. He finished drinking his Twisted Tea and dropped it on what he thought was the ground, but ended up being a kid's pumpkin-shaped Halloween basket. "We could go to my house and just chill, maybe play some Call of Duty. There aren't any other parties going on, and the last one sucked anyway."
"I enjoyed it," Delia replied.
“Easy for you to say,” Tara replied, smiling slightly. She stood next to Brent in a “Hooded Huntress” costume, which was essentially just Katniss Everdeen but copyright-free. Tara had never read the Hunger Games, and she was certain that she'd hate it if she did; she just thought the costume looked kinda neat, and she had to make the decision quickly so it'd be shipped in time. “I think you're the only person there who actually bobbed for an apple.”
“Listen, I was having fun. I just don't get the kind of parties you go to,” Delia responded. “Okay, so you're all crammed in this one room, right? And you want to talk to people about stuff, but the music's too loud so you can't. In addition, we've trained an entire generation of professionals—we call them “DJs”—whose entire job is to make it so there are no breaks in the music so you can talk to people. Wanna dance? You can't; you're surrounded on three sides. So all you do is drink, and I've got, like, 3 meds that all say that I'll die if I try to drink.”
“You can hook up, too,” Brent noted.
“One can,” Delia replied. “You don't.”
“Yeah, okay,” Brent laughed. “Fuck off. Anyone have any ideas at all for what we want to do?"
“My aunt's in an actual blood cult,” Tara said matter-of-factly. “They're having a Halloween party tonight.”
Silence. Delia and Brent stared at their friend, Brent finally being the first to speak. “Excuse me?” he said, his voice raising in interest.
“You're shitting us, right?” Delia said. “If there was a blood cult in this city, I'd know. Trust me.”
"I'm dead serious." Tara shrugged. “I know it sounds ridiculous, but… well, get in the car and you'll find out."
"What?" Brent said. "No. I'm not falling for this. Any real suggestions would be appreciated, thank you."
"I think we should humor her," Delia said. "She's probably made this cool haunted house for us or something."
"No prank, no lie," Tara responded, walking around to the driver's side of her car and getting in. "You can come with us or not. Either's fine."
Brent groaned. "Alright, fine. Let's go."

The signboard in front of the unassuming brick church read “REMEMBER - GOD IS ALWAYS FIGHTING FOR YOU.” Tara parked the car next to the church's side entrance; Brent and Delia vaguely recognized having passed it on the street before, but hadn't given it much thought. It was just a standard part of the landscape, something everyone acknowledged but no one truly saw.
Brent unbuckled his seatbelt a full second before the car stopped, standing up just as it came to a halt. He leaned over the front seat, his head poking out from in between Tara and Delia. “Ha. I get it. Because they drink Jesus' blood, so they're blood cultists. Witty. Clever. Why'd you need to drive us all the way here to make that joke?”
Tara chuckled dryly. “The church is a front,” she said. “What, you think they talk about how they bleed themselves for their god out in the open?”
“They bleed themselves?” Delia said. “I mean, I guess I should've realized that was what ‘blood cult' meant, but I thought you meant more sacrificing animals or something. Did anyone tell them about tetanus? Or HIV? Or literally every awful thing that happens if you just cut yourself open?”
“They're zealots,” Tara said quietly. “They aren't thinking straight. My Aunt's been trying to get us into this shit for years; it's why we don't see her often.” She opened the car door and got out; Brent and Delia followed closely behind.
Tara guided her friends up the stairs to the side door, knocking on it three times. A large old man opened the door; he had shoulder-length white hair, a slight white beard, and round, thick-rimmed glasses. More noticeably, he was dressed as Frankenstein, the entirety of his skin painted bright green. The man looked at them, turned to his side, and bowed; Tara recognized this from the way her aunt would always greet people. “Rakmou-leusan fights as always,” he said. “Welcome.”
"Hello to you too," Delia said.
The man gave them a toothy smile. “I take it you're new here? Well, it's nice to meet you all.” He held out his green hand for Tara to shake. “Harvey Whitfeld, Ur-Aíma Priest of this branch of the Church of the Second Hytoth.” He smiled, and the green coloration of his skin suddenly flushed back into a more natural tone. “That's better. Figure it's best to meet new folks on the human level, even if it is Halloween.”
Delia's face lit up. “Okay, how the fuck did you do that?” She swiveled her head around the room. “Okay, no projectors on the walls, so that's not it. How on Earth—”
Harvey cleared his throat. “Well, maybe it's not from Earth.” He spoke in a mock voice similar to old sci-fi announcers, enunciating every word. “Come on in, get some candy. All your questions will be eventually answered as long as you do one thing for me, okay?”
“And what is that?” Delia replied.
“Give us the benefit of the doubt. Just for tonight.”
The three friends followed Harvey into the church basement. It looked like all church basements tend to look: brown ceramic tiles on the floors, dirty plaster walls, circular folding tables both propped up against the walls and positioned around the room. On each table, there were snacks: handmade scones and muffins, bowls of all the kinds of candy you'd expect from Halloween parties, and some gelatin molds of ghosts and dead trees and pumpkins. The Halloween decorations were simple and store-bought: orange-and-black caution tape warning people to keep out, cobwebs and plastic spiders hanging from them, skeletons propped up in two of the room's corners. No new innovations were being made on that front.
The members of the supposed blood cult were simply chatting amongst each other, eating sweets; Brent and Delia both came to the same conclusion about just how human they looked. Some of them did have brightly-colored skin as a part of their costumes like Harvey did—a middle-aged couple dressed as Navi from the Avatar movie, a 12-year-old boy dressed as the Vision from Marvel—but even they were laughing, having a good time, partaking in no secret blood rituals except for the consumption of candy. People had a solid mixture of costumes on, but several costumes would be out of place anywhere else–four-armed people with bright red skin, holding spears or swords. Delia took note of this instantly as something probably tied to their religion. Brent assumed that there was some new popular anime he had never heard of. Tara knew all too well what they were dressed up as.
“That costume,” Harvey said, pointing at Delia's green patchwork dress that her mother had spent weeks making so many years ago. “I never thought I'd see Karma Chameleon again in my life.” He chuckled heartily; Delia stared blankly at him. “Don't try to look it up,” he added. “No one remembers who he is, and for good reason. We just have ways of remembering things better than other people.”
Delia stopped in her tracks. "You know what this is? My mother doesn't even know what this is, and she made it. How?"
“Well. It's a long story, and one I don't really have permission to tell.” Harvey turned to Tara. “Wait, I recognize you,” he said, stopping in his tracks. "You're Alba Muñoz's niece. I've heard a lot about you.”
“Funny,” Tara muttered. “Haven't seen her in a good long time.”
Harvey nodded empathetically. “I've heard that, too,” he said, his voice almost to a whisper. “I don't think there's a way to talk about that in an unbiased way, and it's far be it from me to get involved in your family's business. Suffice it to say, she definitely wants to get to see you more, if you and your parents would let her in.”
“Hell no,” Tara said. “She's brainwashed. I'm not going to talk to someone who gives blood to invisible sky aliens.”
Harvey smiled. "Then why did you come here?"
Tara turned to Brent and Delia. “You two can mingle, have fun. Don't get sacrificed.” Neither Brent nor Delia knew whether Tara was serious about the last part, but they shared a quick look at each other and went off to one of the tables where several kids their age were.
“Honestly,” Harvey said, “that's probably the first reaction of 90% of the people we get here. I completely understand how we look to people on the outside. Also, we don't sacrifice people. That's a big thing. All blood given to Rakmou-leusan is surrendered willingly.”
Tara sighed. “Right, I know that. Because of those other aliens that did do awful things, the divas or something.”
Harvey burst into genuine, uncontrollable laughter. “They're not called the divas,” he said, “and they weren't aliens. But I love the enthusiasm.” He paused. “Come with me. I want to show you something.”
Tara didn't know why her sense of self-preservation didn't immediately kick in, but as Harvey walked off, against everything in her stomach telling her not to, she followed him.

The main floor of the church was remarkably similar to how Tara remembered her church to look like growing up—her parents had gotten out of the habit of going, and while her mother occasionally mentioned feeling guilty for not going, the thought was never enough to get back into the swing of things. There was no trace of what this place actually was; the illusion of decency, Tara thought, permeated this place so entirely that it almost sickened her.
Harvey, still dressed as Frankenstein with his regular, slightly sunburned skin tone, reached for a light switch on the wall and illuminated the space. The stained glass windows would be easy to overlook as the type of windows one would see in a church like this, but Tara didn't recognize any of the scenes they depicted, and staring harder at them, she noticed that several of the figures had four arms. On top of the altar was what looked like a flat river rock; on the side of it was the all-too-familiar heptagon symbol Tara's aunt had hung up on most of her walls.
“Keep pretending to be something you aren't,” Tara said. “It's a good look. Real religions don't need to do that.”
Harvey laughed. “You know, I wish very much we didn't have to blend in like this. But we've made agreements with a lot of powerful groups, and this is the compromise that best lets us assist Rakmou-leusan without making a lot of enemies.” He rolled the R in his god's name in what Tara thought was the most pretentious display of faux worship imaginable.
Tara rolled her eyes. “Would you like to keep being vague, or are you going to show me that thing you wanted to?” She took a seat at the far end of a pew, her legs turned outwards and facing the wall.
“What I wanted to show you,” Harvey said, “was the hard work your Aunt Alba puts into this community. She planned this party, you know. It was a shame she couldn't make it; she made it incredibly clear that she had to be on her front porch, handing out candy to all the children. Nothing would have gotten in the way of that.”
Harvey gestured to the stained-glass windows. “Alba helped me install these windows the other day; it took us forever to get around to it, but the old ones still had pictures of Yorun-leusan on them, and I couldn't stand to look at them anymore.” He paused, noticing Tara's exasperated face. “You don't need to know who that is, don't worry. I just get started on tangents, and—”
“So what I'm hearing,” Tara said, sighing, “is that you indoctrinated a woman to the point that she puts all her energy into making this place run, while simultaneously literally bleeding her dry. Do you not see why I have a problem with this?”
Harvey nodded. He took a seat on the pew in front of Tara, turning around to face her. “You know, there are a lot of times when I wish that our truth didn't sound so ridiculous to outsiders. It's impossible for any self-respecting human being to judge you for your reaction here. Giving blood to aliens is… yeah, well that's a tall order. And then there's the paradox of giving first aímact. When you first give your blood to Rakmou-leusan, you see him fighting, you feel their struggle against the enemy, that valiant dance between light and darkness. You no longer have to believe; you simply know, and you know why you need to give. But getting to that point requires you to do something unthinkable, something that you are biologically trained to never do.
He sighed. “And I'll never be able to explain to you the entirety of what that feels like, what I know now, and I've trained myself to just accept that, a thousand times over. But I knew I couldn't just not try.”
A silence hung low in the room. Tara found herself captivated by just how quiet it was, having seen the revelry of the people below her, knowing that all around her, kids were celebrating one of their favorite nights of the year. It felt fitting. Finally, she spoke. “I'm not going to let you think for a second that I believe you, or that I don't hate what you stand for with everything in me,” Tara said, “but I need to know. What do you actually do here? What does being in a blood cult look like?”
“Well,” Harvey said, “when we started, we'd have services on Sundays, just because that felt like the norm to all the former Christians who started this place. But we eventually got a lot of people who wanted to be korutists but were also Christian. The Ortothans never ruled any possibility out about what might be out there, and we did not want to either. So we have a shorter service on Sundays, and we have a longer one on Wednesday nights.”
“And you give blood,” Tara noted, lowering the hood on her costume.
“And we give blood. We have portable stones as well, for daily usage. You give what you can; most of the time it's just a pinprick, but sometimes even that can be dangerous for some people. We don't ask for any more than we reasonably should.”
Harvey stood up. “Another good part of our time,” he said, stretching out his arms, “is focused on untangling the mess that our forebearers left us. There was a kingdom, a long time ago, of korutists, and they had a lot of paper documents. Both from the kingdom, and from… well, out there. Millions and millions of these things, stacked up in boxes folded into smaller boxes and put back into big boxes. This I can prove, but I don't think we have any in this building. We research, we translate, and we try to put together the narratives of several millennia into a consistent timeline.”
“Yeah, no,” Tara said. “You can't just say that and then tell me that they somehow all went missing.”
“Show up here on Sunday,” Harvey said, “and I'll take you to a larger church so you can see for yourself.”
“You have another church in Portland?” Tara said. “Because I'm not going any further.”
“In a way,” Harvey said, scratching his head. “If I told you the rest it'd make all kinds of nonsense. Again, the best way is just to show you.”
Tara rolled her eyes again, standing up and slowly pacing along the wall. She looked at each piece of stained glass briefly, pretending that she wasn't admiring the art. “So you guys are just magical alien scholars, then? Assuming I believe any of the shit you say. That's it: giving blood and doing research? Sounds boring.”
Harvey smiled solemnly. “Well… let's just say we were fairly late to the party with this type of thing. Stop me if you've heard all this stuff from your silly old aunt. A long time ago, seven gods fought valiantly against the tide of nonexistence threatening our universe every day. Slowly but surely, these gods fell. One particular knucklehead of a god killed another god in probably the worst decision ever made, and I do mean ever. When korutism came to Earth, there were three left. When we rediscovered it, there were only two. And three weeks after you were born, there was one. When there are zero, we're done. Lights off. That's the end.”
Tara laughed this time, a dry laugh. “Making up urgency to encourage your disciples to stay in line.”
“What I was getting to,” Harvey said, “was that we as a community know this, we know how fickle the universe and all its infinite glory and terror can be, and so we enjoy ourselves. We live, we have more feasts and holidays than we know what to do with, and we give back. You see, this funny thing happens when you start giving your blood, the essence of your being, to someone you don't even know and who will never know you exist. You start to realize that you can give less important things to people who you can actually see the struggles of day to day. Most of the people we feed, clothe, and help get back on our feet think that we're a church of the traditional kind, even if it means that Rakmou-leusan doesn't get another follower. That's fine. They're better off for it, and that's what matters.”
Tara nodded. She couldn't think of anything to say, so she didn't, and walked back down the stairs to the party. Neither Harvey nor Tara knew whether Harvey had gotten anything across to her in that moment.

"Okay, change of plans, we gotta go," Delia said, running up to Tara as she entered back into the basement. "You didn't tell me that they wanted to bring about the actual end of the world."
"They don't—" Tara said, but was interrupted by Brent running up next to Delia.
"You're finally back," Brent said. "I thought he had to have killed you by now! You know what they do to outsiders?" He pointed at the table where they had been sitting previously, at one of the teenagers who was wearing a four-armed costume with artificially red skin. "That's Jove. Xe was kind enough to warn me about the actual shit that goes on here. Your aunt's a fucked up person. Jove's been trying to get out for years, but xir family watches everything xe does, and—"
"Apparently," Delia interrupted, "every Christmas, they go to an animal shelter, find fifteen puppies and sacrifice them to the Holy Fourth. And then, on Easter, they crucify the weakest member of the congregation!"
"Xe didn't want to tell us what happened on Halloween," Brent said. "Just told us to leave before midnight!"
Tara laughed to herself. She took a look at Jove, who looked back and winked at her. "Jove," Tara said, "is messing with you. Come on; let's get back in the car."

In another place, at another point in time in this hytoth, a young Tara Muñoz sat in a handcrafted wooden chair in a suburban rowhouse on the outskirts of Portland. Her aunt walked out from the kitchen door and placed in front of her a plate of tilapia in bechamel sauce, a recipe that she had gotten from the cookbook Tara's mother had bought her for Christmas. "Here you go, yorun," she said. She always used that nickname for Tara; her mother never liked it, but Tara didn't know why. "I hope you enjoy."
Tara poked at it with her fork before finally taking a bite. It tasted strange, but not as strange as the texture of the fish in the cream sauce. She moved it around her mouth a few times before swallowing and taking another bite. As she swallowed the fish, she found herself enjoying each bite more and more; a dangerous curiosity, her young mind thought. How could she enjoy something when the taste was so strong and the texture was so unusual?
Tara looked at the clock on the wall, taking a few seconds to translate the positions of the hour and minute hands into information about the time. 7:14 PM. She looked up at her aunt, who took her seat next to her niece and began eating the meal herself. "Aunt Alba, isn't it time for you to give blood?"
Alba turned to her, a wild, endeared smile crossing her face. "I wish," she said, "I really do. But sometimes you get too old to do certain things, and my doctor says I can't handle it." She held out her arm, blue veins popping out through her aged skin, small pinpricks on each of her five fingers from repeated practice of her church's rituals. Alba placed her hand on Tara's own, smiling.
Tara nodded contemplatively. Finally, she spoke. "My Mommy doesn't want me to see you much anymore because of your religion."
"Oh, don't worry about what she says," Alba laughed. "We've always had our differences, but the two of us are closer than anyone in the world. She might not understand my religion, but she understands me, sweet pea. That's what's important."
Tara looked down, taking another bite of the fish. "Hm."
The two of them ate, neither of them looking at the other. Finally, Alba broke the silence. "You know," she said, "when you were born, I was in a bad place. I did not always give blood to Rakmou-leusan; I respected him, of course, but I was following a different path. I gave my blood to another god, another fighter in the greatest war ever fought, and then, as all things must do, she died. I couldn't go to church, I couldn't bear to think about it. So when you were born, I saw you, and you became the light of my life. I saw Yorun-leusan in your eyes; I saw her willingness to look deep into the cosmos, to explore, I saw all the secrets that would be hidden behind your eyes. Even if you never listen to one silly thing I say, just promise me that you will never stop being curious."
Tara nodded, although she wasn't fully listening. This moment was never truly as important to Tara as it would be to Alba; she was busy thinking about all the things in the moment, the fish, her paper on the solar system she'd have to write when she got back home. Neither of them knew that it was the last time Tara's parents would let her stay with Alba, but it was not the last time they'd meet. Alba would start giving blood again, and while Tara never received news that Alba had gotten hurt from her rituals, it always worried her and her parents beyond belief.
Tara did not think about any of these things as she drove her friends home, but she did not think about any of the things she had to deal with in the moment, either; her mind was racing with a thousand preconceptions she had about the church, and a thousand realities that did not seem to fit, and a million more questions that she did not have the answers to.
There was only one way to know more, and it would require her to do something that betrayed every feeling she had.