With a spinning delirium, Jason wavered on his feet, temporarily struck numb as his senses vibrated into echoing discord. He grabbed a nearby wall for support, suppressing the urge to vomit. "Where's the gong? I can feel my bones..." he trailed off into a truncated dry-heave.

"Oh yeah, that feels good," Kyle muttered weakly from beyond, fighting to retain his own sandwich casserole.

Jason couldn't argue. Nope. No siree. One year, he'd managed to fall down most of Craig's Hill, slamming his body on rocks and various debris for yards before his momentum finally halted at a jutting alcove. This didn't hurt as much, but he felt just as knocked senseless. Punch drunk, without all the messy head-shots.

He coughed. "Kyle, I need yer help. Can't think right now... I'm jus' gonna sit down before it ain't consensual." No fault in that, really. Somehow he'd already fallen to his knees and hadn't felt the movement or impact.

Kyle wasn't done resting, but Jason sounded worse. No need to get up, though, for he fell only a couple feet past the doorframe. Turning to his hands and knees, he backed into the room and let his legs extend naturally down the steps, pushing himself upright when the angle proved convenient. There seemed a distant ringing in his head, but nothing worse than his hasty run toward the schoolhouse last night.

He blinked. What? But the vision was gone, utterly destroyed by merely concentrating on the fleeting image. He mumbled a silent curse. Hallucinations always provided tons of gut-wrenching fun. He vaguely wondered if straight-jackets came in his size.

Crazy or not, he crossed the threshold without incident, and turned around to see Jason sitting with his legs folded beneath him, slightly hunched forward and massaging his temples. "You ok?"

"Never better," Jason groaned. "I think I saw your flashlight on a table over there. Can you get that so we can go?" Not a little urgency crept into his voice.

Table? Kyle distinctly remembered seeing a ledge set into a wall after crawling through his makeshift door. Heck, he left his bag right the nook formed by the left wall and the inset, remembered securing it against falling on the floor onto something possibly squishy, alive, or both. But the light and dust swimming in the beam of his flashlight on the same ledge didn't lie: the walls to the right and left were gone, leaving a chest-high platform.

"Did we set off a trap or something?" he asked, turning again toward Jason. "That was a wall a couple minutes ago..."

"Hey Scruff, anything's possible. I feel like a tuning-fork, so it ain't a stretch." Silently Jason doubted his own assurance. If moving walls mutely thrummed the floor with enough frequency to double his vision, they were fast—impossibly so.

"Hmmm," Kyle replied offhand, partially to Jason, but mostly because his attention was stolen by the table. "Well, I'm going to get the candles. I probably just saw it wrong; it's pretty dark in here."

True enough.

He quickly covered the distance and found his bag, open and ready for the scattered and dusty sticks of wax strewn about the stone surface. He picked up his flashlight so he could see which candles were still usable, unbroken and long enough to use as miniature torches. He counted just over two dozen, arranged in a roughshod circle, easily evident though many had rolled out of place. He scrabbled to toss them into his bag's waiting maw, hoping these would suffice for their stay.

As his fingers passed over the podium, dredging up a deep wedge of dust, his finger caught on a circular depression. Thinking, he dragged his fingers along a similar path slightly to the left, and again a digit descended into a small pit. Interested, he pulled an old cloth from his bag and started wiping down the surface, holding his head high and away to avoid the choking plume of dust dislodged by his efforts.

When everything had settled, he shined his flashlight directly on the centerpiece, and immediately wished he hadn't. Everyone hears stories of Satanists, or other ancient cults which thrived on human sacrifice, but stories were meant to scare children around campfires, prizes and accolades going to whomever made the most scream or wet themselves. Kyle's jaw slackened and he backed away from the scene in surprise. Maybe terror would come later. He stopped only after accidentally running into a slightly yielding surface behind him with a muffled thump.

"Neat!" Jason said, genuinely eager.

Kyle yelped a tiny scream, momentarily aghast by the coincidence. How did I miss that shambling goof? "Thanks Jason, I always wanted a heart attack."

Jason waved him away, again forgoing an easy rebuttal such as Only girls'r afraid of this stuff, or That's what your mom said. "Yeah, yeah," he said instead. "Wouldja look at this?! A genuine pentagram! An' there's holes for the candles you found!"

"Great. Just our luck." Kyle deadpanned. "Hey, I know... let's screw around with it and see what comes to kill us!"

"Har! Great idea, kid! Gimme a sec." Jason didn't give Kyle much chance to reply, and was already arranging candles into the ten points of the star itself, and about fifteen evenly spaced in a circle surrounding it. "Got a match, kid?" he asked with a devilish grin.

Kyle most certainly did have a match, but definitely didn't want to relinquish it to Jason for his foolhardy errand. "C'mon man, yer wasting 'em!" he chastised.

"Save it. It'll only take a second... I wanna see how it'll look."

Kyle made a note to himself to look up the word contrived in a dictionary when they got back to school tomorrow. He was pretty sure this situation fit the bill, but he wanted something more concrete he could wave in Jason's face. It's like he grew up in Cliche Academy. If this does anything other than waste our time, I'm petitioning God for a recount.

He sighed. "Fine, but I'll have you know that the rules say a monster is supposed to eat yer head or sumthin'. I'll be over here if ya need me." He flicked Jason a match and backed away another five paces. He was certain nothing would come of Jason's ministrations, but things were already weird enough to discount even long odds. If Jason became demon-chow, he fully intended to enjoy a head-start on vacating the room.

Jason shook his head. "Suit yerself, kid," and lit a match.