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If you had asked Casey Hartley how he thought he was going to die, he would have had different answers in different years of his life.
If you’d asked him when he was five, he would’ve said, “Dueling pirates like Peter Pan!” If his mother had asked him how he thought he was going to die, he’d have rolled his eyes and said, “From smoking those cigarettes, Ma. Obviously.” If you asked him in the seventh grade on a day that Gregg Lee was especially pissing him off, he would’ve said, “Fighting with Gregg,” and if you asked him after high school ended he’d have shrugged his shoulders and said, “I don’t know, fuck off.”
So, as you can see, being murdered by a cult was not on the list.
June 27th was the last day anyone had ever seen Casey. What was irritating was that it wasn’t even a particularly special day. It was just about two years past his high school graduation, one of Casey’s best friends had spent said past two years off at college, and his other best friend had just returned from vacation in Bright Harbor ranting about how excited he was to move there with his boyfriend and showing Casey his new tattoo. Casey hadn’t done much since high school besides third wheel Gregg and Angus, now that Mae wasn’t around to bless him with the classification of “fourth wheel.” Recently, he’d had a cousin going down the wrong path and tried to talk some sense into him, and he didn’t even have a job right now—not that it stopped him from screwing every girl who was willing only to never text her back.
“Good thing we don’t get cell reception here, or I’d be in trouble,” he’d once joked to Gregg.
It wasn’t his birthday, either. As a summer birthday-haver, he wasn’t due to turn 20 until late July, and with a month off, it looked like he was destined to be a teenager forever. Maybe something he would’ve once joked about loving, but now—a nightmare. Never getting to see twenty.
When he was walking back home from the train tracks—his house wasn’t far—and he’d been grabbed by some creep in some freakish cosplay, he’d been surprised, sure, but he hadn’t thought much of it. Casey’s fighting skills were bar none; even Gregg, who could shoot a crossbow, knife fight, and throw down with the best of them, was not quite as strong as Casey—at least not now, at twenty. He figured he was getting jumped or something and he’d let the guy have it and finish walking home when he’d had enough, let his Mom fuss over him while he rolled his eyes some more. He always did about her concern, it never having occurred to him that he’d miss it.
How terrible, too, to be grabbed at the train tracks, so close to his house. Close to the house he shared with his parents, where he and Angus and Gregg and even Mae, sometimes, though she wasn’t allowed, had sleepovers and hang-outs and fights and laughs over the years. The room where he’d take girls if they were agreeable to go back to his place. The room he’d lived in and now, apparently, would die close to but not close enough.
For a while, it looked like Casey’s original plan was working. He had the upper hand over the guy trying to grab him, and he was going to pull free, but then—there wasn’t just one guy. He could see them out of the corner of his eyes in the trees. And Casey could take a couple of guys, but not by himself. He needed—
“Gregg!” he cried out hopelessly. He knew that Gregg was nowhere near him, and fuck, he didn’t even know where Gregg was right this second. He was hoping that Gregg would just appear out of the shadows and save his ass from…who knows, the power of friendship or some shit.
“Sorry, kid. Nobody’s coming to save ya,” one of the guys said, once they managed to subdue him a bit more.
“Maybe he wants to trade,” one of the others snorted. “Him for Gregg.”
Casey’s eyes got wide with fear, more terrified for Gregg than he was for himself. So it goes.
“If it makes ya feel better,” one of them said, focused on tying his legs as he struggled, “I was all in favor of getting rid of Gregg. But it ain’t my turn to pick.”
“Rules are rules, Eide,” a different one said. “We can only pick people who aren’t contributing to the town, who won’t be missed—”
“That faggot won’t be missed,” the first one, presumably Eide, said again, with a snort—and then screeched in pain. Casey had his hand free long enough to scratch across his face with his claws. “Watch it,” he hissed, but it still wasn’t enough to get him away—in fact, it earned him another blow to the face.
“Ooh, you’re a feisty one, are you?” Eide said, wiping the blood off his face. “Good. We haven’t had a good fight in forever.”
“What the fuck is this?” Casey demanded, spitting blood out of his mouth. “What do you want—money? Cause you dumb fucks should know I don’t have any.”
Eide laughed. “It ain’t about money, kid. It’s about things you wouldn’t even understand if you tried. But listen—there’s good news! You’re gonna help the town.” His smile darkened. “Way more with your death than you ever did in life.”
A tingle of fear ran down Casey’s spine. These people couldn’t seriously be about to kill him, right? Jump him and leave him there bleeding, sure. Maybe it was to send a message, who the fuck knows. But maybe they were absolutely bat-shit insane, and they would. He fought harder to free himself, to no avail.
One of them groaned. “This one seems like he’s gonna be more trouble than he’s worth.”
“Is it your pick?” Eide asked. “No. Then shut your mouth and do your job. They can’t all be eight-year-old kids.”
Kids? Casey’s mouth had gone dry. Who the Hell were these people—they were killing kids?! They’d have no problem killing a delinquent like him if they killed kids. His heart was pumping, adrenaline spreading, but there were too many of them and only one of him. Somehow, he found himself thankful that Gregg hadn’t heard him. Whatever this goddamn mess was, he sure as hell didn’t want Gregg within a hundred feet of it.
If he couldn’t free himself physically, he could use words instead, or try to. “You said that you don’t pick people who’d be missed,” he said quickly. “You can’t pick me then! People would notice! There’s my parents—”
Eide shook his head, smiling like he was actually enjoying this. “Maybe your parents shoulda cared before you turned into the massive waste of resources you are now.” A few other hooded figures nodded. “If you were my son I would’ve beaten your ass ‘til you learned some respect. Then maybe you’d still be alive. Guess your old man didn’t give a fuck.”
“You can’t even beat my ass now,” Casey said, and there was the heavy sound of skin-on-skin as he was punched in the face again. Undeterred, he added, “Not without a bunch of your buddies here.”
Eide smirked. “Maybe not. But you ain’t my kid. And thank god, ‘cause I’d hate to have to put one of my own down.”
“You’d kill your own kid?” Casey had almost forgotten what his original point was, witnessing heretofore-unseen levels of depravity.
“If he turned out like you? Oh yeah,” he said, not sounding like it was a difficult decision.
“You’re still not following your own stupid rules!” Casey argued. “My parents would miss me! It doesn’t matter if you think they’re soft or not! And Gregg would miss me—”
“Fag opinions don’t count,” Eide said loftily, now that Casey was restrained and away from him. He still hissed, though. “What are you, his little faggot boyfriend or something? That’s a shame, Hartley. Thought you were a hit with the ladies.”
“No, that’s the other one,” one of the other members spoke up. “I dunno his name. The fat one with the glasses.”
“What if I was, anyway?” Casey said, partly because it was true and partly because he wanted to take the focus off Angus. “What difference does it make? You’re gonna kill me either way.”
“To be honest, if you didn’t hang around that fucking pedo, I would have felt bad doing this,” Eide said. “A good, country boy like you? I woulda loved to see you grow up and have a wife ‘n kids and settle down. Get a decent job and work for a living.” Casey, god bless him, rolled his eyes. “Instead, all we get out of you is hangin’ around a buncha homos and degenerates and fuckin’ instead’a startin’ a family.”
“Yeah, that’s because I’m 19,” Casey argued in his head. Out loud, he said, “There’s Mae! She’d miss me too!” He wasn’t sure if the cult knew Mae was queer or not but at this point he’d already listed three people who’d miss him and they brushed it all off.
“The Borowski girl?” Eide said, and shook his head. “She’s gone, son. Left for college two years ago. Not here to vouch for ya. Bet she ain’t messaged much since she left. Just another one of them kids where college fills their head with funny ideas and they never come back home.” Eide shook his head again. “It’s a damn shame.”
Casey wasn’t sure why he’d even wasted his breath trying to argue with these people. Not only were they certifiably insane, they were hypocrites. He tried to scream, and the latter half of it was muffled when one of them put their foot directly over his mouth.
“Gag him,” Eide said, face still bleeding. “I’m over this.”
***
He had been dragged, quite literally kicking and screaming, to the old mines. “Put him down,” Eide said when they got to the mouth of the cave. “Fucking Christ,” he said, wiping sweat off his brow. “It’s my pick next and you best believe I’m grabbin’ a kid.”
They took the gag off his mouth, but Casey didn’t scream. He didn’t bother. There was no way anyone was gonna hear him out there, and he wasn’t sure how good the oxygen was down here—maybe he needed to conserve it. “You people are fucking insane,” Casey said, and used the new freedom of his mouth to spit on whoever had bent down to take the gag off him. One of the others kicked him in the cheek, though it never had time to form into a bruise. “What are you even trying to accomplish?”
“Glad you asked,” someone said—not Eide, but the way the others parted for him, he was clearly the leader. “You can stop talking about being killed, Casey. We don’t use that word here.”
“That’s not gonna stop me from being fucking dead!”
The leader sighed. “Even here, at the end of everything, you still have no respect,” he mused, sounding almost disappointed. Like this was a child’s tantrum, beneath him somehow. “Casey Hartley, let me explain something to you,” he said. “These…sacrifices, they’re really quite an honor. Feeding this ancient god here that grants us some of His powers. Helps us stay young and healthy…”
“So you’re killing people for some fucked-up shot at eternal life?” Casey interrupted.
The leader just ignored him that time. “But more importantly, if we don’t, disasters happen. The flood. The blizzard. He lets us know when He’s not pleased. Kids like your friend Mae, they leave and don’t come back. Mines like this shut down. But keep Him happy, this town will be booming again someday, even if you’re not here to see it.”
“You think this place will be some successful mining town again?” he snorted. “Because you’ve been killing people in the mine? Gonna go back to the way it was in the 1920s?”
“Ideally,” the leader said, not responding to Casey’s taunting. “It was a better time then, before the government put in so many regulations, helped out freeloaders and immigrants and lazy people. Certain kinds of people knew their place back then. What’s in it for a hard-working family man nowadays, hm? Nothing but this.”
“You really are insane,” Casey said. “There’s no god down here and even if there was, nothing is gonna get these old mines running again. Who are you people, anyway?” he asked. “Are you actually from town? You’re gonna kill me so it doesn’t matter, right? But you won’t tell me. You’re fucking cowards, all of you.”
The leader paused, and started to take his hood off, but Eide stopped him. “Are you fucking serious?” he asked. “Don’t let that kid get in your head. We do this for a reason.” He put it back on, and Casey smirked. “That’s what I thought.”
“We’re doing you a favor, you know,” the leader said, clearly off-kilter from Casey’s words. “You, and the whole town. You’re not going to amount to anything besides a criminal record and garnishments for child support—if you even had a job.”
“Is that why you picked me and not Gregg?” Casey asked, nearly incredulous even at the end of his life. “Because I don’t have a job?”
“I’d love to send the little fairy back to fairy-land,” Eide cut in. “But it ain’t my pick.”
Cold poured down Casey’s back like someone had dumped a bucket of ice water over his head. Was Eide gonna go after Gregg when it was his pick?! Maybe he should try again to get out of here.
“Eide,” the leader chastised. “Now, I think we can all agree we aren’t a fan of the his lifestyle choices—and some people here, Eide included, would like to get rid of him,” he said. “But, we can’t just go around picking off every undesirable in town. You can’t go picking off those types like you used to when cops would look the other way; everyone would notice, and there would be investigations. Too many laws against the stuff now, too many protections for that kind.” Casey could nearly feel the guy rolling his eyes. “Besides, it’s not about removing people we don’t like. I truly have nothing against you, Casey.”
“Oh, thanks,” Casey said, sarcasm dripping off every syllable. “Really. Comforting.”
“It’s about people who aren’t contributing to the town,” the leader continued smoothly, once again ignoring Casey’s interruption. “And though some of us don’t like Gregg, the truth is, he does contribute. He’s a hard-working boy, at that Snack Falcon seven days a week, not complaining or asking for a break or nothing. It’s a shame he ain’t wired right, but rules are rules. He’s contributin’ to the town, and ’s long as he does that, none of us’ll touch him, Eide included. That’s a promise.”
Casey audibly breathed out a sigh of relief. He never liked to admit how much he missed Mae when she was away at college, but right now he was so absurdly thankful she left. He hoped Eide was right and she never came back to this town; he didn’t want to risk it. He tried to let himself believe that these people, whoever the fuck they were, wouldn’t bother Gregg as long as he kept that job. He was nervous, though—nervous because they already weren’t sticking to their rules.
“Casey,” the leader said. “On my honor as a representative of the ancient and terrible god who lives below this mine, no harm will come to Gregg as long as he stays a hard worker. If that makes you feel better, by all means let it comfort you in your final moments.” Eide, meanwhile, was making a face. “Look how concerned he is about ‘im,” he whispered urgently. “It ain’t right.”
“Eide,” the leader said, sounding exasperated. “Will you stop complaining and do what you need to do? Casey,” the leader said. “You have a choice as to what happens now.”
Cold sweat broke out on Casey’s brow again. The cult had been entirely too silent on how they were planning to kill him, and he wondered if they were about to let him choose the method. He didn’t say anything, though, electing to let the silence hang until someone spoke up—and the leader did, after not very long.
“We can untie you and you can walk into that canyon, chin up, like a man,” he said. “Or, we can throw you in.”
“What happens if you untie me and I kill you all?” Casey said.
“You can try.” He could almost imagine the leader smirking under his hood. “But if you could do that, then you wouldn’t be here, would you? And all of us are here now. Not just the few of us that grabbed you out by the train tracks.”
By the train tracks. Casey liked to go and smoke there, sometimes with Gregg, sometimes not. He would watch the trains come and go, cargo or passenger, and imagine that he was going to get on them like he always wanted. All he ever wanted was to get out of this town, to die somewhere else; anywhere else. And now he wouldn’t even have that.
“You can untie me or not,” Casey decided. “But I can tell you one thing: there’s no scenario in which I walk into that hole. I’ll fight all the way no matter what. So untie me and I’ll fight you right now. Or toss me in like a bunch of cowards. I really don’t give a shit.” His voice was surprisingly steady.
The leader seemed like he was fighting back a smile. “You have a lot of spirit,” he noted. “It’s too bad we’ll never get to see it blossom.” He looked at the members. “Untie him.”
Eide groaned. “What?! We just fought this guy…”
“And you’ll fight him again,” the leader said calmly. “Untie him. Not everyone goes easily.”
A brief struggle did ensue, but with all of them, Casey stood even less of a chance than last time, but he at least wanted to get in a few more hits on Eide for Gregg’s sake. He was overwhelmed fairly quickly, pushed into the endless chasm where supposedly a god was dwelling. But Casey barely even believed in a god in Heaven, let alone one down below.
Our bodies were not meant to survive such a long fall, but before he could hit the ground, his brain had plenty of time to supply him with memories. Him and Gregg putting cigarettes out on each other’s arms and laughing. Mae falling asleep on his shoulder after they watched a movie with his arm wrapped around her. His Mom’s fondly exasperated tone when she asked him why he wasn’t in school today, his Dad’s when he teased him about something, or they split a joint without telling his Mom. Pinning Gregg down by his arm only when Angus wasn’t around and making him admit that Casey was stronger. Defending him and defending Mae whenever they needed him, living up to his reputation for being viciously protective. That warm feeling of connection with each new girl he had sex with, even if he didn’t have real feelings for them. Watching Gregg fall more and more in love with Angus and knowing he’d be okay. Getting high with Germ on his trampoline and talking about life. Visiting Mae when she wasn’t at school during The Incident, holding Gregg in his arms while he slept and crying because it wasn’t fair, it just wasn’t fair that his parents kicked him out for a week and there was nothing Casey could do about it. The first day he’d met Gregg when he’d transferred to their school in the seventh grade, and then absorbing Mae into their group shortly after. Getting arrested with Mae and Gregg after egging Mr. Penderson’s house. Casey could have gotten away, but he wouldn’t leave Gregg. Not again. Screaming about how it was unfair that they were going to let him stay there all night because his parents wouldn’t come get him. Teasing Mae about being a virgin, that tightening in his chest when she’d left for college. Daydreaming about finally being out of that shithole town.
If there was one thing Casey was thankful for, one thing that gave him peace, it was that it had been him, rather than Mae or Gregg. He’d take that trade off any day of the week. And Gregg had Angus, and Casey had once told Angus if he was going to take Gregg away from him, then it was his job to take care of him and protect him now. And he seemed eager and capable of doing both. Mae—she was safe because she was gone, and after college she’d probably get a job in the nearest city or something. There was no reason to ever come back here.
He imagined the three of them holding each other close on a warm summer day, right before he hit the ground, and without realizing it, he was smiling.