The Caverns of Carnage
The Skeletal Throne

October 21, 2023

All of us were silent. I glanced down at the floor.

“That’s his real name? Pietro Hernandez?” Ryan asked.

Lorraine nodded.

“He didn’t look like a teenager when we saw him,” I said. “It was like… It was like he had no skin…”

“What happened next?” Nakia asked.

Lorraine looked down. “The next day, I confronted him… I tried to dissuade him, to draw him back… You see, even after everything he had done… I believed there was some good in him…” her voice trailed off, and she looked at us.

“You guys need to come with me…” Lorraine declared.

We got up from our seats and Lorraine went to start the car.

“Go back to your cabins so you can get your things.”

“Er… where are we going?” I asked, bewildered.

Lorraine smiled weakly. “Jared Warren, the guy from the story,” she hesitated. “My husband, he works in a hotel there.”

Nakia snorted.

“You married that guy?” she asked, disbelievingly.

Lorraine smiled and left the cabin to start her car. We got up to leave.

“Oh, would you look at that.” a snide voice suddenly called out behind us.

Lila Crosby had entered the cabin.

Nakia groaned and turned.

“The terrorist actually has friends.” she added sarcastically. “Must say, I’m surprised.”

“What do you want, Lila?” I asked.

“Nothing,” she jeered. “I just came to get some water.”

She she strolled past us, and we turned to leave as well, and Lorraine went to start her car.

Lila then suddenly turned around.

“Um, Miss Terrorist, I think you forgot your water,” she sneered. She held up a glass of water - and spilled it all over Nakia’s face.

“What the hell is your problem, Lila?” Ryan asked fiercely, but Lila couldn’t -and didn’t answer.

That was because had Nakia punched her. Right on the mouth.

Lila howled in pain and clutched her hand to her jaw.

Nakia looked surprisedly at her fist and then at Lila, who was screaming in hysteria.

“Yeah I think we’ll be going now…” Ryan remarked, and we rushed out of the cabin, where Lorraine’s car was waiting for us.

“Remind me to speak to that girl’s parents when we get back…” Lorraine muttered, shaking her head in disbelief,as we sat at the back of her car.

We sneaked back towards the cabin to pack our stuff.

As the car pulled out of the campsite, we got a glimpse of the city of Los Angeles below a bridge. The lamp-lit streets seemed calm and tranquil in the middle of the night from the top of the hills.

I felt sleepy, but excited.

The car drove onto the main rose. Before us lay a sloping road, with hills on our side, and lampposts illuminating the gloom that we drove into.

“So, um… Mrs Lorraine…” Ryan began.

“Call me Lorraine,” Lorraine said, smiling.

“Uh… Lorraine… where is this hotel?”

Lorraine took a deep breath.

“My father and I used to live in a house near the theme park. After the Mirror Mansion incident, he was forced to sell the park, and my father bought the hotel where Jared currently works at. At our wedding, my father was killed.”

“Did… BloodLust… have anything to do with it?” Nakia asked.

“When we were driving back to the hotel from the wedding, the car exploded. My father hit his head on the steering wheel… and… he suffered a severe concussion. When I got out of the car I was almost unconscious… I saw Pietro… BloodLust… standing on the side of the road right before I passed out. That was the last I ever heard of him… until now.”

“That’s really sad,” Nakia remarked.

Lorraine nodded and sighed heavily.

“I know.”

Soon enough we were driving through a serene, lamp-lit road in the middle of the night. Palm-trees surrounded an illuminated sign which read:

Welcome to Hollywood Drive

Along the horizon we could see buildings of the metropolitan center of LA. But that was not where we were going. The car drove up the hills and the picturesque view of the bustling city came into view. I rolled up the window. A gentle breeze blew into my face. But it was a cool wind, rather than a stuffy warm one.

We pulled up into the driveway of the Hollywood Hotel. It had a contemporary design, with big sliding doors, and luminous fountains.

“Let’s go,” said Lorraine.

We sauntered up to the front desk. The lobby was spacious, well lit, had marble floors and massive walls. Draped on the floor was a thick green carpet. Huge geometric chandeliers hung shimmering from the ceiling. The walls were covered with valuable-looking pictures and there were huge armchairs all over the lobby.

The hotel manager was sitting at the registration desk.

“Sorry Ma’am but the check-in time ends at midnight,” he said as soon as he saw us walking up to him.

“Yes, I know, but my husband works here as a desk manager,” she answered, “Could you tell him I’m here?

“Sorry, but you’ll have to come by in the morning,” he said, rolling his eyes, “Check-in time opens at 8:00-”

“Yes, but we aren’t checking in,” Lorraine sighed with frustration. “We just want to speak to him.”

The manager led the way across the lobby, and we peered up at a very long, winding staircase made of wood, with an iron balustrade that curved alongside it. Besides the stairs stood a pair of sliding elevator doors.

As we arrived on the top floor, we walked past two sets of elevators and across the long hallway. He halted in front of a door with a metal plaque reading 432 and knocked. “Mr Warren, there is someone here to meet you…” he called out.

Jared Warren opened the door. He looked exactly like Lorraine had described in the story, with short, dirty-blonde hair, and green eyes, only thirty years older.

“Lorraine - come in…” he said. He looked at Ryan, Nakia and me with a startled expression.

“I’ll explain everything…” responded Lorraine.

* * *

We were sitting inside Jared’s room. The four of us had told him everything, the dreams, the fire, and Lorraine’s story.

“Hmm… interesting,” said Jared, “Let’s start the tests as soon as possible then, shall we?”

I laughed nervously.

“What tests?” I asked.

“You’ll see,” said Jared, smiling peevishly, and he walked out of the room.

He returned a few moments later with a strange device that looked like an oversized hearing aid, and a jar of sleeping pills.

“Lie down on the couch,” he said. I leaned my head on the armrest of the couch in the corner of the room.

Jared fitted the device around my head. It was somewhat uncomfortable. He passed me a sleeping pill and a glass of water.

“Is all this really necessary?” I questioned.

“Do you want to stop Pietro or not?” He replied solemnly.

I sighed and swallowed a sleeping pill.

“This device will check whether you’re dreaming or not.” Jared pointed to a screen which was linked to the device via a wire.

“Now, Gabe, you need to listen to me very carefully,” he said,”When you meet BloodLust, you need to get him to talk to you.”

“Talk to me?” I asked. I began to feel sleepy.

“Yes, convince him to tell you about him and how he got like this. Find out everything you can…”

“Ok,” I said, and nodded. My eyes sealed involuntarily, as my brain closed itself off from the external world.

* * *

The next thing I knew, I was standing in some sort of cavern. It was lit up with torches, which cast eerie macabre glows on the walls. I started walking across it, which was like a humongous hallway.

At the far end of the cave was something which looked like a throne. It appeared to be made of some sort of white marble. I walked up to it and looked closer. A chill ran down my spine; It was made of a series of broken bones, stained with blood, and fastened together with pieces of flesh.

Then suddenly, I heard a chilling voice from the rear.

“Welcome, Gabriel Coleman. I’ve been trying to speak to you.”

I turned around to face him.

He stood behind me, his cursed face illuminated by the many torches littered around the cavern.

“BloodLust,” I muttered, “Or might I say, Pietro Hernandez.”

“Ah… I see you have discovered my little… secret…,” he smiled. An icy, callous smile. His voice was unnaturally scratchy and husky.

“Take a seat,” he stated. He flicked his finger and a table made of stone appeared separating us.

I sat reluctantly.

“So how exactly did you get like this,” I asked him. It was a sincere question. “Surely you weren’t born like this, were you?”

BloodLust laughed coldly. As if we were having a casual friendly conversation.

“No, I was not born like this. Would you really wish to know how?” he asked. I nodded.

He sighed.

“My companions and I usually loved hiking around the hills near this city. One day we happened to come across a cave. My friends and I split up. I lost my way in the dark and fell inside an subterranean lake. The lake was heated up by the underground magma, and my skin melted off. I thought that was the end of me. When I clawed my way out of that pool, I had transformed forever, I was BloodLust, without a trace of Pietro Hernandez…”

At this, he took a theatrical pause and looked at me with his shining black eyes. “One of those ‘friends’ that were with me that night, was Ezra Henderson. You might have heard of him…”

“Ezra Henderson… Lorraine’s great-grandfather!” I exclaimed, realizing. “So that’s why you were so hell bent on destroying his theme park.”

“Indeed.” he replied.

“But what about all those other people?”

“What?”

“The other people you killed. That wasn’t fair. They had nothing to do with the Henderson family.”

“I need to kill to survive, Gabe” he replied. “Every time I kill, it gives me strength. When I first killed, there was a strange feeling throughout my body. It was as though I was becoming more alive. After I had killed a few more people, I built this little abode for myself, and that throne (he pointed at the throne) out of my victim’s bones. I realized that the more I kill, the stronger I get. And I will not stop until I am the last living human on this planet.”

“Yeah, you can’t really call yourself a human now, can you?” I remarked. “You’re disgusting.”

BloodLust laughed. “I know.”

“And these weird dreams I’ve been having,” I asked, “Did you cause them?”

“Strangely enough, no.”

“Then what are they?”

“Your dreams are caused by something you and your friend, that girl, possess. Something called the True Vision.”

“True Vision? What’s that?”

“The True Vision is a phenomenon which enables you to see certain visions through dreams. A sort of sixth-sense.”

Before BloodLust could elaborate any further, I heard a high-pitched sound, and I was ripped from my dream.

I woke up with my head dangling over the edge of the couch. I glanced over at the time on my phone. It was almost sunrise. I sighed and tried to go back to sleep.