I was huddled behind a wooden pillar that gave support to the roof for about ten minutes while the hellish fiend battered and clawed at the door and walls. It felt like hours as I slowly allowed my mind to become sensible once more, to accept that what was happening was real and that my life was in grave danger. To accept that there was a real monster barking and growling on the other side of the walls. 

The smell of smoke gave me the distraction my brain needed to balance itself out. The scratching and kicking had stopped as well. ‘Why would there be smoke?’ I thought. I peered through the cracks in the walls, where the dry mud that had once sealed them had crumbled away. There was smoke coming from the fields. Did Tony set them on fire? No. It had to have been the flare I fired off to distract the beast. Which meant that I must have also set the forest on fire. 

Looking out the cracks of the door. I spotted the hellish animal perched atop of the tower of corpses. Its head would turn towards me, and I was sure it knew I was looking back. Its dark oily fur reflected the sun as it slowly rested to the west, the high cliffs making the sun seeming to set earlier than normal. It would be an early and long dusk soon. Then it would look back towards the field that was burning away. It was hard to tell if it was the blaze that was distracting it, or if it was looking for the one that escaped it.

I was worried for Tony. He was going to the equipment building to find a weapon to fight off the monster. However, that building was by the fields that were becoming ash at that moment. If he had not already left there, he was going to be forced to leave while the beast was watching. I attempted to distract it by shaking the doors and shouting at it. It looked over but it never left. As long as the doors were not opening, it was not going to be distracted. I put my trust in that Tony could take care of himself for the time being. My concerns had to be for myself and the spawn of evil sitting on top of the pillar of death. So I took out the remains of Crawford's journal to look through for a possible answer.
It was hard to find an intact page, or one where the writing was legible. Nothing was left that could tell me why Crawford moved to the farming village. There was a page were only a corner remained.

   I am unsure of the recent on goings, and I may regret having mov...
   My son, Master Phillip Crawford, has been unforgiv...
   as well as the wildlife having suicidal urges. Even t...
   and now people have started to vanish like...

Master Phillip Crawford? The letter said that the priest of the time had predicted Benjamin's unborn son to be a leader. It seems he was right. Benjamin seems to have also changed his mind about the praises he was giving about moving to New Lordsking. Or he had been lying to his father from the start in case the letter had been confiscated. The part about wildlife having suicidal urges might explain why there have been no animals around, even if it made no sense. Last writing left mentions people vanishing, and that something similar had already happened. That page only opened up more questions with none of the answers I needed right at that moment.

I looked over the next pages. Two pages were missing, but the next page was still there. Some of it was smeared and blurred from age and water. I hope it was just water. But I was able to decipher the majority of the page. 

I can no longer call Master Phillip Crawford my son. I hate that the young man that the rest look up to as a Saint shares my family's name. Over the year since lodging away from Old Lordsking, I have once again become the outsider. I have lived among these people for over seventeen years, but that seems to no longer matter. My rejections of their faith have become more apparent upon my face and actions. All my regrets for allowing my love for Meredith to bring me to this land of madness. I should have made my escape after her and William vanished on the night of Phillip’s inaugural. But my love for my youngest daughter, Celestine, held me in place.

And Phillip has killed her. He killed the last thing I loved and cherished. Killed his own blood among all the others for that damned altar.

I wish I had known that the tower was going to be made of living human flesh. I might have been able to save her. I had watched as they crushed the shells and gravel for the cement. Watched as they slit the last remaining cow's throat so its blood would mix in with the powder, all while they chanted their mad chants. They built the wooden structure towards Heaven, towards where my soul will no longer reach. The ramps circled up to the top where they started to pour the first barrel of cement, turned pink from the heifer’s blood.

Then Master Phillip stepped out to the crowd watching and praying. That was when he shouted out for the first of the slaves to be brought out. I watched in loathing as they moved the terrified laborers to the wooden construction one at a time, their arms and ankles shackled. I never cared for them establishing slave labor. The captives were always kept naked, for the townsfolk saw them as nothing more than animals

The first slave reached the top of the ramps. I could see her tears rolling along her skin, and falling off her breasts like sweat. She pleaded and begged, but she knew that she was to suffer a terrible death. All of them were. I turned my back to look away as they removed her shackles, the others singing around me scoffing my actions. Though I could not see, I could hear her screams as she was shoved into the hole. I could hear her body hit the wooden planks as she fell, and the sound of her bones snapping as she hit the thin layer of wet concrete at the bottom. She screamed with a rasping voice as her suffering continued. The realization that she was not dead from the fall and going to die slowly dawning upon her. She hit upon the sides of the walls that had become her coffin in feign attempts to escape.

Then Phillip spoke again that caused my heart to sink. He called for a volunteer. A willing sacrifice for every one of the unwilling. And I heard my daughter, his little sister, gleefully run up the ramps. Celestine was the first to willingly suffer a horrible death for their insane deity’s altar. The crowd cheered the seven year old on as she disrobed of her dress and garments, encouraging her and praising her for her decision to jump to her demise for their damned god.

I tried to get to her. I tried to stop her. I hardly made it to the edge of worshiping cultists before I was tackled. I was held to the ground as I heard the chanting at the tower intensify. Then the one who held my head took sadistic pleasure in moving his hand off my ear so that I could hear my little Celestine fall into the tower casing. I could hear her chanting with her lovely singing voice all the way down until the snap of her legs breaking caused her chanting to turn into a scream. Even worst, she started to chant again while sobbing in pain. Her devotion was too strong. The slave in the tower was screaming for her to shut up, and then Celestine's chanting turned to wailing along with a sickening thud against the wooden walls as broken slave attacked her. I had to listen to my child cry out as her head was being slammed into the wood as that enraged crippled woman cursed her and all the others. And the crowd was laughing! They were all enjoying the events happening just out of sight. The last I heard of Celestine was her choking breathes as the slave smothered her into the slowly hardening liquid.

Through my tears, I took my own sick pleasure to hear the sound of a male slave scream and fall atop of the woman that had killed my daughter. Then the sound of more pink cementing poured over them and her own gargling gasps to match those of my now dead daughter as the woman drowned as well.

Then I saw a bright light and everything turned red then black as something hit the back of my head.
Before I went fully unconscious, a horse's hoof stamped the ground in front of my face. No, not a horse. There was no horses around anymore. And this was split in the middle.

I awoke within one of the slave huts, my head throbbing and one of my legs shattered. They had crushed my right leg with a hammer to ensure I would not escape. One of the naked slaves gave me water as she cleaned my wounds. Her husband explained how the Devil had appeared and attacked me. Summoned to stop me, a non-believer, from getting near his tower.

This is the last entry to be written for I was also told I am to be among the remaining slaves to be sacrificed. To be one of the unwilling. The head priest, Master Phillip Crawford, made the decision himself. I take solace that I will share the same grave as my loving, misguided, daughter.

There was nothing else written on any of the remaining pages. Just that final entry. I regret having read any of it. I fear the nightmares I will have for having the knowledge of how that damned altar in the center of the village was made. Seven years old. Willing to die such a horrible death. Half of the bodies within the monument was willing to become a part of it. However, the final passages also mentioned the Devil. The Devil was summoned to protect his tower from non-believers. I doubted the thing on top of the altar at the time was the Devil, but it was a good description for it by one who was probably uneducated. It had taken about an hour to research the book, and the sound of the fire could be heard getting closer. Smoke was starting to drift through the village like the fog in New Lordsking. It seeped through the cracks, and burned my eyes. 

Then the house on the other side of the village circle exploded!

Shards of lumber flew across the village and into burning forest. My ears rang and hurt as the shock sent me to the ground. The smell of burning dust mixed in with the smoke. I could hear the hellion howling in anger, its barking heard all over the skies as it searched for the source of the explosion. I got up from the ground where I had fallen to find Tony pounding on the doors.

I lifted the large log from its clasps and let it drop. The door opened as far as it could with the log still in the way, allowing him to fall into the large room, coughing hard from the smoke that was pouring in with him. He had something cradled in his arms like a parent would their child. I could see and hear the monster swooping down, having spotted us, looking like the literal bat out of hell with the light of the fires shining upon its wings. Tony was already trying to lift the log, blood from his injured fingers smearing upon it. Two elongated objects, a foot long and covered in brown wax paper, laid where he had dropped.

The log cracked from the tremendous impact from the creature flying into the doors. The creature slowly got off the ground, barked, and ran off after a few seconds. It must have hurt itself on that last attack. It was easily the hardest hit yet, having nearly broke the large log. That door was not going hold much longer

“What the Hell was that?” I asked Tony, looking down at the objects covered in wax paper warily.

Tony hacked up some nastiness out of his lungs, massaging is injured knee and calf before he answered.

“Found some old TNT,” he answered in a cough and pointing down at the old wrapped objects. “Got lucky that the sticks are individually wrapped with wax paper and was properly stored, but the nitroglycerin had still settled from no one rotating them. There was only two fuses left, and I only felt safe to carry three. That explosion was from me carefully throwing the third stick from the alley with a rock. The impact ignited the nitroglycerin. 

“Good thing I am a fan of Roy Scheider, or I might have blown my ass away upon finding it.,” he finished with a tired and sad chuckle.

“The tower...” I mumbled as an idea came to mind.

“What?”

“Blow up the tower,” I said while holding up the torn journal as a source of my plan, “I think the creature is here because of the tower. If we get rid of it, I think it will leave.”

Tony did not question any of this as we could hear the barking up in the sky get closer and closer once more. He quickly, but carefully, picked up the two remaining sticks. He had inserted a fuse into one just as the doors burst open, and the creature tumbled through and into the meeting hall.

In a panic, we ran out into the smoke. It was dark as dusk did indeed come early thanks to the cliffs, making the sky look red. The sound of the fire was loud with its sounds of crackling burning lumber. I ran for the boat as Tony ran for the tower. He had lit the fuse, and dropped the explosive into one of the many holes. His later explanations on the raft made me realize just how lucky he was that the TNT did not explode from dropping it into that hole. He ignored the pain, and sprinted away as the creature ran out screaming from the building. It screamed like a horse would when a knife enters its throat.

It did not chase after Tony. It ran towards the tower to get the dynamite. The blast was not that powerful, but it blew the bottom out in a spray of rock and bone. The devil creature howled out in pain and loathing anger. Tony had caught up with me, tears running down his face from the pain he was enduring in his leg. We jumped into the raft, Tony fast to get the engine running. To my glee, the tower was no longer visible. To my horror, I saw the giant bat like wings soar out of the smoke and into the blood red sky lit by the setting sun and fire light.

Then another light appeared. 

A light was coming from under the water below us, emitting from the underwater cave that was source to the hot spring that fed the river. It was not just any light for its color was... again I am lost for the words to describe it. The light was of a color that neither Tony nor I could perceive. It shined a color, but it was a color no one had ever bear witness to. A color that no normal person could comprehend. Our eyes and minds failed to decipher the hue that was blindingly shining from the water. Where ever the light touched became like a void due to the infeasible color causing our brain to not want to see it.

Great bubbles of gas rose from the cavern, and the air within them were freezing cold. The temperatures of the spring had dropped dangerously fast as frost was forming upon the raft’s now impossibly colored surface. I was expecting the smell of sulfur, but instead smelled what was like metallic fumes of welding iron and charred meat. 

The howl of the flying monstrosity warned us that it had spotted us once again. We watched as it flew towards us at blinding speeds, its eyes shining red even through the light of impractical color. Tony nearly jumped into the water, with me planning to do the same, when his face twisted into one of fear I not seen on any man or woman. I never saw what it was exactly that Tony saw under the water. What I did see of it was enough to make me thankful that I did not.

From the bubbles and light came forth a slimy tendril bigger than the living oaks that burned nearby.  Our boat sloshed away as it sprang out towards the skies. It was nearly transparent, and was shaped like the tentacle of an octopus except I never saw any suction cups. Instead, it was oozing with a muck like that of the mud one would find at the bottom of the deepest oceans. It moved with shockingly fast speeds for something so big, the sound of the air and water erupting as it shot out was deafening. 

The Devil never stood a chance. The slimy appendage struck through its chest and wrapped around its body and wings in a crushingly loud grip. Its agonizing howls quickly silenced as the tendril shot back under water, to be replaced with the screams of my friend. I never realized till then that Tony had been screaming in terror. 

Tony had also already lit the fuse to the last decrepit stick of old dynamite, and hurled it towards the cliffs. It was a miracle that the nitroglycerine did not ignite from the throw itself. It exploded upon hitting the cliff, sending out shrapnel all around us. I currently have a piece stuck in my left calf. Tony never got touched, but he had to patch four holes in the raft shortly afterward.

The cliff crumbled and fell in great sized chunks of earth and rock. The unrealistic colored light vanished as the cavern underneath caved in. The waves caused by the falling debris pushed our boat further away. Tony had stopped screaming. Seeing the maddening colored light along with that cave get swallowed in tons of rock had seemed to have eased his mind. He hurried to restart the rafts motor, and hurriedly propelled us down river.

Tony had trouble concentrating on dodging the roots of the cypress trees, the raft getting jostled about constantly. The river was also getting smaller due to the spring being blocked off from the cave in. We then had to stop for Tony to patch the raft from the punctures that it had acquired from the explosion. With the murky dark waters residing, and in the light of the blaze that was destroying the woods on northern side of the valley, I saw that it was not all roots that laid hidden.

Among the deep roots of the cypress trees, looking like the gnarled hands of a witch, was bones. Thousands of bones. Bones of all the animals that were no longer in the valley. Benjamin had mentioned that the wildlife had gotten suicidal urges. This must have been what he meant. All the animals in the valley and the surrounding area had drowned themselves in the river.

I am happy to say that Tony is obviously doing better than he was a couple hours ago. I am hurriedly finishing this excerpt as we are now traveling within the gorge, Tony using an oar to push us long. Nearly back to the ghost town of New Lordsking. Back to Tony's yacht where we can sail away from this horrible place. I will have to go back over these writings and correct the terrible grammar and wordings from my hurried typing. I fear going to bed now for the things I had witnessed. I greatly worry for Tony for whatever he had seen under the water. He has refused to talk about it, even getting angered at being asked. 

These writings will be sent to all in authority who must know. I still have Benjamin Crawford's journal in my possession as evidence, along with the many photos that Tony has taken. Just another thirty minutes possibly until we get to the canal straight and to the yacht. Then all of this will be just a bad dream. I can still hear the forest fire in the distance. I can still hear the rocks and boulders fall into the water echoing throughout the valley behind us. I think I even hear the blades of a helicopter. A ranger must have noticed the signs of a giant forest fire and reported it.

Again, no matter what, do not come here! I pray that the next people to come to this land of evil comes with orders to destroy it. Do not seek out this location. Let my story be your one and only warning.