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The passage through the dark gallery felt like an age, although it could only have been a few moments. I had kicked and bitten at my captors as best I could, and in the end they bodily hoisted me by my arms and legs to prevent too much danger to themselves and prevent me from escaping. I recall they had struck me a few times in the process, and I was still a little groggy from the kicking I had received from the cultists in the ballroom. However my blood was up, both in anger and fear. I had a terrible certainty what these two man had in store for me, and could only imagine what the madmen had in store for my sister.

The grim procession that had proceeded mine had drawn away, the robed members hauling poor Del away as rapidly as they could. The thugs holding me threw me down onto a mildewed carpet in a side room, leering at me as I tried to stand. My movements halted when one of them pulled a chunky pistol from a holstered under his arm and waved it at me.

"Don't get any ideas, slut," he chuckled. His companion sprang at me, pressing me to a cluttered desk and pinning my paws above my head. The gunman began to disrobe while the vile beast atop me began to grope and fondle me through my clothes. His stench and the droplets of slobber landing on me made me want to retch, and it was clear that my disgust was what he was after. His crude gropings lessened his grip on my paws, and I managed to get one free. From the look on his face he expected me to punch him. Indeed, I feel that he would rather have enjoyed it.

Which was why he was rather surprised and, to my satisfaction, quite dismayed when instead I drove my fingers into his eye.

The man squealed and punched me hard, dislodging my fingers in a welter of gore and even less pleasant fluids. He staggered back into his companion, yelling and flailing his paws at his face. I struggled to my feet, my vision a little blurry from the blow I had taken. Reacting on instinct I threw myself forward and stamped my foot squarely in the villain's crotch. He doubled over, retching and wailing, and toppled back into his partially-clothed cohort. The pair went down in a heap, and the pistol clattered to the floor, whereupon I snatched it up.

In a moment I brought the weapon up and fired, striking the wailing man in the side of the neck. He collapsed with a sigh, his companion pinned beneath his dead weight. His head emerged from the tangle to glare at me. Even with the pistol aimed he seemed about ready to throw some vile curse at me. I cut him off with a bullet between the eyes,

It has been my great misfortune that I have, in my many years work against the criminal and cabalistic underworld, taken men's life both in anger and cold blood. This was, however the first occasion on which I was forced by circumstance to defend myself lethally in this way. I am not afraid to say that as time came back from that stretched abyss of the heat of the moment, I was quite unmade by the situation. I remember being ill, and I am sure I fainted for a moment. The pistol, I threw from my hand into the corner of the room as I cried for a moment, my wits rather shredded by the madness I had endured.

Eventually it was the sheer danger of my position that dragged me back to reality. I had no idea how long I had spent leaning against the desk, but I realised that at some point the two villains I had killed would be missed. More over, my sister was currently enduring torments unknown at the hands of her captors. I rapidly searched the room for the missing gun, and found it behind a rotting armchair. I was loathe to search the bodies of the men for more bullets. Indeed, a plan was forming even as my mind came back to me. I knew that the trophy room where I had collected my shotgun for the hunt that morning was on the way to the front of the house from the room where I was stood.

Moving with purpose now, I ran down the hall to collect the more powerful weapon. I encountered no more of the staff, and was glad of it. The pistol shook in my paw, and I was not sure if I could hit anyone at anything but the most intimate of ranges at that point. I was forced to use a pool cue to lever open the gun case when I helped myself to the shotgun. The pockets of my coat were filled with a variety of shells, and the pistol tucked into my belt. So armed, I snuck towards the main hall of the manor. From outside I could hear the distant sounds of screaming, and the sound of my sister's distress did a lot to remove the tremor in my hands the the dryness of my throat.

In case the main door was guarded I slipped into one of the side rooms alongside the main hall. The grimy windows betrayed a great light in the overgrown grounds of the estate, which I assumed would be the focal point of this hellish gathering. I broke one of the panes with the butt of the shotgun and carefully crawled out and headed in that direction. Immediately I could see that my guess was right, as the stone folly I had noticed on the drive in seemed to have become a hive of activity.

I sneaked around through the dank and mouldy undergrowth, cursing every dry twig my feet found. The sound of rattling, wet voices drowned out most sound, and soon I picked up the pace, confident I was not about to be overheard. I clambered up a slippery slope of mud and dying grass that had a decent commanding view of the folly, and what I saw took my breath away.

Will and his inners circle of favoured cultists were arranged in a loose spiral in the base of a ruined tower. Rather than a manufactured folly, this structure appeared to be a genuine piece of historical architecture that had crumbled to ruins beneath time's relentless tread. Opposite me, the ruined grounds gave way to a steaming pit surrounded by the most vile vegetation I had ever seen. Fleshy, nodding growths competed with bony nodules and the rotting remains of trees worn like hollow skins by teeming fungi. The congregation faced this venomous chasm and made rumbling, hawking reverence towards it in a language that sounded like pneumonia victim retching their last breaths.

My attention was drawn to my sister, who was strapped to a wood and stone construction rather like a splayed canine form. Her clothes had been removed, and she was sobbing deeply as she pleaded with them to stop this madness. One of the thugs was ratcheting a lever to force her legs apart, despite her wails of protest. My heart skipped a beat to see her so cruelly displayed in this way, and I tightened my grip on the shotgun.

Will paused in his devotions. He tugged open his robe, and the sight made me glad that I had vomited earlier and so had nothing left to bring up. His body was a bald, hairless thing of bulging sacs and grotesque tumours, with only the area above the neck retaining any sense of sanity and normalcy. His leg, I could see now, was bloated into a balloonish tube of folded and refolded flesh, and only the support of metal rods sutured into the puckered flab could keep it in shape. In addition, this baring of his body showed me that his intentions towards my sister were decidedly carnal in nature.

Del screamed at his display, but fell silent as Will took up a two-pronged dagger from a nearby tray of implements. I checked my gun was loaded with solid slugs and began to take aim at this deformed madman as he spoke. "You scream now, my dearest. But soon you will understand what this is. What this great, holy gift is." His followers moaned and abased themselves at his words. Some of them threw off their robes to display bodies as deformed as his, if not more so. "Soon, Those Below will come, and my true ancestors will reveal themselves to you." He crossed to her, and I cursed, as it meant a clean shot would not be possible. My teeth gritted as I saw him caress her body with his repugnant claws. "You will have to bear their attentions first...and when they are done you will be mine..."

At a gesture two of the cultists stood and began to blow into long, hollow tubes like the Aborigines of Australia use. They produced a doleful, whining note that rose and fell like wind in a hollow canyon. Will moved away from my weeping sister and stood with his arms upraised before the pit. I drew a bead between his shoulder-blades.

At that moment I was still convinced that this was simply the work of some diseased, inbred, senile and disgusting degenerates, weak in the mind and with no basis for their ravings. Then the thing emerged from the pit, and that notion was dashed to pieces.