Tracie Hicks

In a dark bedroom, four teenage girls huddled around a glowing phone screen, their faces illuminated by the forbidden Daemon app. Sally, the rebellious ringleader haunted by her troubled past, smirked as her finger hovered over the “SUMMON” button. Brenda, the cautious bookworm seeking escape from her oppressive home life, chewed her lip and scanned the occult symbols flashing across the screen. Jamie, the brazen thrill-seeker masking her own insecurities, grinned and leaned in closer, her eyes gleaming with anticipation. Linda, the hopeless romantic desperate for love after a string of heartbreaks, twirled a lock of hair around her finger and sighed, imagining the cute boys the app promised to reveal.

Memories of their fateful meeting in detention danced through Sally’s mind – an unlikely quartet forged through shared mischief and a deep yearning for connection. Brenda, caught red-handed with a contraband novel; Jamie, dragged in after her daring rooftop stunts; Linda, forever scribbling hearts in her notebook instead of paying attention in class; and Sally herself, the mastermind behind their infamous cafeteria prank. As they swapped stories and laughed that day, Sally knew she’d found her crew, a group of misfits who understood the emptiness that gnawed at her soul.

Brenda’s voice trembled as she asked, “Are you sure about this, Sal? This app is from that creepy Infernales website. People say strange things about it, whispering of disappearances and dark rituals. Who knows what could happen?”

Jamie scoffed, her bravado a shield against her own mounting unease. “Don’t be such a baby, Bren! Everyone at school is using it. It’s just a bit of fun! What’s the worst that could happen?”

Sally’s smile faltered as Jamie’s words echoed in her mind, a chilling reminder of their ill-fated joyride in Principal Lane’s car. Two weeks’ suspension and a lifetime ban from school dances had been the consequences then, but the memory of the unexplainable shadows that had seemed to trail the vehicle still haunted her dreams. Tonight, the air crackled with that same menacing static, an ancient hunger waiting to be sated.

Linda nodded, desperation for romance and adventure etched on her face, a mirror of the longing that Sally knew all too well. Brenda hesitated, then sighed in resignation, her own desire for escape overpowering her misgivings. Sally grinned, masking her own unease behind a facade of confidence. “Okay, girls, let’s do this. Put your hands on the phone and concentrate on your deepest desires.”

Eyes closed, the four friends envisioned the excitement and love they craved, pouring their very essence into the void. The air grew heavy as the app icon pulsed beneath their fingers, tendrils of cold mist curling from its edges like spectral fingers. They held their breath, frozen in anticipation, as an otherworldly hum filled the room, vibrating in their bones. Suddenly, the phone let out a soul-piercing shriek, shattering the silence and sending icy shivers racing down their spines.

“It’s found a location!” Sally forced enthusiasm into her tone, but wrongness coiled in her gut as she studied the glowing red pin on the map, pulsating over the abandoned mining town like a festering wound.

Brenda shivered, the dark legends of Devil’s Town flooding her thoughts, tales of unspeakable horror whispered by flickering campfires. The once-thriving settlement had succumbed to a series of tragedies – cave-ins swallowing men whole, their screams echoing in the depths; epidemics choking streets with the stench of rotting corpses; madness consuming even the most pious, their fevered ramblings hinting at an ancient evil lurking in the mines’ abyssal depths. Whispers spoke of an evil force that fed on anguish, twisting the souls of the damned into its eternal thralls. The town had become a ghost overnight, its inhabitants vanishing into the mist, leaving only a sinister mystery and a palpable aura of dread in their wake.

“I don’t know about this…” Brenda’s words trailed off as an icy chill raced down her spine, the musty scent of old books and the weight of dark knowledge pressing in on her. 

But Sally had already grabbed her keys, her jaw set with grim determination. “We can’t back out now! The guys are waiting for us. I can feel it in my bones.”

Uncertain murmurs and nervous giggles filled the air as the girls piled into Sally’s beat-up Honda Civic, the promise of adventure overpowering their growing sense of foreboding. The car tore through the night, its headlights slicing through the thickening fog like a knife through rotting flesh.

Ominous clouds devoured the moon, staring down at them in warning, as if the very heavens sought to shield their eyes from the horrors to come. The road twisted and turned, dense woods pressing in on either side like grasping hands, their gnarled branches scratching at the windows like the fingernails of the damned. A rank odor, reminiscent of rotting meat and brimstone, permeated the car, growing stronger with each passing mile until it was almost suffocating.

“What’s that smell?” Brenda asked, bile rising in her throat as she held her nose shut, her other hand white-knuckled on the door handle.

Sally waved it off, but her voice’s tightness betrayed her growing unease. “Probably just roadkill. We’re in the middle of nowhere, after all.”

After an eternity that felt like a descent into the very bowels of hell, they reached the rusted gates of Devil’s Town, the name sign hanging crookedly like a mocking invitation. A heavy chain, once securing the entrance, lay broken and useless, as if snapped by a tremendous force that had left deep gouges in the weathered metal.

“Someone’s been here recently,” Linda breathed, terror and exhilaration battling in her voice as she leaned forward, peering into the darkness beyond. “How is that possible? This place has been abandoned for decades.”

As if in answer, a deep, pulsing bass erupted from beyond the gates, its force rattling the windows and thrumming through their bones like the heartbeat of some colossal beast. Mesmerized, Sally hit the gas, propelling them through the yawning gates and into the heart of the forsaken town. Behind them, the gates shut, echoing their arrival.

An enormous bonfire crackled and spat in the decrepit town square, bathing the crumbling buildings in lurid shades of orange and red, as if the very flames of hell had risen to greet them. Shadowy figures cavorted around the blaze, their motions jerky and unnatural, like marionettes dancing on the strings of an unseen puppeteer. Discordant music pounded from an ancient boombox, a seductive yet unsettling melody that set their teeth on edge and wormed its way into their minds, pulsing in time with the flames.

As the car rolled to a stop, the dancing figures froze, their bodies contorting at impossible angles as they turned towards the vehicle in eerie synchronicity. Glowing eyes, like dying embers, seared into the girls corpse-pale faces, centuries of hunger and malice burning in their depths. A feral, predatory hunger radiated from their skeletal forms, their ragged clothes hanging off their bodies in tatters.

Linda whimpered as a tall, raven-haired man detached himself from the horde, gliding towards them with a sinister, inhuman grace that sent shivers of revulsion down her spine. His skin had an otherworldly color, like the belly of a dead fish, and razor-sharp cheekbones cast deep hollows beneath eyes that glittered with cruel amusement. When he smiled, his teeth glinted like needles in the firelight, stained with the rust-brown of old blood.

“Well, well, well,” he purred, his hypnotic baritone resonating in their very bones, echoing the whispers that had haunted their dreams since downloading the app. “What have we here? Four delectable morsels, ripe for the picking, their souls laden with the sweet nectar of despair.” With a mocking bow, he returned to the unnatural gathering, his movements fluid and boneless. “Our harvest prayer has been answered, my brethren! The Ancient One shall feast tonight!”

Growls and hisses rippled through the crowd, a roar of hunger and dark triumph that was echoed by a soul-chilling roar that rose from the bowels of the mine itself, shaking the ground beneath their feet like the fury of a primordial god. Sally tried to restart the car, but the engine only sputtered and died, the acrid stench of sulfur flooding the air as black smoke poured from the hood. 

Icy realization crystallized in Brenda’s mind, the pieces of the puzzle falling into place with sickening clarity: the strange sigils that had flashed on the app, the way their phones had grown hot in their hands as they drove, the screens flickering with eldritch symbols, and the unnatural drain on the car’s battery, as if something had been siphoning its power for its own dark purposes.

“The app,” Brenda whispered, her voice trembling with dawning horror. “It’s all connected – the symbols, the energy drain, everything. It’s a trap, a lure to bring us to this cursed place. We’ve been marked, chosen for something terrible.”

There was no time to process the revelation, no chance for escape. The horde descended on the car like a plague of locusts, skeletal hands shattering windows and tearing doors from their hinges with a strength that belied their emaciated forms. Jagged nails, caked with grime and the rust of ancient blood, scraped against the skin as the creatures reached into the car, grasping and pulling with a hunger that knew no bounds.

The girls fought back with all the desperate fury of cornered prey, kicking and clawing at their attackers, but it was like struggling against the inexorable pull of quicksand. For every grasping hand, they managed to fend off, three more took its place, the horde’s numbers seeming to multiply in the flickering firelight. 

Linda screamed as a wild-eyed woman with matted hair seized her by the throat, yanking her bodily from the car with a strength that seemed impossible for her frail frame. “Let me go!” Linda sobbed, her voice choked with terror and despair. “Let me go! I don’t want to die like this!”

But her pleas fell on deaf ears. The woman’s grip only tightened as she dragged Linda towards the gaping maw of the mine, her movements jerky and erratic, like a puppet dancing on tangled strings. 

Jamie, in a last-ditch effort to save her friend, lunged forward and sank her teeth into the woman’s arm, gagging on the taste of rotting flesh and ancient decay. The woman let out an inhuman shriek, her skin sloughing off in grayish chunks where Jamie’s teeth had torn it, but her grip on Linda remained unbreakable, even as Jamie felt herself being yanked backward by another set of hands.

Brenda, tears streaming down her face, tore free of the skeletal fingers that clutched at her, the creatures’ nails raking bloody furrows across her skin as she scrabbled for the door, desperate to reach Jamie and Linda. For a fleeting instant, escape seemed possible, the night air beyond the car achingly tantalizingly close.

But then the raven-haired leader was there, moving with an unnatural speed that defied reason, his form little more than a blur of shadows. In the blink of an eye, he had Sally pinned against the hood of the car, one hand wrapped around her throat in a vice grip, his face a rictus of cruel hunger as he loomed over her.

“Don’t fight it, my sweet,” he crooned. Rancid breath washed over Sally’s face like the smell of an open grave. “You summoned us, and we are so very grateful for your offering. Your tender flesh will sate our Ancient One, and your life force shall sustain us for eons to come. It is an honor, truly, to be chosen for such a noble purpose.”

Cruel, mocking laughter erupted from the assembled monsters, all pretense of humanity melting away like wax in the heat of a blowtorch. Their faces elongated into grotesque muzzles, their eyes blazing with an inner fire that spoke of the torments of the damned. The girls’ struggles weakened as more hands seized them, dragging them inexorably toward the gaping abyss of the mine, their feet leaving bloody furrows in the barren earth.

As Brenda was being hauled towards the mine entrance, she glimpsed the same eldritch symbols from the app that someone had etched around the archway, pulsing with a sickly green light. With dawning horror, she realized they were wards of binding and sacrifice, ancient sigils waiting for an eternity to be triggered by the unwitting souls lured to this place.

Tears streamed down her face as she felt herself being dragged past the threshold and into the yawning chasm beyond, the air growing colder and more fetid with each step, as if the very essence of death itself permeated the stone. Beside her, Linda and Jamie wept and screamed in their captors’ grasps, their hopes and dreams crumbling to dust in the face of an inescapable horror.

Sally remained pinned against the car, her captor’s razor fangs piercing her flesh, her consciousness fading as he drained her lifeforce with agonizing slowness. As her vision dimmed, the terrible truth dawned on her with a clarity almost peaceful in its finality. The Daemon app had been a siren song, a digital Pied Piper orchestrated to lead the young and hopeful to their doom. It had preyed on their deepest desires, their longing for connection and adventure, all the things that made the teenage years so achingly vibrant, even as it drained their very souls, weakening them for the slaughter.

Sally’s last thought, before the darkness claimed her, was of all the other groups of friends who must have fallen victim to the app’s insidious lure, drawn into the web of the soulless like moths to a flame. How many innocents had the Daemon app trapped, only to be led like lambs to the slaughter, devoured in the nightmarish depths of Devil’s Town to feed the ravenous hunger of the Ancient One?

With the last of her strength, Sally turned her head to face the mine entrance, and the sight that greeted her was one of pure, unadulterated terror. Rising from the abyss, its form a gut-wrenching perversion of life itself, was a colossal entity that defied description, a writhing mass of shadow and rotting flesh that pulsed with an eldritch hunger that threatened to devour the world itself. 

Its maw yawned open, a chasm of swirling darkness and gnashing teeth. As the girls were dragged screaming into its depths, the creature let out a roar of triumph that shook the very foundations of the earth. The sound reverberated through the cursed town and beyond, an echo of the nightmare to come.

In another town, miles away, a group of teenagers huddled in a darkened room, their faces illuminated by the eerie glow of their phone screens. “I found this new app,” one of them said, his voice trembling with excitement. “It’s called Daemon, and it’s supposed to grant your deepest desires.”

The others leaned in closer, their eyes wide with a hunger that was all too human, a yearning for something more than the mundane trappings of everyday life. With hesitant fingers, the boy tapped the glowing icon, the sigil seeming to pulse with a life of its own.

The app interface shimmered into existence on the screen, the crimson icon throbbing like a malevolent heart. A single word flickered across its surface, an invitation and a warning all in one:

CONNECTING…