Last part - Enjoy and if you liked this story please do share it with your friends.

I poke my head around the corner of the building, "Sam... Sam... Sam!" The boy around the corner turns at the third mention of his name. He sees me hiding at the edge of the P.E. building in the gutter between the gym and the changing room.

"What is it?" Sam snaps back. The boy is thin, has short spiked hair and a pair of round glasses hanging on the tip of his nose. He pushes the glasses up his nose and comes over to reach an arm around the corner. There's a black watch on his wrist that is massive compared to his arm. As he pulls his full body around, I see he has a Green Lantern t-shirt and black shorts.

"I found something. You've got to see this."

"Why me?"

"Cause you write for the school paper silly, I want this shit recorded." I put my finger up and wag it in front of his eyes, "I can be your source," I tease. He scowls at my offer and looks over my attire. I'm wearing a loose fitting white blouse and matching white shorts. I look like a ray of sunshine, matching perfectly with the warm day. "Come on, do you want to see?"

"Where and what is it?" he asks, his tone has grown harsh and unpleasant. How rude of him to treat a lady in such a way.

I ignore his tone and reply, "On the other side of Dean-Jay's farm. Chase is waiting there, we found it together." Sam moves back at the mention of Chase's name. Everyone knows I'm with Chase and everyone knows he towers over most of the kids at the school, works out regularly, and is a force to be reckoned with. Hell, since school started he's gone undefeated on the wrestling team even dethroning Jasper's record.

Talking about Jasper, he took the loss of Emily much harder than Chase or I did, and everyone expected him to. After all, she was the first in a series of disappearances across the city. He's gone downhill since. In the last few months his grades have plummeted, he's dropped out of both the wrestling and football teams, he's gained weight and does nothing except sit at home and dwell on that evening over and over.

We never told anyone what happened. Everyone thinks she just vanished and the police investigation has found no trail—of course they wouldn't. I doubt anyone even knows that haunted house exists.

"Why should I trust you?" Sam asks.

"It's about Emily, it may be about all of the disappearances, we found something pretty crazy out in the forest."

This sparks something in Sam's eyes. I knew it would. He writes for the school paper but always ends up with boring stories about gossip or nonsense. His dad writes for the local paper and an online blog with up to a hundred thousand hits. For Sam, it's always been about trying to prove his abilities to an unimpressed dad. He wouldn't be able to resist a story that could not only prove his worth but also become a national success. He could crack six months of crime that no one, not even the special task force sent from New York, has cracked.

"What is it?" Sam asks with interest showing on his face.

"Come with me, we'll meet Chase and Jasper at The Willow." He cringes at the mention of Jasper. Chase is one thing, the big scary guy you don't mess with, but since Emily's disappearance, Jasper has become a dark force of which nothing comes from except self-harm and depression.

"Of course, it would be you three," he says.

"Yeah," I reply, "we never stopped looking you know."

We were the pack. Emily was part of our pack. Everyone knew our pack as the four that never parted, we did everything together. So, when Emily vanished it was only natural us three would take it the hardest. We played the part perfectly—devastated, obsessive over finding her, and enraged she would just vanish. Jasper's dark descent fit in perfectly to match our outrage of a friend disappearing.

"We will find her—we have to," I say. "She was taken and it's my, no our, responsibility to find her."

"Why me then?" Sam folds his arms and leans against the wall.

"Because people don't give a shit about our story, it's old. Not to mention more people have been taken since then, people more relevant than a kid. Quite frankly, we've called wolf too many times that even the police and your father has stopped paying attention to us. We're trying to find her, it's not our fault some of the leads were wrong. But this one isn't, I know for a fact, we found something big."

Finding something big, that's kind of true though the idea to claim we had leads and to follow them in the wrong direction was Chase's idea. I think we've done it five or six times now. We've been written off as grieving kids and others stash away our complaints in a list of 'to be checked—never'.

He sighs and replies, "Let's go then."

With him agreeing, I lead him away from the P.E. building and towards the school fields. I occasionally look behind me pretending to check on him but I am really looking to make sure no one sees us leaving. A few months back Chase and Jasper plotted out all the cameras on campus, so I can do a good job at staying in their blind spots.

When we get up to the football field we cut under the bleachers to avoid detection by a group of seniors practicing lacrosse. Under the bleachers near the middle is a common exit route students use to get onto the street. The exit is a human sized hole that was cut out a few years back by some kids who tried to sneak onto campus to toilet paper the field before the homecoming game. The school never patched the hole, or if they did it was just cut open again.

We cross the road and walk about a block and a half until we reach the front of Mr. Jay's farm. We pass his house. Dean-Jay's truck is gone so he's not home, that's good. We hop over the low fence and start pushing our way through the tall stalks of corn. There are no corn cobs yet, but I'm sure they will start sprouting soon. We get to The Willow.

Chase is leaning up against the tree, waiting. He has a tank-top on showing off the muscles on his arms. They've grown since the fall as he's been in the gym more than ever. On the ground next to him is Jasper, who is wearing a thin jacket. I can still see the defined muscles on his arms from his wrestling days, but it's obvious they've lost some of their definition. Jasper has a knife in one of his hands. It looks like he's been stabbing the shallow roots of The Willow since I left to go find Sam.

"Okay... so we're all here," Sam says, trying to break the ice with us and the boys.

"Yep," Jasper says, stabbing at the root one last time before standing up. "Let's go."

Chase turns towards the far end of the field and Jasper pockets his knife. Jasper takes the lead and disappears into the corn.

"Where are we going?" Sam asks.

I try my best to explain the situation, "There's an old cave just inside the forest. In the back of the cave we found some kind of path. We went in. There are metal bars and shit like someone built a secret hideout or something. There's also a hatch if you go around to the other side of the hill. I think we might have found something big. No one else has checked the place yet. But I think it used to be a haunted house or some shit a long ass time ago. I heard my dad mention it once."

"What makes you think this has to do with Emily?" We get to the end of the field and step over the fence and into the forest. Jasper leads way ahead and Chase stays right in front of Sam and me.

"She was here right before we lost her." I point back to Dean-Jay's farm. "We've been scouring the forest sense trying to find some trail of what happened."

"And how is this... haunted house... apart of it?" Sam asks.

"Well, we found the place. We went inside. We found something." I say.

"And you never told anyone about it?"

"No." We go around several trees and move deeper into the forest. We're very close to the cave now.

"Why not?" he asks.

"Because it's where her body is. It's where all the bodies are."

Sam stops, "You found the bodies, why haven't you told the police or something? That seems like more than just a lead." I look forward. We made it. Chase is no longer in front of us. In front is the cave entrance, Jasper must have gone ahead to pull the tree branches and leaves we put there to hide it off.

I slowly turn back to Sam, and look him in the eyes. He looks at the cave and at Jasper looming near its mouth. I speak, "You have to understand Sam, we can't sleep. It did something to us and we have to feed it to keep it happy. You have to understand."

He nods his head, not liking the situation. He looks at me then back the way we came, when he turns for his escape he's met with Chase. Chase has a metal bat in his hand. There is no hesitation. He swings the bat as if trying to knock a fastball out of the ballpark.

The bat connects with the side of Sam's face so hard it knocks several teeth out and shatters his glasses into half a dozen pieces. Sam spins half way around with the force of the hit and connects with the ground in a single thud. Chase drops the bat and bends over to grab Sam's legs.

As Chase drags Sam into the cave Jasper flicks the knife opened and closed at the opening. Sam's head moves around in its daze and looks at me. There's blood all over his chin and his eyes look around in confusion. I can tell he's still bewildered by the force of the blow, but not knocked out. He reaches his hands out and weakly grabs at dirt and twigs as if it's going to matter. "You have to understand Sam. We're doing this because we have to, not because we want to," I say, following his drag trail.

As he's pulled into the cave both Jasper and I follow. We're surrounded by darkness, but Chase knows the way. "Let go of me!" I hear Sam as he appears to regain some of his speech. It's surprising how he's so fast to come to. The last two didn't say a thing as we dragged them in.

A light flashes on. The entire cave is covered with bright spheres of random colors. This place used to be a beautiful sight meant for love, now the rainbow of shapes is our calling, our salvation—their death. Sam spits out a mouthful of blood and tries to roll over on his stomach to claw at the rocks, "What the hell, guys!" he shouts as Chase stops, we're here.

"You have to understand Sam, this isn't anything against you," I say.

"Yes, nothing against you," Jasper repeats as he moves away from the light and towards us. Jasper spins the switchblade in his hand before shutting it and handing it to me. It seems I am the best one with the knife anyways. Jasper just makes a mess and Chase, well, he's never had any interest in doing the cutting.

We fall into our standard positions. Chase lowers his body down over Sam's head, using his legs to clamp the head between them so it can't move. I descend by Sam's chest and Jasper goes for his back, using his legs to hold Sam's still and his arms to pin the poor boy to the ground. I'd rather Sam was unconscious for this, but we've experienced it seems to work better when the person is conscious and kicking.

"Let go of me!" Sam struggles with us, but with two muscled jocks vs. a skinny nerd, the odds are more than against him—he doesn't even have a chance of escape.

I feel the knife in my hand. The handle is warm from Jasper's fingers. I look down. They're holding Sam so tight I can see the veins popping out on his neck. I can see them contracting and expanding as his heart pumps blood through them faster and faster. I look past his neck. In the rock under him is a convenient groove. This groove is caked with red, the dried blood of our previous sacrifices.

"Little to the left," I say and the boys move on command, sliding him over just enough so that his neck is lined up with the groove, perfect.

"Let me go!" Sam shouts again.

I press the switch on the blade and it flicks open, it's a magnificent piece of art, this knife. It's a thin stainless steel blade so sharp on its sides it could probably cut through a tin can with ease.

I crouch next to Sam and caress my fingers across his neck to feel the blood pumping under the skin. I watch his body squirm under the boys' hold and carefully admire his throat. That's when my target reveals itself, a thick vein right next to his wind passage. That is the one I want to cut.

"This place did something to us Sam, we can't sleep... we can't sleep." I know I've said this before, but I say it again, "It's not your fault."

I look up at Chase, he nods back. I stab, quick and precise, right into his throat. There's not much blood at first as I dig the knife around. Sam jerks as the blade slides around in his throat and I wriggle it around until it's behind the artery I want to slice. Ready. I see Chase squeezing so hard on Sam's head his face starts to turn red and it look like Jasper managed to break one of Sam's arms to get it to hold still.

I twist. The sharp end of the blade presses against the artery and with hardly any effort I pull, causing the knife to slice right through. This causes blood to pour out like red wine from a freshly opened bottle. I drop the knife on the rocks and reach into the wound to grab both ends of the vein in my hand. Blood quickly covers my fingers as I direct the open artery into the small chasm.

The red fluid fills the groove and floods down its path, doing several twists before entering a hole in the wall. This hole is right next to the original path we entered that faithful day six months ago.

"You have to understand," I go on, "Jasper found it out, if we sacrifice to the cave we can sleep, for thirty days we can sleep—then we have to do another. She did this to us, she damned this of us and you are our salvation. You just don't know how important sleep is until you've lost it. The first month after she died was fine but after that... two weeks, not a wink, two weeks as a mindless zombie being driven insane by our never-ending thoughts. It was horrible. Two weeks of absolute terror. At the brink of the end she came to her lover in a dream, she told her lover our only way for redemption. We have to sacrifice to her; we have to feed her the blood of another."

Sam has stopped moving, his eyes are open and looking up at us. Hell, I'm not sure he can still hear me. Jasper lets go and Chase stands up and moves away. It is only me holding the ends to make sure every last drop that comes out goes right into the channel.

I continue my rant, "You'd think a simple child would never commit murder or atrocity. You'd think a simple human wouldn't slit the throat of another and have joy in watching the life drain from their eyes. You're wrong. You deprive anyone of one of the simplest necessities of life and you'll find they'll do almost anything to get it back. Sleep, my darling, sleep. It's more precious than you'd ever think. And we'll sleep well tonight knowing your death helped us get there."

"He's gone," Chase says, stepping over the body.

Jasper reaches above our heads and pulls down a rope with two curved hooks tied into it. Chase lifts Sam's legs up and holds them for Jasper. Like a man climbing a glacier Jasper swings one of the hooks right into Sam's ankle. He does the second in similar a fashion and Chase pulls on the rope, yanking Sam up into the air. The body dangles upside down and gravity helps pull more blood down to the cut vein, just like bleeding a deer carcass, just like those beautiful examples in the witch's hut.

Those fakes in the hut, they weren't some contraption contrived out of nowhere to scare the shit out of the visitors. They were actually recreations of a dark practice done in these woods a century ago. It's true that realism always scares people most of all.

No one ever found out why people were slaughtered hung upside down to bleed out a hundred years ago. No one ever found who hung the bodies upside down and skinned them, or why they did it. No one could understand why there was never a drop of blood found in the forest after the gruesome murders. Well, no one until us.

Sleep is a precious commodity.

We'll do anything to keep it.

-End.

Dark and twisted, just how you guys wanted it.  Happy? Vote, Comment, Share!