Eve woke up to the sound of the door closing downstairs. She mumbled something to Theo, then nuzzled her face back into her pillow. They kept the heat low, so snuggling under covers was a must in winter.

  Wait, the door. Blinking away sleep, Eve got out of bed, shivering as she found her slippers and headed downstairs. There was a note on the counter that said Maddy was starting her long-distance training again.

  Good. If she didn't train during the winter, she wouldn't be ready when the season started. Also, next up in the school calendar was basketball, and they focused too much on sprints. Her Maddy played everything, but she'd gotten her scholarship for track-and-field. 400, 800, 5k, and 10k. She'd probably be on the relay, too.

  Still, the girl had been acting odd all break. She'd stared blankly instead of singing during the Christmas Eve service, then had slept in Christmas morning.

  Something was wrong.

  Also, it was barely 5 AM. Starting training at 5 AM was normal, but that meant leaving the house at 5 AM, not reaching the park at 5 AM.

  Eve poured coffee, pulled on her housecoat, and went outside. There was the bike trail, as expected. It just felt fishy. She walked over to the jeep, opened the door, and shrieked as a crunching sound coincided with shocking pain from her foot.

  She fell into the snow, wailing. She grabbed her foot, found nothing, and lifted bloody fingers. Looking past the blood, Evelyn saw nothing where a house should have been. "Theo? Theo!"

  She tried to stand, fell over, finally looking at her foot, or what had been a foot seconds earlier. A bloodstain was alongside the patch of gravel where the the jeep had been, growing as more blood rushed from the stump at the bottom of her leg. Her foot was cleanly removed to right below the ankle, at an angle that sliced her heel in half.

  A powerful voice declared, "Surviving humams take note," the words also appearing across Eve's vision, like some evil being was hacking into her eyes.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  It was disgusting and invasive, but Eve also had other things to worry about. She was too busy using a stick to turn her housecoat's belt into a tourniquette, as bad as it was for that option, to catch the whole announcement.

  No longer bleeding out, she lay there for a while, trying to figure out what had happened. She tried to wake up, she prayed, she screamed for Theo, she cried, she prayed again, she screamed for Maddy until she was hoarse.

  All that didn't take long. It had been maybe ten minutes when she decided that Theo was gone but Maddy might be alive. She dragged herself to the ATV, which had been mostly in the open because Theo was being lazy and hadn't tied the tarp down properly. The slob had even left the bow on the rear rack, which meant it had been left out in the open for several days.

  She sobbed as she realized she'd just mentally sniped at her husband minutes after he died. She slumped for a moment, prayed for the strength to still help Maddy, and got onto the ATV.

  It was a quick drive into town, following the trail of Maddy's bike—the only mark of any sort in the snow on that road—to the gazebo, where two sets of footsteps ran down to where a bike had lain in the snow and rode off again.

  Lacie. She'd snuck out early to hang out with Lacie.

  Eve wasn't a fan of Lacie. The girl was funny and smart and all that, but she picked fights, and she clearly didn't think the devil was real. It was clear from her clothing, her manner, that she didn't understand that truth of the world.

  Looking across the dead space that had been Bishopton, Eve wondered if the girl still doubted. She didn't have time to dwell on that, though. She got the ATV back onto the road and followed the bike trail. The trail disappeared at the main road, but obviously they were going towards that glowing light.

  This dungeon thing, surely it was some evil trap, a gateway to below, but perhaps they had no choice. Sam, wearing only her pajamas, housecoat, and a hat, was cold enough that she might be in danger from it. Were they worse off?

  She refused to accept that this was truly hell they were approaching and made all haste to it. When she arrived, feeling the heat rolling out of an endless, cavernous ramp, she reassessed whether it was hell.

  "Please, God, let them be alright."

  But the bike trail was visible here, straight into those depths. This was where they were. She held out a hand. It was warm, but not truly hot. It felt like an open furnace because the air was below zero where she was, while the breeze from the depths was a normal temperature.

  She closed her eyes. "Lord, I know you would not let the devil take my baby, not like this. Please shelter me as I go below, as I seek to save my dear Maddy. Please shield Maddy from the harms this evil may bring to her. And Lacie, spare her harm as well, and do not let her lead my dear Maddy astray. Amen."

  Eve drove her ATV into the dungeon with two minutes to spare.