Home.. Charnel Pit.. The Dead Their Due

Even now, at the end, Tanya still didn't understand how that ancient Druid spell could have gone so horribly wrong. She'd painstakingly translated the ancient Druid text and carefully made all the necessary preparations. Then, on witchcraft's most holy night, All Hollow's Eve, she gathered her coven at the ruins of an ancient Druid temple and cast that spell. It still seemed so unfair, she'd gathered all the ingredients, the dried branches of holly for the fire on that ancient Druid alter, the twigs of sage and other herbs that she'd cast into the flames, even the chalice of her own blood that she'd poured into the flames at the culmination of the spell.

That spell was supposed to endow the witch who cast it with all of the ancient mystical knowledge of the Druids, all the spells and incantations, long lost in the darkness of time. But, instead of knowledge, the spell only brought death.

Just as the last drops of blood fell into the flames, a sudden overwhelming smell of decay filled the air. Then, from out of the surrounding darkness they came, the reanimated skeletons of ancient Druid warriors armed with swords, spears and battle axe. There would be no escape, we were just 13 unarmed women, and they numbered in the hundreds.

Overwhelmed by fear I watched in horror as they brutally slaughtered my coven sisters. And it wasn't just that they butchered them, those ancient Druid warriors did things to them, horrifying unspeakable things.

I watched as Sarah, the last of my coven sisters died. They tore off her ceremonial robes and stripped her naked, then forcing her down on her belly across one of the temple's stone blocks they forced the sharp tip of a spear deep into her rectum. Sarah screamed in agony as they pushed that spear deeper and deeper into her body until her screams suddenly ended in a wet gurgling as the spear point exited her mouth. Then with her body still convulsing around the spear shaft that impaled her, the axes descended.

I felt numb, overwhelmed by the sheer horror of what I'd witnessed. I stood on the raised alter platform surrounded by hundreds of skeletal Druid warriors, the still warm blood of my coven sisters dripping from their blades, and knew I was going to die.

It was then that I heard a voice, almost like a whisper, from somewhere deep within my mind, "Your coven is no more, foolish witch. They died because you and you alone choose to mettle in things far beyond your pitiful mortal comprehension. For that you will suffer a fate that will make the deaths of your coven sisters seem almost merciful." As I listened to those terrifying words a sudden chilling fog arose from the ground and enveloped me.

I awoke to find myself naked and in chains, the skeletal Druid warriors dragging me down a dimly lit of underground tunnel. But as my eyes adjusted to the darkness I realized these weren't just tunnels but part of an ancient catacomb, a vast charnel pit piled high with the bones of the dead.

We passed countless side passages each piled high with the bones of the dead until we finally turned down one of the side passages and entered a small torch lit chamber. As we entered the chamber I heard the voices of those skeletal Druid warriors whispering, "Now witch, for your foolish transgressions you will die in unrelenting agony." But, it wasn't the whispered voices, or even the two skeletal figures that stood waiting within that chamber that truly terrified me, it was the ominous sight of that Iron Maiden.

It was almost as if some unseen force had taken control of my body. I desperately wanted to flee, to escape this horrifying fate but instead I meekly stepped up into the blood-spattered confines of that iron maiden and stood there passively as those two skeletons chained my body helplessly into place. It was then, just as they locked that final shackle around my throat that I heard those whispered voices once again, "When those first Christian missionaries failed to convince the Druid people to give up their pagan ways the Church sent the Inquisition. It was bad enough that they burned our towns killing all who refused to convert but they saved the worst atrocities for the Druid high priests and priestesses. The Inquisition would torture them into giving up the mystical secrets of the Druids and then execute them. The Inquisition burned the Druid high priests at the stake as a warning to the people. But they reserved a far more brutally diabolical fate for any Druid high priestess they captured, a slow agonizing death in the Iron Maiden."

As the spike lined doors of the iron maiden started to close I could still their whispered voices in my mind, "You should be proud of yourself witch, you only made one tiny little mistake when you cast that spell, you didn't use enough blood. The chalice referred to in the spell isn't a silver cup but a woman's body, the spell requires a human sacrifice, the draining of every last drop of a woman's blood into the flames."

I could almost hear the laughter in their voices as they continued, "Of course witch, you're going to have more than enough time to comprehend the magnitude of your error. You're young and fit so it should take at least three or four days for you to die."