They fell into the tomb, the two of them. Lester cursed loudly as he nursed his bruised hip and ankle, which he was certain was now broken.
The demon, at least for now, seemed to have left them.
"The fuck are we? What's happening?" Lester was a large and out-of-shape teenager, with sad eyes which he'd always been told made him look slow. He mopped the sweat from the brow and could not stop taking large, panicked breaths.
Alison, by contrast, said nothing. She had fallen with a soft thud, and lay unmoving.
"Come on, now," prodded Lester, crawling over to her. "Come on!" He used the same intonation he had used when they'd been children together, running through Giles' cornfields, tromping through mud puddles, playing hooky from school, when no one could understand how a girl so pretty could possibly be friends with such a slow-witted doofus as he. "You're all right, aren't you?"
He had to be mindful as he gripped her. After all, she was no longer that young girl he'd been friends with for so long... she was a young woman, and her body had developed accordingly. Her pale, soft breasts jiggled gently beneath the black satin fabric she wore, and not for the first time, despite this unholy setting, his tiny cock managed a bit of an erection.
Quick, while she's still unconscious, just give them boobs a squeeze!
But he shook that thought from his mind, and just in time, for she opened her grey eyes and sat up.
Lester scooted away. "Are you hurt?"
Alison tucked her blonde hair behind her ears. "There might be a way out," she said, standing upright. "Help me look."
"Oh, so you want to escape?" he mocked. "You mean this wasn't all a part of your plan?" Pain lanced up his back as he tried to get up.
It was a tight space in which they stood, a hollow cylinder at least nine feet deep. Lester ran his fat fingers over the concave, stone walls, not sure what it was he was supposed to be looking for. Clearly there were no exits.
Then: "Hey, what is this?" he asked. "There's... there's bumps."
"Let me see." Of course it was too dark to see much of anything, but Alison ran her long fingers where Lester's had been. For a moment, their fingers touched and Lester's heart managed to race even faster. "It's writing," she announced. "The whole wall is filled with it."
"What kind of writing?"
She didn't answer at first, just played with the stone. "This is good," she finally decided. "This means this is where we're supposed to be."
"When the hell are you going to tell me what's going on?"
"Sh, listen!"
From above, they heard the deep, beastly growls of monsters. Lester could not bear to look upon the demon-things again.
Alison, for her part, strained her eyes and tried to see as much as she could, the leather wings, dark scales running upside the torsos.
The demon had returned, and brought his friends with him.
2
Strange now to think that for so much of their lives they'd been the best of friends, telling each other absolutely everything with no secrets withheld. During recess, when the boys played kickball and the girls skipped rope, Lester and Alison instead took long walks about the school grounds, talking about everything and nothing. Lester talked about his parents who didn't understand him, while Alison spoke about her dead mother and her father who hit her and tried to molest her.
As they now both entered their senior year of high school, Alison had grown more distant, to the point where Lester felt like he hardly knew her anymore.
She'd always been bookish. It was not uncommon to find her reading intently with her large, owl glasses. She'd always been the one to help him with his homework and with studying. She just knew the answers to everything, it seemed.
But lately, it seemed she spent more and more time with her books. Lester would call and ask her to go out to the movies with him, to get milkshakes, to see if she just wanted to talk... but for the first time in their friendship, she consistently declined, saying only that she was studying.
For what? Was there a test coming up? He could help her...
No. Not for a test, she'd said.
It had to happen eventually, so he wasn't completely surprised. After all, she wasn't interested in him romantically, that much had been made abundantly clear throughout the years, and whereas Lester had just gotten larger and more awkward, Alison had only gotten prettier and had been developing in ways that even the cheerleaders and jocks took note.
Hey, there goes big-tittied Alison! the jocks would cat-call as she walked past.
She never paid them any mind, just sauntered past, as though she couldn't be bothered.
She wasn't lying, she really was studying hard. Her book bag was practically bursting at the seams. The few times Lester caught sight of the bindings, they looked to be very old books.
She'd been coming to school with darker lines under eyes, and her skin was even paler than before, if such a thing was possible. There were also bruises on her arms. If her father were hitting her again, she did not say.
He'd nearly given up hope of ever being her friend again when she had called him and asked him to come over.
"Really?" he exclaimed, cursing himself afterward for sounding so awkwardly anxious. "Why, do you need help studying or something?"
"Yes, that's right," she'd answered calmly. "I need help studying."
3
Her whole life, she'd lived in this large farmhouse outside of town. Her father had set himself in front of the television -- a black-and-white western with indigenous peoples whooping and hollering like banshees - beer in hand, barely acknowledged Lester's presence, other than to say, "In the back," with a jerk of his thumb.
In the back turned out to mean in the fields beyond the farm. He saw her from a distance, a tiny shard of glowing white in the dark fields beneath the full moon. It took some time to trudge out to her, the earth was uneven, filled with the beginnings of this year's crops and the end of the previous year's.
She wore a black satin dress which made her flesh look even more pale, and which served to emphasize her generous cleavage.
She had laid out a red blanket upon the earth, with burning candles set around.
"Have a seat, Lester," she said, putting out her slender hands.
Lester was nervous. They hadn't held hands since they'd been kids, certainly not since they'd each had hit puberty.
"You look... you look nice," he said. He could see her more clearly now as his eyes had adjusted to the dark. Though she did not normally wear make-up, she was tonight wearing both eye-liner and red lipstick.
He noticed those old books laying on the blanket. "Are you going to finally tell me what those books are for?" he asked.
"They were my mothers," she explained. "I found them in the attic. She'd been trying to use them, but they got to be too much for her. That was why she killed herself, I now understand."
"Oh." Lester winced. He'd known that her mother had committed suicide, but it had always been something of a taboo subject between them. "What are the books, you know, about?"
"Everlasting power. Immortality. An escape."
"So... science fiction, then?"
"Are you a virgin, Lester?" Alison asked, giving his hands a squeeze.
"Uh, I-I-I... that is... I haven't... Well, yes. Yes, I am." Sex was another subject he'd assumed taboo between them. In fact, he'd long suspected that she'd assumed he was gay all these years. "Why... why do you ask?"
"Close your eyes," was her only response. And she said it again: "Close your eyes, Lester."
