Chapter 3: The Red Offering

Chapter 3: The Red Offering

The scream ripped through the night, a blade of pure terror that sliced through Leo’s frantic escape. It was Chrissy’s voice, no doubt about it, and it was a sound no human was meant to make—a shriek of disbelief and agony, cut short by a wet, final choke.

Leo froze, his hand clamped on the cold handle of his Escort. His car keys, just a second ago a ticket to freedom, now felt useless in his other hand. Run. Every instinct screamed at him to get in the car, slam the accelerator to the floor, and never look back. Leave Harmony Creek in his rearview mirror until it was nothing but a bad memory. He could be on the highway in five minutes, away from the blood-caked name tag digging into his thigh, away from the dragging sounds in the vents, away from this whole nightmare.

But the echo of that scream held him fast. Chrissy. The girl who had warned him, the girl who knew the rules of survival in this place. Don't ask questions. She hadn’t. She had just been doing her job, just trying to get home.

He looked from the dark promise of the open road back to the sterile, deceptively cheerful facade of the McDonald's. The golden arches seemed to mock him, a triumphant grin in the darkness. Leaving meant abandoning her to whatever had made that sound. It meant accepting that he was the kind of person who could hear that and still save himself. He wasn't sure he could live with that person.

Ricky's name tag felt like a hot coal in his pocket. He was already too late for Ricky. Maybe, just maybe, he wasn't too late for Chrissy.

Cursing his own stupidity, his own decency, Leo let go of the car door and sprinted back towards the employee exit. The metal door was heavy, and for one heart-stopping moment, he thought it had locked behind him. He slammed his shoulder against it, a surge of adrenaline-fueled panic giving him strength. It groaned open just enough for him to squeeze through.

He stumbled back into the crushing silence of the kitchen.

The air was different now. The familiar scents of bleach and old grease were still there, but they were overpowered by a new, coppery tang. It was the smell of a butcher shop, the raw, metallic scent of fresh blood. On the floor, near the deep fryers, lay a constellation of shattered glass from a drinking cup she must have dropped.

"Chrissy?" he called out, his voice a pathetic tremor in the vast quiet.

Only the hum of the freezers answered. The restaurant was utterly, unnervingly empty. It felt wrong. A moment ago, it had been a place of violent, screaming chaos. Now, it was a tomb. The sudden absence of sound was more terrifying than the scream itself.

Then he saw it.

Leading away from the shattered glass was a trail. It wasn't a puddle or a splash, but a long, deliberate smear of dark, viscous fluid. It was too thick for soda, too dark for grease. It looked like spilled oil, but it glistened a sickening, deep red under the flickering fluorescent lights. The trail was a grotesque slug path, marked intermittently by the drag marks of a shoe's heel.

Leo’s breath hitched in his throat. His heart hammered a frantic, painful rhythm against his ribs. He knew, with a certainty that settled like ice in his veins, that he was following the last moments of Chrissy’s life.

He followed the trail on trembling legs, his sneakers sticking slightly to the floor with each step. It led him past the silent, stainless-steel prep stations, past the walk-in freezer where Ricky was supposed to have been restocking, and into the dim, narrow hallway he had been so explicitly warned away from.

The trail ended at the basement door.

It stood ajar.

The thick, iron crossbar, the one that had held it so securely shut, was lifted and rested against the wall. The heavy steel door was open by a foot, a black, yawning gap that seemed to drink the light from the hallway. The spiraling, claw-like symbol scratched into its surface seemed to pulse in the gloom, a leering eye welcoming him to the abyss. Mr. Abernathy’s voice echoed in his mind, a cold, phantom whisper: You do not, under any circumstances, go near that door.

The smell was stronger here, a thick, cloying miasma of blood and something else… something foul and musky, like a damp cellar and a slaughterhouse combined. Hesitantly, every muscle screaming in protest, Leo reached out a shaking hand and pushed the door further open.

It swung inward without a sound, revealing a steep, narrow flight of concrete stairs descending into absolute, oppressive blackness. The air that washed over him was cold, ancient, and heavy with malice.

His eyes adjusted slowly to the gloom, aided by the weak light spilling from the hallway behind him. The concrete steps were slick with the same viscous fluid he had followed. His gaze traveled down, down the length of the staircase, to the small landing at the bottom.

And that’s when his blood didn't just run cold; it turned to solid ice.

It wasn't a stranger. It wasn't an animal.

It was Chrissy.

She was crumpled at the bottom of the stairs, a discarded doll in a McDonald's uniform. Her body was bent at angles that defied anatomy, one leg twisted beneath her at a horrifying, impossible position. Her head was turned away, but a dark pool was spreading out from under her, staining the concrete a deep, wet black. She was utterly still. She wasn't a person anymore. She was an offering, left at the threshold of the dark.

Leo’s stomach revolted. A choked sob caught in his throat. He wanted to run, to scream, to erase the last five minutes from his memory. He took a staggering step back, his heel catching on the linoleum.

The small sound echoed down into the waiting darkness beyond Chrissy’s broken body.

And the darkness answered.

It wasn't one voice. It was a chorus. A layering of wet, guttural clicks and dry, rasping whispers that slithered up from the depths. It was the sound of a hundred mouths, all filled with gravel and rot, trying to form a word. The sounds scraped against each other, merged, and coalesced into a single, terrifying, inhuman demand that vibrated through the concrete floor and up into the bones of Leo’s feet.

"More."