The Devouring Light

Check out our episode here! And our interview with Kat here!

The Devouring Light by Kat Ellis

Tristan "Trip" Filmore Prescott is the main suspect in the disappearance, presumed dead, of Barton "Shark Bart" Ewing. Both are YouTubers, but Shark Bart is much more popular. The Kurt County Police Department interviews Trip where he describes a place called The Light, which is more of an urban legend really. A bunch of celebrities got invited to a New Year's party in an old house in the middle of nowhere. Five of them went but none returned, including the hostess and Trip’s bio-dad. Trip and Shark Bart went exploring to find the house, after finding coordinates from an original invitation. They found swampy land and saw The Light. Trip was able to run away but Shark Bart wasn’t. 

Haden and Kizi are the band Phantomic🤘🏻and are on their way to perform at the Rock-o’-Lantern music festival. Haden is driving her beat up old car and Kizi is trying not to have a panic attack from it when a warning light bleeps a second before they smell burning. As this is happening, a giant tour bus goes by and, going by the detailing, it’s for Deacon Rex and his band Rex Mori who are also performing at Rock-o’-Lantern, but in top billing. Haden knows Deacon from Little Stars USA when they were in their early teens and he’s the reason Haden was kicked off at the final and has had to rebuild her reputation since. Yeah, there’s no love lost there. Due to the car being on fire, Haden pulls into a service area and tries to call her Aunt Selena for help while Kizi grabs snacks. It goes straight to voicemail, but Deacon’s tour bus is there…

Haden follows Kizi inside and gives her the non-update with the car situation, but will try and get an Uber. When she heads out and checks her phone, Deacon Rex bumps into her. To add insult to injury, he doesn’t recognise Haden, treats her like a fan and “gives in” to a selfie with her. At Haden’s cry of alarm when he invades her personal space, Deacon backs off leaving Haden angry, indignant, and frustrated that after four years, two months, and five days, she didn’t give him a piece of her mind. She heads to the grungy restroom to be sick. 

After Haden has stopped throwing up and is standing in the stall catching her breath, a strange grubby looking guy breathing heavily and carrying a hard-shell suitcase comes in. He’s acting weird, looking in the mirror and seems to be hyping himself into doing something, something involving Deacon Rex and a light. When Kizi calls, Haden uses it as an excuse to get the heck out of there, having to move the mop the weird guy used to block the door. 

Outside, Haden sees Deacon next to his tour bus. He’s waiting on Sugar Patel, president of his fan club, but she’s a no-show. Haden swallows her bile to warn him about his weird stalker. Kizi comes running up then and sweet-talks Deacon into giving them a lift to Rock-o’-Lantern. Oh look, she’s conveniently stacked their stuff for Deacon’s roadie to load. 

While Marv, the roadie/bodyguard/bus driver finishes loading Haden and Kizi’s gear in the hold and sorts the sticking hatch door, Kizi introduces herself to Rex Mori’s bassist Shane and settles herself on a sofa, Haden sliding in next to her. Deacon calls Haden out for calling him an arsehole on TV, it seems he did recognize her, which Haden corrects, it was an asshole, actually, while Kizi tells her to shut the hell up. To Haden and Kizi’s surprise, Cairo, their old school friend, Haden’s ex, and new Rex Mori drummer enters then. Well, shit. 

At the sight of Haden and Kizi, Cairo storms off to the back of the bus and Kizi goes to freshen herself up. Haden and Deacon are now free to lay into each other but Shane throws a video game controller at Haden with instructions to shut up and shoot the bad guys. This distracts Haden until Kizi, Deacon and Marv start talking with raised voices. The tour bus GPS has gotten them lost, they’re running extremely late and they are now stuck on a dirt road next to a canyon. When Shane offers to go out and try to find a phone signal, he quickly runs back as the earth beneath the tour bus starts moving and causes the bus to go over the edge, everyone inside crashing around. Haden falls unconscious and dreams of a voice telling her to come to the light. 

Haden wakes up and it’s dark and the world is upside down and inside out as she assesses the carnage that the tour bus has turned into. As she does so, a phone, mostly buried in mud, lights up receiving a call. Haden answers and it’s weird, a crowd is chanting her name and repeats her when she says “help us.” Hanging up because she can’t process too much strange at once, she looks around the displaced furniture and twisted metal and finds Marv dead and the GPS telling them they have reached their destination.

The bus has landed in a swamp and it smells like death and decay. Haden tries her own phone to call for help, but it’s water logged and there is no signal. Climbing out, she goes in search of the others; she can feel someone is out there. The bus is surrounded by thick fog and it seems to be getting thicker but she’s able to find Deacon with a red hard shell suitcase and his leg is hurt. As Haden moves the suitcase that was definitely the creepy service station guy's, a dead girl falls out. It’s Sugar Patel. Haden looks at Deacon’s leg not so gently and declares it sprained, not broken with her non-existent medical degrees, but it does have leeches attached which she pulls off while trying not to vomit. Deacon needs his pain pills from his bag which he threw and is hanging on a branch close by before the mud starts sucking him down. Haden passes it and the weird phone she found on the bus to him. She then realizes they don’t have clean water and Deacon is stoned. None too gently, Haden pulls Deacon to his feet, gives him a suitcase handle as a crutch and they head off to look for the others. Haden thinks they’re going deeper into the forest, the wrong way. Deacon wonders why the stones are glowing and who made the path, and how there is a tide inland… and is the path moving? Haden sees something down the path, maybe it’s the others. Nope, it’s a house.

The house is very grand and very gothic looking. There is a single light on in the house and a sign saying The Light. Inside the foyer is a giant Fabergé egg-like sculpture with patterns etched into it, but they’re slightly off. While Deacon rests his leg, Haden goes in search of a phone. When she reaches the mezzanine floor, Haden hears a knocking sound. Walking past closed doors with names, not numbers, on them, she stops outside the Warren room where the knocking is coming from. Haden has a jump scare when she opens the door to see a woman in a cocktail dress knocking against the window; however, the woman isn’t a woman, it’s a mannequin. Haden moves it to more stable ground less likely to cause creepy knocking and finds a snake headed walking stick, a perfect weapon or for Deacon to use to hobble around. In the bathroom, Haden checks for running water, there is electricity so water is a possibility, too, but actually gets thick brown sludge pitted with maggots. Yum, refreshing. 

When Haden gets downstairs, someone is knocking at the door. It's Cairo. She’s freaked out because there is some strange guy outside and bars the door with the bench Deacon was napping on before passing out herself. A few moments later, Cairo comes to. She explains she was thrown from the bus and fell down the crevasse landing on the half eaten carcass of a bear. She’s not seen Kizi or Shane, only a person in a boat who seemed to be following her, definitely watching her. The fog was so thick though it might have been playing tricks. They decide to rest in the house and in the morning, with hopefully better light and less fog, go looking for Kizi and Shane. In the meantime, they find a leech poking out of Deacon’s leg wound.  

As Deacon panics, Haden overcomes her gag reflex to pull the white leech from his leg. Except as she goes to grab it, the leech goes hard and drops off. Cairo slams her boot down on it and it turns to dust. Weird. Deacon then takes more pain pills while Cairo and Haden split up to look for supplies: water, food, medical stuff, phone. Haden heads upstairs, rechecks the Warren room then works her way along. Most of the rooms appear that their occupant just got up and left one day. One has an invitation to the New Year’s party at The Light for Faith Knight, an actress Haden’s mom lost a breakout leading role to. The house is a labyrinth and feels like it shouldn’t exist, but with some vodka and sanitary pads located at least, Haden carries on with the search. In a windowless corridor, she hears a noise and eventually opens a weakly lit room with what looks like a shadow person in the corner. And it moves.

It’s not a person, but a nest of moths and they all rush at Haden, one going inside her mouth. Haden manages to spit it out and escapes the room and the swarm of bone-white disgusting bugs. Her scream alerts Cairo and Deacon, though when they get to her, all the moths are gone. Cairo reports that the tap water is fine to drink, really after the brown maggot sludge? They also notice a photograph on the floor. Faith Knight is in it with half a dozen other people. Only one person seems to know the picture is being taken and doesn’t look pleased: Magdalena Warren, and she’s holding the snake head cane. Deacon knows where they are and can’t believe it.

Cut to video footage recovered from the camcorder of Conrad Mullaney, director of several low-budget horror movies from the 1980s and 1990s.  He’s complaining about the guests at Magdalena Warren’s 2005 New Year's party, and Magdalena, and pretty much everything else. The video cuts to a short clip of the party then ends with Conrad Mullaney in his room stating he wants no part in Magdalena’s plans. 

Deacon explains Magdalena Warren’s New Year’s party was infamous as so many celebrities went missing. They’re in her house of horrors. Haden points out that that was years ago if true, and no one is living in the house now. Cairo goes to get them water from the kitchen while Haden follows chalky footprints in the carpet she is sure weren’t there a moment ago. Deacon believes in ghosts and is convinced the house is haunted but leaves Haden to investigate while he finds somewhere to sleep. In one room marked Arkansas, Haden finds a beautiful guitar but also a sticky brown strip of sludge on the bed where clearly someone died. In another room, she finds overflowing ashtrays of cigarettes and a dead camcorder which she sets to charge. Clearly the foot prints weren’t Kizi’s or Shane's as she hoped, so she heads back to the mezzanine. 

Haden wakes later in the Faith Knight room and it’s still dark outside. She hears footsteps outside the room, initially thinking it’s Cairo or Deacon but they don’t call out or knock. The light from the chandelier in the foyer can be seen round the door and the light breaks as this “person” reaches it. Haden jumps up and flings the door open but finds no one, only chalky footprints on the floor which look like someone walked up the stairs. As she looks over the balcony, the large egg sculpture lights up blue from underneath. Upon closer inspection it’s a cell phone, her cell phone! There are dozens of texts and missed calls from her Aunt Selena and Bob, the band manager. Haden tries calling 911 but the call goes weird and her voice just keeps repeating her name. Deacon comes into the foyer then, and Haden tries 911 again but hears Kizi and she is saying how lost she is. Suddenly Cairo appears and vomits. The water she drank wasn’t so fresh and she is ill. Haden won’t wait any longer, she’s going back to the tour bus for supplies and to find Kizi and Shane. Deacon persuades her to wait a little longer until it’s light. 

Later, as Deacon shows off his new ensemble thanks to a dead guy, they notice the names on the rooms they’ve adopted have changed… to their own. That’s creepy, and who did this? Haden decides there is no reason to wait any longer and sets out for the tour bus and Deacon hobbles along after her. 

Along the way, they thrash out their time on Little Stars USA. Deacon tried to distract Haden from seeing her dad having sex with a makeup artist, but she didn't see them and thought he was just trying to make her forget her lyrics, which she did. She called him an asshole, but he thought she was saying that about her dad. She's not surprised, her dad is a known cheater, but she is pissed now that her dad made her feel like she was to blame for being kicked off Little Stars USA and lost everyone’s chance at fame when it was really him since one of the producers was married to the makeup artist. The producers actually liked the Haden and Deacon drama, but not the rest. Damn. 

Carrying on their search for Kizi and Shane, Deacon notices that the gravel is moving, and when they come upon the swamp, not the tour bus, the path has to have changed. With no choice but to double back, they find another structure in the swamp, and it’s definitely not The Light, it’s a small rundown boat shack. Haden needs to check it out in case Kizi and Shane took refuge inside and the only way to it is through the swamp. Yikes. The water goes up to her waist, but she ploughs on, Deacon staying on the path. The shack is on stilts and only as big as a single room. Kizi and Shane aren’t inside, but there is a backpack with trail mix, a rain coat, and a porn mag. With her prize on her back, Haden heads back to Deacon. It’s darker and has started to rain, and, worse, she can feel something following her in the water. Despite shouting at Deacon to run, he doesn’t, and instead whatever is in the water surges out at them both. It’s the unconscious body of Shane, and his face is covered in the white leeches. 

Haden and Deacon pluck the leeches off Shane’s face, only one of them biting Deacon before disappearing into the gravel path. They manage to get him back to The Light to tend to his wounds. At Haden’s suggestion that Deacon give one of his pain pills to Shane, Deacon discovers he can’t find the bottle and accuses Haden of a misguided “intervention.” As they’re arguing, Cairo screams and comes running from her room. There is someone on her balcony. Haden goes to investigate. She finds Kizi. 

Cut to a video by Trip one year after Shark Bart’s disappearance. He’s back in the swamp to find out what happened. The video is weird, starting with Trip being cocky to the camera, then being all dreamy proclaiming he knows what to do now and ends with him being bitten by something snakey. Trip is in the comments of the video, the last one reaching out to Sugar Patel about Deacon Rex and urging her to check her DMs. 

Kizi looks amazing! She’s clean, has taken a shower, is in “fresh” clothes (as fresh as pilfered dead person's clothes can be), and doesn’t have a scratch on her. She’s also drunk the water and proclaims it's fine. After the crash, her memory is a little fuzzy but she wound up at The Light during the night, found a room and passed out. Haden, Deacon, and Cairo watch as Kizi walks down the stairs looking around in wonder at the inn that doesn't look as run down now. Shane, who was resting in the foyer, mentions he’s heard of this place from a YouTuber, Trip Prescott. He disappeared, or went quiet.

Haden decides to wash the swamp and crash crust off her and take a shower, though she’s still not ready to drink the stuff despite Kizi saying it's fine. Feeling better now that she’s clean, Haden finds a blue jumpsuit in Faith Knight/her suite’s bathroom to wear. As she’s getting ready, Haden hears breathing. At first convinced it’s someone in the room, a quick check proves there is no one there. There is definite breathing and it’s definitely coming from the bathroom, did someone watch her shower? There is no one in the room, but there is a small vent. Deacon, who heard Haden yelp during her investigation, gives her a boost up to look. There’s nothing there and the breathing has stopped. 

Kizi found expired ramen and worked out how to boil the water so at least they have food now. As they’re eating, Haden and Cairo clear the air between them over their split - both band and relationship - and they feel better for it. Shane, though not in pain, isn’t doing well, the skin on his face is peeling away with infection. They leave him wrapped as a mummy and put him in the Mullaney room to rest properly. This is the same room Haden found the camcorder in, that she set to charge and is now working. Haden sits to watch and finds that Mullaney was also sure someone else was in The Light with him too. 

Shane’s screams interrupt Haden, he’s clawing at his face, puss filled blisters cover him and he pops them as he drags his nails down. Shane rants about not wanting it, and that he can feel the leeches moving under his skin. He runs to the balcony and Haden is sure he’s going to throw himself over. He jumps but it doesn’t kill him, instead Shane runs out into the swamp. Haden follows until Shane is neck deep in the swamp water and realizes he’s trapped in quicksand. She tries to reach him, to pull Shane out of the trap, but can’t. Shane sinks below the surface. 

Back at The Light, Haden, Cairo and Deacon are sitting in the parlor in front of a roaring fire stunned by Shane’s horrific death when Kizi perkily comes in with a hostess trolley with food on it. They decide they need to get out, but the situation is made worse by Kizi’s upbeat personality grating on Cairo and Deacon withdrawing from the pain pills. After throwing out ideas and dismissing them, they decide to sleep on a solution and reevaluate in the morning. Haden will find help on her own if she has to. 

Haden sleeps in the parlor with the fire and Kizi stays with her. During the night, Haden wakes and notices Kizi is gone. Though perfectly reasonably thinking Kizi has just gone to the bathroom, Haden decides to check anyway and starts to hear the mysterious breathing again. She doesn’t find Kizi but more of the strange chalky footprints. Following them upstairs and through the maze of corridors, they suddenly stop outside the moth room. Mouth tightly closed, Haden opens the door but it’s actually a storage closet and there's not a moth in sight. Looking up, Haden sees the footprints on the ceiling and follows them again until they suddenly stop. Going back to the parlor, Haden finds a sleepy Kizi, she had just been to the bathroom. Haden is convinced there is someone or something else in the house with them. She still hears the mysterious breathing. 

The next morning, if you can tell it is with the heavy rain and fog, Haden tells the others about the footsteps. Cairo and Deacon go to take a look, Kizi believes her but would rather go looking for food. When Haden looks out the window, she sees a flashlight swinging back and forth as if someone is searching. Believing it's a rescue, she races outside screaming to the others that the cops are there. Outside, Haden doesn’t find rescue, instead she finds Shane’s body tied to a tree and his face completely gone, inside the skull is a squirming leech. She also finds the weirdo from the service stop. He’s brandishing a heavy looking flashlight and cryptically says “not the one I wanted … but you’ll do.” YIKES.

The weirdo from the service stop grabs Haden and tries to shove her in his boat, but Haden fights back until he punches her in the head making her dizzy and sick, then she falls over into the boat hitting the wooden seat. Haden wakes up in the boat house loosely tied up with her own shoe laces. Her attacker’s arm seems hurt likely from the crash whilst hiding in the tour bus cargo hold. The weirdo from the service stop introduces himself as Trip Prescott and he looks a lot older than he should be and rants and raves about her and being promised fame but she hasn’t delivered. He also says he practically gift wrapped Shark Bart, and can’t get back into The Light so he’ll use her to get him inside. Clearly this man is wackoloopy. Haden breaks her feet free, batters Trip away and runs outside. The fog is thick so she can’t see the boat and can only make a jump for it, so she flings herself over the side.

Soon Trip is out of the shack grabbing at Haden. She squirms and bites him until she’s free and he falls in the water. Instead of coming for her, he panics and climbs into the boat that was so close but she couldn’t see because of the fog. Haden tries to escape through the swamp, Trip following in the boat and using the oar to smash down trying to clobber her head. However, the strange place seems to be working in Haden’s favor as the swamp melts away and she’s on the path, the fog parting. As she runs, the swamp and fog retake the path until she’s back at The Light. Just as she dives inside, Haden spots someone at Magdalena’s window… it’s just the mannequin… Do mannequins move like that? Inside, she cries for the others and Cairo comes running with Mullaney’s camcorder in hand. She’s been watching his videos and will believe anything Haden has to tell her. 

In these clips we see Mullaney broken. Faith Knight, who was on his side, now follows Magdalena all starry-eyed. Arkansas is dead in his bed, his head caved in. He’s sure others are dead too. There are smells coming out of some of their rooms. He went outside to escape but the swamp closed in on him, and some worm thing bit him on the path that seemed to be made of them and spawned from the egg sculpture in the foyer. Mullaney’s going to try and get video evidence of what Magdalena is doing. He also asks whoever is watching to tell his kid, Trip Prescott, he wishes he’d gotten to know him better, and to not show his wife any inappropriate parts of the video.

Together, Haden and Cairo decide they need to leave NOW. First they head to the parlor to find Kizi, she’s not there, but then suddenly she is, stepping out of the shadows. A million things seem to slot in place for Haden, especially the calmness of her best friend and she realizes this isn’t her Kizi. When she turns to find Deacon, Haden says “goodbye forever” and instead of replying “goodbye forever, jackass” like her normal Kizi would, this Kizi tells her she’s being silly and will see her in a minute. Wrong, wrong, wrong. 

Haden tells Cairo they need to check this floor for Deacon since not-Kizi tried to send them upstairs. When they go into the dining room, they hear a tapping and follow the sound to the wall. There is a cavity behind with a dumb waiter and the knocking is coming from it. Calling out, they hear Deacon’s muffled voice call back to them. It’s too heavy to pull the dumb waiter box up so they find the entrance to the basement. It’s dark and it stinks. There are animal and human bones scattered about, something has been eating them. Haden tries to avoid looking around too much, focusing on the dumb waiter. She finds the box, and with force pulls it open and Deacon falls out. Cairo suddenly grabs Haden into a tight hug and tells her not to look, but it’s too late, she’s already spotted Kizi’s real body hanging from a meat hook and a bloody stump where her leg was. 

As Haden stands in front of Kizi feeling like her world is collapsing, Deacon explains he came down looking for tools, but a creature came into the basement a moment after him and he hid in the dumb waiter. He was trapped as he watched it eating Kizi. As it was leaving, he saw it was wearing Kizi’s face. That’s when they all hear the breathing sound again. It’s coming from the vent above Kizi’s corpse. Two eyes blink back at them then slowly a milky white arm stretches out and a creature starts to pull itself out. Haden, Cairo and Deacon run for it. On her way out, Haden picks up a paint can to sling as a weapon, sure the creature is right behind her and going to eat her like Kizi, but as she swings running through the basement door, there is nothing there. 

Once out of the basement, Deacon tells the others he isn’t feeling well so Haden goes to the kitchen for water. What she finds is mold, maggoty mud, rotten bits of plants and weeds from the swamp, crushed insects and dead flies. They’ve been eating that. Forcing down the vomit as Cairo comes in and nearly vomits herself, they turn right around, grab Deacon and head to the front door. They pull the bench away and find the door is locked.

They check the windows, they’re locked too. Picking up the bench, they use it as a battering ram on the door. It splinters a little, but the bench is heavy, eventually they make a hole big enough to crawl through. Outside there is just a white void, but inside the egg sculpture is hatching and spilling out countless leeches. It starts taking the form of a person, not-Kizi. This creature, who tells them to call her Mother, has been watching them the whole time, has been invading their sleep and giving them dreams of all their hopes and ambitions coming true. She can give them their dreams, they just need to decide what they would give to make them come true. Haden can hear the roar of the crowd and feels the thrill of performing on stage, fans calling her name… but this creature ate Kizi and is wearing her friend's face. 

The creature turns into Shane and talks to Deacon who rejects the offer. Then it turns into Magdalena Warren and explains she didn’t kill Kizi, she was already dying, she only read her mind and learned about them from her and didn’t want to waste a meal. Cairo asks how the leeches work. They’re spores which Magdalena controls. Cairo is considering the offer, but she needs to know more. Magdalena says their relationship is symbiotic, when they succeed, she gets the benefit too. Suddenly Deacon cries out, pointing at the door. Trip Prescott is forcing himself though with a crowbar and goes for the creature. He’s overpowered and the creature force feeds him dozens of leeches until he chokes and dies. Deacon meanwhile throws a bust of Magdalena Warren over the mezzanine balcony hitting the space where the creature was, but it jumps up and onto the chandelier, glaring at Deacon with Kizi’s face.

Haden uses the distraction to hit the sculpture with Trip’s crowbar and it does absolutely nothing, and not-Kizi laughs at her from the chandelier. Frustrated, Haden throws the crowbar at not-Kizi and it lands in the wires of the chandelier. Haden is surprised the creature crumples as the light flickers. She didn’t hit it but the light. It drops Kizi’s face and turns into a demonic creature with a spiral of razorlike teeth, nubs protruding from its bone-white snake-like torso, with vestigial wings sprouting from its back. The house changes too with thin cobweb-like vines spreading from the chandelier and around the house, a tether hanging from the creature to the spore sack. The walls look like the rubbery skin of a squid. 

As Haden and Cairo grab Deacon, the creature seems to stir and the chandelier light comes back on. It hits Haden then that the light has always been on the entire time. Everything is connected! Haden sends Cairo outside with Deacon while she climbs up and jumps to the chandelier. She grabs the crowbar and tries to free the chandelier from the ceiling, the creature whispering to her the whole time. The demon holds Haden as they plummet and hit the spore sack. The lights go out. 

Haden dreams of blackness but knows she’s onstage. Mother is talking to her. Tempting her. Begging to be let in. Haden wants the lights back, so she agrees. Haden wakes up in a row boat, the sun glaring down on her, Deacon and Cairo. Cairo tells her not to worry about Mother anymore. Cairo has Mullaney’s camcorder and their families should know the truth. They agree no one should come back here and that they will say the others died in the crash. Haden can still hear Mother, and feel her unfurling in her mind. Deacon and Cairo are acting a little weird… Do they have a part of Mother, too?

Kurt County Police Department logs Conrad Mullaney’s camcorder and all recovered video files. A video shows Magdalena Warren giving Mullaney the devil’s bargain, he has the spores in him already, he’s been drinking the water, hasn’t he? If he doesn’t agree, they will eat him. The video cuts to Mullaney preparing to complete suicide, he wants to go on his own terms and not be eaten by whatever Magda has put inside him. He can feel them moving. 

A news report titled Rex Mori Implicated in Death-Cult Massacre follows. Deacon and Cairo are being accused of inciting the death-cult murder-suicide of sixteen fans, invitations were found among the victims’ personal belongings. Deacon and Cairo have gone missing and are also presumed dead. Multiplatinum solo artist Haden Romero and close friend to Deacon and Cairo posted on social media, “…what a loss, and so much darkness... there are no words, but I am thankful you are now with the Light.”