Nora shouted in frustration as everything she had worked so hard to gather, disappeared in front of her eyes again. This was the third time she had discovered the whereabouts of the medieval castle cult only to have them delete everything and relocate. They never stayed more than a month or two at each place and they deleted everything about their stay online between each relocation. And they never said where they were going next. There was so much about them that she didn't know. All she really knew was that they existed, since she was supposed to have gone there, and that they had to have some serious computer savvy people on their side. She had tried to print out some of their ads, but the prints didn't work. Something about how they formatted their ads made them impossible to save.
She also wondered, again, how they were staying economically solvent. It had been very expensive for her and Audrey to get tickets, but even with that, it had to be hard for them to feed all of these people. And from what she had heard, from talking to people who had been there, they hadn't skimped on anything, there was plenty of food, props, costumes, everything. They hadn't been allowed to keep even the smallest item, but other than that, none of them had noticed anything wrong. She had even talked to some of the people that had been on the same tour she was supposed to be on. A few of them recognized Audrey from her picture, but no one had noticed when she stopped being a part of the group. She had lost a game where they were all locked in a pillory, but other than that, she hadn't interacted much with anyone. That sounded like Audrey, honestly. She had been released from the pillory though, as some remember her being very excited about other things they did during the day. She had stood out to a few of them for being the most knowledgeable of them, almost as much as the people working there. Was that why she had been kidnapped? Or had she broken one of their rules? They had all talked about the rules and how many times they had been repeated. What went on behind the doors the visitors weren't allowed to open? Nora really wanted to know, but she doubted she would find anyone outside the cult who could tell her. She had even talked to a man that claimed one of the guards there, churls, he had named them, had been a little forceful with him when he had behaved foolishly and branded a piece of hot iron around. He and his friend had apparently bet to see who would end up in the pillory the most times, but they had stopped after that. The way the churls had threatened him had stayed with him, even a year later.
"He said that if I burned the smithy down, I wouldn't get to leave until I had rebuilt it. I didn't think anything about it at the time, but now that you claim your friend didn't return, maybe she really was held back?"
What did they do, with all the people they kidnapped? What was the point of it all? If Nora's suspicions were correct, there was a large number of people in that group, and she refused to believe that they had all remained behind voluntarily. Audrey wouldn't do that. Or at least, she wouldn't do that without telling her, and perhaps even suggesting that she could come as well. And she definitely wouldn't send a series of text messages about being sick and taken to a specialist hospital without phone service. Not like that anyway. Any questions from her had been ignored, that was what made her suspicious about it. And the messages were all vague about what hospital, or where she was. Only a last message about the specialist hospital not having cell service, then nothing.
Nora had wasted many months waiting for a text saying she was finally out of the hospital. She had called various hospitals or administrative units for a series of hospitals, and no one could find her in their registers. Her insurance company had at first refused to divulge any information, but after it had been 6 months with no sign of her, she had gotten one of their operators to at least confirm that nothing had been charged to Audrey's insurance since she had left. Even if the insurance hadn't covered the stay at whatever hospital she had ended up in, they would at least have been told about it.
By the time she started looking for Audrey properly, any signs of the re-enactment were long gone. It was like it had never happened. Except for her own ticket that she had printed out, ready to go. That was the only real proof she had that this place even existed.
They varied what name they called themselves, how they advertised, how they presented themselves, all to avoid questions about what they were doing. They never stayed long enough for anyone to become suspicious. With the possible exception of the second location she had tracked them to. There had been a long series of searches after a couple missing in the same general area that the cult had advertised in. No one had been able to confirm that that was where they had gone, but several people who had been supposed to go had suddenly been told that there had been an accident and got their tickets refunded. And as soon as that was done, no more information could be found about the place at all.
After a lot of digging, both at her place and at what remained of Audrey's things after her house had been foreclosed, she had been able to narrow down where she thought the burh had been. Based on when Audrey had sent her last text on the day she arrived, telling her that she wouldn't be able to text her during the day, and what those who had been there said about what the area looked like, she had found the likely spot. Yet there had been nothing. Nothing at all to find, just a few months after they had moved. How could archaeologists find signs of potholes from thousands of years ago, yet a modern re-enactment left no trace of itself behind?!
Nora hated that she couldn't dedicate herself to this full-time, but if she didn't want to lose her apartment, she had to do her regular job as well. Working as an accountant was fairly well-paid, but also very boring. It gave her too much time to think.
She had already spent most of her vacation days traveling to the different locations she suspected the cult had been in and talking to various people who had been there. The few who had been helpful had still not given her much to work with. The most interesting, apart from the ones who had been on the same tour as Audrey, was a man who had been the bus guide for several of the other tours. He told her what he could remember of the information, but he had never been inside the burh or met anyone from there, other than the one other person who had been inside with him. He didn't know the bus driver, but he had also been local and not been inside the burh at all. Apparently, they drove all the way back after handing off the visitors and then went back and picked them up the next day. Nora had asked if that wasn't a lot of extra driving, but the bus guide said that it was worth it, to not have to sleep in poor beds and bad food. The bus driver agreed, and the company had agreed to it, when they saw how far away from everything their destination was. Nora hadn't heard anything about the beds being bad, quite the contrary, the beds had been one of the few things they all mentioned. They all mentioned how lovely they were. That probably meant that the people running this didn't want the guide and the bus driver to know anything about what happened inside. When Nora asked if he ever noticed that there were fewer people traveling back than he had let off, he laughed and said that he wasn't anyone's nanny. He didn't count the people. He heard sometimes that someone had decided to take a job at the location, or a few times that someone had become sick in the night and had to be taken to the hospital. When Nora asked how they would get to a hospital, the guide had just shrugged and said he didn't know. All he knew was that it wasn't with the bus, but there had been other vehicles present as well. If someone had to be rushed to hospital, they may have used one of those.
Was it worth spending yet another long weekend traveling to this new location and see if she could find anything? She wasn't likely to find much of anything there, but it wasn't like she had that much else to do. She sighed as she looked up how to get there. She would most likely end up renting a truck for the weekend again, her car wouldn't make it that far.