Acolytes

Three teenagers blackmail a serial killer. James Tresswick and Mark Vincent are victims of a brutal bully Gary Parker who has maltreated both boys, marking their bodies and spoiling their young lives. In their last year of high school, James and Mark find a way to stop being victims. They're going to kill Gary; Wandering alone around an isolated forest - the suspected site of the disappearance of a local girl - 17 year old Mark strays upon an adult male filling in a trench. It's suspicious and tantalizing. Mark returns with his friend James and Chasley Keys and they bring shovels to exhume what will probably be rotting garbage or someone's dead pet - or so they tell themselves. They find the ghostly white body of a woman. She's a tourist - a Canadian backpacker. The "trench" is a grave. The "adult male" is her killer. And they've got him by the balls. Responding to Mark's intimations James floats an idea to seek out "the sicko". It'll be a bit of fun. He's confident the guy lives in their suburb; Mark saw his car parked on a trail; Mark knows what the car looks like; Mark knows what he looks like. It can be done. Chasely goes along with it. No surprise. James has done all her thinking since they started a relationship. Mark agrees because he's got a thing for Chasely and he'd like to appear a bit more like her boyfriend, but mostly Mark agrees because he carries a culpable secret. They find the car and the killer 24 hours later. He's got the same house as everyone else and a kid and a wife. Jeez, it's anticlimactic. Then, in Chasely's bedroom, as the girl cleans up the latest damage done to Mark's face by an animal called Gary Parker, James floats another idea; What if the killer were contacted and told the name of a guy that they'd like to see dropped in a hole of his own? He's their secret, isn't he? They kind of own him, don't they? If he thinks they might let him go he'd do anything, wouldn't he? What could go wrong? James, Mark and Chasley are about to cross a line of no return as serial killer Ian Wright lures the vulnerable teenagers into his violent world. —Armstrong & Krause High school students Mark, James and Chasely are loner best friends. Mark often feels like the third wheel as James and Chase are a couple, she who Mark also secretly likes. Between the two boys, James is the one with the reckless bravado. Mark and James' loner and best friend status is largely out of a shared history of being raped when they were younger by an older boy named Gary Parker, who has just been released from prison on parole which concerns them and which is not helped by a unilateral move by James. Although Chase knows that Gary had bullied her two friends in the past, she does not know about the rape. While wandering around the forest on his own, Mark sees someone off in the distance burying something. Curious, the three friends return to dig up whatever it is. That something ends up being a dead body. They muse that the body may belong to Tanya Lee, a friend from Chase's childhood and who has been missing. Tanya suffered an accident years ago which had left her mentally challenged. But other indicators suggest that the dead victim is a Canadian backpacker. Not wanting to get involved with a police investigation, the three end up not reporting their find, instead taking advantage of what they sense is an opportunity. Because of the killer's distinctive vehicle, the three are able to track him down. He is suburban husband and father Ian Wright. Leaving a calling card indicating that they know of the dead body, the three anonymously blackmail Ian into murdering Gary. What they are unprepared for is that Ian may have have his own thoughts on the matter, he not taking kindly to being blackmailed. Another factor of what ends up happening is another incident in the forest when Mark was wandering around that day. —Huggo