Ten years had passed since Wendy Lacy’s body had been found dumped in the woods near Limestone Road. I had read the official story but it was bland and sparse on details. The stories circulating throughout school were far more interesting, even if they were inconsistent. One was that she was decapitated, body laid on its back, arms crossed neatly across her chest. The head was allegedly found later on a church altar. Another was that her body was found in the middle of a pentagram painted on the ground. The classic devil-worshipper motive. The most common, and most corroborated, was that her body was found nude and mutilated. The only consistent aspects of every story were where the body was found and the fact that the killer was never caught. An ambitious photojournalist had snapped a photo of the crime scene tape tied to several trees bordering a stone wall next to a dried-up creek bed. The body was assumed to be out of sight on the other side of the wall.
Rosie, a goth-witch, steampunk emo kind of girl, had mentioned to me and my friend Bill that she knew a magical concoction that could conjure up the dead. One day at lunch we invited her to camp out with us one Saturday night and see what would happen.
“Sure, I’ll bring my boyfriend.”
“Boyfriend?”
“Yeah, boyfriend! Does that surprise you?”
“No, I just never saw you with anyone.”
“I wouldn’t date anyone from this lame school, to be sure.” She picked up her tray and dumped everything into the trash. “Not this Saturday, but next Saturday. I’ll have all the materials.”
That next Saturday we walked two or so miles from my house to get to the spot. We started from the Melo-Mart after purchasing a couple of sodas and some gum. We walked to the wide curve in the road that was the unofficial trailhead, with a cleared man-made opening. Beyond that was a worn-out trail made by curious ghost seekers, littered with roadside debris, trash, and fallen leaves. The shoulder of the road was high and it was a steep drop off from the road to the path. I made it the ground with no problem, but Bill stumbled and rolled into a Honey Locust tree, piercing his shoulder with a string of large thorns. There was a burst of laughter from the opposite side of the road. Rosie and her boyfriend walked up to us as I was surgically removing the thorns from Bill’s shoulder.
“I hope there’s some blood on that thorn. Don’t need much. It’ll save me from having to cut one of you.”
She didn’t introduce us to her boyfriend. He was the palest dude I’d ever seen, or at least it seemed that way contrasted with his light blue hair. He had on black jeans, white tee shirt, with what looked like a work jacked with what I assumed was his dad’s name across the front pocket. He was the quiet type, never exhibiting anything other than a stoic facial expression.
Rosie, was all decked out in what I could only explain as a steampunk witch. She had a black dress, with bolts, nuts, and various other pieces of hardware sewn into the fabric. Her long black hair was pulled up into pigtails with gold bows embroidered with black steampunk skulls. Thrust across her shoulder was a large leather bag. She looked cute and ridiculous.
“Let me see that.” She took the thorns out of my hand and surveyed the surface. “Hmmm… we’ll need more than this, but it will work as a good symbol for unforeseen pain.” She closed her fist around the thorns and walked ahead toward the crime scene.
We kept a steady hike. I had never been to the site, but I assumed it wasn’t too far from the road. We followed the trail deep into the woods. The sight of broken bottles and beer cans subsided, and the forest floor became more natural, more removed from human waste. The undergrowth became thicker, crowding up against the narrow trail, some dying, some awakening to the death of the approaching winter. The light was now low, and I saw a bright red cardinal fly across the trail.
“How much longer?” I asked.
“We’re almost there. Once you see the cardinal, it’s only a matter of minutes from there,” responded Rosie.
“What? The cardinal?”
“Yep, and when we hear the raven, we’ll turn left off of the trail.”
“We need to stay on the trail. The trail leads right to the site,” Bill said.
“That’s what everyone thinks, but I know where the real crime scene is.”
A raven crowed in the distance. Rosie immediately turned left and pushed her way through the thickets.
“Where are going?” I asked. I turned and looked at Bill in disbelief.
We followed begrudging our every move. Rosie’s boyfriend never said a word.
“Hey buddy. What’s the deal? Have you ever been to this place?” Bill asked him. He turned and shook his head up and down. “So is this a joke.” He shook his head from side-to-side. “How much farther?” He shrugged his shoulders.
“Well thank you Mr. Mime for all the info!” I snapped. “I’m done. I’m going back.”
“Oh, shut up you big baby. We’re here,” Rosie yelled. I ducked through one last barrier of foliage and found myself in a wide-open glade. Through the middle of the glade ran an old stone wall. On the other side was a dried creek bed with large exposed limestone rocks. Further up the creek bed the ground was moist and covered in moss.
Rosie climbed over the rock wall and walked up the creek bed to the moist spot. She pointed her finger at the ground. “This is where she was raped.” She walked back down towards us and stopped on one of the large dry limestone rocks. “This is where he cut her throat.” She walked out of the creek bed an onto the other side near a patch of red cedar trees. She became blurred in the shade of the trees. “And this is where she finally died.” She knelt down and patted the ground.
“How do you know all this? You’re making this shit up.”
She ignored me. “We’ll build a fire right over the spot where she died and then we’ll summon her with some incense I brought.”
It was late afternoon, more toward twilight and it was becoming difficult to see. We gathered little branches first and lit those with some paper her boyfriend had brought. As the fire began to grow, the light flickered around the surrounding trees. We rustled through the woods and found bigger branches, enough to sustain a good fire through the ritual.
“I need some wood from the area where she was raped.”
“I got it,” Bill said eagerly. Bill walked up to the moist area, bent down, and screamed.
“What the hell.” I ran up to him. He turned his head towards me and pointed to the ground. There on the ground was an entire set of teeth placed to look like a grisly smile. In between the upper and lower teeth was a bloody severed tongue.
Rosie put her hand on my shoulder. It startled me.
“Calm down. It’s just discarded animal bones.”
“Looks human to me,” I said.
“Grab one of the teeth. That’ll work. We don’t need wood. Just something from this area. Almost perfect wouldn’t you say?”
I hesitated. “Damn baby.” She reached down and scooped up all the teeth and the tongue. She skipped over to the fire and tossed them in. The fire shot up into the air, turned blue, diminished and slowly faded back to orange. She then took some incense sticks out of her leather bag and threw them in as well. I saw that she was moving her mouth, but I couldn’t hear her voice. I moved closer to her but still couldn’t hear what she was saying.
“Rosie.” She didn’t respond. “Rosie.” Still nothing. I waved my hand in front of her eyes. No response. Finally, I shook her.
“Hey. Don’t touch me.”
“I’m sorry. What do we do now?”
“Nothing. We wait.” Rosie placed herself directly in front of the fire. She wouldn’t let us talk. She explained that it would ruin the ritual, that we would anger the ghost. We waited forever. The sun had set, our shadows were dancing in the treetops and snaking across the ground. The fire was brighter than it had been earlier in the day and a thought occurred to me that we hadn’t added any fuel to the fire in quite a while. The branches in the fire were bright but not consumed.
The only sound was the crackle of the fire and the wind through the leaves.
“This is boring. It was cool at first but I’m ready to go home,” Bill said.
“Don’t worry. She’s about to make an appearance.” Her boyfriend started to whimper, the first sound he had made all day.
The wind picked up. Rosie stood up and started to undress. She walked nude into the middle of the fire and turned towards us. Her body caught fire, but was not consumed. Her skin glowed bright orange and as she stood in the fire, a long gash opened up across her neck, shooting blood outward onto the creek bed and into the fire. The fire roared with the splattering of blood.
Rosie’s boyfriend ran towards us, yelling with his mouth open. His teeth and tongue were missing. I think he was yelling ‘help me’ but his words came out mumbled and weak. As he approached us, his feet were pulled out from under him from some unseen force. His body was sliding across the ground towards the fire. When he approached the rock wall, he was slung up into the air like he was hanging on a cross. He floated in midair for a few seconds, crying for help.
The wind died down. There was no movement. The boyfriend hung in the air, apologizing for what he had done. Bill and I turned to run back through the thicket but our bodies were forced to turn and watch. A force outside our control had us bound and trapped as spectators. The boyfriend’s body was quickly drawn into the fire. Rosie wrapped her arms around him and started eating into his jaw. The fire extinguished and we were cast into darkness. The smell of smoke and burnt flesh were drifting through the air. We were freed from the force and started to run. Branches and briars were slapping us in the face and across the body. We didn’t care. It felt like my lungs were about to collapse as we finally made our way to the path. We couldn’t see much but it was enough to get us back to the road.
As we got to the road, we heard a car pass. There was something pleasing about the sound of a passing car. It signified that we had made it out of hell and back into civilization. We ran up onto the road. I turned to look back at the path, but nothing was there.
“Let’s get out of here,” Bill suggested.
“Yeah, let’s go.” We started to jog down the road.
“Hey boys.”
We turned and looked back. It was Rosie, standing at the edge of the curve of the road, dressed in her steampunk witch outfit.
“Let’s do this again sometime.” Her boyfriend nowhere to be found.