I live in a pretty small town—one of those towns where kids get their licenses as soon as they’re legally able to. Without one you either have to hope your parents are willing to ferry around you and your friends, or hang out in front of the sodexo that’s too small to have more than one employee with soda and slim jims you bought with loose change. In a town that small, there’s not much to do, so you get creative.
Once you get to high school though, that combination of boredom and unearned bravery can lead to some pretty serious shit going down. No one moves to this town, so everyone’s either related or as close as you can get without blood. So as soon as someone gets hurt or caught, it doesn’t matter if you made it out unscathed, your parents will get the full story soon. Then everyone gets a lecture, and we have to move on to something new.
As soon as Jeremy twists his ankle and they give him a few advil, suddenly he’s telling the doctors, the nurses, his parents, and everyone that will listen that a bunch of kids have been hanging out in the abandoned factory. Of course instead of saying it was just him that had gone and stepped into one of the many holes in the rotting floorboards, he’s listing names, first and last. The way he told it, it was the first time he’d gone, and we’d convinced him, and his parents believed that bullshit. Now there are cops outside the factory, and we had to find a new place to underage drink and get up to teenage mischief.
Of course, Lisa suggested the cemetery, with her black lipstick smudged at the edges and mixing into her too-pale, cakey, foundation to create a sickly grey. And of course, we all agreed. It was big and fenced in, with plenty of places to hide, and it was just eerie enough to stroke our teenage egos. We were just so cool and brave, after all. That’s the thing about teenagers, we have more balls than we have sense.
Every Friday we’d meet at 7, telling our parents we were staying at some friend’s house,
and we didn’t get caught for a long time. It was actually a good spot. As long as we stayed away from the road, no one was coming to check that the ‘NO TRESPASSERS’ sign was doing its job. We drank cheap beer, listened to shitty music, and no one suspected anything.
It didn’t take long to lose a bit of its edge, and we were looking to escalate when Jason made a suggestion. I don’t know if it was the setting, or if he’d been watching too many horror movies, but he wanted to do some sort of ritual. He didn’t even know what kind, or what for, but after a few beers this had sounded like a great idea. Phoebe jumped at the opportunity to set everything up since she’d been a practicing witch for some time, and we trusted her—after all, she brought it up at every opportunity, so why wouldn’t we?
Our plan didn’t come up again until Thursday the next week, when all of us had to go tell our parents our weekly sleepover fib. I was a lot more wary of the plan in the light of day with a clear head, but I really didn’t want to be the pussy that backed out at the last minute and ruined it for everyone.
Phoebe wrote up a list of supplies and gave each of us two things to buy and bring to the cemetery. She gave me a scrap of aged paper with curling cursive that read:
It felt a little over the top when a simple text would have sufficed, but it worked. Since she didn’t specify what kind, I grabbed chicken livers from the small bait fridge in the corner of the sodexo gas station. I paid with a card.
It wasn’t the smartest idea, but multiple people mentally added alcohol to their lists. By the time Phoebe wanted to begin, most of us were buzzed or worse.
Her instructions were minimal, so we sat in a half circle around her, as ingrained in us by our kindergarten teachers. We carefully watched her work, even Jason leaning in slightly to get a better view of her careful gestures. She lit candles and placed organs, speaking aloud as if there was an invisible figure guiding her. I didn’t understand most of it as I was transfixed with her movements, which were mechanical and almost stiff. It was like she was being manipulated by an inexperienced puppeteer that had the movements down, but didn’t yet know how to make them appear fluid and natural. At that moment it really felt like magic, so when she blew out the candles and nothing happened, it was jarring.
I felt the same, other than the slight queasiness I’d chalked up to drinking on an empty stomach. Everyone stayed silent and stared—I would guess I wasn’t the only one transfixed.
Jason was the first one to speak, and loudly asked what the ritual had even been for.
I couldn’t help feeling stupid when I realized I didn’t even know what the fuck was supposed to happen after Pheobe finished.
Phoebe replied with a nervous smile that it should bring everyone good fortune—I suspected that she was similarly disheartened at how anticlimactic this had all been after how much effort had gone into theatrics.
Lisa smiled more genuinely and reassured her that it would, ever the optimist despite her dark wardrobe, even commenting on how the organs and candles felt like “proper witchcraft”.
I went back to my beer and basically forgot about it. If it worked, I’d get some cool shit, if it didn’t I wasted a few bucks on liver. So what if the sodexo cashier thinks I like to fish now?
I did some research after the fact. I was really hoping to find out it was all bullshit, and the strange events of the past weeks were just a coincidence.
I had to feign interest to get Phoebe to send me the sites she used to put the ritual together, but I’ve pieced together what went wrong. We were supposed to have a live sacrifice, but Phoebe skipped that step.
I appreciate not having to kill a rabbit, but whatever thing she made a deal with wasn’t satisfied with the store bought organs, and is still trying to collect.
The week after the ritual I constantly felt as if I was being watched, even at times it was impossible. I brushed this off as paranoia. I saw Phoebe’s hands hovering above those dollar store candles, just hesitating to light them, every time I closed my eyes.
Then the sensation of eyes started keeping me up at night. I never remembered falling asleep, but I’d always wake up in my bed. Again, weird but not totally unexplainable.
After a week of exhaustion my mom started asking questions, but I was able to convince us both that nothing was wrong. However, my faith in this assertion started to waver when I woke up one morning to the feeling of being watched, but rather than looking up at nothing like usual, I made eye contact with it.
It’s face was twisted and inhuman, and totally unreadable. I’m still not sure if it can emote, but malice and bemusement seems to radiate off of it every time I see it. The first time I shut my eyes as hard as I could until I was sure it was gone, but now I can’t look away. I’m afraid of what it might do if I look away.
I tried to brush that off like I had everything else, but every time I saw it I would wake up with fresh cuts, and then missing chunks of flesh. They’ve only gotten bigger, and all I can do is shove gauze into them and wash my bloody sheets again.
I’m scared soon it won’t be satisfied with just taking chunks.