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Another missing person’s case. This time, a family. Traveling by van. It’s been a week or so since I went snooping outside, and you’d better believe I got grilled by my friends about that night, and again by my mother when she saw my face.
It was getting hard dealing with the questions and accusations of my friends, but even harder walking on eggshells around grandma and trying to keep mom from worrying. So, on yet another morning, I resigned myself to suffer my friends again—after all, Gil, at least, wasn’t so bad.
“Here she comes!” Danny hopped off the bench. I steeled myself for his usual barrage of accusations, but the excitement on his face was different this time.
“Bout time,” Gil said, cool as ever, cool as the grey cloudy sky overhead. Had it ever been blue since we got here?
Russ and Sarah said nothing, but stared at me for a moment, then looked to Gil.
“What’s up guys?”
“Do you want to see something real cool?” Gil asked.
***
The walk took us the better part of an hour, an fairly far out of town. Out this way, instead of suburbs, rolling hills of green and gold grass awaited us, and sandwiched between those hills every so often, a house large enough to see from a great distance. We made our way past scenery like this for awhile, until we came to a set of hills that had no house—only the charred remains of one.
There was a rusty gate, locked of course, that barred us for the property. We found a rock and a stick and let ourselves in. The overgrown yard reminded me of Grandma’s but it was much larger and more dense. I almost lost my flip flops more than once. Eventually, we got up to the ruins. At this point, all that remained were the partial walls of the front, little more than stones scorched black from the fire-along with the timbers that had not entirely burnt up.
“What is this place?”
“Don’t you know anything?” Sarah asked. “Some rich guy burned down his mansion a few weeks ago.”
“That’s not what I heard,” Russ cut in. “I heard it was a demon.”“Demons aren’t real.”“But witches are?”
Gil chuckled.
All that was left was the ground floor- buts and pieces of furniture that hadn’t quite burned up. It was cool to look at, for a bit, anyway. The footprint of the house, and the bits of wall that still stood, made it clear it had been big.
“Hey guys,” Russ said. “I found something.”
We shuffled toward the back of the ruins, where Russ stood, staring down at something–
Stairing, more accurately; what was left of the flight descended into the earth; the gray light of day illuminated part of the basement. It was pretty dark otherwise, but there was a particular curve that was darker even than the shadow.
“What is that?”
We picked our way down the decrepit staircase, into a burnt, soot filled basement. It became clearer now what we were looking at.
The remains of a pentagram, smudged across the floor in blood.
No one said anything, and we all avoided each other’s eyes. Only Gil stared intently at the circle, his face unreadable.
“I don’t like this,” Sarah said.-
Had dolls once lined this basement, too?
Whatever had been in the basement, wasn’t. the checkered floor was smudged and dirty, partially covered with debris from the level above. The pentagram dominated the space- three quarters of it remained, only the part under the collapsed upper layers had been worn away by exposure.
We poked about in the basement, everyone trying, and failing, to ignore it. In fact, Gil stared at it openly, intently, even as we shuffled around. As I was glancing back at him, my foot hit something hard, metal by the sound of clattering it made as it bounced away from me.
“Hey guys!” I called. “I found something!”
It had rolled into a darker corner of the basement, and as I realized this, fear and curiosity battled it out. I looked back to my friends, who all looked at me expectantly. I’d never hear the end of ‘chicken’ or ‘wuss’ if I didn’t retrieve whatever it was, and I reasoned nothing was scarier than Grandma’s basement—or Grandma herself whenever she caught me snooping around. Into the dark, then.
For one wild instant, I imagined it- Grandma waiting in the dark corner to grab me by my cheek and scold me, drag me all the way home.
But no, in the darkness was a small bronze urn. It spun listlessly as I approached it. I picked it up, surprised at how heavy it was—how hot.
“What is it?” Russ asked, suspicion on his face.
I carried it back toward them. “It’s an urn.” I showed it to them, and Danny snatched it up right away, shoving his little face against the opening.
“There’s nothing in here,” he said. After a moment, he pulled back, and we all had a laugh at the black ring around his face.
“What?”
“Nevermind that,” Gil said. He looked to all of us in turn, saving me for last. Suddenly, I felt as hot as the urn had.
“Let’s finish it.”
“Finish..?” Sarah pondered. “You don’t mean—”
Gil dispelled the sentence with a wave toward the missing part of the pentagram.
Sarah, Danny, Russ and I all looked to the missing piece. We looked to each other. Our decision was unanimous; the question now was who would say so to Gil.
Three pairs of eyes bored into me.
Sighing, I looked to Gil. He hunched over the circle, his back to me.
“I don’t know, Gil-” I said, looking to the others for support.
“It feels like maybe we should leave it alone,” Danny added. In the dimness of the basement, he looked mousier than ever.
“Is that what you two think?” Gil asked, turning on Russ and Sarah. He stood up and started to pace. Overhead, from at least what we could see in the basement, the cloud roiled restlessly.
“Nothing cool ever happens in this town, and now we have this-” here, he gestured to the circle—“And you all are scared?”
“It’s blood,” Russ protested.
“So?” Gil pressed. He started crawling around on his hands and knees. Then, he lifted something- a piece of charcoal, likely the remains of part of the rafters.
“Use this.”
No one took it.
“Well? Come on then!”
Once again, all eyes fell on me.
“She’s the witch,” Sarah mumbled.
I could feel hot tears stinging the corners of my eyes. Everything was getting tingly and I couldn’t breathe. I glanced to the stairs; no one was actively blocking me, but if I ran, would they stop me?
I looked back to find Gil stalking toward me, charcoal outstretched. He flashed that cool, collected smile as he approached me.
“Well c’mon, witch,” he said playfully.
It just wasn’t the same for me.
***
It was getting dark when I finished. Had it taken me that long?
Most of the circle was complete when we arrived; I didn’t have much to fill in, and yet now it was nearly night and I couldn’t even remember finishing the pentagram. One moment, Gil was handing me the charcoal, and the next, we were climbing out of the basement. Everything in between?
Gone.
I tried, and failed, to piece everything together. I started with what had happened as soon as we entered the basement. Everything was clear in my mind then. As I thought further along, my head began to throb. In fact, the closer I got to Gil’s insistence that we fill it in, the hazier things got, and the more my head hurt. In the end, I couldn’t recall what had happened, and just trying to remember brought on a massive headache. It sucked, but as long as I didn’t think too much about the gap, the throbbing was bearable.
The only proof of what had happened? Ugly black stains darkening my palms. My hands smelled so foul, like I’d been writing with sulfur instead. Just looking at them made me uncomfortable; somehow, it felt wet and sticky, and a little warm…I wiped my hands on my shorts, but it didn’t do any good. My hands were no less dirty, sticky, and smelly, and now I’d smeared the same gunk on my clothes.
Whatever. Just another part of a day gone sour. A headache and being filthy were nothing new, and not nearly the worst result of our little adventure.
No one said it, in fact, no one said anything, but it was time to go home. We moved as briskly as we could, but it didn’t matter; at this point, we were all going to be in trouble, no matter how quickly we hustled.
Dealing with the whispers was a little harder.
At first, I thought it was the gang talking about me. I had noticed how they all huddled together, Russ, Sarah, and Danny, walking just a little further ahead, not looking back. But the more I listened, the more I realized the voices didn’t sound anything like them. Not them…. not Gil.
For the most part, my friends looked absolutely miserable. And yet the voices–very quiet voices, almost excited, chattering over each other. If I could make anything out–
Thank you.
The sort of gratitude that should have been comforting, but it picked at me instead. It was the only ‘positive’ of the night.
Still, worse:
Worse than the silent walk home,
Worse than the awkward, stiff goodbyes,
the way my friends wouldn’t even look at me….
Gil.
Even in the twilight, with the sun rapidly disappearing over the horizon, it was hard to miss the wild grin plastered all over his face.