The beams from three cell phones illuminated the otherwise pitch-black forest preserve, while the shuffling of leaves and cracking of twigs echoed through the crisp night air.
Taylor was lagging behind her two best friends, fidgeted, her eyes darting nervously around. “I’m not sure about this. This isn’t what I was thinking…”
Mandi whirled round on her frumpish friend, aiming the blinding light at her. “Don’t you want them to get a dose of their own medicine?”
Taylor shielded her eyes and nodded. “Yeah, but…”
“Do you like being called, ‘Tubby Taylor’?”
“No.”
Mandi swung her cell phone in the direction of Felicity. “And, do you enjoy still smelling your singed hair even after we cut it all off?”
“I didn’t say anything,” Felicity protested, bringing her free hand to her chest and then readjusting the bag over her shoulder.
Mandi held up the Ouija board. “Well, this is how we do it.” She also had a bag strapped across her torso. “We summon Vepar, we get them what they deserve.” With a huff she spun around and marched ahead.
Felicity looked at Taylor and gave her a reassuring smile. “It’ll be fun.” She shrugged and moved on.
Taylor sighed and followed after them. She didn’t actually believe they would be summoning anything, but was willing to try anything that might bring an end to the torment of life at school, especially with a whole other year to get through after this one. The three had been friends since the sixth grade, joining ranks as if together their awkwardness and pimpled faces would keep the teasing at bay. It hadn’t really, but at least they had each other.
They had started holding séances and trying to contact spirits through the Ouija board in middle school, but somehow the fad had stuck strong with Mandi, and Felicity was always eager to go along with whatever she said. That favorite past time became an obsession to Mandi and she started amassing books about the occult at a startling pace. Taylor questioned her once about it and received enough of an earful that she had gone back to what she did best, keep quiet.
After what seemed like an hour of trudging through the forest, Mandi came to a sudden stop, pulled the bag over her head and let it fall to the hard dirt with a deadened thump. She opened her arms as wide as the smile on her face. “This is it.”
Taylor and Felicity shared a nervous glance as they took in their surroundings, realizing just how far away they were from their neighborhood.
Mandi squatted down and started pulling candles out of her bag. Felicity joined her, unloading even more from hers, all blood red with symbols and words carved into them. They had worked on them the night before, when Felicity slept over, and at the time it had seemed really cool. But out here, in the middle of the woods, Felicity started to wonder if this was such a good idea.
“What if someone sees us?” she asked of Mandi, dumping the candles out. Mandi scoffed.
“Who? We’re like, miles away from anybody.” She handed Felicity a lighter. “Here, start lighting them. I’ll do the placements.”
“Who? We’re like, miles away from anybody.” She handed Felicity a lighter. “Here, start lighting them. I’ll do the placements.”
Taylor watched on, trying not to let the fear growing inside overtake her. With each new candle, the small clearing brightened and the need for the flashlights on their cell phones became unnecessary.
“Come into the circle you goof,” Mandi playfully teased Taylor, who was still standing, hesitant, on the outskirts.
Taylor shuffled in and helped hand candles off to Mandi. With all the candles lit, Mandi took a small hunting knife and opened it up. “You were serious?” Taylor asked, her eyebrows rising on her forehead. “You think we came all the way out here, carved all these candles, just as joke?” Mandi let out a huff and looked to Felicity, shaking her head in disbelief.
“It’s the only way it’ll work, Taylor,” Felicity said, backing up the leader of their merry triangle.
Mandi took in a deep breath and bit down on her bottom lip as she cut her palm. She then made a fist and let the blood drip down onto the blade. She stuck the tip of the knife into the cold earth and carved a large circle in front of herself, an intricate series of symbols were the final touches to the now sacred ground.
“That probably isn’t sanitary,” Taylor joked, her lip half upturned.
Mandi let out a little laugh at their goody-two-shoes friend. “Okay,” finally, she placed the Ouija board down on top of the circle of symbols and on top of that placed the planchette, “Taylor, you’re the scribe.” Mandi handed Taylor a pad of paper and a pen. “The planchette will move fast so I need you to pay close attention.”
“Got it,” Taylor nodded dutifully, taking her place on the ground cross-legged, before the board.
Mandi was sitting with her knees under her. Felicity sat cross-legged in front of the board, placing her first two fingers onto the planchette, also not believing they’d truly summon anything. Mandi smiled, the candlelight cast wicked flickers around the trees and their faces, and placed her fingers on the planchette as well, then closed her eyes.
The forest seemed too still, as the three teenage girls paused in that moment. “I seek thee, Vepar. I invoke thee, Vepar. I seek thee, Vepar. I invoke thee, Vepar.” Mandi opened her eyes, looking quickly to Felicity.
Recalling herself, Felicity shook her head and began mimicking the words of her friend. Eventually Taylor joined in, realizing what they were supposed to be doing.
A perfectly timed gust of wind blew through the trees, making Taylor shut her mouth. The other two fell silent a moment later as well, the candles flickering, but inexplicably staying lit through the strong blast.
Mandi licked her lips as it died down and smiled at her two friends. “Are you with us, Vepar?”
The planchette moved and the girls all took in a sharp breath. Taylor, hand shaking with a mix of excitement and fear, fumbled with the pen and held it, hovering in wait above the pad of paper in her lap. It moved slowly to the ‘Yes’. Felicity let out a girlish giggle.
“Are you guys moving it…” Taylor asked.
“Shh!” Mandi vehemently admonished her. “Show us yourself, for we are willing servants and masters both.”
“What?” Taylor whispered, her eyebrows knitting together.
Mandi cast her a look that Taylor had never seen before on her friends face. It was violent and coarse, and she recoiled from it. The planchette started moving.
D-O-N-T-L-O-O-K “Don’t look,” Taylor read out to them, in case they had missed it.
“Close your eyes,” Mandi ordered, quickly shutting hers.
“How are we…?”
“Shut up, Taylor, and close your eyes!” Mandi hoarsely whispered.
Taylor closed her eyes and felt the most unsettling sensation she had ever felt. Something crawled up her back, like someone using their fingernails to mimic a spider crawling up it, and settled on her shoulders.
Felicity was shaking, the shivers building, as fear took a hold. She had felt the same sensation up her back, but it was when a voice began to intone inside her head that she froze in terror at it. The voice was quickly whispering careful instructions. She gathered the words, as if they had been supplanted in her memory and the spilled out her mouth in gargled Latin, “No matter the horrors you see in front of you, do not dare to turn around. Should your will be great enough to see you thru, my unearthly talents will astound.”
As the fingers dug into her shoulders, and damp breath clouded along the skin of her neck, Taylor shook her head. “Stop it you guys!” She flung her eyes open, but the other girls were still seated in front of her, eyes closed, their mouths slack and dropping open.
“I told you not to look,” a wicked voice whispered inside Taylor’s head. She spun around to the noise that must have been behind her and let out a blood-curdling scream.
The two other girls jolted out of their catatonia, and watched in shock as their friend Taylor’s body contorted and bent, like a paper doll being stashed away, her knees and legs and shoulders, all her joints folding incorrectly into a compact size. Felicity was the first to let out a scream, as she witness her friend become balled into something not at all human, bones snapping, blood spilling from the flesh where the broken bones had cracked through.
Mandi fell across the board, scrambling to control Felicity, pressing her hand to her mouth. “Stop! Stop, Felicity, stop!” Felicity struggled, twisting. “Don’t look behind you!”
This last shout reminded Felicity of something and she became eerily still. The voice in her head had told her not to look, no matter what was happing in front of her, do not look over your shoulder, do not turn. If she didn’t turn, she would be fine.
Taylor’s screams of pain were suddenly silenced, her eyes falling slack and all life draining from them. She fell from the place she had been suspended in the air with a disgusting slopping sound, the blood splattering from the impact onto her friends’ faces.
Felicity let out a terrified groan, trying to swallow down the saliva and the salty tears that streamed down her face, now mixed with blood.
Mandi was trying to remain calm, though her eyes were brimming with tears and her body shook like she had just stepped out of a deep freeze. Her teeth chattered inside her skull, no matter how hard she clenched her jaw shut. Mandi slowly lifted her head from the ground near Taylor; she couldn’t bring herself to fully look at the compact mass of torn flesh, broken bones and protruding intestines. She slowly turned and took in Felicity’s shoes, her legs, up to her torso and neck and face. And then she saw the shadow lurking at the edge of the candlelight. She involuntarily let out a hint of a sob, clawing her hands over her mouth to keep it from escaping.
Felicity bent over, crying into the dirt at her feet. The putrid fumes from her mangled friend sent a race of vomit out of her mouth. The bile and chain store burrito splattered onto the Ouija board. When she looked up at Mandi, she saw her eyes were not on her, but looking just over her shoulder. Felicity had to physically dig her hands into the dirt to keep from turning. She stared into the horrified eyes of her friend, before they suddenly locked in on the unholy thing just over Mandi’s shoulder, turning her chest to stone.
The ghoulish creature had arms that were too long, and sickly dark skin that shone in the candlelight.
“What?” Mandi asked of her, suddenly noticing that Felicity wasn’t looking at her, but past her. “What is it?”
Felicity still could not find breath. The creature had no face, or at least not one she could see, as it slowly tipped it’s long torso over the candles and into the circle, castling a tangled shadow.
Mandi’s eyes caught once more on the figure behind Felicity, as it floated closer to the ring of candles. She could now make out how incredibly tall it was, the hair was long and dark, hanging down the shoulders. Mandi tipped to the side, looking around Felicity to the ground where it walked, she could hear the slithering slide and saw the reflection of fish-like scales that glinted in the warm light. The figure had a strong serpent like tail, except that a flash of a fin caught and reflected and then was gone. “Do you see it, Felicity?”
Felicity let out the tiniest of gurgles, as breath sucked into her mouth and down into her lungs. She did not; she only saw a disgusting creature, the skin mottled and shining with the oozing puss and scabs of blood, as it crawled on long legs and hands toward her friend.
“Felicity!” Mandi whispered harshly. “Do you see it?” She tried to get Felicity’s attention, weaving her head back and forth in front of her friends face.
Terrified, wide eyes finally registered Mandi, and they locked on her face.
“Do you see it?” Mandi took a moment to look up at the figure behind Felicity, watching it now step, with human legs, over the candles and into the circle. Its skin was tattooed in patterns of scars and tar, hair hung over its face, but there was a glisten of the lips, curved ever so slightly, almost unnaturally, upward at the corners. Mandi looked once more at her friend.
Felicity, watching it now step, with human legs, over the candles and into the circle. Its skin was tattooed in patterns of scars and tar, hair hung over its face, but there was a glisten of the lips, curved ever so slightly, almost unnaturally, upward at the corners. Mandi looked once more at her friend.
Felicity’s eyes looked up over her head now, up at the creature with the melted face with sunken eyes and putrefying flesh. A long thin tongue, the color of white mushrooms, hung from the slack mouth, which was too wide for the face, and inside the glint of jagged, broken teeth. She wanted to scream, she was about to scream when Mandi tilted her head up and back.
“You looked,” the crazy, unhinged mouth of the creature said, spilling thick saliva down on Mandi’s face. The saliva transformed into worms that dug under her flesh, causing Mandi to shriek and flail and stand up from the dirt. She clawed at her face, brushing them to the earth, but they kept multiplying and digging under her skin. Mounds of white formed on her skin and burst with pus, as maggots came out, crawling over her face. She flailed, kicking at the candles, knocking them asunder and blinking them out.
Felicity felt a bony hand come down on her shoulder and hot, rancid breath brush at her hair. She scrambled forward, rushing to her feet, slipping through her own vomit on the Ouija board and took off into the woods. Her panting breath came fast and loud, her heart thudding inside her ears, making up a kind of white noise that filled the air around her. She heard no cracks of footsteps behind her, but she ran, and ran. She fell, righted herself, pushing on, knowing she was going the wrong way, but also knowing she simply had to get away. Reaching out, she grabbed a hold of a tree, swung herself around and fell to the ground. Her breath pushed in and out, far too loud, but she could not control it. She clung to the tree, pressing her cheek into rigid bark, trying to stop her raging, burning lungs from needing air. She held it, paused, listening to the woods around her. The silence was deafening, and her eyes spread wide and wider still, until it seemed they would pop out of her skull. She could feel him, behind her the shadow figure of Vepar loomed.
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