I’d always had a girl-crush on her, and would bet that most everyone else felt the same way. I gleaned a good amount of self confidence from the fact that she chose to spend time with me. She wasn’t a solid part of our clique, per se, but was there enough for us all to feel a bit cooler.
“What are we up to, my merry band of bad behaving buddies?” Kayla asks, staring at us through thickly lashed, cocoa eyes.
I raise the baggy and shake it in lieu of an answer and laugh as she immediately takes the last pill without a question. “Ecstasy! Craig and I took this a few months ago, He braided my hair for about three hours while we discussed evolution, The Bermuda Triangle and Proust. Good times,” She says as she raises her glass of what appears to be straight whiskey. I shake my head in awe as she sips it without even the hint of a wince.
“How long does this take to kick in?” Juniper asks.
“It took me about a half an hour, but Craig didn’t feel it for an hour,” Kayla tells her as she looks around with interest. “This house is wonderfully creepy.”
“It truly is,” Erik says. “It was built in 1672 and has been in the family ever since.”
“Is it haunted?” I ask, wondering why I’d never thought to ask before.
“No—“ Erik says at the exact time that Juniper emphatically shouts yes.
“It is!” Juniper says, pointing at her brother incredulously.
“Not one thing has ever happened to me here before,” he tells her with a shrug.
“Well, plenty has happened to me,” Juniper counters as Erik rolls his eyes.
“Is this the imaginary friend thing?” he asks with a disbelieving groan.
“She wasn’t imaginary,” Juniper says, leaning her head back and staring blankly at the ceiling. “I don’t remember a lot from back then, because I was tiny—but I do remember her.”
“Was it a little girl?” I ask, intrigued and confused as to how I’d never heard about this before. It’s a night of firsts.
“No,” Juniper answers with wide eyes. “A fully grown woman. I can remember her before I can remember almost anything else. She was absolutely beautiful with this long, long black hair and these soulful, dark eyes.”
“Do you still see her?” Kayla asks evenly, sitting forward, balancing her forearms on her smooth knees.
“No, no,” Juniper stares at us knowingly. “I know it all sounds crazy, but I haven’t seen her since I was about eight. She’d always been so nice, she felt like a friend. When my parents and Erik ignored me she’d be there and talk with me endlessly. She always left when I went to sleep, but one night she stayed. She started to scare me.”
“How? What did she do?” I ask greedily, chills running up my spine as I observe Juniper’s face in the flickering light of the fireplace.
“I don’t remember what she said exactly but she started getting very insistent with me, she would tell me to do things. And before you ask—I don’t recall what—and It wasn’t so much what she was asking, but how. She was angry and insistent and started to stay night after night, even when I became frightened and asked her to leave,” she shakes almost imperceptibly, as though the anxiety is still tightly coiled in her subconscious and is striking again, just at the mention of this. “I told her I’d go tell my parents and she told me I’d better not. That I couldn’t tell anyone. She didn’t say what she’d do if I did, but it was clear it would be bad.”
“Holy shit,” I mutter inelegantly.
“Well, I told them. They dismissed it as my imagination and that night I had put on my nightlight and finally fell asleep while she stared at me silently from the edge of my bed. I was woken as she pulled me onto the floor, scratching at me and pinching me and she looked so different. Not beautiful any longer, but almost like a creature with burning, angry eyes and she was making this frightening hiss while she did it—whispering harsh things I couldn’t really understand. I started crying and then it turned to screaming until my parents ran in and turned on the light and, of course, she was gone. My body was covered in scratches and my parents were confounded.
Remember, Erik?” She looks at him expectantly.
He nods slowly and then snorts, “Our parents were concerned and took her to a spiritual advisor through the church rather than a shrink. Such bunk.”
“It mustn’t have been, because that was the last time I saw her,” she retorts pointedly.
“Did she have a name?” Kayla asks, crossing her slender, mocha legs in the opposite direction to face Juniper.
“I don’t remember,” Juniper answers, her eyes a bit haunted.
“We have a little time until this kicks in,” Kayla says, breaking the silence that had settled upon us, as she leans over and pulls a Ouija Board out of her hobo bag. “Want to use this?”
“Oh, good lord,” Erik groans, probably thinking he was seeing his chances of getting laid go right down the drain.
“Why not?” Juniper shrugs. “We are already in spooky mode anyhow.”
Five minutes later we’d lit candles and were all arranged on the floor around the coffee table with the Ouija Board sitting patiently for us in the middle. Somehow arcane and also new looking, with its oddly shaped communication apparatus and a plastic window squarely in the middle. Somehow I’d gone to countless slumber parties and not seen one in person until this moment.
“I love how you just have a Ouija Board in your bag,” I tell Kayla.
“Have spirit board, will travel,” she says by way of explanation.
