When her cousin was presentable, Amber went for the phone. Before anyone else came, she hid her stake behind the washing machine again.
Four: Ricky
“Hey, Logan, this is west, right?” George asked the guy sitting in the lounge chair.
“It must be,” Logan said. “An hour ago the sun was right in my eyes.”
George nodded. He paused for a minute to watch Logan play his video game. There were a couple of students who only played games in the student lounge. Logan said that he couldn’t keep the system in his own room or he would play it all the time. He was completely addicted. When he was playing, there was nothing else that could steal his focus.
Logan looked over when George started moving the other chairs around to make an open space.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going to perform the Ceremony of the King’s Flame.”
“Huh?” Logan asked. His eyes were glued to the screen.
“It’s an old magic ceremony,” George said. “Transcribed from the mouth of Abil-Ili and stolen from his sepulcher by grave robbers, fifty years after his death.”
“What are you even talking about?”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll be done in a few minutes.”
George started arranging the string and painting the floor with pure spring water from a vial. When he lit the candles, Logan quit his game and sat in one of the chairs to face George. Apparently, there was something that could grab Logan’s attention away from his game.
George spread out the pieces of paper and knelt just outside of the circle. Before he started reading, he leaned in and put a stuffed animal in the center of the pentagram that he had painted on the floor.
“You’re not supposed to have open flames,” Sandy said. She took a chair next to Logan.
“It’s just for a minute,” George said. “It’s religious. They can’t infringe on my religious practice.”
“That’s true,” Logan said. “Kirk had his student ID taken with a colander on his head.”
“That’s religious?” Sandy asked.
“Yup. He’s a Pastafarian. He worships the Flying Spaghetti Monster.”
“No way,” Sandy said.
“It’s true,” George said. He turned to them. “Can you guys stay quiet for, like, three minutes. I have to recite this precisely and I have to really concentrate.”
They both nodded.
George began reading. Everything was written out phonetically, so all he had to do was read it precisely. It wasn’t too difficult, although he had to work to not do a Spanish accent. Most of the time he read aloud, it was in Spanish class, so his tongue automatically wanted to roll all the Rs.
Logan coughed in the middle of the last line and George nearly stammered.
As he finished, the stuffed animal rocked and then fell over.
George sat back on his heels.
“What was supposed to happen?” Sandy asked.
“Nothing,” Logan said. “It was just a religious thing.”
George moved fast. The stuffed animal was already starting to vibrate a little. The floor was still damp where George had brushed the spring water into a circumscribed pentagram. As the stuffed bear vibrated, the water marks were darkening to a red color and some of the drops were beginning to move towards the center of the circle. None of this was described in the papers in front of him, but George had a pretty good idea what to expect. He reached down and grabbed the box of matches. Sliding a matchstick out, he was just about to strike it when the candles all extinguished at the same time.
“What was that?” Sandy asked.
“Wind,” Logan said.
George struck the match.
The stuffed bear stopped vibrating. It was on its side. The glass eyes stared right at George. As the matchstick burned down towards his fingers, George almost threw it aside to grab another. Just then, the bear’s arm moved and it pushed itself up to its feet.
“No way,” Sandy said.
George tossed the match.
Flying through the air, the matchstick nearly burned out. When it landed at the feet of the stuffed bear, the animal tilted its plush head down so the glass eyes could see the flame. It caught immediately and exploded with a whoosh of flame. The fire was gone as quickly as it started and the bear fell onto its back. There was no smoke and the stuffed animal was still.
“What religion is this?” Logan asked.
The door from the stairwell opened. George’s brother Ricky strode forward, holding a pillowcase.
“Wait, wait, wait,” George said, getting to his feet. He put out his arm and Ricky stopped. George fumbled another match from the box, struck it, and tossed it towards the bear. This time, nothing happened.
“I think we’re okay,” George said.
“Regardless, that thing goes in the incinerator.”
“Hold up,” George said. Before he let Ricky approach the bear, George doused the pillowcase with the rest of the spring water. Ricky picked the thing up like a dog turd, turning the pillowcase inside out before the grabbed it. When he had it in the bag, he twisted it and tied a knot in the cloth.
“Come on,” Ricky said.
“Let me get my stuff together,” George said. He knelt to pack his things back into his pack.
“What was that?” Logan asked. “What was any of that?”
“Just a ceremony,” George said. “It’s a whole thing. We’re trying to attract these paranormal things so we had to do a paranormal ceremony and we needed big windows that faced west. This was the easiest place I could think of.”
“Oh,” Logan said.
He looked over to Sandy who was just standing there with her mouth hanging open.
“Hey, you guys are going home for the summer, right?” George asked them.
“Yeah. I am,” Logan said.
“Where?”
“Florida,” he said.
George pointed to Sandy who stammered out her answer, “I’m from Westbrook.”
“Listen, Sandy, if you hear anything has happened to me—like murder, or I disappear, or anything like that—do yourself a favor and don’t be here this summer, okay? Just in case they’re drawn to you because of what you witnessed, okay?”
“They’ll be fine,” Ricky said from the door to the stairs. “Come on.”
“Gotta
