“For telling you about her,” she recounts almost blandly, her fingers twisting and twining against her jeans. “She attacked me as a warning when I was a child, but this was a punishment. I was not ever to speak of her, but I thought she was gone and I was safe, but she wasn’t. She was always there and set things into motion and then bided her time until we made her stronger when we summoned her.”
“With the Ouija Board?” Kayla’s voice was almost unrecognizable as she gagged out the question while she perched stiffly at the edge of the couch.
“Kayla, you cannot possibly buy into this,” Erik protested in disbelief, staring at her with an open mouth. “You are one of the most rational people I’ve ever met.”
“I have always believed in the supernatural,” Kayla tells him directly, voice now unwavering. “Hence the Ouija Board that night.”
“Juni,” I begin, turning my body towards her, trying to ignore the shifting shadows on the walls that feel as though they have intensified since Juniper began talking. “If she punished you before, why are you talking about it again now?”
“She took my eyes, and with them her power to physically control me, but she can still threaten those I love, so it was an acceptable loss for her. She never liked me,” Juniper pauses, head tilting sharply as though her ears were honing in on slight noise in the air above her. “She’s here now.”
Kayla and I both stiffen and I try not to dart my head around in my fright as I struggle to find my voice. “If she has no power over you then how is she here?”
“You all still have eyes,” she answers, voice monotone.
“She’s here for us?” I strangle out, shivering as I remember the thing I saw in the elevator. The backs of my knees are now slick with the nervous sweat pooling there.
“We let her out and we must put her back again, but she gets stronger with you in town. It won’t be easy now,” her ominous speech chills me to my toes as I struggle to not bolt for the door, feeling as though my clutching the throw pillows to my side is the only thing anchoring me from flight.
“Should I leave?” I ask, affecting a calm timbre over my climbing fear.
“No,” Juniper says quickly. “She never left us, and she has brought misery and will continue to do so unless we stop her.”
“It was the drugs and your mental illness, Juniper,” Erik says through clenched teeth as he nervously rubs his palms up and down his sturdy thighs. I can see that this is the sort of thing he suffers through with Juniper daily, but while I wish to write her off as delusional to ease my own fear like he has, I can’t. She knows what I saw, because she saw it too, and it was the last thing she ever saw.
“Was it my mental illness that killed mom, dad, Monica and—”
“Stop!” Erik roars, making us all jump. “Just stop. I can’t...I can’t...” I am shocked to see tears at the corner of his eyes as he steals from the room, head down, leaden steps echoing through the shadow cast den.
Juniper straightens, her face placid despite the outburst. “You will all be victims if we don’t act now.”
“Juni,” Kayla begins carefully, leaning forward. “You must know how this sounds.”
“Yes, I do,” she allows. “But you know there is truth to it, and if you don’t realize now then you soon will. Hopefully it won’t be too late, Kayla, for you are the most expendable of us all.”
Kayla’s head rears back as though she’s been slapped and her eyes storm. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“You don’t understand,” Juniper’s voice has softened and she reaches out, bending forward towards Kayla’s voice until she has found her hand and squeezes it. “You aren’t an expendable person, you are extraordinary, but not to her. You don’t have a part to play except to complete the cycle, and she doesn’t want that so you are in danger.”
“Complete the cycle?” I manage as I look around, seeing the light eclipse outside, the clouds obscuring the late morning sun, sending licks of darkness across the walls.
“We all let her out and must contain her, and we must do it together. We must all be here recreating it, we must close out the Ouija session,” Juniper explains.
“That’s all? Just contact her again to say ‘bye, bitch’ to her?” I ask incredulously, suddenly peering around inanely in case she appears to take exception to my expletive.
“I believe so,” Juniper says with a faint nod. “She has always been here, but once we summoned her through the spirit board she was able to influence me to conjure her in the mirror, and her gate to this world was broken open. She is still in a sort of limbo, but her connection is growing.”
“Why do you say she grows stronger with me here?” My voice trembles audibly, but I’m far too uneasy to be embarrassed. The creeping shadows in the room have now darkened the cheery sofas to austerity.
“I don’t know why she chose you, but I do know it’s you,” Juniper’s voice is hard with conviction as her pale, slender hands rub the intricately carved oak arms of the chair.
“How?”
“When I was a child and she whispered demands to me, they all had to do with you, Kat. She wanted me to meet you, befriend you, bring you over,” Juniper’s hands stopped moving and her head slowly turned to meet my gaze, despite her milky eyes being sightless. “I did not remember because I was so little, but my mother did. She told me of the demands I’d confided in her as a child and then Mary took her.”
“Took her? Your mother? She died of an overdose,” Kayla intoned bluntly from her perch.
“She died, but it was Mary that killed her,” Juniper’s words are plain, unemotional and earnest and I
