Having sex in the cramped bathroom was difficult, but it served its purpose. My mind was cleared and there wasn’t a trace of fear as we left the blue tiled confines of the room and headed down the stairs. I hoped my friend and his wife were oblivious to Meredith and I inappropriately using their guest bathroom, and when we got onto the main floor I saw they were embroiled in a tear streaked family conversation. Our absence was missed.
“OK, I hope you are all ready.” Meredith walked into the room like she owned it, something she did everywhere she went. Such was her personality. “We are going to start. While Chris handles setting up the ceremony I will walk each of you though what you have to do.”
I took my cue and headed back out to the living room to set things up. My part was pretty basic here; I would draw another circle of salt for protection, draw a few simple symbols around the perimeter, and then sit back and document what happened. Since I wasn’t attached to the house in any way I couldn’t be a part of the actual ceremony.
By the time I finished my duties and got the video camera everyone came walking through the door. Meredith took her spot in the circle and invited everyone to join her, one at a time. Tony was the last to enter, stepping carefully over the salt as he was instructed and taking his place at the southern end of the circle that I had marked with a pentacle.
Meredith called out to the guardians and keepers of the corners, blessed the circle and set about her duties. I noticed the familiar smell of sulfur and heard the scratching on the walls. The doorway was now fully open, and I would have to close it while they stayed safely in the circle. The camera stayed running while I grabbed the bundle of sage and lit it. Immediately the scent of sulfur died out and I began to follow the smoke through the house. It led me into Jennifer’s room.
The purple paint on the wall looked almost black in the shadows, the innocuous teenage things along the wall and floor took on an ominous shape, almost threatening me as I headed around her room following the tendrils of white smoke that drifted lazily from my bundle of dried burning plant. I watched the smoke slither through the statically charged air and flow freeform towards the closet, where it suddenly stopped.
The smoke had hit a wall and had seemingly stopped dead. I knew this wasn’t the case, the smoke was just continuing on to a realm I couldn’t see.
I let the sage burn on Jennifer’s desk while I placed the salt in a half circle around the opening of the door to prevent anything else from coming through. The symbols I drew on the floor made it a one way exit, calling the things that had come through already and sending them back. I could feel the wind pick up in her room, the posters and papers on her wall suddenly lifting off as if a cyclone had started at the heart of her bedroom.
The voices began shortly after, screaming, horrible voices that whispered from a thousand realities away, threatening me and begging me at the same time. I could hear the sound of claws scratching against the carpet and digging into the wood underneath, the heavy footfalls of things better left unseen as they were sucked back into the void. There were screams and wails and so many emotions my mind reeled as it struggled to keep them all in check.
I alternately became a vessel and a guardian, struggling within myself to remain closed off to everything that tried to claim my body and soul as it’s own.
Meredith yelled out from the other room, her voice carrying amongst the others. Either in this reality or another I heard her, the powers with her struggling against things so much more than her. She searched for the power to rid the house of this, but there was a massive darkness that seemed to fill every corner, something so much more than she had ever fought before. It was everywhere at once, yet hidden enough to be nowhere.
Everything we did was useless against this new power. It had found a way to hide under the veil, and Meredith just didn’t have the power to pull it out. I could hear her in my mind, screaming out and struggling and I was powerless to help her.
“Jennifer,” Meredith called out through the ether, “I need your help. I need you to find the power inside of you and wrap it around me so I can use it. I need you to concentrate.”
There were muffled objections but I didn’t have the psychic link with Jennifer that I did with Meredith. I couldn’t hear what the child was saying, but I could hear Meredith’s responses to her. I knew Jennifer didn’t think she could do, I could hear Meredith coaching her and trying to stroke her confidence into action.
Slowly the static charge in the room began to build. The hair on my arms and neck stood up, small pops of blue-green light exploded through the gloom. All the while I could hear Meredith screaming to Jennifer for help, begging her to try because the thing she couldn’t reach was slowly killing her. I could feel ice form around my heart as the fingers of death closed in around me. It was then that I realized I was in love with Meredith and she with me, and all I could do was remain a world away from her and listen to her die.
“Please Jennifer, I can’t do this on my own.” Her voice echoed through my head, filling me with a pain I won’t relive.
“I can’t” The sudden scream filled my head, and I knew Jennifer’s powers were building. “I just can’t. I don’t know how.” She was crying, her mind reaching out in all directions, the power leaking out of her. “I just can’t.” It was taking an amazing amount of power from the little girl just for me to be able to hear her, yet there was no way for her to know this. I’m not psychic; I have no gifts above that of a normal man. If I can hear the psychic whisperings in my head it comes from someone else’s gifts.
“Yes you can Jennifer.” Tony’s voice filled my head. I instinctively looked around the room, expecting him to somehow be there with me. Jennifer’s power had created a surge effect giving Tony the ability to talk to her through her head. “I believe in you. You can do this. I know you can?” His voice ebbed and flowed, coming and going like the tide as the psychic energy from his step daughter washed and receded over him.
There was another static burst and I could feel something very powerful coming up to the doorway. The smoke coming off the sage bowed outwards away from the door and I was suddenly very afraid. I didn’t know what wanted to get in here, but I knew it was evil. I hoped my simple spells would work.
“Concentrate on my voice Jennifer.” Meredith’s voice was growing feint. There wasn’t a lot of time left for her. “Listen to me and send your power to me. Right to my voice. Close your eyes and listen to me talking, send me your strength, send my your power. “
There was a sudden shift in the atmosphere. My ears clogged as if I was taking off on a plane, my sinuses filling with pressure and making my ears pop. I found it very hard to breath and the small explosions of light that danced around me suddenly grew larger and more intense. I could feel whatever had been hiding getting pulled out and shoved through the door.
The evil that had just now arrived was pushing back, trying to get itself and the hidden thing back into our realm. It was a battle of wills, and the screaming in my head mixed with the pressure there to create something that felt like dynamite. The fuse was lit and my head was going to blow up, there was no way I could fight it.
As with most things in life, timing was everything, and boy did I pick the wrong time to walk into Tony’s house. I picked the wrong time to fall in love with Meredith, the wrong time to help to a friend, and the wrong time to help him make a stand.
But when my head exploded it was the exact right time.
Jennifer had been able to pinpoint her energy and send it to Meredith, but she couldn’t hold all that power in herself without burning up. She had to send it to me, along with everything she possessed. Meredith timed it right, the final burst of energy leaving her, that gorgeous body I had kissed and made love to collapsing into the circle dead just as I was hit with an overload of energy and died.
My head exploded outwards with a pop just as the two evil forces broke through the gate. The psychic force from my death creating a vacuum that pulled everything to the door and slammed it shut, never to be opened again.
Now I find myself with eternity to think about timing, love, loss, and friendship. If I had it to do over again I would.
Now Meredith and I float through the ether, our spectral bodies intertwined and exploring the infinite arrays of our beings. Spectral sex is so much better than I ever would have thought, but with most things in death, timing is everything.
The END
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