by Rose, Willow
"What are you doing, you silly goose?" Ella asked as she approached.
Jacob reached up his arms signaling he wanted her to pick him up. "You want out of your jail, don't you?" she said and took him in her arms. Jacob hugged her tenderly with a small shriek. Then he pointed at the window. "You wanna have a look?" Ella asked. "There is a storm coming. I bet you want to look at that, huh?"
She brought him to the window and while standing behind him and holding his hands she sat him down in the windowsill to let him look out. He put the palm of his hand on the glass.
"Feels cold, right? It's because the wind is so cold outside."
Jacob looked up at her and grinned. Then he pointed at Ella. She laughed and nodded. "Ella. Can you say Ella?"
But Jacob hadn't started speaking yet. More than two years old and still not a word only babbling sounds. It annoyed their mother, but Ella enjoyed it. She wanted Jacob to stay the way he was. She enjoyed being the only one who understood everything he told her with his gestures and noises.
"Don't worry. I'm not going anywhere. I'm not leaving you here alone with them," Ella said and kissed Jacob's small nose. "They don't even understand anything you say. I'm the only one who knows that when you touch your throat it means you're thirsty or when you point into the air it's because you've heard an airplane. Mom and Dad are way too busy to notice those little things. If they send me away you'll have to learn how to speak." Jacob looked at her, and then tilted his head. Ella laughed again, and then she became serious. "Just promise me one thing; never ever become like everybody else. Promise me that?"
Jacob grinned and Ella took that as a yes. The wind had gotten a strong hold on the big birch tree outside the window. Its long, bare branches scraped against the house. The sky above the ocean looked pitch-black and threatening.
Ella lifted Jacob up in her arms again. "Better get you back to bed," she said. "This storm looks like it could be a bad one."
2
THEY WERE MESSING around. None of them really believed in this shit, well maybe except for Peter. He was the one who had brought the Ouija board to their secret meeting place above the gym. Now all four of them were putting their fingers on the planchette and Peter was asking it a question:
"Is there a spirit in the room?"
The planchette didn't move. Michael giggled. Peter looked at Ivan and the rest of the group. "Come on guys, it only works if you're serious about it."
Michael giggled again. Peter gave him a look.
"Come one, man," Michael said. "It's hard not to laugh."
Ivan stared at both of them and fought his own desire to giggle. But Peter would be furious and Ivan feared his anger more than anything. Peter had invited Ivan to be a part of the group, something Ivan had wanted for so long. To be accepted, to be a part of the secret order he had only heard rumors about. It was widely known among the students at Herlufsholm boarding school as the most exclusive group, one you had to be specially chosen to become a part of. Ivan had accepted Peter's invitation and gone through all the initiation rituals that cost him a trip to the hospital and several broken ribs, but that was well worth it now that he had the honor of becoming a full-blown member tonight.
"Let's try again," Peter said and they all put their fingers on the planchette. Peter closed his eyes and focused. "Is there a spirit in the room?"
They all stared at the board. Nothing happened. "We're not doing it right," Peter growled. "My brother used to use this and always received an answer."
Mads was Peter's older brother, the one who had introduced the secret order to his baby brother and passed down the keys to the secret place, thereby making him the leader. He had taught him all he knew, Peter always said. He had even helped him make his first kill. Tonight it was Ivan's first time and Peter had promised to help him follow through, to take his virginity, as they called it.
Peter closed his eyes again. "Is there a spirit in the room?" he asked.
"I don't know about this ..." Michael said.
He barely finished the sentence before Peter leaned over and slammed his fist into his face. Dazed Michael felt his nose and got blood on his hand. Then he grinned and bumped fists with Peter.
"Thanks man."
When they grabbed the planchette again it suddenly moved. Ivan gasped and watched as it moved towards "yes". Peter jumped excitedly from his chair. "We've got one!"
Ivan felt his heart rate go up. He had never seen anything like this before. His background was very academic and he had always been taught that anything not proven by science was bogus and for feeble women who were so bored in their lives that they had to believe that there was more to it than just this forsaken world. To him it was all fairy tales that stupid people (or stupid children) believed in. And if there was one thing Ivan wasn't, then it was just that. Stupid. He was smart. Top of his class. He opened his eyes widely as Peter spoke again:
"Tell us, spirit. Are you good or evil?"
A pause followed where they stared at the board. Then the planchette moved again and they all gasped simultaneously. It moved across the letters spelling out words that Peter put together.
"I ... am ... the ... spirit ... that ... was ... within ... Cain."
Peter smiled and nodded. "Cain killed Abel. That'll do," he said.
Ivan felt a chill crawl down his back. The wind was picking up outside the room and throwing leaves on the windows in the roof above them.
"Dear spirit that was within Cain, we worship you on this evening when we go and do our kill, but tell us evil spirit, where should we go. Who should we kill tonight?"
They all stared at the planchette in excitement as it spelled out a name.
"Lucas," Peter said out loud with a grin. "Who the hell is Lucas?"
"Maybe it means the Lucas family," Michael said. "They live on the island, by the beach. They have that girl; you know that fat little one who looks like an egg."
They all nodded and laughed. Ivan had only seen her once when he and his friends had spend their weekend in a summer cabin on the island of Enoe and he saw her bouncing on a trampoline in her yard as they passed it on their way to the beach. He shivered in disgust.
"Guess it's time to crack the egg," Peter said.
3
"WHAT WERE YOU doing in your brother's room?"
Ella's father looked at her menacingly. He had seen her come out of Jacob's room after she had put the baby back in his bed. "You know we don't want you to go in there after he is put to bed."
Ella didn't even feel the pain on her behind when her father hit her once again with his belt on her bare skin. Her mother came upstairs and stood in front of Ella looking at her while she was lying across her father's lap with her pants pulled down to her knees.
"She is doing something to him, Frederik, I just know she is. He’s going to turn out just like her. We have to get her way from him. I'm afraid she has already cursed him somehow and that’s why he's not speaking. Oh, the horror, what if he never speaks? What if she has somehow taken away his ability to talk?"
"Let's not get ahead of ourselves, Marie," her father replied, then swung the belt again feeling a wave of pleasure course through his body.
It left a bleeding mark, but Ella hardly moved. She stared defiantly at her mother while biting her lip.
Her mother turned her head away. "I don't like the way she looks at me," she said to her husband. "She does that all the time. I mean if looks could kill ..."
Ella's father sighed. "I agree that she has been defying us a lot lately, but she is still ..."
"What? Our daughter?" Marie snorted. She pointed at Ella. "That ... thing has never been my daughter." She turned around and walked towards the door. Then she stopped. "Besides you know beating her won't help one bit," she said before she left the room.
Ella's father sighed again then threw the belt away. He grabbed Ella by the shoulders then helped her get up. Their eyes locked for a second. Ella saw how he pulled backwards as if he was afraid of her. Then smile
d and caressed her round cheek. "You know I have to punish you when you do not obey us, right?"
Ella didn't even blink. Her panties had fallen to the ground. Her dad stared at her privates. Then he reached over and cupped it with his hand. "You seem perfectly normal to me," he groaned. "Soon you'll grow taller and have breasts like any other girl," he said and lifted her shirt. He touched her chest and squeezed her nipples. Then he kissed them and licked her across the stomach down to her privates. Ella stared at him motionless while the wind picked up outside the windows. In the distance she could hear the waves as they hit the shore. They sounded angrier and more aggressive than ever.
"A storm is coming," Ella said.
Her father lifted his head and looked at her. She looked down and their eyes met once again. He pulled away with a gasp.
"It's going to be bad," she continued.
An anxiety grew in her father's eyes, and then he slapped her across the cheek. She hardly moved. "Go to your room," he said. "And put those pants on, you filthy monster."
But Ella didn't go to her room. Instead she ran to the end of the hallway, found the hatch to the attic and opened it by pulling the string. She pulled down the ladder and climbed it while fighting her tears. As soon as she was up, she pulled the hatch closed. The attic was her favorite place to hide from her mom and dad, since they never thought to look for her there. They would never admit to it, but they were both scared to death of the place. Her mom claimed she had once seen a black man standing in the attic wearing clothes from the eighteenth century and her dad couldn't go up there without feeling a strange, unbearable pressure in both his ears.
Ella never saw or felt any of all that, on the contrary she quite enjoyed hanging out up there, isolated from the world. She went to an old red velvet chair that belonged to the previous owners of the house and sat down. From there she could look out the small window and still see the ocean and the beach. The waves were white with frothy foam. Ella sighed and wished she could bring Jacob with her up there, and then she would definitely live up here between the old paintings and furniture. Why the previous owner hadn't brought their stuff with them when they left the house, Ella didn't know, but she enjoyed going through all their strange things. She took special delight in rummaging through the wooden chest and looking at all the old pictures and clothes in it. It was cool the way a fog always overflowed out of it when she opened the lid and it sounded like it took in a deep sigh.
Ella got up from the chair and knelt beside the chest. Carefully she opened the lid. The fog came and went and afterwards she peeked inside. There seemed to be more stuff every time, she never got to the bottom of it. She picked up some pictures and looked through them. Pictures of a little girl about the same age as Ella. The picture was in black and white. Ella touched it gently. The girl looked back at her. Emma put it back in the chest, and then found a small jewelry box. She remembered having opened it once before. Now she did it again and stared at the pair of earrings on the bottom of it. Green beautiful stones in each of them. Ella picked them up and put them on. Then she went to the old body-sized mirror and looked at herself. But it wasn't her own reflection looking back. It was that of the little girl from the picture wearing the same earrings.
Ella smiled and waved. She had seen her in there before. The girl waved back. Then Ella put her hand on the mirror like she had done once before and as soon as she saw the girl do the same, she closed her eyes. Her body started shaking and she felt how she was slowly filled with something, she opened her eyes and looked at the white smoke oozing through into her hand and through her body. When it was over she lifted her eyes and stared in the mirror only to realize the little girl was gone.
4
THEY WERE DRINKING heavily. Drinking, smoking pot and doing coke while yelling and screaming volatile words at each other. The music was hard-core rap. Lil Wayne sang:
We cop a whip and drop a brick - that's how we do it
Weed, liquor, money, and guns how we do it
Freak bitch to swallow cum like fluid
Then they pulled off their school uniforms and circled each other with naked torsos while grunting and growling.
Peter was the first to make a move. He stepped towards Michael and punched him in the face where he had hit him earlier. Michael was squirming in pain. More blood ran out of his nose. He wiped it off on his bare arm, then went towards Peter and punched his fist into his abdomen that despite of all of Peter's many hours in the boarding school's gym caved to the hit. He groaned and bent forward in pain. Then Michael lifted his leg and kicked him in the face, causing him to fall backwards.
Peter was in pain, but nevertheless quickly back on his legs, delivering a punch at one of the other boys, Ole, blowing the air out of him immediately. Once back up, Ole threw a punch at Ivan and Ivan threw one back at Michael. Soon they were all sweating, panting, catching their breath, and bleeding on the floor.
Peter raised his hand to stop them. Then he took the bottle of vodka from the table and passed it around. They all drank from it. Ivan panted and grinned. He enjoyed this immensely. It left him with a great feeling of being alive, finally for the first time since he had been sent to this school.
It had been hard on Ivan to leave his home and his old school. But since his parents had died in a helicopter crash his aunt who now had custody didn't know what else to do with him. Travelling was her life and she could hardly drag a seventeen-year-old boy with her. Besides he had to finish high-school. It wasn't that it was bad enough to have to leave the house he had grown up in and say goodbye to his old life, it was the fact that he had also lost his girlfriend. Not because he had to leave but right before the fatal crash that killed his parents, Amanda had been taken from him. Not by another boy from school that she had fallen in love with, no by Ivan's own big brother who was home on vacation from business school in Switzerland. Over dinner he flirted heavily with Amanda and later he had Ivan in a closet of his room, seduced Amanda and had sex with her against her will in his bed forcing Ivan to listen to them all night long, moaning and breathing and Amanda crying for help.
The experience had left Ivan numb, emotionless. He wanted to be angry; he wanted to at least feel furious, something, but there was nothing. Not even when the police came to his door one afternoon a few days later and told him that his parents had died, did he show any emotions. When his aunt sent him off to boarding school with the words: at least you'll be someone else's problem, he never even blinked.
But now. In this forum, his life suddenly had new meaning. For the first time he actually felt something. A thrill, an excitement, whatever. It felt good. He was exhilarated, almost electrified.
Peter handed him the bottle and Ivan drank greedily. He could feel the alcohol as it entered his body and dazed his sense of judgment. Then he roared with his new friends, like animals getting ready for their hunt, warning any prey out there, that they were coming.
"Are we ready?!" Peter shouted.
"We're ready!" they shouted back.
"What are we ready for?"
"Ready for the kill!" they answered.
"I can't hear you brothers!" Peter yelled.
"Kill, kill, kill, kill!" they chanted while hammering their fists into the table.
5
ELLA FELT HAPPY, happy and strong. It was the same thing every time she had been with the little girl from the picture. When they touched each other through the mirror it was like their strengths were gathered, like she gave her something, some kind of power that filled Ella with joy. What the girl did to her, she didn't know, but she liked it. She liked that the girl seemed to like her as well. Most people stayed away from Ella and she never had any friends except for Jacob. The little girl had been her only friend as long as Ella could remember.
She had seen her the first time when she was no more than about a year old and her mother had climbed to the attic (that was back when she wasn't afraid of going up there - before the man and strange footsteps she often claimed she he
ard) Ella had climbed after her up there without her knowing it and hid behind a big painting. Not knowing her baby was up there, her mother had left again once she found the box she was looking for and shut the hatch. Emma spent two nights in the attic before they finally found her. Her mother used to say that she hardly recognized Ella once she was brought down from there. Marie still claimed she was somehow exchanged with another baby while up there, that the child who came down wasn't the same as went up.
Now Ella heard her mother call for her and decided to come down. Carefully not to be seen she opened the hatch and climbed down the ladder. As soon as she was down, she pushed the hatch back in place and sprang for her room. She barely made it inside before her mother stood in the door.
"You need to take your bath. It's almost time for bed," she said her eyes avoiding Ella's. "I've filled the tub for you."
Ella tried to smile. "Thanks," she said searching for just a small glimpse of affection in her mother's eyes, something she hadn't seen since that day she was found in the attic. Why she hadn't cried or seemed dehydrated was a mystery to everybody in the house, but the doctor assured her mother that there was nothing wrong with her daughter and that she probably just enjoyed herself going through all the fun stuff up there.
"But the swelling?" her mother had asked. "She seems so bloated ever since she was up there."
