by Vivien Reis
She remembered them chanting around her before, but never like this. There were so many that the air in the room grew sour with their breath and the heat of their bodies.
A dull bell clinked rhythmically and Abi turned to see a man leading a white goat to the center of the room. It was taller than she thought goats were, with lanky legs and a large bell hanging loosely around its neck. And then her heart became a boulder in her throat. She knew what they would do but denied it, prayed it wasn’t real.
The goat faced her, so close she could see the odd rectangular pupils in its eyes. A large hand pulled the goat's head up and then a blade cut swiftly across its neck.
Gurgling cries screeched from the animal and blood sprayed over Abi. Her eyes burned, and she rubbed at them. She could taste the iron in her mouth and then there were hands on her, people smearing the blood into her skin.
Chains clinked together as a man bound the goat's back legs together. They hoisted the goat into the air over Abi, warm blood dripping down on her.
They're devil worshipers. They were going to sacrifice her. She spun, afraid to have her back to any of them, not knowing who it was that held the knife. This was it. She would die here. Abi's vision was red, blurry. She wouldn't be able to see her attacker.
This was the end.
She wiped again and again at her eyes, but more blood flowed from the top of her head, over her hair, and into her face. She tried to get up, to move away from the limp animal, but the crowd packed tightly around her in a solid wall.
The voices rose to a crescendo. They were all saying the same thing but in counterpoint. Each person spoke at a different pace, the volume rising together like a wave.
A screech, a scream, her scream. She sobbed, salty tears running together with the metallic blood.
Something dark raced behind the robed figures. Her eyes widened, her body trembled. Abi was afraid to see it again and afraid not to find it. The dark figure raced over the ceiling and behind her. A tide consumed her, stomach churning with hunger. But not for food.
She turned.
With a final shout, the chanting ended.
And there before her, stood the devil.
# NINETEEN
A buzz from Ben's phone told him to come inside, but he stayed buckled into his seat. Cora's mom was one of the nicest people on the planet, but that didn't mean he wanted to talk to her. She would ask a bunch of questions about his dad, his sister, and it'd be rude for him not to answer.
He texted Cora back. Battery is acting up. Don't want to turn the truck off. Just a little white lie.
When she came out, Ben almost laughed. In true Cora fashion, she’d dressed as closely to a female Sherlock Holmes as she could, while still wearing platform combat boots.
"What?" She glanced down at her clothes, not a trace of shyness there. "I gotta dress the part."
As she shut the door, a hint of her perfume wafted toward him—something sweet like caramel mixed with pine. He shifted the truck into drive, the steering wheel humming under his hands as he made his way to the other side of town.
"So you got it okay?"
Ben nodded. Gran had made it too easy. When he got up that morning, she’d left the keys on the counter while she was outside talking to a neighbor. He had attached it to his own key ring, a green sticker with the number twenty-nine rocking back and forth as he drove.
"What do you think we'll find?" He was curious, but he had a sneaking suspicion they would search all day and find nothing but confused ramblings written by a mostly catatonic woman. If they found a journal at all.
"Hopefully something about these men. I just think it's odd that your house was getting tossed and Abi just so happened to find this strange necklace. There has to be a connection."
"Yeah." And what happened if they did discover something? Would the police do anything about it?
Then again, what if they found nothing? What if the necklace was just a silly piece of jewelry?
Ben glanced at Cora, wondering if he should tell her about the strange vision he'd had the night before. Would she believe him?
"You looking forward to tomorrow?"
His heart sank. Ben had forgotten tomorrow was Tuesday—his first day back to school. At least it wasn’t a Monday.
"Not one bit."
She chuckled. Her laugh short but full—confidence beaming from everything she did. It seemed easy for her to skip school that day, not a worry that she might get caught. Ben wondered how she and Abi could be so close but so different.
"That's me every weekend. I'll be so glad once I'm done with school."
"Me too."
They rode the rest of the way in silence. The sun wasn't visible through the hazy morning clouds, casting everything in a dull gray. A dozen or so shops lined either side of the main street in town, with only a few people wandering about. When they neared the storage unit, Ben pulled off along the road. They snuck around the back so the person working the front office wouldn't see them. Ben didn't want Gran getting wind of their crazy goose chase if it amounted to nothing. He worried that another customer would spot them sneaking around, but saw no one.
All the units looked the same, arranged in long rows behind the front office with faded orange doors. For some reason, there were only two of the larger units per row that numbered in the twenties, the rest in the tens. Neither of them had ever been there, so it took nearly fifteen minutes for them to find the right row.
"Here it is." Cora had been walking several paces in front of him and placed her reddened hand against the cold door. She stared at it, her expression soft. The items in this storage unit were part of her childhood, too, and he felt something stretching between them, linking them together.
Ben checked his phone to make sure Gran hadn't called or texted before retrieving the key from his jacket pocket. His hand burned from the cold and were slow to move as he fumbled to push the key into the lock. It popped open, and he slid it away from the handle.
They lifted the gate together and the smell of Ben's home greeted him. The sum of his family's life sat in this dusty storage shed, familiar, but so foreign at the same time.
The space was utter chaos. There were lamps and boxes stacked on top of one another, threatening to topple over. Two mattresses lay on a heap of boxes, and the movers had scattered the furniture throughout the unit.
"Oh boy." Cora sighed. "This should be fun."
It was far from it. Three hours later and Ben could hear Cora's stomach growling in the cramped space, but she didn't complain. They had resorted to dragging the larger items out of the small room to pick their way through the boxes.
Gran had stashed the delicate or heavier things in smaller crates. Paint pots, brushes, some of his mom's old books, random trinkets she had collected, some kind of powder she used for painting.
They went through each box that had books in it, but found nothing interesting yet.
Another box had a few photo albums and Ben opened one. Eight pictures stared up at him, pregnancy pictures of his mom, his parents with his paternal grandparents, baby pictures of him and Abi.
He put the album away, a cold and sick feeling seeping into him. There was no use in reminiscing. That part of his life was over—his mom had made sure of it.
Moving on, Ben stood in the middle of the unit and stared at the pile they had already gone through.
Cora read through his expression, sensing his doubt. "Something's here, Ben. I know it."
"We've been through most of these boxes already. It's just junk." His life was a bunch of junk. His hands were ice cold and burned every time he moved another box, another piece of furniture. Cora had disappeared from his sight, rummaging around behind their dining room table.
"Not most of the boxes," she grunted. "This is the last one."
She had lodged herself in the middle of a stack of boxes they had already checked, furniture, and what looked like cleaning supplies, and scooted a box under the table with her foot. He wasn't sure
how she could do any of this while wearing those insane boots.
Ben pulled it away and opened the flaps. Some of his mom's art supplies were piled on top of fabric his dad used to lay down to protect the floor any paint spills. As he pulled the items out, his heart drummed a little faster in his chest.
There were books at the bottom, but just a few of them. The large ones on top were art design books his mom used to lay on their coffee table in the living room. Back when she was normal and cared about things like that.
He pulled those out and then there, sitting atop another art book, was a leather-bound book.
A journal.
"I think I found something."
"What?" Cora's head popped out from under the kitchen table, eyes locking on the book in Ben's hand. She crawled under the table, only knocking over one lamp on her way. "What does it say? Have you opened it?"
He hadn't, and he was nervous to. He looked at Cora, who was ready to burst at the seams, and then opened it.
His heart dropped.
Ben stood in the parking lot and stared at his school. Students meandered around in groups, catching up on gossip before the bell rang.
Only a few people had noticed him so far, and he dreaded shattering his cover. He had parked at the far corner of the lot, where most of the teachers had already parked and gone inside.
His brain felt funny, like it had a heavy balloon squeezed tight in there, and he was nervous about what the stress of the day would do to him. He didn't want to do this. A GED was looking pretty damn good.
"Hey, man." The guy he had met the other night was walking toward him, hands buried in his thin black jacket and unaware of the impending stares Ben was sure to get. "You look just about as excited to be here as I am." The kid laughed but Ben didn't feel jovial in the slightest. Avery had on black sneakers and black pants and was seemingly immune to the icy chill of the morning.
"I'm thinking of ways I can avoid ever stepping foot in there."
"Yeah, you ain't kiddin'."
Ben cocked his head at Avery. A strange accent rang through when he had spoken that Ben hadn't noticed before. The boy's shaggy hair fell in strands over his dark eyes.
"Where did you say you were from again?" Ben watched him.
"Eh, been all over really. God! Why is it so cold up here?" As he said this, though, he didn't appear to think it was cold—he wasn't shivering, his skin wasn't paled or reddened from the chilly air, and he stood tall, not hunched against the wind.
"Are you a senior? What classes are you signed up for?"
"Well, let's see. Currently I'm enrolled in bullshit and bullshit with Mr. Asshole." His elbow came out and bumped Ben. "Screw this, man. I'm skippin'. You down?"
Ben stared. This boy had an odd quality to him, almost like he was a cookie cutter bad boy from a Grease movie gone awry.
"Nah, I'm good." Even though he wasn't at all good. His stomach knotted with pain at the thought of taking another step toward that building. It was hard enough driving himself there at all and the closer he got, the worse he felt.
"Well, I'm gonna go explore the woods," Avery said with a sigh. "See if I can find a bear!" He raised his eyebrows in excitement and left.
Ben watched him stride all the way to the tree line and then disappear.
He'll freeze in that jacket.
The heavy balloon in his brain pulsed with pressure, like fluid trapped in his ear for too long.
Ben wondered what would happen if he stood in that parking lot all day. Would a teacher come get him? Would anyone care at all?
He felt a strong urge to sit in his truck and pick through the chicken scratch in his mom's journal. Even though he had locked it in his glove box, and locked his truck, it didn't feel safe there. It had taken him and Cora five hours to find it and put everything back in the storage unit. So much time spent, and he was leaving it abandoned in his truck.
Cora had tried to reassure him that something could be in there and even offered to look through it herself.
But he couldn't leave it with her. It was his mom's. He couldn't give it away yet, even for a short time.
A gust of cold air sobered him. He knew Gran would call the school to see how he did on his first day back and the principal would be all too eager to tell her he never showed for class. Or that he was standing in the parking lot like a crazy person.
And with that, he marched toward the doors. By the end of first period, he found out how difficult it was to not meet someone's gaze. On the way to his third class of the day, he wasn't sure where to look anymore and trained his eyes on the back of anyone's head in front of him.
Whispers followed him around the school, and the only people brave enough to talk to him were his hockey teammates. Ben was sure they meant well, but every gentle pat on the shoulder and soft-spoken "Hey Ben" made his skin crawl.
His entire life had evolved into a never-ending parade of hell and déjà vu. The same looks, the same tone, the same words.
"I'm sorry about your parents."
"How are you?"
"Have you heard anything new?"
And then there were the dark whispers. He couldn't tell what they said, but he knew from the expressions of the kids that said them, it had to do with his mom. They thought she did it. And how could they not? That's exactly what the news had told them to think. That's what he thought.
Questions and whispers and stares.
He wanted everyone to leave him alone already.
By lunchtime, he realized people fell into three categories: the frightened, who would stare from their wide-eyed peripherals like Ben had a disease they might catch; the caregivers, who gave him those sickening looks and quieted words; and last were the watchers, taking every opportunity to stare at Ben, even if he was walking right behind them.
Most of the teachers fell into the caregiver category and Ben had to expertly maneuver through the class door within seconds of the bell ringing to avoid their sympathies. He camped out in the bathroom stalls between classes, waiting until the last moment to enter his next class so he wouldn't have to talk to anyone.
Ben sat next to Mike in the lunchroom and stared at the tray in front of him. A fly crawled over the ridges in his mashed potatoes before buzzing around to land on his finger. He felt a pinch and twitched his finger. The fly disappeared.
Mike asked him a question, and he grunted. The pressure in his head was still making funny sounds in his ears, like wings fluttering.
His English class seemed to stretch on and on, and at one point, Mrs. Watts called his name by mistake, intending to call on the boy in front of him. Her cheeks reddened and twenty-two pairs of eyes turned on him at once.
The last class of the day was history. He moved toward the back of the room and sat down, but it wasn't the right seat. He second guessed himself, counting two seats forward from the back and the second row from the left.
"What's up?" Mike looked back, trying to figure out what Ben was doing.
"Nothing. Just thought I sat in the wrong seat for a second."
It was his seat, but it didn't feel right. The classroom was different somehow, like he was looking at it from an odd angle or maybe the light was brighter.
Mr. Flynn started class like it was any other day and Ben realized he had never gotten his test back. He hoped he never would.
The teacher passed a stack of papers to a short boy in the front row—Travis? Or was it Trevor?—who jumped up to disperse them. Mr. Flynn gave instructions as he paced in front of the classroom.
A cord of fear rippled through Ben for a second, until he realized it wasn't another test—they were instructions for an assignment.
"Paranormal activity. I figured if anything would inspire interest in history, it would relate to ghosts and ghouls." As Mr. Flynn said this, he threw a wadded up ball of paper high into the air that hit Mike directly on top of his head. The class snickered and Mike set his phone down on his desk.
"I've given each of you a random topic to r
esearch. Each topic is inspired, in some way or another, by paranormal or superstitious beliefs. Your assignment will be due on October 31st. Bonus points to those who can tie their topic in with Halloween and even more bonus points go to anyone who dresses up."
Mike lifted his hand into the air and before he could even ask his question, Mr. Flynn pointed at him. "No, you cannot dress up as anything inappropriate."
Caught red-handed, Mike gave a mischievous grin, and the class snickered again.
Mr. Flynn went alphabetically down the list of students, Ben's heartbeat quickening since he knew only two students fell in front of him: Liz Alton and Jared Caldwell. Before he could dread being singled out to the class, Mr. Flynn assigned him "druidic cults of the eighteenth century," breezing over his name so fast that no one seemed to notice. He exhaled when Kyle Duncan's name was called, and no one had turned his way.
Ben hadn't heard of cults that were druidic, but vaguely recognized part of the word from video games and fantasy movies. Part of him—a small part, but he thought it was an improvement—was interested to find out what it was.
"No trading topics, either. I know which one I gave you." Mr. Flynn thumped the paper in his hands. "We have a mini-assignment due in two weeks to make sure you all aren't waiting to the last minute to give me a piece of garbage."
"Mr. Flynn?" Rebecca raised her hand. "We're doing presentations on this?"
A groan spread through the classroom.
"Yes, you might be. That's entirely up to all of you. If I'm not pleased with the reports in two weeks, then yes, you will all have to give a presentation on Halloween."
More groans erupted. It was Ben's first glimpse at a normal day. Mike acting up, check. Surprise assignment, check. Sarcastic teacher, check. No stares, no comments. He blended in with the rest of the students. Ben marveled. Gran had been right.
"Any guesses on what's in the box today?" Mr. Flynn laid a hand on a wooden box on his desk, worn smooth from years of use. Every Monday he did this, surprising them with an item inside. He would give a brief lecture of the history of the item, and allow the students to pass it around to examine it, or eat it if it was food or candy.
