by Shannon West
“We thought that if we buried it in Emma Mae’s casket with her, that might do the trick.”
“I don’t know. You think it was attached to Emma Mae Millican?”
“Well, she was the owner of the book. Though it really belongs to our family.”
“But she died. So now the book belongs to you. In fact, you reclaimed it, didn’t you?”
”Yes, at the repass! You said it was left to you and now the demon knows. Gran, you’re in mortal danger!”
Nick nodded. “I’m afraid she might be. We need to figure a way to get rid of the damn thing for good.”
“But how? The stuff on the internet’s no good,” Rose said. “We tried all of it we could find.”
“You said you found a spell or something in the book? But the pages were stuck together?”
“Oh yes,” Aunt Rose said. “I forgot about that. Let me see if I can find it again.” She pulled the book over in front of her and started flipping through it, though carefully, as the pages were brittle with age. She would read a while and then keep looking until I almost despaired of her finding it, but finally she read through a page and lifted her face, her eyes shining, “I’ve found it! A spell to cast the demon out. It says all three have to say it at the same time.”
“All three what?”
“Witches I guess. There were three of them.”
“There’s three of us,” Gran said.
“Not really. Claudia is not a witch.”
Gran looked at me. “But you are. You’re family, and I don’t think your gender matters.”
I put my hand on hers. “No, Gran. It’s too dangerous for you and Rose, since the demon thinks you own the book now. I’ll do it by myself.”
“Wait a minute,” Nick said. “That’s not happening.”
“I think I have an idea,” Claudia said softly.
Gran said, “Maybe if we read the book all the way through again, we can find something?”
Rose shook her head. “I’ve read it and I didn’t see anything else.”
“Well, do it again anyway, Rose.”
“Wait a minute, Rose. Maybe we can do some research and find an answer.”
“I said I have an idea,” Claudia interrupted, a little louder this time.
“Nick, do you want another piece of that pie?”
“Yes, ma’am, I believe I do.”
Claudia suddenly slammed her small hand down on the table. We all jumped and looked over at her in surprise.
“Well, don’t any of you want to hear my damned idea?” Claudia shouted.
“Sorry, Nana,” Nick said, looking a little shocked. “Sure. Go ahead and tell us.”
“I was thinking that since demons like to hear prayers and other stuff said backward, maybe there’s power in that. Maybe that’s what drew him here to start with. His name.”
“Yes, we already established that, Claudia,” Rose said.
“No, we know how to get him here. But maybe the way we said it wasn’t the right way to get rid of him. Maybe we should say it backward. The demons seem to like things said backward.”
There was a little silence at the table and then Nick shrugged. “Maybe. Could be. Has anybody else got any ideas?”
“That would be…” I wrote it on a napkin, and then showed it to Nick. He read it and passed it around. The name I had written was Falalaba spelled backward—Abalalaf.
Gran nodded. “I say we do it. Do a séance or whatever. Call him here and then say the spell and say the name again, only backward.”
“And if it attacks us again?” I said softly.
My gran slapped my shoulder. “We have our weapons we’ve already used against it. We can use those again if it doesn’t work, and we can always try later. Besides, who wants to live forever anyway?”
Nick looked over at me and shrugged. “I’m game if you are.”
“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but okay. Let’s do it.”
Rose nodded. “It’s quarter to ten. I say we do this thing at the witching hour, like they always talk about on TV.”
I started to tremble a little, I’m not gonna lie. “What time is that?”
“Midnight and the hour after it.”
“Tonight?” I hated the little squeak my voice gave just then, and I cleared my throat to try and cover.
Nick nodded. “Let’s get it over with.”
No one raised an objection, and soon the ladies got busy with pen and paper, Gran deciding she better write the spell out in larger letter so she could read it and practice it in her head. Claudia and Rose were reading the new name we’d discovered over in the heads too, so they’d be ready when the time came. As for Nick, he looked at me and jerked his head toward the front parlor room.
“Can we go somewhere and talk?”
All the activity in the room stopped for a second or two and then resumed.
“Sure,” I said. “Why not?”
****
He sat next to me on the sofa, and he was beside me, but still miles away. He stared out the window across from him—one of those thousand-yard-stares you hear about among soldiers just returned from battle. The blank, unfocused gaze of those who have become emotionally detached from the horrors around them. Which would definitely apply here, come to think of it.
When he finally spoke, I actually jumped. “I’ve never been so scared as I was when that thing had you by the throat.”
“That makes two of us,” I replied, trying to turn it into a joke.
He turned his head to look at me. “All I could think about was poor, old Janet Hicks with that neat little hole right in the middle of her forehead. And Julie Covington, thrown away like a broken doll, her neck and most every other bone in her body broken.”
Those were details I hadn’t heard yet. A chill traveled down my spine.
“And Ms. Millican too, though we didn’t see her body just after the demon, you know, killed her. It was never reported as a crime. Were you scared?” he asked, turning to look at me.
“What do you think?” I realized as soon as I said it that it was too glib, too facile. I lowered my gaze to my lap and sighed. “Yes. I was terrified.”
“I was too.”
“You were?”
“I kept thinking, ‘that thing is going to hurt him, maybe kill him, and I never got a chance to tell him how much I—how I feel about him.”
Touched and thrilled, my head whipped around so fast I almost did myself an injury. “You sort of did last night, I thought.”
He gave an odd little laugh. “I fell asleep on you. I meant to make certain declarations.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.” He turned to look at me. “I think I’m finally tired of running. But can you give me just a little more time? A little space to decide how to do this? I know what I’m going to do—if you’ll have me. But I have to figure out the logistics. I need to have it all clear in my mind.”
“Oh,” I said, and that one syllable, though disappointed, still contained a whole world of hope and love and impossible dreams I’d thought unattainable. I nodded. “Yeah, I can do that.”
“You know your grandmother and mine are in the next room.”
I laughed and it came out shaky and breathless. “Probably with their ears pressed against the wall.”
He smiled gently. “But I’d like the option of exploring the, uh, situation when all of this is over.”
“You have a deal. Want to shake on it?”
He turned fully toward me then. “Oh, I think we can do better than that.”
He pulled me in his arms to give me a kiss. His lips were soft at first, tentative and unbearably sweet. I pushed against him, wanting to get closer and threw my arms around his neck, hoping against hope I wouldn’t scare him off. I sighed into the kiss and touched my tongue to his, just the slightest bit. And swore I felt a spark leap from his tongue to mine. Anyway, I was electrified and light-headed and totally into it. I kind of never wanted it to stop, but he pulled away af
ter a moment and I was happy to see he was a little breathless too. He gazed down at me and said, “I already feel like you belong to me.”
“Yes,” I said, and pressed against him, giving him my mouth again. “I do. Since I was seven years old.”
I would have had to be dead not to take advantage of his closeness, not to mention his eagerness to kiss me. I pressed my lips to his one more time. He tasted so good and the moan that came from one of us was loud and full of desperate need. I’m pretty sure it was me.
That’s when we both heard the whispers outside the door and the subsequent furtive scurrying of feet down the hall.
He laughed softly, putting his forehead against mine. “We have an audience. And we need to get some rest before midnight. Go to bed and I’ll try to get a nap right here.”
“Or I could stay too?”
He shook his head. “I didn’t get much sleep after you left my house. So I really need to rest for a few minutes and that’s not going to happen with you right here.” He gave me a little nudge. “Go to bed and I’ll wake you up in time for the séance or the ouija board thing, or whatever we’re calling it.”
“Okay,” I said reluctantly. I stood up, and he grabbed my hand and pressed a kiss to my palm. I almost melted right there, but I limited my reaction to a caress of his jaw and a touch to his hair. Then I resolutely turned away and went to lie down across my bed.
I didn’t bother to get undressed. I just pulled the comforter over me, and somehow I fell into a kind of reluctant unconsciousness after a while, though I roused from it unrefreshed a few hours later. I glanced at the clock by my bed and saw that it was eleven o’clock. I sat up, resolving to go splash cold water on my face and wake up, just as my door opened and Gran stuck her head in.
“It’s time, dear. I’ve made some coffee.”
“Okay, Gran, thanks. I’ll be right there.”
I went to the bathroom, splashed some water around and still felt groggy and a little sick to my stomach. Not too bad, but enough that I wished again I hadn’t tried to nap, but just stayed up. I went to the kitchen to find everyone else already assembled. Nick was standing at the window, drinking a cup of coffee, and he smiled at me as I came in.
“You look more tired now than you did before you went to lie down. Why don’t you sit this one out?”
“You’re kidding, right?” I said as I fell into a chair at the table. Rose slid a cup of coffee toward me, already fixed the way I liked it. I nodded my thanks. “You actually think I can rest while you’re all fighting demons in the basement?”
He grinned. “I’ll take that as a no, then.”
“We have some things to do before we call the demon,” Gran said. “Re-chalk the pentagram and the sigils, light the candles and oh yes, I’ve written both names we have to say on a piece of paper for all of you. The first is for when we call the demon and the second, backward name is for when we banish it.”
“Hopefully banish it,” Rose said softly.
“Yeah,” I said under my breath. “Hopefully.”
Chapter Ten
It all started out so well. The room was chilly, so Nick poked up the fire and threw in an extra couple of logs. Soon, the fire was crackling and filling the room with warmth. Gran re-chalked her symbols on the floor and passed around the name of the demon written both forward and backward. We set up five chairs in the center of the big pentagram, and put the ouija board on a little table in the middle. Under the table were a huge bag of salt, Rose’s watergun, newly filled with water. Not holy water, because we’d used all of that up, but water that Rose and Gran said a little prayer over. We hoped it would be enough. Gran came up with a large crucifix I’d never seen before. I could only assume she had gone shopping somewhere for it earlier. I sent up a quick prayer that Rose hadn’t lifted it from the Catholic chruch when she went for the holy water, and another one for forgiveness if she had, with a promise it would be returned as soon as this was over.
I concentrated on the board again. Now personally, I don’t believe in ouija boards. Not as a way to contact dead people, anyway.
The ouija board first became popular in the mid-nineteenth century, when millions of people suddenly gained an interest in talking to the dead following the tremendous loss of life in the Civil War. I always thought it was just a way to exploit grieving families.
But deliberately trying to contact a demon? A week ago, I’d have said that was crazy, but now? I wasn’t so sure about a lot of stuff.
We all sat down and placed a finger on the little triangular pointer called a planchette. This rests on the small brown board itself, which has the words “yes” and “no” in its top corners, an alphabet in the center, and the word “goodbye” at the bottom. The idea is to summon the spirits—in this case, the demon—we wanted to talk to, and the demon would move the planchette around the board to spell out answers to questions you ask — or you know, just appear in a cloud of greasy, black smoke.
In the silence before we started, Nick looked at each of us and said, “This is stupid.”
Gran pounced immediately. “What do you mean, stupid? You agreed to do it.”
“I know, but…there’s a simple scientific explanation for why the little triangle thing moves. It’s called the ideomotor effect, and it’s basically a kind of unconscious, involuntary physical movement — that is, we move when we’re not trying to move. Like when we jerk awake from sleep.”
“Very interesting, ‘Professor,’ but this is about summoning the demon. He came once before when we called him, and I think he’ll come again.”
Rose shook her head. “He came when you called him, Pearl.”
“Grandma,” I said, grinning at her. “Could it be possible you’re a bit more of a witch than you think?”
She lifted her chin and gave it right back to me. “Folks around town have always said so. It does run in the family, Noah. But I don’t have a tenth of the power that you do,”
“Me?” I laughed nervously, as she and Rose both nodded.
“It’s true. You’ve always had a way with you. Look at how you’re successful at anything you put your mind to. That job in Atlanta was an example—you landed that right out of college and were well on your way after only a short time. It’s because people can’t resist you. Surely you’ve noticed that.”
I couldn’t help glancing over at Nick. “Not so much.”
Gran followed my gaze as Nick blushed pink across his cheeks and looked suddenly very interested in the board. She made a little noise. “Nick Moody has never been interested in boys since I’ve known him. Except for you—he couldn’t keep his eyes or his hands off you since you were little boys together. Since you’ve come back here to live, has there been a day gone by that he hasn’t been sniffing around that doughnut shop?”
“I’m sitting right here, you know,” Nick said, frowning ferociously.
“Oh hush up, boy, you know it’s true.”
I glanced over at his red face and had to laugh, because my big, bad sheriff looked so shocked at my gran calling him “boy,” and telling him to hush.
“And those doughnuts of yours—they practically melt in your mouth, and make you think the angels fried them up special just for them. How did you do that?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Just lucky.”
Gran made that noise again. “What some people call “luck” is nine times out of ten just a bit of magic. Probably passed down from some distant ancestor who was a seriously skilled practitioner. Like Elizabeth Seegars. Like your own great-grandmother, Bessie. My mother had some of it, and I think I have some too, but it’s only occasionally that someone comes along who is naturally talented, like I think you are.”
I could feel everyone’s eyes on me and it was uncomfortable. “I’m not a healer.”
“No, maybe not. Though I think if you put your mind to it, you might be surprised. Magic is a natural talent and like any talent it has to be practiced for you to get really good at it. Try it and you mig
ht find out.” She shoved the leather bound book over to me. “Touch it, Noah. See how it feels in your hand.”
I didn’t want to touch the book, and I wasn’t sure why. I glanced up at my gran though and saw that implacable expression on her face. “Touch it, boy.”
I touched it. It was warm and the leather was smooth as glass. And there—just there under my fingertips—a slight tingling sensation. It began to grow stronger, and I jerked my hand away.
Gran grinned at me. “Uh huh. Tingles, doesn’t it?”
“We don’t have time for all this, Gran.”
Nick sighed and gazed over at me. “Maybe we should go ahead and get this thing started,” he said, tossing me a lifeline. I grabbed onto it gratefully, and put my fingers back on the planchette. I felt a little foolish too, but “in for a penny, in for a pound,” as the old saying goes. We were here, so we may as well try it. We all had our fingers on the planchette, and after a few seconds, it began to move in big, swooping circles.
“It doesn’t feel like I’m doing this,” I said, and Nick shook his head.
“No, not for me either. But maybe with all of us here, the ideomotor effect is even more pronounced?”
“Or maybe the damn demon has taken over,” Gran grumbled at us. “Now hush and concentrate. Spirits,” she called out in a slightly louder voice. “We’re here to summon a demon. Help us bring him to the table. Falalaba! Come out here and talk to us. I know you can hear us.”
Rose said the name, “Falalaba!”
Then, feeling kind of stupid, I finished with, “Falalaba!”
Thunder rolled around the sky outside, but nothing else happened. Gran glanced around at each of us in turn and took a deep breath. “Falalaba! Get your ass out here!”
There was a feeling like you have when you go up in an airplane and your ears are full, just in that moment before they pop. It’s uncomfortable as hell and you can’t hear very well, even though people are talking all around you. I had that feeling just then, but I swallowed hard and then gasped as a creature out of a nightmare began to appear in front of us. The air was murky at first and the light was dim, so it looked at first like all the shadows in the room were swarming in from the corners and coalescing into a mass.
