Burning You Down

The girl let out a bloodcurdling scream, then another one, as if she was being brutally killed. Oh, wait, but she was being brutally killed. Well. Too bad for her. I stuffed some popcorn in my mouth and shifted in my chair eagerly. Another scream made me turn the volume of the TV down a bit. Jesus Christ, why do they make these horror films so loud, it was just a matter of time before my mother comes and starts asking me if there was something wrong. No, mom, I’m okay, the girl in the movie isn’t, now leave me alone, would you?

I looked at my watch. Where was he?! He was supposed to be here already! He never missed a Halloween, he promised to drop by at eight! Damn. I really counted on him for bringing some sweets. Or from that chocolate cake his grandmother made, it was so good. I mean, what are friends for? To bring you food, of course. I wondered what his costume would be this year. Hmm.

Suddenly someone rang the bell at the door. I jumped on my feet excitedly. That had to be him! Finally! I rushed in the hallway, almost bumping into my mother.

“Kellin!”, she half-gasped, half-laughed.

“I’ll get it!”, I shot her a glance and grabbed the doorknob, swinging the door open, only to find myself face to face with a Mexican version of Prince.

“Trick or treat!”, my best friend yelled in my face through a giggle.

“Seriously Walter?”, I tried to act unamused. “Prince again? Really?”

Walter chuckled and came in without needing me to invite him. He spent so much time at my place that pretty much it was like a home to him. I gave his costume a critical look. Under all the makeup he was actually quite handsome with his big brown eyes, tanned skin and wavy dark hair. Now though, now he looked absolutely ridiculous.

“Well, man, that’s the only costume I’ve got, sorry.”, he rolled eyes.

“Isn’t your mom mad at you for taking her makeup and spreading it all over your face?”, I teased him.

“Isn’t your mom mad at you stealing her dresses and wearing them secretly at night?”, he punched me playfully.

“Oh, a good one.”, I laughed a bit. “Wait, hang on, you have some glitter on your nose.” I reached to pretend I’m going to clean it up, but he pushed my hand away.

“Shut up, the costume is good.”, he snapped at me, but I knew he was just as amused as I was. “And you, what are you?”

I crossed my arms proudly. “I’m Jack the Ripper.”

“More like Jack the Creeper.”, Walt poked me.

“Fuck you.”, I frowned. “My costume is better than yours anyway.”

“Riiight, riiiight.”, he stuck his tongue out at me.

Another scream sounded from my room. Walter raised his eyebrows and gave me an odd look.

“Wow, I thing something’s up with your mom, dude.”

“That wasn’t my mom, stupid, it was the TV.”, I let out a deep sigh.

“Of course it is, I was just kidding.” He threw his arm around my shoulders and pulled me in a hug. Just like every time he did that, my heart started beating a bit faster. Truth was, I had a little crush on him, but I would never tell him this, because I didn’t want to ruin our friendship. Walt and I knew each other since we were kids and now, when we were seventeen we were still best friends. I would never do anything to ruin what we had.

After a minute of hugging I pulled back and started dragging him to my room.

“So, did you bring the thing?”, I asked impatiently.

“What thing?”

“Well, you know… The thing.”

“Oh! That thing! Yeah, I have it.”, he nodded and looked down at his bag.

I sat on my bed heavily. “So are we really gonna do it?”

“Do what?”, he gave me a confused look, but I knew he was just playing dumb to tease me.

“Your mom!”, I yelled through a giggle and threw a pillow at him. “Dammit, man, pull your shit together! Are we doing the thing or what?”

He laughed when the pillow hit him. “Don’t call my mom a thing!”

“You perfectly know what I was talking about, you idiot.”, I groaned.

Walt sat next to me. “Yeah, okay, I know. Yes, we’re really doing it. I brought the needed materials and all. Do you have a place?”

“I figured the garage works.”, I shrugged.

“Yeah, good idea. But I suggest, let’s not do it just yet. Let’s wait until midnight.”, he grinned mischievously. “That would make it much creepier.”

“I’m not scared.”, I said firmly. “Just thought I’d make this clear.”

“I know, me neither. This shit isn’t going to work anyway.”

“Sure, of course, it’s just for fun.” I gulped nervously. “Now, let’s do something else.”

“Alright. I brought you some of your favorite chocolates and stuff like that. And…”, he pulled out a bottle, “…this.”

Alcohol? Nope. Coke. What can I say? We’re good boys. While the others are out partying, we’re at my place, watching horror movies and drinking soft drinks. It was like a tradition of ours – we’d get dressed up every Halloween and do creepy shit either at mine or his house. Last year, for example, we played Slenderman. And, I have to admit, I screamed my ass off.

This year, though, we had something more special planned… Something different…

…But it had to wait until midnight.

* * *

A week ago Walt had found something really weird and interesting in this small old bookstore near his house. It looked like a boring, old, quite torn book, one of its covers was missing, someone had drawn some stuff on it with a blue pen and it was in a horrible condition in general. Being the total nerd he was, though, Walter noticed it and picked it up to check it out and it turned out to be about some satanic shit, like, witchcraft and stuff. I wasn’t even sure if selling such a book was legal, but I doubted the booksellers in the store even knew what it was about. This was just a place where people leave their old books when they don’t need them anymore, and you could always find something interesting to read and take it cheap.

However, Walt found the satanic book interesting, and decided to buy it, only to scare his little brother with it, but then we came up with the idea to actually try it out, I mean, for real. That’s how our plan was born. I think the idea was Walter’s – he proposed to bring the book on Halloween and together we’d try one of the spells in it. None of us believed in this stuff, so it was safe. Nothing was going to happen.

What we were going to do was summon a demon.

I finished drawing the pentagram on the ground with black spray paint. We’d have to wash this after we’re done so my mom wouldn’t be mad. She wouldn’t like this, and if she found out about it I would be grounded for about one hundred years or something.

“I’m done with the candles.”, Walt announced. Now without his wig and makeup he looked much better, as the reflections of the eight little flames danced on his face. I smiled a bit. His features were so perfect, his chocolate brown eyes – so deep. He looked up at me and I looked away.

“Umm, yeah, and I’m done with the pentagram.”, I replied.

“Did you draw all the symbols, like they are on the picture?”, he wanted to make sure.

“Yeah, of course.”, I confirmed. “Now what else do we need to do?”

He looked down at the book in his hands. “We need two mirrors.”

“What for?”, I knitted eyebrows.

“I don’t know, man, it doesn’t say. It’s just written here – the one who reads the spell should be standing between two mirrors in a way that they would multiply his reflection, like, a million times. Something like that.”

“Well, I don’t have two mirrors.”

“Thankfully, I’ve taken care of this too.”, he pulled two small mirrors, about twenty-five inches long and fifteen inches wide, out of the nylon bag he had brought with him. He carefully set them on two chairs, which I had already brought here. “Here we go.”

“Uhh…”, I bit my lip nervously. “Do we need some blood, or snake poison or something? In most books and movies…”

“Nope, that’s all.”

“Really?”, I couldn’t believe it. I expected it to be more difficult and… impressing. “Now who’s gonna read the spell?”

“I am.”, Walt said confidently.

“Why not me?”, I frowned, even though I was beginning to get a little scared and I wasn’t exactly dying to be the one who summons the demon… even though nothing would happen, of course.

“Because the book is mine.”, my best friend said simply. “So… Should we start?”

I hesitated and nodded, drinking up from my glass of water. I drank a lot of water when I was nervous.

“Okay.” Walter stepped between the mirrors and looked down at the book, coughing, as if he was going to make a speech. I chuckled. “I’m starting now, here’s the spell, listen…

Kellin tried a magic spell
To summon a demon straight from hell;
It’s dangerous – he knew that well.
He got scared and screamed for help,
As he held the book in his hands,
He lost control and peed in his pants.
His fearless friend will surely laugh
While he reads the second half
Of this spell which isn’t real
I wonder, how would Kellin feel?
April Fool’s on Halloween
It’s the day of Kellin Quinn!”

Near the end he was already laughing like crazy and I tackled him, pretending to be mad at him, even though his mocking poem was actually quite funny.

“It had to be done!”, I laughed, pushing me away from him. “It just had to be done! It was worth it.”

“Is there even a real spell at all?”, I asked when I managed to stop giggling as well.

“Yeah, there is, I just wanted to use the opportunity to tease you first.”, my best friend grinned. “Okay, here we go, this time for real.”

He concentrated on the book in his hands and after a moment started reading out loud. This time I didn’t understand what he was saying, because it wasn’t in English, it was Latin, I suppose. We were still both really giggly and every time we looked each other he’d stop reading to hold back a chuckle.

At first nothing happened, just as I expected, but then I started noticing strange things. The flames of the candles started moving even though there was no wind, the air smelled weird, pretty bad actually. It smelled of… sulfur? Maybe, yeah, of sulfur and ashes. Suddenly the garage seemed really hot and stifling. I moved my look to Walt to check if he noticed anything, but his attention was fixed on the spell and he didn’t look around. I was about to interrupt him, but then my look fell on one of the mirrors… and I saw it. I don’t know what it was. There was just… a change. The reflections didn’t look like reflections anymore, it was almost like there was a tunnel behind the glass, a tunnel leading to God-knows-where. And slowly, as Walter read on, the mirror started turning black. My eyes widened.

“Walt, something is happening…”, I spoke up, my voice shaking. “Walt, please stop reading, something’s wrong! Stop!”

“…But I’m done, Kells, here, that was the last line.”, he finally looked up. “Why, what’s going on?”

“I…” I looked at the mirror again. Now it looked normal. There was no tunnel-like thingy made of reflections. There was no black fog. As if nothing had ever happened. Huh… The smell of sulfur remained, though. “…I thought I saw something.”, I only said, now almost convinced that I imagined the whole thing. “I-I-I got scared.”

“It’s okay, told you it’s not going to work. This is just some stupid book, the spells in it aren’t real.”, Walt smiled reassuringly. “We did this for fun, we never expected it to- WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?!”

He literally screamed the last words, his eyes fixed on something above us. I looked up, my pulse quickening.

“Shit!”, I gasped. “What is that?!”

Up there, close to the ceiling, right above the pentagram, was something that looked like a cloud of black smoke, but it was moving… too strangely to be just smoke. It squirmed like a snake, crawling down and up the wall, spreading and then gathering again. Whatever it was, though, it seemed that it couldn’t leave the pentagram and the empty space above it.

“Oh my fucking god, Walt, it’s alive, what is it?”, I started to panic. “Is this a demon, is this how demons look like?! Holy fucking shit, is there a way to reverse the spell and get rid of it? Do something, Walt!”

But my friend just stared at the thing, stunned.

“Walt!”, I screamed at him, my voice high. “Get rid of that thing! Please!”

It took him a minute to realize what I was saying to him and he finally started turning the pages with his shaking hands. He was taking his time, dammit! I didn’t want this thing here, we had to hurry up to banish it away as soon as possible.

“Give me that!”, I ordered, motioning at the book.

“No, no, I’ve got this.”, Walter stubbornly shook his head and stepped back.

“Give me the goddamn book!”, I insisted and tried to take it from his hands. I managed to grab it, but he was gripping it tightly and not letting it go.

“Let me go! I can do this by myself!”, he yelled.

We struggled for a bit more, both of us too panicked and too scared to stay calm and actually use our brains. I kept pulling and pulling the book, until it suddenly tore in two and I stumbled back, holding only half of the pages. My movement was too sharp, and as I almost fell back, I accidentally pushed my glass of water with my elbow, causing it to fall on the floor with clatter.

It would all be fine, if the water didn’t end up on the edge of the pentagram, washing off the spray paint. I didn’t realize what was happening at first, I chose to ignore the glass and throw a look at the smoke, which was still circling the ceiling. I could’ve sworn that it twitched excitedly.

“Dude!”, Walt shouted at me. “You fucking broke it! Fix it, fix it fast!”

At first I thought he was talking about the glass and I was about to ask him why he cares so much, but then I understood what he meant. By splashing water on it, I had broken the circle that kept the thing from running away. It was too late, though. Before I could do anything, the black smoke slipped out of its trap and gathered around Walter.

“No, get away from him!”, I screamed and started frantically going through the pages I had torn off of the book. I found nothing that could help me kick that demon thing out of our world.

And then all of a sudden, the black smoke was gone. I didn’t really see it vanish, because I was looking down at the pages, but the moment I looked up it had disappeared. Walter seemed unharmed, he was standing right where he had been before, breathing heavily. I let out a relieved sigh. So the thing left for some reason. I approached my best friend.

“Walt, are you okay?”, I asked softly. I got no reply. He kept staring at the floor, his soft hair falling on his face and half-covering it.

I stood next to him and put my hand on his shoulder, worried. Maybe he was in shock, and yeah, I mean, how couldn’t he be?

“…Walt?”

Finally he looked up at me, and I almost jumped back. His eyes were grey, I mean, not just his irises, his whole eyes. Pale, deadly grey. A smirk appeared on his face as he saw my horrified expression.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart, but Walt has gone for a walk. He’s going to be gone for a bit. You can call me Vic, though.”, he stretched his arms lazily, his eyes returning their usual color, and added with a mocking smile: “…At your service…”, and then, even more mockingly: “…Or not.”

END OF CHAPTER 1.