RabbitsWarren
Your local trans writer femboy.
Junction Annual Church Lock-In
trigger warnings possible: suicide mention, religious trauma, homophobia, possession, knives, attempted stabbing, manipulation, demons, devils, Satan/The Devil/Lucifer, "satanic" rituals, bullying (it's actually a creepypasta ritual but seems like a safe one to add) (will add more if asked)
“If she’s going to be here, I’m literally going to kill myself,” My best friend, Harriet Reyes, stomped her foot onto the grass outside of the Junction Baptist Church. The entire building covered three city blocks in an L shape, with the last open section of the fourth block containing a parking lot. Because it was one out of four churches in the town with a population of only a thousand people, I never understood why they couldn’t just all go to this one as it was big enough with several connected buildings. They usually held lock-ins for girls in middle school, and this was our first time joining the chaos. Harriet seemed uninterested in the lock-in, though, and more interested in Vee, who chained her bicycle to one of the racks and rifled around in her backpack before entering the building. Excited as I was to be in a building full of essentially unsupervised high school Freshman girls all night long, I could admit that Vee interested me more, too.
“Like, what if she hits on me or something? Aren’t you ever scared of that?” Harriet pulled her suitcase closer as her mother drove away. Mrs. Reyes may have not been nice on the eyes, but if my dad ever found out that I wanted Vee to hit on me, she would take me in when he threw me out even though Harriet and I often had to play alone due to both parent’s absence. When she was home, she was one of my favorite people. Plus, she always brought home really yummy food for dinner when I would stay over. However, unlike Harriet, scared wouldn’t be the word I would use to describe myself in a situation where Vee would hit on me.
“I think she’s nice. I like her earrings. They’re little bottles full of ghosts.” I continued our conversation after we signed in at the door with the Senior chaperones. I also liked her silky dyed hair, and her pretty green eyes that welcomed me into the mysterious world she created wherever she went. It seemed like every location she inhabited transformed around her and reflected the interesting (even if spooky) person on the inside.
The captain of the Academic Team took both of our names down and pointed us towards a room where we could drop off our bags, but she looked like the only one of the Seniors taking this chaperoning business seriously. Even though all of them were supposed to be watching all of us, it looked like most of them already huddled in groups and stared into their phones.
It sounded like a Junction church event, all right. With the word ‘church’ attached, I assumed that most people in the town immediately wrote off the event as safe even if they knew nothing about it. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Seniors would be scolded for setting off a smoke alarm with weed before the night was over. Hell, you could probably have a satanic gathering labelled it as a church fall festival and no one would question it.
“Ugh, don’t tell me you’re obsessed with her, too,” Harriet found an empty space of floor in the sanctuary and set down her bags before flopping onto her sleeping bean bag. Obsessed was a strong word, but I always found myself wanting to be close to her and ask her about the newest book she had. As much as I disliked reading myself, hearing her talk about the stories she loved was my favorite thing to listen to. Her real, alluring name was Yvonne, but she insisted that everyone call her Vee after second grade. As for Harriet, well, I tolerated her for her mom and her money, and she always hated Vee. I never understood why. Harriet and I had been best friends since Kindergarten, but whenever I would express interest in Vee, she would go off about how much she hated her. “She literally called me basic in sixth grade, and she stepped on my chances of winning the talent show every single year with her stupid little self-written poetry readings.” I wanted to implore Harriet to try something more complex than just trying to sing a country song off-key to win, but I felt like that might hurt her feelings so I kept my mouth shut. Now that we were in our Freshman year of High School, they always glared at each other down the hallways, and I’m fairly certain that I saw Vee flip her off one time.
“Nah, she just interests me. I’m always curious what she’s going to be talking about next. Listening to her explain the things she adores sounds better than the actual material, you know?” I plopped my backpack, neatly packed, next to Harriet’s stuff, and laid out my comforter, foam pad, and pillow for the night. Maybe we could get Vee to sleep near our spot. I could talk to her in the dead of night while watching her pretty green eyes try not to drift off to sleep. I wondered if she would take her makeup off, but I figured she wouldn’t in such a public place. She always kept a purse to redo it if it messed up. Did she have black pajamas to wear in addition to the mostly black wardrobe she always sported? Disappointment crossed my mind when I saw her in the back near the emergency doors, huddled around her best friends Gretchen and Joyce instead. They already had a small Bluetooth speaker out, and Vee turned on something I heard her play out loud before with an emotional vocalist and loud bass line.
“You sound just like my brother talking about his girlfriend!” Harriet threw her hands in the air from her laying spot on the floor, but after a period of silence where she could contemplate that thought, she dropped them and sat up as fast as she could. The look on her face shot fear into my stomach and made me want to vomit. “Oh my God, Sloane, are you,” She scooted closer as her grin widened. She flopped her hand over, and then did it again as if once wasn’t enough to get the point across. “Like, y’know,” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Gay? Do you have a crush on Vee?” I hated when people acted like this whenever they found out. Straight people my age treated it like some sort of stage show, and older straight people just condemn me or freak out about me going to hell.
“I think she’s pretty and has fantastic takes on some things. As for a crush, I mean,” I coughed and opened my backpack. For a moment, I wanted to crawl inside it, but I knew that Harriet would never tell my dad. Whenever we hung out, we always went over to her place because she had all of the interesting toys growing up and all of the newest tech now. My measly computer setup that I inherited from an uncle barely functioned for schoolwork. As for Harriet, well, at least she let me use her things. “Maybe? I definitely think only girls are attractive.”
“Oh my God, you are! You are! You have to tell me who else you like!” Harriet squealed and clapped her hands together like a brain-dead game show audience member. I forced the politest smile I could manage, but again, after she contemplated these words, her expression changed. She knotted her eyebrows together and clamped her hands on her hips. “Wait, do you have a crush on me? That’s gross. Please tell me you’ve never like, looked at my ass.”
“Nah, I haven’t.” I couldn’t help but let a laugh escape my traitor throat. Harriet wasn’t exactly bad looking, but when I looked at her tall, beam pole athletic build next to Vee’s soft curves and short stature, I knew I definitely preferred one over the other. Harriet made a good enough void to fill time with, though. She always took me to the mall with her and bought me things with her allowance credit card that I couldn’t afford, and she defended me when people were rude because I hung out with her. As crude as she was, I don’t think I could tell her I didn’t want to be her friend. After all, we’re all that each other ever had. “It’s okay, you’re not my type.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Harriet’s tone changed, and her face heated up with a dark red undertone. I gave her a shrug at first because I didn’t understand why she was upset. She just complained that she didn’t want me to hit on her, but now she acted offended when I assured her that I wouldn’t. She clutched her hand mirror that she just laid out so tightly that I could see the white bone color of her knuckles; she must be determined to give us makeovers tonight. Sometimes I never understood her, but I loved the feeling of her using the brushes on my face to paint me the way she wanted.
Before I could defend my take of who I liked and why, the Youth Pastor walked in with the captain of the Academic Team trailing behind her. I definitely didn’t want to say anything with an authority figure from the Church around. If any of them knew, it would be all over for me, and I would be disowned and condemned to hell. The Youth Pastor would be here all night, but the Seniors were supposed to watch us and move along events throughout the night. I doubted the Seniors would pay attention for the first fifteen minutes after her departure.
“Hello, girls, and welcome to the Junction Annual Church Lock-In! We’ll start with prayer, and then I’ll leave the Seniors to get you started.” As the Youth Pastor spoke those words, the reality of my location weighed on me. All of the kids around ducked their heads as she began to recite words to God, but I didn’t know what to say to him. Everyone said he hated people like me just because we weren’t straight, but I don’t know. My dad forced me to read the book several times, even though it was a teenage adaption, and the Bible’s portrayal of God always felt different than the one the church talked about. I never understood why the one in the text would hate me for wanting to wake up to a beautiful, loving woman every morning. I peeked out of the prayer while she was still talking and looked over at Harriet, who had her head down and her hands folded neatly in her lap around her hand mirror. Almost everyone else was looking down with their eyes closed, too, except for Vee and her friends.
Vee looked up from her notebook and silent circle. Her pretty green eyes met my own, and I gave the smallest wave that I could without disturbing any space lest I got caught not participating in the prayer. Then they’d have even more reason to tell me that I would go to hell. She smiled and her painted black lips stretched into soft dimples that made her face radiate beauty before rewarding me with a gracious wink.
“Amen,” The Youth Pastor exhaled, and I almost let out a squeal. Amen, indeed. Hallelujah, praise the Lord God and Jesus. Thankfully, I was able to weave that thought into my own shaky verbal rendition of amen in order to play it off. I had to go talk to her now. Could she be interested in me, or was she just doing the thing where straight girls pretend to flirt?
“I will be asleep in the sanctuary room. If anything goes wrong, get Colette or someone to come get me.” The Youth Pastor reminded us with a kind smile, and then gestured to the captain next to her. Colette began talking about all of the things we would do tonight as soon as the Youth Pastor left the room for the sanctuary. I wished they would all quit droning on, and apparently the rest of the patrons agreed with me, as they ignored Colette and crowded back into their little groups. I took off immediately for Vee’s circle.
“Hey, uh, I’m Sloane.” I told her when I got there and stuffed my hands in my pockets. I wished that I had my newest jean jacket that I bought with the money I earned cleaning cars, but I hadn’t quite gotten all of the patches on it yet. I wondered if she would like the patches. I made a couple to impress her and a few more to out myself to her but not my dad. Subtle code-switching gay is a survival mechanic for me. “I like your earrings.”
“I know. You’re Harriet’s friend.” Vee tapped the side of her chin. “Sloane, we’ve been in the same class as each other since Pre-K. You don’t have to introduce yourself. Thanks for the compliment, though.” She laughed, so I laughed too, but I could only feel my embarrassment heighten. I needed to play this off as cool as possible. It wasn’t fair. No one ever taught me how to talk to girls and I couldn’t talk to my mom.
“I can’t believe you just left me, Sloane!” Harriet wormed her way into our conversation and waved her hand mirror around for good measure. Why did she have to act like a drama queen? If she messes this up for me, I thought. I will absolutely ream her ass. I tried my best to warn Harriet with the most tentative smile that I could manage. I would dig my mother’s diseased body out of the ground and beat her with an arm if she didn’t stop.
“… And you brought your friend with you I see.” Vee picked at her nails as she turned her gaze away from us, but Harriet’s hand mirror caught her attention. As soon as she locked her pretty green eyes on it, she changed the subject. “Sloane, can I borrow the mirror? Pretty please? I promise I’ll give it back before we go home in the morning, unhurt.” That enchanting gaze returned, and despite Harriet’s displeasure and attempts to fight back, I wrangled the hand mirror out of her fingers and placed it in Vee’s hand. Harriet pounded her fists into my arm. She deserved it for her comments.
“It’ll be okay, Harriet. Even if she does hurt it, it’s just a mirror.” I promised with a shrug of my now aching arm from where she had hammered her anger into me. Vee promised that she wouldn’t hurt it, and that even though Harriet had been cruel to her for so long, she would treat the mirror with respect. “Besides, she probably just needs it to fix her makeup.” I started to defend the motive behind the lending of the mirror further, but a girl calling from a small huddle that started to form near the door caught my attention.
“Hey, Colette asked a bunch of people to play Mafia!” She yelled to the room while waving her hands in the air to attract as much attention as possible. Vee looked to the girls at her side and nodded, as if she passed some sort of unknown code back and forth between her people that us mortals could not understand without ever uttering a word. She stuck the mirror in her cool side satchel bag and thanked me before joining the crowd as her goslings waddled behind her. I nudged a disgruntled Harriet, and she followed me over to the captain of the Academic Team that already had everyone waiting in anticipation. Beside me, I caught Harriet pouting out of the corner of my eye and shooting me looks. What an absolute faker, trying to earn my pity.
“Godfather groups in the cup. We’re picking two groups tonight, no more than three.” Colette passed a sheet of paper around as all of us frantically tried to get into possible hunting pairs. I wrote down my name with Harriet’s, as tempted as I was to ask Vee to possibly hunt with me. “We’ll pick two pairs, and those pairs will hunt the rest of the people while they try to make it back to the safe room. Mafia wins if they can capture the majority of people before they make it back here. The lights are already turned off in the church, so use your phone flashlights to navigate long hallways. Try to keep the lights off please. I was told that the electric bill can’t go any higher than normal from this event.”
Colette passed around the bowl until all of the people that wanted to hunt were in, and then she drew a strip of paper. The first one was two Sophomore girls I didn’t recognize, but they both looked like they wanted to win. They squealed and Colette drew the next paper. This one came up with Harriet and I’s names in my handwriting. We would be seeking, too. Colette let all of the citizen people in the game go, and as they flooded out the door into the deeper, darker parts of the church, I watched Vee vanish amongst the bodies. I could just find her and hang out somewhere deeper in the church all night without anyone to bother us.
“Okay, you four, get to seeking,” Colette told us once fifteen minutes passed for everyone else to flee into the abyss. The other two girls raced from the room on bare feet, and Harriet wandered towards the door as she grumbled that there better be a prize for winning like last year. I turned on my own flashlight and took off into the dark maze.
After a good thirty minutes of walking in the dark and catching people in Sunday School classrooms before they could make it back to the safe room, I paused before the door just outside the monastery. The pretty plaque engraving read ‘Basement Storage’, and any good person looking for a decent hiding place would be stupid to pass it up. Then again, it also looked like Satan’s jaws ready to swallow you whole.
“There’s no way in hell I’m going down there, Sloane.” Harriet snurled her nose at the old wooden door that led into one of the sections of the basement floors of the church. She shivered at my side and clung to my shoulder.
“Awe, c’mon. Someone’s brave enough, and they’re gonna be down there hiding out.” I held my flashlight with a shaking hand and reached for the doorknob before pulling it open to reveal a set of rickety stairs leading down into black void. No light emitted from the bottom.
I climbed down the creaking stairs despite Harriet’s tugging at my shoulder and my own second guesses about demons hiding in the shadows, but as we both treaded deeper, some light finally entered our line of sight so that our eyes could slowly adjust to the darker environment. Though they weren’t trying to hide or run for the door to get to the safe room at all, the figures of Vee, Joyce, and Gretchen all sat on the floor and looked to us as soon as we made it down.
“What’s all this for? You gonna summon your daddy back from hell?” Harriet growled as she pointed at their odd set-up. It looked like Vee took Harriet’s hand mirror, wrapped it in several laps of red string, and placed it up against the wall, facing all of them. On the floor, they laid salt in a semi-circle around it with intricate patterns that I didn’t understand, and on the very outside ring tracing the semi-circle, seven dimly lit, red tealight candles flickered to provide the only light to work by. Outside the patterns lay an old kitchen knife, probably stolen from the communal kitchen in this very church. I creeped closer as the mirror reflected each item. I needed to know what this all meant.
“We’re actually summoning your lost soul back from hell, Harriet. I always knew you were such a bitch.” Vee recoiled at her words, and her eyes squinted at my best friend in the low light of the room.
“Sloane! Don’t encourage them!” Harriet yelled from the base of the stairs as I took a few steps forward. She tugged at my shoulder again, but tried my best to muster a look that would tell her to please go along with it. I only received a nod in return, but the cruelty refused to slide off of her face.
“What are you really doing, Vee? Is this something you’ve read about?” A lot of silence followed my question, and I wondered if she even wanted to answer me. I supposed she really shouldn’t have to, as I never really helped or stood up for her, either, but I thought her music and books sounded really cool. She also got to go to concerts with her parents and friends sometimes, and maybe if I treated her nice, she would let me go. Vee and I at a concert together sounded so nice, but I didn’t know if she would consider that a date. Maybe I needed to start standing up for her.
“Yes, we’ve read about it on the internet, but I’m not talking about it unless Harriet apologizes.” Vee finally broke the silence and her pretty green eyes flickered between the two of us. As if on command, Gretchen and Joyce nodded their approval of this decision. I wished Harriet stuck with me like that, but usually she just followed me around to make herself look better.
“I’m not apologizing!” Harriet whined at me for some kind of support. I refused to let her get her way that day. I took her gently by the arm and pulled her back to the foot of the stairs.
“Look, I’ll do anything that you want me to do if you do this for me. We can go to that movie you’ve been wanting to see.” As much as I dreaded seeing whatever stupid rom-com Harriet found through television advertising on a kid’s network, for this I could do it. I could feel Vee and her goth goslings’ eyes boring into us as I tried to convince my friend, and I gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. Who cared about Mafia when I could hang out with Vee?
“It’ll be okay,” I whispered so that the others couldn’t hear. “Just apologize. You don’t have to mean it. Maybe you’ll find something else to heckle her about, even.” As much as I didn’t want to give Harriet more ammo, I did want her to agree to back down. Harriet finally broke and pulled from my grasp to approach Vee’s cross-legged, sitting figure.
“I’m sorry for being mean to you over the years, Vee.” Harriet apologized.
“And?” Vee crossed her arms as she shuffled on the ground to face her.
“And what?” Harriet crinkled her nose.
“Promise that you aren’t going to be mean while you’re down here.” Vee held her gaze. Harriet opened her mouth, but shut it again after I reminded her with a cough. I needed her to swallow her pride.
“I promise I’m not going to be mean to you.” Some of the tension in the room began to settle after Harriet’s words hit the air. Vee motioned for her friends to scoot over. All three of them shuffled around the semi-circle counter-clockwise towards the wall, leaving us the space on the right side of the set-up to sit. I sat next to Vee, and she claimed the middle as she seemed to know best about what’s going on. Harriet sat nearest the wall on the right side, with Gretchen facing her on the other side of the semi-circle. Joyce held Vee and Gretchen’s arms. Once we all settled in, Vee began to speak again.
“This is a ritual to summon the Devil to get information. Neither of you have any holy symbols or cell phones on you, do you? If so, throw them outside the room.” Vee instructed, and though I didn’t know what she meant, I knew I didn’t have any crosses on me. Harriet shook her head, and we returned to our positions after tossing our phones just outside the door.
“You don’t actually believe that’s going to work, do you?” Harriet rolled her eyes, but anyone looking at her face could read the worry embedded in every inch. I assumed Vee took the comment as an insult as she tightened her hands into fists. However, I somewhat doubted the credibility of the thought, too.
“Yeah, I’m not saying it to be mean, either, but that seems a little silly.” I rubbed the back of my head and waved at their setup. It looked like a messy web of occult vomit despite the feeling I had to learn about it all.
“Don’t act stupid. The supernatural is very real. Gretchen, Joyce, and I all have questions to ask. If you can stump him with a riddle, he has to answer one of your questions with a true answer.” Vee corrected both of us and waved her hands before claiming the knife from the ground. “All of the things here are meant to protect us. That means no matter what happens, you cannot disturb any of it, okay? Leave the salt, the string, and the mirror alone. If you have questions, you can ask them, too, but we have to finish before sixty minutes pass. In order for him to show up, he needs an offering.” I listened to her explain, but her voice faltered. Her pretty green eyes, now muddled with water, scrutinized Harriet before returning to me.
“I want to know why my mom thinks it’s my fault that my dad died.” Vee murmured as she looked into the hand mirror and stared at herself. “I prayed to God to tell me, but I never got an answer. I decided to try the other guy in town.” I slipped my hand across her shoulder, careful only to squeeze it to comfort her and then pull away lest I seem clingy and weird, but I wanted her to know that I cared. I just didn’t think this was the most sensible way to go about it.
“Unfortunately, in exchange, he needs a sacrifice.” Vee stood from her cross-legged position as she choked on her quiet words and drew the knife across the palm of her left hand. My stomach churned as sticky, red goop seeped past the blade and onto the concrete floor in the middle of her salt semi-circle. Harriet fake gagged, but I really did feel like I would throw up. I knew Vee’s mother took her husband’s death hard, but I didn’t realize that she blamed Vee. I wished I could take back every mean thing that Harriet ever said. I looked back to Harriet, who turned from my gaze to glare at the wall. Admittance at its finest. I would make her apologize later.
Gretchen handed Vee some bandages and helped her bandage her hand after she sat back down before placing the knife in the middle of the circle near the blood. Vee wrapped her hand delicately and winced as she pulled the bandages tighter to stop the bleeding. I asked if she was okay, but she shushed me before continuing.
“Now, everyone, close your eyes and count to ten. When you open them, stare into the mirror. He will appear, and Gretchen, Joyce, and I will present our prepared riddles.” Vee took a deep breath and closed her eyes as Gretchen and Joyce, both shaking, did the same. I looked over to Harriet, who sighed and rolled her eyes again. Now that the other’s eyes were closed, though, I watched her shoulders droop and tremble. You could tell a lot from a person when they think the world isn’t watching them.
“Close your eyes,” I mouthed the words without making the sound. I closed mine, too, and then assured Vee that we were ready.
“One…” We chanted off-beat and out of tune with each other. The room already felt colder, as if some entity drained it of its warmth. With my eyes closed, I became hyper aware of the two girls at my side, Vee on my left and Harriet on my right, both just inches from my fingers.
“Two…” I rubbed my hand on the course concrete and accidentally touched Vee’s pinky finger. I yanked my hand back, scared that she might feel intruded upon, but I realized that she didn’t recoil at all.
“Three…” Harriet cuddled into my side and it made me jump, as if something might attack me considering she was closer to the wall. Both Harriet and the wall crowded me, and distracted me from the true goal. I placed my hand back near Vee’s, but then contemplated if I should.
“Four…” I had no questions to ask the Devil, nor riddle to even begin the exchange, but I wanted to know what he might give me if he was real. Could he make my dad accept me? Could he make the world stop being so cruel? Could he tell me if I really would end up in hell for trying to hold her hand?
“Five…” No, I knew he would be awful. Every single piece of literature in this church painted him as a cruel conman. I needed to just do what felt right, right? I inched my fingers across hers.
“Six…” Then again, they painted me as a sinful, evil heathen. Perhaps he would show up and actually be kind. I tried to imagine what he would look like, be he clothed in a suit and tie or a disheveled, shredded toga. My dirt-coated fingerprints slid across the black, shiny field of her nails.
“Seven…” I put my hand on top of hers, and took in the softness of her hand. I wanted to wrap my fingers around her own, but would that be uncalled for? She didn’t seem upset with this, at least. Harriet wrapped her arms under my own and around my torso like she always did when we watched scary movies together so that she could use me for protection.
“Eight…” The paranoia would kill me if the Devil didn’t, as my lungs felt harder to work by the second. I wanted to open my eyes to help gauge her face, but I also didn’t want to get possessed or some shit. That would ruin all of my chances and Vee’s ritual.
“Nine…” I swore I could feel a hand slip up my back to grab my throat, so I batted around the collar of my t-shirt with my free hand just to find nothing. I could scream and run before he arrived, but then I would never know if the church did him wrong, too. If they did, then could he really be all that bad?
“Ten…” I expected to see either the impossibly handsome face of a faux man or a horned fiend in the mirror as we all said the number when I opened my eyes. Instead, I saw only my own face reflected back at me, obscured by the red string. Slowly, everyone around the circle began to open their eyes except for Harriet, who continued to cuddle into my side with her eyes closed. I guess the tension really got to her.
“I don’t understand.” Vee crawled forward after a moment of absolute silence and disturbed her salt circle. She snatched up the mirror and unraveled the thread with tears budding at the corners of her pretty green eyes. “Why didn’t it work? Everyone said it would.” She grasped the mirror with thick, ring-bespeckled fingers, and raised it over her head. For a moment, I thought she was going to throw it, but instead she turned in the salt to face me on her knees and pushed the knife towards the wall. She held the mirror out towards Harriet, who still remained oblivious to the world in my arms. I even felt her grip around my torso tightened. “Here’s your mirror back. I’m sorry for wasting your time.”
Harriet refused to respond for quite a while, and just as I was about to start raising my voice and shaking her with extra force, her eyes shot open. She let out a blood-hardening scream from the depths of hell itself and clawed at her face as she leaped to her feet. I watched as my best friend propelled herself out of my arms, past Vee and smack dab into the wall with a sickening thwack. She snatched up the knife and brandished it at Vee without taking the time to recover. I called out to her, trying to understand what was going on.
“You wanted your information, little girl,” Harriet wheezed, but her voice sounded lower and shriller than normal as she swayed like a drunkard with no balance. I watched her lock eyes with Vee. In the low candle light, her eyes looked almost black. My attention turned to the broken salt circle, a few of the toppled over, burnt out candles, and the string curled on the floor as my breath hitched in my throat. “You said it yourself. I need a sacrifice first.” Vee said earlier if the protection failed, then the Devil could leave the mirror. I stared at what used to be my best friend and thought of the harm that hosting the Devil would cause to the human body. I guess that answered my question about him being evil, though. “Pay up, Yvonne! The bell tolls for you!” She screeched and I realized that I needed to make a choice.
“Fuck off, Satan! That’s my friend!” I tried my best to position myself between Harriet and Vee as Harriet swung the knife under our arms and around our sides. Gretchen and Joyce erupted into a chorus of screams, scrambling for the door in order to get help, and I felt my heart slam into my temples despite the distance from me and the steel edge.
“I thought Harriet was your friend, Sloane.” The eyes of my best friend locked with my own, and I wondered what they would look like if I could see the Devil’s instead. Surely, the brown honey pots embedded in her irises couldn’t belong to the Devil, and yet, the gaze they delivered reminded me of someone much more sinister. “I thought Harriet might even be your girlfriend.”
“Harriet’s just a friend!” I shoved her backward and she toppled onto the floor with her hands barely keeping her back upright as she hit the ground. The knife clattered from her hand and skittered towards the wall as the blood from Vee’s hand smeared against the concrete. I panted and Harriet stilled her eyes on me. A light shone down from above and gleamed off her flaxen hair before expanding to expose all of us. I wanted to throw Vee’s mirror at her, but I knew that would probably break it. Could I even call her just a friend now? I thought. The ritual failed and the supernatural is probably bullshit, but I met the real Devil in that basement.
“What in the heavens is going on down here?!” The light came from the open door, and from the open door came Colette and the Youth Pastor, followed by two sobbing goth goslings with smeared, running black makeup. They took one look at our set up before the Youth Pastor began to scold us and gathered a quiet Harriet from the floor that refused to look up from her feet. Colette demanded that Vee and I follow her as she marched up the stairs and threatened us with writing Bible verses for the rest of the night.
“Honestly, summoning the Devil? You are supposed to be good, Christian girls!” The Youth Pastor whined as she dragged us back to where we had our stuff stowed. I scooted closer to Vee in the dark hallway and noticed that she was still trembling. Now or never, I scolded myself and gently took her hand.
“No, forget Bible verses. I’m calling your parents.” Vee wrapped her fingers around my own and tightened them, and I felt my shoulders settle back down, though I hadn’t noticed their tension before. Dad’s gonna find out? I considered and then inherited her trembles. As much as I wanted this to work, I knew that phone call would end it all. I just needed to enjoy her presence while I could.
In the low light of the moon from the windows, Vee’s hand mirror reflected prisms on the walls, and I realized that I did know what the Devil looked like. I didn’t see him in the mirror because he comes in many forms- like a blonde teenager with an affinity for her best friend, or a silver-haired father with a vicious tongue.
trigger warnings possible: suicide mention, religious trauma, homophobia, possession, knives, attempted stabbing, manipulation, demons, devils, Satan/The Devil/Lucifer, "satanic" rituals, bullying (it's actually a creepypasta ritual but seems like a safe one to add) (will add more if asked)
“If she’s going to be here, I’m literally going to kill myself,” My best friend, Harriet Reyes, stomped her foot onto the grass outside of the Junction Baptist Church. The entire building covered three city blocks in an L shape, with the last open section of the fourth block containing a parking lot. Because it was one out of four churches in the town with a population of only a thousand people, I never understood why they couldn’t just all go to this one as it was big enough with several connected buildings. They usually held lock-ins for girls in middle school, and this was our first time joining the chaos. Harriet seemed uninterested in the lock-in, though, and more interested in Vee, who chained her bicycle to one of the racks and rifled around in her backpack before entering the building. Excited as I was to be in a building full of essentially unsupervised high school Freshman girls all night long, I could admit that Vee interested me more, too.
“Like, what if she hits on me or something? Aren’t you ever scared of that?” Harriet pulled her suitcase closer as her mother drove away. Mrs. Reyes may have not been nice on the eyes, but if my dad ever found out that I wanted Vee to hit on me, she would take me in when he threw me out even though Harriet and I often had to play alone due to both parent’s absence. When she was home, she was one of my favorite people. Plus, she always brought home really yummy food for dinner when I would stay over. However, unlike Harriet, scared wouldn’t be the word I would use to describe myself in a situation where Vee would hit on me.
“I think she’s nice. I like her earrings. They’re little bottles full of ghosts.” I continued our conversation after we signed in at the door with the Senior chaperones. I also liked her silky dyed hair, and her pretty green eyes that welcomed me into the mysterious world she created wherever she went. It seemed like every location she inhabited transformed around her and reflected the interesting (even if spooky) person on the inside.
The captain of the Academic Team took both of our names down and pointed us towards a room where we could drop off our bags, but she looked like the only one of the Seniors taking this chaperoning business seriously. Even though all of them were supposed to be watching all of us, it looked like most of them already huddled in groups and stared into their phones.
It sounded like a Junction church event, all right. With the word ‘church’ attached, I assumed that most people in the town immediately wrote off the event as safe even if they knew nothing about it. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Seniors would be scolded for setting off a smoke alarm with weed before the night was over. Hell, you could probably have a satanic gathering labelled it as a church fall festival and no one would question it.
“Ugh, don’t tell me you’re obsessed with her, too,” Harriet found an empty space of floor in the sanctuary and set down her bags before flopping onto her sleeping bean bag. Obsessed was a strong word, but I always found myself wanting to be close to her and ask her about the newest book she had. As much as I disliked reading myself, hearing her talk about the stories she loved was my favorite thing to listen to. Her real, alluring name was Yvonne, but she insisted that everyone call her Vee after second grade. As for Harriet, well, I tolerated her for her mom and her money, and she always hated Vee. I never understood why. Harriet and I had been best friends since Kindergarten, but whenever I would express interest in Vee, she would go off about how much she hated her. “She literally called me basic in sixth grade, and she stepped on my chances of winning the talent show every single year with her stupid little self-written poetry readings.” I wanted to implore Harriet to try something more complex than just trying to sing a country song off-key to win, but I felt like that might hurt her feelings so I kept my mouth shut. Now that we were in our Freshman year of High School, they always glared at each other down the hallways, and I’m fairly certain that I saw Vee flip her off one time.
“Nah, she just interests me. I’m always curious what she’s going to be talking about next. Listening to her explain the things she adores sounds better than the actual material, you know?” I plopped my backpack, neatly packed, next to Harriet’s stuff, and laid out my comforter, foam pad, and pillow for the night. Maybe we could get Vee to sleep near our spot. I could talk to her in the dead of night while watching her pretty green eyes try not to drift off to sleep. I wondered if she would take her makeup off, but I figured she wouldn’t in such a public place. She always kept a purse to redo it if it messed up. Did she have black pajamas to wear in addition to the mostly black wardrobe she always sported? Disappointment crossed my mind when I saw her in the back near the emergency doors, huddled around her best friends Gretchen and Joyce instead. They already had a small Bluetooth speaker out, and Vee turned on something I heard her play out loud before with an emotional vocalist and loud bass line.
“You sound just like my brother talking about his girlfriend!” Harriet threw her hands in the air from her laying spot on the floor, but after a period of silence where she could contemplate that thought, she dropped them and sat up as fast as she could. The look on her face shot fear into my stomach and made me want to vomit. “Oh my God, Sloane, are you,” She scooted closer as her grin widened. She flopped her hand over, and then did it again as if once wasn’t enough to get the point across. “Like, y’know,” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Gay? Do you have a crush on Vee?” I hated when people acted like this whenever they found out. Straight people my age treated it like some sort of stage show, and older straight people just condemn me or freak out about me going to hell.
“I think she’s pretty and has fantastic takes on some things. As for a crush, I mean,” I coughed and opened my backpack. For a moment, I wanted to crawl inside it, but I knew that Harriet would never tell my dad. Whenever we hung out, we always went over to her place because she had all of the interesting toys growing up and all of the newest tech now. My measly computer setup that I inherited from an uncle barely functioned for schoolwork. As for Harriet, well, at least she let me use her things. “Maybe? I definitely think only girls are attractive.”
“Oh my God, you are! You are! You have to tell me who else you like!” Harriet squealed and clapped her hands together like a brain-dead game show audience member. I forced the politest smile I could manage, but again, after she contemplated these words, her expression changed. She knotted her eyebrows together and clamped her hands on her hips. “Wait, do you have a crush on me? That’s gross. Please tell me you’ve never like, looked at my ass.”
“Nah, I haven’t.” I couldn’t help but let a laugh escape my traitor throat. Harriet wasn’t exactly bad looking, but when I looked at her tall, beam pole athletic build next to Vee’s soft curves and short stature, I knew I definitely preferred one over the other. Harriet made a good enough void to fill time with, though. She always took me to the mall with her and bought me things with her allowance credit card that I couldn’t afford, and she defended me when people were rude because I hung out with her. As crude as she was, I don’t think I could tell her I didn’t want to be her friend. After all, we’re all that each other ever had. “It’s okay, you’re not my type.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Harriet’s tone changed, and her face heated up with a dark red undertone. I gave her a shrug at first because I didn’t understand why she was upset. She just complained that she didn’t want me to hit on her, but now she acted offended when I assured her that I wouldn’t. She clutched her hand mirror that she just laid out so tightly that I could see the white bone color of her knuckles; she must be determined to give us makeovers tonight. Sometimes I never understood her, but I loved the feeling of her using the brushes on my face to paint me the way she wanted.
Before I could defend my take of who I liked and why, the Youth Pastor walked in with the captain of the Academic Team trailing behind her. I definitely didn’t want to say anything with an authority figure from the Church around. If any of them knew, it would be all over for me, and I would be disowned and condemned to hell. The Youth Pastor would be here all night, but the Seniors were supposed to watch us and move along events throughout the night. I doubted the Seniors would pay attention for the first fifteen minutes after her departure.
“Hello, girls, and welcome to the Junction Annual Church Lock-In! We’ll start with prayer, and then I’ll leave the Seniors to get you started.” As the Youth Pastor spoke those words, the reality of my location weighed on me. All of the kids around ducked their heads as she began to recite words to God, but I didn’t know what to say to him. Everyone said he hated people like me just because we weren’t straight, but I don’t know. My dad forced me to read the book several times, even though it was a teenage adaption, and the Bible’s portrayal of God always felt different than the one the church talked about. I never understood why the one in the text would hate me for wanting to wake up to a beautiful, loving woman every morning. I peeked out of the prayer while she was still talking and looked over at Harriet, who had her head down and her hands folded neatly in her lap around her hand mirror. Almost everyone else was looking down with their eyes closed, too, except for Vee and her friends.
Vee looked up from her notebook and silent circle. Her pretty green eyes met my own, and I gave the smallest wave that I could without disturbing any space lest I got caught not participating in the prayer. Then they’d have even more reason to tell me that I would go to hell. She smiled and her painted black lips stretched into soft dimples that made her face radiate beauty before rewarding me with a gracious wink.
“Amen,” The Youth Pastor exhaled, and I almost let out a squeal. Amen, indeed. Hallelujah, praise the Lord God and Jesus. Thankfully, I was able to weave that thought into my own shaky verbal rendition of amen in order to play it off. I had to go talk to her now. Could she be interested in me, or was she just doing the thing where straight girls pretend to flirt?
“I will be asleep in the sanctuary room. If anything goes wrong, get Colette or someone to come get me.” The Youth Pastor reminded us with a kind smile, and then gestured to the captain next to her. Colette began talking about all of the things we would do tonight as soon as the Youth Pastor left the room for the sanctuary. I wished they would all quit droning on, and apparently the rest of the patrons agreed with me, as they ignored Colette and crowded back into their little groups. I took off immediately for Vee’s circle.
“Hey, uh, I’m Sloane.” I told her when I got there and stuffed my hands in my pockets. I wished that I had my newest jean jacket that I bought with the money I earned cleaning cars, but I hadn’t quite gotten all of the patches on it yet. I wondered if she would like the patches. I made a couple to impress her and a few more to out myself to her but not my dad. Subtle code-switching gay is a survival mechanic for me. “I like your earrings.”
“I know. You’re Harriet’s friend.” Vee tapped the side of her chin. “Sloane, we’ve been in the same class as each other since Pre-K. You don’t have to introduce yourself. Thanks for the compliment, though.” She laughed, so I laughed too, but I could only feel my embarrassment heighten. I needed to play this off as cool as possible. It wasn’t fair. No one ever taught me how to talk to girls and I couldn’t talk to my mom.
“I can’t believe you just left me, Sloane!” Harriet wormed her way into our conversation and waved her hand mirror around for good measure. Why did she have to act like a drama queen? If she messes this up for me, I thought. I will absolutely ream her ass. I tried my best to warn Harriet with the most tentative smile that I could manage. I would dig my mother’s diseased body out of the ground and beat her with an arm if she didn’t stop.
“… And you brought your friend with you I see.” Vee picked at her nails as she turned her gaze away from us, but Harriet’s hand mirror caught her attention. As soon as she locked her pretty green eyes on it, she changed the subject. “Sloane, can I borrow the mirror? Pretty please? I promise I’ll give it back before we go home in the morning, unhurt.” That enchanting gaze returned, and despite Harriet’s displeasure and attempts to fight back, I wrangled the hand mirror out of her fingers and placed it in Vee’s hand. Harriet pounded her fists into my arm. She deserved it for her comments.
“It’ll be okay, Harriet. Even if she does hurt it, it’s just a mirror.” I promised with a shrug of my now aching arm from where she had hammered her anger into me. Vee promised that she wouldn’t hurt it, and that even though Harriet had been cruel to her for so long, she would treat the mirror with respect. “Besides, she probably just needs it to fix her makeup.” I started to defend the motive behind the lending of the mirror further, but a girl calling from a small huddle that started to form near the door caught my attention.
“Hey, Colette asked a bunch of people to play Mafia!” She yelled to the room while waving her hands in the air to attract as much attention as possible. Vee looked to the girls at her side and nodded, as if she passed some sort of unknown code back and forth between her people that us mortals could not understand without ever uttering a word. She stuck the mirror in her cool side satchel bag and thanked me before joining the crowd as her goslings waddled behind her. I nudged a disgruntled Harriet, and she followed me over to the captain of the Academic Team that already had everyone waiting in anticipation. Beside me, I caught Harriet pouting out of the corner of my eye and shooting me looks. What an absolute faker, trying to earn my pity.
“Godfather groups in the cup. We’re picking two groups tonight, no more than three.” Colette passed a sheet of paper around as all of us frantically tried to get into possible hunting pairs. I wrote down my name with Harriet’s, as tempted as I was to ask Vee to possibly hunt with me. “We’ll pick two pairs, and those pairs will hunt the rest of the people while they try to make it back to the safe room. Mafia wins if they can capture the majority of people before they make it back here. The lights are already turned off in the church, so use your phone flashlights to navigate long hallways. Try to keep the lights off please. I was told that the electric bill can’t go any higher than normal from this event.”
Colette passed around the bowl until all of the people that wanted to hunt were in, and then she drew a strip of paper. The first one was two Sophomore girls I didn’t recognize, but they both looked like they wanted to win. They squealed and Colette drew the next paper. This one came up with Harriet and I’s names in my handwriting. We would be seeking, too. Colette let all of the citizen people in the game go, and as they flooded out the door into the deeper, darker parts of the church, I watched Vee vanish amongst the bodies. I could just find her and hang out somewhere deeper in the church all night without anyone to bother us.
“Okay, you four, get to seeking,” Colette told us once fifteen minutes passed for everyone else to flee into the abyss. The other two girls raced from the room on bare feet, and Harriet wandered towards the door as she grumbled that there better be a prize for winning like last year. I turned on my own flashlight and took off into the dark maze.
After a good thirty minutes of walking in the dark and catching people in Sunday School classrooms before they could make it back to the safe room, I paused before the door just outside the monastery. The pretty plaque engraving read ‘Basement Storage’, and any good person looking for a decent hiding place would be stupid to pass it up. Then again, it also looked like Satan’s jaws ready to swallow you whole.
“There’s no way in hell I’m going down there, Sloane.” Harriet snurled her nose at the old wooden door that led into one of the sections of the basement floors of the church. She shivered at my side and clung to my shoulder.
“Awe, c’mon. Someone’s brave enough, and they’re gonna be down there hiding out.” I held my flashlight with a shaking hand and reached for the doorknob before pulling it open to reveal a set of rickety stairs leading down into black void. No light emitted from the bottom.
I climbed down the creaking stairs despite Harriet’s tugging at my shoulder and my own second guesses about demons hiding in the shadows, but as we both treaded deeper, some light finally entered our line of sight so that our eyes could slowly adjust to the darker environment. Though they weren’t trying to hide or run for the door to get to the safe room at all, the figures of Vee, Joyce, and Gretchen all sat on the floor and looked to us as soon as we made it down.
“What’s all this for? You gonna summon your daddy back from hell?” Harriet growled as she pointed at their odd set-up. It looked like Vee took Harriet’s hand mirror, wrapped it in several laps of red string, and placed it up against the wall, facing all of them. On the floor, they laid salt in a semi-circle around it with intricate patterns that I didn’t understand, and on the very outside ring tracing the semi-circle, seven dimly lit, red tealight candles flickered to provide the only light to work by. Outside the patterns lay an old kitchen knife, probably stolen from the communal kitchen in this very church. I creeped closer as the mirror reflected each item. I needed to know what this all meant.
“We’re actually summoning your lost soul back from hell, Harriet. I always knew you were such a bitch.” Vee recoiled at her words, and her eyes squinted at my best friend in the low light of the room.
“Sloane! Don’t encourage them!” Harriet yelled from the base of the stairs as I took a few steps forward. She tugged at my shoulder again, but tried my best to muster a look that would tell her to please go along with it. I only received a nod in return, but the cruelty refused to slide off of her face.
“What are you really doing, Vee? Is this something you’ve read about?” A lot of silence followed my question, and I wondered if she even wanted to answer me. I supposed she really shouldn’t have to, as I never really helped or stood up for her, either, but I thought her music and books sounded really cool. She also got to go to concerts with her parents and friends sometimes, and maybe if I treated her nice, she would let me go. Vee and I at a concert together sounded so nice, but I didn’t know if she would consider that a date. Maybe I needed to start standing up for her.
“Yes, we’ve read about it on the internet, but I’m not talking about it unless Harriet apologizes.” Vee finally broke the silence and her pretty green eyes flickered between the two of us. As if on command, Gretchen and Joyce nodded their approval of this decision. I wished Harriet stuck with me like that, but usually she just followed me around to make herself look better.
“I’m not apologizing!” Harriet whined at me for some kind of support. I refused to let her get her way that day. I took her gently by the arm and pulled her back to the foot of the stairs.
“Look, I’ll do anything that you want me to do if you do this for me. We can go to that movie you’ve been wanting to see.” As much as I dreaded seeing whatever stupid rom-com Harriet found through television advertising on a kid’s network, for this I could do it. I could feel Vee and her goth goslings’ eyes boring into us as I tried to convince my friend, and I gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. Who cared about Mafia when I could hang out with Vee?
“It’ll be okay,” I whispered so that the others couldn’t hear. “Just apologize. You don’t have to mean it. Maybe you’ll find something else to heckle her about, even.” As much as I didn’t want to give Harriet more ammo, I did want her to agree to back down. Harriet finally broke and pulled from my grasp to approach Vee’s cross-legged, sitting figure.
“I’m sorry for being mean to you over the years, Vee.” Harriet apologized.
“And?” Vee crossed her arms as she shuffled on the ground to face her.
“And what?” Harriet crinkled her nose.
“Promise that you aren’t going to be mean while you’re down here.” Vee held her gaze. Harriet opened her mouth, but shut it again after I reminded her with a cough. I needed her to swallow her pride.
“I promise I’m not going to be mean to you.” Some of the tension in the room began to settle after Harriet’s words hit the air. Vee motioned for her friends to scoot over. All three of them shuffled around the semi-circle counter-clockwise towards the wall, leaving us the space on the right side of the set-up to sit. I sat next to Vee, and she claimed the middle as she seemed to know best about what’s going on. Harriet sat nearest the wall on the right side, with Gretchen facing her on the other side of the semi-circle. Joyce held Vee and Gretchen’s arms. Once we all settled in, Vee began to speak again.
“This is a ritual to summon the Devil to get information. Neither of you have any holy symbols or cell phones on you, do you? If so, throw them outside the room.” Vee instructed, and though I didn’t know what she meant, I knew I didn’t have any crosses on me. Harriet shook her head, and we returned to our positions after tossing our phones just outside the door.
“You don’t actually believe that’s going to work, do you?” Harriet rolled her eyes, but anyone looking at her face could read the worry embedded in every inch. I assumed Vee took the comment as an insult as she tightened her hands into fists. However, I somewhat doubted the credibility of the thought, too.
“Yeah, I’m not saying it to be mean, either, but that seems a little silly.” I rubbed the back of my head and waved at their setup. It looked like a messy web of occult vomit despite the feeling I had to learn about it all.
“Don’t act stupid. The supernatural is very real. Gretchen, Joyce, and I all have questions to ask. If you can stump him with a riddle, he has to answer one of your questions with a true answer.” Vee corrected both of us and waved her hands before claiming the knife from the ground. “All of the things here are meant to protect us. That means no matter what happens, you cannot disturb any of it, okay? Leave the salt, the string, and the mirror alone. If you have questions, you can ask them, too, but we have to finish before sixty minutes pass. In order for him to show up, he needs an offering.” I listened to her explain, but her voice faltered. Her pretty green eyes, now muddled with water, scrutinized Harriet before returning to me.
“I want to know why my mom thinks it’s my fault that my dad died.” Vee murmured as she looked into the hand mirror and stared at herself. “I prayed to God to tell me, but I never got an answer. I decided to try the other guy in town.” I slipped my hand across her shoulder, careful only to squeeze it to comfort her and then pull away lest I seem clingy and weird, but I wanted her to know that I cared. I just didn’t think this was the most sensible way to go about it.
“Unfortunately, in exchange, he needs a sacrifice.” Vee stood from her cross-legged position as she choked on her quiet words and drew the knife across the palm of her left hand. My stomach churned as sticky, red goop seeped past the blade and onto the concrete floor in the middle of her salt semi-circle. Harriet fake gagged, but I really did feel like I would throw up. I knew Vee’s mother took her husband’s death hard, but I didn’t realize that she blamed Vee. I wished I could take back every mean thing that Harriet ever said. I looked back to Harriet, who turned from my gaze to glare at the wall. Admittance at its finest. I would make her apologize later.
Gretchen handed Vee some bandages and helped her bandage her hand after she sat back down before placing the knife in the middle of the circle near the blood. Vee wrapped her hand delicately and winced as she pulled the bandages tighter to stop the bleeding. I asked if she was okay, but she shushed me before continuing.
“Now, everyone, close your eyes and count to ten. When you open them, stare into the mirror. He will appear, and Gretchen, Joyce, and I will present our prepared riddles.” Vee took a deep breath and closed her eyes as Gretchen and Joyce, both shaking, did the same. I looked over to Harriet, who sighed and rolled her eyes again. Now that the other’s eyes were closed, though, I watched her shoulders droop and tremble. You could tell a lot from a person when they think the world isn’t watching them.
“Close your eyes,” I mouthed the words without making the sound. I closed mine, too, and then assured Vee that we were ready.
“One…” We chanted off-beat and out of tune with each other. The room already felt colder, as if some entity drained it of its warmth. With my eyes closed, I became hyper aware of the two girls at my side, Vee on my left and Harriet on my right, both just inches from my fingers.
“Two…” I rubbed my hand on the course concrete and accidentally touched Vee’s pinky finger. I yanked my hand back, scared that she might feel intruded upon, but I realized that she didn’t recoil at all.
“Three…” Harriet cuddled into my side and it made me jump, as if something might attack me considering she was closer to the wall. Both Harriet and the wall crowded me, and distracted me from the true goal. I placed my hand back near Vee’s, but then contemplated if I should.
“Four…” I had no questions to ask the Devil, nor riddle to even begin the exchange, but I wanted to know what he might give me if he was real. Could he make my dad accept me? Could he make the world stop being so cruel? Could he tell me if I really would end up in hell for trying to hold her hand?
“Five…” No, I knew he would be awful. Every single piece of literature in this church painted him as a cruel conman. I needed to just do what felt right, right? I inched my fingers across hers.
“Six…” Then again, they painted me as a sinful, evil heathen. Perhaps he would show up and actually be kind. I tried to imagine what he would look like, be he clothed in a suit and tie or a disheveled, shredded toga. My dirt-coated fingerprints slid across the black, shiny field of her nails.
“Seven…” I put my hand on top of hers, and took in the softness of her hand. I wanted to wrap my fingers around her own, but would that be uncalled for? She didn’t seem upset with this, at least. Harriet wrapped her arms under my own and around my torso like she always did when we watched scary movies together so that she could use me for protection.
“Eight…” The paranoia would kill me if the Devil didn’t, as my lungs felt harder to work by the second. I wanted to open my eyes to help gauge her face, but I also didn’t want to get possessed or some shit. That would ruin all of my chances and Vee’s ritual.
“Nine…” I swore I could feel a hand slip up my back to grab my throat, so I batted around the collar of my t-shirt with my free hand just to find nothing. I could scream and run before he arrived, but then I would never know if the church did him wrong, too. If they did, then could he really be all that bad?
“Ten…” I expected to see either the impossibly handsome face of a faux man or a horned fiend in the mirror as we all said the number when I opened my eyes. Instead, I saw only my own face reflected back at me, obscured by the red string. Slowly, everyone around the circle began to open their eyes except for Harriet, who continued to cuddle into my side with her eyes closed. I guess the tension really got to her.
“I don’t understand.” Vee crawled forward after a moment of absolute silence and disturbed her salt circle. She snatched up the mirror and unraveled the thread with tears budding at the corners of her pretty green eyes. “Why didn’t it work? Everyone said it would.” She grasped the mirror with thick, ring-bespeckled fingers, and raised it over her head. For a moment, I thought she was going to throw it, but instead she turned in the salt to face me on her knees and pushed the knife towards the wall. She held the mirror out towards Harriet, who still remained oblivious to the world in my arms. I even felt her grip around my torso tightened. “Here’s your mirror back. I’m sorry for wasting your time.”
Harriet refused to respond for quite a while, and just as I was about to start raising my voice and shaking her with extra force, her eyes shot open. She let out a blood-hardening scream from the depths of hell itself and clawed at her face as she leaped to her feet. I watched as my best friend propelled herself out of my arms, past Vee and smack dab into the wall with a sickening thwack. She snatched up the knife and brandished it at Vee without taking the time to recover. I called out to her, trying to understand what was going on.
“You wanted your information, little girl,” Harriet wheezed, but her voice sounded lower and shriller than normal as she swayed like a drunkard with no balance. I watched her lock eyes with Vee. In the low candle light, her eyes looked almost black. My attention turned to the broken salt circle, a few of the toppled over, burnt out candles, and the string curled on the floor as my breath hitched in my throat. “You said it yourself. I need a sacrifice first.” Vee said earlier if the protection failed, then the Devil could leave the mirror. I stared at what used to be my best friend and thought of the harm that hosting the Devil would cause to the human body. I guess that answered my question about him being evil, though. “Pay up, Yvonne! The bell tolls for you!” She screeched and I realized that I needed to make a choice.
“Fuck off, Satan! That’s my friend!” I tried my best to position myself between Harriet and Vee as Harriet swung the knife under our arms and around our sides. Gretchen and Joyce erupted into a chorus of screams, scrambling for the door in order to get help, and I felt my heart slam into my temples despite the distance from me and the steel edge.
“I thought Harriet was your friend, Sloane.” The eyes of my best friend locked with my own, and I wondered what they would look like if I could see the Devil’s instead. Surely, the brown honey pots embedded in her irises couldn’t belong to the Devil, and yet, the gaze they delivered reminded me of someone much more sinister. “I thought Harriet might even be your girlfriend.”
“Harriet’s just a friend!” I shoved her backward and she toppled onto the floor with her hands barely keeping her back upright as she hit the ground. The knife clattered from her hand and skittered towards the wall as the blood from Vee’s hand smeared against the concrete. I panted and Harriet stilled her eyes on me. A light shone down from above and gleamed off her flaxen hair before expanding to expose all of us. I wanted to throw Vee’s mirror at her, but I knew that would probably break it. Could I even call her just a friend now? I thought. The ritual failed and the supernatural is probably bullshit, but I met the real Devil in that basement.
“What in the heavens is going on down here?!” The light came from the open door, and from the open door came Colette and the Youth Pastor, followed by two sobbing goth goslings with smeared, running black makeup. They took one look at our set up before the Youth Pastor began to scold us and gathered a quiet Harriet from the floor that refused to look up from her feet. Colette demanded that Vee and I follow her as she marched up the stairs and threatened us with writing Bible verses for the rest of the night.
“Honestly, summoning the Devil? You are supposed to be good, Christian girls!” The Youth Pastor whined as she dragged us back to where we had our stuff stowed. I scooted closer to Vee in the dark hallway and noticed that she was still trembling. Now or never, I scolded myself and gently took her hand.
“No, forget Bible verses. I’m calling your parents.” Vee wrapped her fingers around my own and tightened them, and I felt my shoulders settle back down, though I hadn’t noticed their tension before. Dad’s gonna find out? I considered and then inherited her trembles. As much as I wanted this to work, I knew that phone call would end it all. I just needed to enjoy her presence while I could.
In the low light of the moon from the windows, Vee’s hand mirror reflected prisms on the walls, and I realized that I did know what the Devil looked like. I didn’t see him in the mirror because he comes in many forms- like a blonde teenager with an affinity for her best friend, or a silver-haired father with a vicious tongue.
