Amateur Author

It was not the first time Margaret spend the night at her friend’s house. As they often did, Crystal and Sophia also spend the night at Miranda’s. The pajama parties were a regularly recurring event in the social life of the four teenagers and was held at the residence of one of them, each girl taking turns in hosting the event. This evening was Miranda’s turn and the three guests were delighted to learn Miranda’s parents would not be at home for the duration of the evening. They would return from a birthday no sooner then very late in the evening. Due to the fact that Miranda had no siblings in any way, shape or form, they had the house to themselves.

The evening started with the traditional grooming with the use of curling irons, mousse, gel and many other ways to give another person temporary an alternate appearance. This ritual was followed by make-up like lipstick, mascara, nail polish and eye-liner. All of this was continuesly accompanied by conversations on boys, sex, music, celebrities, gossip and other things terribly important to girls at that particular age.

After this, it was time for the feature film of the evening. Miranda had rented a romantic comedy starring Sandra Bullock. They had all seen it at least twice, but that didn’t matter. The movie was watched from the beginning through to the end while they consumed large quantities of popcorn, washed down with gallons of soda.

After the movie, they went upstairs, to Miranda’s bedroom, which had been prepared to offer a place to sleep for the three guests. Following the traditions they developed over time meticulously, it was time to play the game `Truth or Dare`. The highlight was the moment Miranda choose `dare` and had to kiss Sophia on the lips. Sophia had undergone it with some awkwardness and Miranda had done it without any reserve while Crystal and Margaret applauded enthusiastically. Crystal, responsible for coming up with the challenge, had not anticipated Miranda to actually going through with it, or Sophia allowing it. She expected Miranda would have an even more daring challenge for her next slumber party and decided she would do it, whatever it would be.

‘And now: the scary story before bedtime!’ Margaret cried out. It was her favorite part. The hostess had to tell the story, which had to be made up.

‘I’ve got something better,’ Miranda smiled mysteriously.

‘Something better?’ Margaret asked, feeling both disappointed as well as curious.

Miranda took something from underneath her bed and placed it on the floor in the middle of the group. ‘There it is!’ she stated with pride.

‘A Ouija board?’ Sophia murmured.

‘Yes, a Ouija board. In stead of making up stories about ghosts we are going to summon one!’

‘I don’t know…’ Margaret confessed. ‘I’ve heard it is very dangerous. Especially if you don’t know what you are doing.’

‘Margaret is right,’ Crystal agreed. ‘It’s better to leave the dead in peace. You’re just doing this because you don’t feel like making up a story.’

‘Scardycats!’ Miranda laughed. ‘Don’t be such a baby and play along. It’s just a game!’

Crystal and Margaret glared at each other. In some way, Miranda was right. What spirit would want to talk to four teenagers, assuming there even was such a thing as ghosts. It couldn’t, could it? They decided to swallow their objections and took up their place in the circle Miranda and Sophia had already formed around the spirit board.

‘We are supposed to do this naked,’ Miranda suggested with a grin.

‘You were supposed to have come up with a decent ghost story,’ Crystal ricochet. ‘ But don’t let me stop you.’

Miranda only replied by sticking out her tongue, dimmed the lights in her bedroom and retook her position in the circle. Then she started the summoning. ‘Spirits of those who have passed; come to us and answer our questions.’ She spoke with a low voice she made sound as mysterious as possible.

All four girls had placed the index finger of their right hand on a glass that had been placed on top of the board. Their hearts pounded in their throats. They all did their best to apply as little pressure as possible on the glass. They only had to touch it lightly, Miranda had explained.

‘Spirits, I summon thee! Listen to my words! Are you here, ready to answer our questions?’

Although none of them expected an answer, they all stared at the glass with tension, their heartbeat heightened by the excitement. A loud thumb swept through the bedroom, chased by a cold breeze. The four girls jumped up in fear, their hearts beating loudly.

Miranda noticed the source of their terror and started to laugh. She walked over to the window that had been blown open and closed it. She took extra care in checking it wouldn’t happen again. ‘That was a scary moment, wasn’t it?’ she said as she turned around.

The others were trying to get their heartbeat and respiration to a normal level, except for Margaret, who still looked as pale as a corpse.

‘What’s wrong?’ Miranda asked her. ‘Did you get spooked that badly? It was just the wind.’

‘Pretty coincidental, don’t you think?’ We shouldn’t be doing this. It doesn’t feel right.’

Miranda didn’t take the doubts seriously. ‘Nonsense. Coincidence. Don’t be such a baby, we’ll try it again.’

‘Yeah, or do you think a ghost is trying to scare us?’ Crystal laughed.

Margaret had some serious reservations. She didn’t want to ruin the evening, but the hairs in the back of her neck stood on end. She didn’t feel comfortable and the game had lost it’s fun minutes ago. A sense of immanent doom befell her. When her friends reassured her again to stop acting silly and that there was nothing wrong, she shoved her feelings to the deep chasms of her mind and retook her place in the circle. But from the chasms silent cries and wordless warnings echoed.

When the circle was reformed, they all placed their index finger on the glass. Margaret used her left hand, because she was left handed, and it didn’t occur to her to use her right. The others didn’t notice.

‘Spirits of the underworld! Hear our words and come to us. Listen to our questions and obey our will. Reveal your presence to us! Are you there?’ Miranda hollered with her fake eerie voice.

Silence befell them. No one spoke, not even a single word, and they were all waiting for a sign they didn’t expect to receive. The patience of the teenage girls was short and after only a few moments, they started exchanging querying glares. But no one dared to speak first. Then, completely without warning, the glass slowly started to move. They all retracted their hand with a yelp and it immediately froze.

‘That was you, right?’ Margaret asked Miranda nervously.

‘No, I didn’t do anything,’ she replied and gave Crystal an accusing glare.

‘Me neither! Honestly!’ Crystal cried out defensively.

‘Then who was it?’ Sophia asked, but no one could answer her. Or wanted to.

They stared at the glass for another minute or so. It just stood there, on the wooden board, completely immobile as if nothing had happened. Then Miranda placed her finger back onto the glass with a definitive gesture.

‘Well?’ she asked impatiently.

‘You must be joking!’ Margaret cried out.

‘Babies! Come on! Put your finger back on. It’s just a game!’ Miranda was positive Crystal had moved the glass. Or perhaps Sophia, avenging her for kissing her.

Doubtfully and one at a time, the house guests placed their finger back onto the glass, Margaret being the most hesitant. When the tip of her finger touched the glass, it immediately started to move again. With tiny shrieks of fear and excitement, the girls managed to keep their fingers in touch with the glass. It first went over to the `y`, then dashed over to the `e` and came to a halt on the `s`.

‘Yes?’ Miranda asked. ‘Yes what?’

Sophia thought about it quickly and cried out: ‘I know! Miranda asked `are you there` and this is the answer: yes!’

‘Subtle.’ Miranda though. ‘Very subtle, Crystal. First you move the glass, then you act as if it really is a ghost. You even pointed out the actual letters. I’ll give you a challenge, see how you handle it.’ She cleared her throat and used her low, mysterious voice again. ‘Spirit, answer my next question.’ She paused to add a little drama to her performance. She could hear the hearts of her friend beat through the silence, softly, in the distance. ‘When will we die?’

Before anyone could object on the level of ridiculousness of the question, the glass started moving. All spoke the letters out loud: ‘N-O-W. NOW!’ All four immediately let go of the glass and glared at each other with fear-struck glares.

‘That is not funny!’ Miranda snapped.

‘I told you, it’s not me, honest! I don’t think it’s any of the four of us. Maybe we really…’ Sophia didn’t finish the sentence. She herself felt it was too ridiculous for words, but she had paid close attention to the fingertips on the glass as it was moving in several directions to learn who the prankster was. None of the fingertips had the characteristic white color she had expected. None had applied enough pressure to be able to move the glass.

For the second time in a short while, they were startled by a load noise. This time, it wasn’t a window being blown open, but a high pitched fear-induced cry emanating from Margaret. She jumped up and started to squeal as if she was in mortal fear. Kicking and crawling, she worked her way to a corner of the room, still screaming and hollering. Her eyes were wide and looked as if she was scared to death. All color had retreated from her face.

Sophia was the first to reach their friend and grabbed her by the shoulders. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked fearfully, but didn’t manage to top the constant screaming.

Suddenly, Margaret shot forward and bumped into Sophia. The two girls rolled over the floor and before anyone realized what had happened, Margaret had gotten up and jump onto Miranda’s bed. A second jump enabled her to leave the bedroom, landing her in the hallway. Baffled by her sudden speed and abrupt stopping of the yelling, the three remaining teenagers were left behind in the bedroom.

When their brains had processed the strange few moments that they had just experienced, they ran into the hallway, looking for their friend. This turned out to be relatively easy, because the yelling had commenced again, if humanly possible even louder then before, although this might be contributed to the volume-enhancing properties of the closed bathroom.

‘Damned, Margaret! Open up! What’s wrong?’ Miranda yelled both angry as well as concerned. She yanked and pushed the bathroom door but Margaret had locked herself in. In frustration, Miranda kicked the door. ‘Damn!’

Then complete silence returned. Crystal pressed her ear against the door to try to find out what was going on on the other side of it.

‘What do you hear?’ Miranda asked impatiently.

‘Someone asking me what I hear. Shut up for a moment.’ Crystal replied with minor annoyance. She pressed her ears as tightly against the door as she could muster and tried to decipher the sounds on the other side. ‘I think she’s puking her guts out,’ she translated.

‘Do you hear her gagging?’ Sophia asked.

‘Yes, and I can hear it hitting the tiles.’

‘Jesus, we are going to have to clean that up. Great.’

‘Shouldn’t we call someone or something? The paramedics or the police or something like that? Who knows what is going on in there.’ Crystal suggested.

Miranda and Sophia nodded in agreement, and Miranda resumed her natural role as leader of the group. ‘Sophia, you call an ambulance. The phone is in the hall downstairs, near the front door. Crystal, you stay at the bathroom door. Try to figure out what is wrong with her, see if you can talk to her. I’ll run to the garage to get a screwdriver.’

‘A screwdriver?’ Sophia wondered out loud.

‘The lock of this door is on the inside, but it’s screws are on the outside. I think I can get the door open. The sooner we get to her, the better. Clear?’

Her friends nodded and as the screaming commenced once more, two of them rushed down the stairs. The third, Crystal, paced back and forth in front of the tightly closed bathroom door and tried to yell comforting sentences to the other side of the wood.

Sophia grabbed the phone and pressed the correct buttons to get in touch with emergency services. Within a few brief moments, a voice on the other side of the line queried her on the exact nature of the emergency. She started to explain they were home alone and one of them had gone bonkers and locker herself in the bathroom.

The operator tried her best to keep Sophia on the line and as calm as possible, and started asking questions to get a picture of the situation. ‘Have you been able to communicate with her? was the forth question.

‘I’ll ask, one moment please,’ Sophia asked and walked with the horn of the wireless phone in her hand to the staircase. She had stayed at the outlet of the device on purpose so she wouldn’t have to compete with Margaret’s screams. When she reached the stairs, she saw no one. The screaming had also stopped. The house appeared to have been dipped in cold silence. ‘Crystal?’ she yelled. No response came. ‘Crystal?’ she yelled again.

‘What is it?’ she suddenly heard and Crystal appeared at the top of the steps.

‘Where were you?’

‘I was listening at the door, but I can’t hear a thing. Is the ambulance on its way?’

‘I’ll ask,’ Sophia replied and put the phone to her ear. She was just about to answer the operator, but instead cried out in fear.

Margaret slapped Crystal in the back of the neck with a mop, who then tipped over and tumbled down the stairs. Sophia dropped the phone and grabbed her as soon as she came within reach. She was still breathing, but knocked out cold. Sophia couldn’t determine if she had broken anything, although her lower left leg did seem to be in a rather unusual position. Flabbergasted she looked up the stairs.

On the top of the steps, Margaret just stood there with a emotionless expression on her face. Her nightgown was covered in vomit and was moist with sweat. Sophia thought she could even see feces on the inside of her lower legs.

‘Why did you do that? What’s going on?’ Sophia asked. She had trouble dealing with what she had witnessed the past few minutes and didn’t even understand most of it.

Margaret’s eyes lit up briefly and she whipped out a demonic grin. A second later, her face lapsed back into the emotionless glacier it had been at first. With the same speed as when she left the bedroom, she bolted forward, down the stairs. Instinctively, Sophia knew she would be Margaret’s next victim and so she made a break for it. Eight steps before she would reach the first floor, Margaret jumped over the rail. She kept a firm grip on it and used it to guide her jump. Effortless, she landed next to the steps and continued pursuit. Her end goal was the kitchen door Sophia had just gone through.

Sophia was pulling the door handle of the kitchen door leading outside. Nervous fingers tried to open the lock, but weren’t calm enough to complete this seemingly simple task. But she had to; it was her only exit out of this room, and the only way to leave this house from here. Behind her, she heard the two way door that separated the kitchen from the hallway. She turned around and saw Margaret staring at her with her emotionless expression. Cold and calculating eyes observed every single movement of the target while the rest of the body slowly moved towards the stove in the middle of the room. Sophia had pressed her back against the door. Pure fear prevented her from turning around and giving it another go.

Like a predator, keeping her eye on her prey, Margaret took another step toward the stove. Sophia’s eyeballs started to move rapidly to supply her brain with as many useful images as possible. It didn’t take them long to stop at a few pots and pans in a sink. She jumped sideways, grabbed a pan and hurled it in the general direction of her friend. Marking it’s trajectory with water and small chunks of food, the pan flew through the kitchen and smacked into the wall behind Margaret. It had been so poorly aimed, Margaret hadn’t even taken the trouble of avoiding it.

Sophia grabbed a second pan. The small supply of arms offered her somewhat hope and rest. The second pitch was a lot less desperate than the first and Margaret was able to duck just in time. Had she not, the pan would have hit her in the chest.

Margaret didn’t seem to want to wait for a third pan, and retook initiative. She grabbed a knife and threw it with frightening precision towards Sophia. Sophia tried to avoid the knife and shielded her face with her hand, but because of this, the blade buried itself into her arm.

Sophia grabbed her arm and roared from pain. Blood dripped along her fingers and her knees weren’t able to carry the weight of her upper torso any longer. Panting with pain, she slowly dropped to the floor. When she looked up, she saw Margaret’s outline through her tears, a glimmering object in her right hand. The object was pushed into Sophia’s heart, then moved up and down a bit to enlarge the whole in Sophia’s chest. Blood was gushing from the wound. Then she stopped abruptly. She heard a noise.

Miranda had walked in through the front door, carrying several screwdrivers. She wasn’t sure what size she needed, so she took those she expected that might fit. She noticed the complete silence that had engulfed the house when she entered it. She couldn’t help to notice the inside of the house also seemed colder then the outside, even though it should have been vice versa at this particular time of year. She softly spoke the names of her friends and took a few steps forward.

Then she looked in the direction of the staircase. At the foot of the steps she noticed a motionless Crystal, with the phone next to her on the floor. It shocked her so much, she dropped the screwdrivers.

The kitchen door swung open and Margaret dashed towards Miranda at top speed. Miranda immediately turned around and bolted towards the front door. The bloodstained kitchen knife said enough. Every cell in her body screamed at her, telling her to get the hell out of there.

The knife whooshed passed her face and came to a stop by slamming into the wood of the door. The still vibrating kitchen utensil had a clear message; this is no longer a viable escape route.

Miranda changed course and was now headed towards the stairs. She was clear-minded enough to figure out the kitchen — where Margaret had appeared from — was also not an option. Perhaps she could vacate the house through a window somewhere upstairs.

Margaret continued her run to the front door, and without stopping turned towards the fleeing Miranda and pulled the knife out of the door. With fluid motion, she threw the knife at Miranda. The blade struck her between the shoulder blades. She fell forward and smashed into the small table that collapse under the sudden increase in weight. The pain in her back was paralyzing.

Because of the fall, the knife had been jolted from her back and laid next to her, just out of reach. She dragged herself to it, and grabbed the handle firmly. Margaret slammed her foot down on the hand. Miranda heard several bones break and cried out in pain. All strength disappeared from her fingers and she had no choice but to let go. Margaret grabbed the knife, rolled Miranda on her back and sat down on her stomach.

‘Margaret, what is wrong with you? Why are you doing this?’ Miranda asked with a vibrating tone of voice.

For the second time since she left the bathroom, her eyes were not without a hint of emotion. She grinned demoniacally and Miranda could swear she could see total euphoria in her facial expression.

‘Don’t worry,’ Margaret said with a dark voice. ‘It’s only a game…’ Then she ripped Miranda’s nightgown open, held the knife near her mouth and licked some blood from it, expressing her enjoyment of the taste of the liquid with a smile. Then she balanced the tip on Miranda’s ribcage and started to cut in the living flesh.

***

‘And this is our next patient,’ the psychiatrist stated with some pride as he was giving several students a tour of his sanitarium.

The students curiously peeked through the tiny window in the door and saw a woman in her forties sitting in the corner of a completely empty room that resembled an isolation booth. The woman stared into nothingness.

‘This women brutally slaughtered her three best friends, then she cut them open — we know at least one of them was still alive at the time — removed chunks from their organs, ate them and drank some of their blood. Then she used some of the remaining blood to write several strange markings on the walls and used the murder weapon to carve the same symbols into her own flesh. Just before these events, she had locked herself in the bathroom and hurled all over the floor. Her friends had called emergency services when she did that and when they arrived, they found what I have just described to you. Our patient was sitting in a corner, almost like she is sitting in that room right now, smeared with vomit, sweat, blood and feces, mumbling unintelligibly. She has been with us for twenty years now; no therapy or treatment has gotten her closer to recovery. She has been completely catatonic ever since the before mentioned evening. No one has ever been able to get through to her.

‘Has anyone ever figured out what drove her to this sudden act of unspeakable violence?’ one of the students asked with goosebumps on his skin caused by thinking about what the woman had done.

‘Unfortunately not,’ the psychiatrist sighed. ‘Completely unexplainable. We have investigated possible causes, from family circumstances to physical problems with her brain, but nothing pointed towards a probable cause. Because of the explanation some of the people of the neighborhood had, our Margaret has become somewhat of an urban legend. In the bedroom of the girls they found a Ouija board. Some claim an `evil spirit` took control of her and caused the massacre,’ the man said with a whim of ridicule. ‘Some claim the writing is some sort of language of the dead, and there are people working on translating it. If you look on the Internet, you can even find entire sites dedicated to the matter.’ He shook his head with a smirk. ‘Can you imagine? A spirit board being the cause of all this. Everyone knows it’s just a game…’