Experiment in Terror 05 On Demon Wings (24 page)

ruby-orange embers in a furnace of coal. And they were

watching
us
.

I wanted to scream, yel , do something other than gape

back but I was frozen in absolute terror that sucked away

my breath and leached onto my bones, holding me

immobile.

Maximus and Ada noted the look on my face. They

turned their heads to look.

And they saw too.

“What the fuck is that?!”

“Oh shit.” Maximus reached out for Ada’s arm and

grabbed it, then blindly groped for mine.

We watched in horror as the creature at the doors slowly

grew smal er, as if it was walking backward into the hal .

And then the eyes blinked black and we could see it no

more.

I swal owed hard. I didn’t want to get up. I wanted to stay

crouched in the yard, low to ground. And then I wanted to

run very, very far away.

“You..we…we did al that,” Ada said in a tiny, shaking

voice. “Maximus, you said…you said we should be safe in

there. Oh God, Perry what was that?”

I found the strength to move my tongue but could only

say, “I don’t know.”

Maximus’s strong hands came underneath my arms and

he effortlessly lifted me to my feet. He didn’t look as scared

as I would have thought. Ada was shivering and white.

“It’s al right,” he said.

“Al right?” I squeaked. I was speechless, my mouth

flapping open to latch onto some sort of word or sentence

but that’s al I could say.

“Yes,” he said in his sharp tone again. He grabbed Ada

and steered her beside me and with one hand on each of

our outer shoulders he leaned in. “That was only the first

step that we did. We’ve got the powders, the dragon’s

blood. We have another cleanse to do. This one is the

banishment. He was only showing us his strength. He’s

teasing us.”

“He?” Ada asked. “I thought it was that Abby girl?”

“Ladies, sometimes things aren’t so simple.”

No shit
, I thought wildly. In my dream Abby had

insinuated she wasn’t alone. That there was a he, or an
it
. I

stil didn’t know if my dream was just that, or some

prophetic message from beyond the grave, but I couldn’t

dismiss it. Whatever we saw inside the house wasn’t Abby.

Though, perhaps it had never been Abby. And then I

understood what Maximus meant. It could have been

anyone but it was dead and we needed to keep going to

get rid of it. Even if it meant doing another ritual, even if it

meant stepping back in the house knowing that thing was in

there.

“OK,” I managed to say. “I’m ready. Let’s do this.”

I pul ed strength from pockets I didn’t even know I had.

Maximus smiled at me with fierce admiration. I took hold of

Ada’s hand and squeezed it tightly.

“We’re going to get rid of it,” I told her. “Now.”

With Maximus leading the way, Ada and I linked arms as

we left the witch bottle buried behind us and entered the

house.

I felt al my bravado fal off me the minute I stepped over the

undisturbed salt and into the house but Maximus sensed it

and reached back for me, grasping my hand tightly. The air

inside was so cold that our breath froze in fragmented

clouds and it only got colder as we got back to the kitchen,

like we were making our way into the depths of an ice cave.

Ada made a point of flipping on every light she could

find, and even though the kitchen was brightly il uminated, I

stil felt like I could see lurking shadows in my peripheral

vision. Maximus scanned the room and then set about

mixing the powders into one of the bowls. We didn’t say

much to each other but I made sure Ada and I were

standing as close together as possible.

What was that thing? My mind had been constructing it

to look like some sort of monster, but al we real y saw was

a large dark shape. I guess in some ways that was worse.

My imagination was fil ing in the blanks and if I let it run

away on me, it would probably come up with something

more horrifying than the reality. Whatever the reality was. It

had glowing eyes and al .

Maximus mixed the powders with a spoon and a ghastly

stench of cinnamon and rotten eggs fluttered in the air.

“Gross,” Ada muttered, but even her comments had lost

their edge. Her voice trembled with fear.

“It’s sulphur,” he said quietly, patiently. “Now we have to

sprinkle this in al the corners.”

To her credit, Ada didn’t complain. We slowly made our

way around the house, jumping at every unexpected touch

of each other, hearts hammering at every squeak of the

floor. The large, black monster was nowhere to be seen

and the only thing we felt was the everlasting chil that

seemed to seep into my bones and sting my eyes. We

fol owed this up with a ritual of sprinkling salt water and

more chanting.

Final y, we came to the end of the banishment, which

involved the black candle drizzled with crimson dragon’s

blood oil and sprinkled with the powders. Maximus passed

it to me in a silver candle holder and instructed me to hold it

in my dominant hand. I actual y had to think about which

hand that was for a moment. I knew I was right-handed but

lately I’d found myself becoming ambidextrous, using my

left hand for more and more things, like a new-found

strength was found in my tendons, or my brain was rewiring

itself.

I took the candle and he lit the wick, which sparked and

popped and then calmed down to a clean, yel ow flame.

“As this candle burns, so are negative energies from this

place,” he said stridently. He looked me in the eyes. “You

repeat it. And then you, Ada. We could use the extra help

here. Once every five minutes. Let’s go.”

Ada and I both repeated the phrase and I anxiously eyed

the clock. My parents would be back in forty-five minutes at

the most. We didn’t real y
have
five minutes. But we real y

didn’t want some monster in the house either.

After the five excruciating minutes were up, five minutes

of nervously eyeing each other, listening to every twitch in

the house, watching our breath catch and freeze in the air,

shivering close together, he had me place the burning

candle on the counter and then handed me a white candle

to hold with my right hand again.

Together we said, “A white candle to fil the empty

spaces with light and hope.”

It took five matches for this candle to light. By the last

attempt, I was feeling the trickles of helplessness on my

spine, wondering what we could do if we weren’t able to

complete the ritual. But the last match worked; the stubborn

wick took hold of the spark and a flame danced weakly

before us.

Maximus said, “As this candle burns, positive energy wil

fil this place, giving negativity no safe harbor,” and we

repeated the mantra after him. He indicated I should put the

candle down, and then we watched and waited for the

candles to burn out on their own.

“Is that it?” I asked him quietly, his face aglow from the

hypnotic flames. The dance of good. The dance of evil.

“Then we bury them in the yard again. It doesn’t have to

be near the bottle.”

My eyes widened. “I don’t want to go back there.”

“Ditto,” Ada piped up.

He gave us a smal smile. “I don’t either. But I can do it if

you girls want to stay in the house. By yourselves.”

Ada and I exchanged a glance. What was the better

option here?

“The flames are almost out,” he whispered, and nodded

at the candles. The black one was burned down to a puddle

of wax that spil ed over the holder and onto the counter. The

white one was close. I was thankful he had bought such

stubby candles. The kitchen clock said we had fifteen

minutes left, and our only saving grace was that my mom

said she would text me a warning and my phone hadn’t

vibrated yet.

The black candle went out with a smal snuff of onyx

smoke and a minute later the white one did too.

“OK,” I said, straightening up off the stove I was leaning

on. “Time to bury these-”

As I said that both candles suddenly relit themselves with

a crackling
poof
, even though there wasn’t any wick left in

them.

“Uh,” Ada said. We al eyed each other, unsure of what

to do.

“We’l just wait,” Maximus said uncertainly. He

protectively put his arms out behind him, shielding Ada and

me, or maybe just keeping us in our place. “They have to

burn out on their own.”

We were glued to the flames as they continued their

dance in the cold air. The buzz of my phone vibrating

caused us al to jump and me to gasp. With trembling

fingers, I brought it out of my pocket and looked at the

message. It was my mother.

“Those flames better burn out in the next ten minutes,” I

warned them.

“Those flames shouldn’t be burning at al ,” Maximus

said.

I leaned forward, edging away from his arm, and peered

down at the candles. They were a puddle of mush, and

through the translucent wax and flame I could see the metal

of the bottom of the holder itself. The wax itself was on fire.

How was that possible?

Al at once a terrible BOOM fil ed the house. It sounded

like the front door had slammed open.

I screamed.

The lights around us turned off.

The flames went out.

We were plunged into darkness.

Ada made a whimpering noise.

Then a ROAR and rustle from the living room and my

eyes picked up a trace of glowing light out in the hal way.

Morbidly curious, we left the blackened kitchen, moving

together like a unit of one, and cautiously stepped out into

the hal . The front door was wide open, the salt in front of it

dancing as if caught up in an invisible wind, one that we

couldn’t feel. The salt floated and fel , then was swept along

the hardwood floors of the hal like an ethereal trail, past our

feet, and made a right turn into the living room, where the

glow originated.

We fol owed it and I wasn’t surprised to see that in the

living room, the fireplace was going ful blast, a roaring,

crackling inferno. At first it looked like someone was

standing in front of the fire, a black silhouette gazing down

at the flames, his back to us. But it was only a trick of the

eye because I blinked hard and there was no one there.

“Who lit the fire?” Ada asked. In her skinny frame she

looked like she was about to keel over in fright.

“O r
what
?” I added, which didn’t help. She swayed

slightly and leaned against the doorframe.

“There’s…something in it,” Maximus said, his eyes

squinting in concentration. He began taking long strides

across the Persian rug.

“Be careful,” I cal ed out warily.

He paused in front of the flames, staring down at it for a

few moments, looking very much like the image I had just

seen before. Almost exactly the same. Was I experiencing

some form of pre-cognition now?

He grabbed the poker to the right of him and gently

jabbed it into the heart of the fiery beast.

Ada and I watched him inquisitively as he pul ed the

poker away and turned around to face us. At the end of the

poker, speared like a flapping fish, was a rectangular piece

of paper.

He walked over to us slowly, staring down at it with an

expression of growing alarm.

“What is it?” I asked.

He careful y pul ed the paper, which was charred,

smoking and torn al around the edges, off the pointed end

and flipped it around to show us.

It was a photograph.

Not just any photograph. The last family portrait we had

done, about three years ago. Though discolored from the

flames, you could clearly see my mother and father

standing behind the sitting room couch, Ada and I sitting

down in front of them, our legs crossed politely, smiling

attentively. It was a happy, cheery photo.

Wel , it had been.

Our eyes were scratched out and replaced with clean

black circles.

I snatched it from Maximus’s hand, feeling sick to my

stomach, a terrible knot of dread and dead butterflies.

A hush of heavy silence fel on us as we took in what it

meant.

Was it a threat? A warning? A sign?

And who, what, sent it?