Ch 4. High School Ritual: The Curse (SepSceneWriMo)

Four high school students encounter an evil spirit. Thoroughly cliched and hopelessly derivative.

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Vanessa found herself in a dusky corridor constructed of pure marble. The recesses in the walls contained vases full of blood-red roses and lilies. She wondered if she were dreaming—yet she clearly remembered lighting the incense, the smoke blowing through her window and how she fell over her chair. It had happened only a couple of minutes ago.

And there it was again! The smoke came towards her from down the hall and wrapped around a vase of lilies, stirring their aroma, and carried it towards her face. There was no one there—and yet there was definitely someone there. She was not alone.

“Hello?” she asked.

The smoke darted away down the hall and turned the corner. She followed it silently, as she was still in stockings, no shoes, just like in her room. She never went out without high heels, so this was proof something strange was going on. In fact, her heels would’ve echoed so nicely here—

The corridor opened up into a monstrous hall the size of a cathedral. The marble columns rose toward the ceiling which was obscured in darkness. They were decorated with carvings that resembled animals or people, yet there was no single detail which could have identified them as either. Aside from the columns, the hall was empty except for a plain altar of the same marble.

“Hello, Vanessa.” A voice answered from no particular direction. “You summoned us?”

“I don’t know—who are you?”

“Why did you summon us?”

Vanessa was almost embarrassed, yet excited because it seemed that her incantation had worked after all. “I… needed help, I guess?”

“Help?”

“Yes,” she said, looking around for the source of the voice. It seemed to emanate from the smoke spiraling around above the altar. “I was upset because, like, my boyfriend didn’t call me the day after we—whatever. And I want to get back at him.”

“We can arrange that.”

“His name is Chad—he’s a football player. He has a scholarship and I just, like, want him to suffer. Can you make him lose or it something?”

“We can do this. On one condition.”

“What condition?”

“Serve us.”

“Serve you? Well, okay, I guess. As long as Chad pays for what he did.”

“He will pay.”

“Good.” Vanessa looked around. Something caught her attention–the smoke now seemed to be hovering near a wall hanging behind the altar that she hadn’t noticed before.

“Hey! So where is that all smoke coming from, anyway?”

“Vanessa, would you like access to the inner sanctum?”

She thought about it, and shrugged. “Sure. Why not?”

“In that case, we will need three sacrifices.”

“Three? I don’t have three.”

“Come forward, and look upon the altar.”

There was a pile of photographs, including Chad’s, which was off to the side. As she sifted through them, she realized they were of her classmates.

“Choose two more victims.”

“Um…” she tapped her lip and finally pointed to two pictures. “Those two. They look like losers.”

“Very well. Lay them in the center.”

She threw all the others onto the floor and laid the two photographs down on the altar next to Chad’s. All three faces burned away—the faces of Chad, Natalie, and Mikhail.