“N…O”
“Can we stop?” Lily begs as a tear clings to her lid. “I want to leave.”
“So…not a spirit.” Gwen worries her lip, ignoring Lily’s question. “An entity?”
The dial moves again.
Outside, thunder rumbles in the distance.
I hold my breath, whispering each letter. “S…O…M…E…T…H…I…N…G.” The dial pauses, and I swallow down the saliva in my mouth. It moves again. “F…A…R?—”
“Worse,” Gwen finishes, her worried eyes clashing with mine. “Something far worse.”
“What could be worse than an entity?” Lily asks, her voice high-pitched.
The candle flickers out, and the darkness presses in from all angles despite it being after lunch. Another rumble of thunder rolls across the stormy sky outside, and rain splatters against the window almost violently, as if the gods are punishing the house for standing after all this time.
“Are you a demon from the underworld?” Gwen asks.
Amused by the situation, Benny chuckles, but soon shuts up when the dial slides across the letters.
“Yes…” I exchange a look with Benny, whose jaw tightens. Beneath that ‘Nothing Fazes Me’ exterior is a guy with doubts.
“Why are you here?” Aron asks beside me, his voice a soft grumble.
As I glance at the doll with matted hair and dead eyes, the dial slides across the wood and stops on letters, as if to build anticipation.
A lightning flash illuminates the crack in the porcelain, and a roll of thunder follows, like a bowling ball heading straight for the pins.
I quickly look away, but I can’t shake the feeling that it’s watching me, which is ridiculous. It’s a spooky doll—a forgotten toy. Nothing more.
“To feed on chaos.” Benny frowns. “What chaos?”
The dial moves again, and Benny visibly stiffens. “I didn’t mean that as a question.”
“Well,” Brittany whispers around a thick swallow, “it wants to respond.”
“D…E…A…T...H.” I meet Benny’s eyes again. “Death.”
The tension in the air thickens until it’s hard to speak. I’m still locked in Benny’s gaze when Aron blows out a breath that seems loud in the reigning silence. “What do we ask now?”
“Nothing,” Lily answers. “We stop this now before we take it too far.”
“It’s too late.” The next flash of lightning highlights Gwen’s haunted face. “It only responded when we said we’re its vessel.”
“I never offered myself up as a vessel. Those were your words.”
“You didn’t object or stop me,” Gwen points out, then freezes when the dial moves again.
“No one asked a question this time,” Brittany murmurs, barely audible above the splattering rain against the window.
“It wants to communicate.”
“Please make it stop,” Lily whines.
It moves from letter to letter, sometimes slowly, sometimes so aggressively that we struggle to keep our finger on the dial as it shoots across the board. My heart hammers wildly. I can’t think about anything except my growing dread.
“Camryn,” Aron whispers, peering at me sideways. “It spelled your name.”
