AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I could tell by the background she was laying out on the little balcony off her studio apartment. It wasn’t glamorous by any means, but Blair always had a way of making even the dumbest little things look like the most fun in the world. She was leaning back in a plastic lawn chair, wearing a hot pink string bikini with her feet soaking in a miniature kiddie pool and an extra large blue slushie in one hand, the kind you pick up from the gas station either before a road trip or remarkably drunk.
“You want some?” she joked after taking a long swig. “I put a little rum in it. It’s pretty good. I’ll make you one when you get back.”
“Honestly, I’d love one,” I mused. “Would you laugh if I said I was homesick already?”
“You’ve been gone like three days, bitch. I haven’t even had a chance to miss you yet,” she said sarcastically. “But I’m kidding. I obviously miss you.”
“What’s your plan for tonight?” I asked, trying to figure out the best way to inform my best friend that I may or may not be performing a seance in my living room this evening.
“Probably nothing. More of this,” she answered, gesturing to her current rum-slushie-kiddie-pool situation. “What are you going to get into over there? More scandalous night time visits?”
“Ha!” I laughed. “Definitely not. I actually have something else in mind…” I was hoping to ease the blow of what I was about to tell her.
“Go on…” she said as she leaned into the camera.
“Well, remember how I mentioned that I felt like some weird shit was going on over here?” I asked with an intentionally cheerful tone.
“Yes,” Blair said intensely, after taking a large swig of her drink. “And now I’m nervous you’re about to tell me you’re going to go on some sort of wackadoo ghost-hunting adventure.”
“Well, it’s not a ‘ghost-hunting adventure’ per se,” I assured her. “But I may or may not be trying one of my grandma’s old tricks to see if I can get whatever it is to maybe… talk to me or something?”
“No effing way,” Blair snapped. “I don’t know the first thing about whatever witchy Halloween shit you’re about to attempt, but I definitely don’t think it’s a good idea. You and I have both seen enough scary movies to know how quickly things like that can go ass-up. No way.”
I hadn’t expected her to have such an adverse reaction to my plan. Blair had never once implied she believed in any part of the supernatural and regularly teased me for my interest, so to watch her go full defensive at the idea was something I wasn’t prepared for in the slightest.
“And we both know how accurate scary movies are. They’re practically documentaries,” I said with a dramatic eye roll. “It’s not going to be anything like that. In fact, I probably won’t even get anything out of it. I’ve just got a feeling I should at leasttry. You know, for the sake of my project.”
Blair leaned hard against her lawn chair and tossed her hand like she was swatting away a bug.
“Yeah, well, I guess we shall see, won’t we?” she asked sarcastically. “Or, I guessyou’llsee, and I’ll be over here watching the headlines to be sure there are no new stories about how the police came to investigate the brutal murder of one college girl who wrote a check her ass couldn’t cash.”
“If the police even show up at all,” I quipped. “I’m alone out here, remember? It could be weeks before anyone realizes I’m dead.” I couldn’t help but say it as my dark sense of humor took over, but I didn’t expect my words to cut me so deeply. The joke may have been a little far, considering all the parts of the story I hadn’t told Blair.
“No, they’ll know right away when you don’t answer my call tomorrow morning,” Blair insisted. “I’ll be blowing up whatever podunk police department is out there to check on you. Make sure you’re still kicking in your little summoning circle with your ouija board or whatever the hell.”
“I can’t tell if you’re just joking or if you’re legitimately concerned,” I responded, needing the clarification for myself.
Blair chewed on a nail as she thought for a moment.
“Both? I think both,” she said confidently. “On the one hand, I am a sucker for the dramatics, but on the other, I genuinely do want you to be safe and make smart choices. I already don’t love you being out there by yourself, and if I had to guess, I’d wager your dad’s not super thrilled about it either. I just don’t want you to take unnecessary risks. And all jokes aside, a seance in a mostly abandoned mountain mansion seems like just the dumb sort of thing a girl in a horror movie would dojustbefore she gets killed in the opening act. I love you, girl, but you aren’t exactly Neve Campbell. In this situation, you might end up the Drew Barrymore.”
“But I thought you didn’t believe in any of that stuff—the paranormal creepy-crawly stuff,” I said as I took another bite of my salad. “And this isn’tScream.”
“Okay, so what…The Craft?” she snorted. “Listen, I don’t know what I believe. Logic tells me it probably doesn’t exist, but that ‘probably’ isn’t enough for me to confidently say I’m totally cool with my best friend performing some sort of ritual witchcraft to commune with whatever could potentially be in there with you. You showed me the marks on your legs, Logan, so, obviously, something is going on.”
With all the chaos of the last day, I’d forgotten Blair was caught up on some of the weirdness. I was glad she was nervous for me—it meant that she cared—but there was something inside of me telling me that Ihadto get to the bottom of everything, for my sake, as well as for the sake of anyone who might come to this place after me.
“I promise I won’t go off the deep end, and I promise I’ll call you before you have a chance to worry too much,” I said with a sigh. She was giving me one of the tough reality checks she was known for. I just never expected to be in a position where she was trying to convince me to not hold a seance. This was new ground for us.
“I guess that’s all I can ask for,” she sighed in return. “But okay, I’m going to go get a refill. Seriously! Call me either tonight or tomorrow morning.”
“I will, I swear!” I promised. “Talk to you soon. Love you, bye.”
“Love you back, bye!”
Then my phone’s screen flashed back to the home screen—a selfie of the two of us back at UPenn at some party with colorful disco lights across our faces. Blair was often the stealthy voice of reason in an otherwise wildly irresponsible personality, and she had no idea how many chords she had struck with me during that conversation.
I went back to enjoying my lunch and took a big bite of my sandwich as I felt a presence behind me. A long shadow cast over me from behind, and I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up as a gentle caress ran up my back. I whipped my head around to see if I could catch a glimpse of the perpetrator, but there was nothing there. Just a sunny glass door that led out to the side yard.
