Fox-Trot-9

  Spook 1: Body-SnatcherThe afternoon wound down towards sunset when seven friends had gathered for their test séance that spring, perhaps their st amongst themselves in this life. Except for Tyler, eighteen, the six others were seventeen, so as the eldest Tyler officiated the séance with the lighting of candles, the holding of hands, and prayers, saying, “Lord Seth, bringer of night, heed our prayers and look upon us with mercy.”

  They were silent for the space of two minutes.

  During that interval, reddening skies fshed on the ncet windows of the old parlor room in deepening hues, till darkness overtook the parlor. Here in this abandoned mud-flooded building somewhere in the U.S., just outside the tall windows overlooking tonight’s participants, sunset was eclipsing the forest of trees to the west. Once the two minutes were up, the deepening reds gave way to venders and blues, till all was enshrouded in a sable bnket of stars.

  Then, one by one, the seven candles went out before them, so that Tyler said, “Lord Seth, bringer of night, we welcome you in our midst this evening. We’ve gathered here tonight to remember our departed friend, whom you’ve taken into your fold. Owen was a good friend of ours, a friend no one could repce. I beseech you, bring our dear friend here, so that we may communicate with him for a while. We want to be with him for the st time before we all go our separate ways after graduation. Please, I beseech you, Lord Seth.”

  There was nothing for a time, only silence amongst the seven participants of the séance. Then a candle lit up before Otis, one of the seven, atop a circur tea table.

  “It’s your turn, Otis,” Tyler said. “You’re the designated speaker now.”

  Otis gulped at Tyler’s words.

  “I’m not sure I can do this, man,” Otis said.

  “He was our friend,” Tyler said, “but you were the closest to him. You were the one who invited him st year, so let’s give him a good send-off tonight.”

  Otis was silent for several moments as he looked at the candle flicker before him and decided to go with it, pcing both hands over the base of the candlestick and saying, “Owen, are you here with us tonight?”

  Nothing but silence for a time.

  So Otis tried again, saying, “Owen, if you’re here with us, try lighting up the other candle to let us know you’re really here tonight.”

  Silence for another minute.

  Then the candle snuffed out before Otis and lit up the six other candles in front of Otis’s six remaining friends (Tyler and Corbin to his right-hand side and Edgar, Rowen, Archer and Arthur to his left-hand side) before the spirit snuffed them all out and reignited the candle in front of Otis again.

  Their departed friend was here, so Tyler took over and said, “Owen, please answer our questions by flickering the candle to the right for a yes and to the left for a no in front of Otis. Can you do that for us?”

  It flickered to the right: yes.

  A collected sigh left the six other members of the séance, so Otis looked across the table at Tyler, catching his eye. With Tyler’s nod, Otis said, “Owen, we haven’t talked with you since you were found dead at your dorm earlier this spring, so tell us now: were you murdered?”

  It flickered to the right again: yes.

  Everyone at the table traded furtive gnces at the other, the specter of suspicion glinting in the eyes of all those attending this lugubrious evening.

  “Were we involved?” Otis said.

  Now the fme flickered to the left: no.

  There was another collective sigh from the six other members, as if the pall of a whole season of doubt and suspicion had been lifted, till Otis said, “Is your murderer here?”

  Again to the right: yes.

  “Holy shit!” Arthur said under his breath.

  “No way,” Rowen said, getting up from his seat, yet Edgar and Archer both yanked him back down. “Dude, if there’s a killer here, we should—”

  “Be quiet!” Tyler hissed.

  “Shhhh, be quiet, Rowen!” Arthur said. “If there really is a killer here, don’t raise your voice!”

  Then all eyes fell on an ashen-faced Otis, now breathing in and out to keep himself in check, who said, “Owen, was your killer a human?”

  The fme flickered left: no.

  Again everyone at the table traded gnces.

  Otis looked over his shoulder at the nocturnal scenery of the woods outside the ncet windows. Turning his head to face his friends, Otis said, “Is your killer out in the woods behind me right now?”

  Now it flickered right: yes.

  Everyone else, along with Otis, looked towards the gloom of the wooded scene: just beyond the ncet windows were overgrown shrubs and a dipidated wn; past those was a screen of trees looming there in quietude; past that were the twinkling of stars behind and a rge full moon emerging from the horizon; and on everyone’s skin arose a chill of something creeping there in the woods tonight.

  There wasn’t anything Otis could say to reverse the situation in the light of the only candle in the room keeping the darkness outside from entering. It was like a beacon attracting whatever lurked out there to their presence here inside these very premises. Then Otis noticed the sudden quietude of the night, a night without the chirp of crickets or the call of loons, as if the outside world had gone silent at something in their midst in those woods.

  “Is your killer a werewolf?” Otis said.

  Now it flickered left: no.

  Otis had a million questions flitting through his mind right then, so he said, “Is your killer otherworldly?”

  Silence for thirty seconds.

  Otis was about to ask another question—

  When the candle fme then flickered to the right: yes.

  Everyone in the parlor room now kept their gazes on whatever was going on outside the windows.

  Otis now took another gulp, the unasked question bobbing like a cork on the surface of his mind, and said, “Is your killer a body-snatcher?”

  The fme flickered right: yes.

  “Fuck, we’re screwed!” Corbin said under his breath, making Otis face him to his left-hand side. “We should’ve never gone out there in the first pce.”

  “Owen,” Otis said, looking over his shoulder, “is it somewhere close to where we’re at right now?”

  Otis turned back to the candle, and at that moment, the fme flickered to the right: yes.

  “Is it looking at us?” Otis said.

  Again the fme flickered to the right: yes.

  “My God, no way,” Archer said.

  “That’s it, I’m quitting,” Edgar said.

  “Shit, we shouldn’t have come!” Arthur said.

  “We should get the fuck out of here!” Rowen added.

  Yet Tyler, the only level-headed person left in the parlor room, now said, “Stay calm, everyone.”

  “How the fuck do you expect us to do that?” Corbin said, rising from his chair and breaking free of Tyler and Otis’s grasp. “I’m not staying here!”

  “What are you gonna do?” Tyler said, rising from his chair. “Go out while there’s something out there?”

  “I shouldn’t have come here,” Rowen said, getting up from his own chair and pulling himself away from Edgar and Archer as they both followed suit. The communication circle was in disarray. “I should’ve stayed at the dorm!”

  While everyone, save for Otis, was standing and arguing about why they should stay here, or giving Tyler fk for convincing them to come back here, the night drew onward. Despite Tyler’s efforts to calm everyone down, the overall consensus was this: they should have just let bygones be bygones. In other words, they should’ve let their questions remain unanswered, because just as curiosity can kill cats, now that same curiosity had ensnared seven human friends into this godless mess.

  Yet out of all the arguing, Otis had managed to stay seated with his hand over the base of the candlestick. Through all of that, a chill went up his spine, so he stood up from his seat and took up the candlestick, its wick dripping wax from the flickering fme, and walked towards one of the ncet windows. Since Otis was still holding the candlestick, the séance was still in effect.

  Looking out the window, candle in hand, Otis peered past the gre of the light on the pane of gss separating him and his friends from whatever was outside. There in the woods lurked something in the darkness amidst the trees, yet there wasn’t any movement or sound there.

  “Everyone, be quiet!” Otis yelled.

  The other six boys hushed at his voice, and Tyler said, “Do you see anything?”

  “Nothing yet,” Otis said.

  Seconds stretched into minutes, three of which epsed in the slowest manner possible, each an eternity in the heart-beating moments of silence.

  So Otis, still holding the candlestick, said, “Owen, are you still here right now?”

  Again it flickered right: yes.

  Otis wanted to ask Owen what was going on outside, but he kept himself from breaking the flow of his communication. He instead peered through the window pane at the scenery outside, noting the screen of trees fading into darkness, and thought he saw an outline amidst the screen of trees.

  “Owen,” he said, “I’m seeing something outside. It’s behind one of the trees in the distance. Is your killer behind that tree right now?”

  Again it flickered right: yes.

  “Owen said yes,” Otis said and then looked back at them.

  At his words, Tyler, Corbin, Edgar, Rowen, Archer, and Arthur all gathered at the ncet window with Tyler saying, “Where is it hiding?”

  “Right there,” Otis said, pointing in the direction of one of the trees where a noticeable, if faint, outline managed bulged from the outline of a rge tree trunk. “See it?”

  “It’s kind of hard to see.”

  “It must be the gre,” Otis said, stepping away from the window pane. “Can you see it now?”

  It was an unintentional question, which got an unintentional answer of the fme flickering to the right again: yes. But Otis and his friends hadn’t noticed, not with their eyes glued to the silhouette of a thick tree trunk several yards out amidst the trees, complete with a bulge on its right side. Something was there, this body-snatcher, stock-still and waiting right now, but what was it waiting for?

  Was it waiting for someone outside?

  Then a chill went up Otis’s back at his next thought: Was it waiting for them?

  “Is it waiting for us?” Otis said.

  Then the candle in his hand flickered right again: yes.

  But then, just as Otis was about to ask yet another question, Rowen said, “Fuck this,” and he stormed off and caused Edgar and Arthur to follow after him.

  “Hey, where are you going!” Edgar said.

  “Dude, you don’t wanna go out there!” Arthur said.

  Tyler ran after them, saying, “What the fuck are you doing?”

  “I’M NOT WAITING FOR WHATEVER THE FUCK’S OUT THERE TO GET IN HERE, THAT’S WHAT!” Rowen said amidst all the footfalls.

  “So you’re going out there then?” Edgar said.

  “THEN WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU EXPECT ME TO DO, HUH?” Rowen said.

  “Dude, just calm down!” Tyler said.

  “I AM CALM!” Rowen said.

  “You’re losing your cool, man!” Arthur said.

  “THEN LET GO OF ME, YOU FUCKING-ASS FAGGOT!” Rowen said.

  “Dude, calm the fuck down!” Tyler said.

  Yet the tussle escated, and there was movement and rustling amidst a cacophony of voices telling Rowen to calm down but to no avail. Then there were running footfalls and the opening and smming of a door, causing Archer and Corbin to take off from the window beside Otis.

  “Keep watch, man!” Corbin said.

  “We’ll come back, don’t worry!” Archer added.

  The running footfalls faded away through the halls of the darkened space amidst more calls for Rowen to stop running and come back inside. The cluster-fuck of six voices talking all at once went away for about a minute, then came back as Rowen was screaming for his friends to let him go, because they were all half-dragging and half-carrying him back inside. All the while, Rowen was having none of it, saying he had to get out of here, or something bad was going to happen, yet all his friends were keeping him talking, keeping him occupied with anything that didn’t involve struggling or going outside.

  As they all kept talking, the door was shut closed again, and the collective voices of six friends became stronger in a sealed enclosure. Yet through all of that commotion, Otis kept his eyes glued to that thick tree trunk with the bulge to the side of it without realizing the real danger he was in right now.

  The opening of the door had let something into the building, and the only one with the candlestick burning like a beacon in the darkness was Otis. He had been marked, yet Otis was still looking at that silhouetted tree trunk with the bulge right over it that the police ter identified as a mere deformation of a tree trunk. Otis just kept his eyes there through the gre of the light of the candle before the window pane, still heedless of the danger he was in—

  Till he noticed the shape of a silhouette in the window just behind him, so he turned around expecting to see one of his friends coming back.

  He saw nothing before him.

  When he turned back to the window to focus on the silhouetted target of his prior observations, he saw his friend Owen smiling at him in the faint flickering reflection of candlelight against the window pane. He could have screamed at the moment of seeing his friend’s image with the knife in his hand. His friend (or whatever had donned Owen’s face and body that night) was already sliding the bde of the knife across his throat the moment Otis was about to scream.

  Then the candle snuffed out for good, banishing the image from view, as he fell to the ground.

  He was bleeding out, gasping through the cerated windpipe burbling up spurts of blood with each breath. His hands were cwing over his throat, trying to close up around the wound and prevent more blood loss, his fingers and palms becoming warm and sticky with blood. The iron stench of it wafted at his nose as he coughed up phlegm and blood, trying to stay conscious as the voices of his friends started calling out to him.

  Then running footfalls echoed closer as his vision became blurry, then screams and yells for Otis to stay with him amid a cacophony of voices crowding around him.

  Then he fell down the rabbit hole of sleep, the big sleep that yanked him into the afterlife, which Otis would never wake up from again.

  The End