The Accident

Chapter I

The flames from the fire pit danced in the nippy autumn air, as leaves rustled and carried themselves off branches and onto the dying grass. A crackle echoed through the cloudless night as bright, playful sparks jumped out of the pit holding the source of heat. Two figures, one small and the other taller, sat huddled together near the flames. Heat licked their bare finger tips, as the duo talked freely. The words hung in the air peacefully, as more crackles came from the pit.

One of the figures bent over the pit, grasping a long, iron poker and prodded the sleepy fire. The light seeped into the darkness, casting beams onto the faces of the two people. Twirling the hot poker, one shadow laughed loudly, causing the other to do the same. Suddenly, the poker fell to the ground with a clang.

"Oops."

"Meg, be careful!" The figure to the left warned as light was casted upon her pale skin. Freckles covered her small nose and forehead, and thin pink lips were pulled back to show white teeth in a smile. Laughter came from the young woman, as she threw her copper brown hair over her shoulder. Lights from the fire bounced off the shine, making it look redder than it actually was.

"Yeesh. Calm down. Would it kill you to have a little fun, Jenny?" The woman to the right laughed carelessly, smiling at her cautious friend. Jet black hair was hanging loosely in front a tan, spotless face. A piercing hung loosely from her lower lip that was hanging in a playful smirk. Her brown eyes darted across the other woman's face. The woman stood up, dwarfing the smaller woman, and picked up the iron poker.

"I am having fun. But, I like to keep the whole 'getting stabbed with a hot iron poker' out of the situation." Jen stood up, and tied her long, copper hair into a loose bun. Biting her lip, she stared out to Meg who was looking to the woods. The cold New England weather bit at their exposed hands and face, and they both shivered.

"I think we should try some of those spells from the book, Jen. See if they're real or not." Meg crossed her arms over her black sweatshirt, and looked to her friend. Jen instantly went wide eyed.

"No… No way." Jen shook her head quickly, earning a groan from her taller friend, "It's just a stupid old book my grams forgot about. Never mind it, Meg."

"C'mon, Jennifer. It's not stupid, you read the dates yourself! 1692, the same year the trials were held in this town." Meg explained slowly, trying to get it into Jen's head. The tall woman's friend just shook her head before crossing her arms and huffing.

"So what? There's plenty of fake witch stuff. After all, we live in Salem, Mass., Meg. Witchcraft Central." Jen inclined her head towards Meghan, who groaned.

"Fine, y'know what? If you don't want to, I'll just do it by myself." Meg started off for the house, and Jen's dark green eyes widened. She followed her older friend into the small town house were Meg snatched the book off the kitchen table.

The book was bound in an old, brown, worn down leather. The spine was broken from what looked to be years of use, and on the front of the cover, CantusinAnima Peccatorumresided in a flowing dark ink. The pages were torn and faded, but each was dated from between 1691 to October 31, of 1693 when the entries abruptly ended.

Jen had found the book only a day before, in one of the old storage trunks that her grandmother gave her when she moved out of college and into the small Salem townhouse with her best friend, Meg. Meg, who had become extremely interested in witchcraft following the weeks they moved to Salem, had wanted to test the spells immediately. But, Jen, being the superstitious person she was, thought it was an extremely bad idea. Meg reassured her, "Nothing can happen, the girls in the Salem Witch Trials made that stuff up, remember? They weren't real witches. Anyways, none of that stuff is real. Demons, ghosts… Pfft. Don't worry."

Meg was making her way to the back door with the book in her hands, and Jen called out to her, but the older woman kept walking.

"Meg, please! What if something happens?" Jen trailed her friend out the back door, and onto the lawn. Meg suddenly stopped.

"Just come with me. If something happens, we can stop the spell and high tail it outta there," Meg pointed over her shoulder quickly, "I promise nothing is going to happen. Let's have a little fun, be a little mischievous."

Jen sighed noisily from her nose, "Fine. I'll come, but I have a terrible feeling about this."

"You have terrible feelings about everything," Meg passed the fire pit and continued on the trail into the woods, "…Like elevators," she stepped over a large log in the middle of the path, "and zip-lines."

"Okay, sorry I'm afraid they might break the second I get on them." Jen waved her hand in front of her, making her way over dead brush and fallen tree limbs. The wind howled once more, causing the trees above the duos heads to shake and moan. Jen looked up slowly, and cringed. Not good, not good at all. The two persisted in silence, listening to the trees creak and the leaves shuffle.

Finally, there was a small clearing.

The trees had thinned out in numbers, but became thicker and taller than the trees on the edges of the woods. The night sounds echoed quietly in the air as the half moon shone excitedly down onto the pair of girls. The trail had faded out and disappeared, causing Jen to worry about finding their way back home. Meg stopped walking and looked around.

Satisfied, she stopped and sat down cross legged.

"Okay…" she flipped through the pages of the book as Jen sat down across from her. Her black finger nails stood out from the pages as she skimmed through the book page by page until she came to a page with a depiction of a forest on it. One person sat with a flame and paranormal pentagram in front of them, closing their eyes and holding their hands out to the sides.

"That's a little creepy." Jen commented half heartedly. Meg smiled back at her, before placing the book down in front of herself.

"It's called, MalumVocari." Meg smiled and pointed to the page. Jen quirked her thin eyebrows.

"What's that mean?"

"I dunno. I picked 'cause I thought the picture was cool." Meg shrugged and Jen coughed, rolling her eyes at her friend.

"Alright… I need a stick," She peered around herself, before picking up a small wooden branch. She began to remove the twigs from the spot in front of her. When it was clear of twigs and rocks, she began to drawn a pentagram, just like the one in the picture.

"Are you sure you are doing this right?" Jen asked quietly when Meg finished the pentagram.

"Positive. Now, do you have that lighter I gave you for Christmas?"

"Never leave with out it."

"Good, lemme' see it." Jen dug into the pocket of her grey 'Maine' sweatshirt, before pulling out a sleek black Zippo lighter. She tenderly flicked it open and closed, then handed it to Meg gently. The lighter was Meg's originally, but she had given it to Jen as a thank you present after helping her stop smoking. The lighter was important to Jen, and made her feel eve closer to her friend Meghan.

"Thank you!" Meg said in a sing-song voice before opening the lighter, flicking it on, and placing it in the core of the pentagram.

Now, everything was complete. Jen sat in silence as Meg's eyes scanned over the page in the old spell book. Her voice suddenly devastated the silence of the night and her eyes closed shut.

"Te invoco… tenebras vires inferos….
mecum nunc… ut te a excito perpetua una dormienda."

The wind suddenly howled painfully, and the trees shook brutally around the two. Meg's eyes stayed fastened closed as she remembered the next verse of the spell.

"Consurge spiritibus inmundis mecum…
Conjuro te excitare…Et ambula in nobis."

Everything went quiet.

The leaves.

The trees.

The wind.

There was an eerie silence for a few seconds.

Meg's eyes opened swiftly.

"Jen?"

The dark haired woman looked to her best friend, who nodded.

"What is it?"

"I can't move."

"What?" Jen practically yelled.

"I can't! I-I… I can't move!" Meg started to pant shallowly, before she broke out into screams that traveled through the night dangerously. Jen stumbled away from her friend, terrified. Her eyes had become extremely wide as she kept screaming.

"Oh my god… Oh… my god!" Meg was beginning to stare into space as Jen shook her shoulders. She was a stiff as a board.

"Jen! Get out of here! Now!" Meg was so loud; her voice came out in a rasped panic. Her head began to thrash about, and her eyes transformed darting blue orbs, which began to roll back into her head. Jen stood, and began to back up, but tripped over a root and landed on her back. Meg began to shake violently, Jen froze, and screamed as loud as she could before hauling herself up, and sprinting into the woods as fast as she could. Behind her, ominous whispers and Meg's screams rang in her ears. Twigs and branches snapped beneath Jen's footfalls as she frantically tried to find the trail back to the house.

"No! No! Meg… She's just trying to... to scare me…" Jen slowed to a halt, as tears began to pool in the corners of her eyes. She took a deep breath trying to calm herself, while she looked for the path. Meg's screams continued, "Stop… Meg, stop. Meg! Stop! You're scaring me!"

Jen's eyes spotted the path, when suddenly the screams stopped. Swallowing the lump in her throat, Jen turned around and softly called out.

"Meg?"

Out of the corners of her eyes, Jen began to distinguish dark shadows passing by trees. They were tall, gangly, and dense, with bright red eyes, that left streaks of fear were ever they went. I'm just seeing things… It's the adrenaline…

A twig snapped behind her, and Jen began to panic.

"Leave me alone! Go away!" Jen's voice traveled through the night as she dodged limbs and branches, sprinting on the path back home. Her feet wouldn't carry her any faster, and her lungs felt as if they were going to give out any second. Her jeans snagged on a tree branch as she ran by, tearing the fabric, and causing her to yelp. The panicked voice in her head pushed her to keep running, and get away from the whispers and shadows. Her hair came loose from the bun and was flying everywhere, obstructing her view of the ground. She didn't see the rabbit hole up ahead, and when her ankle caught the hole, Jen was sent sprawling onto the ground with a sickeningly loud thud.

Her vision became hazy, and the whispers got louder.

Pushing her self to her hands and knees in pain, Jen saw the house, with its back lights on and the fire still going. Tears began to flow down her cheeks, and sobs racked her chest as she pushed her self up with a moan, and took off to the house. She ran as fast as she could past the fire pit, and hobbled over lawn furniture, as her ankle throbbed. Throwing the screen door open, Jen launched herself into the safety of the town house, before slamming both the screen and the heavy wooden doors shut. Quickly, she locked the door and threw on the deadbolt. Sliding down the door, she began to try to catch her breath.

The sound of bangs on the door caused her breath to hitch in her throat.

Crawling on her hands and knees, Jen made her way to the front door and locked it. From the back of the house, she could hear the bangs and repeated shuffling of the door.

Grabbing a phone from its cradle near the door, Jen took off up the stairs, where she ran to her room and shut the door. Jamming a chair under the knob, she closed her shade and left the lights off, then buried her self in bed.

"It's just a bad dream…"

Bang, bang, bang…

"It's just a bad dream!"

Bang, BANG, BANG!

"Please… please stop!"

BANG, BANG… BANG, BANG, BANG!

"GO AWAY!"