I feel it's important to preface this by urging you to never ever ever ever play any of the games I describe here. I'm purposely not fully detailing the steps or giving the names, but obviously I can't stop anyone from Googling them. Even if you don't believe that these games are real, you don't understand the things you're playing with and you shouldn't take the risk and open yourself up to those things
Matthew was high as a kite, that much was clear to her. Emily was fairly sure that was the only reason he had tagged along with her that night. He had once been a good God-fearing Catholic and whatever issues he might now have with the Church's teachings (all her fault, the voice at the back of her head reminded), he never missed an opportunity to remind her that she shouldn't mess around with things she didn't understand.
"Are you coming or not?" she asked, stopping and turning once she realized that he was no longer following.
"There's no moon tonight," he remarked off-handedly, as if he hadn't really heard her. "I think it's bad luck."
"Matthew, come on," she groaned, backtracking and grabbing his arm and tugging him along with her. "I want to get in and out of there before it gets too early and people start waking up."
Outside the apartment building, the two teenagers crouched down out of view of the doorman working the night shift. "Do you remember what you're supposed to do, Matty?" Emily asked, then repeated his name a few time to make sure he was listening. He stared blankly at her for a few moments, so she sighed and repeated the instructions. "If I'm not back here in twenty minutes, call me. I'm not sure if my phone will work on the Other Side, but time doesn't work the same and I don't want to stay too long."
"Twenty minutes," he echoed.
Then, thinking better of just leaving it to his memory, she snatched his phone from his pocket and set an alarm to go off in twenty minutes. She shrugged off her coat and dug around in her pocket for the black tourmaline stone she'd bought, just in case.
Matthew grabbed her hand and pressed something cold into her palm. "Take it with you, just in case."
She closed her fingers around the object and recognized the shape as being that of his rosary, complete with a large silver cross. Regardless of whether or not she believed in God and his ability to protect her anymore, Matthew wasn't taking any chances. She smiled softly at him and kissed his cheek.
The lobby was eerily silent when Emily entered as if it were sitting vigil, just waiting for what she was about to do. The doorman was either too busy reading to notice her or she looked as if she belonged because he made no attempt to stop her.
There were two identical elevators and she was suddenly struck with the fear that she wouldn't remember which to get back on to return because the instructions had been exceedingly clear that she needed to make the return journey on the same elevator. She fished around in the pocket of her jeans for something to write with, emerging with a tube of lipstick that she used to print 'LEFT' on the back of her hand to remind herself.
With one last sweeping glance of the lobby to make sure she was alone, she got on the left elevator and with a deep breath, pressed the button for the fourth floor.
For reasons she couldn't pinpoint, her nerves started jangling the further she got through the sequence of floors, like the air around her was electrically charged, making her hair stand on end. On the fifth floor, the doors shuddered open as if they were slightly off their tracks and Emily had to bite back a scream as the girl got onto the elevator like the instructions had promised.
Deliberately training her eyes on the buttons to avoid looking at her, Emily tried to make herself seem as small as possible as if that would prevent the girl from noticing her. The girl said nothing, didn't say what floor she wanted to go to, so Emily was fairly sure she wasn't one of the building's residents who'd stumbled into her ritual. It felt as if there were eyes trained on her, staring into her very soul...Emily wasn't even sure if the girl had eyes, all she could see from the corner of her eyes was a tattered white dress that looked stained with rust (God, she hoped that was a rust stain) and long choppy dark hair.
With a trembling finger, Emily pressed the button for the first floor, only to have the elevator immediately start ascending. The girl in the elevator with her started to hum a tune that was naggingly familiar, but she was unable to place it. The sound made a shiver travel along her spine like ice water.
At the tenth floor, the elevator stopped and Emily found herself frozen in place. She'd set out with the intention of exploring the Other Side once she got there, but now her legs seemed disconnected from her brain and she couldn't will herself to take even a single step.
The burning feeling of the girl's gaze seemed to get more intense and Emily wasn't sure if she was imagining the feeling of breath fluttering against the back of her neck, but the idea of the girl being right behind her suddenly catapulted her forward with the violence of having been pushed.
Stepping out of the elevator onto the dark floor felt like having a damp blanket thrown over her head.
"Where are you going, Emily?" a voice asked from the elevator and she jumped, her heart hammering from somewhere in her throat. She sprinted halfway down the hallway to put some distance between herself and the girl.
She clenched her fist tighter around the stone and the rosary, feeling the edges digging into the flesh of her palm. She told herself that nothing could hurt her as long as she had those protection objects in her possession.
The hallway looked like she imagined the halls in the building normally looked, except that there were no lights anywhere and all the doors leading off the hall seemed to be rusted shut like no one had tried opening them for decades.
The air was oppressively warm and humid and seemed to be actively clinging to her. She wondered how long she'd been there, whether Matthew would call her soon, but she was afraid of looking at her cell phone and seeing that it wasn't working.
There was a small window at the end of the hall, blackened with grime and age, light from the streetlamps filtered through it making a mottled pattern on the floor below it. Emily was suddenly filled with an irresistible urge to open the window and breathe in something other than the cloistering wet air around her.
As she got closer to it, the glowing red cross became visible, shining like a beacon in the otherwise dark world she'd found herself in. It seemed to call to her like a siren – she wanted to get as close to it as she could, figure out where it was so that she could touch it. The need grew inside her until it was all she could think about.
The first sound other than her breathing and dull footsteps was a jarring and rapid knocking behind one of the rusted apartment doors. It came so suddenly out of the heavy silence that it broke Emily out of her trance with a start and she tripped over her own feet, falling into a door on the other side.
That door immediately began to rattle too, like something on the other side sensed she was there and wanted to get to her. She thought she heard something like nails scratching on the wood and she screamed, scrambling to right herself and get as far from the door as possible.
Gasping for air, she crawled along the carpeted floor for a few moments until she could find her feet and start running. Each door she passed started to rattle as something banged on them and she thought she heard moaning behind a few. The instructions had said that she would know she had completed the ritual successfully because she would be the only human on the Other Side...which begged the question: what was on the other side of the doors?
She clutched the objects in her fist so tightly it was painful and she crossed herself on impulse. It was taking far longer to get back to the elevator than it should have, no matter how fast she ran, and the fear that she would never reach them started gnawing at her.
Sweat was running uncomfortably along her spine when she reached them and she stabbed at the down button repeatedly, the noise surrounding her like a dull roar and the voice in her head kept telling her that maybe Matthew had been right after all.
She fought back the tears pricking at her eyes as she waited for the elevator, stabbing at the button again every few seconds. It shouldn't have taken so long to travel ten floors in the middle of the night. Surely the apartment doors, no matter how rusted, couldn't hold against such violent pounding for much longer and she didn't want to be around when they gave way...
When the elevator doors finally lurched open, she practically spilled into the car and backed herself into the corner as she waited for the doors to close her off from wherever the hell she was. Later, she would never know how she had the presence of mind to follow the correct order of floors for the return journey.
Landing at the lobby, she was sure she'd never been so relieved in her entire life. As she moved to step out onto the polished marble, something inside of her stalled. She looked up to the clock mounted on the far wall and she audibly gasped. The hands were ticking back and forth between 3:13 and 3:45 in random leaps and stalls.
She stumbled back into the relative safety of the elevator as the realization that something was very wrong washed over her. The doorman, still sitting with his back to the elevators, turned suddenly and Emily had to clap a hand over her mouth to hold in the scream and his eyes – completely black and unnervingly large – landed on her. He opened his mouth as if to say something, but no words came out as his mouth continued to yawn open, wider and wider, revealing only darkness.
Something was trying to keep her here.
That was the thought that repeated inside her head as she tried to remember if she'd done the sequence wrong. Bile was burning the back of her throat and she whispered, "No, no, no, no..." over and over again as she pressed the buttons again.
She landed on the ground floor again and crossed herself one more time, hoping that she had returned to her realm, but not quite daring to look on the off chance that she hadn't. The ringing of her phone started suddenly and she started trembling all over again, having completely forgotten about it.
The battery was almost completely drained, even though it had been fully charged when she'd left home earlier. She had three missed calls and seventeen text messages, all from Matthew.
"Emily, what the fuck!?" he practically shouted into the phone when she answered.
"What?" she asked, genuinely confused.
"You've been gone like an hour! I thought I was going to find you dead in one of the hallways!"
"An hour?" she repeated breathlessly. This time everything in the lobby seemed to be correct, so she finally willed herself to exit the elevator.
"You promised you'd only be twenty minutes," he reminded her. "If my parents notice I'm gone..."
She dropped herself on the ground next to him before he could finish and wrapped her arms around him, squeezing him tighter than she'd ever hugged anyone before.
"Em, what happened?" he asked, struggling to get the words out around her embrace. She shook her head in response, feeling the tears back in her eyes. "Em, you have to stop this..."