Day Seventeen/Eighteen: Seance/Favorite Character
Word Count: 2504
Genre: Humor
"I feel like an eleven year old at my first slumber party," Alivia deadpanned.
Cory swung around and laughed, "Well, don't we all? Ooooo, summoning ghosts!" She grabbed the last bowl of popcorn and placed it on the table. They were in her dorm room, and she had provided most of the snacks.
"I'm nineteen," Raquel added, "this shouldn't be something I'm actually doing, but you know what? Whatever," she shrugged, pulling out her chair and sitting beside Jazz, who was already seated.
Between the four of them, it had been Jazz's idea to have a 'séance'. It'd been a spontaneous idea that stemmed from a conversation about their favorite movie tropes - as soon as Jazz suggested it, Cory and Raquel jumped on board immediately. Alivia was a bit skeptical, but since her other three roommates were participating, she didn't have the courage to 'wimp out'. Not that Alivia believed in the supernatural anyway, unlike Jazz and Raquel. Cory was on the fence of belief, but was excited either way.
Who knew that after getting into an Ivy League college they'd be spending their nights playing with a children's Ouija board from Target?
"So," Cory turned to Jazz, clutching a handful of popcorn, "you've done this before?"
"Once or twice," Jazz replied cooly. "I am from the most haunted town in America."
"Like that means anything other than that you're from a tourist trap," Alivia pointed out.
Jazz smiled, "I think you'd be surprised. I used to think it was all fake too, but… I've had my fair share of encounters."
Raquel snorted. "Never thought I'd live to see the day when poor, studious Jazz Fenton spoke like an old fortune teller. What's next, tarot cards?" she joked.
"Who knows?" Jazz shrugged. "Those could be real too. At this point I'll believe anything, sadly enough."
"You're right," Alicia said, "that is sad. Buuutt, I'll humor you with this séance thing anyway."
"So-" Cory said, with a mouthful of food, "-how do we do - this talking to ghosts thing?"
"I think someone uses the slidy-thingy and asks ghosts to show up," Raquel replied. "At least, that's what the instructions say, anyway."
"Well, I'm not doing it," Alivia opted out.
Cory swallowed her last bite of popcorn and grinned. "I wanna do it!" she volunteered.
"Aw, I wanted to do it," Raquel complained.
"You don't even know what you're doing," Cory pointed out.
Raquel crossed her arms, "Neither do you."
"Can you guys, like not argue?" Alivia interrupted. "Since none of us but Jazz have done this before, I think she should do it."
"I kind of did want to," Jazz admitted. "For nostalgia's sake."
"Okay, then it's settled," Alivia decided. "Jazz is doing it since both of you insist on arguing like children."
"We are playing a children's game," Cory defended.
"Since when is having a séance a children's game?" Raquel asked, bewildered.
Cory pointed to the Ouija board box, "It says eight and up!"
"That's… a bit concerning," Alivia frowned. "I mean not that it's dangerous, but summoning ghosts shouldn't be something marketed towards kids…."
Jazz laughed, "Not for my childhood."
"You don't count," Alivia countered. "Ms. 'Haunted-est Town in America'."
"You said you've had encounters, but have you ever really seen a ghost, Jazz?" Cory wondered.
"Plenty. One practically lived in my house," she smiled as if she knew something they didn't. "He could be annoying, but I guess I'm fond of him."
"Really?" Cory asked, interested. "What did he do?"
"Cory, don't listen. She's just pulling your chain - everyone in tourist towns tend to exaggerate."
"Are you comparing me to the greedy con men who glorify every single tree to rake in cash?" Jazz was humored. She leaned forward and opened the pack of Twizzlers that Cory had yet devoured. "To answer your question, Cory, he was mainly a good ghost. Phased through my wall, woke me up in the middle of the night for… things. Sometimes I'd help him with ghost things, too. I hope he's doing well with ou - ghost hunters... now that I'm gone."
"Sounds like your mystery ghost was a lot more than just a dude that hung around your house," Raquel wiggled her eyebrows.
"Ew! Gross, no!"
"Come on Jazz," Alivia got on board, "if you're going to make up things, don't tell us the beginning of some cheesy paranormal love-story-"
"-it's not like-"
"If that was a love-story I would totally watch it. Well, mainly to watch Jazz act like a dumb lovestruck teenager," Cory laughed.
"You guys are awful," Jazz declared.
"And that's why you're your friends!" Raquel said. "Someone has to tease you with all that boring studying you do."
"I can't help that school is my first priority," Jazz rolled her eyes. "Can I start the séance already?"
"You prefer ghosts to your friends' light-hearted jokes," Cory smirked. "Coward."
"I'll accept cowardice," Jazz shrugged. "If it'll shut you up."
"Ooooooh," Raquel put her hand over her heart. "That hurt."
"So are we finally starting this or are you guys going to keep interrupting?" Alivia asked.
"We're starting," Cory took the Ouija board out of its box and evenly spread it on the table. She flipped through the instruction pamphlet and started reading. "Okay, first it advises not to play alone: check. Second, it works better if there's an atmosphere, so we gotta turn off the lights."
"I got it," Raquel stood up. She switched off the lights and the room was obscured in darkness, leaving only a vague glow from the door outside Cory's dorm.
"Nice and spooky," Cory grinned. "Okay, next… blah-blah-blah safety precautions… it says to chose one 'medium', which is Jazz. We can all ask questions, but she's the only one who can directly speak to the spirit. Then we all have to hold onto the planchette thing as it moves around the board. We're not supposed to let go until the 'session' is done."
Alivia pulled out the planchette from the box and placed it in front of Jazz. Everyone else tentatively placed their fingers on the thin, wooden heart. "Now, the medium has to announce that this session will only allow positive energies - aw, where's the fun in that?" Cory wondered.
"You wanna get killed like we're in a bad slasher film?" Raquel questioned.
Cory looked up from where she was holding the pamphlet with her free hand, "I will let Freddy Krueger kill me, thank you very much."
"Okay, as the medium for this session I declare that tonight we will only be allowing positive energies," Jazz recited. "Now…" she chose her words carefully, "is there a Phantom present?"
Alivia fake coughed, "Melodramatic."
The planchette began to move. Everyone held their breath as the planchette slowly pulled it's way towards the corner of the board. It passed the letters and stopped over the word 'No'. "Well," Jazz asked. "Can there be?"
"Uh, Jazz," Cory said, "you said you know how to do this, right? That's not what the instructions say-"
"I've done this before. I'm just testing something out," she nodded. She closed her eyes and tilted her head up, "Phantom, can you be here?"
"Jazz, really-"
The planchette drifted under their fingertips, moving towards the letters of the ouija board. It kept moving until it stopped at 'J', then a moment later it drifted over to 'A', then 'Z'. And it stopped.
"Did it just spell your name?" Raquel whispered. "How does it know your name?"
"Come on guys, clearly we're the ones who are moving it-" Alivia reasoned.
"Quiet," Jazz hushed. In the dark, her friends could make out her hair moving as if a wind was running through it. Except, there was no real wind in the dorm room; just the faint circulation of air running through the vents on the other side of Cory's bed. This was suddenly a lot more unnerving than they had anticipated.
"I'm scared," Raquel whimpered. Always the scaredy cat of the group.
"She said hush," Cory hissed in response.
"Phantom," Jazz repeated, "come to us. I call on you from your grave, the portal beneath your bedroom, Amity Park."
At her words, the room seemed to grow heavier. It wasn't anything physical, but the energy in their atmosphere seemed to grow darker - shadows in the corner that seemed to crawl up the walls, slinking and curling. Something in each of their stomachs dropped, an unsettling emotion that caressed their souls unpleasantly. The feeling ceased for a moment, before growing and growing gradually again.
At these sensations, Jazz's friends erupted.
"Jazz," Raquel glared, "what the FUCK-"
"That is not in the instructions what are you doing-"
"-is this feeling? Not good-"
"-can't believe you're turning this into your tourist-town bull-" Alivia was cut off.
"Shh!" Jazz silenced them. "Phantom," she repeated once more. "I summon you. Come."
As the energy continued to fluctuate, the temperature suddenly plummeted. In a matter of seconds, it dropped twenty degrees, leaving all the girls shivering at the unexpected drop. Just continued to stare straight, headstrong - she had expected this phenomenon. Oddly enough this eeriness reminded her of home. Her new friends on the other hand….
"This isn't funny anymore, Jazz!" Raquel squirmed in her chair. "I swear, I will take my hand off-"
"NO!" Cory yelled. "If you do that, whatever ghosts are here could attach themselves to us-"
"Jazz, stop it," Alivia protested weakly. "You're scaring u - them."
In the dark, Jazz grinned toothily, ignoring their pleas. "Phantom…" she insisted, "stop being so stubborn, you dork."
A staggering, black silhouette materialized behind Jazz, and all three of her friends promptly screamed. They clamored, pushing away from the table and releasing the planchette. The spectral figure loomed at Jazz's shoulder, menacingly - unnaturally. A real… a real ghost. Jazz had summoned a ghost! Cory hid herself beneath her bed, hiding herself from sight. Alivia was doing her best to comprehend what she was seeing, actual proof of paranormal existence - something she thought to be absurd! And Raquel… Raquel was a paralyzed, sobbing mess.
"Why are you all dark?" Jazz calmly asked the figure behind her. She released the planchette and turned to the familiar aura that stood at her shoulder. "You've never looked like that before."
When he spoke his voice was garbled and staticky, a cacophony of white noise. Jazz reflexively cringed. "You're speaking in ghost-speak," she informed him.
The ghost looked at his shadowy hands and audibly groaned. A white spark of light formed around his midsection and illuminated the entire dorm room. It hovered around his waist and expanded, encircling and colorizing him. And then, the spectral figure was a lanky teenage boy donning sweatpants and a NASA t-shirt. He had black hair and blue eyes, a splash of freckles, and blue band-aids applied on various body parts.
At that point, Alivia and Raquel's jaws had dropped to the floor. Cory was still cowering under her bed, unable to get a clear vantage of the specter. He looked ultimately harmless and was glaring irritably at Jazz. In turn, she didn't back down. When they stood face-to-face, Jazz was about one inch taller, and she used that inch to her advantage; standing slightly over him.
He moved first, crossing his arms, "Did you just summon me all the way to Massachusetts only to call me a dork?"
"You wouldn't answer your phone," she supplied. "I figured it was a fair course of action."
"You're a jerk," he declared.
"Stupid," she responded.
"Know-it-all."
"Super-disaster."
"Psycho-sister."
She barked, laughing. "I've missed you."
He raised a brow, "It's only been… four months?"
"I'm sorry," Cory intervened, crawling out from underneath her bed. "What's going on?"
Alivia and Raquel stood baffled, having seen the entire exchange. "No clue," Alivia breathed.
"Oh, sorry guys," Jazz laughed. She patted Danny on the shoulder and jetted for the lightswitch. For a moment, everyone in the room had to blink the darkness out of their eyes. "I... kinda of scared you on purpose? I saw an opportunity and took it," she admitted to her friends. "This is my brother, Danny. He's half-human-half-ghost; it's complicated but you just have to go with it."
"Ghosts are… real?" Alivia reevaluated everything she thought she knew. Raquel nodded numbly next to her.
"Woah… How can you be dead and alive at the same time?" Cory asked excitedly.
"Uh," Danny butted in. He nudged Jazz, "who gave you permission to tell your new college friends my secret?"
"I did?" she raised a brow. "Look, they're not going to tell. They didn't even know for sure that ghosts existed until two minutes ago. Trust me, no one will buy their story if they do try to snitch; it isn't like home here."
"Fine," Danny groaned. "But I'm still pissed you did this. Do you know how awful it is to be summoned? Once you're called on, it's irresistible and I hate it. What if I had been in front of Mom and Dad, huh? Besides, how am I going to get home now, anyway? Amity Park is hundreds of miles away."
"I'm so lost," Raquel muttered.
"I summoned my brother to scare you and to punish him for ignoring me," Jazz grinned. "It was the perfect plan on both accounts."
"She looks like she's innocent, but she's not," Danny told them, seriously.
"I am innocent!"
"I have to fly more than three hours, non-stop because you pulled me out here! I have school tomorrow! Tell me how that's innocent!"
"Well, I guess if you put it that way… I didn't realize that I couldn't just unsumon you," she admitted sheepishly. "Didn't realize you'd have to take the long way."
"Jazz!" he cried.
"I know, I know," she said, "screw up on my part. But hey, you got to meet my new college friends?"
"I think I traumatized them," he glanced at the three perplexed girls watching their exchange with captured interest.
"Yeah… okay, maybe I'm not good at pranking?" she asked.
"You think?" Danny asked. He put a hand to his head. "Look, it was good seeing you Jazz, but it's late and I need to get home ASAP." He posed and allowed the transformation rings to morph him into Phantom. Alivia, Raquel, and Cory gasped again, and Danny lifted off the floor. "It was uh… good meeting you?" he told them. "Sorry about all this, Spazz can be short-sighted."
"Stop saying that-!"
"Love ya, 'sis'," he bid sarcastically her farewell. "Sorry I couldn't stay long."
He phased through the wall, leaving her alone with her friends. "You didn't stay at all," she accused, moments too late. Once she realized he had left for good, Jazz turned back to her friends. The table with the ouija was between them, and she realized what a bad idea all this had been. The tension in the room was high, and Jazz felt she was suffocating. That hadn't gone as smoothly as she'd envisioned.
"So…" Cory started awkwardly, breaking the ice. "Your brother's a ghost? That's uh… pretty different."
