The Book Of The Movie
Chapter 3: The Fourth
It was pretty, the way the branches intertwined with the fence. Sarah peered through it to see Chris play football. It *was* tempting, seeing him get all sweaty and athletic and stuff. She so wanted him, to make her empty life complete. But life was not that simple.
A rough female voice shot through the air.
"Sarah!"
She turned to face the three girls, walking towards her from the trees. Great, she thought, now I have stalkers.
"Looking for someone?" Nancy asked, flashing her a sly smile that was, Sarah guessed, suppossed to achieve some semblance of "friendly".
"Some of these football dicks make them watch them practice, as if it's interesting," Bonnie explained.
Nancy sneered.
"Yeah, like girlfriend over there...Chris Hooker."
Sarah suddenly felt stupid, pathetic, to have these girls know about her silly crush with a guy that was addmittedly a jerk.
"I...I don't even know him..."
Rochelle sighed...she was the only one equipped to step in and be the welcome-wagon, it seemed...had to, couldn't let this one slip away. Bonnie had told them all about how the girl made the pencil move by itself, and anyone capable of Poltergeist stuff like that definitly put them further down the road to Manon than without.
"Nancy's *sorry* for what happened in Biology," she said, brushing a curl behind her ear, "And she's mean to everybody, so don't take it personally..."
Sarah looked at Bonnie.
"You're Nancy?"
"Uh-uh, she's Nancy, I'm Bonnie, and that's Rochelle."
"Hi, I'm Sarah..."
But Bonnie cut her off.
"We *know* who you are..."
Sarah thought back in apprehension to the pencil, and Chris's admonition.
Nancy smiled hopefully.
"You...want to go for coffee?"
Sarah couldn't get caught up in this, she knew if she said yes doors would open that were better left shut...
"No, I can't, I gotta get home...my dad's waiting for me..."
Obviously this appeal to familial duty did not hold water with Nancy, who guffawed loudly.
"You can make something *up*..."
Somehow, Nancy's words freed Sarah in a strange way, made her smile. The girl seemed so wild, so unencumbered by society's rules. There was a danger around her. So tempting...
"...Rochelle's ditching practice," Nancy continued.
Just then, Sarah remembered Chris. She felt like she was almost being disloyal to him by going off with the girls. She looked back at him in indescision. Nancy knew exactly what was going through her head and answered as if she read her mind,
"He comes on to anything with tits, Sarah."
"Except me," Bonnie piped in.
"I'm...not watching him," Sarah said, feeling pathetic again.
"He spreads *disease*...I speak from personal experience."
Sarah was shocked to see the seemingly invulnerable Nancy make such a candid statement...the shock showed on Sarah's face, and Nancy hated that someone saw past the armor.
"Goooo Chris!!!!" Nancy shouted out to him, "C'mon, go for the pass, baby..."
Chris turned to face the voice and couldn't stop his legs from tangling up beneath him. Sarah couldn't help but giggle as she saw the Mighty Chris brought down to the ground.
Nancy looked grave.
"He's a *jerk*."
The lines from an old Smiths song sang through Sarah's head,
You shut your mouth,
How can you say
I go about things the wrong way
I am human and I need to be loved
Just like everybody else does...
Nancy touched her arm.
"C'mon..."
And she confidently started walking, not waiting for Sarah's reply. Bonnie was not so confident.
"So you're coming, right?"
"Where are we going?"
"Shopping."
"C'mon," Rochelle said.
Sarah began to panic. If she went off with them, went to wherever these girls went, her life would be altered forever, she knew it.
"I, I don't have any money..."
"We get a five-finger discount..."
"A five-finger discount," Sarah said in resignation...oh great, she was going to go shoplifting with them and end up in juvy hall...that would certainly be life-altering! But still she followed them.
*** *** ***
"Sarah, where'd you live before?" Rochelle asked.
"San Francisco..."
"Why'd you move?"
"Because it sucks ass there...'cause my dad wanted to..."
"It sucks here too..."
"And I need a car here,"
"You need a car everywhere," Nancy said. Then she noticed something. Sarah's wrists.
"What's up with that?" she asked, pointing at the white lines that crossed the girl's wrists.
Sarah was so uncomfortable by the question she wanted just to run away...but she had gotten used to it by now, and knew the best way was a straight answer.
"I...slit my wrists..."
"S-sorry..." Nancy answered, embarassed.
It was startling how Bonnie took her hand and examined the scar the way one would a rare flower.
"What'd you do it with?"
"With a kitchen knife..."
"You even did it the right way," Bonnie said approvingly.
"Yeah..." Sarah said, puzzled and sickened at her strange sense of pride at the ingenuity.
Such a tragedy immediately put Sarah into Nancy's book as "cool"--before then she was nothing but annoyed by the seemingly pure white-bread girl.
"Punk rock!" she said, grabbing Sarah's arm, pulling her towards her, and putting her arm around her shoulder in a show of solidarity. Sarah was a little taken aback by the girl's forwardness, but in a good way. She had finally found some friends.
Meanwhile, Rochelle turned to Bonnie in concern.
"The *right way*? How do you know the *right way*?"
"Shut up, Rochelle..."
*** *** ***
Goosebumps travelled up Sarah's arms as she entered the magic shop.
Lirio's -- the woman in the Stevie Nicks dress making strange hand gestures
over a bowl of herbs must be her.
Sarah thought: *Totally weird.* Tons of candles, that much she understood. You use candles to...set mood. To decorate. But the African statues on one table, bundles of what looked like chopped grass on another...this lady must be into some straaaange stuff. Voodoo maybe? Or maybe just Bellvue...
But the woman looked kind though, her long soft brown hair and large dark eyes...she sort of reminded Sarah of her own mother, as strange as that sounds. Sounded strange because Sarah's mom certainly shared none of the kooky instrests this lady had...
"Sarah," Bonnie said in a summoning whisper.
"What?"
Bonnie, her eyes squinting through her greasy bangs and on the lookout for Lirio, handed Sarah a red book.
"Put this in your bag..."
Oh greaaaat, *shoplifting*...That was soooo junior high, what next, they were going to filch lipstick at the drug store?
"No," Sarah said dismissingly as if the girl was a bug near her tennis shoe. She was shocked to see Bonnie, who looked so innocent, flash a disgusted sneer as she pocketed a smaller item.
"Everything in nature *steals*, you know...big animals steal from little ones..."
"*They* steal for *survival*...besides, I already have a diary."
"This is different. You put spells and power thoughts in it, and don't let anyone else read it, ever...except maybe *us*"
At the word "spells" Sarah's ears pricked up in alarm and for the first time she really looked at the odd book...it was made of leather and had a triangle on it...and it made her think of the book Snow White's stepmother had in the cartoon...
"You guys are really into all this?" Sarah asked warily.
Bonnie rolled her eyes and made a secretive, evasive grin.
"Mmmmnnn sort of," she replied, walking past Sarah.
Sarah held the book in her hands, flipping the pages cautiously, and strolled towards a doorway in the store blocked off by a curtain with eyes on it. She didn't know why, but she felt deeply drawn to the area, as if it contained the most powerful magnet in the world and she was a helpless little metal bobby pin.
As her hand clutched the fabric of the curtain and made a motion as if to draw it back, she felt as if she was watching someone else do it, as if it was not really her...which made the shock of feeling Lirio's sudden, firm grip on her wrist all the more acute.
"That's *not* for you," the woman said in a forbidding tone.
Sarah was in terror. Terror not only of being caught by Lirio, but by the whole notion of her doing something out-of-the-ordinary like that. She was a good teen. She never got into trouble, except for the whole attempted suicide thing, and even then she was hurting herself, not anyone else...
"U-uhm, I'm sorry..."
Lirio could feel the anxiety shooting off the girl in waves, and quickly softened her expression. She gently turned Sarah's hand around and smiled approvingly.
"What a beautiful ring," she remarked, and rested her hand atop it. "It was your *mother's*..."
Ohmigod, Sarah thought. How could she have know that? She suddenly felt a little flushed, but not in a bad way.
"Ye-ah...it was..."
Lirio's head motioned at the red book.
"Are you going to pay for those?"
"U-uh-hunn.."
The woman nodded approvingly.
"You're not like your friends," she said, walking Sarah to the counter. Then she looked at the girl more closely, playfully even. "You know how to use candles?"
What an odd question.
"Yeah: you light the wick?"
"More than that," she replied, holding several candles in her hand thoughtfully. "Red is for love, black...Actually..."
She pulled a small paperback book from the shelf behind her. In big, flowery letters was the title:
*The Craft*
"Why don't you read that...it explains it all."
It was a long day, and Sarah just wanted to be done with it, so she looked at the tome nonchalantly and nodded.
"Okay..."
"Twenty dollars," Lirio said with a big smile, putting that book and the red one into a brown bag and taking Sarah's green wrinkled bill.
Quite the saleslady, she thought. Hope she didn't think she had a customer for life or anything...
"You know, I've never read anything about this stuff before...I mean, I don't follow it..."
"Maybe you are a natural witch...your power comes from *within*"
This comment floored Sarah way more than the one about her mother...but instead of being outraged, or terrified, or laughing it off as the delusion of some aging New Agey chick, it actually kind of made some sort of sen--
The rest of the girls were suddenly behind her and headng for the door.
"C'mon, Sarah,"Bonnie said, holding the door open for her.
Lirio watched the four leave with a calm, yet knowing expression.
*** *** ***
Downtown LA at night. Not the place you want to be, especially four teenage girls with pocketbooks theoretically filled with Mommy and Daddy's cash. Maybe the others were used to it, but the police sirens, prostitutes, and crazy people gave her the chills. And apparently, their excursion wasn't over yet.
"You guys, I think I should head home..."
"Just keep looking straight ahead and keep walking," Bonnie said.
Sarah tried to mimic her companions's expressionless faces and confident strides, but there was just so much chaos and confusion there...suddenly, a disheveled woman with a baby in her arms accosted her,
"My baby needs some food," the woman pleaded, her child wailing in her arms.
"Don't give her money, you're gonna get *nailed*," warned Rochelle as she tugged on Sarah's sleeve.
Sarah didn't know what to do...she couldn't just leave a starving baby like that...and the noise from the environment...so many people...and right behind the woman...
The man with the snake!
He began to totter to her slowly like an excited, curious infant, balancing a snake in his hands.
"Hey, I know you..."
She had to get away--
"I got a snake for you--"
She had to get away, someplace to breathe--
"Hey, I've got to talk to you...I had a *dream* about you--"
Had to get away, pursuing her through the crowd, he's getting louder--
"In my dream...you were dead...YOU WERE DEAD!"
God! Have to get away--
"HEY I'M TALKING TO YOU!!!!"
In her haste to flee she bumped into a tall, Vincent Pricey priest-looking guy who summoned her to return to Jesus...she didn't know who was more frightening, she just knew she had to get away...she didn't want to die--
"I KNOW WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT--I'M IN TOUCH WITH THE *MAN*"
The frightened girl ran into traffic, narrowly missing a car...still the snake man followed...
Oh God, she just wished he'd go away, that something would make him go away...
At the same time, the other three, witnessing the spectacle, wished the same thing, that he would go away, though Nancy's thoughts were a little more extreme, her eyes cold and blazing at the same time...
"LISTEN TO ME!!!!"
Goawaygoawaygoawaygoaway--like four voices noiselessly humming, blending into one...
The shriek of a car's tires and scream of it's horn as it plowed into the man, the man's body bouncing off the windshield with a sickening thud and rolling down the wet black asphalt, limp as a doll, now stopping lifeless...
All at once the four girls's eyes met, sheer electricity.
Bonnie clutched Sarah's arm breathlessly and pulled her away.
"C'mon Sarah, let's get out of here..."
Running away, it almost felt like they had fled from murdering that man with all eight of their slender little hands. But of course, that's crazy.
*** *** ***
They headed for a wooded area behind the highway, hearts thumping, legs running, dancing, arms out as if they had the power of flight. Sarah hadn't felt such a sense of danger and excitement since she was a little kid, playing with firecrackers.
"Whoaaaa!!!!"
"OhmyGOD!!!"
"We hit him, the car hit him and we made it happen!" Bonnie exclaimed, her and Sarah twisting excited in the wind like two schoolgirls.
The thought that they could have such power was so wonderful to Nancy's mind that she had to shoot it down lest she be horribly disappointed by its inaccuracy.
"Maybe, maybe not..."
"Definitely," Bonnie said she plopped down on an abandoned red couch, Nancy next to her and Rochelle and Sarah on the ground. "I thought to myself: it's gonna hit him!"
"I thought it too!" Rochelle yelped.
"Well, I thought it too," Nancy replied, "but that doesn't..."
"Sarah did too...Sarah, did you think it?" Bonnie asked.
"Yuh-yeah..."
The previously reserved Bonnie burst forth into an excitement that made her whole face glow, and gave promise to a beauty that might had been hiding all this time...
"Well that's it, you guys, Sarah's the Fourth! North, South, East and West, we can make things happen, this is it, this is real!"
Nancy couldn't fight the wide smile that overtook her face...she felt stoned with glee.
"Shit..."
Sarah shared in the euphoria, knowing it was wrong to grin at another's misfortune, but the sheer fantasticness of the situation canceling it out. Her eyes were wide with wonder tempered with fear.
"Hey you guys, this is really weird..."
Nancy, seeing her companion teetering between emotions, jumped in to reassure her and keep her on the side she knew she herself was firmly on. She didn't come this far only to have things blocked by misguided sentiment over some creepy dead bum.
"Hey, he was after you...he was going to HURT you, man...it's not our fault, I mean..."
"Hey guys, maybe he'll really *listen* now..." Rochelle said.
"Who?" Sarah asked.
"Manon,"
At the mention of this thing's name the atmosphere suddenly became a little quieter, a little more reverent. Sarah could tell by the placid, knowing look the three girls shared that it had to be some religious-type figure.
"What, that's like God?"
"No, man invented God, this is older than that," Bonnie said, taking a drag on a cigarette. A flask of whiskey was passed to Sarah.
"Say, do you guys worship the devil?"
All three girls bellowed in laughter, and Sarah nervously managed to let out a chuckle herself.
"It's like God and the devil," Nancy explained breathlessly, perched on the edge of the red sofa cushion like a bird ready to shoot in the air. "It's *everything*...it's the trees, it's the ground, it's the rocks, it's the moon: it's everything!"
Sarah thought she understood.
"Nature,"
"If god and the devil were playing football, Manon would be the stadium they played on...it would be the sun that shone down on them..."
This was large, almost too large for Sarah to wrap her brain around.
"So does things like tonight happen to you a lot?" Bonnie asked as she looked at the girl admiringly.
Sarah was kind of dumbstruck, almost touched...nobody had ever asked her that before, much less made it sound like something she should be proud of, like a skill...
"No, not like that...other stuff..."
Rochelle regarded the girl in awe. "Where did you learn it?"
"I...dunno."
Bonnie took another sharp drag and nodded sagely.
"A *natural witch*"
"I hate it, it's always getting screwed up...it's like, sometimes I'll want it to rain and a pipe will burst in my room and it'll just get *flooded*"
It was nice to talk about such things freely and laugh with the girls, but the smile on Nancy's face started to noticeably drop with each passing sentence. This had to be bullshit, Nancy thought: she herself could never do anything like that and she had been practicing and studying for a long time. This Sarah chick was just starting, didn't even know what a Book of Shadows was, c'mon...
"Yeah, right..." Nancy sneered.
"No, really, er, um...it's like I'll want it to get really quiet, and I'll wish for it and wish for it...and I'll go deaf for three days straight..."
Nancy adjusted herself in her seat with a cocky flair, the flask in one hand and a burning cigarette in the air.
"If you can do that: ever heard of invoking the spirit?"
Sarah's face turned blank. That sounded heavy, made her think of demons.
"No," she answered quietly.
Nancy leaned in closer, her grin ear-to-ear.
"It's when you call him..."
"Who?"
"Man-on," Nancy said, rolling her eyes at how dumb, how *pathetic* this mousy little Sarah was. "It's like...you take him into you...it's like he fills you..."
Bonnie closed her eyes and tilted her head back in rapture while Nancy's eyes glittered in glee and Rochelle nodded in bliss. Sarah began to feel really uncomfortable...it was like the three girls were talking about some hot night spent with their boyfriend and not worshipping some god.
"He takes everything that has gone wrong in your life," Nancy continued, "and he makes it *all better again*"
Sarah looked at Nancy in horror.
"Nothing makes everything all better again."
Nancy's lips curled in derision.
"Maybe not for *you*"
That's all Sarah needed to hear. These were like some Manson-girl chicks...
She jumped up and gathered her bags.
"Where are you going?" Bonnie asked, crestfallen.
"You guys are freaking me out," Sarah said as she started to run away.
Nancy knew it. She knew this mousy bitch couldn't handle it. Girl's probably scared of her own period.
"Oh-ho! She's *scared*!"
Bonnie couldn't believe that her only tangible hope for a better future through magick had just left their makeshift circle.
"Nancy, we *need* her..."
"Like a hole in the head..."
But Rochelle managed to stay calm. She was very in touch with her intuition, always had been, and something told her not to worry.
"She'll be back."
*** *** ***