The Occult Experience

Chapter Three

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Shauna looked at the little boy screaming himself into a fit, and would be smiling were she able. She turned around, looked up at the sun, and turned back around. The screaming had been going on for about four minutes now, interspersed with the boy needing to breath.

"Are you about done?" She asked when he stopped to take a breath.

"Gimme a minute." Dib replied, inhaling deeply, and then squaking in surprise when he was hit in the back of the head. A small cylinder, a battery, bounced over the back of his head where Shauna grabbed it from the air.

"Shut. Up." Gaz growled out. She was not a morning person (Or afternoon or night, for that matter), and did not react positively to being awakened by her brothers needless screaming. She turned around and walked off, tersely mumbling about breakfast.

"Pleasant girl, isn't she." Shauna stated. Dib ignored the sarcasm out of habit.

"Who are you and WHY ARE YOU KNOCKING ON MY DOOR?!" Can anyone truly blame Dib for being so excitable, with such irrefutable proof of the supernatural in front of his eyes.

"I'm Shauna, and I'm knocking on your door for the same reason anyone else knocks on the door. To talk with the inhabitants and possibly be let in. So, may I enter?" Dib stared at the skeleton in his doorway. It wasn't a bad answer... Which surprised him more than the skeleton in the doorway.

" Eh ye-no-uh... Sure, uh yeah, come on in." This was getting to be too much. This was getting to be way too much.

He stepped aside and let her in, with a repetitive rattle and and dry sound of rubbing bones she walked past him, looked into the room immediately connected to the entryway, and then walked on into the kitchen. Dib followed at a sedate pace, wondering what, exactly, Gaz was going to do.

It turned out that she did nothing, she was staring at the toaster. The skeleton had taken a seat at the table, idly watching him the moment he'd entered. The unblinking red orbs were more than a little disturbing. The fact that the... thing couldn't blink due to not having eyelids didn't really factor into the equation until it was a little too late.

"Take a seat and listen, I'll see if I can't clear a few things up." Dib didn't sit. "I'm the demon that was sent to help you fulfill whatever goals it is that you have. You are neither the youngest or oldest person to summon a demon, but you are the only person to do so in this dimension. For control reasons, the dark secretary that you met last night has removed that page from the book you used, so as to prevent anyone else summoning a demon to be their assistant."

"Why didn't they just have you- or the assistant or whatever it is- be the one to do it?" Dib jumped and screamed when the toaster popped out a pair of toaster Super Bread (Tm) slices. His sister, to his amazement and Shauna's amusement, sat in, on, through? Shauna's body.

"The ritual seems to disappear if not immediately removed, often into the hands of undesirables, or else into the hands of the nemesis, arch-rival, what have you of the original summoner. The leader of the board quickly got tired of that. His exact words were "It's not an unfair advantage if everyone has it"." This was unusual for Dib, his questions were being answered, and not with the words "Doom!".

"Well then, what about-"

"You have school, soon, yes? You go get ready and I shall make you some of this... Burnt bread that your sister is eating." Dib spared the new skeleton an odd glance before getting up. Was this stuff supposed to make sense?

"This will be very dificult... Perhaps I should have asked Hatch about how he aided his childe. Where did the girl get that bread, though?" Being from a world of magic, and the dark ages of that world, Shauna was very, very out of her element. Not that she'd let the boy know that.