The Seance in Apartment 10 Page 14

  She said it with such nonchalance, I hated her for it. The thought that my playing with a Ouija board one night had “tainted” me permanently in some way, had made me a life-long target of evil spirits, didn't sit well. “Wish you'd warned me about that before we started this whole thing.”

  We trudged up to the fourth floor, standing outside the door of apartment 10. Cat motioned to me, making it clear that she wanted me to open it. I hesitated for several seconds before even touching the knob, and when I did, I felt such a jolt of fear in my heart that I couldn't help but let go.

  “Go on, Tori. Open it.”

  I held my breath and turned the knob. To my surprise, the door was unlocked, and it fell open without a hitch. Remembering what'd happened during my last trip into Evelyn's apartment, I insisted that we wedge something in the door, to keep it from closing and trapping us. I removed one of my shoes for the purpose and stuffed it between the door and the frame. Then, slowly, I started into the apartment.

  I wish I could say that I had warm memories associated with the place. Walking back into it was like walking back into a bad dream, suffering a recurring nightmare. For days and nights straight I'd dreamt and fantasized about the trials I'd faced in this building. You're an idiot for having come back here, I thought.

  In the center of the room, near where my futon had been, there was still a large, rusty stain in the carpet. Cat laughed uncomfortably at the sight of it. “Oh, damn. I guess that's where it all started, huh?” She set down her bag and unzipped it, pulling out a Ouija board made of thin wood and a plastic planchette. Placing the board over the stain, she lit a number of large, white candles and set them around the board in a circle. “All right, Tori. Have a seat. Let's end this, here and now.”

  I joined her, sitting on the floor with my legs crossed and eyeing the talking board like it was a loaded gun. “God, I hope this is the right thing to do.” I looked up at Cat. “I hope... I hope that this isn't a mistake.”

  Setting the planchette down at the center of the board, she replied, “Me too.”

  22

  As we'd done on that night over the summer, the two of us joined hands and Cat called out to the spirits. “We're here today, hoping to make contact with the spirit in this building.” She closed her eyes. “The two of us would like to speak to you.”

  The silence was smothering. Prior to getting started, we'd cracked the window to let some air into the stuffy apartment, but aside from the whistling of the wind there was nothing else to be heard. No cars passed and the far-off din of downtown failed to reach us here.

  When nearly a minute had passed, we reached out with our non-dominant hands and placed a single finger on the planchette. I was determined to let Cat do all of the talking; she was the expert here and I was simply along for the ride. I leaned over the board as she started into her questioning, my gaze drifting occasionally to that dark passage that led to the kitchen and bathroom. Literally nothing had changed since I'd last been in this room. My dad and Sheldon had seen to removing all of my things, and it was cooler, but in all of the important ways, it was still the same room. The space felt claustrophobic, and even with the sunlight flooding in through the open window I couldn't help but look to the shadowed corners of the main room, waiting for something to materialize.

  “We would like to speak to the spirit in this apartment building. The spirit that was called into this sphere by Evelyn.” Cat looked to me, her large eyes narrowing in intensity. “The spirit who manifested that night, when the four of us were gathered in this very room.”

  I think that, at that moment, the two of us held our breath. Last time we'd made a connection to this thing with the board, it'd been pandemonium. Cat had ruptured an aneurysm upon seeing the thing in all its awful glory. We waited for the pointer to shift over to the “YES” in the top left corner. Thankfully, this board was more rustic than the last, and there were no strange, grinning suns or moons on it.

  The presence in the building apparently hadn't heard us, because minutes ticked by with no answer. Cat decided to repeat herself. “Are you there? We wish to make contact with you. The dark spirit that chased Tori through the apartment upstairs. The very same that was conjured by Evelyn, using the knowledge she gained in her dark book. Are you listening? We want to talk, spirit.”

  Again, minutes went by without the planchette nudging in the least. My arm was starting to get sore, and the longer I sat there the more embarrassed I became. We were like dorky live-action role players, talking to ourselves. “Is it... is it possible that the spirit isn't here anymore?” I asked. Admittedly, the possibility that the spirit had moved on gave me a surge of hope. I was more than ready to get the hell out of there.

  Cat shrugged unconvincingly. “I dunno... I mean, that could be it. But I don't understand why. Unless it's escaped the building by latching onto someone, or unless its connection to the world was severed while we were away, I don't know how that's possible.” She thought it over, looking around the room. “Let's keep trying.”

  And so we did. We sat there on the carpet, criss-cross-applesauce, calling out to an entity that either wasn't there, or which had no interest in chatting. I was relieved, frankly, that the planchette hadn't budged, that we hadn't seen or heard anything out of the ordinary. Cat rephrased her offer any number of ways, calling out to the spirits—any spirits—in the building, but eventually she saw the futility in it and decided to call it quits. We shoved the planchette south, to “GOODBYE”, and signed off the proper way.

  “Well,” I said, standing up, “I guess that's it, huh?” I was awfully pleased with the outcome. We could leave now, could go back to town and never visit this terrible building again.

  Cat, though, wasn't through yet. “No, listen, something's not right here.” She packed up her Ouija board and extinguished all but one of the candles, which she picked up and wielded like a torch. “I want to see Evelyn's room, the apartment above this one. Let's go in there, have a look around. If it's empty, then I guess this really is over with. We've come this far, Tori. We have to make sure.”

  Returning to apartment 10 had been an ordeal for me, make no mistake. I'd hemmed and hawed the whole way, and was only brightening up now because I'd been under the impression that we were through.

  But going up to apartment 11, where I'd been forced to flee for my life from that hideous thing?

  “You're out of your fucking mind, Cat,” I said plainly. “I... I went along with this thing, we did the séance. But... even if that damned thing isn't up there, I absolutely don't want to go back into that room, OK?”

  I could see that Cat understood, and to her credit she didn't give me any flak for my refusal. Instead, she nodded and walked over to the door, starting out into the stairwell. “OK, then. I'll only be a few minutes.”

  I raced after her, nearly knocking the candle from her grasp. “Hold on! You can't be serious! Where do you think you're going? It's different up there, Cat. It's not safe.”

  “Come with me, then,” she countered. “We'll do a quick walk-around. We need to do this. It's the only way for us to know that the spirit is gone.”

  My voice wavered and my eyes threatened tears. “No, I...” It was too traumatic to even consider. I stationed myself in the stairwell, shutting the door to apartment 10 and crossing my arms. “We need to leave. If it were still here in the building it would have reached out during the séance, Cat. Am I right? Wandering around in that room... it's stupid. Pointless.”

  She was going up there whether I liked it or not, and began hiking up the final flight of stairs. “Stay here, if you want. I won't be long.”

  As if led by the nose, I went up behind her, cursing and spitting all the while. “You're out of your damn mind! A woman died in that room, Cat! Evelyn killed herself and was hanging for months before she was found. She committed suicide because she couldn't live with the thing she brought into this world—the thing that she summoned in that very room. Are you dumb? Let's go, Cat. Please! Fo
r God's sake, let's get out of here!”

  We were outside of apartment 11, where Cat tried the door almost immediately. It was locked, and at some point over the past few months, Sheldon had apparently fixed the damage I'd done to the doorframe. The door was surrounded by new molding and the deadbolt looked to be of a different make.

  Seeming to have predicted this obstacle, she reached into one of the side pockets in her duffel bag and took out a thin screwdriver. This she inserted into the lock and began to twist in a measured way. She grinned. “I learned how to do this when I was a kid, sneaking into my older brother's room. It's not hard to do, and these locks are old...”

  There was a pop as the deadbolt was disengaged.

  She returned the screwdriver to her bag and then picked the candle back up. Opening the door, she turned to me. “I know this is hard for you, Tori. And I don't blame you for not wanting to go in. But unless we do, there's no way for us to be sure that the thing is gone. You want answers, don't you? You want the truth?”

  The truth didn't mean a damn thing to me. I'd seen more than my fair share of “truth” in that awful room over the summer. And yet, I couldn't let the imbecile go in alone. She was being reckless, walking into a trap, and unless I was there to serve as a second pair of eyes it was likely she'd end up hurt. “I hate you,” I said, wiping at my eyes. And I kind of meant it.

  The apartment was abysmally dark. The window I'd broken was boarded up, and there was no light in the entire apartment except that which came off of the candle in Cat's hand. She reached into the room and hit the light switch on the wall, then remembered that the building had no power. Stepping inside, I kept tightly to her rear, almost bumping into her. The feeble light coming from the stairwell didn't reveal anything but the barest outline of the room. There was ample shadow throughout; shadow in which untold horrors might lurk.

  We passed through the main room, cutting into the kitchen. The candlelight wasn't good for a whole lot; it failed to fully penetrate the inky darkness and showed us only those sights within arm's reach, while casting queer shadows all over our immediate surroundings. The kitchen, we found, was as empty as it'd been during my last visit.

  That left only the bathroom.

  “It was here, in front of the bathroom mirror that you saw Evelyn speaking to something in your dreams, is that right?” Cat stood in the bathroom doorway, sticking the candle in to have a look.

  “Yes,” I replied. “She had the book with her, too.”

  There was no book there now, however during my last stint in the apartment that awful tome had been on the floor, near the tub. Something—Evelyn, I believed—had tried to break through the thing physically, had called out to me and urged me to run from the apartment. It'd been good advice; advice that I wanted to take again.

  Cat stationed herself before the bathroom sink and studied the claw marks on the medicine cabinet. She frowned as she touched them, then looked closely into the mirror. “You saw things in this mirror, too, am I right?”

  I nodded. “There was something in it looking out at me, yes. I remember hearing it pound against the other side of the mirror in a dream I had, like it was breaking out.”

  For a long moment, Cat looked at her reflection in the mirror, moving the candle this way and that to judge from different angles. Meanwhile, I paced around in the kitchen, hands on my head, trying not to hyperventilate. The darkness in the studio was so absolute that I had to look continuously at the front door, which remained wide open. A powdery light came in through there, a promise of freedom. I wanted so badly to run for it, to leave through that door and never look back, but I waited as Cat took her time with the mirror.

  “I don't see anything in it now,” she eventually announced, sighing. “If it was there, then it isn't now. I'm not sure what to make of it, if I'm telling the truth.”

  Relieved, I turned back to Cat and took her arm. “Good. Now let's get the hell out of here, OK?”

  As the words left my lips, I became aware of something else in the bathroom with us. It issued from the tub, in the form of a quick, shadowy movement and a faint sound, as of flesh slapping the bottom of the basin. Cat heard it to, because she quickly shifted to the side and thrust out the candle, lighting up the inside of the tub.

  Surging to its feet, arms and legs pasty and uneven in length, was a human figure. Its mouth gaped as it extended a large hand, raking the air. From the hollows of its throat there leaked out a sound that was all too familiar to me.

  The wheezing, droning moan.

  Its pale hand struck the wall and it took a quick step out of the tub, rushing at Cat head-on. Its pasty, hairless head fell back on its shoulders and it bared its hideous, waxen mask of a face in the full candlelight, sending the two of us sprinting. Cat fell into me, nearly toppled me over, and darted into the main room. I was on her heels, the fleshy footfalls of the running specter issuing from just behind me. I felt sure that if I stopped to turn around, if I slowed even a hair, I'd be grabbed by the thing.

  We'd thought it was gone. We'd thought ourselves in the clear.

  But it'd been waiting for us.

  All this time, it had been waiting.

  Maybe it really had known we'd return.

  The door flew shut just as Cat was within reach of the knob. Trying to pry it open, she dropped the candle on the floor and tugged with all her might. “W-what is this? What the hell?” she cried.

  I hit the wall, then fell to my right, narrowly avoiding the specter's swinging arm. Cat let go of the door and then bolted towards the other side of the room, striking the wall so hard that I heard it crack. She tumbled to the floor and began to crawl towards the candle.

  I lunged towards the door and tried my hand at opening it. The entity was still in the room with us, was working in the background. I prayed that it wouldn't come near me; that, if forced to decide between two targets, the spirit would freeze up and give one of us a chance to forge an escape.

  I worked the doorknob with everything I had, but I couldn't get it to turn. I turned around, looking to the window, which had been tightly boarded with a sheet of wood. It was screwed into the surrounding wall, would be impossible for us to tear down or break through.

  We were trapped.

  Good and trapped.

  We were going to die, the two of us. In the same room where Evelyn died, we were going to perish in the dark, one after another, at the hands of this monstrous thing. In the chaotic flickering of the candle I caught bits and pieces of a few things: Misshapen hands and feet moving through the darkness in search of prey; Cat, tears in her eyes, trying to evade said hands.

  The light, though, had grown. It was bigger than it should have been. In my confusion, it took me a minute to realize why.

  Hot wax dripped into the carpet where Cat had dropped the candle, and as the wick continued to burn, the carpet fibers were beginning to ignite. A small fire was now spreading across the floor, and the smell of singed carpet met my nose through the darkness. “Oh, no,” I muttered, backing against the door and gaining my feet. Panicking for the second time, I tried to force the door open again, this time because I didn't want to die in a fire.

  The carpet, old and dusty, proved quite flammable. In the space of a few moments, the fire began to spread, and the room became host to a wild bonfire, with the candle melting near its center. Cat crawled on hands and knees towards the door, while the entity, droning, stood along one wall and leveled its empty gaze on the two of us. Smoke rose up from the ground, a thin veil of it forming near the ceiling.

  We were going to die in this apartment, even without the specter's intervention. Cat bumped into me, covering her airways with both hands, and took her turn at trying the door.

  Still stuck.

  The carpet was being rapidly consumed. The young flame took to one of the walls, creeping up it very slowly once the carpet in the corner had been fully burnt away. It wouldn't be long before the whole building went up.

  I tried screaming for
help, forgetting in my terror that the building was completely empty. “Help! Help!” From across the room the entity took a jerky step, then another. The hollows of its hateful visage were more pronounced in the firelight, and the shadows it cast across the burning carpet and walls were sickly and ill-defined.

  The fire was still spreading. The flames were steadily making their way to the door. Hot smoke rolled past our faces in thick waves, and I felt it in my throat, my lungs. Cat and I coughed almost to the point of vomiting, our eyes stinging in the peppery haze of smoke. There was nowhere to run, nowhere to take shelter.

  It was at that moment, when the flames were nipping at the soles of my shoes and I was getting dizzy for all the smoke I'd inhaled, that there was a change. The specter suddenly turned back, stumbled through the flames with a low moan. I was so delirious with fright that I didn't know what I was seeing. Was the entity not immune to the fire? Had it been distracted somehow in the chaos?

  Turning to the passage between the main room and kitchen, I thought I saw another figure standing amidst the tongues of growing flame. It was so powdery, so faint, that I initially mistook it for more smoke, but when it moved, I saw it was something more substantial. The figure stood in that doorway and pointed straight at me, raising a paper-white face behind what looked to be a black veil.

  It was Evelyn.

  Cat was having trouble breathing and bumped into me, her legs nearly giving out. She coughed in my arms, pawed at the walls as she went down. I slung an arm around her, my eyes never leaving Evelyn.

  “Go.” A disembodied voice came through the room like a refreshing breeze, cutting through the pale entity's cacophonous droning. Evelyn motioned to the door with a nod. The lock clicked behind me so loudly that I startled.