"Close your eyes." Christophe whispered.

One last suspicious look connected each set of eyes before they closed. Sadie suddenly didn't want to close her eyes. Would something bad happen if she did. She'd be vulnerable. She glanced around at bloodied hands and the closed eyes, before finding Christophe's eyes still open. They had that puckish twinkle, but they were also impatiently waiting for Sadie to close hers. She gave a weak smile and then closed her eyes, throwing her world into an inky abyss.

Christophe's voice cut through the void, clear and without his usual social media affectation. "Think of Ingrid. Picture her. Remember her. Go specific. Hear her voice in your mind. Feel her. Feel how she made you feel."

Micro-expressions of anxiety torqued each face. Everyone cupping a memory they've tried so hard to keep buried. Christophe began an incantation in some strange language. Sadie thought it sounded like a nest of snakes singing. In any other 'Christophe-experience' this would elicit a comedic effect, but here, in this dark attic, with a mangled rodent's dead black eyes witnessing them, there was nothing funny.

As Christophe continued to chant his voice seemed to reverberate onto itself. A vocal ouroboros as the words echoed back on themselves the moment they were uttered. And the echoes echoed into a feedback loop that Sadie felt worming under her skin. The air hummed with an strange electrical force with a supernatural intensity which Sadie could no longer bare. Just as she was about top open her eyes Christophe switched back to English and called with authority, "Spirits!"

The vibrations ceased immediately leaving a vacuum in its absence, "Spirit's hear me! I knock on your door and as —

Knock knock.

The knocking came from everywhere at once. And thousand fists rapping from the floors and ceilings as well as the walls.

Everyone's eyes sprung open and found Christophe's hands still linked and his legs still sitting crossed.

"Wasn't me."

"I don't like this." Autry whimpered, her common refrain.

"Don't break the circle," Christophe cried, "Listen." He craned his ear to the centre of the circle.

Barely perceptible creaking sounds jumped from dark place to dark place with intention. Their eyes darted, following the creaks as they stalked around the room. The fear shone bright in all of them, even through the ever skeptical Gigi's cold raven eyes. Sadie could only describe it as if reality was a knot that had started to loosen, leaving an opening for something horrifyingly indescribable.

"Spirits," Christophe called to the roof, "We beseech you, pull back the veil. Bring Ingrid Peltman forward."

A sudden crash of an ocean wave. A far off seagull's accusing scream. The candle flickered. Then went out. Then relit on its own.

Christophe's wide grin was a swirl of madness, "Ingrid! Was that a sign? Are you here? Give us another."

And then nothing happened. The impossible creaking, the supernatural vibrating air, the elevated sense of presence was extinguished in a moment. They had all woken from a collective dream to find themselves holding blood soaked hands in an attic.

Christophe became like a panicked presenter who took the podium only to realize he had left his speech in the car. He umm'd and hmmm'd, trying to find his place in the ritual again and coming up only more lost. He cleared his throat and ordered, "Ingrid, we call you forward. Feed on our pain. It is on offer. Feast Ingrid. Grow and show yourself." It was much less convincing than before.

And again Christophe waited and again nothing happened.

The rest of the group, who had been sitting with perfect posture became aware of the unnaturalness of it, slumped. Each fabricated the same reasoning for what had just happened. It was only their minds playing tricks or even more likely Christophe playing tricks.

"Pretty sure Mr. Gerby died for nothing." Gigi said

"Give it another second!" Christophe was near hysterics. He lifted Gigi and Autry's hands to the air and bellowed, "Obey me spirits! The living commands you!"

"Chris," Jordan said coolly, turning the last page on this disturbing chapter, but Christophe ignored him and pushed on, "We demand Ingrid enter!"

Moss broke the circle and stood up, stretching and popping his knees, "Well, I'm getting drunk." He strolled over to Christophe, wiping the blood off his hands on his face. He then ordered Autry to follow him. Autry popped up and said a silent and teary prayer for Mr. Gerby, before she scampered down the hatch door.

Christophe lowered his chin to his chest as the rest got up one by one and exited the attic. Sadie remained with Christophe. She thought he looked like a pouty child who didn't get the Christmas present he wanted.

"If it's any consolation I thought it could've worked, but you know, even dead Ingrid would never do what anyone asked anyway."

Christophe didn't seem to acknowledge the sympathy. He nudged the dead gerbil with his shoe, blew out the candle, and said, "Alexa, end seance."

"I can to that." Said the AI assistant.

The mechanical curtain over the skylight drew back revealing a line of planets and Christophe exited the attic without another word.

Sadie sat alone on the rug watching the stream of grey smoke make a clean break from the wick up to the rafters. All sorts of thoughts swam in her mind. Why had she agreed to come here? Why did she allow herself to be lured back into Jordan's orbit? She'd had such a good plan to run away, so why had she blown it?

She knew the answer of course. She wasn't just trying to make Christophe feel better when she said she thought it could've worked, part of her allowed herself to believe that Ingrid would fade in from some dead realm. She wanted that because it would mean she could finally tell her everything she was always too afraid to say. She never got that giant come to Jesus moment with her ex-BFF and nemesis. She had rehearsed her confrontation fantasy for years. Telling Ingrid what a foul thing she really was. How cruel and empty and evil. She had tried so many times, but the courage to tell her off never came. Or if Sadie got close, Ingrid would whiff the slightest obstinance and stamp it out with veiled threats and marrow deep insults. So, Sadie went on sitting with her at lunch or riding shot gun, silently enduring her ghoulish best friend.

It wasn't until Ingrid launched the bully campaign on Bianca Temple that Sadie had finally had enough. She couldn't understand why tease that sweet quiet girl. She posed no threat to Ingrid. She already had a hard time fitting in with the oh so beautiful of Beachwood High. Sadie thought it was if that Bianca's loneliness and self-consciousness was chum in the water, sending Ingrid into a ravenous froth.

Sadie never got the chance to stand up to Ingrid. Abetters are just as guilty as perpetrators. A silent witness speaks only permission. Ingrid's final blow was that Sadie was going to have to live the rest of her life having never done anything about it.

So yes, she wanted Ingrid to reappear. She wanted to leave tonight knowing she had finally said her piece so she didn't have to carry the shame. Sitting there, amongst the twinkly lights she conceded that the shame had taken up permanent residence. The damage was done. Sadie Swyft knew she was a shitty person and the time to change that had long since passed.

*

Sadie sat for a few more moments in the lonesome attic and then made a new plan that was the same as the original plan. Get up and leave forever. Flee Beachwood never to return. Run away from all the horribleness of it all. Perhaps if she kept moving she'd be able to make some distance from her old self even though she had read enough books to know that was impossible.

Sadie made her way to the hatch door when she felt something familiar in the air. A fragrance. Orange and vanilla. She turned around to the web of twinkly lights. Amongst them, two lights weren't like others. Eyes. Someone was in the attic with her, but she could not see who.

As she made for the hatch door there was a sudden sickening pop. All the twinkling lights popped at once showering the room in sparks. Sadie jumped. The room was black except the lone pillar of moon light shining down from the skylight. The eyes were gone, but she caught a shadow slice the moonlit beam as if something were flying over it followed by a heavy THUD! Sadie's pulse leaped into a hammering. Cold sweat beaded on her brow.

The beams and joists moaned softly. A whistling ocean wind kicked up. Sadie wanted to run, but her curiosity or perhaps something more sinister held her in place.

Sadie eventually mustered the wherewithal to take one step forward, unable to not know what was in those shadows. An other slice of shadow from above the skylight and a THUD.

The noise wasn't coming from the room. It was coming from above. Something was in fact flying into the skylight. As if a battering ram, perpendicular with the sky was trying to smash through.

Sadie inched to the centre of the room.

Slice of shadow. THUD.

She snuck closer still, despite each thud arresting her heart.

The moonbeam in the centre of the room strobed again and again. She crept closer and closer, braving herself against the thuds as best she could. She finally arrived at the centre, careful not to step on the charcoal symbols. She told herself not to look, but as was her way, she did so anyway.

Eyes! In the glass. Hateful. Hungry. Glaring down into her. Sadie shrieked and fell backwards. And as she hit the floor the loudest thud yet sledgehammered from above followed instantaneously with a startling crack. The skylight shattered and rained down shards.

Sadie rolled away evading the glass. She looked up again, but this time only saw the bright organized planets framed in the broken skylight. A cool ocean breeze swirled in.

Sadie pushed her self into a stand, but before she could run she noticed fresh blood on the floor. It wasn't from the gerbil. She checked over her body, sweeping her arms and legs, neck and cheeks to see if she was cut by the falling skylight glass, but she wasn't.

And then she saw it. White feathers at excruciatingly unnatural angles. It was a seagull desperately attempting to jerk its glass sliced wings back into place. The seagull flapped like a fish pulled onto land, painting uneven brush strokes of blood on the floorboards as it did. The poor thing let out a hideous and painful squawk.

Sadie's swallowed her own throat as goosebumps jumped up on her flesh like pin needles.

The seagull, in some rabies like madness, must have been what she saw swooping into the skylight, but why was it trying to kamikaze itself through the glass? She couldn't take her eyes off the torn open seagull, a porcupine of shards, it's spastic movements pushed the triangles of glass deeper into its meat. It was as if the pain was keeping it alive just a little bit longer. Sadie found the bird's little marble eyes. The eyes pleaded with her... don't let me die. Please! Then they froze in hopeless terror and slipped all too slowly into death.