CHAPTER THREE
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FEAR
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‘‘Storm has materialized after the calm.’
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Perhaps "scared" was an understatement; Allen was well beyond petrified at the looming events. He nervously chewed on his soft lower lip, extending his left arm with outstretched fingers. This offered Adalyn an opportunity to smoothly graze the silver knife across his porcelain palm, causing his tender skin to part, and blood to cascade onto an old page adorned with messy French words.
An inexplicable foreboding gnawed at him, his sixth sense screaming that something was profoundly amiss. The knife continued its macabre work, biting into his skin, causing him to bite down on his lower lip with such intensity that it drew forth a slight taste of blood.
Nobody had instructed him on the chants, and no one had demanded them; they had merely placed him in the middle, flanked by three candles, near the paper receiving his blood. He sat, squeezing his palm into the air to hasten the process. Though the pain and the lightheadedness gnawed at him, he endured in silence as the other teens chanted incomprehensible words.
As Allen contemplated closing his eyes, yearning to escape the frantic thudding of his heart, a sudden, harsh gust of wind extinguished the candles, leaving them in eerie darkness. It was a bone-chilling moment, a feeling that something had gone awry, rendering their ritual unnecessary. The teens, having ceased their chanting, opened their eyes, scanning for an uninvited presence among them, only to find none.
"What the hell! I was hoping for a demon to help with house chores and to boss around at the party tomorrow. I guess it didn't work!" Adalyn growled in frustration, while others merely shrugged, too fatigued to dissect what had gone wrong.
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"Hey, guys, it's getting late. I promised my mom I'd be home before midnight, and there were only seven minutes left. It's a thirty-minute drive, so I'll see you all tomorrow. Goodbye," Matt declared as he gathered his belongings and departed the graveyard. The others bid him a weary farewell.
Allen sighed in frustration, recognizing he couldn't leave until the other four chose to depart. "Let's head home for now, and tomorrow, if we have time, we can try to figure out where we went wrong during the ritual," Drake suggested. Anna nodded, stifling a yawn as she stretched her arms. Jake and Adalyn concurred.
"Hey, guys, aren't we going to treat Allen's wound? Look, it's still bleeding," Anna whispered, her fatigue apparent in her forest-green eyes. Their collective gaze fell upon Allen, who was rolling down the sleeve of his black hoodie to conceal his wound, paying them no heed.
In his heart, Allen knew that as much as they might want to help him out of pity, they wouldn't. These teens were prideful and possessed of substantial egos but small minds. With the clock nearly striking midnight and his obligation to meet Emery the following morning to decorate the school hall for the Halloween party at 6:30 p.m., he couldn't afford to waste any more time with them.
"No, let him suffer. He might have done something to disrupt our ritual, so I suggest we leave him be. Besides, he can handle it himself," Adalyn grumbled, her silver eyes narrowed.
Allen knew it was time to depart. He walked back to his house, just fifteen minutes away. He climbed the stairs and entered his room. After tossing his mobile onto the bed, he headed to the bathroom in search of a first aid kit. In the bathroom, he turned on the light, glimpsing his reflection in the rectangular mirror. He adjusted the tap to release warm water into the white sink.
As Allen reached beneath the flowing warm water to cleanse his bleeding hand, he winced in pain. He eventually extracted a first aid kit from the dark grey cabinet mounted beside the mirror. Though his palm still bled, he set the kit on the grey and white countertop.
Having looked at himself in the mirror, Allen stepped back and halted abruptly in his tracks. Staring at his own reflection, he could scarcely believe what he saw. His heart pounded with such ferocity that he believed it might be the last time it would ever beat.
In the mirror stood a sinister, bloodied, and pale woman, clad in all black with flowing raspberry-crimson hair. An eerie, infernal smile stretched across her lips. This horrific sight was the breaking point for Allen, and his scream was loud enough to rupture his own eardrums.
Suddenly, the woman materialized in front of him, her long, pale fingers, adorned with jet-black claws, silencing his cries. His wide ocean-blue eyes locked onto her fiery scarlet gaze, and his spine stiffened with fear. The chilling smirk haunted his stressed mind, and he was gripped by an inexplicable sense of dread.
At that moment, Allen couldn't have known that the calm had given way to an impending storm.
If only he could have envisioned.
Storm had materialized after the calm.