I spied on him from my locker. He looks as if he doesn’t want to be here, like the whole affair of school is trivial to him and he has better things to do. He’s very unaware of his other classmates. He just does his own thing and goes home to a life unrelated to mine or anyone’s.

Adram.

What a strange name. An old family name perhaps?

He wears the school uniform very well. The white vest over the black dress shirt gives him that extra swarthiness that fits his mysterious persona. The dress pants do a good job keeping his form slim while not suggesting an overly thin frame. He’s not in any sports team or club so he is probably not athletic. His face is blank most of the time. There’s no reading his expressions or his thoughts. They are elsewhere, except for when he interacts with people. Then it becomes full of humor and snideness.

I can’t tell if he thinks he’s better than everyone else or that he always knows something nobody else does. I would bank on the latter.

He has decent hair, medium length with some strands touching his eyes and brows. It’s dark and a little unkempt but it works for him considering he abhors socializing by all accounts.

I’ve never seen anyone with such colorless eyes. They are more gray than green or blue and his eyelashes are black. His whole countenance is enigmatic with perhaps a touch of loneliness. I never knew he went to this school but apparently this is his third year.

“Are you done stalking?” came a voice from behind.

I shut my locker to reveal my friend Lou. I glanced back to see Adram had moved along to his next class.

“There is little else to do.” I reminded her.

“So today you will introduce yourself?” Lou guessed.

“What makes you say that?” I asked.

Lou leaned in and whispered. “Your skirt is half an inch higher than normal.”

I turned red. “You can tell?” but recovered. “I think when you called me a stalker you had me confused with yourself.”

Lou rolled her eyes. “Sometimes Jienne, you need an easier way of wording things.” She was taller than me by a hand, light brown hair that flowed along her lithe form. Lou came from a poor background, only in the last couple years did her family find its wealth which they invested into this private school for their only daughter. Lou was free-spirited and noticed everything, her wide eyes sharp and brown and eyebrows arched in a very active state of mind.

I started walking to class with Lou. We shared most of a schedule and literature was our current destination.

“Do you have any classes with him?” Lou asked, smiling. It meant she had many follow up questions.

“Nope.” I said. “I didn’t even know he existed until last week when I overheard Maria, Anthony and Chester freaking out about their summer adventure.”

“The infamous Ouija board.” Lou announced. “You know Adram’s into demonology and cults?” Lou gave me a knowing look because she knew what my answer would be already.

“That’s why he intrigues me.”

Lou nodded, confirming her own suspicion. I continued. “I’ve been everywhere and I’m bored of it. The pyramids of Egypt, the Wall of China, the ruins of Mexico. I’ve seen Moscow and the caves of Iceland, all the major European cities, more islands than I can count-”

“Yes yes, do get to the point.” Lou cut me off.

“The point is, I’m yearning for something else. Something unfamiliar and dangerous.”

Lou probably saw the madness in my eyes.

“Maria swears she’s haunted now.” Lou pointed out. “She said she’s done the Ouija board a dozen times before and nothing real ever happened.”

“What else do you know?”

“I know everything,” Lou said sly and sultry.

We were settling in our desks now, about a minute to go before class starts.

Lou turned in her seat to me, keeping her voice low. “Apparently, Adram heard Maria and Anthony talking about doing the Ouija board in summer prep. He laughed at them and said it was child’s play, Maria got feisty and dared him to join. I think Maria thought Adram believed it was fake. Boy was she wrong.”

I smiled. Adram sounds like such an ass.

Lou stopped herself from speaking as the teacher rolled into class and began the day’s lesson.

Junior year only began a week ago so classes were still easy and getting into the swing of things.

Lou scribbled messages to me.

Maria says she has nightmares now. Anthony can hardly look into mirrors anymore and Chester says his dog died.

I decided the dog dying was a coincidence.

Another note came a few minutes later.

The dog's guts spilled into the street with no apparent injury.

I smiled despite myself.

Maybe Adram was the real deal.

You are insane. So what’s your move?

I scribbled back to Lou. Lunch. I’ll say hi and ask him about Maria and the others.

Lou nodded after reading the message.

They had an assignment to focus on after that and couldn’t exchange messages but class ended shortly after and lunch break began.

Lou and I walked toward the cafeteria. I glanced around but did not see him anywhere. Probably still on his way. He wasn’t the type to get anywhere first.

“He’s handsome.” Lou said out of nowhere. “The idea of him is growing on me. I’m sure all the other boys here are more of the same to you. Rich, good family, proper manners, completely self involved and entitled.”

I nodded. Couldn’t argue with that. The guys in my class would approach me and say the same boring things. They would either act overly interested in my travels or try to show me how much cooler and worldly they were than me. Despite their education, most of the boys at school didn’t have much going on upstairs when it came to talking to girls.

I suspect that’s true for most men at all ages, to be fair.

“You can be with a future lawyer or the demon hunter!” Lou said the last phrase with sarcasm and exaggeration.

I shook my head and grinned. “I’ll find out what he is.” I assured Lou and myself. “Speaking of which, I wonder where he is?” I looked around.

“Are you sure he has this lunch?” Lou asked.

“I thought you knew everything,” I countered.

“You’re right. I would try the library.” Lou wagged her finger.

“You just made that up.” I blurted out.

“Definitely the library.” Lou actually believed herself. Of course she did.

I tapped the table. “Fine, I’ll check it out.”

“Good luck.” Lou said with a mischievous smile.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

I made my way to the far end of the school where the library was. I grabbed a magazine sitting on an empty table and spotted Adram reading a book in the corner of the library. Lou was right and he was alone.

I walked over to him and sat across on an open chair and opened my magazine. Adram raised his eyes for a moment before returning to his book. The book didn’t have a title or description on it. Just a plain reddish cover.

“I hadn’t realized Dior came out with a gunpowder cologne. Must be a guy thing to smell like that.”

“What?” Adram said, either not hearing or not understanding what I said.

“You smell like sulfur.”

“Yes.”

“Do you always smell like sulfur?”

“I try to.”

“How odd.” I remarked before returning to my magazine.

He made no effort to break the silence at first. Another minute of reading before he put his book down. “I can’t focus.”

“Oh, why is that?” I asked.

“It’s hard for me to read when you are pretending to read right in front of me,” he said.

“It wouldn’t be hard for you to read if you weren’t busy pretending to read instead of watching me pretend to read.” I replied.

“You have a way with words.” Adram observed.

“So I keep hearing.” I put my magazine down.

Adram sighed and slid his book in his bag, surrendering all notion of continuing his book right now.

“I’m Adram.”

“I know.”

Adram looked only at my eyes. Few boys ever held my gaze. Most were either intimidated or embarrassed to look into mine. Even adults and other girls rarely could. I realize it's more of a social thing. People despise that intensity. My father taught me to never have a weak gaze. Apparently so did Adram’s.

I knew what he was seeing, even if he was focused on my narrow eyes. I had a more round face, long eyebrows that tilted up at the edges just slightly which made me seem very active, yet my guarded eyes closed off my desires. I used mascara to further the shadows and contour my eyes to flow in the same direction as my brows, giving others a false impression of my personality. My nose was straight and smooth, my lips were wide and bow-shaped, more naturally ready to frown than to smile.

I switched between several hair styles, sometimes I did it big, sometimes I had it in a long bob with bangs but today it was in a Dutch braid, making my face fully exposed as the two sections of hair tied together in a bun rested on the top of my neck. The collar of my black dress shirt was buttoned all the way, accentuating my neck further. Two silver studs pierced my ears on each side.

My posture was perfect and I had one leg over the other. My hands rested in my lap now that the magazine was down.

Adram sat more casually and looking into his eyes told me nothing, other than they possessed a particular depth to them.

“That’s usually when you say your name,” he said.

“I’m Jienne.”

“A pleasure,” he forced a smile.

I returned the forced smile. “So tell me, Adram. Why do you try to smell like sulfur?” I had humor in my eyes because I was sure whatever the answer was, he would know I would think it was ridiculous.

“Protection. Sulfur keeps me safe.” He was serious and spoke like it was common knowledge.

I played along. “Protection for what?”

“Not for, from.

“Okay, from what?”

Adram shifted in his seat but did not break eye contact. “Insanity and corruption. There are a lot of forbidden artifacts in my room that could easily lead to some bad things getting in if I’m not careful.”

“What kind of ‘bad things’?” I pressed.

“Forces outside the comprehension of mankind, mainly.” he produced a half smile.

I held back a smile of my own. “But sulfur can stop them?”

“Oh no. The sulfur just stops the agents from finding me, it burns the low level ones you see.”

“Ah, do your parents know about this?” I asked.

“They taught me the basics.”

“Doesn’t sound very basic.” I responded.

“They taught me the basics, I learned the rest myself.”

“Like the Ouija board?” I finally asked.

“I suppose everyone in this school has heard about that at this point. I told them it was child’s play. Turns out they can’t handle child’s play.”

“You know I wonder if they interpreted that to mean you thought it was fake and for children.”

This gave Adram some pause as he considered it. “Yeah… you might be right. Oh well.” he shrugged. In his mind he gave them full warning.

“So the Ouija board is just a toy to you. Not because it doesn’t work, but because it only gets you to contact regular spirits?”

“Oh no we met a demon all right. The board is a tool, it can do some things but there are better ones out there.”

“You met a demon?” I was skeptical but the way he spoke revealed he truly believed what he was saying.

“You asked me about the Ouija board but you don’t know the story?”

“I’ve only heard a couple details.” I admitted. No one mentioned a demon to me.

“The three kids that wanted to do the board with me,”

“You don’t remember their names do you?” I interrupted.

“Can’t say that I do. Anyway, they set the board up and I told them some things we could do to enhance the experience. I didn’t want to waste my time talking to some half-asleep ghost and figured if they were participating they wanted something exciting. I made some markings on the bottom of the board and we gathered three mirrors to bounce the reflection of a candle we placed on the planchette.”

I raised a brow.

He waved the unspoken question down, “It helps. We set it up, I said some words and we began to harvest our energy into the spirit portal. One of the dudes there was the first to scream, I told him to avoid looking into the mirror because the reflections bounce off into infinity and there is a lot between here and infinity that might be peaking between each iteration of the mirrors.”

I nodded, trying to keep up. Adram was into the story now, his elbows were on the table as he leaned forward and his hands were doing half the talking.

“Turns out he attracted a geist. Now geists are nasty creatures. They like to infect an animal and mutate it before going on killing sprees. I told the other dude with the dog to keep it muzzled. The barking was just like an invitation for the geist to come out and take over. He didn’t listen and instead was frozen in panic. Never freeze up.” Adram suddenly advised.

“And?” I was at the edge of my seat.

“The geist reached out of the mirror and touched the chick that was there. By then I was trying to close the portal. You start by putting the mirrors face down on the floor so they are no longer connected. You need to do this before anything gets out or else it's stuck here. Now with everyone freaking out, I had to do the mirrors myself which took a second too long. The geist escaped and first blew out all our candles. Now a geist isn’t a big deal without an animal to possess, but our dude here had one of those dogs trained to open doors and the poor creature was just trying to defend its owner. No blame on the dog.”

“Ah.” I replied. I felt I should make some acknowledgement of what he was saying.

“Geist gets into the dog. I close the portal before anything else comes out. Unfortunately with the dog possessed, an exorcism was standard procedure. This would require the three of them holding the dog down for the duration of my spell. I had to draw a delicate figure on a scroll and burn it up while repeating the Marduk Cipher. Everything was going good until the chick got a night vision, like a daymare.”

“Because the geist touched her?”

Adram nodded, impressed. “Exactly. She lost her hold on the dog and it managed to chew up the scroll before I could finish. Now the geist was mostly weakened. It’d never be able to mutate but the dog would be prone to bouts of aggression because the geist was still living inside it, it just lost full control.”

“But Chester’s dog still died.”

“Chester, that’s right. I told him how to take care of it in the event that the dog starts to act up. He would need to feed it vinegar and then baking soda thirty minutes after.”

“You blew his dog up!” I exclaimed.

“Shh. The geist was already clawing its way through the dog. That reaction would kill the dog and the geist. But the dog was going to die regardless.”

“Well what about Maria and Anthony, they are still experiencing hauntings,” I informed him.

“Yes, they refuse to talk to me but their problems will go away in a bit.”

“You’re going to make them explode too?”

Adram smirked at my joke.

“Do the Ouija board with me.” I demanded.

“No, I think not.” he rejected.

I frowned.

“We can do something better. The Ouija board is child’s play, I’m not a fan of it.”

“What will we do?”

“Wednesday, after school we’ll meet up.”

I stood. “I look forward to it.”

“You shouldn’t.” Adram grinned but when he saw my eyes only glint at the thought of adventure he realized I was craving that kind of thrill.

“See you around, Jienne.”

“Later.” I left first just in time for the end of lunch break. I had mathematics next and settled in my desk thinking over our conversation. It was unbelievable, his story. Yet three others corroborated, more or less, the events of that summer night.

Adram, what a strange name.

I’ve been around the world. I’ve met millionaires and seen the greatest works of art and architecture, dined in the fanciest restaurants and been treated to the closest thing to paradise money can buy. On the flipside I’ve passed through the poorest places, seen starvation and poverty, visited old battlefields and the aftermath of bombings. This world has little I haven’t already seen. But Adram, he’s got a world entirely separate from mine or anyone’s I’ve ever met. A world of hauntings and impossible things. If it turns out to be fake I’ll have wasted an afternoon, but if it’s real, maybe this school year won’t be so boring after all.

Instead of working on my math problems, I spent the period calculating the circumference of when the clock would reach the end of the hour.