I panted loudly as I scrambled after Thomas. My short legs and frail form did me no favors keeping up with the jock. Once he crashed through the fire exit door of the concrete building foundation, he ultimately stayed only a few steps ahead of me through the abandoned industrial complex, it's twisting debris the only thing keeping him from taking off ahead of me in a full sprint.

None of this was real. It couldn't be. There were projectors or costumes or, I don't know, holograms or some other bullshit tech I didn't know about, because I refused to believe my grandma's weird stories were anything but superstition. These two assholes were surely playing some kind of elaborate prank on me, because I refused to believe that I'd just summoned some kind of malevolent spirit from another dimension. This was absurd.

My name is Coraline Eld. A week before this all happened, I'd put out a call to the university study group for aid. My grandmother had passed away last month, and while I appreciated that she'd left me her house, it was a dusty old cluttered mess that was impossible to live in as is.

I'm far from a fit person, stunted in growth and naturally anemic since the day I was born, so it made sense to me to call on some of my more physically fit peers for help cleaning out my new home, offering cheap takeout and the temptation of exploring a large creepy haunted house in the middle of Brightcrest as compensation for casual labor.

I never really believed in such things. My grandmother's stories of ghosts and goblins, of magic and secrets had grown old to me by the time I was a teenager. She was a nice enough old lady, but she was delusionally stuck in the traditions of eastern European occultism, and while there was admittedly a touch of academic intrigue in learning about occult traditions, I never thought it was healthy that everyone fed into her weird beliefs just because she wasn't hurting anyone.

I didn't expect many to answer my summons, so I was glad when I found two messages responding to my request. The first was a girl I knew a little from my general credit classes, a slightly older woman named Scarlet who seemed nice enough. The charismatic sort, pursing a degree in social work after taking a gap year out of high school. I trusted her well enough on her field of study alone. I imagined most of the people in that area of study were optimistic types with too much of a nice streak in them for their own good.

It was the man I was worried about. Thomas was on a waning sports scholarship, here for a liberal arts degree. The sad sort trying to cling to his glory days at the top of a high school lacrosse team. Aimless. That alone wouldn't have made me too suspect if I hadn't also learned that he'd accepted my request in order to fulfill a community service obligation. He'd refused to elaborate. But this was a big house, and I needed the help I could get, so I begrudgingly accepted.

Three days ago, he'd stumbled across a large box loaded with occult paraphernalia in the attic. We'd been cleaning from the bottom up and I hadn't even instructed him to open the attic yet, so he was already testing my patience.

"Sorry, I got curious." He insisted with a shrug. His lighthearted callousness toward my property had already annoyed me enough by then, but I didn't dare speak up too harshly. I wasn't afraid of him, but I was afraid of losing the only real muscle I had on hand for this project. Thomas stood at least a full foot of height over me, a head of short but messy light brown hair adorning his admittedly handsome features. He had the kind of build that was made for rough contact sports, broad-shouldered and athletic. He liked to show it off, too, preferring simple tight-fitting shirts that put his tone body on display. I was immune to such masculine physical charms, though.

He rifled through the box at the table in what I had planned to be my office and fished out a book. "Look at this thing." He flipped open the fragile tome and fanned over the pages once before I snapped it away from him, taking care to push his hands off so he didn't tear anything.

"Books are valuable." I scolded, "Treat the old ones with care; they're fragile."

He let out an amused chuckle, like he did every time I snapped at him. That was starting to get on my nerves. "Easy, it doesn't look that old."

"It's ancient." I mumbled, rolling my eyes at the diagrams on some pages as I carefully paged through it. Magic circles and ritual arrangements. Mostly depictions of grim, barbaric acts. Sacrifices and bloodletting. If this was a book about the occult, it was a subject of dark magic. "But in remarkably good condition. Grandma knew how to care for some of her things, I suppose."

Thomas peeked over my shoulder at the tome and frowned. "What language is that?"

"Slavic." I answered proudly. I was a student of literature, and while I had not yet mastered many languages, I dabbled enough in a good deal of them to recognize their signature features and maybe even make translations if I had the time to piece things together. "I'd have to sit down and do some work to determine which branch. Some other time."

"Looks like a magic spellbook." He chuckled, pulling a few fragile-looking crystal apparatuses from the box more carefully.

"You've said that a few times now." I huffed, setting the tome carefully onto a small pile of books on my desk I'd told myself I'd take the time to study once I was alone. My grandmother's belongings had a lot of things like this. Journals depicting magic, encyclopedias of supernatural creatures and reagents, and ancient holy books written by madmen were the staples of her collection. If nothing else, her obsession would make for an amusing subject of study if I needed a distraction sometime.

A few minutes passed and I saw him flipping open the book again, mercifully more careful after my first interruption. I guess I couldn't completely blame him for getting distracted, even if it certainly wasn't for the physical reasons I needed frequent breaks. "Hey look, a magic circle," he called out. His lighthearted amusement was almost infectious, but I wasn't a fan of the material.

"Don't tell me you're into the occult too." I sighed loudly, lifting a small stack of modern spiral-bound notebooks from the box. Most of them were empty, so I set them aside to use myself later.

"Not really, but isn't it a cool idea? That you could make awesome supernatural stuff just happen by waving your hand and saying a magic word?" He smiled down at me, and I couldn't help but wonder how I'd been intimidated at all by such an airhead the first few days of working together. He was way too sociable to be some kind of misfit criminal type. "We should try this stuff, see if anything happens."

"No." I snapped again, pushing the book cover closed a little harder than I meant to, but thankfully leaving it undamaged. Thomas backed up, a surprised defensive look in his posture. I sighed loudly, regretting being harsh toward the giant puppy dog of a man. "I had enough of this shit growing up. We don't live in a fantasy world of elves and dwarves. At most, it's a pretty academically useful look at ancient anthropology."

He paused to listen for just a moment before he smiled again. "Well, let's say, academically, we draw a magic circle. Scientific theory, right? You have to try things to see what happens, huh? And a lot of the times, nothing does happen, so it's fine, right?"

I started to protest before Scarlet peeked through the doorway. She was also a bit taller than I was, but given my stature, almost everyone was. Long windswept copper-red hair framed her sharp facial features beautifully, and she wore a dark blue sweater with the sleeves rolled up, dressed cautiously for turbulent mid-autumn weather. "We're doing magic in here?" She teased.

"No." I repeated, a little irritated that she was playing into this. Scarlet ended up being a little more mischievous than I expected her to be. She had a mysterious air about her that made me feel like she was hiding something, but I could never quite put my finger on it. She was the kind soul I expected her to be for certain, but there was something more to it. So I didn't take any chances. "If you two start drawing magic runes on my floorboards, we're done here."

"I'm just joking." She gave that disarming smile I couldn't help but return. "I know how you feel about this stuff. And we're here to clean this place up, not draw on the walls."

"Well I wasn't joking." Thomas chimed. I frowned at him, unamused by his insistence. He continued, "What about the old industrial park? Outside town."

That admittedly disarmed me, mostly because I didn't follow his logic. "What about it?" I raised an eyebrow, unsure where he was going with this.

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"We could hold a seance or perform a ritual or whatever there. It's private and no one's going to care if someone draws on the walls and stuff." He somehow suggested with a straight face. I didn't know how he could say such ridiculous things without bursting into laughter.

"Why in the world would I want to do that?" I asked incredulously, pushing the box aside for a moment because this conversation didn't seem to want to end any time soon. "Why would I ever go into an abandoned district with you? Especially to do my grandma's weird old country magic nonsense?"

"I dunno. It could be fun." I had to do a double take as Scarlet opened her mouth. She saw me give her a confused look and she gave a shrug, like she was uncertain of what she meant herself. "Can't spend all of your time studying. May as well go out with friends and do something stupid now and then."

I gawked at her for a moment, wondering if she'd suddenly gone mad. But her words gave me pause. Friends, huh? I hadn't exactly been a social butterfly growing up. I was downright inept at meeting new people or making a good impression on people. Maybe that's what made me change my mind. That or just how beautiful Scarlet was to me. Damn hormones.

I'd spent a few evenings after they'd finished helping me to piece together the ritual, telling myself that it was just an interesting study on language and culture before I knew how the ritual worked. It was a rush job, so I'd focused more on how it worked than on what it did. That part hardly mattered because I didn't expect it to do anything. I was especially wary when it called for 'a drop of witch's blood' at the climax of the performance. Grandmother had always told me my family had witch blood, but I didn't exactly have much blood to spare. A pinprick of thin blood to make some friends, though. Maybe I was more lonely than I thought.

None of that mattered now. Not when that thing burst from the circle and grabbed Thomas's ankle. When that hole in the universe tore itself into the concrete beneath the diagram. When it took shape and unleashed a horrible cry that shook the heavens. After a few more moments of panicked running, trying to rationalize what had just happened, my skepticism was on life support. This was actually happening, wasn't it?

"You asshole! This better not be some kind of prank!" I shouted ahead of me, holding onto one last iota of hope that he would confess to arranging this whole horrible thing.

Thomas panted too, though. He wasn't tired like me. He was scared out of his mind. "How the fuck would I fake that!?" He glanced back, sidestepping behind a wall. I followed suit and saw that there was nothing behind us. "I-Is it gone?" He asked, a slight tremor in his voice that told me he was being genuine.

This was real.

I groaned, leaning over with hands on my knees and heaving. My doctor would have a fit if he knew I'd just sprinted that much at once. But he'd also have a fit if he knew I spared a even a tiny pinprick of blood from my fingertip, so I set that thought aside. I was dizzy and felt like throwing up. If it had been following us, I'd be fucked because I was spent. "What if it's after Scarlet?" I managed to ask between gasps.

"We should call the cops." Thomas glanced back behind his new position, making sure he wasn't being flanked.

I scoffed, my legs finally giving out. I leaned back against the wall and slid down against it, a mistake against bare concrete, but that's what shirts are for. "And say what? 'Hey, we accidentally summoned some kind of shadow demon from hell. Can you come shoot bullets at it?' Cops are useless, anyway." I bit my lip, though. I didn't exactly have any bright ideas myself.

"Come on Cora, my sister's a police officer." He whined, shaking his head. I didn't have time to argue with him over his overly familiar nickname for me. He swiveling his head back and forth as he searched for the creature in the distance. "That thing grabbed me. It... felt wrong. We gotta do something."

"You're welcome to be a big fucking hero, tough guy!" I jabbed, trying to remain quiet and failing. Just raising my voice was enough to send me back into a fit of panting that undermined my authority, though.

"Well, you're the one with the spellbook!" He countered. Okay, fair point, actually. Magic is real. I'm a witch. I just made a portal to another dimension and pulled through some kind of shadow monster. But that's literally the only spell I knew. And I didn't even really know it, I just knew how it was performed, not what it did or any other implications of utilizing it. I never translated anything else in the book. I didn't think I'd need to.

"I-I don't know what to do! You two were in such a rush to perform this stupid ritual! I never read any more of the book!" I shot back. "I-I don't know shit about this! I thought this was just gonna be some stupid teenage bonding experience, not a plunge into the depths of actual working occultism!"

Another unearthly cry came screeching from the other side of the grounds, banishing any fleeting hope that maybe the monster would be vaporized by the sun or something. If it was that far away, that must have meant it pursued Scarlet...

"Come on, man. Your grandma never said anything useful?" He whined, stepping out from around the wall and trying to see if he could spot anything across the abandoned piles of building materials, gravel, and discarded tools. "You're always going on about how she wouldn't shut up about witchcraft and stuff, you have to have picked up something!"

"Just... give me a minute." I closed my eyes. He was right again. Grandma never shut up about her superstitions. Or maybe less superstitions and more occult fact, I begrudgingly admitted to myself. If this was real, after all, then what else she rattled on about was practical? But it was hard to concentrate while my thin blood was currently circulating as fast as it could, trying to keep me from losing consciousness. It might have been failing at that. My point is, wracking my brain for useful bits of lore from the library of facts I'd filed away under useless cultural shit wasn't something I could do very easily. "I can't sprint like that." I declared, hanging my head. "Too much. I-I can't think clearly."

"Right, your condition." He clicked his tongue. "Well we can't just leave Scarlet alone with that thing!"

"I'm thinking." I lied. I wasn't thinking clearly at all. But I needed him to shut up so I could pull myself together.

"If we have to run again, I'll carry you." He glanced down at me. He was scared. Very scared. But that was quite an offer. Tempting despite the fact that I'd rather be princess carried by Scarlet if I had the choice. I just nodded to him. Preference be damned, I'd rather be carried around by a man than eaten by some kind of demon.

It was precious minutes until the dizziness passed. I had no idea what was happening to Scarlet in that time, but I managed to get my head together. My aching legs still wouldn't let me stand, but I could think.

"What do we have on hand?" I finally asked, letting out one long exhale as I finally caught my second wind. "Anything. Give me an inventory. Maybe something's useful."

"An... inventory?" He asked, judging my use of the word.

I rolled my eyes "Yes, like in a video game. Just list off what's in your pack." I demanded as I slung my own bag from my shoulders and pulled it around into my lap. The book was packed tightly with some clothes to prevent it from getting jostled around and damaged. I couldn't carry much more than that with me. Just a small water flask, which I gladly consumed in full the moment I found it. Then I unwrapped the book. I definitely couldn't translate anything without any sources, but maybe the diagrams could give me something to work with.

He let out a huff that told me he didn't think he had anything useful. "I got some track clothes, my art history workbook, an old granola bar-"

"Gimme." I reached up, breathless from my desperate swig from my water bottle, and my hand was quickly filled with foil-wrapped nutritional energy, which I promptly devoured while Thomas continued.

"Some condiment packets I swiped from the canteen. You know, why buy stuff when the school can provide." He almost let out an awkward chuckle, but sighed instead.

"Hold on." I drew in a deep breath and took another bite from the granola bar. "Do condiments include salt?" He nodded slowly. "She used to say salt was a purifying agent. Protective against evil stuff. How much do you have?"

"A couple handfuls of those little paper packets?" He shrugged, beginning to pick them out of the bottom of his bag "Is that really going to work?"

I threw my arms to the side in a dramatic shrug. "I dunno!" while I finished off the granola. I let out a sigh and forced myself up onto my feet. At least I wasn’t immobilized anymore, even if I definitely couldn't sprint again. I stared down into the pages of the tome that was suddenly so much more precious than anything I'd ever owned before, and flipped through page after page, searching for something that looked like the monster or a step by step visual guide to spell-casting, but there wasn't anything relevant no matter how many pages I tried. "Ugh, this is so stupid. This whole thing is ridiculous. I'm running from monsters, for God's sake! I'm filing through a magic tome hoping it's a children's picture book on how to summon demons! What am I even doing!?" I leaned against the wall again, my resolve beginning to wane. "What am I doing? I'm not some magical action hero. I'm a frail little thing trying to figure out how best to season a hole in reality."

"Well we have to do something." Thomas sounded like he'd run out of patience with my whinging. I felt an odd pang of guilt that I wasn't holding it together better than he was. "You rest if you need to, I'm going to go help Scarlet. Maybe I'll punch this thing in the face with salt packets, I don't know."

"Yeah. Do that. I won't be able to keep up." I sighed. I felt useless. Again. I'd spent my whole life forcing people to slow down for my sake. With lives on the line, though, I was just going to have to deal. I nodded to him and watched as Thomas took off at full sprint back into the center of the industrial park like some kind of hero.

Maybe it was better off this way. I didn't offer much to friends in the best circumstances. Sure, I had a sharp mind, but I was always left behind, eventually. Everyone else always moved on while I struggled. And I'd done fine in life so far. Maybe I wasn't ever dealing with some kind of shadow beast that probably wanted to rip us to pieces before, but I never needed to rely on friends before. Thomas could handle this, and I was far away from that last screech, so I was safe already. I would just turn and walk out of the industrial park now. Maybe, if I was lucky, I'd see Thomas and Scarlet in class again sometime, confirm they were okay, and never speak again. Maybe this thing would just turn into some kind of local cryptid and no one would actually get hurt. Maybe I could convince myself that this was all just a dream.

But my eyes went wide when I was suddenly overcome with an incomprehensible sense or wrongness. There was something behind me. I snapped my attention back around and saw unnatural oily black emptiness staring back at me.