The Eighth Gate

8 | Seaside High

Mary sucked in a sharp breath and pursed her lips in order to stifle a scream; nonetheless a small whimper managed to slip through the cracks, somehow catching Noah’s attention in spite of the urgent series of beeps Tamara’s electronic device kept letting out into the silent night. Mary’s clear blue eyes were cast downwards, practically crossed as they peered over the thick fanning of her lower lashes and the bulge of her slender nose to witness the small, wooden cross steadily suspended in midair. Its beaded chain, the same texture as the cross, was strung out weakly like a flimsy telephone wire, arcing downwards with the cross raised on the other end.  It reminded Mary the way Caspar’s leash looked when he wasn’t pulling at it.

“I’m getting a reading of nine-point-oh on the EMF meter,” Mary heard Tamara state. The thing continued to beep urgently, adding to the tension crackling between the three of them. “There’s definitely something here. This amount of electromagnetic activity is off the charts.”

Mary suddenly became distinctly aware of just how cold she was. Every single hair on her body was erected straight upwards, as if a charged balloon were attracting it with its static electricity. Her bones trembled beneath her freezing skin, stirring the stillness of her blood. She was frozen like a sculpture made of ice; she could hardly feel her legs, her arms, her fingers.

All she could do was stare with bated breath and a furiously thrumming heart as the holy cross slowly but surely continued to make its ascent into the air.

 “Mary,” Noah gasped out, and for a moment he too seemed to be paralyzed by complete and utter shock; his flashlight nearly slipped from his fingers. He recovered much more quickly than Mary did, however, and lunged towards her, reaching out a hand as if to clutch the cross.

Noah’s fingers just grazed its surface before the cross was yanked away from Mary so quickly that it was nothing but a blur of brown. The cross disappeared in a blink, zipping through the air and catapulting straight through the jagged hole in the kitchen’s broken window, into the backyard. Mary only vaguely felt the fleeting pressure on the back of her neck as the necklace was wrenched from its hold, its clasp breaking; she hardly caught the sounds of dozens of wooden beads pattering onto the kitchen floor like bits of hail raining onto a car roof.

The prickling cold had apparently disappeared along with Mary’s cross. With it the tension stretching over the kitchen snapped in half like a rubber band. Mary exhaled a shaky breath and relaxed her stiff body.

“The reading’s going back down,” Tamara squeaked, eyeing the EMF meter. Its monotonous beeping finally ceased. “What the hell just happened?” Her gaze bounced between Mary and the gaping window on the other side of the kitchen.

“I don’t know,” Mary breathed, clutching at the fabric of her clothes. A few beads were caught inside her sweater and bra, and she shook them off with haste, fighting to regain control of her shivering body and quick breathing. “Something… something yanked the cross off my neck and tossed it out the window.”

Tamara sucked in a sharp breath. She immediately reached for her own cross, cocooning it protectively in her hand.

“Why would a ghost do that?” Noah queried, eyes skimming over Mary’s neck in spite of the poor lighting. For some reason he was gripping her arm.

Mary knew the answer to his question; she just didn’t want to have to be the one to say it, because stating it out loud would make it true, would make what was happening real.

Luckily, one of Tamara’s strong suits was her bluntness.

“Because I don’t think we’re dealing with a restless spirit,” she explained soberly. “We’re dealing with the very reason we carry around the holy water, and wear the cross, and memorize verses from the Bible. Something more sinister, strong enough to give me those insane readings.”