Into the Light

Chapter 10

CHAPTER 10

NOTICE: This story is written for mature audiences. The upcoming chapter contains potentially upsetting content. Reader discretion is highly advised.

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   So much planning has gone into this moment, Jade thought as she stood over Marie's naked body. Her chocolate hair hid most of her face. His skin was milky and smooth. Thick lashes guarded her closed brown eyes. This is it.

   Distantly, Jade recalled the night she stumbled upon the power of the otherside.

   It had happened in a hidden room in the upstairs level of Jade's home, discovered by chance while her parents had been out of town. Jade had been carrying a large box of old toys marked for donation when she tripped on the rug runner and felt against a wall.

   Instead of drywall, Jade collided into brittle wooden planks covered by wallpaper. It all came apart under her weight. The painting of a ship, the one her dad loved and her mother always thought was ugly-- 'The water is far too green, Harold'-- fell from the wall, cracking the frame.

   Jade pulled herself from the wall. Her lip was bleeding. She tilted her head, squinting through the sizable hole she had made. There was a hallway. It veered right and she could see no farther.

    Jade hesitated. Why board this up?

   Old lanterns hung on the walls unlit. Jade pulled back. A terrible cold washing over her. She scooped up the toy box and hurried downstairs to the kitchen to get (a flashlight) her car keys.

    She started for the (hole in the upstairs wall) front door.

   Jade clicked on her flashlight as she found herself running up the stairs.

   When she reached the hole in the wall, Jade did not hesitate. She climbed through, shining the flashlight down the dusty, forgotten corridor. Following it to the right, and right again and again and again. Too many rights. An impossible amount of right turns.

    And then she came to a little door. It stood there somberly dressed in odd markings. Open me, it seemed to say.

    Jade's heart was pounding. She did not want to open the door. She wanted to turn tail and run. She wanted to board up the hole in the wall. Wallpaper over it. She wanted to forget this place forever.

   But Jade's hand seemed to have other ideas, and she watched herself slowly push open the door.

   There was an old book left open on the floor, pressed with spells. It was as if the book had been waiting for her. It called to her. It told her to dig in the cupboard until she found an old piece of oak--a board carved with alphabet letters. A Ouija board that worked when she used it by herself.

   The planchette moved beneath her fingers, telling her what to do. Promising her heart's desires. 'USE ME,' it said. 'I WILL MAKE YOU HEAD CHEERLEADER.'

   Jade had just made the junior varsity team this year. It had taken her four tries, but her senior year, she was finally in.