The Eighth Gate

2 | Bloody Grave

“You’re joking, right?”

“No,” Tamara replied, evidently offended. “I’m serious. It looks... good on you.”

“My mom forced me to wear it,” he explained with a grimace. Then his eyes met Mary’s, and this time the look exchanged between the two of them was confused instead of hostile.

“Well,” Mary told him, holding his gaze, “I think it’s hideous.”

The corners of Noah’s lips twitched upwards into an almost-smile; he clutched at his chest dramatically with a feigned gasp. “Oh, how you wound me, Durward.”

“Shut up,” Mary giggled, lightly shoving him as they neared the door with Tamara silently following. The two girls grabbed their coats from a nearby coatrack and shrugged them on; Noah and Mary’s laughs echoed off into the empty house as he opened the door and they stepped outside, into the uninviting cold…

                                                           †††

Mary spent the remainder of her evening holed up in her bedroom. The four-walled square of living space had become a home within a home to her, a sort of caged asylum that she liked to think would protect her from anything that wanted to come in, despite the fact that she knew her optimism was unfounded. The egg blue walls encasing her might’ve been made of solid concrete and plaster, but the paranormal beings didn’t need an open door or window to find their way inside. The only glimmer of hope that could be found in the bleak rubble of Mary’s situation was that this sort of freedom also meant that they could get out just as easily.

That was, if they so desired.

But Mary had a feeling that Noah and his friends liked spending much of their time here with her, almost always choosing to sleepover so that they could torment Mary during her slumber with horrific nightmares and eerie sounds. She couldn’t remember the last time she had gotten a full night’s rest; every time the pills pulled her into the depths of unconsciousness she found herself being violently yanked back out from under, into a real nightmare—one that never ended, from which there was no escape. One that she lived in every day.

Mary’s parents hadn’t gone up to check on her that night after the scene in the dining room, something that suited Mary just fine. Aside from the fear and anxiety, Mary still felt the lingering threads of guilt clinging to her, remnants from the preliminary onslaught of emotion that had racked through her earlier. Soon the guilt encouraged feelings of shame, which stirred from deep within Mary and slowly made its way up her system, reddening her face when she heard a few faint, quiet raps at her door.

She was ashamed for being so weak and useless, for allowing her family to feel the effects of her own personal dealings, for the fact that her parents had to be two clueless civilians caught in the crossfire of a war between man and spirit. A war that Mary was losing terribly, one that she didn’t know how to win.

Mary waited for the footsteps outside her locked door to descend down the hall, the soft thumps marking each footfall growing fainter with distance until their audible travels could no longer be detected.

Only then did Mary slide off from where she sat perched on her window seat, the softness of her fuzzy socks muffling the sounds of the soles of her feet against wood as she padded across her bedroom and wrapped a hand around the chilled doorknob. Slowly, she twisted the lock and turned the knob, carefully pulling the door just a few centimeters back; she cringed when an audible creak sounded from its hinges. It echoed off into the dark corridor, causing Mary to wonder if perhaps her door was trying to warn her parents—or worse, her young Labrador Caspar—of her attempted escape.