"We got it."
Eva's struggling to sound apathetic.
"What do we do now?"
Silence.
Arthur then slams a few pieces of paper and a black cord down in front of them.
"This is the ritual from Shane's jacket."
"Shane's jacket?" Tim side-eyes the butler.
"Why were you snooping through a dead guy's clothes, dude?"
"You did it," mutters Lele.
"That was different! He had just died! We were looking for evidence and shit! Besides, it was Joey who was—"
"Doesn't matter." Matt's voice is sharp enough to cut steel with.
"Ritual. Now."
Right.
Eva reads.
"The ritual symbol must be drawn in ash and sand seven feet from each side of the center point. Three of the artifacts must be placed onto the marked points of the symbol, while the fourth artifact must be placed in the center of the inner triangle." she finishes. Tim smiles. Okay.
So this is it. This is all they have to do. One more pinch of crazy demonic shit, and then we can go home. We can live.
"We're gonna go home," Sierra sings in Lele's ear. "We're gonna go shopping." She giggles. "2016!"
The setup process goes by in a blur. Before I know it, the triangles have been drawn, and the artifacts have been placed on their respective points.
"Looks good." Sierra says.
"Those look like demonic fingerprints," Joey frets, pointing at a few stray fingerprints in the sand.
"Those are mine," says Tim nonchalantly.
"Oh."
I grab the instructions and read the next step aloud.
"One must sit in the center triangle and wrap the black cord around the fourth artifact seven times, while another recites the binding invocation."
"Well, you're all in white," says Tim, indicating Sierra.
"Are we supposed to sacrifice a virgin?" I chuckle a bit.
"No, no, no..." He's joking. She smiles and we can all tell by the twinkle in his eye, by the cocky little grin sneaking its way across his face. She doesn't expect her friends to take his suggestion seriously...but, much to our terrified surprise, they do.
"You haven't done much, honestly..."
"Yeah, Sierra, why don't you help out the group?"
"Yeah! You haven't! You've just been standing there!"
"Why is everyone ganging up on me?" Sierra moans, choking back tears for the hundredth time tonight. Tim, to his credit, tries to save her.
"Uh—guys—c'mon—I was joking—" But it's too late.
"I vote Sierra goes in the center," Joey insists, and the others shout their agreement. Matt turns to her.
"You gonna do it?" His voice is the tonal equivalent of a shrug. Sierra's hands shake. She sighs, adjusts her tiara, and enters the danger zone. Everyone takes their places around the ring. Arthur dims the lights, and a chill tickles the back of my neck. This is it. If all goes well, the evil will be banished, and we'll be released from the hell that was once his home. But if something goes wrong... It won't.
"You guys ready?" Matt whispers.
"Yeah." Tim, for once in his life, has a serious expression on his face.
"Let's do this, man."
Matt, reads the invocation. His voice is oddly soothing, and listening to him smooths the frazzled edges of my otherwise anxious nerves.
"With the thread of the crimes of your own design, I bind your evil seven times."
Demon whispers. Oh god, those are demon whispers. The artifacts are glowing, the room is getting darker, there's freakin' demons whispering to them, and now one of the artifacts just fell over for no reason. Something's wrong.
"I bind you from behind, I bind you from before, that you hurt my people nevermore. I bind you from the left. I bind you from the right."
Another artifact topples over, hitting the ground with a sickening thud. Oli flinches. Eva screams. Sierra barely manages to stifle a scream of her own as she sits in the center.
"I bind you by day, and I bind you by night. I bind you from below. I bind you from above." Matt continues.
The third artifact falls. The whispers grow louder, threatening to drown out Matt's tranquil voice. To make matters worse, thick black clouds descend upon the group, i put my hands over my ears.
"I bind you with your own evil within. So let this magic unfold. Goddess of the darkest night, bind the presence that haunts this home in thy sacred fires of eternity."
The clouds depart. The lights return. YouTubers straighten in their seats, their eyes shimmering with a nervous hope. Sierra trembles. Lele frowns. Tim looks like he's doing yoga or something.
And Matt...well, Matt looks glad it's finally over. It is over.
Right?
Joey breaks the silence.
"Did we do it?" And then, the darkest, most disturbing laughter I've ever heard in my life. It sniggers in spine-tingling tones, its voice low and sinister, sending shockwaves of fear across the group.
"What was that?" Oli exclaims. Eva's voice is a string of anguished gasps.
"That's not—we didn't do it—that sounds like the devil!"
"Guys..." Joey stares at the floor. "I don't think it worked."
At this point, Matt tells me he wants to bang his head against the nearest hard surface, same.
"Did we read the map the right way?" he asks, hoping that our failure is the result of a careless mistake. Maybe one of the artifacts is in the wrong place. Or maybe they used too much sand. Or maybe—
"Yes!" insists Joey. "It's totally fine!"
Oli's staring at the map as if it's an especially hard geometry test.
"We did everything right."
So we did it, we followed the directions. For all intents and purposes, this ritual should've worked. And yet, here we are, still stuck in the 1920s, no closer to safety than we were before.
"Do you know," Matt snaps, his fingers curling into fists,
"how much time has been spent just to find these stupid artifacts?"
At least Tim is still trying to keep a positive spin on things.
"Okay, but what if there's something in here that we're missing? What if there's another clue? What if they just wanna play with us more?"
"Yeah." Joey gets up. "Let's look for it."
Sierra, who's been oddly quiet for the past several minutes, pushes over the artifact in front of her.
"Waste of time!" she shouts, tears in her voice.
"I'm so tired," Lele complains.
"Hey." Lele's whisper is louder than any other whisper in recorded history.
"Sierra. It's fine. We're gonna be fine." But Sierra stares straight ahead, barely acknowledging her friend's existence.
"Are we?"
Dammit. I think we broke her. Before Lele can respond to that, Joey points to a weird black box hidden in the fireplace.
"What's that?"
"That's new," says Eva, who's once again morphed into Miss All-Business-All-The-Time.
"Pull it out."
So we do, and lo and behold, we find our next clue.
"A key," Joey mutters, staring into the box.
"There's a key and a note." Great. More notes. This should be fun.
"I've cast out demonic spirits and seen the devil himself, but nothing could prepare me for what I found here. This is truly the house that evil built. It haunts my every moment, and as the days pass, I see more innocent lives devoured in its terrible mouth.
I am trapped in the basement until I can find release from this evil." I read off.
I'm confused. Someone's been trapped in the basement this entire time? That makes no sense.
"I think we should go to the basement," says Joey.
"Okay." Eva shrugs. "Let's go."