The Night Crawler

The Warlock Ritual

The air inside the Grimwood Family Crypt swelled with ritual magic. It seemed to have run its invisible fingers through the air, binding the tiny magical particles, and shaping them into constellations of stars. As a result, the air twinkled, like an open field with fireflies sporadically moving above it.

With unease lodged in their throats, Derek and Nick watched the warlocks gather around Rebecca's coffin. Their silver masks were riddled with shadows, while clouds of magic coiled in the atmosphere like yarn strings. The warlocks' armor brightened as they ushered magic from the full moon and into their bodies, making them glow.

"O veni dominus tonitrui," the warlocks' voices merged into one continuous wave.

At the sound of their chanting, the mausoleum windows began to violently shake making the entire crypt rattle, just like Derek's and Nick's hearts.

Nick thought about all the times Rebecca had saved him from falling. Not only from the old Harpers Ferry bridge, but also when he thought of giving up, but she kept him afloat. She was his safety buoy in a middle of a brewing storm. And he wanted to be the same for her.

Derek wished to know what Nick was thinking about, standing quietly with his hands inside the pockets of his jeans. What memory of her he savored when things got bad. The last time Derek remembered seeing Rebecca, they were sitting on the roof of the house with lavender curtains, and she was crying. He would have given anything to change that memory of her, and now he could only imagine what that ending would look like.

But thunder thrummed through the skies with new power, jerking Nick and Derek back from their thoughts and into the unfolding ritual.

The warlocks' tunics glistened as they moved past Rebecca's coffin, fabric clinging to them like a spider clinging to its web. The magic floated alongside them, a loyal friend that never leaves in time of distress. And they walked together, creatures and shadows, until everything else inside the crypt was affected by them.

Derek and Nick watched candles get pulled into the spiral of magic, as they stood motionless, afraid to breathe. It seemed to them that moving even a little would send their bodies into the air, just like the candles.

Eyes focused on the mausoleum doors, the warlocks drew the wind inside, as if it was a wild animal they could tame. It looped through the objects hanging in the air and entered the fireplace.

When the flames flickered, Rebecca's coffin began to glow with magic, and the warlocks lowered onto their knees beside it, pulling something sharp and silver out of their tunics.

"Fac nos cum risu tuo magno..."

Derek and Nick both heard the thunderous rumbling outside, it sounded like laughter. A deep explosive sound that was so omnipotent and present, it made them feel small.

Inside the crypt, the blades the warlocks held with their tentacles started to accumulate the darkness of the mausoleum at such high rate that it began to look like dawn and not middle of the night.

"Divide caelum dextra manu..."

Before Derek and Nick knew what was happening, the crypt was completely drained of light. Above the tombstones, the skies parted, clouds drifting away as if someone scattered them with their hand.

Suddenly, out of the darkness the blades illuminated, pulsating with thunder. The warlocks swiftly raised them into the air, and then stabbed them into the glass coffin, magic running along the steel like electricity. Rebecca's coffin shook, meeting the magic, which disturbed the butterfly that rested inside her hands. Its wings fluttered, as if it was trying to break free.