Yuuzel and I hid at the back of the tall bushes where we waited for Ms Claire to come out of the teacher's lounge. It was well after 6 pm and most of the students and teachers have already gone home.
"Let's go Yuu..." I tapped at his back. Ms. Claire was shuffling a bunch of paper files and folders as she walked through the dim corridors and I approached her.
"Evenin, Ms Claire." Ok I sounded kind a rigid since it was Ivy who was head of the Drama club not me...in any case I just had to make it believable. "Uhm, I was wondering if...if...if you can - I mean if you could - "
"Yes...?" her face was becoming even more perturbed. I was never the type to approach my teachers like this. So she would naturally feel anxious or perplexed by it.
"If you could show me the Ouija board you were telling us about...y'know...just curious..."
God please let it work!
"Why certainly! You wouldn't mind holding these for me would you?"
Yes! I guess my acting skills aren't as bad after all. I took to the task of carrying Ms Claire's things for her and trotted behind her like a gradeschool kid. So this is what the teacher's pets felt like. Huh. Yuuzel was following us ofcourse. It gave me a feeling of security knowing he was around.
Ms Claire's apartment was a few blocks away from school - the red building that stood at the intersection. She was kind enough to offer me some cake and hot cocoa. I didn't decline ofcourse. I mean, who doesn't like cake or chocolate for that matter? Her place was what you would expect from a teacher whose been single all her life. Books about politics, social rights and humanism were neatly displayed on a bookshelf near the t.v., which, I gather, wasn't used much. The sound equipments were brand new as well. But among the soft tones of the mantles, curtains and table cloths were a few occult relics that greatly contradicted the entire atmosphere. There was also a book or two about the legend of Count Dracula and Van Helsing. There was also a Queen of the Damned DVD on the center table. I guess Ms Claire was a bit of a fanatic herself.
"Here it is, ooff" she said, hitting her elbow at the side of the door. Who would've guessed that she had such hobbies.
Ms Claire placed the Ouija board on top of the center table, brushing away the bits of tissue and scratch paper.
"Did you know that around 1100BC, there was already the first mentions of automatic writting found in the Ouija board?It was during the Song Dynasty, I believe...I'm not so sure about it myself"
Ms Claire was always the soft spoken one and seeing her immensely fascinated by this kind of stuff was a little bit disturbing. Ok the chain of bloody attacks was way more disturbing but this was also - on an entirely different level.
"There was also a novel written in during the year 1917" she thumbed at her chin "Emily Hatchings...yes. She wrote a novel which was supposedly dictated to her by Mark Twain's spirit."
"Really?" I said. No kidding. That kind of sparked my interest. "So she talked to the dead to get her novel done?"
Ms Claire nodded and continued on with her cryptic stories about the said wooden board that was sitting idly ontop of the center table. If she were to tell me those stories about a month ago, before I had met Yuuzel and accidentally found The Archives, I would have - sure as the sun - rolled my eyes in bitter contempt. There was just no rational explanation, no logical reason to believe any of these hocus pocus stuff. But that I happen to have met two members of those occult forces, made it somewhat viable for the Ouija Board belief to exist.
"How does it work?" I knelt infront of the center table, beside Ms Claire. She got up and fished a coin from her purse.
"Basically you have to have an open mind for it to work at all. And this" she said placing the coin on the center of the Ouija. It had the basic alphabet written on it, the numbers 0 to 9 and at the corners were the words 'hello', goodbye', 'yes' and 'no'.
"Do you want to try Ms Rubes?"
Ugh. The nickname Ivy gave me. Like I said, Ruby wasn't short enough for her.
"Sure thing." This is good. I might stay long enough to guard her. Ms Claire was a plausible victim in a bloody chain of attacks on the teachers of our school. But Yuuzel refuses to guard her if it means leaving my side. Wait- now that I think about it, does that mean that he'd been guarding me all along?
"Anytime now Rubes." she pointed at the coin, her finger was already on top.
"Oh-ok" I shrugged. What could possibly go wrong with this?
She started to chant, in sing-song, somethin about calling the ancient spirits, or the one that dwells near but is not seen.
"If you are near, heed our calling and answer us...!"
I closed my eyes as well. In a few moments, there was a sort of shiver that ran down her arm. I felt it too. It was like a cold gush of wind had found it's way into the small recieving area we were cramped in. And the coin moved. On it's own...
It moved towards 'Hello'
BINABASA MO ANG
Blood Ink (The Archives Book I): Editing
Vampir"Two deaths that happened in the distant past were revealed to me. Now there was a recent murder within the school that I had to witness for myself. And when I fled to a new found friend (though I wanted to be more than that) for comfort, he tells m...
