Temporal Exploring 101 - Cultural Immersion

II.10 The séance

After last period, we were all hanging out at the school cafeteria. It had become a ritual of sorts, to sit there together after classes, just chatting and nursing a coffee or a shake.

"Tonight we will have a full moon," Helen Langdon observed, to no one in particular. "We could go and have another one of those séances. What do you all say?"

"That's a great idea," Carol Mellon agreed. "Let's do that, why don't we?"

"Alright!" Debbie Turner was enthusiastic about it, too. "Carmichael, can you organize the booze?"

Mallory nodded. "Sure thing."

We were all of us bored, and ready for any kind of diversion.

"I don't know about that, guys," Erin Morgan said. "I mean, I am all for having a party tonight. But I pretty much decided I would never hold a  séance again."

"Aw, come on, don't be such a spoilsport, Morgan," Jessica told her. "You know that it's just for fun."

The Welsh girl frowned. "I thought so too, when my grandma first taught me how to do that. But I was little then, and I did not know any better. I had no idea then just how scary it can get."

"Scary how?" I asked. "And what exactly is a séance, anyway?"

"Well, this is something we have done a couple of times already. We all meet outside and have a party," Nancy explained. "Carmichael brings some booze. At midnight, we hold a seance. Morgan will go into a trance and communicate with the spirit world. If she wants to, that is." She looked at the Welsh girl. "If not, we can just have a party."

"Even just having a party would be awesome, if you ask me," Mallory declared. "Morgan, you can always decide later tonight if you want to conduct a séance or not."

Thus, it was decided.

Around eleven o'clock the girls of the Upper Fifth left their dorm. Trying to make as little noise as possible,  we tiptoed through the empty corridors and down the stairway to the ground floor where we opened a window to climb outside.

"Leave the window just a tiny bit ajar," Natty cautioned. "That way, nobody is going to notice that it is open."

We gathered in a clearing of the small forest that surrounded our school's central building. Within minutes my classmates had built a campfire and were passing around bottles of beer.

Slowly the alcohol was beginning to have an effect on us. Everybody was talking animatedly, and a lot more than usual. Even Erin Morgan was looking happy and relaxed now, and when midnight approached, she agreed to hold a séance for us, after all.

To prepare herself, she sat down a bit apart from the rest of us, with a scarf tied around her eyes. She looked strange and unfamiliar, with the shifting lights and shadows created by the flickering fire playing on her face.

Erin Morgan started to chant, in a language I did not know. I thought it sounded a bit like a song, or perhaps like some poem.

"It's Cymraeg," Natty explained when I asked her about it, "the old Welsh language."

Suddenly, the Welsh girl stopped chanting. Her head turned until she appeared to be staring directly at the disk of the full moon, right through that scarf that covered her eyes. She remained like that, perfectly motionless.

"She is in a trance," Nancy told me in a whisper.

"What happens now?" I inquired.

"We can now ask her for messages," Mallory replied. "Messages from, you know, the spirit world. That is, if they have any message for you. The spirits, I mean." She cast a searching look around the campfire. "Who wants to go first?"