Darkness Conjured Read Online Free PDF Page B

happiness one day and that she’ll recover from this horrible experience.
     My mind wanders and I wonder who left the board behind, if it’s part of the darkness of the Amelia Leech house, or if it’s just a toy created on an assembly line with a thousand others like it.
    No matter. I’m curious, drawn into the idea. I want to ask about Ken. Maybe it can tell me
how to find him. I know there are spirits here. I know they see things beyond
the walls of this house.

4

    The room is dark except for a nightlight. Rain pelts against a lone window
facing an empty street. A radiator hisses. The floor creeks. Someone is
speaking above the storm and sounds of an aging house.
    It’s my sister Beth. She sounds excited. She looks a little scared. She always
seems to know obscure and esoteric facts. “The Ouija board has been around for a long time. Originated in China; 1100 BC.
Some people call it a spirit board , or talking board . Bet you didn’t know that. Aleister Crowley used one. His friend Achad summoned angels with
the damn thing.”
    Beth is sitting in a chair, her knees pressed against a girl sitting opposite
her. Beth’s hair is tied back with a red ribbon. The other girl is blonde, slender and
looks apprehensive. Her name is Belle. I haven’t seen her in a long time. I can’t remember why. She doesn’t speak. Just lets my sister ramble on. There’s a Ouija board balanced on their laps.
    “Let’s do it,” says Beth. Both girls place their fingertips on a plastic planchette in the
middle of the board. Beth sucks in her breath and then speaks slowly, “Spirits come to us. Give us a message.”
    The planchette moves to the right and then stops.
    Beth presses her fingers down harder. “Speak to us.”
    Belle sighs. “The answers aren’t here.”
    Both girls gasp when the planchette begins to move quickly touching a letter and
then moving to another.
    Beth shrugs.”Jibberish.”
    “I have to go now, Beth.” Belle lifts her hands, holds them up and moves her fingers back and forth. “I’ve been with him. So many have been with him.”
    Beth opens her mouth to speak, but disappears in dreamtime mist. Now I’m standing by an open grave. Birds screech and cold wind blows.
    I remember why I haven’t seen Belle for so long. She’d been missing for months and then the cops found her body buried under a tree
by Century Lake. Close to where Ken and I made love.
    Now Ken is here, leaning against the truck. His face is thinner, paler. There
are deep blue circles around his eyes. His lips are white. Blood drips from the
trailer, onto tires and pavement and he tells me, “The magic worked. Moloch will have his sacrifice.”
    I awake when a sand truck makes loud scraping noises on the street beneath my
window.
    I wonder if it’s a mistake to use the Ouija board. I wonder if Ken is more than a stranger I
made love with—if he’s something wicked moving through the dark and through people’s lives; destroying them with evil enchantments.

    *     *     *

    Ken didn’t come to Luke’s the following Friday. Each time the door opened my heart beat fast and I hoped
it was him. I gave up hoping when my shift ended.
    All the things he said to me, his passion and the look in his eyes haunted me.
How could he just forget?
    He’d come back. He had to.
    But he didn’t.
    Before the morning Ken and I made love I was lonely. The loneliness hurt. It was
nothing compared to how I felt when he disappeared. I cried. I felt like
screaming each time Lizzy looked at me with her knowing eyes.
    Time went by quickly. With Labor Day truckers began hauling Christmas stock to
the malls and stores in surrounding cities. I thought maybe Ken would return.
His truck would be filled with sweaters, boots and warm coats, but that didn’t happen.
    I got a little concerned when I was two weeks late for my period, but I’d never been regular and sometimes I’d skip three or four months at a time. Once when I was three