3
Sep
“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary, over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore… Oh what is this crap? It’s as occult as a cheeseburger. I wanted to do real magic.” Tim’s nasal whine cut through the dark room.
Jacob answered. “It is occult, it’s from the witch trials of ancient North America. The writer of this got burned as a witch. That means it was occult.”
“It just sounds like bad poetry to me. Who talks like that now, really?”
Amanda glared at both of them. “Shut up, both of you. You’re spoiling it.”
“While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, as of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. `’Tis some visitor,’ I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door.”
“He must have been visited by a ghost!”
“You’ll become a ghost if you don’t shut up!”
Timothy and Jacob withered under the glare, and Amanda continued reading from the book of occult lore. She droned on and on, her voice flat and unemotional, attempting an Old American dialect and failing miserably.
The three teenagers sat in a room pitch black except for the dim candles at the five points of the pentagram. It was the basement of Amanda’s mother’s house, but it felt occult to the three of them. It was an old house, all concrete and steel and it never creaked once, and that always spooked the children at night.
“On this home by horror haunted – tell me truly, I implore – is there – is there balm in Gilead? – tell me – tell me, I implore!”
“Would you children stop butchering my poem and disturbing my rest! I can’t sleep with you nattering on like this! And you, young lady, that is the worst reading ever attempted. Five year old school children have done better.” Standing in the middle of the pentagram was the ghost of a dark gentleman, his forehead high and his face covered by a thin moustache.
“Who… who are you?”
“What! You’re reading my poem and you don’t know who I am? I wrote The Raven, that beautiful poem you’re butchering. Are you children really sunken that far?”
“It’s not a poem, it’s an occult spell that got a witch burned at the stake in North America!”
“Oh dear… you have fallen far, haven’t you? No history, no nothing.”
“We know our history, and we’re right! It is an occult spell!”
The ghost shook his head. “Children these days… You want occult magic? Fine. I’ll show you real magic.”
“Really? That’s great!” The children all squealed with glee.
“Oh yes.” The ghost grinned. “Your souls from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor shall be lifted – nevermore!”