Spirit Board In Summer

"You gotta do it!" Darik said. "If you don't I'll tell everyone you're a weenie!" Billy, not at all interested in scary things, had been over to visit his friend Darik. The pair had been friends since kindergarten. Now they were sixth graders; almost teens! While there was no one else Billy would like to hang out with on a lazy June day, he hated when Darik made him do things. He wasn't going to chicken out though, not in their secret tree house.

They had built it together in Darik's backyard, it was where they did all the stuff they didn't want grown ups to see. The two of them sat there with the Ouija board on the tree house floor. "Fine," Billy said. "Just don't scream like a girl if a ghost shows up!"

Billy had been taught there were no such thing as ghosts. Still he felt nervous. His mom had told him about another kid who had played with a spirit board and the Devil had come and jabbed that kid with a pitchfork! In the butt! Billy didn't want that to happen to him. That couldn't happen every time though. It was probably just a story grown ups told kids to frighten them.

Placing their hands on the planchet, Darik began the ritual. "Hey, are there any ghosts here?" He asked. It was hard to tell whose hand moved the cursor, but it hovered over "YES". Billy's eyes widened. "No way;" he wispered.

"Cool!" Darik exclaimed, clearly enjoying the seance. "So what's your name?" Slowly the pointer moved over letters. "Z-I-M-I-N-I-A-R" Darik crinkled his eyebrows and nose. "Ziminar?" He asked. "I think my mom went to one of those." Billy laughed "No thats a seminar, stupid!" He told Darik shaking his head. "This thing's broke. Lets--" The planchet moved on it's own, spelling "K-I-N-G O-F-N-O-R-T-H" Darik's mouth opened in suprise "Whoah!" He said. "This ghost is a king?! Dude! Where were you king of?!" Again letters "N-O-R-T-H".

"North? North of what?"

"H-E-L-L"

"OHMYGOSH! IT SAID A BAD WORD!"

"Darik, this is getting weird I don't want to do this!"

"D-E-M-O-N"

Both boys got really pale and let go of the cursor. "I wasn't moving it, were you?" Billy asked quietly. After a pause, Darik shook his head no. The sun was starting to set outside the tree house. Long shadows grew from the fading light. "Maybe we were making stuff up;" Darik said. "Yeah, that's gotta be it. If we don't touch the board, nothing's going to happen." They sat there with their hands on their knees, motionless.

Neither one dared to take their eyes off the Ouija board. Billy heaved a sigh of relief after a minute with no activity. He was about to start putting things away when the cursor started moving again. "K-I-L-L" it spelled "B-O-Y-S" The two friends were seriously freaked out now.

"It can't really hurt us;" Billy said. "Right?" Darik was panicked "I DON'T KNOW!" He shouted. "I DON'T GO TO CHURCH!" Billy had been raised Catholic and he sort of knew about demons. What had his Sunday school teacher told him to do when something evil was after you? Oh yeah! Now Billy remembered! "Maybe we need to call one of those Archangel guys?" He suggested.

"Do you remember any of their names?"

"Um I dunno, I think it's like Michelangelo, or Donatello maybe."

"Don't we need a phone?"

"No, we just call out their names."

"Okay we do it together. Ready?"

"MICHELANGELO!"

"DONATELLO!"

"HELLO? WE NEED HELP!"

Billy and Darik waited. Shouting agin felt dumb. Was something supposed to happen? Billy was sure his dad had told him Donatello was the turtle with the purple bandana; that didn't seem very angelic. "Did we screw up?" Darik asked. "Isn't there supposed to be some holy light or a dude with wings and a sword or whatever?" Billy, was breathing hard still. "I dunno;" he answered. "I think I hear something. Be quiet!"

Off towards the house, there was the sound of a door as someone opened and shut it. The grass rustled as feet walked towards the boy's hiding spot. There was a loud growl from the base of the tree. Darik picked up a flashlihgt and switched it on. Daytime was ending and now the darkness was taking over.

Darik and Billy listened hard. The wooden ladder began to creak under something's weight. A pair of hands with red nails gripped the deck of the tree house. "AHHHHHHHHHUGH!" The boys screamed. They were scrambling away from the new arrival until they hit the rear wall of the structure. "Boys!" Said a friendly, surpised face. "What happened to you two?! Good grief!"

It was Darik's mom staring at them as she climbed up inside. Darik, forgetting that he was supposedly too cool for parents, crawled over and hugged his mom! Billy had been curled in on himself and sat pretending not to cry. "Mommy," Darrik sobbed. "I'll never play with Ouija ever again! There was this-this Ziminar guy who said he was a king but he's a demon and-and-and he said he was going to kill us! And then there was a growl and I just wanna go inside now!"

His mom stroked Darik's back, comforting her son. "It's okay, baby;" she said. "You probably just heard your dog Buster. I brought him out with me when I came to check on you two. Buster saw a cat over in the hedges. Why don't you go inside and eat dinner? I'll clean your game up and take Billy home."

Wiping his nose on his sleeve, he gave his mom a grin and proceeded down the ladder. His mom finished packing up the seance materials into their box, then gently coaxed Billy out of his corner. Billy had listened to what Darik's mother had said; he wanted to believe it was just their imagination.

Still, as Billy looked back at the tree house, he was worried. Demons weren't real were they? But if that was true, then why had words spelled out on their own? Billy hoped that if the King of the North guy was in the tree house that he'd leave them alone.