Alexandra Sokoloff - The Harrowing

She suddenly, savagely pulled the yarn from her wrist, breaking it and flinging it away from her.

“I didn’t know,” she whispered, looking sick.

“None of us did,” Cain said. He indicated a diagram of a starlike arrangement, then bent and quickly sketched out a table with five figures around it in the same arrangement. Robin noticed fleetingly that Cain’s trademark cynicism was gone; he was strangely comfortable with the ancient symbols.

“Look. We’ve been creating a pentagram all along—the five of us in this shape. Five is a magic number. A pentagram is a gateway. We made an opening—”

“And this…this shell thing came through,” Patrick finished grimly.

Robin turned dark eyes on the others. “Zachary Prince and the kids who died in the fire were doing a séance in the attic—with the same Ouija board that Lisa found. They wrote the answers the board gave them.” She showed them the faded writing in the lid of the box. “They called up the Qlippah.” Her voice dropped. “And it killed them.”

Lisa blanched. “Why? What does it want?”

Cain sat on the edge of the radiator. “The Kabbalah texts say the Qlippoth want life.”

Lisa turned to Robin. “But you just said it killed those people.”

“And Waverly.” Patrick spat.

Robin nodded. “That’s the thing. It wants life—it’s jealous of all human life. But it can’t have life. It can only destroy.”

Patrick paced in the small room. “The truly fucked-up thing is that I believe it.”

“What do we do?” Lisa’s voice was small and wan. Robin felt like crying herself.

Patrick stopped his restless prowling. “We head for the tall grass. The fuck away from here.”

“We can’t leave Martin,” Robin protested.

“Every man for himself,” Patrick retorted.

Robin whirled to Cain, her eyes appealing.

“We don’t know he’s anywhere near here,” Cain told her. His voice was gruff, but he looked away from her gaze.

Robin stared around at all of them. “Martin wouldn’t have left. You know he wouldn’t. He’s obsessed. He doesn’t think. He’s still in Mendenhall with…that thing.”

Lisa hugged herself. “What if he’s dead?”

Robin flared up. “What if he’s not?’ Her voice rose. “We all let this thing out. What if it can move? It killed Waverly. What’s it going to do next?”

An uneasy silence fell between them. Thunder rumbled again, then the not-so-distant crack of lightning.

Cain picked up some printed pages. “There’s one more thing. We found a banishing ritual. It’s pretty wild. But at least there’s a precedent.”

Lisa was suddenly very still. “You mean we could get rid of it? For good?” she asked cautiously.

Cain looked troubled. “I don’t know. But somebody thought so. This stuff has been passed down for ages.” He looked around at them. “We all have to do it, though, or the ritual won’t work.”

They looked at one another in silence. Then Patrick growled. “Shit on the mumbo jumbo. This thing kills. We go in, we get Martin, we get out. End of story.”

Four pairs of eyes locked over the strange diagrams on the bed. And slowly, they all nodded agreement.

The day passed in slow motion. Going back onto campus with all the police everywhere was out

of the question. They decided to try for ten at night, figuring the campus would have been completely cleared by then and the police would relax their vigil.

Patrick and Lisa went out for supplies, since Robin and Cain couldn’t risk being seen. Robin dozed fitfully, waking several times to find Cain poring over the ritual. She watched him, fascinated. For all his rationalism, he’s in his element now, caught up in the mysticism. Maybe we all want to believe .

They ate pizzas that Patrick and Lisa brought back. Patrick drank beer after beer and rolled joints, which he smoked, too, the look on his face precluding any protest.

Robin sat with her back against the wall, her thoughts a tumult. Waverly’s dead. She’s dead, and we could be next.

She thought of Martin, alone in the dark halls with some unimaginable thing, and shuddered.

Suddenly, Cain was crouched in front of her, taking her hands, looking at her questioningly. She shook her head, trying to smile, and he sat beside her against the wall, warm and real.

Patrick took in the two of them, and when Robin met his gaze, he nodded. Approval, or maybe a blessing.

“The Discarded Ones,” he said aloud.

Everyone looked at him.

“That’s us, right? Damaged goods. It came straight to us—because it knew.”

Cain squeezed Robin’s hand. Lisa put her head on Patrick’s shoulder.

The four of them sat in silence, listening to the sound of the rain outside.

Waiting.

The campus seemed vast in the dark as Patrick drove his SUV without lights into the woods,

heading toward the Columns. After much heated debate between the boys, they’d decided it was best to get to the dorm through campus.

They left the 4Runner in the woods and then moved through the oak grove, nervous as cats, wearing dark clothing and each carrying a duffel. The rain had abated, but the dead leaves under their feet were damp and slick, and wind lashed through the trees, intermittently showering them with droplets.

They stopped on the path, looked through a tangle of bushes to the silhouette of Mendenhall.

The dorm was towering, a huge dark shell. Robin thought she could hear a shutter banging somewhere in the building.

Cain started forward, then Patrick hissed, “Wait.”

Lights swept the pavement of the circular drive in front. All four of them hit the ground behind the bushes, waiting, not breathing. A sheriff’s car cruised by; the lights passed over them, dappling light through the bushes.

Robin pressed her face into the damp leaves, heart pounding, breathing in the loamy rot.

Then the patrol car turned the corner of the drive, moved away down the street. Robin felt Cain’s hand on hers, closing around her fingers, pulling her up.

The four of them slipped from the wet bushes and hurried around to the side wall of the building, halting at a door hidden under the fire escape.

Cain fished out his dorm keys and tried the lock. The key turned, but as they’d all expected, the door was bolted from inside.

Patrick stepped back, looked up at the slatted metal fire escape ladder above their heads, calculating the height. He turned to Lisa, spoke in a low voice.

“Up on my shoulders.”

Cain stooped, locked his hands together to boost Lisa up. She stepped into his hands and Patrick grabbed her by the waist; both of them lifted her up at once to kneel on Patrick’s shoulders. Lisa put her palms on Patrick’s head, then, balancing carefully as an acrobat, unfolded herself to a standing position.

Patrick grabbed her ankles, steadying her. She reached up for the bottom rung of the ladder, grasped it, and yanked hard. The ladder refused to budge.

“It’s stuck,” she whispered down. She gave another hard tug, then ordered Patrick to let go.

Robin watched admiringly as Lisa tucked her legs up to her chest and slung an ankle over the rung of the ladder, then hoisted herself up over the ladder and onto the platform.

Her Nikes squeaked on the wet metal as she stood and shoved down on the ladder, pushing and straining, but no amount of force would unstick it.

Cain called up softly. “Break a window and come down and let us in.”

Lisa looked down at them over the railing. Her face was hard. “No way am I going in there alone.”

Cain looked to Robin, raised his eyes to the ladder, questioning. She nodded, and he laced his hands for her.