©2018 David Morgan — 2033 words
“Should I draw a pentagram?”
“I don’t know, Dude. Does that shit really work?”
“It’s what they do in the movies. I’ll get some paint.”
A chubby, slovenly dressed thirteen-year-old boy walks over to the supply closet in the back of the room. He takes out a brush and a jar of dark blue paint. Rusty, that’s his name, carries the supplies back to the front of the classroom and hands them to his friend.
“Here you go. Draw it this big.” Rusty spreads his arms as far as he can to demonstrate.
Peter takes the brush and paint jar from him. “I can’t draw that big. I never drew nothing bigger than a piece of notebook paper.”
“Just do it the way you want. Don’t listen to Tubby.” Cameron gives Rusty a cold look through her long black bangs.
Rusty ignores the insult. He gets called plenty of names. He knows Cameron doesn’t mean anything by it. The attitude is just her thing. He thinks it’s kinda cool. Not that it matters. After all, she’s the only girl who’ll talk to him. As far as he’s concerned, she can call him whatever she wants.
Peter gets on his knees and paints directly on the floor. He is very insecure about his art talents and curses under his breath several times as he struggles through the task. At one point, he accidentally spills some of the paint on his drawing and furiously mops up the mistake with some notebook paper from his backpack.
It is around 3:30 on a Wednesday afternoon at Cottonwood Middle School. The three members of the newly formed Religious Studies Club are holding their first meeting. Peter, Rusty, and Cameron are also the only members of their own clique. None of them have any other friends. Rusty, as mentioned earlier, is a rotund boy with a nest of curly red hair on his head and wears ill-fitting hand-me-down clothes. Cameron is a wannabe bad girl. She is a thin girl with naturally dark hair that she dyes coal black. She wears baggy jeans and flannel shirts that she steals from her older brother. Every day she draws what she wishes were tattoos on her arms with markers and ballpoint pens. Every night her father makes her wash them off. Peter is the most well groomed of the three. The son of a hairdresser, he always sports an immaculate haircut, and his clothes are obviously picked out for him every morning.
The school’s Vice Principal, Wesley Gordon, was concerned about the trio always hanging around each other and never socializing with any of the other students. Two weeks ago, he caught them hiding in a stairwell after school. Cameron found a joint in one of her brother’s shirt pockets. They were attempting to light it when Mr. Gordon found them. During a conference with the three sets of parents, it was suggested that the kids needed a productive after school activity. He recommended they form a club in hopes that it would attract other students and widen their social circle. He let the kids choose the theme of the club. Cameron came up with “Religious Studies Club”. Gordon is a faithful church-goer and thought this was a wonderful idea, but of course, she chose this knowing that no one else would be interested in joining.
He granted them the use of one of the classrooms for an hour after school once a week. This is with the understanding that he would check in on them periodically. So, they have to do something related to religion or they will be busted and will probably get suspended for the marijuana incident. None of them know much about religion, except for what they find on the internet. This is where Peter found the club’s first activity.
“Ugh. This totally sucks. I’m sorry guys.” Peter stands up and judges his work critically. He jams the brush into the paint jar and attempts to wipe paint off his hands with more notebook paper. He notices a blotch of blue paint on his shirt. “Oh, crap! My mom’s gonna kill me!” He dabs at it with the paper and discovers he’s been using his History homework as a rag. “Shit!”
“Sorry, Dude, but that’s a pretty messed up looking pentagram. The circle around it isn’t even round.” Rusty offers his critique.
“Shut up. I’d like to see you do better.” Cameron hisses.
“What is that blob in the middle supposed to be?” Rusty asks. He walks around the drawing as if a different angle will make all the difference.
“That’s a goat head.” Peter explains. “Like the one on the website.”
“Goat head? It looks like Bart Simpson!” Rusty chuckles.
“You’re looking at it upside down, dumbass!” Cameron gets even more annoyed at Rusty’s criticism. She punches him in the arm.
He walks around to the other side and takes another look. “Hmm. Well now it looks like your mom!” He punches Peter in the arm and adds, “Burn!”
Peter shakes it off. “You punch like a girl.” He looks over at Cameron, “No offense.”
“Are we gonna do this or what?” Cameron opens up the website on her phone and scrolls down to the incantation.
The three kids stand around the crude painting of a five pointed star with what looks like Bart Simpson’s face in the center. Cameron reads from the website.
“It says here the ritual has to be performed on hallowed ground,” she explains.
“What does ‘hallowed’ mean?” Peter asks.
“I think it means like holy or something. Like a special place,” answers Cameron.
“There’s nothing special about this place. It’s just a stupid classroom. This isn’t gonna work.” Peter is frustrated and ready to give up.
“I heard that new girl from Southside let Greg Mitchell touch her boob on a dare. It happened in this room during fifth period last semester. That sounds totally hallowed to me.” Rusty smiles excitedly while retelling this story.
“Repeat after me.” Cameron holds the phone out in front of her and the boys get close so they can see it. She reads the mysterious incantation. “Et aperuerit ianuam introibo ad illum infernum indulgere. Et a me præceptum est mihi Dominus Bellum resurgere!”
“Are you sure you’re pronouncing it right?” Peter asks.
“I have no idea. Do you think that makes a big difference?” Cameron shrugs her shoulders. “Let’s just all say it the same way.”
The boys agree and all three chant in unison, “Et aperuerit ianuam introibo ad illum infernum indulgere. Et a me præceptum est mihi Dominus Bellum resurgere!”
“Okay, now for the blood offering.” Cameron crouches down near the pentagram.
“Blood offering? I don’t want to kill anything!” Peter protests.
“Relax. The ritual requires the blood of a virgin. I got this covered.” She pulls a ziplock sandwich bag out of her pocket. She opens the bag and dumps a small object onto Bart Simpson’s face. It is cylinder-shaped and white, but stained red with blood.
“Ewww. What is that? Where did you get it? How do you know it’s from a virgin?” Rusty rattles off questions. “What’s that string hanging off it?”
“Trust me,” she answers stoically. “Now we repeat the chant two more times.”
They repeat the chant twice more. Rusty stares quizzically at the object the whole time. They stand quietly for what seems like an eternity after the chant. Then, something happens.
“Do you hear that?” Peter whispers.
A low rumbling sound gets slowly louder. The kids look around the room trying to find the source. Then the noise becomes clearer. It sounds like a thousand voices screaming, and it’s coming from the floor where the pentagram was drawn. The kids get really nervous and back carefully away from the pentagram. Suddenly, the symbol bursts into flame.
“Oh, shit. We are in so much trouble!” Rusty starts to panic.
The flames burn brightly, but only reach a foot or so off the floor. Something appears in the fire. It looks like the tips of a pair of horns. The horns slowly ascend. Something is coming through the flames.
“Oh my god! It worked!” Cameron gets excited. “I can’t believe we did it. We summoned the devil! And on our first try. Damn, we’re good at this!”
The pentagram has been transformed into a portal of some kind. The goat horns are fully visible now. The head they are attached to appears. Its skin is red and scaly. The demon’s glowing yellow eyes become visible through the tiny flames.
“What are we gonna do? It’s gonna kill us!” Peter is about to throw up. “Cameron, is there a spell to send it back?”
“Why would we send It back? We can command it to do anything we want! Think about it, Peter. We can use him to get back at anyone who’s ever been jerks to us. Think of the power we have!” Cameron lets out a giddy squeal.
“Who hath summoned the mighty Belial?” The demon’s voice is so cold it chills the room.
The kids stare, too terrified to answer. The demon rises from the portal until his collarbones are barely through. Then he suddenly stops ascending. A look of surprise fills his evil goat-like face.
“What the hell?!” He screams. “What have you done?!”
“Oh, shit! I told you to draw it bigger!” Rusty blames Peter.
“How was I supposed to know? I’ve never conjured a demon before!” Peter defends himself.
“Free me now!” Bellows Belial.
“Forget about blaming Peter. We’re screwed if Mr. Gordon comes in and sees this! We can’t even command Belial to do our bidding. Look at him. He’s stuck. What a useless demon!” Cameron is pissed.
“I will devour your soul over a thousand centuries!” curses the demon.
“You suck!” Cameron shouts back. “Rusty, go check to see if anyone’s coming. Maybe we can get a saw from the shop class.”
“And do what?” askes Peter. “It’s a concrete floor. We can’t cut him out.”
“I wasn’t thinking about cutting the floor,” she replies.
“You bitch!” shouts Belial. “When I am free, I will burn the entire world, and they will know it was because of you!”
Cameron walks over and kicks Belial in the nose, “Shut up goat face!”
Rusty opens the classroom door a crack and peeks out. He closes the door and whispers, “Keep it down. Mr. Gordon’s coming this way.”
Peter thinks fast. There is a large trash can in the corner of the room. He drags it over and Cameron gives him a hand. They turn the can upside down, pouring garbage all over Belial. The demon curses and protests as they hide his hideous head under the can.
Vice Principal Gordon opens the door and steps in. All three kids stand around the upturned garbage can trying to look nonchalant.
“How’s it going, guys? Have you found any fun activities for your club yet?” he asks encouragingly. “I have some ideas. Here, I brought this book. I use it when I teach Vacation Bible School.”
“How’s this for a fun activity? I will crack your skull open like a coconut and suck out your sweet brain meat!” Belial boasts, his voice slightly muffled by the plastic trash can.
Mr. Gordon stops dead in his tracks. His eyes grow as big as saucers. “Children, what have you done?”
Peter tries to play it cool, “We were talking, and we decided we want to change our club to board games.”
“Yeah, like Risk or Monopoly or something.” adds Cameron.
#
After numerous parent conferences and attempted exorcisms, the school finally had the shop class build a pine box to hide Belial. Every now and then, he gets belligerent and sets the box on fire. The art teacher sprays it and the devil down with a fire extinguisher whenever this happens. This usually humiliates him back into submission for a while. The teacher and students have become so used to him, they hardly pay him any attention. They make an exception at Christmas every year when the kids remove the box and hang tinsel and popcorn garland from his horns.
Clubs have been banned from Cottonwood Middle School.
