James Cree, Part One

“You almost done Mikey?” Thomas asked, adjusting his glasses on his face.

The overweight boy looked up at Thomas from his place on the floor, carefully drawing a circle in chalk on the wooden panels. “Yeah, sorry it’s taking so long. The book is really specific on what the circle is supposed to entail.”

A black-haired girl with heavy mascara pushed herself away from the dresser. “Can we just get on with it? I’m really getting sick of just waiting with you two.”

“Yeah, we love you too Katrina,” Thomas laughed, hefting up the heavy, leather-bound tome he’d ordered from the internet. “Once Mikey’s done we’ll be able to try the curse out ourselves and see if we can exact revenge on the preppy assholes at school.”

Katrina crossed her arms, looking around the room. The bed had been pushed against the far wall, along with all of the other furniture. This left a wide open space of Thomas’s bedroom available for the great circle Mikey was working on. He’d finished the first circle about half an hour ago and was now drawing the second circle around the first, as the book instructed. He’d been slowly working on it, drawing the archaic symbols of some forgotten language in a painstakingly slow fashion, making certain each symbol was perfect. Thomas had already set up the thirteen black wax candles and written down the instructions for the ritual they were about to perform; it would involve all three of them, along with the skull of a murderer.

That was where Katrina had come in. She’d gone to the graveyard in town and dug up one of the graves from the eighteen hundreds, a man by the name of James Cree. He’d been hung for killing five innocent men and women as they left church, for reasons he never explained. When Thomas had explained that they would need the skull to make this ritual work, the other two had fallen silent. Katrina had shown up with it the following night with nary a word to say about her experience, especially when the local church found out that there had been a grave robbery.

“Done!” Mikey said, leaning back, wiping his forehead free of sweat. “How’s it look?”

Thomas and Katrina examined the great set of circles, the symbols placed between the lines precisely every three inches from each other. They seemed to take on a faint glow in the low-light of the room, despite being written in chalk.

“Alright, are we going to do this?” Katrina asked, looking to the two boys. She picked up the skull and stepped over the circles, placing it in the center of the drawing, before stepping out again. “You all know your lines?”

“Yeah,” Mikey said, looking over at Thomas.

“I have the book right here. Now we just need the silver knife and we can begin the ritual,” Thomas said.

“Got it right here,” Mikey said, pulling a wicked looking cleaver from his belt beneath his oversized shirt.

“Well go on then,” Katrina said, nodding towards him. “Start us off.”

Mikey stared at her for a moment before looking down at the dusty skull. Several teeth were missing and a bit of root had grown up through the eye and through the cranium. Slowly, Mikey held out his hand and took the knife, slicing along his palm without so much as a grimace, allowing the blood to pool in his hand before dribbling it down onto the skull.

“By my blood, let a protector rise,” Mikey intoned before passing the knife to Katrina.

She snatched the blade away and quickly cut her palm, allowing her blood to freely flow onto the blood dribbling onto the skull from Mikey’s hand. “By my blood, let a protector rise,” she repeated.

Thomas took this as his cue to begin reading the Latin portions of the spell, which he did slowly and carefully. He followed along in the text with a finger, slowly enunciating each vowel as he spoke the words of supposed power. Outside, thunder echoed in the distance. Thomas could smell something foul, like rotting eggs, but he continued reading as Katrina and Mikey continued to bleed on the skull. He failed to notice how the blood was forming a semi-permeable skin over the skull, filling in the missing teeth while inflating eyes in the sockets. Katrina and Mikey were staring at the skull in fascination, but remained silent.

Thomas finally spoke the final line of the spell before closing the book and looking down at the head, which was peering up at him with eyes as blue as glaciers.

“Spirit!” Thomas exclaimed, holding the book under his arm as he addressed the arcane creation.

“Yes?” A figureless voice answered the voice weak and sibilant.

“We’ve summoned you here tonight in the hope that you will avenge us in our hour of need!” Thomas cried out, ignoring the gust of fetid wind in the sealed room. The skull seemed to vibrate, the eyes rolling in the sockets. “What say you to an offer of servitude for time outside of Hell?”

The spirit was silent for a few moments, the eyes looking up at Thomas with a look of utter loathing. “I serve no one!”

“You will serve me James Cree!” Thomas cried, opening the book once more and flipping through a few pages. “I will bind your spirit to this skull and keep you amongst the realm of the living until you agree to do our bidding.”

“You wouldn’t!” The ghost hissed.

But Thomas was already chanting in Latin, holding one hand up high as he called forth on both the powers of Heaven and Hell to bind the summoned spirit to the undead abomination that was James Cree’s skull. The spell was short, and seemed to suck the light from the room. Thomas was sweating and felt as if he’d aged a few years from the aches in his bones, but the way the skull was staring at him now told him that his efforts had been met with success.

“Now spirit, I invoke thee to rise from your grave,” Thomas ordered.

The skull vibrated, eyes closed as it seemed to fight against the order. It opened them after a moment, looking tired. “Fine,” the spirit whispered throughout the room. “what would you have me do?”

“I would have you do what you were hanged for,” Thomas said with a wicked smile. “I have nine people that I want you to kill. Once they are dead, as well as any who defend them, I will release you from your bonds and send you back to Hell where you belong. Do we have an accord?”

The skull seemed to regard Thomas for a few moments before finally closing its eyes. “We have an accord.”

And with those words the window shattered inwards, thunder ripping through the sky in a tumultuous cacophony that rattled the neighborhood. Mikey and Katrina looked down at the skull and then back to Thomas. “So it worked?” Katrina finally asked.

Thomas slicked back his greasy hair and gave a wry chuckle. “James Cree is our own personal undead hitman for nine lives. According to the spell each person we order him to kill will go to Hell with him when this is all over, so we’ll finally have our revenge on the jocks that’ve been giving us crap all these years.”

Thomas walked into the circle and reached down to pick up the skull, amazed at how dry the bloody looking skull really was. The eyes stared into his, blinking every few moments.

“Who is my first victim?” The spirit of James Cree asked in a flat tone.

“In time Cree, but first I need to rest.” Thomas said, setting the skull down on top of his dresser. Turning he looked at Mikey and Katrina. “Thank you two for helping with this. I knew I could count on my fellow outcasts for help.”

“As long as you make sure that bitch Jessica Martinez gets hers, I won’t mind what I did,” Katrina growled, crossing her arms beneath her breasts.

“And I just want Justin Long to finally leave me alone,” Mikey said.

“All in due time. I’m going to sic our vengeful spirit on someone a little more high profile then those two, just to shake the bedrock of our little community.” Thomas said with a smile.

Katrina and Mikey exchanged a curious glance as they listened to Thomas’s plan, before quickly agreeing it was a good one.
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