Blood was dripping from the knife in Ricks hand right on top of Codys forehead. From there it was running down to the ground.

The lightbulb made a humming noise, while Ricks words were echoing in my head. His dark grey eyes were still pointed on me.
He licked some blood from his upper lip and smirked.
"Mhm, your blood tasted better"

After he said that I acknowledged he wasn't talking to me.
I turned around and my eyes widened.
Right behind me was Jason's head impaled on a rusty metal pole. Many of my other classmates heads, just boys, were standing there in a row.

Rick took Codys head and impaled it on a pole too, then he added him to the rest of his collection and left the cellar.

I looked around. I was alone.
Codys body was still on the table. Next to him was a bloody saw and under the table were two boxes. The first one contained legs, the second contained arms.
A few flys were siting on the limbs. I watched one of them crawling on top of a finger, rubbing its arms against each other and flying away.

In a shelve that stood near by the staircase were the bled out torsos. Like books, side by side.
Jason's was the only one hanging from the ceiling; so he was probably , except for Cody, the most current victim of Ricks psychotic games.

On another table was some flesh. It was completely blood free.
"What the hell is this sick fucker doing down here?" I mumbled.

"Good question" I heard a high pitched voice agreeing.
Jane was sitting on the stairs, watching me with her beautiful deep black eyes.

"Jane, since when are you there?"
"Just a few minutes."
"How did you know I was here?"
She just shrugged.
A moment of silence.

"My corpse is still in the bathtub" she suddenly blurted out.
I raised an eyebrow.
"In my skirt," she went on with her weak voice "the right pocket, there's a book. We need that. We can't touch our own corpses. So you need to get it." Like always her sentences were kept as short as possible.

"B- but... but" I stuttered. I didn't want to go to the bathroom, that place was creeping the hell out of me, although I couldn't find a reason why I shouldn't do that.

"We need that Book"

"O-okay" I sighed.

She gave me a weak smile and then disappeared. She left me to get that book alone.

I was in front of the bathtub.
I have entered with my eyes closed, it was weird, because somehow I knew what happened here, so there was no need to be afraid. Besides, I was dead already, what could happen to me?

The light blue shower curtain was still pulled aside and the bathtub was filled with blood, while Janes body was floating on it.
The wetness expedited the decomposition process. Her skin soaked in the water and her face looked swollen, it was even paler than before and her lips had a purple like color.
It was terrible to see her like this.

After a moment I finally looked in her pocket for the book. Her body was cold and moisty, obviously.

The longer we are dead the stronger we get and that includes getting back our senses. I was glad I couldn't smell already.

I found it pretty quick, it was an old book with fully black cover, it didn't even have a title. I opened it on a random page. The paper was wet and a bit red from the blood. I couldn't make out if the tiny black letters were written by hand or printed. It also had many sketches. A goat with horns, a rotten hand with long dark nails, creatures that I've never seen before.

It was a book about witchcraft and demons, even I, who had no experience with that kind of stuff, could see that.
I was looking at the pictures with just one thought running threw my head: What did Jane do in her free time when she was alive?

I met her in the living room again.
The carpet was still covering my blood trial, the doll I have connected with was still in the shelve and my classmates were still laying all over the floor, sleeping like babies, not knowing they could die any second.
I realized that there was only one boy left, I forgot his name, even though we were in the same class for years.
The rest was probably in the cellar, their heads on Metall poles and their limbs separated like paper and plastic trash in two boxes.

Jane was looking at the picture of the landscape that I demolished when I was still living.

"Hey, I got the book" I walked towards her "have you been waiting here the whole time?"
"No. I looked for something. Page 175" she said that without even looking up from the picture.
I opened it at said page and started to read.

"The beast (demon, class 13)

The beast, also known as the antichrist, is a demon whom possesses a male organism. Its origin is unknown.
It is marked with the number 666, it tries to imitate the wrong God (888) and her son (777).
It has strong supernatural powers that are partly unusable as it is always in the body of a earthly creature, if it would not be connected with something it could not do anything in this state of existence."

"Does that mean Rick is not the bad guy, he's just..."
"Possessed." She finished my sentence.
"So we have to do an exorcism?" I speculated.
"No" she turned around to face me "that only works for demons until class 10. Look at page 682"
Again I followed her command.

The first thing that catched my eye was a black and white portrait of a young and honestly beautiful woman. She had full lips, long lashes and natural kinki curles. Her lips were a straight line, but her eyes smiled brighter than a mouth ever could.
This time I read out loud.

"Nakeisha (witch, class 11)

Nakeisha was a young American woman. Her ancestors came as African slaves into this country.
Her fiancé betrayed and killed her on their wedding day. Details are unknown.
Ever since she is a even more powerful spirit that will kill a man when she gets summoned, then she returns to her grave.
Young witches are using her to save them from oppressing men.
(Ritual on following pages)"

I flipped the page and there were several sketches again with short instructions. I skimmed it over, my eyes stopped for a second at the word RATS. Then I gave the book to Jane.
"23pm" she said after a brief look at the book.
"23pm?" I questioned.
"We have to do the ritual at that time. I have everything we need collected already. That's why I didn't come with you to get the book."

I headed towards the cuckoos clock. I saw a shadow in the reflection of the glass that was covering the beige clock face. I looked behind me but there was nothing.
It was probably just the light.

"It's just 4.30 pm. We have nearly the whole day left"
I felt a soft touch on my shoulder. Suddenly I was outside, it took me a second to realize Jane brought us on top of the roof.
"You really need to teach me how to do this. Why are we here though?"

"We died this morning. We saw things. It was exhausting. Lets take a break and just admire the view"
This morning? It felt like it was ages ago. Time goes by different when your dead, sometimes it's faster, then again it's slower.
She was right, a break wouldn't hurt.

We laid down, since it was autumn the sun would set soon. But for now the sky was grey, full of heavy dark clouds. At the left side of the house was the neighborhood, on the right side was a forest, I could make out some pines and maple trees. Their leaves were colored in many different shades of yellow and red.

When the sky started to turn pink I heard Janes high pitched voice again.
"Hey. How do you feel?"
"I uhm.. I don't know" I flattered. How do I feel? Not good, that's for sure. "It could be better"
"Like always"
I raised my eyebrow.
"Whenever I heard someone asking you how you feel you said it could be better"
"Well, it could be better than now, right?"
"Since you died I thought you say terrible. But I think it was already terrible before"
"I- , no it wasn't!" It was.
"You always seemed to be depressed in school"
"I was just tired" she knew I lied.
"Tell me what was really bothering you" she asked straight ahead.
"It was just... nothing, really" she looked my into my eyes. We laid side by side; I was never that close to her. She seemed so delicately and sad, as if she would burst out in tears any second. But still she asked what was bothering me. Maybe opening up isn't a bad idea?

"Okay, you're right. My life has always been shit. My parents argued nearly every day since the day I can remember. When they had a fight my mother would walk out of the door and slam it shut behind her, just to come back drunk in the morning. When she left, my father always asked our neighbor to come over because he said he couldn't take care of me alone. Actually he just wanted to fuck her while I watched tv. There were some good days though. We laughed, but that laughter always stopped at some point. When I was around nine my parents hated me, their hate against me grew every day and I never knew why. I always tried to be a good daughter. I did everything they wanted, but it was never enough. I wanted them to be proud of me, to say I did something good, that they think I did a great job. But all they did was to complain about every little mistake I made. They divorced when I was eleven and since then I've never seen my father again. He married our neighbor and moved somewhere far away where he never has to see his disappointment of a daughter. My mother was always home, still she never talked to me, she didn't ask me how school was or what I was doing when I wasn't home. The only feeling I had experienced was anger, the anger turned to sadness and I tried to drown this sadness with cheap beer on some after school parties. Before I got to the party at Ricks I had a fight with my mother. She said she hated my red hair and no boy will ever like me if I won't dye it. And I accidentally told her that I... I don't even like boys. The last thing my mother said to me before I died was that she hates me and I- I shouldn't even come back home-" my voice cracked and I felt warm tears running down my cheek. "That's b-basically it. That's what was my life and to be honest, I don't miss it. So all in all, yes, it could be better, because it was always terrible. But thanks for asking."

I was surprised by how much I did just tell her. These feelings were eating me from inside and I never had the chance to talk to someone about it. Not even to my close friends.

"I know how it feels to be alone" she whispered and softly touched my hand "and I will always be there for you. These memories won't hurt you. Not anymore."

The sky was dark blue already and millions of stars were shinning from above on us. It looked like a dark carpet full of glitter.
"The sky is beautiful" I mumbled.
"You're beautiful" she said that under her breath, thinking I didn't hear her, but I did what would cause me to blush if I had blood in my body.

Jane and I were holding hands. This simple physical contact comforted me more than all the hours of therapy I had.

It was silent, all we did was stargazing. Then Jane stood up. I immediately missed that reassuring feeling when she let go of my hand.
"It's time"

We jumped from the roof on the grass. A living person would've probably broken their ankle. Jane took a cotton bag she hid earlier in a bush. It contained what we needed for the ritual.
We walked into the forest. I could barley see since the trees didn't let the moonlight shine threw their leaves.

After some minutes we stopped.
There was a large black lake and at its lakeside was a old willow. The cold wind made the thin branches move.

Jane took something out of the cotton bag and started to walk around while pouring a white substance to the ground.
It was salt. After a minute passed by she stopped and I noticed she had been drawing a pentacle.
She putted a candle on all of the five tips of the star and lit them.

We kneeled down inside of the circle. Jane left the bag on the ground nearby after taking out the last items; a dark grey rock that was as big as her hand and a white cloth.

She laid the cloth in front of us, and something I didn't see before was on top of it.
It was a rat with a broken neck.

We raised our hands to the sky and started to speak in union:

"Guide us, Nakeisha, to what we desire. Men are hurting us like they hurt you. We don't have the strength to defend ourselves."

The flames of the candles started to move constantly back and forth and it got colder within a second.
We raised our voices so we were on the verge of screaming.

"He will die!
Dolor interficere
Your dress turned red!
Omnia dolor est
COME TO US NAKEISHA!"

With the last sentence Jane lifted the rock above her head and hit it on the ground right on top of the rat.

I cringed when I heard the crunching noise of the breaking rat bones.
The white cloth soaked in the red liquid that came out of the lifeless animal.

Suddenly there was a scream. I looked up to the willow and a human body dropped out of the treetop.
It didn't hit on the floor, it seemed like it was floating just centimeters above the ground.

In fact it was hanging above the ground. A thick dark rope was tied around its neck.

Dark windswept curls were covering its face and it wore a dirty and torn wedding dress. It reminded me of something.

Jane and I stood up, I waited for her to tell me what comes next, but she didn't say a word. When I opened my mouth to ask her I heard something. I thought it was the dead person, but the noise came from behind them.

It was the lake. First it was just bubbling, but then thousands of rats came crawling out of it, they were rushing towards us. Their wet bodies brushed our ankles and they squeaked.
I did my best not to run away.

When the rats were gone something else catched my attention immediately.

Someone was singing. It was a cold, raspy and creepy voice.

"I can see you, can't you see me?
I loved you and I thought you loved me
We wanted to say these bonding words
But you wasn't there
Now I'm nothing but death in the air

My white dress turned blood red
You were a monster that turned me into a menace
Before I return to my grave a man will be dead"

It seemed like it was coming from everywhere.
I searched for the source of the song but I didn't see anyone else but Jane. By the look of her expression you could tell she heard it too.

"Your screams break the silence
Mine break your bones
Someone asked me for guidance
Now we bedight you with stones"

It got louder, I covered my ears with my hands, that didn't help. This melody was driving me insane.

"You killed me without saying goodbye
That brought me this agony
Because you didn't know a witch can never die"

"Make it stop! Make it stop!" I begged, I didn't know who I begged for, but this song floated my mind with images. Disfigured corpses, men without faces, a women laughing, her face covered with blood.
I'd do anything to make it stop.

I faced the willow and
The body was gone!
I felt a cold breath on my neck.
I turned around and right behind me was she.

It was Nakeisha, her skin was rotten and she had prints from the rope on her throat.
Although her lips didn't move she was the one who was singing.

Her voice didn't come out of her mouth, it was in my head.
Her hand grabbed my face harshly when she arrived at the last verse.

"I can see you, can't you see me?
I loved you and I thought you loved me
We wanted to say these bonding words
But you wasn't there
Now I'm nothing but death in the air "

An
2935 words. That's quite a lot.
Thanks for reading, don't forget to vote and comment ^^
I'm sorry for making this chapter so long and still pushing the plot.
If you find any grammar/spelling mistakes feel free to correct me
Anyways good night/day :)

Saturday, 30.01.21
00.27 am