"It was a chilly, sunny day in mid-spring," I began, watching the whistle from Laguna Beach move in lazy clockwise circles as it dangled from my neck. I was as surprised by the words that left my mouth as if I hadn't said them myself because they sounded far too serious and calm to have been the output of the chaos inside my head . There was no other way for me, Trey, and Mischa to leave this room with any kind of futures ahead of us worth living unless I followed through with the one and only risky plan that had occurred to me. "Mischa Portnoy was a world class gymnast and was training to compete in the Olympic trials in Long Beach, California. Taking a break from her training, she had accompanied her friends McKenna Brady and Trey Emory back to her hometown of Weeping Willow, Wisconsin aboard a private jet provided by the father of a girl they knew from school."

I hesitated, paranoid that if the spell wasn't working-and Mischa was actually hearing the words I was saying-she might react at any second. It wasn't exactly Mischa's style to lie still while someone suggested she was about to die in a matter of minutes. But where her head rested against my knees, her eyelids flickered with slight movement. The flame dancing atop Laura's black candle was strong, giving me every reason to believe that the game was working as expected. The only other person in the room who seemed to think it was odd that I was commencing the story of Mischa's death with events that had occurred mere hours ago was Trey, who suspiciously glanced at me with a poker face expression.

"The group traveled to the rectory of St. Monica's, the church where Mischa had been both baptized and confirmed. They intended to meet with Father Fahey, a priest who had assisted Ann Simmons, a patron of his parish, almost eighteen years earlier in casting a spell to protect Mrs. Simmons' unborn grandchild. The group descended into the basement of the rectory to play a round of Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board, a paranormal game that Mischa, McKenna, and Violet had played at the birthday party of their friend Olivia several months earlier."

At the mention of Olivia's name, Henry lifted his head and his eyes sought out mine. A hint of alarm in his eyes made me instantly realize that Henry was much more aware of what was unfolding around him than I typically gave him credit for being. Since Olivia's death, Henry had always been two woeful steps behind the rest of us, learning about the game we'd played with Violet far too late to do anything to save his sister. But now I could tell that he knew what it meant that I was including details about the game we were playing, right at that very moment, as I told the story of Mischa's death. With an almost imperceptible nod, I discouraged him from interrupting the process. Henry was simply going to have to trust that I knew what I was doing, which had become an unfortunate routine since last fall.

In the distance, I heard tornado sirens. Long ago, when I was a very little girl, tornados had touched down in Weeping Willow and tore the roof off the old high school. The town had installed an alarm system to make residents aware of inclement weather. In school, we learned that when we heard the sirens we were supposed to get under our desks and tuck our heads between our knees. It should have come as no surprise that strong winds had reached Wisconsin considering the weather through which we'd flow overnight. But from within the windowless secret room in the rectory basement, it was difficult to tell if a storm was raging outside.

Reassured by the uninterrupted spinning of the whistle hanging from around my neck, I continued telling my prediction of Mischa's death. "The group agreed that the story of Mischa's death would be told as a means of capturing the evil curse that had been transferred to her from Violet Simmons because Mischa had evaded the original death story that was predicted for her at Olivia's party. She stretched out on the floor with the others in the group surrounding her, ready to raise her toward the ceiling as McKenna Brady told the story of how she would die," I said. I kept watch on Mr. Simmons, and my blood ran cold when he boldly looked over at me. Even from across the room I could practically smell his adrenaline as he geared up to carry out what he'd brought us here this morning to do.

This was the part in the story where I had to choose my words carefully. If I said the wrong thing, or accidentally blurted out anything too soon that clued Mr. Simmons in to what I intended to do, my ploy to turn the tables on Mr. Simmons could get all of us killed. But surely, if he'd ever believed for a second in the powers of this game, he had to know what was coming. It was a pretty negligent oversight on his part to think we'd get this far into this morning's events without the game's storyteller revealing the death he had planned for Mischa. "McKenna told an intricate, detailed story of how Mischa would meet her fate. Everyone present in the rectory basement prepared to lift her with their fingertips up over their heads as they chanted light as a feather, stiff as a board."

A gust of cold wind rushed into the room from under the locked door confirming my suspicion that the weather outside had turned nasty since we'd gone down to the basement. Overhead, I heard the beams of the rectory creak, and desperately prayed that the spirits who had viciously messed with us multiple times in the past as we'd researched the history of the curse on the Simmons family weren't powerful enough to cause the entire building to collapse on us. Ironically, the only thing we had going in our favor if the spirits had resorted to manipulating the weather was that the rectory was a fairly new building, thanks entirely to Ann Simmons, Violet's grandmother. It had been built with donations she'd made to St. Monica's after the death of her wealthy husband, quite possibly as some kind of devious method of deferring money that she would have lost anyway if her husband's former business partner had been successful in suing her for half of the Simmons family construction fortune.

Swallowing and licking my lips, knowing that I was doomed if I lost my nerve or became so nervous that I lost my voice, I resumed the story without knowing for certain whether or not what I was attempting would actually work. There was no way to even be sure that the gun Mr. Simmons carried with him had bullets in it. "Mr. Simmons, kneeling at Mischa's ankles, knew that the moment had arrived when he had to take action. He reached for the gun that he carried tucked into the back of the waistband of his trousers."

My breath was ragged with fear as Mr. Simmons looked up at me in surprise from the opposite end of Mischa's reclined body in the dimly lit room. For a second, I felt like a gullible idiot for thinking that this harebrained scheme would actually work. As if telling a story about one person's death could actually make a person take actions they didn't necessarily want to take. As if I could will the future just by telling a story. My fingers had practically turned to ice pressed against Mischa's temples; I could feel her warm pulse beneath my fingertips. This was the moment when-if I survived this ordeal-everything I knew about myself to be true would change. Does anyone ever go back to feeling like themselves again after committing a murder? Would I ever be able to look my mother in the eye again after following through with this?

Laura, Henry, Violet and Trey gaped at me in confusion. I refused to make eye contact with any of them, knowing that I'd feel obligated to explain to them what was about to happen if I did. Beyond the walls of our room, the wind roared.

Not trusting my own words but knowing that it was far too late to turn back, I said with trembling lips, "He lifted the gun to his right temple and pressed the warm barrel against his skin." I expected that next he would aim his gun at me, but by some great miracle, he didn't.

"Don't do this, McKenna," he said in a voice loud and angry enough to make everyone but Mischa turn to see that he was holding the gun to his own head. His command reinforced my intention. Even seconds away from his own death, Michael Simmons was the kind of man who chose to try to exert non-existent power over a teenage girl he considered inferior to him rather than beg for his life. If anyone in the history of the world had ever deserved to die a gruesome and awful death, it was Violet and Trey's father. However, acknowledging that didn't comfort me at all.

The locked door rattled, which startled all of us. It sounded like someone was jiggling the handle in an attempt to break in from the hallway, but then I realized that it was wind pushing so hard on the door that the hinges were vibrating. There was no time to wonder how wind had managed to make its way in to the rectory basement. Perhaps one of the cellar windows outside of the secret room had broken. The wind's roar sounded like a voice as it bellowed into the secret room through the millimeters separating the door from the frame. The tongue of flame blazing on top of the black candle twisted and shrank, making me fear that at any second the wind might extinguish it, effectively interrupting our game. It cast wild, dancing shadows on the walls around us and on the pale faces of those kneeling around Mischa.

The whistle hanging from my neck whipped around in furious, clockwise circles. Mischa's eyes remained closed, suggesting that she was completely oblivious to everything unfolding in the room around her. She was in another state of consciousness with no idea how very much danger she was in. All eyes darted from Mr. Simmons to me. Panic was palpable in the air.

"McKenna, whatever you're doing-" Father Fahey cautioned, projecting his voice to be heard over the wind. He removed his right hand from underneath Mischa's feet to raise a hand with outstretched fingers at me in a motion that suggested I should stop and consider the consequences of my actions.

"No one move!" Laura barked. She urged me with her eyes to continue-

"And then Violet looked away and covered her eyes." I raised my trembling voice to be louder than anyone else who might try to interrupt the game. Sparing Violet from having to witness her father's death was the least I could do as she knelt inches away from him. She may have been a monster, but I wasn't. She looked at me, perplexed, before silently turning toward Trey and burying her face in the crook of her folded elbow.

"McKenna!" Mr. Simmons warned, gun still pointed at his head.

"Michael Simmons told his daughter with sincerity that he loved her and that he was sorry," I said, beginning to choke up.

"Violet, I love you more than anything else in this whole life, and I am so sorry for all of this," Mr. Simmons said. There was acceptance in his voice. I could tell that he understood exactly what was going to happen next, and that there was no point in fighting it. A whimper escaped from Violet but she didn't dare look up.

"He turned off the safety-"

His thumb flipped the hammer lock, turning off the pistol's safety mechanism. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Trey nod at me, communicating that he understood what needed to happen for the curse to truly be broken.

Then, I said the most important words of the morning, the words that I hoped would bring an end to this season of evil. "The curse on Mischa Portnoy transferred to Michael Simmons, and to bring an end to the curse his mother had cast upon his family, he pulled the trigger."

And Michael Simmons did pull the trigger. A deafening BOOM filled the small room. In a merciful fraction of a second, the bullet tore through Mr. Simmons' head and exited the other side, creating a hole in the wall of the secret room smaller than the circumference of a quarter.

At the very same moment, the door of blew in. It had broken free from its brass hinges and flew over our heads, crashing into the bookshelf along the far wall on the other side of the examining table. Gale force winds rushed into the room, carrying dead leaves and trash that looked as if it had blown in from the street. Our hair whipped around our faces. The force of the wind was so strong that it stole the breath from my lungs. When I did managed to inhale, the air was littered with particles of debris that tore at my throat and made me cough.

Although I didn't want to watch Mr. Simmons die, I also couldn't tear my eyes away, needing to see it for myself to believe it was actually happening. Thankfully, it was nowhere near as gory as the clenched muscles in my gut were expecting. Mr. Simmons locked eyes with me as he squeezed the trigger and even after the intruding bullet severed any thoughts running through his mind, those aquamarine Simmons eyes remained on me, simultaneously defiant and resigned, until moments later when his body slumped forward onto Mischa. Not even the impact of his heavy torso pulled her out of her deep sleep, which made me worried that perhaps I'd failed.

Through the open doorway, I saw that the rest of the rectory was simply gone. The roof must have blown off, and all that appeared to remain of the first floor were some jagged floorboards. The staircase we had just descended fifteen minutes earlier now led toward an overcast sky obscured by swirling leaves and sticks. Maybe a tornado had touched down in Weeping Willow, and maybe we were all lucky as hell to be alive.

Just then, I noticed that the fingers on Mr. Simmons' right hand, the hand he'd used to fire the gun, were wiggling. The game wasn't over, not yet, I realized with horror, and sputtered, "But the shot that Michael Simmons fired into his own head didn't kill him instantly. So Father Fahey grabbed the gun-"

With furious eyes, Father Fahey leaned forward and removed the gun from Mr. Simmons' hand. Thinking fast, knowing that if Father Fahey shot Mr. Simmons again where his body was positioned, there was a good chance Mischa would also be injured, Henry managed to flip Mr. Simmons' body over onto the floor using only one hand while his left hand remained in place under Mischa's leg. Violet's shoulders racked with sobs as she cried into her arm, still hiding her face. Father Fahey shook his head at me, begging me to say nothing more. "Please, McKenna. This is a mortal sin-"

"He aimed carefully to avoid hurting anyone else in the room because he knew that what he had to do was his obligation to his community. And Father Fahey shot Michael Simmons twice in the back to make sure that he was dead."

Bang. Bang. Mr. Simmons' body jerked on the ground both times as bullets entered his torso, and fell still in the way that only something lifeless can be.

Laura hoarsely whispered to me, "Finish it!"

It took me a second to realize what she meant: I had to finish the game. "Three days later after a police investigation, Michael Simmons was buried in Chicago alongside the bodies of his dead infant daughters. His body lay in its coffin, light as a feather, stiff as a board."

Without any prompting from me, Trey, Laura, and Henry moved over to Michael Simmons' body and slid their fingers beneath it. Realizing that as the storyteller I had to lift his body as well, I crawled over and placed my fingers under his head, feeling his slippery blood on my fingertips. "Light as feather, stiff as a board," Laura repeated, nodding at all of us emphatically to suggest we join her.

"Light as a feather, stiff as a board."

We didn't raise Mr. Simmons' body nearly as high as we'd raised Olivia's, Candace's, Mischa's, or even Violet's when we'd played the game a second time in January. We only managed to get his weightless body as high as our waists when a gust of wind blew out the flame atop the black candle. Laura dashed back to where Mischa lay on the ground and twisted the cap onto the bottle, capturing the evil that had run rampant across Weeping Willow for the last seventeen years.