“Yeah, of course I can come!” I replied to Tina.

“Great. Tonight will the world’s greatest birthday ever.” She said it with conviction, a smile spreading across her features.

Tina, Amanda and I were probably three of the world’s greatest best friends. I don’t think we ever fought, and I can’t remember a single time we had ever left each other out in anything. Even at school, with “partner projects” we would manage to get the teacher to let us work in a threesome. Amanda at the moment hadn’t arrived at school yet, but Tina and I as usual stood by the entrance waiting for her

I looked worriedly at my watch. “D’you think she’s ok?” I asked Tina. Amanda was usually the one who was always on time. She was the common sense of our friendship. Tina was the extravagant, party lover, and I was sort of the in between.

Tina gave me a worried look, her blue eyes worried. “I don’t know I hope she’s not sick…” She pushed her pale hair away from her face, and adjusted her backpack as the bell rang.

“I guess we should go in then…right?” I said, turning to go in the building. Tina reluctantly followed me, brightening up as we began to talk about what we were going to do that night.

Tina suddenly elbowed me, making me swerve across the hall as she said, “You know tonight’s the thirteenth? We have got to do something!”

“Duh Tina, it’s your birthday, of course we’re doing something!” I told her, exasperated.

“Nonono,” she said, pulling me into our first class. “I mean, it’s Friday the thirteenth. We’ve got to do a superstition. Mom already told me she didn’t care if we stayed up late. I bet we could sneak out…” She trailed off and slid in her seat, eyeing me.

I shook my head, but grinned agreeably. Tina would try anything once, and of course Amanda and I always went along with her. She began to speak again, but was shushed by the teacher as she began class, with still no sign of Amanda.

* * * * *

I reached for the doorbell, and pressed it again impatiently, leaning against the wall, and knocking. It was finally pulled open, by Tina’s flushed face.

“Oh, good, you’re here. Come in, toss your stuff in my room. Amanda called, she’s been sick all day, and still isn’t better.” Tina said, shutting the door behind me and following me to her room.

“That’s kind of freaky...” I said, dropping my bag by her bed, and sitting on it to take off my shoes. I pushed my short hair behind me ears, and looked up at her. “Don’t you think?”

Tina was staring out her window, and obviously hadn’t heard me. She turned suddenly, and fixed her blue eyes on me. “We’re still going to go do something right? I heard of something we can do, but we have to wait until midnight.”

“Sure,” I responded, kicking off my other shoe.

Tina sighed, “Good.”

We had coke and cake and ice cream, and did all the normal birthday rituals of singing and games. Her parents finally left us alone around ten, and we flopped down in her living room to watch a movie. I was half asleep when it was over, but Tina was still wide awake. She flipped on a lamp, and whispered to me.

“Come on, let’s go get the stuff we’ll need.” She padded silently into the kitchen on stocking feet, and I reluctantly got up out of my pile of warm blankets to follow her.

We piled into a backpack two of the glass coke bottles and a t-shirt to keep it all from clanking together and making a lot of noise. We each grabbed a flashlight out of the cupboard, and I put on my shoes while Tina checked to see if her parents were asleep. I checked my watch. Ten minutes until midnight.

“Let’s go.” Tina hissed, easing the backdoor open silently. She shut it behind her and whispered, “Don’t turn on your flashlight until we get to the street.” She led the way around her house and down to the road, where we flicked our flashlights on. Their warm flood of yellow light eased my nerves somewhat. In the dark around our flashlight beams, everything was sinister and black, despite the round moon that shone down on us.

We walked for more than five minutes, out of her neighborhood and going down an isolated gravel road when Tina grabbed my arm. “That’s it!” She whispered. Around the bend a small, weather worn unused church came into view beyond the trees. Its wooden sides were gray with age, and even the peelings of paint gave no color. It must have been there for almost a hundred years, if not more. It doorless entry gaped at us and made me shiver. The small lot around it was gravel, and our feet crunched through it, making more noise than I thought humanly possible.

I checked my watch again, two minutes until midnight. Tina set down the backpack, and we took out our bottles and walked to the side of the church. It was eerily silent, and the trees seemed to press on from all the sides as we clicked our flashlights off, and set them beside us.

We both grasped our bottles firmly, me by the neck, and Tina by the bottom. She had explained it earlier, what we were going to do, and what was supposedly supposed to happen. I looked at my watch, and began to count down.

“Five, four, three, two, and one.” We hurled our bottles at the wall, and shielded our eyes as the shattering glass pelted backwards at us from impact. I felt a few pieces rain on me, and I looked at Tina. The tinkle of broken glass died away, and she grinned, “I guess that superstition wasn’t true…” She picked her flashlight back up, but a sound made her pause, and me go numb: a low sinister, and barely intelligible laughter that seemed to come from the Earth itself. A moment later, there was another sound, and my wide eyes locked on Tina’s as the sound continued, a sound like the Earth was breaking in two.

“Tina…” My voice trembled as I straightened up.

“Did you hear that?” She asked, her voice as scared as mine. She straightened suddenly, flicking on her flashlight, the warm flood of its light creating a pool of light around us. “It was probably just our imaginations, I mean, this stuff never comes true.” She turned around, but a metallic sound made her look down.

One of the bottles rolled across the pavement, still whole, and came to rest just beside my foot. The only problem was whose bottle was it? I began to shake. “Tina…this isn’t supposed to be happening…” I pleaded with her, ready for her to break out laughing at a practical joke she had just played, but her face was deathly white, and her eyes were focused at something beyond me.

The flashlight beam went out.

I slowly turned around, afraid to open my eyes, but more afraid of keeping them shut. It was Tina’s scream that made my eyes fly open – and instantly I wished I had not.

The thing, it wasn’t quite human, yet neither alien, was worse than death itself, worse than even I had ever pictured.

His skin was the color of dried blood, so black it made my eyes hurt just to look upon him. His eyes were diminutive slits, with burning red centers, narrowed in hate and damnation. His nose was flat and his mouth strange, for though it had no lips, when it parted a great cavernous black hole showed filled with fire, like that which burned behind his eyes, hotter than the fires of Hell. He reeked of wrongness. He wasn’t supposed to be here.

His voice rasped like stone against stone, but its power and presence didn’t go unfelt. Each word felt like a blow upon my mind rather than my body. “Thank you.” His voice scraped against his throat. His words left a sulfurous scent in the night air. “It has been so long, and finally, someone let me out of my prison. That person shall have to be rewarded.” His eyes focused on me, and I couldn’t shut mine, couldn’t shut out the voice, and couldn’t move.

I finally regained enough control to glance at Tina, but her eyes were locked on the demon creature, her face whiter than the hair that hung askew around it. She clutched the flashlight with both shaking white knuckled hands.

His voice slurred on, still deadly, and I realized it was talking to me. “…was you!” It was staring at my hands now.

For the first time, I noticed the cold glass that was clutched between my hands. When had I picked that up?

“You let me out, you are…” His voice trailed off and he said something in another language that was more smoke than words that left a chill dread on my heart. I didn’t hear anything else he had to say, something was going on much more important. The bottle in my hands slowly turned a white red-hot, like someone had stuck it in a fire. My hands began to burn, and I screamed as I tried to drop it, but it wouldn’t – I couldn’t move my hands. I barely realized I was still screaming, and that tears were falling down my cheeks in pain, steaming where they fell on the bottle.

Something inside me burst, and my voice grew desperate. I felt it inside of me. I didn’t notice myself twitch convulsively, nor the hoarse tone my voice took as I screamed for Tina to help me. Something inside me, my soul, felt like it had been dipped in poison, and then set afire. I felt myself loosing consciousness. Only then did it suddenly stop. I found my face wet with pain-tears, and my voice scratchy from screaming.

“Help me!” I screamed at Tina, who still seemed paralyzed to the ground. I felt myself take steps toward the creature, heard his cruel crackling laughter in my ears, and try as I might, nothing stopped my progress. I could make out a little of what was behind the thing, before he stepped forward and blocked my vision.

Behind him a greenish fog hung through the trees. In a small pocket where the trees indented, a spiral staircase rose out of the ground. It seemed to be constructed out of some kind of black iron, with ornate and sinister designed wielded into its bars. The stairs spirals downward into the Earth, fog trickling on their expanse, revealing it to be littered with something too close to human bones, and things to inhumane that I even guessed were possible.

Suddenly the world was still again, and I no longer moved forward.

“Come with me…” the thing purred, and like a puppet on strings, I followed it nearer.

“No! Stay back, leave her alone!” Tina suddenly cried, running toward us.

“Tina!” I managed to get out, but it was barely a whisper in my ears. “The…” The creatures made my mouth close before I could finish, and I found myself once more inch by inch moving toward him.

I didn’t want to go, but it made me. The only thought I could get to go through my mind was no, I don’t want to go. Leave me alone, let me go. Then suddenly, it just burst out of me. “No!”

The creature took a step closer to me, and though I could control my voice, I couldn’t step back. “What was that?” It hissed, its eyes holding mine.

“No.” I replied, more calmly, now that I had control of myself somewhat.

“Never. Say. No. To. Me!” It shouted at my face. The smell of its hot and smoky breath made me cough. Suddenly a long, whip-like piece of fire appeared in one of its hands. “Now. Come.” It snapped the whip in the air and it left a white hot ghost in the air behind it.

I shuddered.

“Come…” It hissed.

Suddenly Tina was at my side.

I tried to tell her something, I tried to speak, but I couldn’t even get spit to come to my mouth, or my lips to word anything. It once more had control of me! I tried to hand the no longer hot bottle to Tina, but my arms wouldn’t work either. I got a small grunt out, and Tina looked at me, her face paler than chalk, and more afraid than ever.

Her eyes went to the bottle, and I felt my hands twitch as I tried to get them to move, and then suddenly, Tina turned and walked away. The demon creature laughed, dancing his puppet toward death. My eyes widened, what? No! Don’t leave me! I screamed to Tina silently.

Suddenly something slammed into me from behind, and I flew across the gravel, and slammed into it, and felt it tear across my face and skin.

The demon turned around, its face full of surprise, but the momentary release on its influence gave me enough time to do what I needed to do. I raised the bottle up, my eyes on the demon’s, and slammed it as hard as I could on the gravel, feeling it shatter beneath my already scraped hand.

I screamed once more, as pain shot through my body, and the world dissolved to blackness around me.

* * * * *

I found myself blinking, groaning as a dark face bent over me.

“Are you ok?” Tina’s voice swam through my muddled brain to comprehension.

I slowly sat up, “I think so…” Wincing, I brushed off my shirt, first noticing the state of my hands, and then the state of the rest of me. I was covered in dust, gravel, glass and blood. “Is…it gone?” I asked, looking around. Tina had once more turned her flashlight on, and was shining it around nervously.

“I think so…” she said shakily, helping me to stand up.

I continued to look around, eyeing the place where the stairs had been. “Where’d the stair go?” I asked her.

“I don’t know…” she said slowly, “I was knocked out, same as you. Want me to go look?” She asked.

“No!” I found myself still whispering in the pale light. Talking out loud seemed to bold for the occasion. “Let’s just go back to your house.” I said, checking my watch. It was frozen on twelve a.m. I gulped, and started toward the road.

Then, a low sinister laughter filled our ears, and I glanced at Tina. Simultaneously we both took off sprinting for her house. At the edge of the parking lot, I remembered her bag, and I took a glance behind me, instantly turning around and going even faster.

Beside where the stairs had been now stood a ghostly figure, gesturing to the stairs, his voice within my mind as much as my ears. “You won’t forget…” He said.

It had taken us almost ten whole minutes to reach that church, and I think it took us barely a minute to get back. We slammed the door behind us, and locked it. We nearly fell onto her couch, just as her mom’s voice came from down the hall.

“Tina? Is that you?”

Tina took a deep breath to steady her voice, before replying, “Yeah mom, everything’s fine.” The look she gave me though said that nothing was ok.

“I wish we were dreaming…” I said. “But I know we’re not…I can still…feel him…inside me…” I gave up at trying to explain it, but Tina nodded.

“You know we can’t tell my parents or anybody about this.” She said, and then managed to give some semblance of a smile. “Not that they would believe us anyway.”

I nodded my agreement. “But tomorrow we have to go back.” I told her, and she just nodded, not bothering to argue.

* * * * *

The next morning, we hung around her house, procrastinating before we finally managed to gather enough courage to make ourselves walk back down there.

The church looked much less forbidding in the flooding morning light; it looked more like the quaint little country church it used to be. However, in the middle of the gravel lot, glinting in the light was glass, and more was beside the church. Around one bottle’s remains, the gravel looked a little charred, but I didn’t walk over to find out for sure.

Tina found the bag we had used the night before, picked it up and slung it over a shoulder, before looking to me. “You ready?”

I shook my head and walked out toward the trees. There was a sunken spot where the stair case had been, and a faint reek of smoke reached my nose and made my head reel.

Suddenly a soft laughter filled my mind, and I wheeled around, expecting to see the demon, but only Tina was there, watching me.

“Did you hear that?” I asked her.

She eyed me, making sure I wasn’t playing a joke on her. “No…” she said, “Are you ready to go now?” Obviously she didn’t want to hang around her more than I did.

I shrugged, and began walking toward her. “Sure.” I said, ready to get away.

The strange laughter continued, and I knew Tina couldn’t hear it now.

A voice protruded into my mind, “Only you will remember…”