I saw my first demon at a Halloween party. To be honest, I don’t even remember whose party it was—possibly Lola’s. Someone who lived in the rich part of the neighbourhood—I remember there being a freaking balcony. I remember falling off that balcony and almost breaking my arm.
I remember laughter, followed by screaming.
It took me weeks to put together what happened before, and it began, would you believe, with an Ouija board.
Yeah, such a horror-story cliché. Not like I believed in that kind of crap then, anyway. All I wanted was a good dance, a drink or two, and maybe kiss one of the cute guys who were checking me out in the ridiculously short dress I’d worn as part of my witch costume. Technically, it was a kid’s Halloween costume, but no one had to know that. I’m short and skinny, and it showed off my legs, which was the plan. Alcohol, loud music, and unruly dancing were the recipe for a perfect night out.
Except the power cut had to ruin everything. Ten minutes in, all the lights blew out, and the music blaring from the iPod speakers died out with an ominous sparking sound. Hell, that was a horror-story cliché, too.
When the lights went out, the living room was full of noise and people running about, knocking over paper cups of cheap wine and bumping into each other, when Lola yelled at us to shut the hell up.
“I’ve got an idea!” she said, holding a light up to her face that cast shadows across her face until she looked like a ghost. “How about we try and contact someone from the other side?”
She shone the light over an old wooden board with the alphabet on it, along with a few words. At the bottom, it read “Good-Bye”.
I groaned, turning to Bethany, my best friend, who’d been the one to drag me to the party in the first place. I didn’t even really know Lola that well.
“Seriously?”
“Hell, yeah,” Bethany said. “I always wanted to try one of these.”
Everyone else agreed. I suppose there really wasn’t much else to do but wait for the lights to come back on. In the meantime, make contact with the Other Side.
Ha.
“There’s more room upstairs!” Lola called, and the rest of us—thirty-odd half-drunk strangers and friends of mine—stumbled upstairs after her, following the torchlight into her bedroom.
Even with the power out, I was still impressed by the size of her room—she had a four-poster bed, for God’s sake, and what looked like the entire window display at TopShop. The curtains were open over the glass doors to the balcony outside, allowing the moonlight to shine on the wooden board as she set it up on the ridiculously plush carpet. We all gathered around her, eager whispers and drunken laughter filling the air.
Lola moved the cursor over several letters, spelling out something like, “Is there anyone there?”
Yeah, like dead people were just hanging about waiting to have a conversation. But hell, what did I know? This whole mess taught me nothing about life after death—just that life’s too short to worry about it. Of course, back then, I had no idea. I was actually entertaining the idea that it would be kind of cool to have a conversation with my dead granddad again. Not that I thought he’d actually show.
I sure as hell wasn’t expecting the demon.
As Lola’s hands moved over the letters, a chill began to creep up my arms, like from an open window. I rubbed the goose-bumps, feeling the chill slowly work its way over my skin, like dipping toes into ice-cold water. And—I don’t know why—but I lifted my head to look out at the balcony.
Darkness obscured everything, creeping over the balcony like unnatural fog. The chill settled at the base of my spine, and my vision wavered as I stared unblinkingly at the blackness spreading across the balcony. I found myself looking into a pair of cat-like eyes, suspended in the darkness.
My hand jumped to my mouth, my heartbeat loud in my ears. I glanced from side to side to see if anyone else had noticed, but everyone else was fixated on the Ouija board. Like anything that said could be as scary as what I was looking at.
Blink. They were still there. No body, no face—just eyes. The sense of being watched by something otherworldly chilled me to the core.
The eyes shifted, and the shadows crept forward from the balcony into the room. The eyes remained fixed on me, but I still couldn’t make out what they belonged to. A horrible feeling started to nag the corner of my mind, though I didn’t know where it came from—the idea that the eyes belonged to the darkness itself.
All common sense deserted me. The sounds of the others giggling over the Ouija board were distant, muffled, like I had cotton wool in my ears. I was the only one who’d seen the eyes, and I couldn’t say a word.
Instead, I screamed.
Everyone’s gaze turned to me. I jumped up, stumbling around over people sitting in the dark, glancing everywhere for the door. Another wave of panic rose, the last bit of sanity departed, and I found myself running toward the darkness. Out, onto the balcony.
Blackness swallowed me whole. I couldn’t see a thing—not even my own outstretched arms. Whispers sounded in my ears, and I felt the presence of that awful creature, though I could no longer see it. I ran blindly through the pitch-black shadows, hit something solid, and fell.
I wish I could say I lost consciousness right away. But as I lay sprawled in Lola’s manicured garden hedge, a sharp pain in my arm, I heard cold, inhuman laughter above me.
Then I passed out.
Mum and Dad took me to the hospital, where, after a long wait for the X-ray, I found out I was lucky and had only sprained my arm, not broken it. I sure as hell didn’t feel lucky. For one thing, Bethany hadn’t even accompanied me to the hospital. For another, I was fairly sure I’d gone insane.
When I got home, I braced myself for the talk about drinking responsibly—even though I’d only had a couple of vodka and cokes—or I don’t know, about not using hallucinogens. But that wasn’t the talk I got.
Instead, my world flipped upside-down, and they started talking about dark spaces and demons and a place called the Darkworld. And magic. I think I laughed at that point. Who wouldn’t? This whole thing was insane. Maybe we all needed our heads examined.
But it went on and on. My sane, rational mother and father told me in detail about an organization called the Venantium, who policed magic-users and were responsible for hunting down demons, like the one I’d seen. Yeah, the Venantium. Lame-ass title, if you ask me, but those guys lived five hundred years in the past, or so Mum and Dad said. They went on and on about this Barrier between our world and the Darkworld, which was the reason the demon hadn’t been able to hurt me. But now, I was—get this—a sorceress. I had the power to summon demons myself. Imagine! Of course, that was a very bad idea. No shit. The Venantium would have me arrested, if the demon didn’t kill me first.
I’m pretty sure I went semi-hysterical at that point. What can I say? It’s hard to wrap your head around stuff like that. Learning my sensible, normal former-lawyer parents actually used to hunt down supernatural monsters that could kill without touching, that wanted nothing more than a human life force to feed on and a body to use as a puppet… yeah, that can kind of screw a person up.
It took a while to get used to my new status as a sorceress. Meaning: freak.
Not that anyone actually called me that to my face, but I saw the raised eyebrows when I passed people in the corridors at school, and imagined how things had played out after I’d been carted off to hospital at the party. Jumping off a balcony tended to get rumours flowing, even with less than a term left before starting university and those scary life decisions banging on the door.
Did we have career talks at home? Hell, no. Instead, my parents decided to lecture me on how my new Freak Status would mean a change of career plans.
“We didn’t want to say before, in case you turned out not to be able to see the demons. It’s always a possibility.” Mum’s calm demeanour was kind of undermined by the outlandish nonsense coming from her mouth.
“Well, thanks for keeping me in the dark.” I’d decided to go with the ‘play along’ approach. I sat in the well-worn living room chair, Charley, our dog, sniffing around my ankles. “So, you think you get to decide my future?”
“We’re thinking of your safety, Claudia,” said Dad. “We made enemies in the time we worked for the Venantium, and I don’t feel comfortable with you leaving home with no knowledge of how to control your powers.”
I burst out laughing. “Powers. Right. So, I need to buy a magic wand? Is there like a Hogwarts for uni students?”
“Claudia,” said Mum. “We’re only looking out for you. In Blackstone, there will be other people like you. The Venantium themselves live there. It’s up to you if you want to join, of course, but—”
“Secret society? Sign me up.” I stopped laughing as, not for the first time, the very real implications of that sank in. “Seriously, though. It’s my life. It’s not yours to control. Or theirs, whoever the hell they are. They sound like crazy cultists.”
A secret group that tried to get every magic-user to register with them so they could make them do whatever they wanted? Ugh.
“Not happening,” I said. “I’m not letting anyone mess with my life.”
“I thought you were undecided on where to go?” said Dad.
“Yeah, but I want the choice. Besides, I don’t know anything about this Blackstone place.”
Honestly, university was university. I wanted the experience more than anything, and I didn’t much care where I went as long as it wasn’t here. Any generic arts course at any university suited me just fine. But the idea of following in my parents’ footsteps left a bad taste in my mouth. Stupid, really, given that I could see freaking demons.
Yeah. Maybe I should go to the no-demon zone.
The careers advisor at school was no help, telling me to follow my interests. Well, I liked parties and listening to music, and that was about it. Look, most eighteen-year-olds haven’t won prizes or played sports on a national level or reached Grade Eight cello. I’m not on the “Gifted and Talented” list. Teachers are lucky if I don’t sleep through their lessons. I’m no role model. Maybe I could teach, but little kids annoy me.
“Claudia, we can’t help you if you don’t help yourself. It’s your choice,” said the careers advisor, who’d also confided to me that she’d originally wanted to go to drama school, but instead had ended up coming back to advise us on our future decisions. Oh, irony is a bitch.
In the end, I dithered right up until the last minute. I had five options on my form, so I put down five different courses at five different universities—arts, media, film production, drama. And then I waited, deciding to let my grades make the decision for me. Only Blackstone offered me a place on their Media Studies course—and they had so few applications that they accepted practically anyone.
“You can reapply, if you don’t want to go there,” Mum said, when I told her.
Staying at home and taking a gap year didn’t appeal. Stay home and do what? I couldn’t afford to travel, and most places weren’t hiring. Another year at home with my parents on my back and demons appearing at every corner? No thanks.
So, there was only one option, really.
I make a habit of reinventing myself every year, partly out of curiosity, partly from boredom. One year, I was the smart-alec, foul-mouthed, talking back to the teachers, not giving a shit. The next year, I was the nerdy girl with braces and a pen tucked behind her ear. For a while, I was the sulky emo kid sitting in the corner wearing way too much eye make-up—and coming from me, that’s saying something. It was entertaining to see people’s reactions when I show up dressed completely differently than before, acting like someone else had taken over my mind and given me a totally new personality.
But that wasn’t true. Not even now. See, despite all the disguises and stupid trends, I always had Bethany. Through primary and secondary school we were BFFs, and even though my parents said things would change when we got older, they never did. At least until we started applying to university. We promised to keep in touch, meet up in the holidays, yada yada. It seems so stupid now, but back then, the idea of being thrown to opposite sides of the country was the worst thing that could happen.
Yeah. Naïve much? Turned out she wanted a new start at university, and ditched all her old friends. Even me. I spent the summer alone, waiting on my stupid application form. And now, I was going to be a stranger in a place no one knew who I was.
In the end, I decided I preferred being the happy-go-lucky party girl.
I wasn’t going to be the freak.
