Séance, Part One

“This all happened four years ago.” Marcus Keene was in his 20s, African American, with a short beard and a small gold ring in his left ear. “In college. The U of C.”

I nodded. We were talking via Skype, in the office I share with my girlfriend Rachel in our apartment. I was doing a lot of that these days, with social distancing and all. A lot of people did, even private detectives like me. “What can I do for you?”

“It was this party. Late at night, lots of wine and weed. Just a few of us friends, five or six, in Charmaine’s apartment. Midnight, one or so? We, uh . . .” He hesitated. “Figured a séance would be fun. You know about that stuff, right?”

All too well. My work as a P.I., like my former job as a reporter, has brought me into contact with all kinds of supernatural occurrences and beings. I’d gotten a reputation for it—and clients to match. “Go ahead.”

“Anyway, it was just a goof at first. We talked to Warren’s grandmother. She told him—it was Natalie talking—that he was embarrassing the family by studying English. We laughed, but Warren got mad. But there was no way—I mean, his grandparents really wanted him to go into law, like his mother. But there was no way Nat could have known about that.” 

Marcus shook his head. “Anyway, we went on. It got a little silly. They were just pretending to talk to the dead, making stuff up. Like Anis was being Abraham Lincoln and talking about killing vampires, like in that movie?” He laughed. “But then something—the candle flickered, and it went out and then it started burning again. And Charmaine was . . . crazy.”

He rubbed his forehead and took a gulp of water from a nearby bottle. “She said her name was Azar, and she came from hell. And now that she was out, she was going to kill all of us.”

Marcus shuddered. “We freaked. Warren blew out the candle and turned on the lights, and Natalie slapped Charmaine’s face. Hard. Then she started having a seizure. We were all set to call 911 when she snapped out of it. She didn’t remember anything. It was—weird.”

“I’m sure it was.” I’d encountered my share of demons from hell and other dimensions. I sipped some water myself.

“We all went home and forgot about it.” Marcus sighed. “I didn’t even think about it at all. Until the other day.”

“Did something happen?”

“Yeah.” He took a deep breath. “Warren sent me an email. Charmaine—she killed her boyfriend. And then she killed herself. But before that, she wrote the word ‘Azar’ on the wall. In blood.”