It was a typical weeknight and me and my roommates were up studying and watching TV in our house off-campus. We only had about two weeks until finals and we all had decent grades, so the four of us were always serious about studying before midterms and finals. I’d been friends with Denny, Wade and Alton since high school. All of us were openly gay and it was the main reason why we were so close, because we were all too different to have a friendship based on anything else.
I was the laidback friend who was friends with everybody, including some of my homeboys’ enemies. Denny was the jokester of the group. He was always playing pranks on us and shit. Me and him had started fucking recently but Wade and Alton didn’t know. Wade was the pretty boy with the tattoos and the long braids. All the girls wanted him until he told them he was gay, and then they’d still try to change him and give him some pussy. Little did anyone know, he rarely hooked up with anybody. And Alton was the kindest and smartest one in our group. He had a 4.0 GPA and everything. He was always quiet and nonconfrontational, but always seemed to have a boyfriend around that bought him shit. I mean that nigga stayed booed up.
(from left to right): Me (Ced), Denny, Wade & Alton
So there we were, studying and watching TV when all of a sudden the cable went out. I turned the TV off and got back to studying with Denny sitting across from me. Under the table, he started playing with my feet with his. That usually meant he wanted to go to either his room or mine and fool around. I didn’t want Wade or Alton to get suspicious so I looked at him and shook my head no.
“Ced,” he said to me. “I need to ask you something in private.”
“Just ask me now,” I told him while giving him a look.
“Nah, it’s gotta be in private.”
Alton and Wade gave us some weird looks before putting their attentions back on their books. I stood up and followed Denny upstairs and into his messy room. He closed the door and started kissing and touching on me. I admit, he had me turned on. But I’d never fucked around with him while Alton and Wade were home.
“Chill,” I said to him while he squeezed on my butt. “We’re supposed to be keeping this secret, remember?”
“You got my dick so hard, baby,” he said while still squeezing on my butt. “Just let me finger you while I jack off. Or you can finger me while you give me some head. Shit, let’s just jackoff together right now. I need to bust a nut now, baby.”
“No. We need to study. We can do some shit after they go to sleep later.”
“Y’all come here!” Wade called out from the living room. Denny and I headed back downstairs to see Wade and Alton were lying on the floor.
“What’s going on?” Denny asked.
“I just learned some crazy shit about this house,” Wade replied. “Y’all know how this part of town used to be called Little Jamaica, right?”
“Yeah,” I answered. “What about it?”
“A dude died in this house,” he explained. “Like ten years before they gentrified this area, some homophobic Jamaican dudes tortured and killed this gay Jamaican dude here.” He scrolled through his phone and read more about the situation. “The dude they killed was into some crazy Voodoo type shit.”
“Man, that’s probably fake,” said Denny.
“It’s true,” Alton certified. “I’ve looked it up before. The gay guy was a known prostitute in the area. His name was Almani Breaux and he was lured to this house by the guys who lived here. They tricked him into thinking they’d pay him for letting them run a train on him and when he came inside, they attacked him.”
“Damn,” I said. “That’s messed up.”
“Do y’all think his spirit is still trapped in here?” Wade asked.
“Spirit?” Denny asked. “Man, that shit ain’t real.”
“No for real,” said Wade. “What if his spirit is trapped in this house? I have noticed some weird shit happening around here.”
“Y’all wanna make a trip to Wal-Mart?” I asked them.
“For what?” Denny asked me.
I smiled and replied, “To get a Ouija board.”
“Shit, I’m down for a Wal-Mart trip,” said Denny as he put his shoes on. “I’m bored as fuck.”
“Guys, this is silly,” said Alton. “There’s no such thing as spirits.”
“I’m bored, too,” said Wade. “You and Denny go get the Ouija board and me and Alton will set everything up here. I know Alton got some candles in his room.”
“Those are my romance candles for when I have company,” he said with an attitude. “I don’t wanna do this, y’all. Can’t we just play cards or something?”
“Come on, Alton,” I pleaded with him. “It’ll be fun. I promise.”
He shrugged his shoulders and said, “Whatever.”
Me and Denny left the house and climbed into Denny’s Honda Accord. He drove us to Wal-Mart and as usual, he was all over me because Alton and Wade weren’t there. I knew he probably considered himself my boyfriend but I wasn’t quite there yet. I cared about him because he was my friend but to me it was more of a convenient thing since our rooms were next to each other and he was vers like me.
“Here it is,” he called out to me. He picked up the Ouija board box.
“Cool,” I said. “Let’s buy it and get back.”
“Hold on. You don’t wanna fool around in my car before we go back?”
“Denny, we can get into some shit later. But it’s gonna be in my room. Your room smells like feet and ass.” I laughed and he smacked my butt as we left the toy section and headed to the checkout lines.
When we got back home, Wade had lit candles around the living room and had turned all the lights off. Alton was sitting on the sofa drinking a Pepsi as if he wasn’t interested in what we were about to do. Looking back, I should’ve listened to him. What we did that night will forever fuck with my mind. Wade, Denny and I sat down on the floor and took the Ouija board out of its box. I sat it down in the center of us.
“Come on, Alton,” said Wade. “All four of us need to do this.”
“I can’t believe y’all are being this silly,” he said as he climbed down from the sofa and joined us on the floor.
“Everyone, put your hands on the pointer,” I told them. The four of us put our hands on the pointer. “Okay, I’ll start by asking something simple.” I cleared my throat before asking, “Did a man named Almani Breaux exist in this neighborhood when it was Little Jamaica?”
The pointer moved to the circle with yes written on it. Alton sighed and said, “Ooh, you moved our hands, Ced.”
“No I didn’t,” I told him. “It moved on its own. Let me ask something else. Does…”
“Are Ced and Denny fucking?” Alton asked with a smile on his face. The pointer moved to the yes circle again. “I knew it! I knew I heard some moaning the other night in Denny’s room!”
“Y’all are fucking?” Wade asked with a big smile on his face.
“Yeah, we are,” Denny admitted. “We might as well be honest with them, baby.”
“Denny, we agreed not to say anything! Damn man, you are so fucking childish.” I took my hand off of the pointer and so did Denny.
“No, you’re not. You moved the pointer to the yes circle on purpose just so Alton and Wade could know we’ve been having sex. You’re not slick.”
“I really didn’t move it, Ced,” Denny told me.
“Guys!” Alton said louder, catching our attention. “The pointer is moving…by itself.”
I looked at it and saw it really was moving on its own. I grabbed my chest and asked, “How is it doing that?”
“That shit is cool,” said Wade. “What is it spelling out?”
“H-e-l-p,” Alton said as he read what the pointer was spelling out on the board. “M-e. Help me?”
“It’s Almani,” I said. “You guys, he needs our help.”
“Guys, we need to stop,” said Alton, visibly upset. “I don’t like this. It’s creeping me out.”
“We have to see how we can help him,” I said. “Come on y’all, let’s see if we can. Hands back on the pointer.” We all put our hands back on the pointer again.
“How can we help you?” Wade asked. The pointer moved with our hands on it and Wade spelled out the letters. “B-a-s-e-m-e-n-t. You’re trapped in the basement?” The pointer moved to the yes circle. “Guys, his spirit is trapped in the basement.”
“But how do we help you?” I asked. “O-p-e-n space t-h-e space i-n-c-i-n-e-r-a-t-o-r.”
“He wants us to open that old thing down in the basement?” Denny asked. “Why?”
“It must be where the Jamaican men who lived here burned his remains,” Wade suggested. “Come on y’all, let’s go down and do it.”
“Stop!” Alton hollered. “No, we are not doing this. This shit is too weird.”
“Alton, he suffered in this house,” I said. “He was killed by those thugs because he was gay. It’s not right. His spirit deserves to rest in peace.”
“Then let someone else free his ass! Ced, this shit doesn’t feel right! We don’t even know if…”
“I’m going down there,” said Wade.
“Wait for me,” I called out as I began to follow him, but Alton grabbed my arm.
“Ced, please don’t,” he pleaded with me.
“Stop being a baby, Alton. Come on.”
The four of us went into the kitchen and Wade grabbed a flashlight before leading us through the door that led to the basement. We went down the steps and when we got in there, he pulled the string that was attached to the basement light to turn it on. Over on the back wall was the old incinerator. The house had been remodeled so the incinerator no longer worked, but it did have a door on it that could be opened. Wade walked over to it and me and Denny followed. Alton stayed behind by the steps.
“Y’all ready?” Wade asked.
“Yeah,” answered Denny. “Let’s open it, bruh.”
Me, Denny and Wade put our hands on the long lever and pushed it up to unlock the door before opening it. The moment we opened it, we heard the sound of a grunt and felt a cool chill run in between us. That was followed by the sound of doors opening and closing upstairs. We ran out of the basement to see that everything was still how we’d left it. However, Wade’s phone screen was flashing for some reason. He ran over to it and picked it up.
“My phone,” he said while looking at it. “It’s back on the webpage I had up about Almani Breaux’s murder.” He read something on it and then gasped.
“What is it?” I asked. “Wade, what’s going on?”
“I didn’t read the whole story,” he explained. “Guys, Almani’s remains weren’t burned in the incinerator. Those homophobes who killed him kept his body intact and had it stored in the attic, not the basement.
“If that wasn’t him in the incinerator,” said Denny, “then who was?”
“Guys, the Ouija board is trippin’ again,” said Alton. “It’s spelling t-h-a-n-k space y-o-u.”
“Thanks for what?” Wade asked. “Who the fuck are you?”
The pointer was still for a little while and then spelled out L-u-c-i-f-e-r. I jumped back and asked, “The devil?” The pointer pointed at the yes circle.
“Oh fuck this,” said Alton. He picked up the Ouija board and headed into the kitchen with it. We followed him through the kitchen and out the side door to where our dumpster was. He tossed the board into the dumpster and then retreated back into the house. “We’re not messing with that thing anymore.”
“Yeah, that got weird,” said Denny.
“Maybe it was just rigged to do all of that,” suggested Wade.
“I’m going to bed,” said Alton. “Fuck all of this and goodnight.” He took the kitchen set of stairs to the second level of the house while me, Denny and Wade stayed in the kitchen.
“Do you really think it was fake?” I asked Wade.
“Yeah. I mean, it has to be. The devil isn’t real. Right?”
The three of us went back into the living room and blew out the candles. We then grabbed our stuff and went upstairs to our bedrooms. I was scared out of my mind so when Denny came into my room to sleep in my bed with me, I didn’t reject him. I needed somebody to sleep in the bed with me that night. With Denny holding me, I went to sleep.
When we woke up the next morning we went downstairs expecting Alton to be there cooking breakfast but the only person down there was Wade eating a bowl of Captain Crunch. I looked at him and asked, “Where’s Alton? He’s usually the first one up.”
“I know right,” agreed Denny. “Damn, I was looking forward to them cheese grits he always makes.”
“I think he’s still asleep,” Wade told us.
“It’s not like him to sleep in though,” I said.
The three of us looked at each other and then dashed upstairs. We first knocked on Alton’s door but when he didn’t answer, we opened it. The first thing that hit me was this very strong odor. I had no idea what it was but something told me it wasn’t good. The next thing I noticed was that the clothes Alton had on were lying on his bed as if he had been lying that exact same way on the bed. The third—and scariest—thing was that the Ouija board was at the foot of his bed.
“Alton?” Wade called out as he opened Alton’s closet door. “Man, this ain’t funny. What’s going on here?”
“What is that smell?” I asked.
“Sulfur,” Denny told me. “My dad used to work at a place that used it in fertilizers. It’s sulfur.”
“Why is the Ouija board on his bed?” Wade asked. “He threw it out last night before he went to bed. How did it get back in the house and up here?”
“Oh fuck,” said Denny, pointing at the board.
The pointer was moving by itself again. It kept spelling out thank you over and over again. I moved closer to it and asked, “Thanks for what?” It spelled out: G-i-v-i-n-g space m-e space y-o-u-r space f-r-i-e-n-d.
Wade asked, “You have Alton?” The pointer pointed to the yes circle. It then spelled out: H-i-s space s-o-u-l space i-s space m-i-n-e.
The three of us looked at each other before running out of Alton’s room and leaving the house. We called the police and when they got there, they thought we were playing around. It wasn’t until a day later that they began to take us seriously and began searching for Alton. Sadly, they never found him. We never saw Alton again. We tried using the Ouija board to get him back but it never moved on its own again. The police closed Alton’s case and told his family that Alton most likely ran away with some guy that none of us knew about. But me, Wade and Denny knew the truth. The devil got him.
I blamed myself because it was my idea to get that stupid Ouija board in the first place. I should’ve never suggested it. And Alton begged me not to that night and I just kept on going. When our lease was up, we left that house and lived on-campus for our last year. Eventually, we all stopped talking to each other. I’m currently still in counseling trying to make sense of what happened. But it will never make sense to anyone. All I can say is that the devil is very real, and I wish I never let him take my friend.
[Disclaimer]: Pictures used do not reflect the sexuality or personality of people in the pictures. They only serve as visual examples of the characters.
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