I was extremely apprehensive about revealing this horrible element from my past, but I must tell the world because it is killing me inside. Halloween is upon us and is the perfect time. I am deeply ashamed of what happened that night, when my friends and I gathered for something that scorched lacerations of blackened hellishness within the very fiber of our hearts.

We gathered one Autumn evening for a seance. We were very ignorant youngsters who had no idea the wicked power of evil. On that night, I tasted the dark angels vile breath as condensation from his thickly humid exhalations, moistened my face in putrid stink.

My friend Alicia had a friend who had recently died. She had the brilliant idea that it was easier to channel a fresh soul. Looking back, it was the worst decision she ever made. We lit a candle to sit in the center of the floor. We didn’t realize that the colour of the candle would have an impact on the seance. It was a massive, solid black candle.

Alicia, Roy, James, Julie, John and myself joined hands around the burning candle as we fell into a trance – dreaming of her dead friend, Theresa. James whimpered,”She’s here, between me and Alicia.”

It was then I saw the hospital room she died in. It was cold, lonely and filled with pain. We all sat around the candle joining hands and eyes closed. I became frightened…chills slithered across my skin as John said, “She touched my cheek, with her dead finger.”

Though it was warm in the dark room, a frigid breeze of icy air shrouded us in nightmarish exhalations, a stench of deadness. Alicia and Julie began crying as fear gnawed it’s vicious fangs into our souls. We all sobbed uncontrollably. We were frightened beyond anything I had ever known. It was clear that a presence was in the room, but it wasn’t Theresa.

I opened my eyes and noticed the candle was no longer burning. It was then I saw him. A silvery sheen glistened upon his glassy skin and I saw clearly defined, a naked woman from a twisted perspective as if I were looking through a bending liquid lens. The breasts folded back as the body morphed into a head with scarlet tongue, blood drizzling from his mouth.

He turned, looked into my eyes and hot breath, the sweetened stink of rotting carcasses filled my senses – I vomited grasping for breath, then passed out.

When I awakened I saw my friend James kneeling down behind Julie, holding his razor sharp machete to her throat. “James…stop!” I screamed.

It was too late. He powerfully torqued the razor into her neck as a perfectly straight, iron bar of black blood spurted from her jugular. Around six feet out, it angled at a perfect 90 degree angle, splattering across the wall – sheathing me in liquid death. Again I retched, gagging on gelatinous, fleshy chunks of putrid rot. Suddenly, the lights in the room came back on, revealing James, John and myself as the only still alive. John sat, shivering in terror, tears raining down his twitching cheeks.

I was drawn to Julie’s dead body. Her dead flesh called out to me, enticing me with it’s wondrous aroma. Overtaken by macabre romanticism, I wanted to make love to the pool of blood and taste the acrid morbidity of Satan’s breath once more.

James and I fed on Julie’s blood, licking it from her milky, dead skin. Swirling her coagulated fluids, twirling her forbidden flavour, our feast of crimson nectar filling our bellies. I turned, looking at John, waiting for him to join in. PAIN! I felt a cold steel blade firmly nestled on my throat, the wicked silver beast crouched behind me, reflected from a mirror across the room.

I erupted into consciousness, I had been dreaming. Everyone else was asleep as the black candle was still burning, but almost finished. It had been six hours since the seance started! I left the house before they awakened and didn’t see any of them for weeks.

Throughout the years, each of us have talked the dreams we had that night – though we all, wish we could forget…

It took a lot for me to write this and get it out. Please, never try to channel someone with a black candle. It was the last seance I will ever participate in.

Happy Halloween

Tags: fiction, horror, short-story