The contact

“Dan! Hey Dan! What are you doing? Where are you going in such a hurry?”

Dan paid absolutely no attention to the voice he heard. At that moment, he felt utterly miserable. All he wanted at that moment was to return to his room, to drink something with a high alcohol content, and to disappear from the entire world. He would burst to tears at that instant, if he didn’t dread the relentless torment he would receive from the other boys in the school for the entirety of the remaining school year.

That bitch… I can’t believe she treated me like this! was the phrase he kept repeating to himself.

A little voice inside him objected that it wasn’t her fault, but rather his. He was a complete fool for nurturing hope for this affair. During your juvenile years, it doesn’t matter to others if you are the smartest person in your class, with the ability to come up with a solution to any mathematical problem before your classmates have even started to work on it.

No. What matters is a nice physique, sociability and the attitude with which you treat others around you. It’s normal for a dumb athlete to be treated better than a fat, scruffy and antisocial genius. So, he should have known that something was wrong when his beautiful, social classmate started to show interest towards him and began efforts to approach him. She asked to sit in the same desk with him. She started returning home with him. She asked whether he would like to go out with her one of the afternoons. He should have imagined that it was impossible for this particular girl to become attracted to his excessive weight and even more excessive shyness.

And, as was proved earlier that day, she wasn’t attracted by all these qualities of his. These things happen in films only, never in real life. That morning, he had discovered that the only reason that particular girl did what she did, was to invoke emotions of jealousy to her ex boyfriend.

The problem was that before he discovered this, he had fallen in love with her.

Earlier that Friday morning, he had summoned all of his courage, so as to confess his feelings to her. Her reaction to this was to laugh to his face.

“You? I see you as my brother!” was all she managed to say during a small break in her laughter.

Two breaks later, he got a glimpse of her and her boyfriend making out and then moving towards a remote area in the school grounds. Apparently, her efforts have proven successful.

He didn’t remember ever feeling so awful like he did at that time. He barely managed to stay in the school till the end of the classes. When the bell rang, he took his things and immediately left the school. He walked for a while, until he decided that he didn’t want to wander aimlessly around. Maybe it would be better if he returned to his house.

He walked with a quick pace, without really looking at the area around him. He crossed a street without noticing that the red light for pedestrians was on. He almost got hit by a car, but the driver swerved and managed to avoid him in the last instant. It stopped a few meters down the road. The driver rolled his windows down and started to shout something. The tone of his voice indicated to Dan that he was swearing, but he didn’t pay attention. He didn’t care in the least. Keeping his head down, he continued walking toward his house.

Ten minutes later, he crossed his home’s yard. The walking had made him very hot and sweaty. The day was sunny and warm, the normal weather for late May. The dark clothes he was accustomed to wearing, made his sweating even worse. His t – shirt was completely wet all over his chest and back.

He entered the house, went straight to his own room and fell heavily on his bed. He didn’t take off his wet clothes. If his mother saw him in this state, she’d definitely scold and nag him, till he put something dry on.

However, his parents weren’t there. They had left earlier that day, in order to spend the weekend in his grandmother’s village, one hundred and fifty miles away. Dan had stubbornly refused to follow them to a place where the existence of electricity was considered high technology. He couldn’t stay in a house without a decent Internet connection, and he also couldn’t take his computer and games with him.

In the end, he decided that returning to an empty house that day was most fortunate. His father would probably find the excuse to start lecturing him again about how he should start acting like a man, now that he had passed seventeen. His sisters too would take the opportunity to start mocking and tormenting him.

The last things Dan needed at that instant, were lectures and mockery. He felt ready to start crying again, from the bitterness that was drowning him.

Shit, I won’t do it. It isn’t worth it! He forced himself and suppressed the tears. He thought about starting his computer and spending some time with the new computer game that he bought the other day, but he rejected this idea.

Maybe I should train a bit. On Wednesday, that idiot buff classmate of mine was talking about how training will release substances in your brain that improves your mood. He didn’t remember the name of these substances, but the fact that he remembered all this was more than enough for him. Let’s try and see if there is any truth in his words, he thought with his hope rising. He lay on the floor with his back down, and started performing sit – ups with a quick pace.

A quarter of an hour later, he was just as miserable as he was when he started. Even worse, the new fact was that now he was feeling aches in various places all over his body. His muscles were not accustomed to training, so these pains came naturally. He couldn’t keep on the effort, so he returned to the comfort of his bed.

One day, I too will be thin and handsome. One day I will receive the attention of girls, and not just when they want to make someone else jealous. One day…

Deep inside him however, there was little hope that this day would come any time in the near future.

He remained lying on his bed for a long time, until he realized that he was getting very hungry. He hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast. He got on his feet and went to the kitchen, where he was greeted by a lovely smell originating from the oven. He opened its door and discovered that his mother had taken the effort to make his favorite meal before she left. He felt a bit touched by this movement of hers. He served himself a large potion and ate it mechanically, without feeling too great an appetite. He put what remained back in the oven, mimicking what his mother did.

His next move was to go to the refrigerator. He opened the door and saw that it was relatively empty. A large number of aluminum beer cans caught his attention immediately. His father was a frequent drinker, but luckily this wasn’t bad enough for him to be classified as an alcoholic. In any case, he had the habit of always keeping a more than adequate quantity of beer in the house.

They say that alcohol can help you get over pains in your heart. Maybe I should try this too?

Without giving it any more thought, he took a can and drank. He felt his insides getting pleasantly cool as the cold drink ran down towards his stomach, a feeling most welcome after the heat of the day and the training afterwards. He quickly emptied the first can and grabbed a second. A third followed soon afterwards.

One hour later, he had stopped counting how many cans he had drank. The originally pleasant feelings had long passed, and were replaced by an intense stomach sickness. He was becoming dizzy and his head hurt. He decided to go to the bathroom and throw some water on his face. He had to lean on to the washbasin, to help maintain his balance. The nausea became even more intense, to the point that he leaned over the basin and threw up his lunch and the beer.

He stayed in the bathroom for a long time. His dizziness was so intense that he had to always keep a hand on the wall, else he felt unable to stand on his legs. Dragging his feet, he managed to return to the living room, where he collapsed on the couch. He thought that it would be a good idea to turn the tv on and watch something, until his head got better.

Where is that blasted remote control, though? The screen was on the other side of the room, and he didn’t trust his balance enough to walk there and turn it on manually. His mother would become furious if she found out that some disaster had occurred while she was away. He already had to face his father regarding the beer drinking and was hoping on her support. But if he broke anything, there was no chance of avoiding some sort of severe penalty.

I have to find the remote control.

He started looking around, hoping that it wouldn’t be too far away from the place he was sitting. He didn’t spot it anywhere. There was a series of drawers in the wooden table located in front of the couch. Maybe his mother put it in there before the family’s departure. He opened the top drawer and saw that it only contained magazines of various topics. He closed it and then opened the bottom one. There was a single object in it, and Dan remained motionless for a while as he observed it.

The object was a wooden board. In the center were the letters of the alphabet, arranged in two rows. Over the letters was a smaller piece of dark – colored wood, which had the shape of a heart and a hole in its center. On the bottom side were the numerical digits from 0 to 9. on the top side, one could find the words “YES” and “NO” on the left and the right side, and the word “OUIJA” on the center. His mother had told him that this was the name of the board, and its use was to summon spirits from the other world and to communicate with them.

This was the latest and most bizarre of the many strange hobbies his mother had over the years. Her initiation with this was after she started hanging out with the old lady that moved in the house next door. This happened two months ago. Many evenings a gathering of the neighborhood’s ladies took place, and they tried to call to spirits with the intent of discovering the future, or learning whatever secrets these spirits wished to share with the mortals.

His father considered these goals ridiculous, and never missed a chance of sharing this with his wife. Dan wasn’t so sure though. One night he had spied on such a meeting and had witnessed things that he couldn’t really explain.

This could be because I wasn’t seeing too well at that moment. Or maybe I was sleepy. In any case, I can’t deny that I observed some mysterious phenomena, he thought as he stretched his hands and took the Ouija board out of the drawer. He lay it on the table, noticing how light and thin the wood was. When he asked his mother how this thing was supposed to work, she replied that the members of the group (“séance” was the precise word she used) would touch the smaller piece of wood, and the spirits would move it across the board. One letter at a time, until words and phrases were finally formed. When Dan confessed that he considered these completely dumb, she got very angry. She scolded him and replied that whatever his beliefs were, this was a very powerful object. Definitely it wasn’t something that you could use as an object of sarcasm and jokes. At the end of that talk, she warned him to never again observe their meetings, and emphatically noted never to try to use the board by himself.

Dan’s disbelief about the existence of anything supernatural on this was great in any case, and at that moment he was feeling himself fearless as an effect of the beers. So, he grabbed the piece of wood with his right hand and started moving it all over the board, left and right, up and down.

“Oooooooooooooooooooooo mighty spirits, where are you? Show yourselves to me and tell me all the secrets you know! I’d really appreciate if you told me which team will win the baseball season this year!” he yelled laughing, having fun with the vanity of the whole thing. “Or at least, disclose the questions of the written exam that Mister Grant plans to give us on Monday, the one that he thinks we don’t know about and will be unwarned!” he then added.

Two minutes later, he was bored from moving the piece of wood aimlessly around. He was ready to give up and restore the board into the drawer where he found it. At that moment, the piece of wood, and his hand with it, moved by itself. It first went to the left side of the board and then to the right. Dan’s jaw dropped from the surprise.

Hell, I didn’t do this, he thought.

“Is there someone else here, right now?” he asked, his voice trembling from astonishment.

Without exerting force on the small piece of wood, it moved again and stopped at the point where its hole was over the word “YES” on the board. Dan’s surprise began to be replaced by enthusiasm. As it seemed, his mother turned out to be correct!

As he was considering what question he should put forth to the spirit that obviously had appeared, the wooden piece started moving again, and this time over the area where the letters were located. It stopped with its hole over one letter for a second and then moved on to the next one. Dan still had his mouth open as he observed the words that were being formed, when eventually the wood stopped moving.

I WANT YOU

“What do you mean, you want me?” he asked, with feelings of unease growing inside him. The wood started moving over the letters again. When it stopped, new words had formed.

SAY YES

“Say yes to what?”

I WANT YOU SAY YES LET ME ENTER YOUR MIND

“What do you mean? What do you want from me?”

I WANT YOU SAY YES LET ME ENTER YOUR MIND NOW NOW

The feelings of unease were progressing into terror. Dan wasn’t having fun anymore. He tried to remove his hand from the wooden pointer and the terror multiplied when he realized that this was impossible. His hand remained as if glued on it. He put on all his strength, but still he was unable to let go of that cursed thing.

The wood was now moving at a frantic pace. It didn’t stop for more than half of a second over each letter, but Dan didn’t need to look at the growing words any more, since they were the same over and over:

I WANT YOU SAY YES

I WANT YOU SAY YES

An idea began to appear in Dan’s mind, despite the extremity of the horror he was feeling.

“Say yes to what? What will happen if I do?” he asked, his voice trembling.

All of a sudden his house, the living room and the Ouija board disappeared. Dan found himself in a long corridor that was well lighted by a series of halogen lamps on the ceiling. In front of him was a closed a door. Some indeterminate noise could be heard from the other side, but it wasn’t loud enough for him to identify. He looked behind him and saw that five meters away the lights went out and the corridor became dark.

He spent some time lying still, trying to understand what happened and he got to that place. No idea came to his mind and he decided to move forward and open the door. This way he would find out what was the origin of the noise he was hearing, and maybe also a clue that would help him figure things out.

He started walking with slow steps. He felt hesitant, but also an unexplainable lack of fear. The terror he felt during the contact he had through the Ouija board had vanished. It had been replaced by curiosity and a feeling that he was exactly where he should be.

Just before reaching the door, a mirror stood on left side of the corridor. Dan looked mechanically with the corner of his eye, took two more steps and then froze. He retraced the two last steps and slowly turned his head toward the mirror, trying to make sense from what he was seeing.

He was looking at himself, wearing bright colored clothes and having his hair in a ponytail behind his head. There was no sign of the acme that was tormenting him since the beginning of puberty on his face. However, his amazement wasn’t caused by his clothes, or hair, or face, but rather by his body.

The reflection that appeared in front of him appeared at least twenty kilograms lighter than the one he was used to seeing in the previous years. He turned his body to the side, and the profile that greeted him was thinner than he had ever seen, ever since he started gaining weight at the age of ten. He could almost discern his abdominal muscles through his tight t – shirt. His back appeared broad and his chest taut.

I must be facing one of the mirrors that are in the houses of terror in theme parks. The ones that distort the images of those looking at them and make them appear tall or thin or fat or with huge heads, he decided.

However, one look towards the floor allowed him to determine that it wasn’t a distorted reflection he was observing. His body had truly gotten thinner. Dan couldn’t explain this, like everything else that were happening in the previous minutes. Were it only minutes that had passed? He couldn’t say with certainty and didn’t care. Whatever had actually transpired, the image he was seeing was one out of his dreams.

Damn it, I look like a model! As if I’m preparing for a photo shoot to be on a magazine cover!

His smile almost reached his ears. Having more confidence now, he moved again to the door. He reached out to grab the door knob, but a fraction of a second before he touched it, the door opened. Immediately afterwards, someone rushed towards him. He didn’t have time to react before this someone hugged him and kissed him with passion. He felt lost and his legs trembling but managed to kiss back.

A few seconds later, the person that fell on him stopped kissing. She moved her head a few centimeters back and looked at him. Dan felt his jaw drop as much as was humanly possible from the surprise. The girl that was in front of him was that classmate that had caused him so much sorrow earlier that day.

Is it really the same day? What is happening? Where am I? he wondered, feeling again the seeds of terror taking deep root inside him.

“My love, what took you so long? They are all standing here for a long time, waiting for you. They are anxious to see you”, the girl said, smiling broadly. Her eyes appeared to be shining.

My love? She called me ‘her love’?

“Who is waiting for me? Why?” he managed to mutter.

The girl kept on smiling but didn’t respond. Instead, she left him alone and took two steps backwards and to the side. It was as if she was showing him that he should move on. Dan managed to take his eyes off her and looked around. He finally recognized what was the place he was standing on.

He was up on a stage of some sort. As he realized this, he noticed that the strange sound he was hearing earlier, now had grown louder. It took him a moment to determine its nature.

This is noise from the confused conversations coming from a large gathering of people. They are below the stage and I am on it, he realized feeling a sudden surge of panic. His shyness prevailed and he turned around towards the corridor, with the intent of finding some place to hide from all the eyes he felt fixed on him.

He barely had time to move when he was illuminated by a spotlight. The change in brightness was so sudden that his eyes complained momentarily. The light from a second spotlight fell on his body and pretty soon he was entirely covered by the glare of an entire row. The noise he was hearing suddenly stopped.

There was a moment of silence.

And then, the crowd that stood below his feet, started to cry his name out rhythmically.

“Dan! Dan! Dan!”

Dan looked and listened and felt at a loss. He had begun to sweat from the anxiety and the heat that the spotlights were causing. He turned to his left and saw his classmate smiling encouragingly at him. He looked at the audience again. His audience. He still couldn’t figure out what was happening. Whatever it was, it was good.

Maybe this is too good to be real, a new thought suddenly occurred to him.

This isn’t real. Not yet. It is simply an image of what will happen if you accept. All the glory of the world will be yours. Your wishes will have real power, a voice in his head said. A cold chill ran throughout his body. Despite the thoroughly pleasant image he was facing, a feeling that something was terribly wrong came back in force.

And what would be asked from me in exchange for all these to happen? he thought.

What I ask in return, is that you let me come inside your mind. This is miniscule if compared to what I have to offer. Together we will rule over the entire world, the voice replied.

Don’t force us into temptation, he thought as he remembered the favorite prayer of his younger sister. Who are you? Are you Evil?

Not Evil. Chaos. I am waiting for you to accept. The unidentified voice he was hearing had started to sound impatient.

And what will happen if I say no? I will return to my home and this will be the end?

The crowd that was shouting his name vanished. The stage disappeared. Dan found himself in an open area, near the entrance of a large wooden building. Everything around him, even the grass, appeared to be colored in a reddish tint. He assumed that this read color was a result of some sort of artificial lighting, but one look up disclosed the truth. The sun was what lighted everything in red.

Dan remembered of course that incident that took place three years ago, when the news that the sun had changed its color for a short period of time and shined red got circulated all over the world. He hadn’t noticed it himself, since it was nighttime in his time zone when this phenomenon happened. It had lasted for about thirty seconds and then the sun had returned to its original color. No one had managed to propose a convincing theory about what had happened that day.

It definitely happened, though. It was witnessed by millions of people all over Earth and also recorded in many media. Whatever it was, it is also happening in the reality that I am a part of right now. But what could it be?

He stopped pondering all these when he heard a scream of terror originating from nearby. A middle aged woman appeared from behind the wooden building. She appeared to be trying to run away from something, she was panting and kept looking back over her shoulder. She had a large gash on her left calf and blood flowed in an abundant quantity.

She’s injured and probably needs my help! thought Dan and started walking towards her in order to offer aid. The woman looked at him with eyes flooded with despair and then turned her head back. Her eyes opened widely and she screamed again. A group of five or six little animals belonging to a species unknown to Dan appeared behind her and charged. The woman had time to walk two more steps before these creatures overtook her and started stabbing her with fangs that appeared extremely oversized. The woman fell on the ground while screaming continuously. Even more of these creatures showed themselves and climbed on her back. The screams continued for one more instant and then abruptly stopped. The woman’s body was now entirely covered by these animals and little jets of some indeterminate liquid splattered occasionally. Dan had no doubt that this liquid was blood.

He felt utter horror witnessing the scene that was unfolding in front of him. He unconsciously opened his mouth and uttered a scream. The creatures on top and around the woman's lifeless body turned and stared at him. Two of them instantly started walking towards him, and the rest followed immediately afterwards. They were moving extremely fast on their eight little legs. The first ones opened their mouths and bared their teeth. Dan turned around with the intent of trying to escape the onslaught. When he completed his movement however, he stood completely still.

He was frozen by another terrible sight he was now beholding. In front of him and as far as his gaze could reach, the land was covered by a horde of these little but deadly monsters. He couldn't determine their number, but they were many. Thousands.

No, not thousands. Millions?

The crimson flood was approaching him, slowly but steadily. Dan felt unable to move even a single muscle.

Now you know what is at stake. Join me and together we shall rule all the Earth. Deny me, and this is the fate that awaits you. A torturing death along with many other humans when I return, whispered the voice he also heard earlier.

Every one of Dan's instincts warned him that he should decline this creature's voice. And yet, the temptation was overwhelmingly strong. The image of himself up on a stage, with a crowd of people cheering him and his unfulfilled love kissing him and calling him 'her love', was most appealing. He would sacrifice a lot for a chance to live this in real life.

What about my soul, though? What about my personality? Would I sacrifice these too?

Everything suddenly went dark. Dan closed his eyes tightly. When he opened them again, he saw that he was back in the living room of his house, sitting on the couch. The Ouija board was on the table in front of him and the heart – shaped wooden pointer was under his hand. Its hole was between the words “YES” and “NO”. Everything was just as it was before he started experimenting with that cursed thing.

He remembered that prior to the mental trips forced on him by the entity he had come in contact with, his hand remained stuck on the wooden board, unable to move. With hesitance, he tried to raise it again and this time he was able to move it without a problem. Whatever had happened to him, it was now over.

He felt a strange sensation below his waist. He looked down and saw that at some time during his experience, he had wet his pants. This was the final stroke for his already tense nerves. He started sobbing and ran towards the bathroom.