NOVEL NEXT Chapter 459.
Chapter 459. An Exciting Night with Two Girls Outside the City: The Alleged Haunted Castle. (2/10)
Rosa approached the area I’d cleared out, squatted down, and got to work drawing out a hexagram inside a circle large enough to stand in by squeezing out the Rabbit's blood. After five minutes, she stood up and admired her work with a satisfied nod.
“That’s… really it?”
“Yeah.”
“Yuh sure this is going to work, Rosa?” Dawn asked skeptically.
“How would I know? It’s not like I’ve ever tried summoning a devil before. I have absolutely no idea what I’m even doing here.”
“Shouldn’t there be a goat skull or something and candles along the cardinal directions?” Dawn suggested.
“Oh! Candles? I didn’t even consider that.” Rosa’s eyes lit up when she heard Dawn’s suggestion.
“Yeah. Do yuh actually have some with yuh?
“Yeah. We actually carry a few small ones around with us in case an emergency crops up where we run out of batteries or lose our phones in the middle of the night and need a light source to move around for some reason.”
“Yuh’re quite prepared.”
“You never know what you might need when you’re on the road after all. It’s best to be prepared.”
Rosa stuck her hands into a pocket of our bag and pulled out four small candles. I pulled out a lighter from my pocket and lit them for her. She placed them down at the north, south, east, and west points on the circle.
“As for the goat skull… do you think a rabbit’s would do?”
“Maybe?” Dawn responded uncertainly.
“Okay, we’ll try it with that. Let me just finish the second circle to avoid wasting any blood though.”
“Right…”
Rosa drew a second circle beside the first one and drew a pentagram inside of it.
After the two circles were prepared, she turned her back to Dawn and started to… skin the rabbit’s head… humming cheerfully to herself… with her fingernails that effortlessly cut through it like a knife through butter.
When she was finished skinning the head, she wiped her cheek with the back of her wrist smearing some blood that splattered on her face in the process. With how naturally she did it all, not even the slightest bit grossed out or reluctant, I couldn’t help but think she looked the part of a textbook yandere right now.
Well… in her eyes, this dead rabbit was just some meat to cook some food later. It was a gruesome bloody sight to others, but to her, it wasn’t anything much.
Dawn didn’t seem too bothered by the sight when Rosa turned around with the rabbit’s skull in one hand. I suppose seeing animals butchered for their meat wasn’t too unusual if you lived on a farm. She also said she went hunting on her own as well.
If Alicia was here and witnessed this sight, that poor girl would likely be in tears and mourning for this pitiful rabbit.
Haaaaah. I couldn’t help but feel we were the weird ones for being so numb to it. It may seem cruel to some, but it was life.
“Alright then, let’s start off with the hexagram circle first,” Rosa declared as she put the rabbit skull down in the center of the circle.
“Uh, what do we do next though?”
“I guess we’ll stand outside the circle and chant while you stand in the middle of it in front of the rabbit skull.”
“What exactly are yuh going to chant?”
“No idea, I’m just winging it.”
Dawn exhaled out a long sigh while shaking her head, “Haaaaaah. Figures. There’s no way this is going to work.”
“You never know, maybe it will.”
We all got into position, Rosa by the south candle, Dawn stood at the center of the circle, and I stood at the north candle. Rosa clapped her hands together in prayer, then closed her eyes before she opened her mouth and recited a chant out loud, “I invoke Thee, The Terrible and Invisible God: Who dwellest in the Void Place of the Spirit. Deliver me, O Mighty Devil, from all past error and delusion. Fill me with truth, wisdom, and understanding. Keep me strong in my faith and service, that I may abide always in Thee with Praise, Honor, and Glory be given Thee forever and ever.”
With an intense air of solidarity, Rosa’s eyes shot open wide as she cried out in conviction, with a resounding clap of her hands, “Great Devil, answer my call! My call! My call. My call...” Her words echoed in and out through the castle until they inevitably faded away in the distance. The air grew heavy as an eerie atmosphere enveloped us amidst the sudden silence that followed.
“...”
“...”
“...”
“Nothing’s happening…” A full minute passed before Dawn was the first to break that awkward silence.
Rosa joked as she scratched the side of her cheek embarrassedly, “Uh… maybe it takes a while? The devil might need to catch a devil bus or something. Haha, there might be a lot of traffic in hell or something.”
I couldn’t help but tease her, “You really got into the spirit there though.”
“Shut up. Let’s try again with the pentagram circle.”
We transferred the rabbit skull and candles over to the second circle and took up our positions again.
“Alright, summoning a devil take two, start,” Rosa said enthusiastically as she began a new chant.
“Great Devil, by your grace, grant me. I pray thee the power to conceive in my mind and to execute that which I desire to do, the end which I would attain by thy help. O Mighty Devil, my one true God, who livest and reignest forever and ever. I entreat thee to manifest before me so that you may give me a true and faithful answer, so that I may accomplish my desired end, provided that it is proper to his/her office. This I respectfully and humbly ask in Your Name, Great Devil, may you deem me worthy. Father-”
“Did you make these up yourself or did you go and search for some chants online in advance?” She ignored my comment but her lips nevertheless twitched in response.
Rosa raised her hands over her head in the air animatedly and emplored, “Lend us your fiendish powers! Powers! Powers. Powers.”
“...”
“...”
“...”
“Rosa-”
Rosa cut Dawn off and held one hand out to dismiss her, “Shhhhh! I can feel it coming.”
What coming?
“...”
“...”
“...”
Unable to play along any longer, I finally spoke up, “I don’t think anything’s coming, Rosa.”
“This can’t be… I can feel it. It definitely wants to come. But… something seems to be holding the devil back. It’s as if he’s reluctant to appear for some reason.”
“Something’s preventing the devil from showing himself?” Dawn asked skeptically.
“Yes. Maybe this devil doesn’t like men or something.”
Rosa looked over to me.
“Yuh mean... if Ran leaves the room... the devil will appear?”
“I think so. I can feel it. It’s almost as if the devil is conveying his will to me remotely. Do you mind?”
“Yeah, yeah. Sure, whatever floats your boat. Good luck, I’ll push the door in and be waiting outside the room.”
“Sorry…” Dawn apologized, sounding as though she felt genuinely guilty.
“Don’t sweat it. If the devil really appears, can help you out with your problem, and you can get a good deal out of it, then great.”
“Thanks…”
I exited the room and Rosa took up the position behind Dawn. On my way out of the room, I felt Dawn’s eyes glued to my back.
I pulled the door in on my way out but didn’t fully shut it.
Rather than sticking around out here, I walked down the passage toward the stairs and climbed up to the third floor. I walked down the hall and located the room the two of them were inside by looking for the room with the hole in the wall directly beside a hole in the ground.
It was pretty easy to tell I had the right room since I could hear the two of them talking down below and see light coming out of the hole from their flashlights.
“Rosa… I think we should just give it up here. Even after Ran left and yuh did the chant again the devil still isn’t appearing.”
I reached into my pocket, pulled out what Rosa handed me earlier, and silently stared at it while waiting for the signal from Rosa. I’d honestly forgotten that we brought these with us. We only had them with us in case an emergency situation arose. I definitely hadn’t expected to use these on this trip, especially not for something like this.
“If you don’t believe strongly enough, the devil will not appear.”
“Doesn’t that go against everything yuh said before about god and even contradict your own beliefs?”
“Haaaaah. Yeah… sorry, I guess I’m grasping at straws here. If we at least knew exactly where your mother was, that’d be one thing, we might be able to meet up with her and do something ourselves to get them back together, but we don’t even know that. All we can really rely on is the chance that we might bump into her if we go to the city. But the odds of that seem pretty low. It would have been nice if a kind-hearted benevolent devil really appeared and could provide assistance with getting your mother and father back together.”
“...”