There was this Goth chick Solomon used to hang with for a while. Black fishnet arm sleeves, pentagram pendant, platform combat boots, you know the type. We’d get high as shit and she’d break out the Ouija board. But I didn’t play that game. I don’t step on cracks, I don’t walk under ladders, and I certainly don’t attempt to conjure spirits, real or otherwise. Neither did Kevin, and Caspian’s attention span wasn’t long enough to suffer through it. So we’d hit the bar while Solomon held back because she was his chick and he couldn’t bail.

As the story goes, they’d popped acid after the show. Back then we used to get our supply from one of Owsley Stanley’s guys and the shit opened portals of its own. They’d played with it a couple of times before and had some creepy shit happen – knocking sounds, names of dead relatives – but you never know how much of that is being manipulated by one of the participants.

They were in the bus. Solomon, his girl, and maybe one of her friends and another rando. I can’t remember. His girl started asking if there were any spirits in the room. And the damn planchette began scooting before anyone could even put a finger on it. But, again, people in paintings will wink at you while you’re on Stanley’s LSD. They rushed to put their hands on the thing and it began buzzing under their fingers. Spelled out the name A – B – A – C – U – S.

“Abacus,” Solomon’s girl said, reciting the word. “Where do you come from?” And then, apparently, allegedly, she stiffened and her eyes started fluttering and she began to make this mewling sound like she was scared or in pain or trying to resist something. When she spoke again her voice had become deep and gravelly, and a second face – the maniacal face of a wide-eyed man – formed like a mirage over her own. “I come from inside you,” she said in a man’s voice, his translucent lips imposed over hers, revealing teeth that were black and rotten. “From the backside of your eyes. The blank space in your mind. The break in your heart.”

The girl’s friend freaked out and crab walked away from the table. Solomon, who had a higher tolerance for fucked-up shit, leaned in to get a better look at this phantasmagoric face. His girlfriend’s eyes were still closed, but the man’s eyes, hovering just over her own like an aura, were wide open, the pupils scanning the room, landing on Solomon and staying there. Her breath came quicker, panting, and the man sneered.

“Yo, so how’d you die, man?” Solomon said. He snickered. “Dosed out on H or something?”