Alone in the house on a sunny midsummer afternoon, Odette lay listlessly atop the blue patchwork quilt on her twin bed, which she made every day at her mother's insistence. Even when lying perfectly still, she was the very epitome of restless late adolescence.
Attempting to stem the outpouring of boredom that seemed to seep from her very pores, she entertained a variety of notions about engaging herself in some activity or other.
She could take a walk across the dirt road down to the lake and have a swim, but that too seemed a little lonely without the company of her neighbor cousins, who were spending the weekend at a schoolmate's. She could head down to the basement and dance, but she didn't feel in much of a mood for that despite the inviting coolness of the cellar air. There were always books, her constant companions when there were no others to be had. She did not feel like reading either.
To look at her, it was something of a wonder as to why a petite, lithe, well-proportioned eighteen-year-old girl with ample assets should be alone at all, why there had never really been a luststruck boy or several close at hand to allay her increasingly persistent ennui.
Her straight medium-length auburn hair splayed haphazardly across the pillow where she rested her head, and the greenish-gold of her eyes took in the length of her body. Under a white cotton tank top, the mounds of her full c-cup breasts rose and fell with each even breath she took. Her small hands with their long wine-colored lacquered nails were folded neatly across her flat stomach. Beyond the denim of her shorts, her legs tapered from her toned thighs down to finely-muscled calves. Although the healthy honeyed cast of her skin indicated some time spent in the summer sunshine, Odette was always disappointed that she never tanned as darkly as her cousins did. Unable to sustain a posture of complete repose, she wriggled her toes with their pink-painted nails as her mind wandered.
She thought about calling her best friend Jenn to see if she wanted to watch a movie, but for Odette it was almost inexplicably difficult to make the effort to reach out to another human, even a close friend.She was afraid that she might seem too needy, and so rarely initiated interactions completely spontaneously, lest her requests be construed as social avarice.
She had been staring blankly at the contents of her closet through the half-open louvered doors. Thinking of Jenn, Odette realized she was looking at her Ouija board, or rather the clean, neat box which contained it.
She and Jenn had started using the board a few months ago, usually during visits to Jenn's parents' camp, but sometimes at Jenn's house in town too.
Neither of their parents openly approved of the board, though it was not something they tried to hide from them. Their parents seemed to also be smart enough to know that if they attempted to actively prevent the girls from using it, or if they even made their disapproval of it overly vocal, they would simply be fueling the girls' interest in the esoteric object.
Sometimes one of their mothers would make a "tsk" sound when they would go off to use the board, but that seemed to be the extent of the parental interference.
They had received some directives concerning its use from other friends before they'd started, and had dutifully respected them. The most significant of these was that the board should not be used alone.
Using the board alone, friends had told them, made it very easy for the spirits to manipulate your mind, facilitating undesirable scenarios like demonic possession.
Friends had also described to them how people had guardian spirits, and that the Ouija board could be used to discover more about these spirits. These same friends had also made it clear that spirits were frequently prevaricators about their identities. So, you had to ask them questions very firmly, sometimes repeating the same question several times to ensure the answer you received was authentic.
They had discovered and spoken with Jenn's guardian spirit, a deceased Southern gentlewoman named Rena, who was benignly charming.
Odette's guardian spirit, on the other hand, did not claim to be a spirit at all, but rather a minor demon, who identified himself as Daremo.
The girls researched the name at length only to learn it was the Japanese word for "nobody." It did not strike them at all as unusual that Odette's guardian should have a Japanese name, given her ardent affection for Asian things including arts both martial and non. It did not really strike them as unusual either that her guardian spirit was a demon, considering the quiet ferocity of Odette's personality.
Odette began thinking about Daremo.
Though he was a demon, she did not have any fear of him. But she was smart enough to realize he could be dangerous.
She had tried to picture what he might look like, but had been unable to visualize his countenance or form with any real clarity. Her impression of him was as an invisible male force, dark and powerful, that hovered ever near her. Now, Odette wondered if his unseen presence was a deterrent against other male attention, and suddenly felt as though she had stumbled upon precisely the reason she had been ignored by boys for so long. The thought made her very angry.
She wanted to conjure Daremo, call him to her, and confront him with the idea, to accuse him really.
For a brief moment she debated about pulling the Ouija board from the closet and using it by herself, but her ire had not completely clouded her judgement.
She reasoned that since he was her guardian, always close to her, that she herself should be a sufficient conduit through which to contact him. While she understood on some level that what she was about to do was dangerous, she felt bolstered by her anger, and was certain that she would be able to hold her own against him.
Rising from her bed, Odette made her determined way to the kitchen drawer where her perpetually disaster-prepared mother religiously kept some candles, for largely unromantic purposes like power outages. She rummaged through and selected the darkest one of the jumbled bunch, a short but healthy fat stump with a wick blackened by prior burning. The color of the candle's wax was indeterminate. It could have been a dusty black or a very dark blue or purple or even a deep green. She also grabbed a pack of matches conveniently kept in the same drawer, and a nondescript white saucer from a puritanically orderly cupboard.
Returning to her bedroom, Odette set the small saucer on the wooden headboard of her bed, and placed the candle on it. She ripped one of the matches, struck it by scraping it between the folded-back matchbook cover and the strip, and touched it to the wick, smiling satisfied when it flamed to life. She shook the match to extinguish it and dropped it on the saucer next to the candle.
She sat cross-legged in the center of her bed, facing the headboard and focusing her gaze on the flicker of the candle flame. Resting her wrists on the points of her knees, Odette began to breathe deeply to clear her mind of all but the thought of her guardian demon.
When she was certain that he alone occupied her thoughts, she closed her eyes and softly but firmly called his name aloud, "Daremo."
Inspired by a flash of intuition, she repeated it two more times, a little firmer and a little louder each time.
In the quiet seconds that followed, she sensed something large forming behind her, bristling the hairs on the back of her neck and sending a shiver down her spine. Eyes still closed, Odette could not bring herself to open them until she heard her name.
"Odette."
Her eyes flew open and though she wanted to turn around and face whatever was behind her, felt held fast to her seated position. She could only gaze at the candle in front of her, trying to steady herself against the rising fear that she had been dreadfully successful at her first conjuration.
She heard her name said two more times, mimicking her simple spell, but could not tell if the voice was in her head or not. Though there was no breeze in the room, something lightly touched the back of her hair. There was no question about who it was.
