Another late start, so no 3000 words, but I wrote again tonight. That’s two straight weeks of daily writing. I don’t know when, or if, that’s ever happened. Probably in school, but that doesn’t count.
At this point I need to write 2,661 words a day to finish this month. My current daily word average is 495 & NaNo estimates at that rate I’ll finish by Feb 8, 2012. Oy.
Inside the room, Johnny resumed his chants while drawing a circle and a few ancient looking symbols on the floor with the salt. He then began misting the air with the holy water and seemed to be saying some prayers to the sky. While he did this we busied ourselves with setting the cameras back up. The beings attention must have been all on Johnny, because we had an uneventful time of it. Nothing happened to Johnny while we were busy with the cameras, but the tension in the air rose to an almost suffocating level.
When he was done, Johnny asked us all to get inside the circle with him. At this point he pulled out a ceremonial dagger and began to bless the circle and close it. This must have been the line in the sand for whatever had been watching because he began to act out and show Johnny some of what we had already been privy to.
As Johnny prayed a sense of calm entered the circle, but if we stood near the edge of the circle it was like you could feel whatever was out there lurking just outside the edge, as if he was waiting for one of us to step outside the boundary. Soon we could feel a rushing at the perimeter. I can’t begin to describe it, because it’s not like there was anything to see or hear or feel, but it was a definite sense of something trying to its damnedest to get inside the circle to us. The air outside the salt line felt heavy with frustration. I tried to keep my focus on Johnny and keep all of me inside the circle. To this end, I moved closer to the middle to avoid an accident.
As Johnny seemed to be winding down his incantation, one of the cameras crashed to the ground. I heard both Kyle and Trevor moan simultaneously as it thudded against the thankfully carpeted floor. I have a feeling we’ll be replacing at least one of those after last night. We watched in awe as the camera began to slide across the floor towards our protective barrier. It reached a point and stopped, but not entirely motionless. It seemed as though someone was trying to get it into the circle but couldn’t. Suddenly, it was flung in the air at us, but fell just outside the circle. I don’t know what kind of spell Johnny cast on this circle, or who he was praying to, but he did a hell of a job. This circle was locked up tighter than a drum, and felt safer than anywhere in the whole house. I began to feel a sense of hope, when the camera suddenly flipped around in the floor and began nudging close to the circle again.
It made it to the edge of the salt barrier, and then began pushing through the form, breaking the line. Johnny seemed to become worried at this, & began pushing back against the camera with his foot. He struggled against the being behind the camera for a minute, until the camera seemed to go slack and Johnny found his foot pushing against a force no longer there and his foot went outside the boundary. With the kind of speed that only comes with anticipation, Johnny’s leg was snatched out the safety of the circle, with the rest of him being drug behind it. He was clawing at hte carpet and yelling at us to help pull him back into the circle. Trevor and I were closest, so we each grabbed an arm and began pulling him back within bounds. It was a high stakes game of Tug-of-War, and I can’t say we were winning, but thankfully Kyle and Andy found their own spots and helped us get him back with us inside the safety zone. When that was done, we all stayed closer to the center.
We heard maniacal laughter, followed by the camera seemingly kicked back against a wall. Johnny used his dagger to reinforce circle, and he added some symbols near that spot on the edge. When he seemed to feel secure again, he told us it was time to start asking some questions. We had our walkie-talkies at the ready, so we could feel Gemmie information to research as we went along. Not only did we need to verify anything the ghost told us, but we needed to supplement what did learn with more to help us move him on from this house, whether willingly or not.
