The consequences of her actions

"Yeah, they say there's a demon in this town."

I looked at my friend sitting on the other side of the restaurant's table with an expression of disbelief.

"A demon," I say, holding my cup of coffee with my right hand. I’ve known this guy for quite some time now and it never ceases to surprise me all the things he manages to find.

"Well, that's what they say." He then took out a small notebook from his backpack "Well, it's a folk legend, kind of like the Moth-man. They say that she appears at night to kidnap kids and kill dogs or cats."

"So she's a witch now?" I say, trying to make a small joke.

"Hey, I don't make these stories up, I just research them." He said before taking a bite from his chocolate donut.

"Yeah ok, sorry about that." I finally say, regretting the dumb comment.

"Anyways, just like the Moth man, this legend is fairly recently. From the people I've interviewed, this demon first appeared one night after a spectacle of lights. Then, witnesses said that it flew away, screaming with a horrifying scream."

"When did all of this happen?"

"Apparently, just a year ago."

"Wait, seriously?" That surprised me. It’s not every day that you find an urban legend that has a starting date. On top of that, one that is this recent.

He kept reading his notes "And that's not all, supposedly, it all started in a local high school."

"So I guess that's what we're going to do tomorrow, right? Interview the kids on what happened?"

Putting his notes away, he answered. "Yeah. However, they won’t be our first option. You know how impressionable kids are, they probably will invent things on the spot to be the center of attention."

"What about the teachers and staff?"

"Yeah, that’s the plan. I already asked for permission to get us inside but the principal of that school told me that we were only able to interview her."

I lazily stretch myself, finishing my coffee and take a peek to my watch. “It’s rather late. We should go to the hotel for now. Thanks for inviting me.”

“Yeah, no problem. I asked you to take me all across the country for some dumb legends, so it’s my way of repaying you.”

For those of you who may be confused about this, I suppose I may owe you some explanation. My friend here is an anthropologist and he teaches in a rather nice university. I’ve known him since we were in middle school and we’ve been friends since. I wasn’t that big on school, so after finishing high school, I decided to work on drawing commissions for people on the internet since I’m a good artist. Drawing instead of paying attention in classes was a good idea after all.

So one day, while I’m visiting him at his house, he tells me that his university agreed to fund his newer research proposition, a compilation of urban legends on the east coast. His idea was to visit several small towns and interview people about them. Before I could congratulate them, he asked me if I would like to go with him on this trip. I immediately agreed because, well it’s always nice to have an excuse to travel, but I didn’t know why he asked me that.

It turns out that he is scared of flying and he didn’t want to travel alone on the highway. After teasing him about that for a while, we decided on the day to set off. I would be bringing my car, he (or rather, his university) would be paying all the expenses, from food to hotels and some souvenirs we find while traveling.

It was an uneventful and boring journey. He drove for three hours, I drove the next three hours and we stayed in some inns in the middle of nowhere. However, those nights were really exciting, since the guy knew a lot of stories from his researching and overall love for reading. So, he thought it would be funny to tell horror stories in the middle of the night. It was fun, yeah, but the jerk didn’t consider that I get scared quite easily. Nevertheless, it was worth it.

This was the first of the towns on his list. After some investigations he did beforehand, he discovered that the event happened in the outskirt of the city, at its suburbs in a public school. As much as I hated to wake up in the morning, I have to say my interest in this urban legend was bigger than my laziness, so I woke up at the same time as he did. After a quick breakfast at our hotel, he packed his recorder, notebook, and pens for the interview and his trusted sidekick was ready for the important mission.

When we arrived, I couldn’t believe that this was actually a public institution. The size of the main building, how well kept it had its soccer field, a giant stone statue of a stallion at the entrance, it even had an amphitheater. I guess that’s the east coast for you. After asking the children for directions, we finally arrived at the principal’s office and we were asked to wait for a couple of minutes.

As we waited, the students walked passed us since their first class of the day was about to start. A sense of nostalgia ran through my body as I watched the chaotic parade of these youngsters while some naughty memories hit my mind like a brick. I turned around and whisper into my friend’s ear.

“Hey, there are a lot of cute girls in here.”

“Quiet!” He said, “Don’t forget they are underage!”

I grin and continue “Remember the ass-meter?”

He covered his mouth with his hand, trying to hide his laughter. He slowly turned around to face me and with his palm still on his mouth, containing what was a genuine laugh, he nodded. The ass-meter, as we used to call it in our middle and high school days, was an intricate system designed to measure and quantify the buttocks of our female classmates. As objective as we tried to make it, we were only human, so we would have different scores depending on what they were wearing. He liked skirts, the shorter the better. I, on the other hand, preferred the tightness of the good old jeans.

“7”

“6”

“Oh, that’s a 9!”

“That’s because she’s wearing a skirt.”

“I told you many times before that makes it better.”

“Well, you must be in heaven, almost all of them are wearing one.”

“Wearing what?” A strange voice spoke behind us.

It was the principal of the school. We looked at each other, trying to process an answer that wouldn’t make her kick us out of the school before he could start his research.

“Uh… backpacks. For some reason, they were never popular at our high school.” My friend said. He was always quick with this kind of stuff. “A-anyways, good day, I’m the professor that called you a week ago from the Western University. He is my helper.”

“Yes, of course, I am Celestia, the principal of this school. It’s a pleasure to meet you.” She said while stretching our hands. “Please, come inside.”

We accepted her invitation and sat on the chairs in front of her desk. It was a nice office, some lockers behind her gave the place a high school feels that I always dreaded. While my friend talked to the principal about what he had in mind for the ay something called my attention, there were some squared spaced on one of the walls, evidence that something was nailed on it recently.

“Today is the 8 of September of 20XX, we are with the principal of Canterlot High, Celestia.” While I was distracted with the wall, my friend had already his recorder and notes out, ready to start with the interview. From the looks of it, this wasn’t the first time he had done this kind of work before. I will never admit it to him, but I admire him for being such a respectable academic.

“So let me refresh you on what we’re doing here” my friend started “we’re making a compilation of several urban legends from the region and we’re interested in the Demon of Canterlot High. Have you heard of it, principal?”

“…Yes, I have.”

After an hour of speaking with her, the interview ended. It was a lot more mundane than I have hoped. She gave very broad answers or didn’t know what my friend was talking about. For me, it was a waste of our time.

“Thanks a lot for the interview, principal.” My friend said, “Would you mind if I ask some questions to your students?”

“Actually, I do,” She said. “Please excuse me if my answer was rude, but right now they are all in class and they are not allowed to talk with people outside the faculty.” Wow, what a stuck up woman.

“We understand. Thank you for your time.” My friend said while opening the door. As soon as he did that, two girls that were in front of the door escaped into the hallways as if the devil was running behind them.

“Rainbow Dash!” The principal yelled, “Oh, I’m sorry for that, this is so embarrassing.”

“Don’t worry about it?” I say “Kids will always be kids, right?”

“…Yeah, you’re right.” She said while sighing.

“Well, that was a waste of our time. Not only did she not say something juicy, she didn’t even let us talk with the kids.”

My friend, who was quiet since we got into the car finally said something.

“She was hiding something.”

“Wait what?”

“I noticed it, she dodged certain topics. Listen.”

He took out the recorder and forwarded it to the 27 minute.

“Wait, how did you know where to stop?”

“Hehe, that’s why you always check your watch before you ask a question.”

Damn it, he thinks of everything.

“So please tell me, rumor says that on a night of October, strange lights and out of this world screams were heard on the school campus, some people even saying that the school grounds may have been used for some kind of satanic ritual. Are these rituals common in this city?”

“I can assure you that none of my students did something like what you’re describing on that night-“ He pressed the stop button as soon as she said that.

“Did you hear that?”

“Maybe. That did sound strange.”

“She said that none of her students did anything on that night. First of all, I never implied that her students were guilty of something like that. Second of all, she said that something did happen on a certain night.”

That blew my mind “Wait, what does this mean?”

“It means that at some point during the interview, she thought that I was accusing her students of something and she believed that she had to defend them. She tripped and told me something I wasn’t even asking for”.

“What now?” I asked, trying to process all of this.

“It’s possible that this whole rumor started because some over impressionable kids did some kind of ritual to summon something and some old folks got scared.”

“Are you saying that a demon is actually in this city?”

“Of course not! Don’t be ridiculous. They probably read something on the internet about summoning demons and they tried to replicate it.” He looked at his watch “This may actually be something worth to look at, but that’s not what we came here for. Before we get too excited about this, we need to remember that we’re researching urban legends, not solving mysteries.”

“Yeah, you’re right.”

As I turn on the car, he looks at me and says with a smile on his face “that comes later.”

After that, we drove around the suburbs to the different people he contacted beforehand for the interviews. Most of them were elderly people since they were the ones that knew more about this urban legend and the so-called Demon of Canterlot High.

“Yes, I’ve seen it.” The old lady said, “She took away one of my previous cats to God knows where.”

“Where did you see it?”

“On my backyard. I heard my precious screech with anger and when I looked through my window, I saw this, being with wings fly into the sky with the corpse of my kitten.”

“So, officer,” my friend asked the policeman “have these calls been common?”

“Most definitely, Doctor” he answered “At least one every two weeks. Most of them were about missing animals or broken windows. There was this time when a small kid disappeared after the window of his room was broken and the parents went crazy because of the demon legend. Turns out it was just a regular burglar who almost got away. The kid stayed up late playing in the attic while this all happened and didn’t want to get down because he didn’t want his parents to scold him.”

“Mrs. Smith. What animals have you lost these past weeks?”

“Mostly chickens. The first time I didn’t even notice Mrs. Clucking-head was missing. After that day… how many have they been? Hey! Mac! How many chickens have we lost, 10?”

“Yeah.” A faraway voice answered.

“10 chickens, that’s it. My granddaughter gets extremely worried when one of the chickens disappears, so much that she sleeps hugging her teddy bear all night.”

“Don’t tell lies to the Mr., granny!” An embarrassed teenager said while she walked out the door. “I’m going out with Rainbow Dash, I’ll be back soon. Please excuse me.”

“These good men are talking about the demon, don’t you want to talk to them about it? You usually talk a lot about her.”

The embarrassed expression of the girl suddenly changes into a nervous one.

“W-what? I don’t know what you’re talking about…”

“Yeah! You talk about your demon hunting sessions with your friends and such. Why don’t you sit with us?”

Now the expression of the teenager was that of nervousness and embarrassment.

“G-granny, please! Let’s not talk about Shimmer- I-I mean the demon right now! Gotta go!”

“Kids these days, right?” She said while laughing. “Even if they like to think they are grownups, they still play their games. Speaking of growing up, Hey! Mac! Does your sister have a boyfriend?”

“No.” The voice answered once more.

“Are you sure? She’s of that age after all!”

“Yeah!”

“She doesn’t have a boyfriend. I don’t know why because she’s a pretty girl after all.”

Back in the car, my friend sighed. This last interview lasted for two and a half hours and we were both exhausted, but he had a depressed expression.

“You know how long it’s going to take me to transcribe all these two hours? It’s going to be an eternity!”

“You can worry about that later. By the way, remember the girl? The number 8?”

“She was a 9, but yeah. Her grandma talked about her demon hunting sessions. I really wanted to ask her about that but she never came back. What a shame, you know what this means? If my deductions from Celestia’s interview are correct, the entire demon thing was created and is propagated by teenagers, forming an entire culture around it. This is fascinating, this could possibly be an expression created by a particular social context that makes these kids look into the supernatural for answers.”

“What kind of social context?” I ask.

“Well, it may be many things. From what they see happening in the world, the overdependence of technology that makes them try to look for answers in less conventional mediums, but who knows. This could be the start of a young movement across the country.”

“Maybe. Or maybe you’re extremely tired from this interview and need to rest.

“Yeah, you’re probably right. But if I’m right, then we’re going to need to browse social networks to see if this is actually something that’s growing.”

After driving for some 20 minutes, we see a small café, more like one of those old soda fountains, where middle class/ good kids like to hang out. We’ve been drinking coffee for the last couple of weeks and we thought about drinking something sweet.

“Don’t you think the name is kind of, gay?” I say.

“Relax, you’re going to be in this town for a couple of days. No one will care that you’re a huge homosexual.”

“Well, at least I don’t puke when I’m on an airplane.”

“Well, at least I’m not a pedophile.”

“Hey! I told you she lied about her age-“

“What can I do for you, gentlemen?” The lady behind the counter asked.

“Oh, thanks.” My friend says, trying to end the conversation as soon as he can “we work at the Western University, I’m a professor there and we are doing a report about the urban legend of the demon of Canterlot High, and we were wondering if you didn’t mind if we ask some of your clients about it.” He said while showing her his university ID.

“Oh my, look at this!” She said, impressed by having an academic in her business. Guess there are not a lot of those in this small town “Of course, please go ahead!”

“Thank you! Oh also, we would also like to order.”

These strawberry milkshakes were pretty good, though sickeningly sweet. After drinking the first half of the glass I was already tired of it so I grabbed a piece of white bread to control its sweetness. However, my friend was too busy making some questions to the kids in town and unlike me, he doesn’t look like a creep, so he was able to get close to them without much trouble.

“Well,” he said, “These weren’t proper interviews, but I got some very interesting things written down.”

“Alright, tell me about it.”

“Sure. So it turns out the Canterlot High are the most informed kids around here. The other teenagers know almost as much as the old people or even less, but the Canterlot kids? Well, at least they are good at inventing stories.”

“What do they said about the demon?”

“Let me see. The freshmen tell me stories of this demon, who they call Shimmer or Sunset.”

“Spooky.”

“Yeah. Apparently, small groups of friends in that school wear black clothes and they even sing incantations trying to summon this Shimmer.”

“Hehe, so you were right, some dumb darkies are scaring the people in town and doing pseudo-satanic rituals the watched on YouTube. I bet those are the same ones that are stealing the small animals around the neighborhood.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me. The juniors and seniors, on the other hand, have no comment or don’t want to talk about it. It’s possible that for them it is nothing but a dumb fad and are embarrassed by their schoolmates.”

“So what now?”

“I don’t think there’s much more to know right now. Honestly, I think it is too early to give some kind of conclusion about this whole situation so the only thing I can do is write down the transcriptions, the interviews and my speculations about the whole thing into a logical narrative. I’m kind of disappointed. I thought there would be a bit more to this legend, but so far we only had kids and old people telling us rumors.”

I laughed and pat his back. “Isn’t that the reason we came here to this town? To record urban their urban legends?”

He sighs “Yeah, yeah you’re right. I don’t know why this one, in particular, got me this excited. Why did I think there was something else, some bigger to this?”

“Ignore it, man. Tell you what, we look for a bar and we drink a couple of beers to get away from these teenagers.”

“Alright, sounds like a plan- Hey, look who’s over there.”

He points out at the window to see two girls walking together on the sidewalk. One of them is the granddaughter of Mrs. Smith, and the other one was eavesdropping our conversation with the principal.

“What’s with the hair of that number 10?” I say, pointing out to the one wearing the compression shorts.

“I don’t know, kids these days. Where are they going?”

“Come on, let’s follow them.”

“I don’t know, man.”

“Aww, come on, Mrs. Smith said they were going to hunt the demon, right? Don’t you want to see the other side of the story?”

“Alright alright, but if the police catch us, it was your idea.”

“They have never caught me before.”

We make sure to stay relatively far away from them so that they don’t see us. Before we realized it, night had already come upon us and our only source of light was the streetlights.

“The good thing is that this is a nice neighborhood so we won’t be getting mugged,” I say.

“Honestly, I think we’re the ones that may go to prison if they find out we’re following 15-year-old girls.” He nervously answered.

We eventually got to the forest at the outskirts of the town and we hid behind some bushes. These two reunited with a bigger group of girls and they were discussing something, but we didn’t want to get closer so that they wouldn’t see us. For the few minutes, they talked, we say how concerned they were about something, one of them almost crying.

“What do you think is going on?” I whisper.

“I don’t know, let’s wait to see what happens.”

Suddenly, the girls got quiet and made the motion that they were trying to listen to something far away. We looked at each other and we noticed what they were listening to. Faraway chants and prayers. They were coming from the inside of the forest and the girls froze in fear. One of them, the rainbowed one, started to walk towards the chants, but the cowgirl stopped her.

They were arguing until the cowgirl finally shouted “Who knows how many are in there!” to which the other responded “I don’t care! What if something serious happens now! We need to do something!”

But then, something stopped them on track, something that I and my friend still remember to this day. It was an animal screech, strong enough that it filled the entire forest with its pain and it reached us like a demonic echo. I could see the fear in the eyes of the girls and I’m man enough to admit that I wanted to run away, but my friend did the most sensible thing he could do.

“Hey! You girls, what are you doing here in the middle of the night!” He scolded them. Before I noticed it, he was standing up, with his arms crossed and an angry face. “Go to your houses, now!”

“Wha- wait, aren’t you-” The rainbowed one tried to say but was interrupted.

“I’m not asking you a question, kid! Get the hell out of here, now, this looks dangerous!” The girls all looked at each other with worried looks and quickly got out of there. I noticed the sight of relief in their faces.

One time, long ago, he told me that children, in critical moments, will always shut up and listen to any adult that is raising their voice, a mechanism of defense I suppose. But even if he was trying to look all tough (and he accomplished it with the girls), I noticed that his legs and hands were violently trembling. It was a miracle that his voice didn’t crack.

“Ok, we need to get out of here.” He said, almost fainting. I could see that he was pale as a ghost.

“Wait, sit down.” I say while I pull him down into the bushes “If we run down, you’re going to faint in front of me. Look at yourself.”

“But we need to get out of here now! Call the police or something!”

“Calm down! You're supposed to be the rational one here, remember?” I said that not only to him but to myself. I needed him to be the stoic one so I could be the one losing my shit. “Remember what you said, the cultists are just stupid teenage boys, yes? Finding their rituals on the internet?”

“Yes yes, I remember.”

“Well, in that forest there are nothing but dumb emos or punks or whatever they call themselves these days trying to summon a demon. You realize how ridiculous that sounds?”

“I know, I know! It’s stupid.”

“Let’s just calm down, ok? And breathe.”

After a couple of minutes of trying to calm ourselves down, we heard footsteps coming out of the woods. As we peeked at the source, it was indeed a group of teenagers walking through the trees while wearing some black robes. To be honest, nothing would have calmed us as much as the sight of how ridiculous they looked wearing them.

“Ok, that’s the last of them,” I say while they disappeared in the night. “Ok, I have an idea, let’s go and take pictures on their ritual grounds or something.”

“Yeah, that’s a great idea.” He said, finally calming himself down. “It would be nice evidence for my book. Come on, I have my cellphone with me.”

We slowly walked into the woods and thankfully we didn’t have to go far. We finally came across a clearing between the woods. It was pretty dark, so we had to use a small flashlight to see around the place. What we thought was going to be a place full of gadgets and dumb toys, made us froze in disgust.

There were animal carcasses all across the clearing. Some recent, some older and there were even bones all around the floor.

“Oh lord.” My friend said, “What the hell are these kids doing?” He then took a picture of the scene.

I slowly walked towards the freshest of the corpses and took a closer look “This… This was beaten by something, look!” He walked closer to me “These are human teeth, aren’t they?!”

“Disgusting, what is wrong with them?” He said, taking a picture of the small dog.”

But then, we heard something on the other side of the clearing and we noticed a shadow moving across it. We quickly pointed the flashlight towards it.

“H-Hey! Who goes there?!” I shouted.

It was a girl. A teenage girl wearing a very skimpy dress and with a sad expression on her face as she faced us.

“A girl? Hey, are you okay? What are you… doing…” He never finished his sentence.

From the back of the girl, two demonic wings that were hidden, spasmed, revealing themselves to us. At that moment, I noticed that blood dripping from her mouth.

“...Run… Run, RUN!” I Screamed. And as soon as he reacts, we both escaped from where we came from.