Perhaps because Elrond had hidden in the safe house, the curse could not be transmitted properly. This angered Kelly, and she began taking revenge on everyone involved in the matter.
The first to be affected were those connected to the perjury.
Among the four families who had orchestrated the plan, only Elrond’s parents were spared due to the protection of exorcists. The parents of the other three deceased students, however, were caught up in a series of bizarre accidents and ended up in the ICU.
The homeroom teacher of the neighboring class, who had been bribed by the parents, somehow mistook shattered glass for ice while drinking water in the office. As he chewed the shards along with the water, by the time he was discovered, his mouth was full of blood, his tongue torn into a mangled mess of flesh.
Others who had been bribed—the police officers, the school principal, the students who gave false testimony—also received their respective punishments. Some lost their teeth and could no longer speak; some had their hands broken, becoming disabled. The injuries were countless and varied.
Because these were real, physical injuries, even the exorcists brought in by the Kingsley family were powerless against this kind of revenge.
Kelly’s anger was endless. After punishing those connected to the perjury, the unlucky next targets were those involved in b*llying.
Those who had beaten and tormented Kelly along with the four-member group screamed in pain as countless rotting, foul scars appeared on their faces and bodies. Those who had insulted or mocked her suffered decaying mouths and throat sores, unable to speak harsh words or vent malice. Those who had turned a blind eye to Kelly’s cries for help had blood-tinged tears streaming from their eyes and were temporarily blinded…
Batch after batch of students “fell ill” and had to take leave for various reasons. Gradually, the number of students in the school dwindled. Especially in the neighboring class—its homeroom teacher had been hospitalized due to mental breakdown, and only two or three students remained. They were directly merged into Everly’s class to attend lessons together.
Strangely enough, the boy from the neighboring class—the one who had twice come running excitedly to invite Everly on night tours—had somehow survived all this time.
Everly had assumed he was also part of the b*llies’ side, since he had run errands for Elrond’s group. Out of curiosity, she asked casually, and the boy, named Jenny, immediately raised his hand to declare his innocence—he had actually been on the side of the victims, just more savvy, so he had suffered less abuse.
“Elrond and his gang were really terrible, using all sorts of unimaginable ways to torment people… Sigh, looking back, a lot of this is also Eric’s fault. If he hadn’t egged Elrond into holding that séance, Kelly wouldn’t have ended up like this.”
Séance?
This was the second time Everly had heard that word. Apparently, Kelly’s change had started after they had used the Ouija board. Trusting that horror movies never include useless information, Everly pressed Jenny for the full story.
It all began with that séance held half a month ago.
At the time, Eric had brought a Ouija board from home. Middle schoolers, curious about everything, were easily tempted. Eric encouraged Elrond to organize a séance. Finding it amusing, Elrond invited more than ten students from various seventh-grade classes to sneak into the school building at night.
“We had originally planned to go to the abandoned teaching building, but after the first night tour was leaked, the night patrol there became much stricter. So the séance ended up being held in the sewing classroom of the new teaching building. Five years ago, a senior had died there from a sudden heart attack, and they wanted to see if they could summon her spirit in the sewing room.”
Although that was the plan, when Elrond and the others avoided the patrols and finally sneaked into the building, they found the sewing classroom’s doors and windows all locked, completely inaccessible. In the end, under Elrond’s direction, the location of the séance was moved to the storage room next to the sewing classroom, separated by just one wall.
“Everyone thought that, since the two rooms were so close together, the chance of summoning the senior’s spirit would be pretty high. After all, on TV, ghosts always pass through walls… But the storage room was a bit eerie, and everyone was scared. So Eric said that Kelly should go first and do a solo séance as a demonstration. But there are three rules for using a Ouija board: ‘Never perform a séance alone, never do it in a graveyard, and always say goodbye to the spirit afterward.’ What he did was obviously breaking the rules.”
“And then?”
“And then…”
Jenny’s voice trembled as he recounted the details of the séance to Everly.
Under the pressure of Elrond’s group, Kelly sat alone in the middle of the storage room and began the séance.
A Ouija board doesn’t require any spells. You just place the wooden board flat, rest your fingers on the planchette, and ask questions directly.
The first question Elrond made Kelly ask was: “Is there a spirit here?”
After she asked, the storage room was silent at first; the planchette did not move. Elrond grew bored and urged Kelly to ask again.
By the third time, as impatience began to stir among the group, a chill breeze suddenly blew through the locked storage room from who-knows-where.
The wind was icy, carrying dust and the scent of grave soil. It brushed across everyone’s cheeks like a cold ghostly hand groping in every direction. Even Jack shivered involuntarily.
Before the shiver had even left him, an odd sound of wood scraping echoed through the room.
“Shhhh… shhh shhh…”
The sound was heavy and dragging, reminiscent of an old wooden house or the wheezing coughs of a gravely ill, dying person. To avoid the school patrols, no one had dared to turn on the lights, relying solely on the dim streetlight filtering through the windows. The sudden, eerie noise threw everyone into a brief panic.
They turned toward the source and saw that Kelly’s fingers were being guided by the planchette. Slowly, deliberately, it moved toward the upper-left corner marked “YES.”
Benjamin screamed in fright. Once he realized what was happening, he clenched his fists and rushed forward, thinking Kelly was deliberately trying to mess with him. He wanted to teach her a lesson and regain some face for himself.
Elrond saw this and called out to Benjamin: “Wait. Isn’t this fascinating? Don’t disturb her, let her continue. I still have many questions to ask.”
Benjamin, always obedient to Elrond, immediately stepped back behind him.
Elrond instructed Kelly to ask the spirit for its name. Kelly didn’t want to—she was the most terrified of everyone present. This spirit had been summoned by her, and it was her fingers being dragged across the planchette by some unknown force. Only she felt the terrifying sensation of almost being pulled into the darkness by an unseen presence.
But Elrond and the others always found a way to force her compliance.
“Um… um… may I ask… what is your name?” Kelly asked, trembling, her face marked with the bright red imprint of a slap.
“Shhh… shhh…” The planchette dragged Kelly’s fingers again under everyone’s anxious gaze.
“Who’s there?!”
At that moment, a sharp voice rang out, and the storage room door was pushed open violently. The overhead light snapped on with a “click.” In the glare, the night-tour group and the school patrol officers inside stared at each other, stunned.
“After the lights came on, the planchette stopped moving, and Kelly’s fingers were freed. But I still saw that the spirit’s answer was N.S…” Jenny said.
Everly corrected him: “Wasn’t it O.S? The witch in the old teaching building was Olivia, Olivia Salaman.”
“Is…is that so?” Jenny scratched his head, unsure. “So it was O.S? I probably misread it; N and O are right next to each other. With the security guards bursting in, everything was chaotic. Everyone was too scared and worried about getting in trouble to pay attention… Luckily, Elrond was in our group, so the guards were lenient. They just warned us not to do it again and sent us back to the dorms.”
“So that’s when Kelly started acting weird?”
“Yes. Because she violated two rules in a row: ‘Never use the Ouija board alone’ and ‘Say goodbye to the spirit after the séance.’ As a result, the witch’s spirit possessed her from that moment and never left. Her roommate said that since that day, dead insects often appeared around her, and her gaze became eerie and unsettling…”
I see.
Hearing Jenny explain the whole story, Everly finally completed the last piece of the puzzle about the incident—and learned something new: when a witch possesses someone, dead insects tend to appear around them.
That was worth jotting down in her notebook.
Perhaps because she had just heard Jenny mention the storage room that morning, after school in the afternoon, Everly instinctively glanced toward it.
That glance revealed something alarming: the storage room door was open and unlocked.
Everly didn’t dare approach. She stopped a few meters from the doorway and cautiously peered inside.
She saw Kelly standing among the piles of supplies. The red-haired girl stood with her head lowered by the window, reaching out to touch the face of a child mannequin tucked in the corner. Sunlight streamed in from outside, casting heavy shadows over her, making it seem as though the red-haired girl was on the verge of being swallowed by darkness.
Wait—why was Kelly at school?!
Noticing that Kelly seemed to sense her gaze and had turned her head slightly, Everly immediately darted behind a wall, pressing her hand to her racing chest as she quickly left the corridor.
During extracurricular time at the tennis courts, after talking with some gossipy students, Everly learned that Kelly had actually been “released without charge” back to school at noon.
The police were genuinely afraid.
Kelly was extremely unusual. Every officer who had touched her case suffered some kind of misfortune. Coupled with the mass recanting of previously false testimonies by students, the evidence was insufficient, and they quickly let Kelly go—a hot potato they didn’t dare hold onto.
Since Kelly’s class had now been merged with Everly’s, starting the next day, Kelly became Everly’s temporary classmate.
Everly, forced to sit in class with such a dangerous person, said: “…”
Fortunately, even as a goddess of vengeance, Kelly still retained some rationality. She would not attack people out of petty spite. Even though everyone in class avoided her and dared not speak to her, Kelly remained expressionless, dressed in black, sitting quietly in the corner like a dormant, dangerous volcano.
Meanwhile, the team of exorcists hired by the Kingsley family had finally finalized their plan, preparing to take action against Kelly.