June 12 | Thursday #4
“That?” Liam scoffed. “What’s impressive is sinking a shot from this distance with a few guys surrounding you. Shooting at an empty hoop is a piece of cake.”
“Uh-huh…” Will cleared his throat, a little confused. “What exactly are we doing?”
“Playing.”
“You mean you have practice?”
“Nope.” Liam laughed quietly. “Playing with you.”
Will looked at him like he was crazy.
“I don’t know how.”
“Everyone knows how to play basketball.”
“Not at your level.”
Liam shrugged.
“I’ll adjust.”
“Liam…” Will began slowly, thinking to himself that this was absolutely, definitely not better than a drink. “I don’t know if you remember, but I’m not exactly at full strength.”
“And you still have to take it easy?”
“To a degree. I’m not supposed to overexert myself.”
“That works out,” Liam said cheerfully, picking up the ball. “You don’t have to run or anything like that. We can just stand in place and practice shots.”
“But shooting at an empty hoop is a piece of cake,” Will reminded him sarcastically.
Liam took another shot. This time, he missed.
“See? Not really.”
Will narrowed his eyes. Right, as if he was going to believe the guy who’d just effortlessly sunk a shot from half-court had missed while standing right by the basket.
“Seriously, Liam, what are we doing here?”
“I told you. You should move around a bit. You’ve been at home for a long time. It’ll clear your head.”
“Because it’s too dark in there?”
“You said it.”
“And you implied it, asshole!”
They both started laughing.
“You do realize you picked the worst possible sport, right?” Will asked wryly.
“Because?”
“Because I have basketball-related trauma, and I won’t mention whose fault that is.”
“Even better. You have to face your fears, right?” Liam said casually, making a successful shot.
Will watched Liam move around the hoop.
“Aren’t you sick of basketball? You must have practice several times a week, plus your pick-up games… If I were you, I’d want to do something else in my free time.”
“Yeah…” Liam cleared his throat loudly. “I’m not on the team anymore.”
“What?” Will said, surprised. “Since when?”
“Since last month. I thought Norma was keeping you up to date.”
“Why didn’t you?”
Liam shrugged. He was still acting like his usual self, but something in his expression told Will it was a sensitive topic for him.
“What happened?” he asked anyway, unable to curb his curiosity. “They didn’t kick you off, did they?”
“No, I quit.”
“Why?”
Okay, it was definitely a sensitive topic. He couldn’t remember ever having to drag words out of Liam before.
“It’s just… you know…” Liam shifted restlessly. “The situation with some of the guys… the shaggy ones… it got a little out of control. The atmosphere started to sour, and I figured there was no point sticking around in that kind of company. So I let it go.”
“Let me guess. They were thrilled.”
“Ecstatic. But it’s better this way.”
It didn’t sound convincing.
“Okay,” Will said softly. “We can play for a bit.”
Liam was delighted. So much so that he ignored Will’s ineptitude, encouraging him to keep playing.
His love for basketball was plain to see.
He probably didn’t have anyone to play with now.
It was no surprise; besides his teammates, he only ever hung out with Blake, and Will couldn’t imagine Alden playing a sport like that.
Two hours later, they were walking home. Will was breathless and sore as hell, but all in all, happy.
“…it was okay,” Liam was saying, giving his opinion on the manga he’d borrowed. “I was expecting something better.”
“What?” Those heresy-filled words shook Will to his core. “It’s the best manga under the sun! Okay, fine, at least in the horror genre. Seriously, Nakamura is a genius. I’ve never seen anything more terrifying!”
“Yeah… it’s just that his stories don’t really make sense. Everything is so over the top.”
“That’s why it’s scary, that’s the point!”
“I prefer a different kind of horror. More… psychological.”
“Oh. You’re that deep, are you?” Will asked playfully.
Liam smiled at him.
“Don’t I look the part?” he asked with mock indignation. “You should know, Will, that secretly, I’m a great thinker.”
Okay, that sentence made Will nearly trip, laughing too hard to pay attention to where he was going.
“Uh-huh,” he managed, once he’d finally composed himself. “And what exactly do you think about?”
“Many important things.” Liam tried to sound serious. “But if you doubt me, I can bet you twenty bucks I’ll get a higher score on the literature exam than Blake.”
“No way,” Will said flatly. “Blake loves literature. He writes essays that are a dozen pages long!”
“Yeah, but he completely misunderstands how the exams work. Unlike me.”
“Oh, really?”
“You bet. He doesn’t stick to the rubric.
Instead of thinking about what a bunch of professors want to read, he scrawls out these long, off-topic ramblings and then gets pissed when he doesn’t get a good score.
Last year he got a sixty-three.” Will’s mouth fell open.
It was hard to believe. He himself had only gotten sixty, and Blake was considered a brilliant student.
“To this day, I regret not recording him arguing with the principal. Pure gold.”
“And what did you get?” Will asked, not expecting the score to be much different.
“Ninety,” Liam replied casually.
“WHAT?” Will exclaimed, staring at him in shock. “How is that possible?”
“I’m telling you. You write what they expect from you. That’s the whole philosophy.”
“Okay. I stand corrected,” Will declared humbly. “And the bet’s off.”
“Damn it,” Liam said with theatrical drama. “I should have kept my secret techniques to myself!”
Will chuckled. They were passing a single-family house. Two children were playing in the yard. A boy threw a paper airplane toward a girl. The makeshift toy flew for a moment, carried by the wind, before it began to fall.
That’s when Will realized he’d seen something like it before.
The memory returned to him. So distant it was like trying to recall something from years ago, even though it had only happened a few months prior.
He remembered walking home on the first day of school.
And seeing a slowly falling object, glinting in the sun.
He remembered finding it in the grass. He remembered the triangular shape.
The ornate structure, the white color, and the green light flickering in its very center.
He remembered touching the thing, thinking it was some kind of device and…
That was it. Nothing more.
“Will?” Liam said, a note of worry in his voice.
“Hm?” Will mumbled, only half-present, desperately trying to recall what happened next.
“Everything okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Should we get going?”
He nodded. They walked on. Liam was still talking, but Will couldn’t focus. His thoughts kept returning to that memory.
Finally, they reached his house.
“You sure you’re okay?” Liam pressed.
“Yeah.”
“I can stay with you if you want.”
“No, seriously, it’s fine. See you tomorrow.”
“See you tomorrow.”
Will went inside. He sat on the sofa in the living room, needing a moment to breathe. He began to think about everything he knew so far—about himself, his powers, this world. Finally, he decided to call Norma.
“Hey, Will. You got out early! How’d it go?”
“Good, I think. Remember when we talked about what happened to Christine? You said she found some object and that’s how she got possessed.”
“Yeah,” Norma replied cautiously, as if she was afraid of where the conversation was heading.
“What kind of objects can demons be in?”
“Well… theoretically, pretty much any of them.”
“And can these… objects… move on their own?”
“Of course not. We’re talking about demons, not poltergeists. Did something take up residence at your place?”
Will didn’t answer, lost in thought.
“Will?” Norma’s tone immediately became more serious. “Is something really going on?”
“No, no, everything’s fine. I’m just curious.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“But a possessed person isn’t aware of what’s happening to them, right?” he pressed on. “I mean, the demon is controlling their body.”
“Well, not always.”
“What do you mean?”
“It kind of depends on the demon. And the circumstances, I guess. Some like to take full control, others partial, and still others hide. They only reveal their presence at specific moments, or not at all, and just influence the person’s mind, sometimes more actively, sometimes less.
You know, voices in your head, recurring thoughts, that kind of thing…
Like I said, it’s a pretty complex issue. ”
“So someone could be possessed and not even realize it?”
“I’d say that’s usually the case.”
Will swallowed nervously. More and more pieces were starting to fit.
“And can people like that discover… powers within themselves?”
“Well, no. I mean, they wouldn’t be their powers. But demons have their own abilities and can use them.”
“Oh,” Will whispered weakly.
“You don’t think you’re possessed, do you?
Because, first of all, I’ve never in my life met a demon that shoots electricity.
And second, no demon, not even a hiding one, is so clever that it wouldn’t betray itself sooner or later.
I barely knew Christine, and even I figured it out.
I spend way more time with you, so believe me, I would have definitely noticed. ”
Will didn’t want to openly question her, but not long ago, she’d been claiming that the demon that had almost killed him was practically harmless and nothing to worry about. So Will wasn’t about to treat her as an authority.
“Of course not,” he said, forcing a light tone. “I have to go. See you tomorrow.”
“Bye, Will.”
The conclusion he reached was terrifying.
June 10 | Tuesday