Intense white-gray flames enveloped the sky, and in the center was an expanding circle of the same hue. Zeke’s eyes watered and felt like they were being pushed back with a needle, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the divinity. It seemed sinful to even think about looking away.

“Um… I don’t think that’s a shooting star,” Zeke uttered.

The flames extinguished on their own, and a large ball of light fell out of the darkening sky and punched through the roof of the abandoned factory building.

The sky was normal again. As if it had never changed. Zeke turned to AJ and found her hissing and wiping tears from her eyes. When he turned to the other side; Ugo sprung up and dashed to the old bricked structure. Zeke grabbed the handle of his doctor’s bag and got up, so did AJ, and they went after Ugo.

“Mora!” Zeke shouted when he entered the confines of the shrouded building that was being provided with dim light descending from the hole above. It reeked of cat urine, corroding metal, and wet, rotten bananas. The stench refused to subside as he crept around the area with AJ searching for Ugo. The industrial interior was vast with yellowing and greening concrete columns and moss was trying to take over — it mushroomed, alongside stale-colored blotches, all over the floor and walls, and on wooden tables and flipped over crates and buckets. Decaying machines were tall tubes that shot up and then forward and then down with a jagged spiral disc at the end; there were other machines just like it that had large spotted vats with the disc in the center. They cautiously stepped over the pipes sprawled on the ground and avoided stepping on any sticky-looking substances.

Zeke and AJ spotted Ugo standing still. He legged up to him alongside her and slowed as a crater came into his view. They halted at the edge of it and stood alongside Ugo. He stared at the center of the bowl-shaped depression — a girl in a mangled school outfit laid there.

Her hair was a confusing blend of white, black, and gray — streaks of the three colors raced across and her skin was as white as a sheet of paper, her lips were thin and dark as graphite. Her face was drawn with a pained expression with her eyes clamped shut.

Zeke could hear heavy breaths from her where he stood. He looked up at the gap in the ceiling and squinted at a tiny ray of light particles. He followed it with his eyes and ended up staring back at the girl again.

“By the way, this is exactly what I wished for,” Ugo said.

“Okay… there has to be a scientific, rational explanation for this,” AJ said. She looked at Zeke. “We’re waiting.”

Zeke stammered. He swung his bag back and forth in his hand for a while and then said, “The human body is capable of impossible feats. There have been people who survived falls from planes and the top of Niagara Falls.”

“Did you see that light?” Ugo said. Zeke remained silent.

“Whatever this is. It isn’t the result of some wish you made, Ugo,” AJ said.

“Is she even alive?” Zeke said.

“If not, she’s the hottest corpse I’ve ever seen.”

“I’m going to start recording the trash that comes out of your mouth, so that you can listen to it for yourself,” AJ announced.

“It’ll probably have no effect on him,” Zeke lamented.

Ugo patted Zeke on the back. “Go do your thing, mano.”

“Seriously?” Zeke looked over to the girl — his duty was calling him. He put on a brave face, placed his bag down, and took out from it a pair of blue latex exam gloves. He equipped them and took one more look at the girl and then slid down the crater.

He trod toward the girl and then slowed down to screw up his face as a miasma of sulfur and rotten egg attacked his nose. He halted and gagged.

“What’s wrong?” Ugo yelled.

“She smells a bit… funky… okay, really funky.”

Ugo pondered and put his hand on his chin. “Alright, she’s a bit smelly. I can deal with that. At least I can play the hypocrite card if she ever complains about how I smell.” Ugo peered down and asked, “Does her breath stink, too?”

Zeke attempted to keep his nostrils from inhaling as long as possible as he sped up to the girl and kneeled to her. A pungent whiff shot right into his orifice. “Yeah, it smells like something died inside her,” he said.

“What?” Ugo jerked his head back and groaned. Then, he assured himself, “Okay, I can manage.”

“What are you doing?” AJ asked Ugo. He was far gone in his fantasy to respond.

Zeke placed one hand over her forehead — a malignant frost bit into his skin. He pulled his hand back. “Whoa.”

“What is it?” AJ asked.

“She’s cold, like, freezing,” Zeke said. He looked up at them. “Way too cold for someone to be alive, like the temperature of a corpse stored in a morgue.” He scratched his head and studied the girl. Her tricolor hair was alluring; it looked like a bold fashion statement. He made a comparison in his head between her temperature and that of an ice cube plucked right out of the freezer. Despite how cold she was, she was definitely alive. This was a bizarre medical phenomenon, Zeke convinced himself. “I want to put her in a recovery position, but I’m afraid of moving her. There might be a spinal injury… well, there definitely has to be; she fell from the sky. Oh, Dio Mio, how do I make sense of this?”

The girl’s body convulsed suddenly.

Zeke backed up and took notice that the fingertips on her right hand were blackening and becoming as dark as an olive. He watched until her body calmed down a bit and then gently raised her right hand to examine.

He analyzed the palm that looked ghostly pale and then turned it over and saw that the back of her hand was only slightly darker. During the observation, Zeke detected black spots freckled up the side of her neck, he leaned towards it and made out a faint sound. It was slow and rhythmic: lub… lub… lub… lub… lub.

Zeke’s mouth fell open. Did he gain superhuman hearing? He pushed his ear down onto her chest.

Ugo blushed with fury. “Hey, Zeke, no fair!”

The organ murmured just as low: lub… lub… lub… lub. Zeke bit his lip as her icy physique burned the cartilage in his ear. Without warning, the beating sped up: dub-dub-dub-dub. It sounded muffled and he could also hear merciless whooshing, like wind from a tundra, and whispering in something that had to be gibberish; the voices were shrill and childlike. It slowed again: lub... lub… lub… lub. Abruptly, it stopped, and then sped up: dub-dub-dub-dub-dub-dub. It stopped again and then restarted the sequence. The stink crawled its way up into his nostrils and Zeke retched, but tried to focus on what might be the most unique heartbeat in history,

A lanky hand dropped on his back and grabbed a handful of the cotton of his T-shirt. Zeke was wrenched back and fell on his side.

“Okay, Zeke, that’s enough!”

Zeke gave Ugo a look. “Mora, this is serious. Her heartbeat it’s more than just abnormal.”

Ugo crouched to the girl. “How many heartbeats have you heard in your life? I’m sure she is just special.”

AJ slid down and approached them as Zeke got back on his feet.

“Let’s just call 911 already.” AJ said.

“What are we going to explain to them?” Zeke asked.

Ugo leered at the girl, enamoured by her perfect beauty, and extended his hand towards her. A pale, blackening right hand gripped onto his wrist. He froze and squealed, “Guys…”

Zeke and AJ turned to Ugo. They froze as well.

The girl’s eyes ripped open and her right was a misty gray with the iris and pupil missing. Her face became mean and withered as she spat rapidly without falter, like a machine gun, in a tumultuous, deep voice; speaking something that didn’t sound human.

The girl applied more pressure on her grip — crack — Ugo shrilled.

“Somebody do something!” Ugo cried.

Zeke went into auto-pilot and put his hand on his head and squealed several exclamations in Spanish, some he didn’t even realize he still remembered.

“Like what?” AJ yelled.

“Cut her hand off! It’s okay! I can deal with having a girl short on one hand!”

“You’re still thinking about that?”

The girl twisted his hand in one direction. Ugo bent back. “You can’t take this hand! It’s my favorite one!”

Zeke slid his hands down his head and entered mental nirvana. He stared at Ugo with a warm smile. “Okay, there’s nothing else we can do. AJ, let’s leave. I’ll miss you, mano,” he lamented calmly.”

“Cabron! Don’t you dare leave me!”

“I’ll tell Mom and Dad that I did everything I could. Don’t worry, I promise that your funeral will be beautiful! A real tear-jerker!”

“I’ll haunt your ass!” Ugo paused. “Wait, if I die with anger and regrets, I get all the perks that come with being a ghost, right?” He stroked his chin and cracked a lecherous smile. “Maybe this won’t be so bad.” Crack! He started screaming again.

“Please, just go to Hell instead,” AJ said.

The girl let go and choked. Her chest arched up, like the back of a threatened cat; Ugo goggled at it with a mile-wide smile and then the girl hurled a slimy glob of black goo onto his striped hoodie, and some of it flecks onto the bottom of his chin.

The room hushed as the gang held their breaths and the girl beamed into Ugo’s eyes and then muttered in a small, brittle voice, “Help me.” Her eyelids fell shut, and she collapsed; making a gentle thud sound when her back hit the ground.

Zeke, Ugo, and AJ let out big breaths, simultaneously, and allow themselves to catch their breaths.

Ugo stood up and doubled over as he cupped his sore wrist. He walked back to his friends.

Zeke, Ugo, and AJ spent the next fifteen minutes in recovery licking their mental wounds, and Zeke worked on Ugo’s physical wound. He was huddled at one end of the crater with Ugo, patching his wrist with fresh gauze from his doctor’s bag. It was only a sprain; Zeke was surprised that Ugo didn’t make a joke about how this wouldn’t be the first time he sprained his wrist.

Ugo’s eyes stayed glued on the girl, whom they left spread on the ground, shivering with his black goop splattered hoodie over her chest.

AJ kept a great distance from the girl as she eyed her, standing at one side of the crater, leaning back onto the wall with her arms folded.

Zeke wrapped the tape around the gauze and cut off the end with a pair of scissors. He removed his gloves, tossed them away, and stored the rest of his equipment in his first aid kit box and then put it inside his bag. “I wonder what she has,” he said.

“You think this is some kind of sickness?”

“Upper gastrointestinal bleeding and other possibilities have been recorded to cause black vomit.”

“You said her heartbeat was really weird, too. I think I heard it as well. And what about the black spots on her skin, her fingertips, and um... I feel like I’m forgetting something... it’s pretty minor—Oh, yeah! The demonic voice and monstrous strength! She almost broke my wrist, it’s a miracle that nothing happened. If she held on any longer she probably would’ve torn my whole arm off! And you think she has a cold or something!?”

Zeke paused. “Okay... maybe it’s a really bad cold.”

Ugo squinted silently at Zeke, smacked him across the face, and then grabbed onto his shoulders. “Stop trying to look at this from a scientific point of view. Wake up, Zeke! She’s being possessed,” Ugo said. “By a demon!”

“That’s ridiculous.” AJ said from the other side.

“Don’t play dumb, AJ. You saw all that, nothing normal can explain that!

“Doesn’t mean that it’s related to the supernatural.”

“Am I the only one who saw the sky on fire?” Ugo said belligerently. He got up and approached AJ. “If you believe that this is all normal, then how come you’re not calling 911, huh?”

“I—I—I’m going to. I—I—I just forgot to…” AJ reached into her pocket and whipped out her cell.

“Put your phone away; she’s possessed!” he said. “We can’t take her to a hospital. What if the demon gets loose there?” Ugo argued. “No type of general medicine can cure her/”

Zeke felt a ping in his head. It prompted him to rummage through his bag and pull out his grandmother’s black book. He flipped through its pages as he heard Ugo and AJ arguing.

“Who we should call is the Pope! Or you know, Jesus!” Ugo said. Does anybody here know any priests? Any Martin Luther types? Any badass demon hunters on speed dial?”

“Okay, fine.” AJ conceded. “She’s possessed, let’s just get out of here already!”

“No! We can’t just leave her.”

“We don’t even know her and you’re just saying that because you think that she’s hot.”

“Yeah, I do! So, what if that’s part of the reason? Look, she asked for help, didn’t you see the fear in her eyes? We can’t just leave her like that. To let that demon take over and probably kill loads of people in Winterberry afterwards.”

“Ugo, what’re we gonna do? We’re just a couple of teenagers. You get winded by doing a couple of jumping jacks!”

“Oh, here we go with the fitness crap!”

“Having soda for breakfast isn’t healthy, Ugo! And it wouldn’t kill you to go for a morning jog.”

“I drink it with a BLT sandwich on the side! Oh, and what are its ingredients? Bacon… let-tuce and… to-ma-to! And I can’t run every morning. We have school, remember?”

“Then wake up at 5am!”

Ugo froze and gave her a glazed look. “This and the poop charts are why we kicked you out of the group chat.”

“Isn’t it just you and Zeke now? How is that any different from texting him directly?”

“Don’t be bitter.”

Zeke muted the two in his head. He didn’t quite understand what he was hoping to find, but he couldn’t shake off the lessons his grandmother etched into his mind. If — If! This was a case of demon possession; there had to be an answer in the book. An interesting page flew by. He stopped and went back to it. The page exhibited a sigil of a cross that had a curvy line stricken through it sideways. Under it was scrawled: PARA EMERGENCIAS!

It was like Grandma Esther was signaling him from the great beyond.

The power of the sigils.

She said that once he was old enough that there are certain sigils that he could use to help him out of... abnormal situations like this. Every time he visited her in the ward she’d draw it for him on a napkin or on a piece of paper, but he always ended up losing or having it thrown away by his mother whenever she found it.

Zeke rose and turned the page over to Ugo and AJ. “Guys, look at this.”

Ugo and AJ silenced and looked at the sigil.

“Is that the vieja’s book?”

“What does it say under the sigil?” AJ asked.

“For emergencies,” Zeke said.

“So, we’re going to fall back on your grandmother’s theories to resolve this situation?” AJ groaned.

Zeke heaved a loud sigh and lowered the book. “Look, AJ, my whole world is falling apart, okay? I’m a very open-minded person, but to be honest, I always found the things that my grandmother told me to be simply fairy tales which I listened to because I found them to be intriguing just like all the useless information I put in my head from video games and comic books and movies and TV shows. I just found it all to be interesting, that’s it!

“Never in a million years did I think I would come across a case of demon possession. Now, I’m thinking that maybe my grandmother wasn’t crazy! Just what else is real too. I don’t think we should call 911 or just leave. I mean, it’s already seen our faces, we should just send it back to Hell before it comes for us to have some fun.”

They all took a short beat. Ugo was the first to break the silence. “So, how can this sigil save her, exactly?

Zeke looked around and then stopped at the machinery with a vat. It was a paint mixer. He grinned. “Let’s search the building. We need to find some paint.”