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You’d think that, after the first few times they summoned supernatural entities, they would have stopped.
That’s what you’d think. Of course, what you think to be rational rarely ever actually happens, especially with Roanoke Cabin. They just have a way of surprising you.
This started… like that.
Ripley found a Ouija board. Again.
Well, actually, to say she ‘found’ it would be inaccurate - after the first few times various cabins decided to try their hands at summoning ghosts, demons, and other otherworldly creatures, Rosie rounded up any Ouija boards, spirit boxes, and other similarly supernatural-related items and donated them to Abigail (who used them for, quote, “Research Purposes”).
So, no, Ripley actually did not find a Ouija board this time.
She made one.
It was rather crudely constructed - built on cardboard, numbers and letters painted on in glitter glue and embellished and outlined with Sharpie. The planchette was really just one of Jo’s contact lenses that Ripley had stolen borrowed and somehow inserted into a pinecone, the most planchette-shaped object Ripley could find on such short notice.
The Ouija board itself was odd, yes. But it did the job. Ripley would prove that soon enough, when she called the demons to Roanoke Cabin.
There were many times when the Roanokes thought they were about to see Jen’s head implode. Sometimes literally, most often figuratively. Sometimes it was because they were trying to sneak out yet again instead of engaging in a ‘normal’ camp activity like basket weaving or bracelet making. Sometimes it was because they were making contact with mermaids or werewolves. Once, it was related to dynamite and gunpowder and a faulty fuse box. This time, it was because Ripley was messing with a Ouija board.
“YOU WHAT?”
“I summoned demons into our mortal realm,” Ripley said, wearing her biggest heart eyes. “I just wanted to see if I could do it! Please don’t be mad, Jen!”
Somewhere behind them, Jo was trying to refrain from using expletives as she battled demons with one of April’s rolled-up teen magazines.
“I think you’re allowed to swear,” April muttered to Jo. “I mean, you’re fighting a literal demon.”
“ I can’t swear in front of a child, April. That’s wrong. ”
So when another monster flew at Jo’s face, she screamed “WHAT THE JUNK” before April tackled it to the ground.
“Girls,” said Jen, sounding far too tired to deal with this kind of thing at two in the morning. “Why don’t we try just leaving the demons here, evacuating the cabin, and getting Rosie?”
“Why?”
Jen’s eye gave a little twitch. “ BECAUSE THAT’S THE SAFEST THING TO DO??”
Mal and Molly, still in their respective bunks, made eye contact. Mal pointed at the door, and then mimed a bow-and-arrow, and then used a hand signal that Molly recognized as a cue to use one of their pre-designed two-person defensive fighting stances. She nodded, already grabbing a bow from beside her bed, one she accidentally brought into their cabin after archery the day before, and the quiver that came with it. Then, wordlessly, the two snuck out of the cabin, just barely dodging a Jen that really needed some coffee, a Ripley who was still playing with her homemade Ouija board, for some reason, and a Jo and April fighting off demons side by side.
A few demons got in their way, too - Molly stabbed an arrow through the throat of the first one that flew toward them, and Mal kicked another one in the crotch. But it was a small cabin, and their bunks were pretty close to the door, so they made it out quickly.
As the screen door shut with a soft thump behind them, they ran out into the night, stars above them, cool breeze blowing by, trying to get somewhere safe, strategizing about places to stay the night.
So that’s how Mal and Molly ended up standing outside of the Zodiac’s door at 2 AM, covered in what could have been either chicken blood or craft paint, sequins in their hair.
It was Barney who answered the door - it was always Barney who answered the door. They were well known for their hospitality, and couldn’t let anything ruin their reputation. Oftentimes, they even greeted guests with a plate of cookies in their hands. Tonight, the only thing Barney held was Marigold. This was probably because it was 2 AM.
“Can we please stay at your cabin tonight?” Asked Molly.
“Why?”
“Ripley played with a Ouija board and cursed ours,” Molly explained. “And April doesn’t know how to banish spirits, she just throws salt at them and yells ‘Does this look like a hotel to you?’”
“Oh,” said Barney, setting Marigold on the ground beside them. “Didn’t she do that last week?”
Mal grumbled. “No. It was aliens last week, and a Ouija board the week before. Because it’s always something. ”
“I can’t believe my parents thought this was a summer finishing school…” Molly muttered.
“We’re getting off-topic,” Barney said. “Here, let’s get you inside. You can explain more there.” They poked their head back in the door, glancing around, then turned back to Mal and Molly. “Okay, it looks like Mackenzie and Emily are awake, and I think Wren might be up, too. Be quiet though, because Diane and Hes are still asleep, and they’re cuddling, and they don’t like it when people wake them up from their cuddle-sessions.”
Mal was obviously trying to hold back a laugh.
“What?” Asked Barney.
“Diane - Diane cuddles?” Mal said, before bursting into a fit of (surprisingly quiet, but still extreme) laughter.
Barney’s face turned the color of the sheet. “I wasn’t supposed to tell you that. Don’t tell anyone that. Don’t tell anyone that I told you that. That…”
“Calm down, Barney, we won’t say anything,” said Molly, trying to help a doubled-over and wheezing Mal.
Barney nodded. “Okay, come on in.”
Jen had signed up to be a camp counselor.
That was it. That was what was all that was in her contract.
There was nothing about aliens, nothing about gods, nothing about Bigfoot wandering around in the wilderness, nothing about mermaids, nothing about quests, and nothing, absolutely nothing about demons.
And yet here she was. In a cabin. With her girls. Fighting off demons , of all things.
(That wasn’t even the weirdest part, though she definitely had a hard time pinning down what the ‘weirdest part’ of her night was, seeing as it was all roughly the same level of weird. She eventually decided that the most absurd element of it all was that the demons all seemed to speak with British accents. She didn’t know what to do with this information.)
She made a note to herself to ask Rosie to change the counselor’s contract to include a section pertaining to the supernatural, hopefully with footnotes - Jen quite liked footnotes - and some nice fancy lettering. Also, she needed to ask Rosie for a raise. Because a few college credits and a couple hundred bucks a week would not cut it after this.
Jen will admit, she didn’t really know what to do, in the moment. She wasn’t a fighter - her girls were more skilled in that department. Even when they let her in on their plans, she always ended up being on the defensive, often a distraction or diversion, so that the other Roanokes had time to strike. Now, as the cabin swarmed with angry monsters, she just tried her best to get a headcount, to at least make sure that all of her girls were here. Then, she reasoned, she could find a way to get them out of here, without the spirits following them.
So Jen took a deep breath, and she started counting.
There was Ripley, under her bunk bed, planchette still in her hand and her board by her side. She was eating something, though Jen couldn’t really see what - from where she was standing, it could have been anything from a new order of Squishy Squids to an old t-shirt.
Jen could see April throwing salt at a few different monsters from a position atop Jo’s bunk. She was shouting something - Jen thought it sounded like “LISTEN UP BUDDY IF YOU WANNA STAY YOU’D BETTER START PAYING RENT, AND I’M TELLING YOU, I’M ONE HECKUVA LANDLORD” but she wasn’t sure. There was a lot of background noise to deal with.
Jo seemed to be beside April. Or maybe hiding behind April. Again, it was hard to tell - Jen probably should have been wearing her contacts to do a headcount, or at least her glasses. Even without either of those, she thought she saw Jo reading some sort of book. Jen didn’t think about it.
She was thinking about where her two missing Roanokes had gone off two.
“I swear,” she muttered. “Molly and Mal always choose the worst times to sneak off into the woods to make-out.”
Molly and Mal were not, in fact, in the woods, making-out (as Jen had put it).
They were, in fact, sitting on a bunk in the Zodiac cabin, being served hot cocoa and cookies. Barney explained that they’d been teaching the other Zodiacs how to bake (because apparently none of the Lumberjane Scouts had any cooking skills, as far as they could tell, and they all needed to be taught) so these cookies were Mackenzie’s handiwork, and therefore a little bit burnt on the bottom. But they weren’t bad, and the cocoa was good (though that was made solely by Barney, and Barney is known for their cocoa-making skills) and Mal and Molly were very, very happy to be out of their cabin.
“Is it aliens?!” Asked Emily.
“Nah,” said Mal. “Pretty sure it’s demons. Or at least, some sort of otherworldly spirit.”
“We didn’t get a good look,” Molly explained. “We were running through the door pretty fast. We only really stopped to beat a few of them up.”
Emily whispered a quiet “Dammit.”
“Hasn’t Rosie talked about demon-summoning with Ripley?” Asked Mackenzie.
“Well, she gave the whole camp a talking-to about Ouija boards,” said Barney. “I don’t think she was talking to Ripley specifically. And then she confiscated all of our ways to contact the supernatural.”
Wren muttered something about her tarot cards also being confiscated in the purge.
“I don’t understand why she had to do that,” Emily said. “I liked being able to contact the supernatural.”
“You’ll find it’s not as fun when you have the supernatural hanging out in your cabin and wreaking general havoc,” Mal said.
Emily pointed at the still-sleeping Diane. “You’ll find we already do have the supernatural hanging out in our cabin and wreaking general havoc.”
“Fair enough.”
“I think I can perform an exorcism,” said Jo.
“You sure you don’t want me to just punch them away?” Asked April.
Jo sighed, shutting her book. “April, I love you, and you’re buff as junk, but I don’t think even you could take down a demonic horde of otherworldly spirits with just your guns.”
“You underestimate me,” April sighed.
Jen shouted from somewhere in the corner, “DID I HEAR YOU SAY YOU CAN DO AN EXORCISM?? PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF RUTH HANDLER PERFORM AN EXORCISM.”
And then, Jo heard her say, “Oh sweet Sellappan Nirmala, please put that down on the list of phrases I never, in my life, thought I would ever say.”
Jo shook her head, and opened the book again. She had to focus. In front of her, April punched another monster in the face.
She looked down at the book in her hands. She tried to find once more the page on exorcisms, and silently wished that her four years of taking Latin would pay off. Her dads had wanted her to take it so that she could get better with derivatives of words, and be a better scientist. Jo laughed. If only they could see her now.
Mackenzie looked a little concerned.“So do you think the rest of the Roanokes - of your cabin - needs help, or anything?”
Mal and Molly looked at each other.
“We hadn’t really thought about it-”
“Oh come on,” said Wren. “They’re Roanokes. They’ll be fine.”
“It’s still polite to ask.”
Off on the edge of the room, someone shifted in their bunk.
“Guys?” Asked a sleepy Diane, still partially curled around Hes. “Why’re the lights on?”
Mal and Molly - and everyone else, for that matter - froze. They all watched Diane rub her eyes, and then comb her hair out of her face with her fingers, and then, eventually, reach full consciousness. And see Mal and Molly.
Diane jumped out of bed, away from Hes. “ YOU SAW NOTHING.”
“We saw nothing,” Mal and Molly repeated back to her.
“Barney?” Asked Diane. “Dear, my sweet, lovely child, I love you, but why the fuck are the Roanokes in our cabin?”
“It’s only two of them,” they said.
“Diane?” Hes said, slowly waking up. “You know we’re not allowed to swear for real, this is supposed to be a G-rated comic…”
“There’s demons in the Roanoke cabin,” said Emily.
Diane cocked her head to the side. “Wren, why aren’t you over there? You love that shit.”
Wren glared at her. “I’m goth, Diane, not a Satanist.”
Mal and Molly watched as the two suddenly got into a very, very heated argument.
“Should we go?” Molly asked, mostly to Barney.
“No, no, it’s okay, they do this sometimes. Diane’s not a morning person.”
“It’s 2 AM, Barney.”
“Technically, that’s still the morning.”
Jo had never exorcised a demon before. Or a horde of demons, in this case. She couldn’t remember having ever exorcised anything, actually. She tended to stick to science. Science made more sense, and was more fun, anyway, and at the very least was far more thrilling than any demon-related activities.
April had never helped exorcise a demon. She’d only ever helped exercise one, in an aerobics class one time, and that was at the beginning of the summer and she didn’t remember how it went. She hoped some muscle memory would kick in.
Jen had never watched an exorcism before. She’d signed up to be a camp counselor, and she hadn’t even thought to prepare for this.
Ripley was hiding under the bed. Or at least, she was in theory. None of them had heard from her recently. Jen hoped she was okay.
“You got this?” April asked Jo, who was reading and re-reading the book in her hands.
“I think so,” said Jo. “Just trying to figure out the pronunciation of a few words, but I think I’ve got them down, now.”
“Do you need me to throw any more salt?”
“April, I mean this in the best way possible, but please do not throw any more salt at any more demons. So far it’s only helped piss them off.”
“Understood.”
Jo had them stand in the center of the cabin - her, April, and Jen. Demons flew around them, but weren’t doing much harm, anymore. They seemed a bit tired out. One of them was hanging from the ceiling by it’s toes, presumably for fun, and another had picked up one of April’s teen magazines and seemed stuck to it ever since. April was incredibly tempted to recommend the best articles, but knew it would probably be a bad move, seeing as they were currently trying to banish the demons, not befriend them.
“Okay,” said Jo, “I’ve got it.”
She took a deep breath.
And then, she started speaking Latin.
Or at least, presumably, it was Latin. April didn’t speak Latin, and Jen only knew a little - she was a Spanish and French student. She’d never spent the time to learn a dead language because it was, quite obviously, dead, and so it hadn’t made sense to learn it. Unless, apparently, you were attempting to exorcise demons. In which case? Well, it seemed pretty important, actually.
Jo chanted like that for what might have been fifteen to thirty minutes. She closed her eyes while she was doing it, trying to distance herself from any distractions. And then, after what felt like an eternity, she opened them. She was done. There was nothing more to recite.
But the demons were all still there.
“Why-?” Asked Jen.
“I don’t think it worked?” Said Jo, looking over the pages again. “But I did it exactly how it said I should-”
“Excuse me?” Asked Ripley, suddenly, from under her bed.
“Oh thank Mary Shelly she’s still alive,” sighed Jen.
All of the demons looked toward Ripley.
“Hm?” Said one of the demons, sounding surprisingly polite for an evil spirit.
Ripley held out what appeared to be a pile of food(?) in their direction. “Do you like chili cheese fries?”
“...well actually-”
“I also have a dictionary,” Ripley said. “Which I love dearly, but perhaps, just maybe, I could let it go. For a price.”
“Keep talking,” said another demon, looking up from one of April’s magazines.
It was 3 AM, now.
Someone knocked on the door of the Zodiac cabin.
“If it’s one more Roanoke,” muttered Diane. “I swear to god - I mean, I swear to me - that I will lose my shit-”
“We’re in a G-rated comic Diane!”
“Oh, suck it.”
Emily stood up and answered the door.
It was the Roanokes.
The rest of the cabin, actually.
Jen, Jo, April, and Ripley, standing in a huddle together on the Zodiac cabin’s steps, looking a bit like they’d been through hell, but only the outermost circle.
“We got rid of the demons,” Jo said.
“Really?” Asked Mal. “How? Did you do an exorcism?”
“Tried that. Didn’t work.”
“Then what did work?”
“Ripley offered them some chili cheese fries and a dictionary if they let us be, and went off into the woods or something. And then they did.”
“Really? That worked?”
“Apparently.”
“Huh.”
Molly looked around, suddenly realizing that someone was missing.
“Where’s Jen?” She asked. “Is Jen okay?”
“Jen’s fine,” said April. “Actually, she’s right over there, in Rosie’s cabin. I think she… well, she said she’d be making some complaints…”
“DEMONS, ROSIE!!! DEMONS!!!! DO YOU KNOW WHAT I SIGNED UP FOR???? I SIGNED UP TO BE A CAMP COUNSELOR, ROSIE, AND INSTEAD I GOT THIS. DO YOU KNOW HOW DANGEROUS THAT IS?? WE COULD HAVE DIED!!!!! WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO SAY ABOUT THAT?????”
“I’d say you need to read the fine print, Janet.”
“ What fine print? WHERE WAS THE FINE PRINT?”
“Well, I use microdots…”