A Beginner’s Guide to Summoning Demons

“Are those pyjamas?”, I said the first thought that came to my mind.  “Yes”, sighed the ghost flailing its arms frantically. “You can see me”, it screamed and whooshed away. My heart had not stopped pounding. The pyjama ghost had scared the living daylights out of me. I was trying to find a reasonable explanation for the apparition. Maybe it was a prank. Maybe I had imagined the entire thing. Yes, that was it, I always did have an overactive imagination. Mind reeling, I turned around, to my dismay the ghost was floating right behind me looking miserable as ever. I had wanted to scream and screech in horror. I was shaking like a leaf, initially at least, but I really couldn’t take a pyjama ghost seriously. I don’t think anyone could. Out of respect, I had asked him what had happened to him. Which was the wrong kind of small talk, he had whooshed around melodramatically looking even more wretched and shameful than before, if it were possible. I am fairly certain I heard the words ‘uncouth plebian’ and ‘cretin’ before he evaporated without a trace. 

By the next week, I had gotten accustomed to his customary wailing, the dramatic wind, curtains flying around, doors opening and closing without any reason, capsized furniture, my clothes in heaps on the floor and anxious, sleepless nights. Any sensible person would have run out for their lives in two days. But like the white person who gets slaughtered first in the horror movies, because they are too dim-witted, I lingered there. Not because I was not terrorized, not because I was audacious, not even because I didn’t believe in ghosts. I really couldn’t go home. Also, I needed the money. Out of all the ghosts that ever existed, I was being haunted by the most bothersome and unreasonably melodramatic, not half bad looking ghost.

Instead of focusing on the students and my first day as a teacher at the institute, I found myself investigating the ghost. After some research and some rude comments from my students that I will end up like the previous teacher I came to the conclusion that the ghost that haunted me was in fact, their previous English teacher, a handsome 29 y.o fresh out of College. Of course, they don’t know anything about the haunting, otherwise, I’d be kicked out of the school before I could say ‘Ghost’. After all, they wouldn’t want a lunatic to teach kids. I discreetly gathered information about his death. I had seen horror movies too, if the ghost was there it was obviously for revenge or to fulfill some dream. So I tried my best to get something that might help me get rid of the ghost. That’s how I stumbled upon his diary, no I wasn’t snooping, I’d like to call it research. He was an adventurer, he went skiing, para-gliding, para-sailing, deep-sea diving, mountain climbing, you name it he’s done it. He also loved to read. He’s the guy they make movies about. Jupiter. Yes, that’s his name. Maybe his parents hated him, but everyone called him Peter. 

How he died was perhaps the most cartoonish of it all. He slipped on a banana peel, fell down the flight of stairs that led to the room, hit his chest hard on the edge of the railing, punctured his lung, stood up without realising it, insisted he was fine and ran up the stairs out of breath and dropped dead in front of this very room. In his pyjamas, no less. Consequently his comical pyjamas. I try not to laugh when I tell this to someone, sounds vaguely disrespectful of the dead.

Once I learned his secret I was not scared of him, I started calling out his annoying behaviour. Told him how bad a roommate he was being. We decided to call a truce. Peter being a ghost couldn’t just pick out a book and read any time he wished. Every day for one hour I would read him any book he chose and he would leave me alone for the rest of the day. This was a good deal until he started trash talking Dan Brown. I know a lot of people don’t approve his writing but to each his own. Peter took sympathy on me and helped me in navigating the politics of the institute. He’d come with me to classrooms and since no one but me could see him, he’d tell me that Ryan was bullying Maria or who was cheating on tests. Within weeks I had garnered a reputation of being formidable. Peter told me the kids thought I had eyes on the back of my head. I found the whole situation horribly funny.

“Are you cleaning up again?”, Peter would jokingly mimic me cleaning up and I would retort, “Someone has to and we both know its not you.” Peter thought I was being rigid and didn’t enjoy my life. I enjoyed these discussions with Peter. I would tell him of course that he was wrong, I was merely doing everything well now, saving up, eating healthy food and just normal stuff so that I don’t have to worry later on in life. On more than one occasion I had asked Peter what he would do if he could be a human again. His answer was always the same: go to an amusement park, eat as many cheeseburgers and ice-creams as he could and make out with someone at a movie. “Classic”,  I’d say. Things were going almost smoothly for me, Peter and I were fast becoming friends. After class, we’d hang out in my room. Peter would tell me how I was wrong, I would tell Peter how he was dead and should shut up. All in all, it was going well until I got hold of “A beginners guide to summoning demons: A user’s manual” on Peter’s shelf. It had a logo which said “The Coven of Theivery”. 

“For the last time, I don’t know where that came from”, bellowed Peter. I had been badgering him for a week to know the whereabouts of the book we had found. Peter doesn’t want me to open the book, he thinks it may bring “curses”. Then again with a name like Jupiter you are bound to believe some nonsense. We both agreed that no harm ever came from opening a book. I failed to tell Peter that this was the exact line from the movie “The Mummy” right before they open “The book of the dead”. To be fair, this book seemed like a joke. It told us we could summon demons using some basic ingredients found in the kitchen and if there was no goat blood, we could substitute with ketchup! Really! But what got my attention was section B chapter 7: Living for a day. There was a way we could summon a demon that would let us resurrect any dead person and lets them live for a day. It wasn’t even that hard.

So I ventured out into the supermarket and bought 30 bottles of ketchup and realised I am the guy from the math problem we learn about at school. The cashier looked at me like I had sprouted a violet horn, but I soldiered on. Soon with ketchup, mayo, garlic and some other objects, we got to work.  I am not giving out the entire list, you don’t want to summon a demon, not even by accident. I made and did all the silly stuff mentioned in the book and waited. Peter had floated in to see the immaculate marble floors covered in garlic paste, ketchup and some other unspeakable things. Peter wailed on about ruining the room and the smell of garlic which ghosts couldn’t stand apparently. I chanted the spell given in the book.  Nothing spectacular happened, at first. Then out of thin air, a figure began to materialise, it seemed like someone had put burning coals to make a figure, a terribly misshapen, grotesque figure. I couldn’t look away, I watched it emerge with a sick fascination, it was right there in the middle of our living room amidst all the ketchup and garlic which was meant to keep it in the circle preventing us from being demon food.

“Am I scaring you guys ?”, the thing in our room,  had the audacity to ask! “Only a bit”, Peter replied paler than before. Peter was always terrible at lying. “Sorry guys, I am Dave”, said the monster, shrinking before our eyes until he looked like a Dave. He’d pass off as a guy from a mall any day. “Aww you’ve got garlic paste circle and all, you guys are cute”, Dave said in a sing-song voice.

“You want your friend to live for a day?” Dave motions to Peter. Peter looks petrified. If he was any paler I would have mistaken him for water vapours which suspiciously looked like Peter. Dave was looking at me expectantly. I nodded and asked, “And you do this all the time? Nothing goes wrong?”. Dave takes a second before answering, “Well this one time I was summoned accidentally by a kid who made a sandwich. That didn’t go as planned. If you know what I mean”, Dave winked at me. I did not know what that meant and I told him so.  “If that’s all I will make this pale ghost, human for a day and be on my way”, Dave off-handedly beckoning  Peter.  I nodded. Dave started waving his hands theatrically at Peter and Peter vanished in a cloud of smoke. When the dust cleared,  I saw Peter coughing up and pinching himself. He was human! Before I could ask anything else Dave vanished in a puff of smoke.