Three friends burning through their senior year

"Hey, Danny, Becky, look at this!"

Luke gazed down at his find. The book felt warm to the touch. For the apparent age of the tome, it's cover was black as pitch. A red pentagram glistened on the front.

Becky reached him first. The very site of the work made the girl feel queasy. It was so very...wrong.

"Freaky," she mumbled, trying to save face.

"What the fuck," Danny said, joining them.

"I found it in the cooking section of all places."

"You should probably put it down," Becky said, adjusting her soda bottle glasses. That put in her stomach was growing with each second.

Danny scoffed at her. He was always doing that. Balking at danger to try and seem impressive. It didn't work most times, but it didn't stop him from trying.

"Come on Bex, it's probably a prop. Besides, Halloween is coming, this could make a great costume."

Luke could see Becky's growing discomfort. She was twirling her short blonde hair and biting her lip, causing a bolt of desire and sadness to run through him. The feeling faded into the warm murkiness of the book's leather.

"I don't know Danny, it looks real. As real as something like this can be." Luke said.

Luke opened the cover to a page with an ornate circle inscribed in bright purple. The words, suprisingly in English, read: "Portal to elsewhere".

There was a set of instructions for carrying out the "spell" below the title.

"Charcoal, whiskey, a drop of human blood," Danny said, reading the ingredients over Luke's shoulder. "Hey, we could do this."

"Or we could not," Becky chimed in. The pit was now a chasm.

Luke and Danny were engrossed, however. The ritual seemed possible and both of them felt oddly compelled to try it. Luke flipped the pages of the book to find similar, easy to perform spells. The only draw back seemed to be the names. They were all vague. What was "elsewhere". What was a "rite of unleashing"?

Still, it was all exhillarating for Luke, a nerd amongst nerds. The possibility of real magic. Spells and rituals, portals to other worlds!

"I don't have anything on Saturdays, do you guys? I'm telling you, tomorrow night. Let's get our groove on in 'elsewhere', or whatever it's called." Danny said cheerfully.

"Yeah!" Luke said. "That gives us enough time to gather the materials. Meet in Tenley park at 6?"

Becky wanted to scream. This was wrong. It was all wrong. What was worse, she felt invisible to her best friends. Couldn't they see that something was off?

"Bex, you game?" Danny asked.

"Please put it back," back said softly. "I know it seems exciting, but something isn't right here."

"It's a book, Bex," Danny said.

Luke chime in: "we'll just try the portal spell. It probably won't do anything anyways."

"Please," Bex whimpered.