Adam shuddered, imagining the oily feeling of this entity all around him. He wondered how many of his bodily sensations were real and how many were self-delusions.

“Right…” Jesse shuffled awkwardly back to the group. They stood in a circle, Dylan in the centre, waiting for apparently the only person in the room who had any idea what was going on. She nodded at them, ensuring their attention, and continued.

“So… it seems that this prophecy refers to the six of us. And like any prophecy, following the pre-determined paths will bring us doom, but so will ignoring it. There are cosmic forces at work here today, and while this all might seem very odd and unbelievable, you all are going to have to start getting used to weird shit happening. Otherwise, we are all screwed.”

Facing no opposition, she moved on. “First, it’s obvious that I’m the Witch, and he’s the Siren.” She pointed at her brother.

“What? Why me?”

She levelled him with a condescending gaze that only a sibling could give. She oddly reminded Adam of Jesse in that way. “Your influence?”

He seemed to recognise that particular reference and nodded sagely.

“Yes. That makes sense.”

“Hold on, before you steamroll through, Miss ‘Russian Witch’, mind elaborating on how the hell you came to that conclusion?” Jesse interrupted, glaring at the blonde girl.

“For your information, my name is Anastasia Vokhvova. But you can call me Nastya.” Said the girl with gravitas, as if the usage of her shortened name was a great privilege. She continued. “And I come from a long line of practising witches. Hence the connection.”

“What, like Harry Potter?”

Nastya paused, expressionless. “Not exactly. More like the person that you would go to for a tarot reading or to find missing relatives and such.”

Seeing the blank look of non-recognition, she added, a little frantically. “You know! A… what are they called here… psychics? Spiritualists? You have those, right?”

She looked from Jesse to Adam to Dylan, hoping for any sort of recognition in their eyes. At last she looked at Nikolai and shook her head, sighing in defeat.

“Yes, like Harry Potter…”

“Yeah, thought so.” Jesse met his eyes across their impromptu circle and mouthed ‘What the fuck?’

“Second, I am pretty confident that the Warrior is you.” She pointed at Jesse, the other hand rubbing her temple. “And that makes you the Priest.” The last was directed towards Adam.

“Bold of you to assume, but honestly, that checks out.” Jesse shrugged and winked at Adam. “I guess if we are going to play along with this madness, then Adam's one is right on the money as well.”

“Now the last two I am not sure about. Seer and Gatekeeper are more vague than the others, so considering you were the source of the prophecy, I guess that makes you the Seer?” 

She nodded in the direction of Dylan, who was uncharacteristically quiet.

“Actually…” Ian raised his hand, like he was answering a question in class. “I believe I am the Seer, which makes Dylan the Gatekeeper.”

As the puzzled faces turned to him, he adjusted his glasses. “I can see the branches of possible future timelines, but only for about five minutes at a time. It gets too overwhelming otherwise. So…”

No one spoke. Adam internally wondered if he was still asleep in his bed and this entire strange day was simply a vivid dream. Or everyone except for him and Jesse had apparently been dabbling with dark forces all along.

“You… see the fucking FUTURE!?” Jesse voiced their collective shock. “Since when?!”

“Since I was six.” He looked at them, as if confused as to why they seemed to focus on the wrong details. “You know, since the accident.”

“Accident?” Adam asked quietly as all attention turned to him. He realised that this was the first time he had spoken in some time.

“Yeah, mate.” Jesse answered, “You know. The almost car crash with his parents? No one died, but it was a close call. How do you not know this about one of your friends? Oh, wait. There it is again. You’re so damn…”

“I only told you.” Ian stopped her from going on a tangent again. When she gave him the tell-tale why-the-fuck-not look, he added.

“It never came up.”

You could cut the awkward silence in the room with a knife. As if reading his mind, Jesse made eye contact and graced him with a spectacular eyeroll. Typical Ian.

“Right. So getting back to the earth-shattering event that has just happened, if you please?” Nastya cleared her throat and hastily motioned to Dylan. “If Ian here is the Seer, then you are the Gatekeeper. Everything hinges on you, I’m afraid, young man.”

“I mean…” Dylan spread his hands in mock surrender. “All I have to do is just not open this door, and we’re good, right? Problem solved.”

“I doubt it’s going to be that simple.” Nastya mused as she pulled out her phone and pushed it towards Jesse.

“Alright then. I need some time to research, and the rest of you need to deal with…” she glanced at Adam, “... whatever it is you have going on. So let’s meet at our house after school. Bring an overnight bag; it’s going to be a long night.”

“Erm… yeah, that’s gonna be a problem for me.” Jesse took the phone and begrudgingly typed in her phone number. “I have curfew at ten.”

“Tell me the name of your social worker, and I will sort it out,” Nastya announced confidently, like she was ordering take-out and not implying the pressuring of a public servant, as she passed the phone to Ian.

As Ian finished providing his contact details and offered the phone to him, Adam felt lost. This impossible, horrible, unnatural thing had just happened, and everyone else seemed to just accept it and move on. Those weird twins, Ian, and even Jesse, after a lot of swearing. It’s as if he was the only one who felt the true wrongness of the unclean thing that was inside Dylan only a few minutes ago. Who was quietly watching them. He had bags under his eyes, as if he hadn’t slept in weeks. Their eyes met, and Dylan smiled sheepishly.

“No,” Adam said quietly, the unspeakable rage at the dismissive attitude of his friends starting to boil inside him. He pushed Ian’s hand away- that liar- and looked up at Nastya.

“No? You don’t want to get to the bottom of this?” she asked, stepping up to him. She was barely tall enough to reach his shoulders, but her authoritative presence was not to be trifled with. But Adam had had enough of everyone’s shit today.

“No. Do you think you can deal with whatever that thing was?! Who do you think you are? This is way beyond any of us.”

“So what do you suggest we do?” Nastya asked, crossing her hands over her chest. “Move on with our lives and ignore this?”

“NO!” Adam felt his voice rising, beyond his control. “We talk to somebody! Get a doctor to check Dylan out! Or even go to the Church! We shouldn’t handle it on our own!”

He saw out of the corner of his eye that everyone except Nastya and Dylan backed away from him. The strange high-pitched ringing in his ears grew louder as he heard the equipment in the shed clatter against each other.

“The fuck! Not again!” he distantly heard Jesse swear as his eyes never left the steel grey gaze of the girl before him. Surprisingly, they weren’t confrontational, just… sad. Why would she be sad?

“Hey there, bud.” The ringing subsided almost instantly as Dylan approached and instinctively touched his arm. After realising what he was doing, he jerked it away self-consciously, and Adam reached out and grabbed it, holding tight.

Clearly surprised at Adam’s willingness to touch him after all that had happened, Dylan’s eyes softened as he squeezed Adam’s hand. They were their usual amber and blue, a little bloodshot, but unmistakably his. “I think we need to take a breather and think, ok? Let’s go to Nastya’s house, have a nice dinner, talk about what we experienced. And if we feel we can’t handle it, then we go to the doctor or the Church or wherever you want, ok?”

As if the words compelled him to obey, Adam felt himself calming, his unreasonable rage embarrassing in hindsight as he nodded reluctantly and took the phone, offered by the non-plussed Ian.

He gave it back to Nastya, still holding Dylan’s hand in his. She looked him straight in the eyes and asked.

“So, are we agreed? My house, seven o’clock in the evening.”

Everyone else nodded. She stood unmoving. Waiting for him.

Adam steeled himself, burying all his instincts to calm the hell down, and said

“I agree.”

Abruptly, they heard the ringing of the school bell in the distance, signalling the finale of the never-ending lunchbreak. The strange time dilation that apparently fit the insane events of today into a forty-five-minute window had ended. In the silence, they heard the non-existent door lock click, and the rusty metal hinge creaked as the noon sunlight flooded the room from the shed exit.