Monkey

Stay away from all this "spirit summoning" and fortune telling. It only took me one time to realize it wasn't going to lead to anything good.

It happened in the mid-nineties. I came across a self-published brochure called "Rituals for Summoning Spirits." I was very intrigued and decided to try the first method described. You had to draw a circle on a piece of paper and mark it according to the diagram in the brochure. A needle with a thread through it was placed in the center of the circle. Next, you had to take the thread in your hand and pull it taut so that the needle touched the paper and remained perfectly vertical. Then you had to ask a question out loud and lower your hand slightly. The tilted needle should indicate the answer. If the needle didn't stay still, you had to freeze and wait until it stopped spinning. There were a few more mandatory conditions, according to the book, but I won't mention them so no one will repeat it after me.

 It was an ordinary December evening. When I came home from school, my parents weren't home—they usually came home late from work. I set up everything I needed on the table in my room, turned on the desk lamp, and turned off the light. At first, I was asking all sorts of trivial questions like, "Will I get rich?" or "Will I see the Egyptian pyramids?" Then I felt uneasy—I noticed the needle's movement wasn't at all erratic. Then I asked, "Is there anyone here besides me?" The needle indicated the answer "YES." Immediately, I heard a quiet creaking sound on the cabinet, like old glue cracking and crumbling. I looked at the cabinet, but saw nothing but an old monkey doll in a knitted sweater that had been standing in my room for who knows how many years. It had always been there for as long as I could remember.

I turned away from the lamp to let my eyes adjust to the darkness and looked closely at the cabinet again. And then I felt a sudden dread. The monkey was looking at me, although she had been standing in a completely different position before. Her head was turned in my direction. I froze in horror and had trouble understanding what was happening. Before my eyes, the monkey began to raise her paw. To the disgusting sound of cracking glue, she raised her paw... I dropped the needle and ran to the door, ran into the living room, turned on the light and the TV. All evening, I was afraid to approach the door to my room. Being in the apartment was also scary, but going anywhere was even scarier, since the evening darkness had already thickened outside the window. I sat there by the TV until my parents came home. At first, I sat with them in the kitchen, then, under some pretext, I called them into my room. The monkey sat on the cabinet with her paw outstretched. Later, I asked my mother to take her away from there and slept with the light on for a whole week.