I heard about it through a guy at work. I worked as a college intern at a medium-sized

brokerage firm at the time, and one of the junior executives, Tommy, had taken me under

his wing as a gopher and goof off buddy when he wanted to take a break and blow off steam.

One day we were talking about stupid games we played as a kid. I told him about playing

Mercy in Rockdale, which was basically Mercy with thrown rocks. He told me about a game

his cousins had gotten in to try one time when he was staying with them. It was called

Billy, the bouncing butcher. He said it involved Mirrors and sang some chandun till something,

quote, scary happened. When I pointed out that he sounded like a rip off of Bloody Mary,

he just shrugged and gave away the laugh. He told me he wasn't sure, but he didn't think

it was like that. You weren't supposed to see a ghost or anything. Yet it was something

worse. When I asked him what was supposed to happen then, he looked embarrassed. That

was weird. Tommy was a nice enough guy, but he was a super type A, a man's man type,

or at least that's the image he wanted to present. This was the first time I'd seen and

be anything other than serious or sarcastically goofy, and seeing his carefully crafted mask

slip for a minute to show uncertainty and shame. Well, he got my attention.

After a moment of contemplative silence, he shrugged again. To be honest, I didn't really

know. I was with him when we said everything up, but as soon as they started saying the

words, I got scared and ran out of the room. They were laughing at me, but I guess they

were committed after all that work, because they stayed in and finished it. They weren't

laughing when they got done. I was mad at him, but I was curious too. I asked them that

night what had happened, but they wouldn't say. Tried to joke that I didn't get to know

since I was too chicken to stay, but they seemed weird, scared even. He shook his head.

...