Disclaimer, I started writing this when I got back from the bar last night and kinda lost the main thread of what I was doing after a bit. Posting it anyway.

I had a short flash of a story with a very intense level of detail. The setting is a medium-small college on the North Atlantic forest coast, a precise construction of dark granite buildings set less than a mile from the salt beach. It's an early October evening and low chill mists puddle just out out of the reach of the lanterns. The campus is mostly dark, except for a blaze of light coming from the student union. A banner across the front of the vaguely gothic building reads 'Homecoming Masquerade Ball!.' Pairs and trios, and the occasional single young man or woman in formal clothing and masks approached the building as the clock tower struck 10 o'clock. In a small, vacant top floor office a gaunt figure in a dark rumpled suit tugged his mask, an ornate golden affair with a pair of small curling horns at the temples, off of his face and massaged the spots where it had pinched his head. 'Damn thing is too heavy.' he muttered to himself as the sound of a sock-hop band replaced a that of an earnest young woman issuing from the main ballroom several floors below. The spidery youth reached into his misshapen sport coat and removed several objects. A doctors bag with several dark stains, a short knife in an ornate leather sheath with a dull red gem set in it's base, a cloth bag of various colors of chalk, a bundle of dull red candles and a dark leather bound notebook. With a sweep of this forearm he cleared a few feet of dusty stone of dust and detritus and set to work carefully drawing a circle a few feet wide in red chalk as thick as a mans thumb, and a perfect five pointed star within the circle. He stepped back to judge his creation after setting a candle at each point of the star. He stared for a few seconds and blinked, and when his eyes opened a dim crimson light danced in the depths of his pupils. The burning eyes swept the circle and abruptly closed, the pale young man gasping as if with pain and shaking his head. When he opened them again the light was gone but was replaced with an instant of fear then hard determination. He picked up the knife and reached into the doctors bag, withdrawing a thick rubber stoppered glass jar containing dark sloshing blood. He opened the stopper and the thick liquid began to slowly bubble, thick ribbons of steam beginning to slowly curl from it's surface, even as he stood, upending the container into the center of the pentagram. The candles burst into dramatic foot high flames, the blood rushed from the jar leaving no remnant and the few wisps of escaped vapor quickly were drawn into the circle, the column of gas roiling thickly against an invisible barrier around the perimeter of the circle. With a grimace he unwrapped some bandages that encircled his left hand, exposing a inch wide band of shredded skin on his palm glistening with scarlet. He dropped the sheath from the knife and coated it's blade with his blood, and faced the pillar of dark red smoke, now as high as his waist, indistinct shapes rippling the smoke. A stream of confident harsh syllables issued from dry lips and the young man extended his bloody hand towards the barrier, a hair fine stream of smoke emerging from his brutalized hand and pausing an inch from the cylinder. It inched closer and made contact, suddently blossoming into a torrent of smoke that rushed up to the offered hand and made contact, drawing suddently in and forming a perfect mirror arm in a handshake. The pale, stubbled face suddenly flushed and he gasped again, raising the bloodied knife high in his right hand, and brought it down on the copy arm with a jerk. The previously squat column shot abruptly up to match the young man's height and drew in to mirror his every feature, even the quickly darkening flush in his cheeks, forehead and throat. Another jerk removed the knife from the suddenly solid arm and a perfect copy of the gaunt youth in the dark rumpled suit stared out of the summoning circle, pinpricks of bitter fire burning in the pits of its inhuman eyes.