“Let’s do it,” says Beth. Both girls place their fingertips on a plastic planchette in the
middle of the board. Beth sucks in her breath and then speaks slowly, “Spirits come to us. Give us a message.”
The planchette moves to the right and then stops.
Beth presses her fingers down harder. “Speak to us.”
Belle sighs. “The answers aren’t here.”
Both girls gasp when the planchette begins to move quickly touching a letter and
then moving to another.
Beth shrugs.”Jibberish.”
“I have to go now, Beth.” Belle lifts her hands, holds them up and moves her fingers back and forth. “I’ve been with him. So many have been with him.”
Beth opens her mouth to speak, but disappears in dreamtime mist. Now I’m standing by an open grave. Birds screech and cold wind blows.
I remember why I haven’t seen Belle for so long. She’d been missing for months and then the cops found her body buried under a tree
by Century Lake. Close to where Ken and I made love.
Now Ken is here, leaning against the truck. His face is thinner, paler. There
are deep blue circles around his eyes. His lips are white. Blood drips from the
trailer, onto tires and pavement and he tells me, “The magic worked. Moloch will have his sacrifice.”
I awake when a sand truck makes loud scraping noises on the street beneath my
window.
I wonder if it’s a mistake to use the Ouija board. I wonder if Ken is more than a stranger I
made love with—if he’s something wicked moving through the dark and through people’s lives; destroying them with evil enchantments.
* * *
Ken didn’t come to Luke’s the following Friday. Each time the door opened my heart beat fast and I hoped
it was him. I gave up hoping when my shift ended.
All the things he said to me, his passion and the look in his eyes haunted me.
How could he just forget?
He’d come back. He had to.
But he didn’t.
Before the morning Ken and I made love I was lonely. The loneliness hurt. It was
nothing compared to how I felt when he disappeared. I cried. I felt like
screaming each time Lizzy looked at me with her knowing eyes.
Time went by quickly. With Labor Day truckers began hauling Christmas stock to
the malls and stores in surrounding cities. I thought maybe Ken would return.
His truck would be filled with sweaters, boots and warm coats, but that didn’t happen.
I got a little concerned when I was two weeks late for my period, but I’d never been regular and sometimes I’d skip three or four months at a time. Once when I was three weeks late, after
Alan Berle and I had done it, I took a bus to the clinic downtown and got
tested. The test was negative. I didn’t get a period for another six weeks.
I told myself it was more of the same. I convinced myself that a girl with such
erratic cycles couldn’t possibly get pregnant.
On the third week, after being with Ken, the smell of Luke’s coffee made my stomach queasy, but other than that I felt good. I figured if I’d be upchucking every morning if I was pregnant. My Mom was sick for three
months with Beth, Jen and me. Doesn’t a girl usually take after her mother?
By Halloween my nipples felt sore and when once—when waiting for my Dad to pick me up after my shift—the cold wind felt like razor blades slicing through them.
I needed to get to the clinic, but I read in the paper they stopped the bus runs
from my neighborhood. I had my driver’s license, but I didn’t have enough money saved for a car. My father waited while I cashed my check
each week, took it all but ten bucks. He knew I kept my tip money in an
envelope. I’d hand it over to him every Friday as well.
I put the extra in another envelope and stuck it under my tissues and makeup
bag.
The only satisfaction I had was knowing my stash was hidden from my father.
He said, “Dreamers only end up with dreams. Hard workers get what they want in life.” He changed jobs a lot and collected unemployment whenever he could. It angered
me that my hard earned money was being pissed away because my Dad didn’t deny his own dreams.
I dreamed a lot about Ken. We’d be driving to the lake, holding hands as the sun set. The drummer sat between
us, lifting his hands up and down, his beats getting louder and louder. I saw
Belle clawing her way out of a shallow grave. Three old women kneeled beside a screaming woman. They sliced open her belly
with kitchen knives and then removed a mass of slimy flesh from the hole they’d made.
Nightmare images were everywhere, but somehow it seemed normal and as though I
was part of the horror.
“Why didn’t you come back sooner?” I asked Ken.
He didn’t answer. He just kept driving past graveyards and on deserted roads flanked by
lakes of blood and fire.
There came a time when I dreaded sleep, but I’d always give in to it.
While at work I went to the toilet more than usual, checking my underwear,
looking for telltale splotches of blood.
I told myself my period would come any day and things would be alright.
I’d jotted down the phone number in back of Ken’s truck, called it once. It rang—twenty times or more. I figured he was on the road. I’d try again. I’d get to tell him what was going down.
I deceived myself a lot back then.
* * *
Flora’s room is like mine except she’s got a spider plant hanging on a hook by her window. The Ouija board box is on
her bed. A green sticker is on the upper right corner.
$9.99. A Special From Woolworth’s Toy Department.
Flora bites her lip as she presses her fingers on the plastic planchette. I can
feel her knees shaking against mine.
“We’ll only speak to spirits of light,” she says to the board. “We won’t allow evil.”
“That ought to do it,” I say, thinking of the dream I’d had and then wondering how something bought at Woolworth’s could conjure anything but dust and neglect.
I think about the ghost girl Linda saw. Will she speak to us? Appear outside the
window with sooty hands clawing on glass as smoke pours from her lips?
Flora sighs. “You ask it something.”
Why not? “Will I ever see Ken again?”
The planchette moves beneath our hands, flies across the board and points to
YES
.
“Cool,” Flora smiles. “Are you in Heaven?”
NO
“Where are you then?” She leans forward as though a voice will suddenly erupt from the board.
H-E-R-E
“This is freaky,” she says.
The planchette moves again—slowly from letter to letter. Flora and I say them aloud.
“
I-D-I-E-D-H-E-R-E”
“Ok, that’s it,” I say as I shove the board and then stand. The planchette slides across the
board and then stops with a quick jolt.
Flora’s face whitens. She quickly stands, shoves board and planchette back in the box.
“I’ll put it back. Don’t want to mess with it anymore. Marcy Long told me her aunt stayed here back in
the forties. Lost her baby. Told me lots of girls died here.”
“I heard that too, but it’s not the old days. This is a silly board game somebody bought at Woolworths.
Besides, Marcy was probably just trying to freak you out.”
“No, sometimes she gets scared like the rest of us. One night I got up to pee. I
was heading to the bathroom down the hall. Marcy was sitting on the stairs. She
was crying. Sobbing like a little kid. She had a knife in her hand. I think if
I hadn’t come along she might have done something bad to herself. I sat down next to
her and she grabbed my hand. Told me how much the house spooked her and then
she told me about her aunt.”
“Scared or not, Marcy has issues. I wouldn’t believe anything she says. Especially after the shit she’s done to you.” Something tells me otherwise, but still I try to calm Flora. “Maybe we made that thing move with our subconscious minds. I heard someplace
that’s what happens with Ouija boards.” I flinch when the box falls off Flora’s bed and onto the worn braided rug.
“No, it’s haunted here. I know it.” Flora has tears in her eyes.
“There’s something wrong here. I’m not sure what, but I’ll find out. Don’t be afraid. I doubt it’s evil spirits who eat eyeballs, or if Count Dracula’s coffin is in the basement.” My attempt at humor fails and Flora sobs loudly. “Look, it’s an old house. The floors are uneven. The pipes, or any kind of vibration can
set things off and make stuff fall.”
Flora still doesn’t look convinced.
Now the door creaks. The knob turns. The door slowly opens.
There’s nowhere to run or hide in this tiny room. I hold my breath as the door opens a
bit more. Flora gasps, presses close to me.
The door creaks again. Someone—or something sighs. A shape is now evident as the door opens wider. The hall
light brightens and I realize it’s Marcy Long. Arms dangling at her side. Knife glimmering in her hand. “They took my first baby. They’ll take this one too,” she says. She slides a finger over her knife, caressing it almost lovingly.
She takes a step backwards. The light flickers and then dies. Marcy is swallowed
by darkness.
“Damn creepy chick. What the heck was she talking about?” snaps Flora.
“I’m not sure. Just trying to freak us out.”
Now we sit here on Flora’s bed, holding hands, shuddering each time we hear an unfamiliar sound. I’m keeping the baby. I don’t have much else. I don’t have anything at all, but a tiny bit of cash hidden away. Not enough so I can
start a new life, but I got options.
Something taps at the window. I turn slowly to look. Dark streaks stain glass.
Finger marks.
Child laughter erupts. First one voice. Then two and then a chorus of many.
“They died here,” Marcy is still standing in the dark. Is she taunting us? Or is this a warning?
“They
all
died. And so will we.”
5
Snow is clumped on windows and the sitting room is chilly. There are copper
vases with dusty fake flowers sitting on the mantle. There are logs in the
fireplace, but no one ever lights a fire. The wallpaper is gray with black
swirling designs and there are cobwebs stretched across the ceiling.
My sister Jen waits for me on a couch. It’s the first time she’s visited since Dad brought me here. She’s staring at the painting of Amelia Leech. She smiles when I sit across from
her.
“Frumpy painting,” she laughs. “I could do a modern version of her—make her more hip.”
“Your portfolio is still in your old room back at the house,” I tell her. “I liked looking through it. I wish I had your talent.”
“I wanted to be an artist, move to New York, but Dad told me I’d starve, that marrying Jack would be best.” Jen’s eyes are sad.
“You have regrets?”
“Sometimes.” She looks to the floor. “But Daddy looked out for me the best way he could. Besides, Jack’s real good to me. We always have what we need. Isn’t that enough?”
No, it’s not enough
, I think.
She’s staring at me now. Blue green eyes move from my face to my swollen belly and
then she tells me, “You’ll find somebody, too.”
I wave my hand. I know my father sent her here. I know she’d never step foot in this place if it were not for his persuasion. “I’m keeping the baby. I don’t care what people will say.” Maybe she’ll support my free spirited decision since her dreams were squelched by our
father.
“You can’t. Where’s the father?” There are tears in her eyes.
“Trucker I met at Luke’s.”
“Does he know?” Her face reddens just like our father’s when he’s about to scold.
“Never saw him again.”
“Ever think about finding him? Do you even know how to? Dad is heartbroken, Meg.
He cried when I visited him this morning. Sometimes I think you’re the only one he really loves.”
“That’s not true. How could you think that?”
“It was always you, Meg. I used to hear you guys talking late at night after he
came home from wherever the hell he goes.”
“I don’t remember much of it. I think it was because I was the only one who was up.”
Her voice softens. “No matter. You made a mistake. It’ll be water under the bridge in a few months. Then you can get on with your
life.”
I hate Jen now. Years of listening to my father, of being crippled by his old
fashioned views have made her who she is.
“You’ll change your mind once reality hits.” Jen rises from her seat. She buttons her coat and then moves towards me. She
leans down and wraps her arms around me. “Poor, poor Meg. The kid will be fine, have good adoptive parents.” She pats my back, pulls away slightly. “Jack is taking us to Martha’s Vineyard on Memorial weekend. You’ll come with us. It’ll be good for you.”