Ouija Board

Word count: 1,013

Ouija Board

“Look at what I have!” Holding up a box Christina continued, “I took it from my sister.”

Ivy looks at the box and asks, “What is it? Just a box.”

Placing the box in front of Ivy, Christina explains, “No silly. This is a Ouija Board. You cannot have Halloween without trying the Ouija Board.”

Laughter bubbles from Ivy and she says, “Those things are not real. Just an excuse for you to spend money on something useless.”

“Ivy, my sister showed me how to use it and it was strange. Does everyone want to try it?”

All four girls look back at Christina and nod in agreement.

Christina opens the box and places the board in the middle of the circle the girls have created. She places the planchette on the board and asks, “What questions are we going to ask the spirit?”

“I know! Ask the spirit what kind of clothes they wore?” Antonia looks excited at all the girls and says, “Fashion is very important.”

“Of course you would say that, Antonia. You are the fashion queen here. I think for our first question though we should ask if the spirit is male or female. What do you guys think?”

Christina looks at the other girls and Antonia replies, “Yes I agree. We do not want to just fire random questions at the spirit. Start small and work our way to asking about the clothes.”

The other girls nodded in agreement. “First we need to turn out the lights. We are lucky that we are in the basement. We can leave the light on from the stairs so; we can at least see what we are doing. My mom does not let me light candles. Antonia, can you go and turn the light off and turn the stair light on, please?”

Antonia gets up and replies, “Yes.”

When she gets back to the group, Christina explains, “Everyone must put two fingers on the planchette. I will say our question out loud and everyone must have the question in their mind. When the spirit is ready, then he or she will answer the question by moving the planchette. Time to start.” Everyone places their fingers on the planchette and when the last girl did this, Christina says, “Spirit, we would like to know if you are male or female?”

All the girls look at one another in anticipation for something to happen. After about twenty minutes, Ivy says, “I told you guys this is not real. This is starting to get lame…”

The planchette moved and Ivy says, “Ok, Christina. Great trick.”

With fear in her stammering voice, she replies, “It is not me.”

“Shut up it is spelling something. Y-O-U W-I-L-L D-I-E. You will die.” Ivy could not contain her fear anymore and she screamed, “Aaaaaaaagggghh!”

Christina says, “Run upstairs!”

Three of the girls stood up screaming with their arms in the air running to the stairs. It sounded like a herd of elephants stomping to the kitchen. Kim and Arleen looked at each other and decided they did not want to be down there by themselves. They had some experience with spirits before and were not as freaked out as the screaming girls were.

When they are made it to the kitchen where the mothers were gathered at the kitchen table having coffee, Christina’s mom says, “It sounds like you girls are having fun. Would you like some cookies?

Christina replies, “Yes mom.” She gets a plate of cookies and brings them back downstairs to share with everyone. She turns the light back on and looks at all her friends and says, “I am so sorry. I just wanted to scare you guys. My sister does not know I have this and she did not show me how to use it. I looked up on the internet how a Ouija Board works and just made some stuff up as I went. Who moved the planchette? It was not me.”

All the girls took their turn to say, “Not me.”

“So, you guys are saying that it actually happened.”

Julia is wearing a heart necklace. It is a silver colour with three layers of the heart shape increasing in size with the middle being the smallest and the farthest outside being the biggest. In a quivering voice, Julia says, “I am not sure what just happened. I was just standing here and my heart just fell onto the floor.”

Kim bends down to pick it up. She holds it up and asks, “Was it bent like this when you were wearing it?”

In a small voice, Julia replies, “No. There was nothing wrong with it.” Kim tries to hand the heart back to Julia and she shakes her head saying, “No I do not want it.” Kim wasn’t sure what to do with it so she put it in her pocket.

Ivy, questioned, “Who took the stone in my ring?”

Everyone ran over to Ivy to look at her ring. Ivy held out her right hand showing everyone the ring part which fits over her finger still there, the red stone is missing. All the girls looked all over the carpeted basement floor and did not find the stone. Ivy, says in a frustrated voice, “My parents are gonna kill me. That stone was real and very expensive.”

Christina suggests to everyone, “Let’s watch a movie to get our minds off of all of this.”

Everyone nods in agreement; Christina walks over to the TV and turns it on. Strange thing is every channel shows a snowy picture with the annoying sound that accompanies it. Even turning on the DVD player showed a snowy screen. Christina says, “This is strange. Maybe we should call it a night.”

Arleen who has been very quiet through this whole night, says, “Isn’t it interesting, that stuff happened to you girls that screamed and ran up the stairs. Kim and I were not screaming we just followed you guys.”

Christina thinks about this for a moment than replies, “That is so freaky.”