“Hell no. Oh Hell no!” Moneesha, a junior theater student was voicing her objections to the board.
The party was at Liam’s house, a tidy little stand alone in Reisterstown. There were about twenty of us sprawled around his finished basement. A movie marathon had ended after a group attack of ADHD, and people were trying to think of new, holiday appropriate activities. Elizabeth, a junior photography major, read tarot cards and palms. We’d been entertained for nearly an hour but the masses had begun to hunger for more.
Liam’s girlfriend answered the challenge. She knew he had a Ouija board in his room, and while we were all entranced with the news of whether or not Mr. A would fail Tubby this year, snuck it past his parents in the living room and down to us.
Within seconds of revealing the box, most of the room wanted to play. A few of us weren’t comfortable with it, but Moneesha was freaking out.
“I ain’t hanging out here while y’all are playing with the dead.”
“Aw, come on. It’s just a game.” The same thing was said in a dozen different ways from a dozen different people. But Moneesha wouldn’t be budged.
“Nuh-uh. No way. You start playing with the dead, you better be ready for when they start playing with you. And I don’t want any part of that.” In what Val would call a Grand Diva Bitch Fit, she stormed upstairs, slamming the door behind her.
In hindsight I probably should’ve gone with her. But there’s that saying that hindsight is always 20/20. A group of us weren’t interested in playing. Elizabeth stacked her cards and curled up on an arm chair near the TV. Andy and Nika, girls from the Multimedia program, were huddled on the sofa, eyeing the board and the people around it with obvious distrust. Going on instinct, I joined them. We were all aware suddenly of something in the air. I felt cold and hot all at once, like I was sick, but without the headache and soreness of a real fever. Andy shivered beside me.
For a while, there was a confusion of noise over the board. Giggling and complaints over who was moving the table seemed to go on forever. Then, voice by voice, the room went quiet.
“Lizzie, get a pen and some paper. Come write this down for us.”
She got up without a word, grabbed a sketchbook and pencil, and sat behind Liam. Nate started calling out letters. They didn’t seem to make any sense, just a random string of letters without any rhyme or reason. Some of the tension eased from the group and people started giggling and chatting and complaining again.
“Figures we’d get the retarded ghost.”
“Daniel’s moving it!”
“Am not, bitch!”
“C’mon guys, get serious about this.”
“Yeah it’s not gonna work if y’all are fucking around.”
“Wait, don’t we have to ask a question?”
A pregnant pause and then:
“Is anyone there?”
“Is my grandmother there?”
“Can we talk to Elvis?”
“Shut up!” Nate yelled. “One at a time, ladies and gents. One. At. A. Time. Now,” he said, “is anyone there? Yes or no.”
Beside me, I felt Andy push her body deeper into the couch cushions, away from the Ouija board and the stale air surrounding it.
For a while, it seemed like they were getting answers. A yes, a no, a generic name, an accusation of murder with the body never found that got everyone excited. Then there was nothing. The planchet circled the board over and over, never pointing to anything for the rest of the night. The board was put away. Andy, Nika, and I relaxed, and the party went on almost as if the little experiment with the supernatural had never happened. There were jokes, accusations that the whole thing was a hoax, that the supernatural was just people with too much imagination and too little common sense, followed by claims that the paranormal was real, ghosts were real, and that the Ouija board had failed because of so many skeptics.
It was all too easy to ignore in favor of more scary movies, and different, more entertaining board games.
I don’t remember when we started making shadow puppets.
Sometime after midnight, I’d curled up between Tubby and Marco. We were backlight, and we’d laughed at the weird shadow our bodies had cast. It seemed a natural thing to start making the dog and duck shapes we’d been taught in elementary school, and I laughed as Marco’s butterfly danced around Tubby’s barking dog.
More hands shadows rose from the floor. They made no shapes, they just reached and writhed on the wall.
“Knock it off, fuckers,” I swore at the people behind me. “Either do something neat or go the fuck away.”
“Fin, who are you talking to?” Nate asked.
“I’m talking to whichever ass hats are making these weird shadows behind me and the boys.”
“There’s no one sitting behind you guys.”
I felt cold. My ears were trained on the sound of Nate getting to his feet. He’d been laying on the floor a few feet away watching TV. He stood behind me and his shadow joined our lump monster, but it didn’t interrupt the sea of arms and hands. His hands spasmed on my shoulders, his finger tips digging into my collarbones as he watched the wall with us. More hands had sprouted from our joined shadows. There were dozens now, more pairs than there were people in the room, and none of them were ours. Our hands had dropped to our laps as soon as we’d realized there really was no one behind us, and I could see Nate’s knuckles turning white on either side of me.
The room had gone perfectly silent. The others had seen the wall too.
One by one, we got up and walked upstairs. Tubby, Marco, me and Nate, all walked outside to the car without saying a word. No one in the basement spoke either. But as I opened the door to Marco’s car, I heard Elizabeth screaming.
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