Unknown (34 page)

'How do we do that?' asked Sarah curiously.

Becca didn't know, and therefore didn't answer; but she went to the closet and brought down the set. They placed the board between them on the kitchen table, and Becca took the suddenly inspired precaution of sprinkling the planchette with holy water taken from a bottle in the pantry placed next to the vanilla extract.

'Shouldn't we turn down the lights? Or maybe we should do it in the living room or something', suggested Sarah, who thought that Becca's brightly lighted - even garish - kitchen provided insufficient atmosphere.

Becca shook her head. 'Don't need it, don't want it. Spirits come crowding down thick enough as it is. Don't want to
draw
'em in here with setting the place up spooky and all. And I wouldn't do this if Margaret was here, but she isn't. She's too young to fool around with this kind of thing. I wouldn't want nothing to happen to Margaret 'cause of a wee-gee board.'

'How do we do it?' asked Sarah, a little impatiently. She didn't believe it would work, but then, she didn't believe in the amulet either.

Becca instructed Sarah to place two fingers of one hand on the planchette, while she did the same. 'Now we ask it a question, just a little everyday something, something we don't care about. Then we just sit, and this thing starts moving around, pointing at letters and numbers and so on, and that's the answer to the question. Sort of. Sometimes. You write down what the thing points to, to keep arecord, 'cause spiritsdon't spell remarkable. You got to ask tilings you don't care about first, so that it's got time to know what you're like, and to gather the spirits 'round the board, I guess. 'Cause they 're out there, just waiting for a chance to say something to us. Sometimes they don't answer the questions that you're asking, and they just start talking to you, and that's when you got to stop it, right then and there, 'cause if you don't, you gone find out things you don't want to know."

Sarah nodded, and Becca continued, for in dealing with so dangerous a device as the Ouija board, too much instruction was barely enough to protect against the evil spirits that were able to speak through the little pointed wooden tongue that moved about on the brightly painted board. 'You not supposed to laugh, but I don't hardly need to say that, 'cause after the first five minutes, don't nobody laugh no more. Sometimes it works, sometimes it don't. When it don't, you cain't make it work. And you don't need to try to push the thing, 'cause it just goes by itself. When I was first doing it, I used tQ try to push it - just a little - to send it where I wanted it to go, and I couldn't do it. I'd send it off to the
H
and it would head right for the M, and it spelled out
M-l-K-E,
even though I didn't want it to. And then I went and married the man, and that was the worst luck that I ever did have in the whole of my life! So you don't have to push it.'

Sarah shuddered. She had never done this before, and she couldn't conceive that the strange little board before her, with the two crescents of alphabetic letters, the row of numbers, the
Yes
and the
No
, and the small wooden triangle were anything but a gift for a child born on Halloween. It certainly wasn't as dangerous- or evil-looking as the Pine Cone rifles that passed before her on the assembly line every day.

'I'm ready then', said Sarah. 'What do we ask it first?'

'Well', replied Becca, 'like I said, something that don't matter. Like, "What day of the week will my next date be on?" '

Sarah laughed, but Becca held up a warning finger. 'Don't giggle now. This is serious, or we not gone find out anything, and we gone get the bad luck to boot. Now you look here, this board's special, 'cause it's got the days of the week on it, up there at the top, and most of 'em don't. I still wish you hadn't given me this thing. Now, Sarah, we got to be serious.'

Becca dropped her hands into her lap, and closed her eyes briefly; when she opened them again, her face was blank and solemn. She looked like a snapshot of herself taken at a bad moment. This made Sarah even more jittery but she closed her eyes and in a few moments, when she had calmed a little, she opened them again.

Becca stared vacantly at the buttons on the front of Sarah's blouse, and she said, 'When will I have my next date?'

The two women raised their hands out of their laps, and placed two fingers each on the planchette. It stood still a moment, and then moved irresolutely among the letters of the alphabet. In a few seconds, it had rested on the circle which denoted
Yes.

Sarah thought that this made no sense, for the planchette ought to have headed for one of the days of the week. Becca was unperturbed. 'What night of the week will I have my next date?'

Their fingers, which had been lifted from the planchette when it came to rest, they dropped down again, and the wooden piece struggled, this time stopping above the number 4.

'That's next Saturday', said Becca when she lifted her fingers. 'Saturday's the fourth."

'Have you got a date then?"

'Don't know yet for sure. Jimmy Mack Jones was talking to me yesterday about something next Saturday night, but he didn't make no commitment, really, so I don't really know yet for sure. Wrestling in Opp or something like that. I'll see him tomorrow, and then I'll find out."

Sarah was impressed, but she did not comment for fear of breaking the spell. Three more questions were asked, of an equally innocuous nature, and the Ouija board answered in either an ambiguous or senseless manner. Becca wasn 't sure that they were getting through.

'We gone try one more time, and if it don't work, this thing goes back up in the closet for a good long while. All right then, here's the question: "What's Margaret doing right now?" '

The two women placed their fingers on the planchette, and slowly it moved from one corner of the board directly towards the letters on the far side. It stopped dead on the letter M and then moved suddenly again to the letter
L
next to it.

Sarah was very much surprised, for before the planchette had seemed to waver all the while, to be unsure of itself, but now there was no question but that
M
and
L
were the letters intended. It was as if they had only been playing around before, but now that the board had been threatened with its removal, the planchette moved in earnest.

'M-L
', said Becca, after a moment. 'That's Mary-Louise, and that's where Margaret is tonight.'

The planchette moved suddenly to the other end of the board, pulling their fingers across so suddenly the muscles knotted in Sarah's upper arm with the strain of maintaining so light a touch on the wood.
N,
then across to
E,
then to
L
- and Sarah suddenly removed her fingers.

Becca glanced at her reproachfully. 'It was gone write out Nelson.'

'I know', whispered Sarah, and trembled. She had not wanted to see the board spell it out with such hideous ease. She knew that none of the movement in the planchette was of her volition, and she was frightened.

'Do you know about the amulet?' Becca asked sharply, and in so matter-of-fact a tone of voice that Sarah thought the question was intended for her. Their fingers were on the planchette, which trembled slightly and then moved first to the figure 1 and then to
6,
and then stopped. Sarah pushed, but it would not move.

'Sixteen', said Becca. 'I think it means twelve, twelve people killed so far. Is that what you mean?' said Becca, again in the matter-of-fact voice. Once again the planchette moved; Sarah tried to push it towards the letters, away from the
Yes,
but it moved only one figure over, to the 7, paused, then 2, danced a little circle and returned to the 2, then over to 1, and then - though Sarah was desperate to remove her fingers altogether - the planchette dived straight again to the 2, moved away, and then returned resolutely to the same figure. Sarah trembled as she recorded the figures on the back of an envelope: 722 122.

They add up to sixteen', said Becca, and Sarah nodded reluctantly.

'The seven is the Coppages', said Sarah.

Becca nodded thoughtfully. 'And the first two is the Shirley s and then the Simses and then poor ol' Miz Weaver. But they was two more two's, and there's not nobody else dead.'

Sarah shivered violently. 'Nobody we know of. Becca, you think this means there's four people dead we don't even know about yet?'

Becca shook her head. 'We would have heard, don't you think? Pine Cone's not that big, you cain't just go and cover up for people being dead, even when they been dying like they have this week. As it is, there's bodies just right in the streets, seems like.'

'Can we ask it anything else?'

'Sure. That's why we're here. If there's gone be bad luck, we already brought it down, so we might as well find out what we can.'

'Ask 'em if that was right. There're really sixteen people dead because of the amulet.'

Becca did so, and immediately the planchette began the sequence again, but in reverse:
2 2 12 27.
Sarah lifted her fingers so quickly that the planchette skidded across the board,

'That answers the question', said Becca with a little irritation. 'You ought not be so jumpy, Sarah. Don't want 'em to start lying to us.'

'They lie?' She was almost hopeful.

Becca shrugged. 'Who knows what they do? I don't like this, but we're doing it, and we might as well do it right.'

Sarah was surprised and troubled by Becca's hardness in all of this.

'Ask 'em', said Sarah, and paused, 'ask 'em where it came from.'

The planchette didn't wait for Becca to put the question: it moved quickly, but with a certain lurch it had not had before, and spelled out
DENIJOZAFANANANAN,
and looked to be stuck between the^4 and the
N
just below it, until the two women, puzzled and troubled, raised their fingers.

'I tell you what it looks like', said Becca. it looks like Dean and Josephine and somebody getting strangled.'

Sarah sighed heavily, not that there wasn't more specific information, but that all that she had feared was being confirmed. And now she had begun to fear this board as well.

'What else?' demanded Becca of her friend.

Sarah's mouth was grim. 'Who's next?'

Both expected that the planchette would move, but there was not even a quiver. Sarah pushed a little, but the wooden triangle did not budge.

'Who's next?' repeated Becca sternly.

Now the planchette moved, unsteadily and slowly, spelling
mV.ANRABUANNRBRY.

Sarah was nervous, and all the concentration on the board, after a good hour and a half poring over the catalogues, had enervated her. 'That don't make no sense.'

Becca shrugged. 'See if you can make something out of it. Looks sort of like Robert and maybe Andrew. The thing about the wee-gee board, Sarah, is that it don't spell real good, and sometimes you got to use your imagination. I mean the spirits aren't moving the thing around themselves, they 're on the inside of our brains, telling our fingers what to do, without our fingers knowing what's going on, and they probably don't have complete control, you know what I mean. I mean, it's like they got a stutter or something

Sarah nodded. She was nervous, and didn't know whether she wanted to go on with this at all. It was a painted piece of wood, and how could it tell the future? How could it know about Dean and Jo? How could it tell who was going to die next? But their questions were being answered. She wanted to stop, she— 'How many more are there going to be?' she gasped, and wondered where the question had come from. It hadn't been in her mind.

The planchette wavered, swung around the numbers without pausing, and then returned to the alphabet where it spelled out
B A KA B LE R K A B LAR.

'Well', sighed Becca and sat back, 'I think that' s about it. It's just doing nonsense. I don't think we're gone get anything more out of it tonight.'

Sarah stood up hastily. 'Honey, thank you so much. It was exciting, real exciting.' Becca looked at her friend strangely; it wasn't like Sarah to depart precipitously. And she was acting as if the whole thing had been a game, and Becca knew her friend well enough to know that she had been very much troubled. 'It's late', Sarah faltered, 'I got to get back and make sure Dean's all right. I'll see you in the morning.'

'We could wait a few minutes and tiy again', suggested Becca, but Sarah shook her head emphatically.

'No, no, no. I probably just don't have the knack for it. It's probably never gone work for me, and right now, I'm dead on my feet.' She hurried out the door. Becca stood on the back steps, and staged after her friend. Then she returned inside to put up the Ouija board and the planchette, and only then did she notice that Sarah had taken the envelope on which they had transcribed the messages that had been indicated on the board. Becca shrugged, and with only the tiniest shiver, put the board back into the closet.

Sarah Howell went directly into her husband's bedroom and turned on the dresser lamp. She was alone in the room with Dean, but after glancing at him briefly, she ignored him. She smoothed out the crumpled envelope, which she had secreted in her closed fist, and stared at the last set of letters,
B A K A B LERKABLAR,
that had appeared as the nonsensical answer to the question of how many more deaths. She drew three slashes to divide the letters, thus, BAKA/BLER/KA/ BLAR, and could see nothing but her friend's name — Becca Blair - written out twice.