The Oiuja Board by D.C. Palter
In the course of investigating the fire that claimed the lives of the three members of the Seigler family, I came across a curious item. Although little remained of the house except the support structure, in the fireplace I found a Ouija board still in its original plastic casing. I can verify that no unauthorized personnel entered the property, thus ruling out the possibility of a hoax. Though evidence indicated that the fire broke out in the son's bedroom, the unaccountable presence of this item caused me to investigate further. After removing the contents from the box, I noticed that the "pointer" was moving about in what I took to be a random manner until I noticed that words were being spelled. What follows is a verbatim transcript:
* * * * *
While searching for her junior high school pictures, Melanie discovered this board in her attic. Although it was covered in a thick layer of dust, the original plastic casing still covered the box, the bright colors of its box unfaded by time. Without telling her father, she brought it back down to her room, later deciding to bring it with her to work as a way to kill the time at the greasy Mexican fast food hut where she worked on the graveyard shift.
At midnight they locked the doors to the store; only the drive-thru remained open. Melanie tore off the plastic wrapping and removed the board from the box and placed it on a table by the window. Jerry, her co-worker, grimaced. "You don't believe in that stuff, do you?"
She grabbed his arm and dragged him to the table. "Come on, it'll be fun."
On the base of the board were written the letters of the alphabet in two rows of thirteen, the numbers zero through nine, and the words, "YES","NO",and "GOODBYE". The message indicator was a triangular piece of plastic with a stake protruding from each vertex.
They each put both hands on the prongs. On the middle prong their fingers lightly touched. The pointer jumped.
Jerry was tall and scrawny, only his arms showing the muscles from mowing lawns in the neighborhood each afternoon for five summers. He was planning to major in physics. Melanie, a prospective psychology major, was much shorter than Jerry but in good shape from her devotion to tennis.
Although they had graduated from the same high school less than a month before and were both, like a large percentage of their classmates, enrolled to attend the nearby University of Southern Illinois beginning in the fall, they had barely known each other until they had become a team working the late shift at the fast food restaurant to save-up money to help pay for the school. The graveyard shift paid slightly higher than the usual minimum wage and in this suburban area, was relatively safe, even well past midnight. Still, when they finally closed the shop at 3 AM, Jerry followed behind her blue Camero in his old Datsun to make certain that she arrived home safely, honking very softly as she waved good-bye from the door to her home each night.
"How's the board work?" Jerry asked.
She was surprised that he had never play with one before. "It is supposed to have a spirit trapped inside it that will answer our questions."
"So what do you do with it?"
"You ask it questions."
"Like what?"
"Like...will I win this week's lotto?"
The pointer snaked its way across the board, hesitating on the 'Yes' before coming to rest on 'No.'
"Damn," Melanie exclaimed. "Guess I wasted another buck. Okay, it's your turn."
"I don't know what to ask."
"Anything."
"Uh, who won tonight's Cubs game?"
The triangle slid about the board spelling out C-U-B-S, then continuing on to L-O-S-T.
Jerry called the sports hotline. "Cubs lost 7-6."
"See, the Ouija board was right!"
She motioned him back to the board. "It's my turn." With a devious smile she asked, "Who in this world loves me?"
The board spelled out F-A-T-H-E-R. Jerry laughed. "Who else?" she demanded. It spelled out J-E-R-R-Y. "I thought so," she said smiling at him.
"Well don't rush out to buy a wedding gown," he replied. "It's just a stupid game."
Melanie glared at him. "No it isn't."
"It's made by a toy company. How real can it be?"
"It got the Cub's game right, didn't it?"
"That was easy. The Cub's always lose."
"Okay smarty-pants. Ask it something that only you know the answer. If it gets it right, you have to admit you're crazy in love with me."
Jerry turned away but Melanie wouldn't relent. "Okay, okay. Here's one it can't possibly know. What's my real name?"
The pointer paused at 'D,' continued to 'A' then stopped on 'N.' Jerry was shocked. Melanie was puzzled. "Dan?"
"Daniel Gerard Seigler III."
Melanie jumped out of the seat. "It got your name right! That means you must love me." Jerry didn't answer. She stepped closer to him. "What would you say if I said I like you, too?"
Jerry laughed. "Why don't you ask the Ouija board?"
"Forget the Ouija board." She bent over and kissed him on the lips. At that moment the drive-thru buzzer buzzed.
She kissed him again, then reluctantly returned to the drive-thru window. No one was there. "Strange," she said, but the board was forgotten for the rest of the night.
* * * * *
Each day they asked the board the score of the Cubs game, which they verified with a call the sports hotline. They asked it the next day's weather, the previous day's winning lottery number, and embarrassing questions about each other. Questions such as the next day's lottery number or the future direction of the stock market were rebuked with a "Don't Know" answer.
This continued harmlessly until one day near the end of the summer when Melanie suggested asking the board questions about itself. "Talking with a ghost should be really neat," she said. With no hands touching the board, the pointer slowly slid across the board to "No."
"Maybe it's not such a good idea," Jerry said. He checked to see if the table was wobbly.
"Oh, don't be a chickenshit." She put her hands back on the handles and Jerry hesitated but did the same. "What is your name?" she asked. The pointer didn't move. She asked again with no response.
Jerry took his hands off the board. "Give it up, Melanie."
"No!" She slammed down her fist. "I command you to answer my question! Tell me your name." At first, there was no motion, then slowly the pointer rolled until it landed on 'C,' paused before rolling to 'A,' then to the 'R' and 'O,' then stopped dead on 'L.'
Melanie looked up, then muttered to herself, "It couldn't be - it's just a common woman's name." To the board she asked, "When were you born?"
"1-9-6-3."
"Oh-my-god, no," Melanie said. Jerry put his hands on her shoulders.
"What's wrong?" he asked, but she ignored him.
"When did you die?"
"1-9-7-1"
Without saying anything, Melanie stood up and moved to another table and stared out the window at the blackness beyond.
Jerry, fascinated by the board that could move by itself and spell out answers, began to ask it questions himself. "How did you die?"
"F-I-R-E"
"She died in a fire," Jerry yelled over to Melanie.
"I know," she sighed.
With each question, the pointer moved faster, making it necessary for Jerry to write down the letters and read the message when it stopped. He learned that Carol was the eldest of three daughters whose mother had died giving birth to the youngest. Carol and another daughter were killed when the house burned the ground. The youngest child, five years old, was saved when she climbed out through the window and fell to the bushes below.
Melanie rushed over from the other side of the room, pushed Jerry out of the way and sat down in front of the board.
"WHO LIT THAT FIRE?"
The pointer began sliding about, finally resting at "Don't Know."
"Yes you do! Tell me! Tell me!" It didn't move. "Damnit, I need to know!"
The pointer moved again, slowly spelling "Y-O-U." Outside a woman laughed, a high-pitched screaming laugh, though no one was in view in the darkness.
Melanie started crying hysterically. She wrapped her arms around Jerry's neck and rested her head against his shoulder. Finally, she broke away and sat in a corner booth staring out the window.
When she stopped crying, Jerry put his hands on hers and said, "What's all this about?"
She gave him a kiss salty with her tears. "Just remember I love you." She started crying again, then rushed out of the shop. Jerry followed her, but she drove off, tires squealing.
Jerry packed up the board, locked it in the cleaning supplies closet and waited for the morning crew to arrive.
* * * * *
Melanie didn't come to work the next night. Her replacement was crying.
"I can't believe nobody told you. Melanie, she...she killed herself last night. Drove her car off the bluffs." The girl grabbed Jerry and wrapped her arms around him. "I went over to the house when I heard. We just about had to keep her father from killing himself, too. Poor man - first losing his wife, and then two children dying in that fire, and now this."
Jerry ran to the closet, grabbed the board, took it outside and heaved it into the dumpster, then kicked the dumpster. He started back to the store, but couldn't step inside, and instead drove home. The drive was a blur of ignored traffic lights and stop signs. He didn't care if he crashed.
He ran upstairs to the bedroom where he could be alone. There, lying on his bed, was the Ouija board. He screamed.
Then he laughed. It was a joke. Just a stupid joke.
He looked inside the closet, under the bed, anywhere Melanie might be hiding. "Come out, Melanie. You win. I don't know how you got the board back here before me, but it isn't funny." There was no answer.
Jerry's mother came running into the room. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing, Mom. Where's Melanie?"
"No one with any sense would come over here this time of night."
"Yeah, that's fine but where's Melanie?"
"No one's been here. What's gotten into you?"
"If no one's been here, then how did this get here?" he said pointing at the board.
"I don't know. You tell me." She looked at it more closely. "What is it?"
"Where's today's newspaper?"
"I threw it out already."
Jerry ran out to the two trash cans sitting by the curb. After rummaging through the bags of leaky garbage and piles of newspapers, he found the one he was looking for. He ripped through the paper. On page twelve, a headline in small typeset caught his eye. "Local Co-Ed Dies in Car Accident. Melanie Jenkins, aged 26, was killed last night when . . ."
Jerry ran back to his room. On the bed sat the Ouija board, taunting with its glare off the cellophane wrapping. "God damn you," he screamed at it, then began punching the box until the board was in pieces and the skin on his hand ripped away. Blood stained the shattered board.
He knew what he had to do. He took the box outside and placed it inside the trash can, then sat down on the lawn chair on the porch. "Oh, Melanie. Why? Why? I love you Melanie."
Somewhere in the black distance he thought he heard Melanie's voice, "I love you, Jerry," but no one was out there.
He sat in the lawn chair all night, unsleeping. In the morning, the sounds of the trashmen banging the metal cans against the truck could be heard from miles away as they snaked through the labyrinth of asphalt. Finally, they drove up the street, dumped the waste into the truck and drove off. Jerry continued watching until the bin was full and the compactor turned on, crushing the load and pushing it deep inside the truck. Then he went back inside, avoided the stares of his parents eating breakfast and climbed the stairs to his room.
"You had better not be on the bed!" he yelled into the room before opening the door. There was nothing on the bed. He stripped off his clothes and lay face down on the bed.
He woke up feeling numb, but dragged himself into the shower. Afterwards, he dried himself, put on his underwear and socks, then opened the closet to grab a pair of jeans. On the shelf sat the Ouija board, pristine in its cellophane wrapper. Outside, a woman was laughing.
* * * * *
He sat back down on the bed. Something had to be done, but what? He didn't know much about the occult, didn't even really believe in it, but there was obviously something abnormal happening and it had to be fought.
He opened the box and re-read the instructions, but it gave no clues on how to exorcise it. He headed for the college library and began pouring over the books on the occult. None took the board seriously if it was mentioned at all.
One old and well worn book gave specific details on various exorcisms. None applied to the board but one incantation was listed that was to be chanted during the burning of witches. He photocopied the page and left.
* * * * *
When the sun went down and the cloudy skies grew dark, Jerry started for the forest with the board and a bag of supplies. After wandering for an hour, he came to a clearing. He searched the area to make certain it was deserted. The flashlight illuminated a few rusty beer cans but no sign of people. He placed the board on the moldy stump of an old tree and opened his bag. He took out a bottle of charcoal lighter fluid and drenched the board with the liquid until the gasoline stench was overpowering.
From the bag he pulled out the newspaper that told of Melanie's death. He crumpled the page, struck a match and lit the paper. He placed the burning paper atop the board. The board erupted into a fireball. Illuminated by the dancing flames, Jerry began reading the incantation from the photocopied page.
"No, Jerry, don't!" a voice cried. "It's me - Melanie! Don't kill me!" Jerry stopped. In the whiteness of the flames, her face appeared, pleading. "Save me, Jerry. I love you."
He reached over to touch her face. He could feel her skin, still warm and alive. Her lips waited for him. He closed his eyes and leaned over to kiss her but at the last moment, opened his eyes to see hers and saw only the flames on his burning hand. He ripped it from the flame, and rolled on the damp grass, the hairless and blackened flesh throbbing in pain. He thought he would pass out. He looked up and saw Melanie's face grinning at him.
With his left hand, he reached for the discarded paper and began chanting again, concentrating on the printed words, struggling to remain conscious over the throbbing pain in his right hand. The grin turned to horror. Melanie screamed, "Don't hurt me, Jerry!" but he continued on unheeding until the face melted into the dancing orange flames. Jerry watched until the flames burned through the board, leaving only the smoldering ashes. He dug a hole to bury the ashes, then collapsed on the ground.
* * * * *
The next evening, in his fitful sleep, his right hand wrapped in gauze, Jerry began to dream. He is back in the clearing. Flames begin sprouting from the old stump. Suddenly, the stump splits open and Melanie's face on a five year old girl's body rises from the center of the flames.
"I'm here for you, Jerry," she says sweetly, "but you must follow me." She smiles at him, then walks towards the fire.
"Don't!" he yells, but she walks into the flames and steps up onto the burning stump and sits at the peak. Flames burn about her, but she is untouched. "You must follow me, Jerry. It does not hurt."
He walks to the edge of the bonfire and looks in.
"Be strong, Jerry. Be strong. Come to me." He enters the conflagration. The fire's rays warm his skin, blackening the hair on his arms, but the flames do not burn. She motions, and he walks up to her. He reaches over to kiss her, but suddenly she vanishes.
"I'm over here," she calls from outside the fire, and begins to laugh, the laughter growing louder than the scream of the flames until he can hear nothing else. Still the din grows stronger, splitting his eardrums. She waves her arm and ropes materialize that bind him in place, tightening about his chest until he can no longer breathe. His clothing erupts into flames, the hair on his body burns, and his skin begins to smolder. Melanie stands outside the flames and as her laugh continues to grow it becomes deeper, her eyes turn to red globes and the skin of her face melts away, revealing a hideous figure, its razor sharp teeth glowing with the reflection of the conflagration.
* * * * *
In light of this report, submitted the evening prior to the fire that killed Fire Marshall Herring and his family, it is the opinion of this committee that Fire Marshall Herring was insane at the time he wrote this document and henceforth destroyed his own dwelling. However, in order to avoid the media attention this report could cause, the contents of the report as well as the minutes of this meeting are to remain secret.