Communing
09 Aug 2021Today’s prompt: “Complete the following sentence and then keep writing: ‘My first _____.’”
My first time holding a seance was pretty standard. I lit some candles and put out a ouija board, used some cold reading techniques. The rest was all ideomotor effect and a few well-placed knocks on the wall. I had them eating out of my hands.
My second time holding a seance, you actually answered.
One of the young women there, the one who was hosting the seance at her house, was convinced the house was haunted. She’d decided to have a seance while her parents were summering elsewhere and she was staying in the house while going to summer school. I asked her if she knew if anyone had died in the house, and she said the realtors had told her parents that someone had. But they didn’t remember what the person’s name was, when it would have happened, or any other details. She was quite angry that they hadn’t bothered themselves with the details. Well, I thought, that’s handy. We could spell out any name and it wouldn’t be falsifiable. I’d see if these young ladies started spelling anything out, and just adjust the planchette’s direction enough so that whatever it spelled out was a name. I could make up the other details as we went.
I had the young women seat themselves around the table and place their fingertips on the planchette. I stood, touched the planchette, and intoned, “Is there a spirit in this house?”
The planchette moved to “Yes.” As I expected. That’s where the young women wanted it to go.
“Spirit,” I asked with as much gravitas as I could throw into the question, “what is your name?”
The planchette jolted toward the letters with such force that I drew back my hands. So did everyone else. The planchette lay still. “Whichever of you is doing that, stop,” I said. “You can’t force it. You have to let the spirits reveal the answers.” The ladies all stared at each other in turns around the table.
“It wasn’t me,” one of them piped up.
“It wasn’t me either,” another said.
“I didn’t do it.”
“Okay, okay, okay, I’m not accusing anyone of anything. Let’s just try again and be gentle, okay?” I said.
We all laid our fingers on the planchette again and once more it raced across the board. And with no coaxing from me at all, you spelled your name.
The ladies were abuzz with excitement. “Ask them how they died!” one of them chirped. “Yes!” another gushed.
“Spirit,” I said, “how did you die?”
M-U-R-D-E-R, spelled the planchette.
“Murdered how?” I asked, abandoning my sonorous tone.
The planchette was still beneath our fingers.
“Try asking again,” one of the women said.
“They might not know,” another suggested.
“Spirit,” I said, “do you know how you were murdered?”
The planchette moved firmly to No.
“Spirit, do you know who killed you?”
A quick circle back to No. You didn’t have to be a psychic to read the disappointment in the room.
Okay. Let’s say this really is a spirit, and not someone in the group fucking with the planchette, even though I kind of doubt anyone would after all that, I thought. Let’s get back to something they would know. Preferably about their death, though. Give the ladies what they want.
“Spirit, what year did you die?”
The planchette moved to the numbers. 2-0-2-1.
“Wow, that was so long ago!” one of the women breathed.
“It’s an old house,” the host said nonchalantly.
I was feeling warm again, so I jumped right back into the mystical. “Spirit,” I asked, “do you have any unfinished business?”
B-U-R-I-A-L.
“Spirit, where are your remains currently?”
C-E-L-L-A-R.
One of the ladies yelped. “No fucking way!” another said.
Holy crap, I thought, stifling a smile. These girls are going to have a hell of a ghost story. I wonder if they’re going to tear up the whole–
My thoughts were interrupted as the planchette started moving again, almost as an afterthought.
N-O-R-T-H-W-E-S-T-C-O-R-N-E-R-I-N-T-H-E-W-A-L-L-B-E-H-I-N-D-T-H-E-S-H-E-L-F.
Holy shit.
“I know where my dad keeps an axe!” the young lady hosting the seance shouted. The girls armed themselves with shovels and axes, headed down into the cellar, and pulled a shelf away from the northwest corner.
“Look!” one of the women said. “It looks like that section of the wall had drywall redone or something.”
The girls all looked at their host, who hefted an axe over her head and wedged it into the wall. A piece crumbled away. The ladies took turns destroying the wall until a small hollow opened up.
One girl shone a flashlight into the hole. The ladies all peered in. I had been hanging back, not wanting to be part of the property damage, but moved forward to get a glimpse. I was only able to see a hint of your eye socket when one of the women shrieked, “A skull!” and the rest began screaming.
We didn’t finish excavating you that night, but once the young host’s parents returned early from their vacation, you got your burial, all right.
But that doesn’t mean you stayed resting. Whenever I hold a seance now, I can always count on you to be my spirit guide. You don’t always have anything for me, and when you don’t, you still lend a wonderful air of theatricality. But sometimes you share a juicy secret from someone’s dead relative. You’ve been very good for business.