With the flames of the fire crackling a few feet away, warming his body but doing nothing for his inner chill, especially after the basement’s disconcerting light show, Ben laid his fingers on the Ouija board’s planchette next to Laurette’s.
“Gently,” she whispered.
A hiss and a pop of a carbon dioxide tank down the hallway filled the silence. The familiar tapping soon followed.
Trying to swallow the nervous pulse in his throat, Ben lightened his hold. Laurette had already given him instructions: let her take the lead, yes or no questions were easier than open-ended ones, be patient, be polite—to which he’d replied he wasn’t exactly planning on flipping the spirits off or telling them to go eff themselves. Whether her knowledge of how to proceed had come from experience or from Google, he didn’t know, but given the occult beliefs of some of her family members, both seemed equally plausible.
Laurette cleared her throat and began. “Hello,” she said. “Is anyone here with us tonight?” Although her words were steady, a jittery energy radiated from her being, matching Ben’s own.
They waited, fingertips on the planchette, Laurette’s nails elegant with their violet polish, Ben’s short with a few hangnails.
They waited some more.
And then more.
After about five minutes of nothing but fire snapping and candle flickering, Ben’s nervous fear dissipated. A sense of foolishness replaced it.
“Well,” he said. “This is as fun as watching cheese age.” What was he thinking? A Ouija board? Stupid. “Come on, Bovo, I’m hungry. Let’s—”
The planchette began to move.
Ben shut up. His body tensed. He resisted the urge to tighten his grip on the game piece.
Together, his and Laurette’s hands moved, with no influence of their own, up toward the left of the board. The answer was YES.
Yes, someone was with them tonight.
A slight intake of breath from Laurette. Then she asked, “Are you the boy Ben saw in the mirror?”
A pause, followed by a slow circling of the planchette back to YES.
Ben swallowed. Hard.
“Are you a ghost or a spirit?”
Laurette’s question seemed redundant, but Ben said nothing. He wasn’t even sure his tongue would work if he did speak.
The planchette, and thus their hands, drifted to the letter B. Then an O, T, and H followed before the planchette stopped.
Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit.
Although Ben remained silent, Laurette quietly explained to him that a spirit was what was left of a person after they died. “It can usually cross from one dimension to another,” she said softly. “It isn’t tethered to any one place. A ghost, on the other hand, is tied to a place, often because of a violent or tragic death, and cannot leave until someone helps it do so. I’m not sure how one can be both.” She paused, and although her voice was calm, Ben felt her tremble beside him when she added, “Ghosts can take the form of dark—and sometimes evil—energy.”
Terrific.
Laurette’s voice returned to normal volume. “Are there other spirits or ghosts here?”
YES
“Many?”
YES
What. The. Hell.
“Do you mean Ben harm?”
Drifting of the planchette to NO.
Laurette must’ve sensed Ben’s relief, because in her softer, explaining voice, she said, “Although we will assume this is true, and it clearly seems to be since nothing bad has happened to you, we must be on guard. Sometimes a spirit or ghost can lie.”
Did she have any good news? Ben wondered. He whispered back, “Ask him who he is.”
“That’s too open-ended of a question, I fear.” Instead, she said, “When did you die?”
Again the planchette drifted, this time to the numbers near the bottom of the board. 1966 was the ghostly answer.
“Did you die in this house?”
YES
“How old were you?”
9
Ben’s heart beat faster. “Ask him if he was the one completing the puppy puzzle.”
Laurette did. YES was the answer.
“Did you do that to get Ben’s attention?” she asked.
YES
“What is your name?”
The planchette drifted to T. And then O. When it found the B, Ben mouthed the name as soon as the final letter, a Y, was centered in the planchette’s window.
Toby.
“Oh my God,” Ben said out loud, half speech, half croak. Jake’s friend. The boy who “lives in the hotel.” Can this really be happening?
Outside the hopper windows, wind howled and shook the panes. The basement’s dimmed lights flickered once again, and from somewhere upstairs, a door banged shut. Ben’s gaze shot in the direction of the stairwell, but he kept his fingertips on the planchette. How he managed to, he wasn’t sure. His hands were shaking like Jello shots. Even Laurette seemed rattled, and he knew she’d seen some scary shit in her day.
“Are you the same Toby who’s been communicating with Jake?” she asked.
YES
“Are you a Claxwell?”
Ben gaped at Laurette. What had made her ask that question? He wasn’t sure he wanted to know its answer.
YES
Ben’s armpits grew damp. “Ask if Freddy and El—or the hotel—are trying to influence me and why,” he whispered to Laurette.
She shook her head. “Too difficult.” After thinking a moment, she rephrased his question. “Do Frederick and Elizabeth want Ben to stay?”
YES
“Is it because they love him?”
YES
“Is there another reason?”
YES
“Ask what it is, ask what it is,” Ben whispered urgently, even though he understood the broadness of the question would be too much. But he was so close, so close to finding out why he was there.
“Do they need Ben to do something?”
YES
“Why?” Laurette asked. No answer came. “He’s tiring, I fear. We must hurry.” She rattled off another question. “Is it you who wanted Ben to find the fairy tale book in the library and the journal in the stairs?”
YES
“To help him?”
YES
“Are you the one Ben heard scream when he found the journal.”
YES
“Was someone hurting you?”
A rather emphatic circle back to YES followed, the planchette almost sliding out of Ben and Laurette’s hands. They reset their fingertips, the device now moist with their perspiration.
Without warning, the walls of the inn started to shake. Rattles and thuds and structural screams blasted them from all sides. Madly, Ben wondered if the hotel was about to collapse and crush them alive.
“Who?” Laurette said, raising her voice above the din.
Again, fast movements of the planchette, as if Toby were not only in a hurry, but also terrified.
E-D-W-R-D
“Oh shit,” Ben said. “Freddy mentioned an Edward.” In his flustered and heated state, his skin both clammy and on fire, he tried to remember the conversation with Freddy in the hidden cemetery. Couldn’t.
The floorboards below them rumbled. Clattering from somewhere upstairs. More doors slamming shut. Open, shut. Open shut. Ben worried he was about to lose it.
“Who do you want Ben to help, Toby?” Laurette shouted.
The planchette’s movements grew even jerkier, sliding around beneath their fingers so rapidly Ben could barely process the letters.
ABIGL whizzed out.
“Wait, isn’t that—”
Laurette cut Ben off with urgency. “Will helping her help you and the others?”
YES
FREE US
Quickly, as if on hyperspeed, Laurette said feverishly, “Who killed you, Toby? Who?”
No answer.
“Merde,” Laurette cried. “We’re losing him.” She bit her lip in frenzied contemplation, as if trying to figure out what to ask. Finally, she blurted, “Was it Freddy? Did Freddy kill you?”
Ben whipped his head toward her, stunned she would think to ask that.
But just as the planchette started to move—toward the left to YES, toward the right to NO, Ben couldn’t tell!—it flew out from beneath their hands so sharply it nearly burned their fingertips. Sailing through the air past the pool table, it shattered against the far wall, its splintered bits scattering to the floor.
Just as suddenly, the inn stopped shaking.
Before Ben could even inhale a breath of relief, a horrific screeching blasted from the intercom speaker down the hallway, a screech so awful that every cell in Ben’s body and every hair on his head jolted with electricity. A screech both human and inhuman at the same time.
“Oh dear God,” Laurette said, her face pinched in distress. “I think Edward has found him.”