GEORGINA DID NOT WAIT AT HOME very long for Poco’s telephone call that afternoon. She was far too impatient for that. Hardly had she come in—rather late after a Girl Scout meeting—when she dropped her book bag on the floor, wrote a note to her mother (who was herself at the supermarket), and left in a rush for the Lamberts’ house.
“Hello, Georgina. Poco is not here,” Mrs. Lambert said, opening the back door. “She’s gone to Walter Kew’s house to do something. We have just spent two hours putting up lost cat notices. No one has seen Juliette anywhere! Not even nice old Miss Bone at the Harralls’ house.” (Georgina’s eyes shifted slightly at this.) “What on earth can we tell Angela when she calls next time?”
Georgina shrugged. “Tell her that Juliette was so furious to be left behind that she decided to become an invisible and live with the fairies. Angela believes in that sort of thing, and who knows? Juliette was always a mysterious cat.”
“How I wish it could be true,” Mrs. Lambert said, rubbing her temples. “It’s supposed to snow tonight. Poor, poor Juliette. I’m afraid we may have seen the last of the old dear.”
Walter Kew lived down the street and around the corner from the Lamberts. Georgina set out right away. The house was small and overgrown with vines. A cockeyed sign nailed to the fence out front said HOME OF FRED B. DOCKER. PASS YE WHO DARE. This referred to Walter’s grandfather, a kind but blustery grocery store owner who had passed into final realms himself several years before. Walter wasn’t exaggerating about the shrunken state of his family.
Georgina pounded on the shabby front door. She rang the doorbell three times in a row.
“Coming!” a voice croaked from inside. The door was opened by an old woman with a cane.
“I suppose you want my grandson?” she demanded. “He is up in his room with another visitor. Would you care to wait, or join them?”
“Join them, please!”
“Go on up, then. Second door on the left. Walter is very popular today,” his grandmother added, thrusting her head forward and blinking like a curious old sea turtle. “Company, company, left, right, and center!”
Georgina fled up the stairs. Old people were so unsettling. They were always peering and probing, as if children had some secret they would like to get at.
Poco and Walter were in the midst of pulling down the shades in his room and preparing the Ouija board.
“So! Here you are, you double-crossing rats!” Georgina cried, charging through the door. “Poco, you were supposed to call me and—”
One look at Poco’s face brought her to a halt. It was red, and puffy around the eyes.
“Oh no! What’s the matter?”
Walter stepped forward protectively. “She’s worried,” he said. “Her mother told her that Juliette is most likely … um …”
“Dead!” wailed Poco. She hid her face in her hands.
“Oh, Poco! Don’t cry. We’ll find her. I know we will!” Georgina couldn’t bear to see her in tears. Poco never cried.
“She was my friend,” Poco said in a trembling voice. “She slept at the end of my bed every night. We loved each other.”
“I told Poco we’d ask the Ouija to find out about Juliette once and for all,” Walter said. “Poco can’t wait anymore. She has to know the truth!”
He looked quite upset himself and kept yanking his baseball cap up and down over his eyes. “Since you’re here, could you ask the questions again?” he asked Georgina. “Poco wants to work the wand with me.”
Georgina nodded unhappily. She wished Poco had not come here. In the end, she would be disappointed, the way she had been before. Or worse, she would be hurt. Georgina saw her staring grimly at the Ouija’s glistening letters, as if they were her very last hope in the world.
Walter was already lighting the single candle, however. He rested the board on Poco’s knees and recited the odd little chant:
“Come together, all believers,
Let us turn this day to night
And surround the ancient Ouija
With the gloom it needs for sight.”
With a swiftness that Georgina found hardly possible, the air in the room changed. It became private air, secret air, air that pushed back the real world all around so that a space was opened for the Ouija’s lidless eye. Was it really magic? Georgina felt the skin prickle on the back of her neck. She glanced at Walter, but his eyes were hidden under his cap. Outside, the noises of the neighborhood began to fade …
If this was real magic, Georgina knew suddenly that it was not a good kind. There was something disturbing about that eye. It was so dark and unblinking. So strong. Too strong, she thought, to be used for lost cats.
“Couldn’t we just go outside and try looking for Juliette by ourselves?” she begged the others. “I’m sure if we went to Angela’s house again, we really might—”
“No!” Poco interrupted before she could even finish. Walter also was shaking his head. “Remember when I said sometimes you have to believe?” Poco asked her. “Please try to now, because it’s the only way.”
Even before the questions started, it was clear that this meeting with the Ouija would be different from the one before. The darkness seemed darker, the candle burned brighter, and the three in the room felt farther away from the real world beyond the windows.
Walter was on edge. He barked out his commands and took a great deal of trouble arranging them around the board. By the time he and Poco placed their fingers on the wand, there was so much tension that plain breathing had become difficult.
Into this thick atmosphere, Georgina flung her opening question, a warm-up one about when the first snow of that winter would fall. Without hesitation, the Ouija spelled out T-O-N-I-G-H-T, a reasonable answer since the sky was clouded and weather forecasters everywhere had been predicting snow since early morning.
“Good,” Walter Kew said. “We’re on the right track.”
Georgina’s second question (another warm-up) asked for the color of Juliette’s eyes. She’d had the bright idea to start the Ouija thinking about the old cat.
A-Z-U-R-E, the answer came back, making everyone think the board had sneezed, or was perhaps “unsure” of how to spell. Then Walter remembered that azure was a shade of blue. Exactly which shade he couldn’t recall. It didn’t seem to matter. Juliette’s beautiful Siamese eyes were blue.
Finally, while Poco’s face alternated between steamed-up red and ghostly white, Georgina inquired about the cat herself.
“Dear, kind Ouija, please tell us what yard Juliette is hiding in so we can find her,” she begged. “Tell us if she has been taken inside or is being held prisoner. If Juliette is lying in the bushes along a road, please give us the name of the road. If she is under a house”—Georgina felt, rather than saw, Poco’s frown—“let us know whose and where. Also, is she hurt? Also—”
“Stop,” Walter Kew murmured. “That’s enough. The wand has started to move.”
Like a ship drifted off its mooring, the wand began to float over the glossy surface of the board. Aimlessly it wandered hither and yon, pausing in places where there was no meaning to be had, moving on again.
A minute later, though, it picked up speed. It swept toward Poco’s edge of the board, then toward Walter’s. It pirouetted on the Ouija’s great eye, then sped headlong into the mass of red letters. It halted over one. Georgina leaned forward to look through the glass circle.
“D,” she announced. The message had begun!
Other letters came rapidly.
“E,” Georgina said. “A,” And, after a scuffle, “D” again.
Poco’s eyes widened into terrified saucers at this, and she toppled back on the bed where she had been sitting. “I knew it!” she wailed, and would have given up there and then if Walter had not shouted at her to put her fingers back on the wand.
“It’s still moving! It has something else to say!”
So Poco got into position again, though tears were streaming down her cheeks. Soon the wand stopped over another letter.
“L,” whispered Georgina.
Ten seconds later came “Y.” After this, the wand rushed to the painted veil and sat still upon it for at least half a minute.
The wand started up again.
“Good grief!” Georgina said. “Is there even more?
“E,” she cried out. And then, during a mad series of dashes and halts: “N.” “E.” “M.” “Y.”
Afterward, a tremendous shiver arose from the board. It passed through the wand up Poco’s and Walter’s arms. Poco let out a shriek and fell back again on the bed.
“What was that!” she gasped. “Oh, it was awful!”
Walter Kew was frightened as well. He snatched his fingers from the wand as if they had received a shock.
Georgina, standing over them, was the most startled of all. She had not felt the Ouija tremble, but she was the first to understand its message.
“Deadly enemy!” she whispered. Poco and Walter stared up at her.
“We have a deadly enemy,” she said again. “That’s the Ouija’s message.”
Poco sat up suddenly. She removed the wand from the board and took the board from her knees. She placed them carefully on Walter’s bed. Her face was calm. Her eyes were clear. It was as if she’d received the very news she’d expected and no longer had to worry about what was coming.
“Deadly enemy,” she repeated. “I’m so glad to know it for sure. I thought there must be someone at the bottom of this. Whoever they are and wherever they may be, there can be no question now what has happened to Juliette!”