The wind, Brian mouthed at Mr. Voland.
Don only shrugged. Maybe.
Ollie’s palms were sweating.
Don gestured to something he’d set up on the table in front of him. Then he pointed to three chairs. Carefully, they sat down. Ollie glanced back at her dad. He was still snoring away, which surprised her a little. Her dad wasn’t that heavy a sleeper. But they’d been quiet.
They needed to hurry. On cold nights, Ollie’s dad was used to getting up every few hours, going downstairs, and adding logs to their woodstove to make sure the house stayed warm until morning. Her dad would wake up soon to check on the fire.
Somewhere above them, the sobbing sound went on and on. Ollie felt the hairs on her arms standing up.
The table in front of them held three things.
The first thing was an empty cardboard box. Brian picked it up and tilted it into the red firelight so that all three of them could read what was printed on it.
OUIJA, it said.
Below that, in smaller letters, it said, MYSTIFYING ORACLE.
Brian frowned. “A Ouija board?” he breathed, in the smallest, softest whisper he could manage. “Isn’t that just—a party game?”
“It can be,” murmured Mr. Voland, his voice as soft as Brian’s. “But it also works for its intended purpose. Talking to ghosts.”
The Ouija board itself was laid on the table beside its box. It had two parts. Ollie had to squint to see them. The first part was the big wooden board. Mr. Voland’s Ouija board was shiny and smooth, as though it had been touched by many hands. A picture was carved into each of the board’s four corners: a smiling sun, a frowning moon, a black bird, and a woman with her arms folded, who appeared to be asleep.
The middle of the board was carved with the alphabet. To the right and left, above the alphabet, were the words YES and NO. Below the alphabet were the numbers 1 through 9 and 0.
Below that was a single word, carved deep. GOODBYE.
This board was the first piece.
The second piece was small. It looked like a magnifying glass with an arrow on one side. It was lying in the middle of the board, right on G.
Mr. Voland pointed to it. “This is the planchette,” he breathed. “It indicates the letters. Everyone put your two forefingers on it with me.”
They did, except for Brian. Brian looked unconvinced. He had picked up the Ouija board’s box, which had instructions printed on the inside of the lid. Brian turned the instructions toward the firelight and started reading them.
Mr. Voland looked just the faintest bit annoyed. “We do not have much time.”
“I just want to know what we’re getting into.” Brian was whispering, but not as quietly as the others. Ollie glared at him. Did he want her dad or Coco’s mom to wake up? The soft sobbing of the wind—or not the wind—seemed to have crept closer. But still Brian was reading over the instructions like he didn’t have a care in the world. Ollie felt herself starting to get annoyed at Brian.
“We have to hurry,” Ollie told him.
Brian was still running a finger down the instructions. His finger paused at the bottom. His frown deepened. “There are four warnings.”
“Warnings?” asked Coco.
“Yes,” said Brian. “‘One: don’t use the board alone.’”
“We aren’t going to,” murmured Mr. Voland. He sounded like he was struggling to keep his patience. Behind them, Ollie’s dad snorted and turned over in his sleep. Ollie gave Brian an agonized glance. He went right on reading.
“‘Two: don’t use the board in a graveyard.’”
Ollie shook her head impatiently. No graves here. Coco said nothing.
“‘Three,’” said Brian. “‘Just because the board says something doesn’t mean it’s true.’”
“However,” broke in Mr. Voland, “I can tell you when the board is—” The sound of someone stirring in their sleep near the fire silenced him.
“‘Four,’” said Brian. “‘Always say goodbye.’”
There was a pause.
“Why? What does that mean?” Ollie asked. Involuntarily, her eye went again to GOODBYE, stark at the bottom of the board.
“Because,” Mr. Voland said shortly, “if you don’t move the planchette to GOODBYE, they do not necessarily depart.”
“The ghosts don’t leave?” Coco whispered. Ollie frowned. Outside, the wind moaned to itself. Brian was watching Mr. Voland, narrow-eyed.
“But,” Mr. Voland said, “we will always say goodbye. Now if you have had quite enough chitchat? We’ll begin.”
After a long pause, Ollie shook herself and nodded.
Brian was looking at that big, black GOODBYE burned into the wood at the bottom of the Ouija board. He cocked his head, listening to the faint, strange sobbing that might not be the storm. They all waited for him.
Finally Brian nodded. He still looked unhappy. But he put his hands on the planchette too.
“Now,” said Mr. Voland. He was talking so low that he was barely moving his lips. All of them had to bend forward, hardly breathing, in order to hear him. “You will close your eyes, breathe evenly, and concentrate. Ollie, you must take the lead here. When you feel ready, ask a question.”
Ollie nodded, closed her eyes, and thought about her mom. That wasn’t hard. Her mom had been the best. Fierce, reckless, brilliant. A math professor, an adventurer. Everything Ollie wanted to be when she grew up. Always laughing, always running, always flying. When Dad told Ollie her mom’s plane had fallen out of the sky, it had taken Ollie forever to believe it. Her mother couldn’t be gone. How could a pine box in a church contain all that life? Her mom wasn’t there. She had to be somewhere else. Perhaps behind a tree, behind a doorway, perhaps just in the space where the shadows met the firelight.
Ollie opened her eyes suddenly. With two fingers on the planchette, she whispered, softer than a sigh, “Are you here?”
Mr. Voland’s lighter eye gleamed with the red light of the low, sputtering fire. His darker eye seemed coal-black.
They waited. Nothing.
Ollie’s voice cracked a little as she said it a second time: “Mom. Are you here?”
Suddenly, the little piece of wood began to move. It quivered. And then it started a slow slide from letter to letter.
“N,” said Coco, reading aloud. “E. A.”
“Near, it means near,” said Ollie. Her heart raced. The wind (or not the wind) moaned. Her dad sighed and turned over in his sleep. The planchette swung up to YES.
“In life, did you belong to this orphanage?” murmured Mr. Voland.
Another pause. Then the planchette went to NO. It quivered again.
A strange, buoyant, impossible hope was rising in Ollie’s chest. “Who are you, then?” she asked.
The planchette moved almost at once that time. HELLO OLIVIA, it said. Only her mom had ever called her Olivia.
“Mom?” Ollie whispered. “Mom?” Her heart was beating faster and faster. “Mom, where are you?”
The planchette hesitated. Then it started to swing once more. BEWARE, it said.
Brian’s hands twitched on the planchette.
“Mom—what’s happening?” Ollie breathed. Her heart was going like a hummingbird’s wings. “Why—beware? What’s wrong with this place?”
“One question at a time, Ollie,” said Mr. Voland.
GHOSTS WANT TO KEEP YOU HERE, spelled the planchette.
“How?” Ollie whispered. “Why?”
Brian was scowling mistrustfully at the Ouija board, but Ollie didn’t care. Her entire concentration was locked on the planchette under her fingers. She wished it would spell faster. “What do I do?”
MIRROR, said the planchette. LOOK MIRROR. ANSWER IN MIRROR.
All four of them stared up at the mirror. It hung almost directly in front of them, o
pposite the fireplace, big and dark. Ollie could see the red coals of the fire reflected in it. And, dimly, the dark shapes of chairs and tables and their own faces. What else? Was there something else?
“Owl,” said Brian, low.
Ollie ignored him. She got up and took a step closer to the mirror. Before she could take another, Brian’s hand fell heavily on her shoulder. “Ollie, where are you going?” Brian wasn’t even bothering to be quiet now. “Remember the mirror upstairs? Be careful.”
Ollie shot an agonized glance at her sleeping dad, but still, strangely, none of the adults stirred. She threw off Brian’s hand and took another step toward the mirror. “I just want to see, Brian,” she whispered. “That was my mom. She was talking to me. I’m careful.”
“Owl,” said Brian. “Don’t believe everything the board tells you.”
“It’s my mom. She called me Olivia. Only my mom ever called me that,” Ollie retorted. “We believed my watch when we were in the corn maze. I’m going to believe the board now. What else do we have to believe in? How else are we going to figure this out? I’m just going to look. Come with me if you want to help.”
Ollie’s dad murmured something in his sleep. It sounded like Ollie.
“Hang on—” Brian began.
“Guys,” broke in Coco. To Ollie, it sounded like she’d been trying to get their attention for a while. “Guys, listen.”
Ollie and Brian fell silent. And they heard it. A tap.
Tap.
Where was it coming from?
Then Ollie realized it was coming from the mirror. Someone was tapping on the mirror. But who? Ollie took another step, craning to see.
Mr. Voland watched with slitted eyes.
Tap. Tap.
“Ollie,” said Brian, still following her, “please be careful.”
“It’s okay. I’m careful,” she whispered back. She stared into the glimmering depths of the mirror so hard that her eyes watered.
Behind her, she heard Mr. Voland talking. “Don’t worry, Coco. She’ll be all right.”
Ollie saw her own reflection. And Brian’s reflection. And the reflection of someone else. A woman.
But was it a reflection? The woman in the mirror was tapping on the glass.
Tap.
Tap.
“Olivia,” whispered a voice in her ear, as though the person reflected in the mirror really were standing next to her. “Olivia, I’m here.”
“Ollie, I don’t like this,” said Brian.
Was it her mother’s voice? It might have been her mother’s voice.
“Mom?” Ollie whispered. In the mirror, she could see curling dark hair like her own. She still couldn’t make out a face.
But that voice in her ear said, “Olivia, come here. You’re in danger, and we don’t have much time.”
Ollie went closer. The woman in the mirror put her hand flat against the glass, as though the mirror were a window and they were staring at each other through it. Brian stood rigid beside her. Ollie reached out, tentatively. She laid her shaking hand against the woman’s. The glass was icy under her fingers.
“Mommy?” she whispered, her voice a hopeful, agonized thread. “What is it?”
At that moment, the firelight flared up behind her, flared up bright, as though someone had thrown three logs on the sullen, smoldering blaze. Brian cried, “Ollie, Ollie!” But he seemed suddenly very far away.
The light brightened as the fire leaped up. It fell on the woman’s face.
She was blue-lipped and black-nosed. She wore a black dress and a black veil over her hair. When she smiled at Ollie, her teeth were sharp.
It was the woman from the hallway.
The woman from her nightmares.
Ollie tried to yank away, but black-nailed fingers had curled out of the mirror glass, catching her hand and holding it. “Got you,” breathed Mother Hemlock.
The warning from her dream raced through Ollie’s shocked and panicking brain: Stay out of closets and don’t look in the mirror.
Should have taken the advice. Ollie wanted to scream with terror and disappointment. Mom, where are you? She struggled to throw the woman off. There was a commotion behind her, but Ollie couldn’t tell what was going on. All of her skin felt cold and heavy with fear.
Mother Hemlock yanked Ollie forward hard enough to wrench her face-first into the mirror. Ollie screamed, and her free arm flew up to protect her head against smashing into the glass.
But she didn’t smash into the glass. She was dragged forward and forward and forward some more, until she tumbled and fell flat on her face onto a foul-smelling carpet.
There was total silence. Total stillness. For a long second, Ollie lay still, hearing only her fast, frightened breathing. Then she dragged herself to her knees. “Dad?” she called, hearing her voice shake. “Coco? Brian?”
No answer.
10
OLLIE SCRAMBLED TO her feet. All was silent. The fire in front of her burned low and red. For a second, Ollie thought she had imagined falling forward, falling . . .
Falling through the mirror.
How could you fall through a mirror?
Then she realized that the air smelled different. It smelled like mold and damp and rotten food. It was freezing cold. She was shivering.
Next Ollie realized what wasn’t there. There was a fire, but no blankets.
Rotten carpet, but no tables.
Herself, but no friends.
She was alone.
Ollie spun in a circle. She was in the dining hall. But it had changed. This was the dining hall of her nightmare. The front window was broken and boarded up. Glass crunched when she moved.
“Coco?” Ollie whispered again. Then a little louder: “Brian? Dad?” Where were they? Where was she? She spun in another circle, trying desperately not to panic. She wasn’t succeeding too well. “Mom?”
No one answered. But the sound of a soft laugh came from the mirror.
For the mirror was still there. One of the only things that was. It was hanging on the wall opposite the fireplace. But now Ollie couldn’t see her own reflection in this mirror. Instead, she saw her friends moving around near the fire. Their lips moved as they called, Ollie, Ollie. But she couldn’t hear them.
She had gone through the mirror, Ollie thought. She was alone. She’d never been so afraid.
Then, with a surge of relief, Ollie realized that Mr. Voland was standing right next to the mirror, looking into it, staring right at her. The light from the fire on Ollie’s side of the glass fell on his face. “Mr. Voland!” Ollie called. “Mr. Voland!” She reached up and pressed her hands to the mirror’s cold glass. It felt just like a mirror. Rigid. Unyielding. She couldn’t get back through it. But if Mr. Voland could somehow hear her . . .
“No need to shout,” Mr. Voland said calmly, as though he’d heard her thought. “I can hear you, Olivia.”
Mr. Voland, Ollie wanted to say. Help me. But she didn’t say it. Something about his slow, satisfied smile choked the words back down her throat. Instead she said, “Where am I?”
“Behind the mirror,” he said. He was still smiling gently.
Behind him, Ollie glimpsed Coco frantically trying to shake her mother awake. But Ms. Zintner didn’t wake up. Brian was trying to do the same thing to Ollie’s dad.
He didn’t wake up either.
Cold terror filled Ollie. She stared at Mr. Voland. He smiled back at her. “Is my dad okay?” she whispered.
“Just asleep,” he said. “But he will not wake. Not tonight.”
Ollie’s mouth was completely, utterly dry. “You,” she croaked, licked her lips, tried again. “Who are you?”
“I think you know,” he said.
She did. She didn’t want to. She didn’t want it to be true. But it was, and she did. Stammering, Ollie said
, “But you—you were different. The last time.”
His smile was colder than the freezing lodge. “I never look the same twice,” he said. “Where would the fun be in that?”
Now she recognized the smile. Ollie, if she lived to be a hundred, could never forget that particular smile. How could she not have known? How could she not have recognized him the second he walked into the lodge?
But maybe he hadn’t wanted her to recognize him. Maybe he knew how to hide somehow.
“You—” Ollie could barely bring herself to say it. “You’re Seth. You’re the smiling man.”
Seth laughed, and it was Mr. Voland’s warm, happy laugh. But then his smile widened until it wasn’t a smile at all but a specter’s gruesome grin, all teeth. “Discovered at last,” he said. “I wondered how long it would take you.”
Ollie slammed the side of her fist against the glass of the mirror. But it was completely solid under her hand, and she was on the wrong side of it. Mr. Voland—Seth—didn’t even flinch. “No one outwits me, my girl,” he went on. “And you didn’t outwit me last time, mind you. You had help.” He raised his hand. Something small and dark dangled limp between his fingers. It was her mother’s watch. He’d taken it—when had he taken it? Ollie touched her wrist, felt the bare skin where her watch had been. She thought of reaching for the Ouija board in the dark, so distracted by the slide of the letters that she hadn’t noticed . . .
“It was you!” Ollie snapped, realizing. “You stopped her from talking to me! You stopped my watch from working! She was saying BEWARE about you. You scared us, you tricked us, you lied to us! The whole time, everything that’s been happening here, it’s been you.”
Seth bowed to her in a theatrical and old-fashioned kind of acknowledgment. “Of course it was me. Well, except for Mother Hemlock. She’s real enough.” He grinned. “Such a helpful old thing, that hag. But mostly it was me.”
Ollie slammed the side of her fist against the mirror again. “Give me my watch! Give it back! Give it back!”
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