by Ania Ahlborn
“But . . .”
“But nothing.” She veered around, giving Maggie a hard glare. “You know what, Maggie? You’re the bitch!” The curse made Maggie wince, but Cheryl wasn’t deterred. “You should go hang out in the graveyard with your sicko sister,” she spit out. “Go join a devil cult, Mags. Then you can talk to the dead people all the time! And, and . . .” She noticed the placement of Maggie’s hand, then reached up to her own necklace and tore it free of her neck. “You can keep this. Find someone else.” She threw the necklace down onto the carpet and stormed out, leaving Maggie alone with the board across her lap.
. . .
Maggie was devastated. She tried calling Cheryl the next day, but Cheryl’s mom insisted she wasn’t home. When she called the day after that, Cheryl happened to be out with her dad. After a week of trying, Maggie’s mom rested a hand upon her youngest daughter’s shoulder and gave her kid a sad sort of smile. “Honey, Cheryl doesn’t feel like talking. Let’s stop calling her house, okay?”
That afternoon, Maggie sat down with her school pencils and stationery set and began to write a note of apology—Dear Cheri, I’m so sorry—but she couldn’t think beyond the light tapping on her bedroom window. At first, her heart soared at the sound. Maybe Cheryl was outside, tossing pebbles at the glass. That seemed like a Cheryl sort of thing to do, something they’d both laugh at because it was hokey and lame. But when Maggie abandoned her desk chair and pushed the curtains aside—her heart thudding in her ears with eager anticipation to see her best friend standing on the lawn—there was no one in the yard, and with no tree branches anywhere near the window, it was impossible to decipher where the noise originated.
Squirrels, she thought. Squirrels on the roof. They drove Maggie’s mom crazy. Surely that’s where the tapping was coming from.
That night, with her note only half-finished—I promise on our whole friendship, it wasn’t me—the tapping on the window graduated to a knock.
Squirrels? Not unless they were inside the walls, banging on two-by-fours with their tiny fists. She hit pause on the DVD she was watching—Panic Room, borrowed from Brynn, and most certainly not approved by their mother—and followed the knocking to a spot behind her bed.
Tap tap tap.
Maybe a mouse skittering behind the plaster? But when she put her ear up to the wall, the knock seemed to come from the back of the headboard, as though an invisible hand were reaching out from beneath the mattress and rapping its knuckles against the wood.
“What the heck?” She went downstairs and reported the knocking to her father, who—a few minutes later—came into her room with a ratchet set to tighten the bolts of Maggie’s frame.
“What’re you watching, Crazy?” He peered at the TV. “It looks scary.”
“It’s not,” Maggie said.
“Oh yeah?” Dad gave his youngest daughter a look. “Doesn’t look like it’s Mom Approved, and it sure as heck looks like it might make a little girl hallucinate some strange knocks in her poorly lit room.”
“I’m not hallucinating.” Maggie crossed her arms over her chest. “And I’m not a little girl,” she muttered beneath her breath.
Dad didn’t bother to counter her argument. He checked the headboard. “Loose screws,” he said, tapping Maggie’s forehead with a finger. “Get it together. Either that, or stop watching scary movies.” Maggie stuck her tongue out at him, but she couldn’t stay mad for long. Besides, he was right; it was nuts. There was no such thing as ghosts. Just her imagination. Her newfound resolve, however, didn’t keep her from tossing that Ouija board into the steamer trunk at the foot of her bed and latching it tight.
In case the knocking came back. Which it did.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Always in threes.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Now, from inside the trunk.
As if to say:
Let. Me. Out.
THIRTEEN
* * *
MAGGIE FOUND HERSELF sitting next to Brynn on the couch, waiting for Simon to arrive. It was New Year’s Eve, and their parents had gotten snazzed up to attend some sort of fancy gala downtown.
“Hey, Bee?” Maggie squinted at the TV.
“Hey, what?”
“I don’t get it,” she said. “You know how you said that board doesn’t work?”
“Oh my God, are you still going on about that?”
“I just want to know something,” Maggie said, trying to come off as casual.
“Fine. What?”
“Well, if it doesn’t work, then how does the pointer move and stuff? How do the words appear the way they do?”
Brynn looked up from her phone with a raised eyebrow. “You think they just appear?” she asked. “Like, a ghost is really doing it, huh?”
Maggie lifted her shoulders up to her ears.
“Like, ghosts just sit around waiting for dipshits to break out their stupid Ouija boards that they bought at Toys R Us so they can spell out stupid crap like I like big boobs and Let’s order pizza?” Brynn paused, suddenly looking thoughtful. “I should have ordered pizza.”
“Or bad stuff,” Maggie said, only to immediately regret it. Because now her sister was looking at her with flat-out suspicion.
“Bad stuff? Are you screwing around with that thing?”
“No!”
“Bullshit, yes, you are.”
“No, I mean, not anymore.” Maggie frowned. Another lie. Before the board had been around, she hadn’t had to cover her tracks. But since she’d brought it home, she’d lied to her dad on her birthday, and now she was lying to Brynn. “But I played with Cheryl—”
“Little Miss Priss.”
“—and it spelled out awful stuff, Brynn. Stuff I’d never say to Cheri, like, ever. And that’s why she left and hasn’t come back. That’s why she doesn’t want to be my friend anymore.”
Brynn appeared to consider this. She sat silent and motionless for a time, as if thinking something over. Then again, she might have been back to thinking about pizza. There was still time. Their dad had given them twenty bucks before heading out the door.
“And now there’s knocks in my room,” Maggie added, albeit quietly.
“Knocks,” Brynn echoed.
“Yeah, and scratchy sounds.”
Brynn gave her sister a look. You’re bullshitting me, it said.
“You’ve got to believe me, Bee,” Maggie pleaded with her sister. “Are you sure the board really doesn’t work?”
“I guess it could,” she murmured. “But . . .”
“But what?”
“You ever heard of the subconscious?”
Maggie shrugged.
“It’s, like, stuff you do or say without knowing you’re doing or saying them. It’s your mind acting out on your innermost thoughts.”
“Yeah?”
“So, maybe you actually did want to say those things to Little Miss Priss, but you couldn’t bring yourself to do it, so you had the board do it instead.”
“No.” Maggie shook her head, vehemently denying the possibility. That was ridiculous. Maggie was hurt, sure. And she’d been jealous of Cheryl and Jenny’s budding friendship. Maggie had felt left out because Cheryl had changed. She’d become more distant, distracted. But for Maggie to call her a bitch? “No way,” she said. “Cher’s my best friend. Or . . .” She frowned, realizing the inaccuracy of her word choice. “. . . was . . .”
“Yeah, well . . .” Brynn lifted a single shoulder up toward her ear. “Sometimes best friends suck a big one, so get used to it.”
But Maggie couldn’t bring herself to believe it. Because even if it had been her unconscious mind, why hadn’t she been able to stand up, to throw the board off her knees and chuck the pointer across the room? None of it made sense.
“But—”
The doorbell chimed.
<
br /> “But nothing,” Brynn said, leaping off the couch to answer the door. “Don’t be a drag, okay?” She shot a look over her shoulder, as if to say: Do not embarrass me in front of Simon.
Maggie bit her bottom lip and moved to her father’s armchair. A few minutes later, she was happy she had. Brynn and Simon were cozying up on the couch, neither one of them able to stop touching each other for more than half a second. It was gross, which was why Maggie decided to focus all her attention on the movie Simon had brought with him. The opening credits began to roll, and all three of them immediately began gorging themselves on Orville Redenbacher’s buttered popcorn, Diet Cokes, and red Twizzlers that Maggie didn’t much like but couldn’t seem to stop eating.
The movie was boring at first, something about an archeologist and a mysterious artifact—Indiana Jones without the rolling boulders and monkey soup. She considered ditching out and going upstairs to watch Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve on her own TV, same as the Olsens usually did as a family every year. Or maybe she’d pull the board out again. It might be fun to ring in the new year by talking to the undead. It sure as heck would trump Simon’s taste in films.
Except, by the time Maggie had gathered up the nerve to excuse herself, the film cut away from the archeologist to the story of a little girl instead. And when that little girl’s mother discovered a Ouija board in the basement? Well, Maggie was riveted. And absolutely terrified.
A handful of scenes later, that same little girl peed herself during a party in front of all her mother’s fancy friends. At that point, Maggie pressed a decorative pillow to her chest and gaped. Because what the hell was this? What had Simon brought into their home?
“Gross.” Brynn pelted popcorn at the TV screen. She and Simon couldn’t manage to keep quiet for more than a few minutes at a time, laying down witty quips after what seemed like every line of dialogue. But Maggie’s attention was fixed, her eyes glued to the tube, and by the time Regan MacNeil was thrashing in her bed, Maggie was struggling to keep her own scream at bay. Stuffing a corner of that pillow into her mouth, she kept herself from revealing just how scared she was, worried that maybe Brynn would make her go upstairs or turn off the movie completely, which Maggie both wanted to happen and knew she would challenge if it did. Because she had to know how it ended. She had to know what her own future held.
Every now and again, her eyes would dart toward the staircase leading up to the second floor. There was a sensation of something standing at the top of the stairs, just out of view, like a kid hiding out, watching the TV through the slats of the balustrade. Except the feeling coming from upstairs wasn’t curiosity; it wasn’t a sense of inclusion. It was heavy. Black. Swirling with menace. And the more Regan transformed into a snarling demon on screen, the more Maggie wanted to run from room to room, flipping on every light.
Even Brynn and Simon fell silent when the flick went off the rails. The story spiraled toward madness, and Maggie could tell that they, too, were disturbed by the things they saw. Brynn was probably regretting having shut off all the lights; she was more than likely considering another movie right after this one—something funny to break the tension. That was Maggie’s go-to technique whenever Brynn scared her just before bed. Cartoons, or the Farrelly brothers. Dumb and Dumber was one of her favorites. She couldn’t count the times Lloyd Christmas and Harry Dunne had put her at ease with their snorts of laughter, assuring her that the world was stupid and hilarious rather than a terrible, festering wound.
When this movie ended, though, Maggie wasn’t sure she could move. Her body had petrified within its protective pillow-clinging huddle. The anxiety that had grown inside her chest was coiled up tight, promising to rouse with the slightest of shifts, to suffocate her beneath its crushing weight.
Brynn and Simon fell back into their usual teasing. Simon collapsed against the couch like a tired prince, his black T-shirt and jeans nothing more than pronounced shadows against the beige upholstery. He began to convulse while Brynn laughed next to him. Then he fake-vomited all over the floor before attacking Brynn, pretending to puke into her mouth and onto her hair. She parried him with flailing hands and uncontrollable laughter.
Meanwhile, Maggie sat motionless, staring at the TV as the credits rolled and that creepy music played, waiting for something evil to crawl out of the screen. It was only after a few seconds of goofing off that Brynn realized her little sister was too quiet, too still.
“Mags?” she asked. “Hey. Oh man. Are you totally freaking out?”
Maggie didn’t respond. She continued to hug that oversized pillow to her chest like a soul shield. There was a terrible feeling in the room—one that neither Simon nor Brynn seemed to register. Whatever had been lurking at the top of the stairs had now descended—backward and in reverse, having crab-walked down the risers just as Regan had. Maggie was certain it was standing directly behind her, leering. She could feel electricity upon her skin. She could smell it. Something was burning. Going up in smoke.
“Shit, Maggie?” Brynn sounded concerned this time. “Dude, if you’re freaking out, you better not say anything to Mom.” Because if Maggie did, Brynn would be in a world of trouble. Maggie wasn’t even sure Simon was allowed to be there. Brynn would be grounded for life, and Maggie would never hear the end of it from her disgruntled sister.
Maggie managed to blink out of her stupor, but rather than releasing the pillow, she only clung to it more. “I’m okay,” she whispered. “I’m okay.” An echo, as though saying it over and over would make a falsehood true.
“Hey, didn’t you say you guys have a board?” Simon’s question made the hairs on the back of Maggie’s neck stand on end.
No. She wanted to scream it at him. No, no, NO.
“Yeah, Mags does . . .” Brynn said, still watching her kid sister.
“Well, bring it out!” Simon said, beaming, pushing his fingers through that floppy black Mohawk. “Let’s talk to some fuckin’ demons.”
“Ehhh, probably not the best idea right now,” Brynn said.
Simon sat up from his sprawl across the couch and raised both eyebrows at Maggie. Secretly, she found him painfully pretty, like one of the all-black-wearing bad guys in an anime movie. But now, in the darkness, his pale face and odd expression made him look disconcerting, like a ventriloquist’s dummy. If he made like he was going to come after her, she was sure she’d burst into tears.
“You afraid something’s gonna steal your soul, little sister?” he asked. “That stuff really happens, you know. There are documented cases . . .”
Maggie held her breath. Those tears were coming, their sting creeping across the backs of her eyes.
“This movie, it’s based on a true story, you know. There’s even a book written about it. And it’s not just people they can get into, either,” Simon continued. “It’s things, too.”
“Hey, Si, don’t,” Brynn said, taking a seat next to Maggie. And yet, when the cushion of the armchair compressed beneath her weight, rather than being comforted by her big sister’s presence, Maggie jumped up and off the furniture like a startled cat. Brynn stared at her with surprise. “What the hell, Mags?”
“Nothing!” The word came out as a yell, though she didn’t know why. She looked down to the pillow she was now wrenching with both hands. It felt like the only pure thing in that room, so she hugged it again, refusing to release it from her grasp.
“Dude, okay, now you’re freaking me out!” Brynn yelled back, then got up to cross the distance between the couch and the wall. She flipped a light switch. A small table lamp burst to life, cutting through the malicious darkness of the living room. But the shadow the light should have blotted out stayed exactly where it wanted to be, cemented in the material world. She imagined it swirling. Huddled. Clinging to the walls. The furniture. Grinning. Grinning . . .
“I’m going to bed,” Maggie whispered into the fringe of the pillow. She did
n’t want to go upstairs by herself, but she couldn’t beg Brynn to go upstairs with her while Simon was there. And she certainly didn’t want to stay downstairs, where that shadow lurked.
“But it’s not even midnight,” Brynn protested.
“You’re gonna miss the ball drop,” Simon said.
Who cared about the dumb ball drop? To all the people who froze their butts off out in Times Square, the new year meant new possibilities, a fresh start, a clean slate. The night felt exciting, full of mystery and potential. But not to Maggie. Not now. Not after what she’d just sat through. Not with how twisted up she felt.
Now, the future felt nothing but ominous.
Bad things lingered on the horizon, she was sure of it. Very bad things.
. . .
That night, Maggie couldn’t sleep. Even with the desk lamp on and the TV muted, every time she shut her eyes, the same sensation swept over her like a fog: the feeling of someone sneaking up on her, tiptoeing through her bedroom in that high-stepping cartoonish sort of way. Demons flashed against the backs of her eyes—perfect replicas of the awful monster the movie had invoked. Pulling her blankets up beneath her chin, she buried her face in her pillow. If she managed to fall asleep, she was sure her apprehension would wane. But sleep seemed next to impossible. The knocking that was coming from the back of her headboard wouldn’t stop—a light tap, tap, tap, always in threes. Just a loose screw, Crazy. Yeah, right. There was no way she was imagining it this time.
Her heart thudded to a stop when she heard the opening and closing of a door—What was that?—only to realize it was her mom and dad, back from their party. They were talking downstairs. She could hear the jingle of her father’s car keys. Her mother laughed, then laughed again, but more quietly the second time around. Maggie imagined that they were both a little drunk. At least, that’s how couples in the movies came home after a long night of fancy parties.
Despite her shot nerves, the fact that her parents were home gave Maggie more confidence to keep her eyes closed. Nothing bad could happen when they were home, right? That, and the repetitive nature of that tapping eventually lulled her in a trance.