by Aarsen, Zoe
“Oh, him,” Mischa said with a smile, delighted that I’d asked. “Total nervous breakdown. Got rid of his car as fast as he could, bought a fancy new one that he couldn’t afford with his credit card, divorced his wife before winter was over. She thought he was totally nuts when he told her the story about Bloody Heather. He never drives at night anymore.”
“Good job,” Olivia commended Mischa. “What about the story of the six white horses?”
“God, no!” Candace protested. “That story is soooo long.”
Hannah sat upright on the floor and folded her hands in her lap. “What about Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board? Have you guys ever played that?”
Olivia rolled her eyes. “Geez, not since middle-school.”
“I don’t like that,” Candace shook her head. “I don’t like the idea of messing with spirits. Too scary.”
“It’s not spirits,” I interjected. “It’s group hypnosis. My dad has written papers on this. That’s why it works better for younger kids than for older people. The chanting hypnotizes everyone playing the game.” The game involved one participant making up an elaborate story about the future death of another participant, who would stretch out on the floor. All of the other players would kneel around the girl laying down, sliding their fingertips underneath her body. At the end of the story, which was usually either remarkably gory or silly enough to inspire giggling, everyone but the girl laying down would chant, “light as a feather, stiff as a board,” while raising the reclining girl toward the ceiling using nothing but the slightest bit of pressure from their fingertips. I could never figure out exactly how it worked, because during my own childhood, the handful of times when I’d played the game and the hypnosis had been successful, the body had been raised effortlessly over everyone’s heads. Inevitably, the state of hypnosis would be interrupted by one of the players, ruining the effect for everyone, and the body of the unfortunate girl who had been lifted into the air would crash down to the floor.
“I don’t believe that at all,” Candace told me, making me feel kind of like an idiot for speaking up. “When it works, it’s scary as hell.”
“Let’s play!” Mischa insisted, pulling a pillow off of the couch. “I want to be the storyteller first.”
Olivia reached for her mobile phone, checking her newly received text. “It’s Pete,” she announced. “It’s midnight. He wanted to be the first one to wish me a happy birthday. Isn’t that sweet?”
We all agreed that it was quite sweet, and Mischa decided that Olivia would be the first subject in our game. I had a queasy feeling about participating even though I knew in my head what my father had told me was true. There was nothing occult or mystical about this game. But for me, making up stories about death scenarios didn’t feel right. Death had already visited my home in my lifetime and I didn’t like the idea of tempting it, even just for the sake of a game.
Olivia lay on her back with her head balanced on the pillow which rested upon Mischa’s knees. I knelt along Olivia’s right side, facing Hannah, who knelt along her left side. Candace knelt at Olivia’s feet, tickling them lightly to make Olivia kick and squirm before Mischa got started. Olivia accidentally kicked a little too high and knocked Candace in the chin.
“Ow!” Candace wailed.
“No tickling!” Olivia bellowed. Since Candace and Olivia had been best friends the longest, Candace knew that Olivia was wildly ticklish.
“Quiet, everyone!” Mischa commanded with authority. “Everyone must be very serious for this to work! I mean it.”
Without exchanging any words, we all agreed to settle down. Mischa waited until the only noise in the basement was the crackling of the fire. We could distantly hear the talk show being watched upstairs by Olivia’s parents two floors above us, the fuzzy applause of its audience. Mischa placed her fingertips on Olivia’s temples and began concentrating on a wholly original description of Olivia’s future death, which was how the game went.
“It was the night before Homecoming,” Mischa began in her scariest storyteller voice.
“Not the night before Homecoming,” Olivia complained. “Can’t I at least die the night after Homecoming so I have a chance to fool around with Pete one last time before I die?”
Candace smirked. “You’ve already fooled around with Pete plenty.”
Hannah and I blushed. The full details of how much Olivia and Pete had fooled around so far hadn’t really been disclosed to either of us yet. We were juniors in high school; naturally we were curious about who among us had gone all the way. I had barely gone any part of the way, except for a few chaste kisses I’d exchanged over the summer with a guy named Rob who lived in the same condominium community as my dad and Rhonda. He’d been cute, but I knew our little romance had no future. I wouldn’t be in Florida again until the week after Christmas, and I wasn’t so naïve as to think that sixteen-year-olds were capable of sustaining a long distance romance.
“Quiet!” Mischa ordered. “I’m the storyteller, and I decide! Okay, fine. It was the night after Homecoming. Olivia Richmond had been grounded by her parents for staying out way past her extended curfew the night of the dance, having innocently fallen asleep in the big field behind the high school track beneath the stars with Pete. No matter how many times Olivia insisted to her parents that she was only guilty of being sleepy, they wouldn’t believe her, because they knew their daughter and her boyfriend were total horndogs who couldn’t keep their hands off each other.”
“You’re gross,” Olivia said without opening her eyes.
“The problem with being grounded,” Mischa continued, “was that Pete had told Olivia he wanted to show her something very special that night, the night after Homecoming. So Olivia waited until her parents fell asleep, and decided to sneak out of the house to meet him down by Shawano Lake.”
Candace resisted the urge to make an insinuating, “Ooooh” noise.
“She got out of bed and changed out of her blue satin pajamas and into her skinny jeans and the totally amazing cashmere sweater that her best friend Mischa had given to her for her sixteenth birthday.”
“Nice touch,” Candace whispered off to my left.
“She raised the window of her second floor bedroom, and removed the screen. But as she climbed through the window, the fabric of her skinny jeans caught on a rusty nail in her window frame. When she reached for the drain pipe she intended to use to climb down the side of the house toward the ground, she realized that her leg was stuck. She forcefully jerked her leg to try to break free, and in doing so lost her grip on the drain pipe and fell forward. Her pants tore, and she tumbled to the ground, breaking her neck in the fall. However, she did not die instantly. She writhed in pain, struggling to breathe, paralyzed, until dawn. She drew her last excruciating breath as sunlight broke over the horizon. Hours later, Mrs. Richmond found Olivia’s dead, lifeless body when she entered the girl’s bedroom to wake her up for church services. She saw the window open, and leaned through it to see Olivia’s broken and twisted body below on the grass.”
“Two days later at the funeral home, to the horror of her friends and loved ones, Olivia’s body rested in her coffin, light as a feather, stiff as a board.”
“Light as a feather, stiff as a board,” we all chanted in unison, our expectant fingertips beneath Olivia’s limbs gently pushing her heavy body upward.
“This isn’t working,” Candace said after about five iterations of the chant.
“I don’t feel anything happening,” Olivia announced. She opened her eyes and sat straight up.
“Can I try?” Hannah asked, looking directly at Mischa, implying that she wanted to take a turn at playing the role of storyteller.
“Sure,” Mischa said, handing her the pillow that she’d been balancing on her knees.
I really wish Mischa hadn’t relinquished her cherished role as the storyteller so easily. Because when Hannah began telling stories, the trouble began.
CHAPTER 2
“Olivia
Richmond had everything any girl could ever want. A beautiful house, perfectly straight blond hair, a handsome boyfriend and a close circle of friends. She began her junior year of high school with everything in the world going for her. She had even just received a brand new red Prius for her Sweet Sixteen, and everyone at Weeping Willow High School knew she’d be named Homecoming Queen at the annual fall dance.”
I dared not look up to try to catch Hannah’s eye, but her mention of a new red Prius had caught my attention. How had she known that there was a red Toyota parked in the Richmonds’ driveway at that very moment? Had she guessed?
Hannah was a noticeably different kind of storyteller than Mischa. She didn’t attempt to make her voice sound spooky or scary. Her voice was steady, confident, and she told her story solemnly, as if it was factual. Time seemed to slow down as she assembled the tale. I could hear the Richmonds’ grandfather clock ticking at the top of the stairs, hear Candace swallow quietly, two feet away. Olivia’s breathing was rhythmic but shallow, and her eyelashes fluttered as if she was dreaming. Hannah’s locket threw little glimmers of light around the basement as the flames in the fireplace reflected off of it.
“The night before the Homecoming dance, when the Weeping Willow High School football team was clear across the state claiming a victory over the team in Kenosha, Olivia was pulling together the final details for her big date with Pete. She had already found her perfect buttercream-colored dress, and a pair of earrings that would look fantastic dangling from her ears, just barely brushing her tan shoulders. But she was still missing the perfect pair of shoes to match her dress, and time was running out. She announced to her friends after school on Friday that she was going to drive to the mall in Green Bay in search of the perfect pair. After combing the mall and settling on a pair of shoes that weren’t ideal, she found that the brand new car she had received for her birthday wouldn’t start in the lot. She tried and tried to start its engine, but it just stalled.”
“As heavy storm clouds filled the sky, Olivia accepted a ride back to Willow with a classmate from her high school who happened to recognize her car in the mall parking lot. They began the long drive back to their small town down the wooded rural highway as Olivia’s mind filled with thoughts about the upcoming Homecoming dance, as well as the new complication of having to get her car towed out of the mall parking lot in the morning. The raindrops falling from the sky turned to hail, and before Olivia and the student behind the wheel could even see what was happening, they were hit head-on by a speeding truck that didn’t see them in the other lane. Olivia’s ribs were shattered, her internal organs splayed out across the front seat of the wrecked car. Her right arm was severed and discovered twenty feet away from the automotive wreckage after the hail storm. Both of her legs were crushed beneath the crumpled dashboard, pinning her into the front seat, preventing her escape even if she had remained conscious long enough to try to crawl away from the wreck. When the truck driver was able to bring his truck to a skidding halt and rushed to the car to see if either passenger had survived, he had to turn away, because Olivia had also been nearly completely decapitated. Her head dangled from her shoulders by a few cords of muscle and chunks of skin, having been knocked clean off her spine.”
“Three days later, as her shocked family and the grieving town of Willow assembled for Olivia’s wake, her body lay in a closed coffin, light as a feather, stiff as a board.”
I was in such a state of awe from the gruesome detail and calmness with which Hannah had brought an end to Olivia’s life with words that my mind wasn’t even focused on whether or not the game would work. An odd feeling of static had fallen across the room, and out of the corner of my eye I could see that the fire in the fireplace was blazing higher and brighter than it had previously all night, even though an hour ago when I had gotten up to use the bathroom, the logs were already glowing red, lit from within. As we began chanting and Olivia’s straight body, her mouth frozen in a frown, began to lift with ease, I began to genuinely feel frightened. An uneasiness had slipped up against me, a sensation that someone—or something—was patiently observing us.
“Light as a feather, stiff as a board,” we chanted together, slowly, ever so slowly, lifting Olivia’s weightless body with our fingertips inch by inch. I became increasingly aware of my desire for the trick to fail. It’s only a game, I reminded myself. Vague, intangible recollections of my father’s explanation that phenomena like the one experienced in this game could be credited to group hypnosis formed like a brick wall in the back of my thoughts.
We nimbly climbed from our knees and onto our feet when we had raised Olivia to the level of our eyes. From there we continued to lift her, from the height of our hips until she was level with our shoulders, her arms crossed over her chest, her silvery blond hair dangling toward the ground.
“Holy…”
It was Candace who broke the spell without warning. All at once, we were snapped back to our senses, and before we had an opportunity to even feel the full weight of Olivia’s body in our hands, she had dropped to the ground with a thud and was rubbing her behind good naturedly. Relief washed over me.
“Thanks, guys!” she teased, not at all hurt in her tumble back down to the carpet.
Despite the fact that we had all played the silly game before when we were younger, and had experienced the effect firsthand, everyone but me was delighted with our small success. It was as if Hannah had cast the spell on us so effortlessly, with such ease, we hadn’t even had to exert an ounce of thought toward making the chant work. After a few minutes of listening to my friends’ casual celebration, my fear dissipated and I felt a little victorious, too.
“That was amazing!” Mischa exclaimed, her entire face ignited by a smile.
There were so many questions about how Hannah had constructed the odd and gruesome story.
“Who was the driver?” Olivia asked. “I wouldn’t just accept a ride home from Green Bay with anyone.”
“And you skipped the part about where Olivia buys her dream dress,” I teased Hannah.
“Yeah. It would be helpful to know where I’m going to find that dress,” Olivia said.
Hannah blushed, her lily white skin heating up into a deep pink. “Sorry, I’m not a fortune teller. Just making up stories, here.”
“Do me next!” Candace insisted, dropping down to her knees on the floor.
We reassembled our little circle, eager to see if Hannah could deliver the phenomenon with such conviction a second time. This time, however, I was a little afraid that my reluctance to participate was going to be noticed by the others. There was something disconcerting about the confidence with which Hannah had told Olivia’s story. A warning voice in my head urged, Don’t do it again. Not another person.
“Okay, we all have to calm down and focus or it won’t work,” Hannah reminded us as she adjusted Candace’s head on the pillow in front of her knees on the floor.
She drummed her fingertips on Candace’s temples and stared up at the ceiling, lost in thought. “Candace Cotton. What should we do with Candace Cotton?”
As soon as the story came together in her mind, the expression on her face changed. Her gaze steadied and she looked down at Candace, who dutifully closed her eyes and crossed her arms over her chest as Olivia had done. Olivia had assumed Candace’s position down near the feet, and had daintily placed two of her curled fingers beneath Candace’s heels, her palms facing the ceiling. Candace took a deep breath, preparing herself for Hannah’s terrible story, her chest heaving toward the ceiling as she took in air, and then sinking back toward the floor as she exhaled.
“It was the end of October and Candace’s family was far away from Willow on a spur-of-the-moment vacation. Candace was excited to show off her new bikini at the beach, and to test out her swimming abilities for the first time. The waves were mild that day, so she blew off her parents’ insistence that she try her luck with a surfing lesson instead to wade out into deeper water on her own. At first she
stayed close to the shoreline, not venturing too far away from where her brothers were building sandcastles on the beach. The water was warm and tempting, not nearly as cold as she had been expecting, so she waded in deeper, to her hips, and remained there until she felt confident she could handle herself in the stronger currents.”
“After she disappeared, her brothers told her parents that they saw her walk straight into the deeper currents, right at the waves, as if on a mission. Unafraid, as if she was daring the ocean to come and take her. They said a wave washed over her and the ocean just swallowed her whole, enveloping her in blue and carrying her away. Her body washed up three days later, two miles down the shore, barely recognizable. Much of her long blond hair had been torn away by the current. Her pasty, blue skin was waterlogged and falling off of her bones, exposing the layers of bloated muscles beneath the surface of her flesh.”
I felt Candace twitch above my fingertips at this horrific description of her own body.
“Fish had eaten her eyeballs and some of her internal organs. The stink of her rotting corpse was unbearable. After her devastated parents identified her decomposing body at the coroner’s office, it lay on the metal autopsy table… light as a feather, stiff as a board.”