by Chris Raven
“I don’t know why he would come for. It’s all over... He already has his victim...”
“I’m not going to leave it like that.” Dunning takes a deep breath, looking for strength to speak. “I believe you. It still seems crazy to me, but I believe you. This has got to end.”
VII
I can’t believe Dunning is sitting next to me in front of the Ouija board. He stirs nervously in his chair and clears his throat again and again, as he dries the torrents of sweat that slip down his forehead. The atmosphere in the room is unbearable. The air seems scarce and is impregnated with candles and incense scent.
In the gloom, Dunning and I contemplate how Eloise makes the final preparations. When everything is to her liking, she comes to us with an aged wooden box. She puts it on the table and extracts three bags made of brownish cloth which hangs from black strings. She extends one to each one and places the last one around her neck.
“You have to put them on,” she commands. “They’re protective amulets. They work the same way as the house’s protection, but in an individual way.”
“How practical!” says Dunning while struggling to tie the string behind his fat neck. “My own unipersonal force field.”
“I will not endure your impertinences for a long time, Dunning.”Even with the scant light, I can perceive the wrath burning in Eloise’s pupils. “I have allowed you to be present because Eric has asked me to because he has told me that this was also important to you. If you have only come to demonstrate your lack of faith and to laugh at my beliefs, I invite you to leave immediately and let us work in peace.”
“I swear I’ll know how to behave.” Dunning manages to stay serious until Eloise turns around. At that moment, he winks at me as he leans towards me to whisper. “What a character!”
I get to hold the laughter and pretend that I am very focused, trying to relax and prepare for the session. The truth is that my interior is a hotbed of hormones and sensations: I want to flee, hide, to remain crying in a corner... Fortunately, there is an emotion that prevails over all of them: the desire to speak with Anne. At this moment, no matter how afraid I am about the chance of that being appearing, there is nothing in the world capable of lifting me from this chair.
Eloise finally sits down at the table and tells us that we should put our hands on the planchette. Then she closes her eyes and concentrates, trying to contact the other side. As happened the previous time, in the first minutes nothing happens, until suddenly we notice a slight vibration in the planchette.
“Is anyone there?” Eloise asks, excited.
The planchette glides at full speed towards the Yes. I notice that Dunning gets tense in his chair and I look at him sideways. His eyes are exorbitant, and his mouth is open. I wonder if his chastened heart can endure so much emotion if the being gives us in present a demonstration of his powers.
“Are you Anne? Anne Austen?”
The planchette slides to the center of the table and then returns fast to the Yes, where it remains vibrating as if she wanted to emphasize that it is her without leaving the slightest doubt. I know it’s stupid, but I have to contain myself not to caress the planchette, not to transmit with that gesture all I have missed her.
“Now that you can talk to us, we need you to help us,” says Eloise. “We need to know what happened to you and what happened to Dave and Bobby.”
The planchette starts to move from letter to letter as we try to follow the message without getting lost. I-T-S-A-L-L-I-N...
“It’s all in the story.”Reads Eloise when the planchette is stopped again. “That’s what Peter told us, but we can’t figure it out. We need to know who killed you. Couldn’t you tell us his name?”
The planchette moves again, spelling the same message again: I-T-S-A-L-L-I-N...
“It’s all in the story. She can’t tell us anything else.” Eloise leans back on her chair but does not separate the hand from the planchette. “Any ideas?”
“I’m not going to say anything because I don’t want to upset her, but the truth is that this is turning out to be quite frustrating,” says Dunning, as he turns to me hoping I’ll say something.
I do feel frustrated. And hurt. And sad. I don’t know what I was hoping to talk to Anne about, but it certainly was something more than this kind of answering machine message from beyond. I get the impression that it’s me who is more hurt about what they did to them, who cares more about solving this. It does not seem that Anne is willing to give us any useful information as if she did not care to do justice, nor escape from the being that has trapped them. I feel like I’m making a fool of myself. I have left my home, I have made my family angry, I have played with my sanity, I have been in the dungeon, I have spoken with her father and I have managed for him to forgive her. What else do I have to do for her to help me? Before I realize what I’m doing, I’m standing up, leaning over the Ouija board as if I meant to intimidate her, yelling like a raging lunatic to a wooden plank.
“Enough of riddles and crap. I want to know who killed you. I need his fucking name.”
Eloise puts her free hand on my arm. When I look at her, she tells me with a gesture that I sit and calm down, while she looks at me harshly. I sit down again, though I do not calm down at all. I’m sick of all this. The planchette is slipping again, composing again the same fucking message: “It’s all in the story.”
“Anne, please. You have to help me.”Even though I still feel my blood boiled with rage, my words are a plea, they are tinged with supplication and pain.“Another child is dead. Is there anything I could have done to avoid it?”
The planchette slides again to the I. I’m about to take the Ouija board and throw it against the wall when I realize it’s not the same message. We finally seem to be advancing.
“It was you who should have died.” Eloise whispers when the message ends.
“Who does she mean?” Dunning questions, confused.
“Eric. The other spirit we contacted told him the same thing. We don’t know what that means.”
The planchette moves towards “Bye” with a fast movement. Although Eloise continues to attempt to contact her for a couple of minutes, the planchette refuses to move again. That’s it. That’s all Anne had to say to me: To re-read her fucking story and that I was better off dead. Right now, I feel so empty and depressed that I almost agree with her.
When Eloise gives up, she accompanies Dunning to the door. I hear how she throws salt at the door and how she goes to the kitchen and frets the pots. I just stay in this room buried in the shadows, letting the penetrating aroma of the incense get me dizzy. I don’t see the strength to get out of this chair. I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t this. She has not even sent me a kiss, nor has she told me that she still misses me... I feel stupid, manipulated, a sad puppet in the hands of a wraith...
Eloise appears in the living room with a couple of cups of hot chocolate. She puts one in front of me and sits next to me. I feel her cold hand on my arm, reassuring me.
“I appreciate the chocolate, but in this heat, I do not feel like anything.”
“You need it. The contact with the spirits consumes a lot of energy... Look how you are...”
“You know it’s not that. I was hoping... I was hoping...” I hit the table with both fists, unable to convey my feelings. “The truth is that I do not know what I expected...”
“You expected to meet her again, talk like you did when she was alive, feel the same again... That is one of the reasons why the Ouija board is dangerous. She’s dead and nothing will ever be the same again. You can’t cling to a wooden board or your memories... Nothing can make her come back.”
“But she could have said something to me: that she misses me, that she thinks of me, that she still wants me...
“The spirit world is not like ours. The space does not exist, the time is different, the memories are clouded, and the mind is lost. Little by little, the spirits become beings without past, without conscience, without
feelings... That’s why it can be dangerous to contact them. If they do not manage to transcend, they are perverted and become lost beings who try to cling to the living to be able to feel something. That she didn’t want to tell you anything can be the biggest sign that she still loves you, but she doesn’t want you to get caught in her misfortune.”
“And why doesn’t she transcend?”
“I believe that being has them prisoners, that it feeds on them to be able to continue its mission, whatever it may be.”
“And how can we free them?”
“I don’t know yet, but we’ll find out.” Eloise gets up from the chair and approaches me the cup. “Take the chocolate and go to sleep. We’ll continue tomorrow.”
I smile gratefully and when she leaves the room, I drink the chocolate in a sip. That was a bad idea. I just burned my esophagus, but I don’t care. I’ll go up to my room, just like Eloise suggested, but I’m not going to rest. If the answer I’m looking for is in the short story, I’ll re-read it until I find it, even if my eyes get dry, even if I end up learning it by heart. I’m not going to let any more people die, now or in twenty years. And I’m not going to let that being continue to feed on Anne. I have to find a way to free her.
VIII
I get out of bed with all my body sore. I’ve been lying on my left arm for three hours, reading this damn story over and over again, trying to make sense of it. I try to move my shoulder to get my mobility back and the very fucked one thanks me with some terrible punctures.
I would like to open the window and let the night breeze to refresh the heated atmosphere of the room, but I know that Eloise would kill me even if I only kept it ajar a couple of minutes. Although we carry our “personal protective amulets”, she says she does not trust that this being can sneak into her house and remain crouched until one day she gets distracted. I think she’s paranoid, but after the things we’re living, I can’t blame her. I resign myself to smoke a cigarette while I look through the glass at the village that is sleeping under the light of the crescent moon. There is not a single cloud in the sky and I can let my mind wander among an impossible amount of stars. It was a long time since I saw a sky so clear, so beautiful... I try to think of the nonsense that people always think when they look at the stars: that we are very small compared to the universe and that, compared to that immensity, our problems are negligible. The fuck... My problems are immense, they are a black hole in which I am drowning. I doubt very much that any constellation, no matter how big, has ever felt as overwhelmed as I am.
When I finish the cigarette, I open the story again. I don’t even know what to look at anymore. I’ve read it so many times... I have also reviewed its illustrations to the smallest detail. I have even tried to read the first letter of each sentence to see if there was a hidden message. Nothing. If it’s all in the story, I’m unable to see it. Even though I feel that it will not be useful at all, I start again from the first page.
When I finish, I sit on the bed and put the opened book on my knees. There must be something that escapes me... I want to throw the book against the wall and go out for a ride with the bike, but I know it will be useless. Riding a bike by Swanton is not what it was anymore, I don’t feel like when I was a kid. We’ll never be the four of us together again, Jim, Jake, Dave and I, challenging each other to see who runs more or who holds more time pedaling to the fastest or simply enjoying how the summer seemed to glide under our wheels.
There was something in the story about us and our bikes. I’m going through the pages until I find it:
David knew that his brother and his friends would worry and would go out looking for him when they saw that he was not there, but his ponies were much slower than the man’s wagon, so he was afraid they would not arrive on time.
If the ponies were our bikes, it is clear that the man’s wagon was his car, the car that I caught a glimpse of after Dave’s death. I remember, at some point in the story, it was talking about that wagon. I go back and forth in the book until I find the fragment I’m looking for:
The next morning, he had decided it already. He wouldn’t let that being take his son. He would walk the streets of the village and he would take the first child he would find. He entered the barn, ready to saddle his magnificent black horse, but he realized that the neighbors could see the boy who he would take. He decided it would be a lot safer to go in the wagon. Like so, he could put the child in the back and no neighbor could see it.
I try to find the meaning that these words hide. I notice my breathing is accelerating and my hands are sweating. I don’t know why, but I’m pretty sure I’m about to find something important... If the ponies are bikes and the wagon is your car, what is the black horse? It has to be something similar to ponies, but bigger. A motorbike... It has to be a black motorbike... I feel something strange, a kind of bite in the brain, a shiver that tells me to stop thinking, not to follow that path...
The truth begins to break through in my mind. Despite the times I’ve been afraid in my life, none has come close to the feeling that invades me as I peek into this abyss. The image of the Harley has been nailed to my brain. I see it in full detail, with its black and shiny bodywork, with its silver handlebar... What did Anne, Bobby and Dave have in common? Everyone knew my family, we had gone to their homes many times, they trusted us... That’s why they trusted the kind man who offered to take them. He was the man who, after those deaths, left Swanton with his family to never return. Now I understand everything. I finally understand the words of Peter and Anne:
Is there anything I could have done to avoid it?
You should have died.
I was the boy the murderer wanted to save. I was the last sacrifice, the one that would have made the curse stop forever. The man who killed Anne, Bobby and Dave is my father.
I don’t know how long I stand still, looking at the pages of the book without even blinking. I do not know what I am expecting, surely to find some information that makes me doubt that idea, to convince me that what I’m thinking cannot be true. I can’t find anything. Everything is so much logic that it does not admit discussion. I wonder how it’s possible that I haven’t seen it before. It’s all in the short-story.
After a few minutes my mind is unlocked. I exhale the air slowly, as if I were deflating. I would like to expel in that air all my thoughts, all my memories, to remain empty inside, but I do not get it. The air comes out, but these thoughts that poison me are still inside. I know I will never be able to free myself from them.
With shaky hands I pull the phone out of my pocket. It’s after midnight, but I’m sure my father will be awake. Even if he is not, I’m going to call him anyway. I can’t stay with this anguish inside. While I look for his number, I ask myself what I want to achieve with this conversation: For him to explain to me why, to apologize, to repent... I know it’s none of that. What I want is for him to deny it, to give me the necessary arguments to stop thinking that he killed them. The man who told me stories as a kid, who taught me to fish and play baseball, who took me for a ride on his motorbike, cannot be the murderer of my friends. I want him to speak to me, to tell me, to explain to me... to lie to me if necessary.
After a couple of rings my father takes the call. My hands tremble so much that I almost drop the phone, but I get to hold it. I hear at the background the noise of loud conversations and crystal’s chinking. He’s at the bar, like every night.
“Eric, is that you?” My father screams on the phone to overcome the fuss around him. “I’m at the bar and I can’t hear you very well.”
For a few seconds I think that is not the best time to talk about something so important. It is very possible that he is drunk or that he does not listen well. Besides, I don’t know how to deal with the conversation. How do you tell a father that you think he’s a murderer? However, I make an effort to speak bluntly. If I don’t say it already, I know I’ll never reunite the courage to ask.
“Were you the one who killed my friends? Was it
you who drowned Anne, Bobby and Dave in the lake?”
On the other side of the line nothing is heard other than the background noise of the tavern. I’m afraid he’ll tell me that he didn’t listen to me well, or that he hang up the phone to me without giving me an explanation... However, after a few seconds, I get the sound of a smothered sobbing.
— I’m sorry, Eric.
Nothing else is heard. He has hung up the call. I stay with the phone in my ear, waiting for the conversation to reset itself. What does that “I’m sorry” mean? Is that a confession? My mind refuses to accept it. There has to be some explanation for this nightmare, something that allows me to go ahead without going crazy.
When I get to react, I call him back. In the first three calls, the phone rings and rings without anyone picking it up. After that, it does not even give tone and the only answer I receive is a recording that tells me that the phone I call is off or out of coverage. I guess it’s his way of expressing me that he has nothing to say.
I sit on the bed, staring at the phone and not knowing what to do. For a moment I think of calling my mother, but I don’t know what I could tell her. How do you tell someone that her husband is a child murderer, that the man she has been loving all her life is a psychopath without a conscience? She wouldn’t believe me. I don’t even want to believe it...
I end up tossing the phone on the bed and walking around the room like a caged tiger while smoking one cigarette after another. As much as I think, I can’t think of what to do next. Should I take the car and drive to Burlington to confront him? I’m afraid of what he can tell me, but I’m sure there’s nothing that can make me feel worse than how I already feel. I could be there in less than an hour, surprise him and corner him until he tells me everything, to the last detail. Why did he do it? Why didn’t he try to rebel and look for another option? And, above all, why Dave, why Bobby, WHY ANNE?
The melody of my mobile surprises me, causing me to startle. I throw myself to the bed to pick it up, thinking it’ll be my father. I guess he managed to overcome the initial impact and called me to explain.