Ouija Warning Copyright (c) 1993, Ed Davis All rights reserved OUIJA WARNING by Ed Davis Laura Wells' refusal of a ride to her parent's home had raised eyebrows, despite the funeral home operator's pretended understanding. She needed the walk through the fallen maple leaves to sort her thoughts and clear her mind. With her father buried alongside his wife, his torments about her strange death six months earlier were ended. Laura's remained. When Laura's mother had perished, with an animal's fang marks at her throat, the investigation had concluded that she suffered a heart attack and was then mauled by the family dog. The authorities would likely blame the same dog for Randolph Wells' similar death, except that the aging pet had surrendered to time and died a month before his master. Laura was battling anger and grief. Monday's inquest would answer her questions, or she was going to the State Police. A second mauled corpse changed the old explanations. Laura stopped at the corner of her parent's property and smiled at the old Victorian house they had treasured, while church bells chimed six o'clock. Built more than seventy years earlier, on the largest lot in town, the white dwelling was encrusted with molding and gingerbread. Well maintained, Randolph Wells would have had nothing less, the old house was a showplace. The lawn was brilliant green, despite the season's lateness. The house looked sinister, now. Laura shook the thought out of her mind, rejecting the idea that her home was anything but welcoming. The trees had lost their leaves weeks ago, making the late afternoon shadows more than blocked off light. The first touches of winter jabbed icy fingers under the last warm days, deepening the gloomy atmosphere. The last week in October and the first in November always seemed uncertain about which season owned them. Laura usually liked the erratic time. After the heat of the summer, the contrast seemed a flashing caution of the coming winter. The cold, like the summer, would wear into its own tedium, but the transition was exciting, offering a change. Laura shook away the gloom and smiled. November was a single evening away. The day had been warm; tomorrow would likely be the opposite. Shaking her head, she hoped she was wrong. She wanted another day of sunshine, to ease into a world without her parents. While her father had lived, her mother still seemed near. Like most couples who spent their lives together, her parents had become personality clones. Now that they were gone, Laura's world was empty. With her schoolmates married or moved away, Laura was friendless, alone. She shivered, as a puff of wind drove a cold burst of air down her back. Abandoning her mental wandering, she moved along the wrought iron fence to the gate and the walkway leading home. Neighbors and old friends of her parents, stoics with haunting faces leathered by years, had carried their sorrows into the house on heirloom platters and old silver serving trays, polished especially for the occasion. Three days later, Laura knew she could still eat the ham, bread, and greens. The potato salad belonged in the trash. Her large brass key slid into the front door lock and the mechanism opened with a familiar rattle. She could remember her parents locking the house on very few occasions. Vacations out of town... Every night during the fighting in Korea and Viet Nam... The key was left under the welcome mat during the vacations, but was withdrawn during the wars. Her gentle parents had distrusted the uneasiness in the world. The smell of her father's pipe still lingered. Laura smiled, wondering how long the smell would stay. She locked the door behind her, walked across the entry hall, and climbed the stairs to the second floor. Turning right, past the attic door, she walked into her room. Unchanged since her last college year, it was a time capsule. A school banner, a poster cat still "Hanging In There", and the hair brush and comb set from their Florida vacation, were the reminders of the years. Many other memories were plastered on the walls, like annual layers of wall paper. Her first broken heart had mended there. Her first, second, and other loves were measured against her father in that same security. The night she spent agonizing about "going all the way" with Charles Montea had twisted her sheets into a sweaty mess. She was glad she waited. Charles had turned into a real bastard. Laura tossed her sweater onto the bed and decided to rehash her past after eating. Some memories were better on a full stomach. The attic door captured her attention, because the key was in the lock. It should have been over the door, above the frame, like always. Who moved it, she wondered. There had been a gaggle of people, some she knew, some knew each other. Had someone invaded that part of the house, too? Laura twisted the door knob and was surprised when it turned and the door opened. The darkness on the other side of the oak barrier was frightening, as always. She was reluctant to enter the darkness, as always. The only light was a single bulb, with its pull cord waiting somewhere in the middle of all the darkness. An icy feeling of terror griped her insides, as she realized that she was completely alone. There were no comforting sounds of movement coming from the rooms below. Mastering her fear was a slow process. She breathed deeply several times and gripped the door frame tightly. Childish, she chastised herself, being afraid of the dark. She sucked in a lungful of bravery and walked through the door. The squealing protests of the stair treads and the dusty smell were manageable, but the feeling of feathery fingers passing along her bare legs brought chills racing in waves toward her neck. She thought about rats and their naked, pink tails. She knew the light would chase the darkness and fears away. A small smile, like whistling in a dark alley, bolstered her courage. The first landing was a disoriented moment of panic, until she looked back to the lighted doorway and regained her bearings. Turning, she ignored the renewed sensations of something reaching out to touch her. She ran up the last four steps, preferring the more open attic to the constricted walls of the stairwell. She groped around the air for the pull cord, while the chills ended their race and began returning to her ankles. Her hand finally found the string and its small brass bell. Electric illumination killed her fear. The attic was just a closed up room, with its thin covering of dust. Cardboard cartons were arranged along the walls, each labeled by a felt tipped marker. Xmas... Thanksgiving... Toys... Dishes... Cards... The inventory went around the room, like sentries awaiting a command. One corner was not crowded by a box. Alone, as if it were a germ with terminal penicillin, Laura's old Ouija board leaned against the corner. Memories, of summer evenings spent searching for the name of her true love, returned. Laura picked the board up and smiled, the shuttle had been carefully taped to the board, more of her father's compulsive neatness. With no visitors expected, Laura decided to spend a night with Ouija. She scanned the remainder of the attic, rejected working through the boxes, and walked across the room. Leaving the light burning would make her descent easier, and tomorrow's ascent easier, too. Has nothing to do with being scared, she lied. She took the stairs slowly, proving her bravery. Back within the security of the first floor, Laura decided to skip supper. She folded her legs under the coffee table and faced the black and gold Ouija board. What to ask, she wondered. Ideas came and went, evaporating for lack of importance. The question she wanted answered, needed answered, she did not dare ask: How had her father and mother died? Her eyes left the board and studied the metronome movement of the grand father clock's pendulum. The Ouija shuttle began moving, under her left hand. She started to lift her fingers, but decided to see what answer Ouija would create. The chalk-on-a-blackboard squeak of the shuttle's feet stopped. Laura looked down and saw the number six in the small window. Now, what does that mean? Silly game... A tiny spark of tension snapped in the stillness, but went unnoticed. Her mind went back to searching for a question, as her hand returned the shuttle to its starting place. Movement started again, unasked, and the shuttle moved slowly across the board, stopping over the number six once more. The snap of the second spark was louder, but still unheard, as Laura's heart began thumping loudly, a bass accompaniment for her chills. While she watched, her mouth hanging open in amazement, the shuttle moved slowly back to its starting place and returned to six again, carrying her useless hand along. "Six hundred sixty-six. What does that mean?" Her voice was a strange sound, unrecognizable, but started her mind sorting through the numbers that influenced her life. Chills held races on her legs, while she searched. Nothing matched. There was no meaning... Her mind scrambled for an explanation. Finally, she remembered a sermon she had heard many years earlier. The number of the beast... 666. The sign of the devil's disciple on earth. A new feeling grasped her, not fear, horror. The house seemed cold, as if wrapped in a blanket of ice. She knew the furnace was working; she had been warm earlier. The cold was not from the outside, her insides seemed frozen. Her brain filled with all the images she had ever created concerning the devil. The memories were flickering reds, yellows, and a terrible blackness. An occasional tooth flashed white brilliance, but fiery colors filled the majority of her mind, one morbid vision stacked over top of another. "Why would the devil want Momma and Daddy...?" Her voice sounded hollow in the emptiness, widening her terror. The shuttle moved again. Letters were selected swiftly. S...L...A...V...E...S. "Insane... My parents were... Their lives were... Perfect." Her voice climbed a ragged scale, ending in shrill panic. The shuttle began moving again... U... N...E...X...T. The furnace had no hope against the cold, when the last letter was reached. Her chills had to battle for space on her body and a tremor started in her left leg. Suddenly, she was not at home. She had been transported, somehow, to another house, a place of terrible evil. Her living room would not be filled with such foul things and thoughts. Even the air was different, sour and laced with threats of impending violence. Her trembling began spreading. "No!" Her single word exploded into the charged atmosphere. She smashed her fist against the Ouija shuttle and saw it crumple, as she scrambled away from the disgusting device. One leg rolled away, tumbling to the carpet. The shuttle moved one last time, without her help this time, resting finally over the single word. "YES." Laura screamed, her throat threatening to explode with the force of the sound. Nothing except the sound had any space in the room, except the obscene feelings crowded into the corners. Nothing made any sense, except the feeling that the board told the truth. A wave of nausea crashed into her control and she rushed down the hall, toward the kitchen sink. Her stomach was empty, but two steps before she reached the sink she felt her revulsion turn to moving fluids, and she lunged forward. The edge of the kitchen counter hit her breasts and added pain to her raw edged emotions. Her throbbing breasts robbed her of her stomach's second warning and she was racked with more agony, as it expelled the last of its contents. Sobbing, with fear, pain, and frustration, Laura wiped her lips with a dish towel and hammered her fist against the counter top. Her mind was howling negatives. Her breath was coming in gulps. Her heart was hammering the beat of some insane drummer. Her legs quivered violently. As her senses slowly returned closer to normal, she heard faint rustlings on the second floor. No one was in the house. What was the sound...? Her pulse remained frantic, as her ears were suddenly much more sensitive. She could hear individual foot steps, while someone walked across the floor. A pace at a time, the steps moved out of her father's room and thumped their way to the sewing room. There, they stopped. Laura listened to her own heart for several rapid beats and committed herself to flight. What ever was up there, whoever was making the noise, it was not part of this world. Everything was happening too quickly, crowding her ability to think into a corner of screaming terror. Sucking her lungs full of air, she started toward the front door. No matter what, she pledged, I'll never come back. Her hand wrapped around the door knob, just as the foot steps started again. She turned the knob and pulled. Nothing happened. She remembered the key and felt for it. It was gone. She recalled putting it in her purse, and putting her purse on her bed. The foot steps were headed toward that room. "You need these, Baby?" Her father's voice drifted down the staircase, from her room, harsher than she remembered. She knew he was holding her keys in his hand. She was terrified of the price he would demand for their return. Chills stopped forming new prickles on her body, there was no room. The old bumps simply grew taller, as each moment added to the terror devouring her middle. Her throat had constricted, when her father's voice had started. Her lungs were aching, now. She battled the door and her breathing, neither worked the way they should. Her eyes leaked involuntary tears and her knees threatened to collapse. Wanting to scream, to breathe, she battled for life. The back door, she suddenly thought, the idea breaking through the oxygen starved barrier of her brain. Her lungs came back into operation at the same instant and she gratefully filled them again. Pushing away from the locked door, she rushed back down the hall past the kitchen and into the pantry. Her hand twisted the knob and her heart plummeted. It was locked. She saw that the key was missing, too. The basement was the only other exit, except climbing the stairs to the second floor, and her father. She tore back through the hallway and jerked the basement door open. With her throat ripped open, dripping blood down her lace trimmed burial dress, Laura's mother held out her arms and smiled to her daughter. The stench of rotted meat and burned sulphur threatened to ignite the wooden doorway. Terrified of her mother's renewed existence, Laura screamed. Her voice xylophoned down through the scales, ending in a throaty growl, better suited to something wild. Her mother simply smiled and beckoned. "It's easy, Baby. I fought, too. Randolph was even worse. You listen to Momma..." Laura threw up again. Nothing but rancid bile came out. A new foulness filled her mouth and lungs. "Never!" Laura's single word answer was a burst of fire edged fury. The woman in the doorway stepped back slightly, then smiled again. "You go to hell, if you must." Laura screamed her terror into her mother's face. "Whatever you are... I'll never accept that... that bastard. You can all rot." Laura slammed the door, wishing she had been able to design a proper curse. She felt very puny. Footsteps, coming down the stairs, were sounding again. Laura did not want to face her father. The pain was too recent, the memories of his love too strong. She turned through the kitchen and went swiftly across the dining room into the living room. As the footsteps moved down the hall, Laura dashed up the stairs. The attic key would allow her to open the downstairs doors. Her room was unchanged, except for filthy foot prints on the carpeting. Unlike the downstairs windows, steel barred barriers since her mother's bizarre death, her window was a tempting escape hatch. She stood in the doorway for several heart beats, measuring her chances of eluding the downstairs terrors. The tree outside her window had been a summertime ladder, years ago. Was she limber enough? Was the tree still able to hold her weight? Would the limbs even be in the right places? Her father would hear the window opening, he would remember, too. Knowing her life, her soul, depended on her choice, she stole one more minute. Escape was not all she needed. She had to destroy the evil that had taken her parents. How...? The answer was both simple and terrible. She would have to destroy the last of her past. Fire was her only weapon. She would have to burn them. More revulsion hit her stomach, but there was no choice left. Moving around the second floor with the caution of a cat burglar, she gathered her tools. Her mother's decorative lanterns were the nucleus of her arsenal. Alcohol, liniment, and toiletries with alcohol in them added to the small stack of bottles. She remembered the gallon of moonshine she had brought home as a gag and retrieved it from her father's closet. Not much to fight with, she thought, as the small bottles of liquid began gurgling onto the carpet at the head of the stairs. Saving the moonshine, in its earthen ware jug, Laura dropped the key from the attic door into her bra and knelt to strike a match. Her nervous fingers dropped the first paper match, and she heard footsteps approaching. She forced herself to calm her hands. The red tip of the second match exploded into life, as her mother's ravaged remains stepped into view. Laura dropped the flame onto the carpet. Nothing happened. She battled with another match, while her mother began climbing the stairs. Her hand carried the second flaming match to the carpet and felt the heat of the invisible flame from the burning alcohol. The carpet suddenly burst into a familiar red flame. Laura saw her father, through the flames. His ripped throat was an angry grimace below his own smiling lips. "Baby... Come. We can be a family forever." Tears trailing down her cheeks, Laura shook her head, uncertain that she could say no. Her resolve weakened, but she turned from the spreading flames and hurried to the window. Not opened for years, it was reluctant. Laura wished she had tried her last way out, before closing her only other option with flame. She pulled with all her strength and felt the framed panes begin to move. Slowly, like a curtain opening for a stage performance, the window surrendered. The night air was sweet, and fed new power to the already roaring fire. Laura grabbed the brown jug and stepped through the dormer window and onto the roof. The familiar tree limb was gone. She felt new panic and then looked up. There it was, it had grown taller, as had she. Her free hand grasped the old friend and she swung to the trunk. Her descent was awkward, with one hand. She raced to the front door and looked inside. Flames danced behind and above the two figures still standing at the bottom of the stairs. Laura fished between her still aching breasts and retrieved the brass key. The door surrendered easily and moved noiselessly into the room. Laura whispered a prayer that the jug would break and dashed it onto the floor. It bounced. Cursing her frustration, she moved a single step into the horror filled house. Her father turned, smiled, and stepped forward slowly. Filled with disgust at the sight of the creature her father had become, Laura quickly grabbed the brown jug and bashed it against an umbrella rack. The jug exploded, scattering crockery and raw whiskey everywhere. Laura looked up to see the whiteness of her father's teeth and the matching white of his torn wind pipe. Fresh chills climbed her spine and stood her hair on end. She searched between her breasts again and extracted her matches. Fumbling with hands that had lost their connection to her brain, she tore three matches from the book and struck all three. The smell of the burning sulphur was lost in the stronger stench that surrounded her, but the lighted matches fell onto the soaked carpet. Tinged with blue, the nearly invisible flames licked upward. Laura moved back quickly. She backed out the door and closed it, just as her parents reached the other side and pulled. Laura fought them for possession of the door, and struggled to lock it at the same time. The lock clicked into place, finally. Laura looked up into her father's eyes, just as the flames washed up across his face. He seemed startled, then apologetic. An instant later he was lost in a black swirl of smoke. The glass of the door's window darkened and shattered from the heat. Laura felt her cheek open, as a sliver of the window sliced into her. She felt the pain, but the deeper hurt in her heart made it small. "Gone... Everything... I... I'm sorry, Daddy... Momma. I love you." Laura's whispered epitaph was lost in the fire's roar. She turned to walk away, as a distant church bell clanged out, eleven times. October was nearly over. Lifting her head, she saw the front yard for the first time since the horror had started. Everyone from the funeral, all her parent's friends, were standing before her. The flames of the burning house lit their gaping, blood streaked throats.