Haunting Margalo

The Ouija Board

When they arrived at Aunt Catherine’s house, the three of them took Margalo’s bags into the house and Aunt Catherine asked Tara to show Margalo her room. Tara silently led her over to a pale blue bedroom. She sat down on the bed, still looking at Margalo with that curious expression.

“You burned your house down, right?”

Margalo shifted nervously. “No, not really. I just burned part of it. The firefighters arrived before it could be destroyed.”

Tara stared at her for what felt like forever, then smiled. “That is so cool!”

Surprised, Margalo shook her head. “It really isn’t, Tara. It was totally irresponsible of me.”

“So why did you do it?”

“I left my lamp on,” Margalo lied. “It overheated.”

“No it didn’t,” said Tara. “I heard my mom talking about it. From what I figure, you were playing with a lighter. You do it a lot, and that’s why your parents sent you away, right? So come on. I want answers.”

Tara looked at Margalo expectantly, her eyes wide. Margalo wondered how someone who looked like such an innocent child—braided pigtails, big brown eyes, the whole nine yards—could be so damn perceptive.

“You shouldn’t say ‘I want answers’. It’s very rude.”

 “Aw, you’re just trying to avoid the question.”

Margalo thought. She was suddenly overwhelmed with the urge to tell Tara everything. She already knew the half of it, and Margalo had been holding her story in for so long. “Alright, if you promise to shut up about it.”

Tara clapped her hands happily.

Wondering where to start, Margalo took a long, deep breath. “I guess it all kind of began when I was 13. I had a fight with this girl I didn’t really like, Violet, and we were being pretty mean to each other. I mean, she said I looked like a horse, and I called her a rude name, and then the fire alarm went off. So I ran out, and after that, I found out…Violet was dead. And—look, Tara, I don’t know if you’ll understand this—but all that guilt and sadness and everything just manifested in a really, really weird way. So I started messing around with fire, and before I knew it, it was like an obsession.” As Margalo finished, she felt ashamed of telling such a young girl a complex story like that. “It’s okay if you don’t get it.”

“No, I get it,” Tara said, and Margalo wasn’t sure if she was just saying that or not. “So wait, that happened here, right? In Bellton?”

“Yeah.”

“So you have, like, a connection with a dead person here in Bellton?”

Now Margalo was confused. “I guess you could say that.”

Aunt Catherine’s voice rang out from the stairwell. “Girls, I’m going to the grocery store, okay? Tara, make Margalo feel welcome.” The door shut behind her.

Tara grinned. “This is too awesome. I have a Ouija board downstairs. We have to contact Violet.”

Margalo rolled her eyes at Tara’s lack of tact. Who else but an eleven year old girl would be so absolutely flippant as to suggest “contacting” the spirit of a girl who had led someone to pyromania? “Tara, I don’t know if that’s such a good idea.”

“Come on,” Tara whined. “It’ll be fun. If you get too scared, we can stop.”

Knowing Tara, she wouldn’t stop asking if they could use the Ouija board for months if she didn’t do it now. Besides, there was no real danger. Margalo was sensible enough to know that it was your own subconscious mind moving the planchette, not actual spirits or ghosts. “Okay, Tara. If it makes you happy, we can do the Ouija board.”

“Awesome!” Tara crowed, and began to sprint to the stairwell and down the steps almost instantly. Margalo chuckled to herself. What a weird kid.

Margalo followed her hesitantly, feeling frightened in spite of what her reasonable mind told her. Tara pulled a wooden board covered in letters and numbers out from under the sofa. “I’ll light some candles,” Tara said, and then saw the look on Margalo’s face. “Okay, maybe we should skip the candles.”

She dimmed the lights in the room and the two girls sat down on either side of the board. Tara laid her hand on the planchette, and Margalo followed suit. “If there are spirits here, please come to communicate with us,” said Tara, as if she had done it a million times before. “We wish no harm towards you, only to experience your presence.” She bowed her head. “Let there be no evil spirits or demons.”

They waited a few minutes, and nothing happened. Margalo rolled her eyes.

“Don’t do that,” whispered Tara. “They don’t like doubters.”

“Okay, sorry,” said Margalo, trying to contain her laughter.

Suddenly, the planchette moved from letter to letter: H, E, L, L, O.

“Are you doing that?” asked Margalo.

“No!” said Tara. “And I told you, they don’t like doubters.”

“Do you live in this house?” Margalo asked, against her better judgement. “Well, ‘live’ being in a figurative sense.” The planchette moved to NO.

“Do you live in Bellton?” said Tara. It moved to YES. Tara raised her eyebrows at Margalo, mouthing the word “Violet”.

Margalo wrung her hands uneasily. “Um, are you a good spirit or a bad spirit?”

The planchette moved across the letters again: S,O, S,O.

Tara laughed. “I like this spirit. She’s funny.”

“How do you know if it’s a boy or a girl?”

“Okay, spirit, are you a boy or a girl?”

It moved from G, to I, to R, to L.

Margalo didn’t want to ask any more questions, but Tara seemed utterly intrigued. “So how did you die?” Tara asked.

The planchette moved to F, I, R, E. Margalo shuddered. “Okay, Tara, stop. You’re moving it now.”

“I swear to God, I’m not. What’s your name?”

V, I, O, L, E, T.

Margalo clapped her hand over her mouth, only removing it to say firmly, “Tara. Put. It. Away.”

“We have to go now, Violet. Bye.”

The planchette moved to “GOODBYE”, and as Margalo lifted her hand off the planchette, she had the strange sense that it was floating upwards involuntarily.

Margalo glared at Tara. “That wasn’t funny.”

“It wasn’t a joke.”

Margalo shook her head headed up the stairs. Tara followed. Margalo went into her new room and slammed the door behind her. “It wasn’t funny,” she repeated loudly so that Tara could hear her through the tightly shut bedroom door. “At all.”