Something Strange

Planchette

Albert had always known of his mother's spirit board; it's not like her attempts to hide it were great in the first place. Said board was stored inside a small, locked trunk in the attic, and the key to open it had carelessly been placed in mother's box of jewelery and other small trinkets she certainly liked, but hardly ever used.

As such, taking the key from the box was undoubtedly the easiest part of this whole scheme Albert had carefully crafted in the past week.

The hardest part was to make the board work while doing it alone. These boards, at least according to his classmates, operated on group energy, and so doing it alone would defeat the purpose. But the whole reason Albert even wanted to use the ominous board in the first place was to have a friend (since he had none), and so he had no other choice but to try it alone.

"Never use the board at home," he had once heard a classmate tell another. "Otherwise you might invite a demon into your house."

"That sounds great," Albert had thought upon hearing this exchange. A demon in the house was certainly better than nobody.

Albert had chosen their home basement as the ideal place to use the board, as the mood of the place was perfect: quiet and eerie, no other location within the large house had quite the same feeling of ominousity and dread as this one had. As younger, Albert had been convinced the entire basement was haunted and that a hideous child-eating monster lived there. He wasn't sure at what point he stopped being afraid of the basement, but it might have been the time when he realized it was the least likely place his father would visit whenever intoxicated and aggressive.

Albert had lit a few candles here and there to give light in the otherwise dark cellar, the old board now resting on the floor and surrounded by candles. The flames flickered in careful motions, indicating the basement wasn't entirely windproof: there had to be a hole somewhere within the old, cold walls of it, but Albert couldn't tell where exactly this spot was.

On top of the board a small planchette rested, carefully placed in the middle and waiting to be used. Albert felt a little nervous (and somewhat foolish) about all this, but the idea of finally having someone, anyone, to talk to was making him determined to go through with his plan. The boy inhaled deeply and then exhaled, collecting himself for this hopefully historical moment where he would finally get a friend of his own.

Gently, Albert touched the planchette on the board and started moving it in a circle very slowly, clockwise and three times. He then cleared his throat in an almost ceremonial manner, and with the squeaky voice of a middle schooler he was, Albert spoke: "Is there anyone here with me?"

No answer.

Albert tried again, this time with more courage: "Is there someone, anyone, here with me?"

Still no answer, and Albert could feel the uncomfortable cold sweat starting to fall down on his back. After having gone through all the trouble to start this, however, he had no intentions to stop the game just yet.

For the third time, Albert called out: "Is there anyone here with me?"

What happened next was something Albert couldn't quite put into words: it was almost like the planchette itself had started to move, but simultaneously it was as if his own hand had stopped cooperating with him and was now leading the small piece of wood across the board, all the way to the left side with the text "NO" written on it.

"Very funny," Albert said with a frown, but after the initial mix of amusement and annoyance, the boy started to realize there indeed was someone with him - and that someone had immediately started messing with him.