Cricket: Ember's Story

Shiver

"Look what I found!" Adam says excitedly.

He bangs open the front door of the house and holds up a battered old ouija board.

"Okay but did you get what I want?" Hex asks, her hand on her hip.

Hex has been in a horrible mood today. She's been throwing up pretty much nonstop and sent Adam to get her some saltine crackers hours ago to settle her stomach. Apparently he got sidetracked along the way.

"We can talk to the spirit world with this!" Adam exclaims. "And don't worry, I got your crackers too!"

He digs in his pocket and takes out a roll of crackers, which Hex snatches out of his hand.

"Oh my God, Adam, you're ridiculous! I asked you to come back with crackers, not bring home some stupid kids' game from the garbage!"

Adam ignores her, enthralled with his treasure. He carefully unfolds the board and examines the heart-shaped object it came with.

"I got so lucky! First just found the board and then a couple feet away I saw the planchette too! Can you believe that shit?" he says, and I get the feeling he's talking to himself.

"What the hell is a planchette?" I ask.

Adam holds up the heart shaped object. "This is what the spirit moves to spell stuff out for you. Everyone has to keep their finger on it but nobody can move it."

"So it supposedly moves because of a spirit, and yet there's a bunch of people's fingers on it? What's to stop one of those people from making it move?" I ask.

"It's always possible, but you have to trust each other and trust that whatever's happening is real," Adam replies.

I glance at Hex, who's rolling her eyes. She looks so irritated. I remember this stage of pregnancy too. I was always pissed off and nauseous, but I didn't barf this much. I'm worried about her. The sooner she goes to a real doctor, the better.

"Here I am, pregnant with your kid, barfing all over myself, and meanwhile you're out dumpster diving for stupid shit!"

"I wasn't gone long," Adam says, looking stung. "Besides, you know you're my first priority. You and the baby. Always."

"Then act like it!" she snaps, and she stuffs a cracker in her mouth.

That night, Adam makes all of us participate in a seance. The lantern is placed on the center of the floor next to the board, and me, Jesse, Hex and Gus are all crowded around it. We each put a finger on the worn planchette.

"Is there someone here who wants to speak to us?" Adam asks.

He instructed all of us to barely touch the planchette so we can be sure we're not the ones moving it. My finger is hardly making contact. I feel the planchette beginning to move and watch as it slides over to the word yes.

Gus gasps, Hex scoffs, Jesse rolls his eyes, and I don't do anything. Adam looks like a little kid on Christmas morning.

"Are you a human spirit or non-human?" Adam asks.

The planchette slowly spells out the word NON.

"This is so dumb, dude," Jesse says softly.

Hex chimes in. "I actually agree with Jesse for once. This is a waste of time. Let's-"

Adam shushes them both with a wave of his free hand.

"So we can know you're real, tell us something about one of us that only we would know."