textfiles/stories/fic3

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.