The Loveliest Dead (16 page)

Martha was asleep on her neatly made bed beneath an afghan she had crocheted. Her clock radio was playing softly and the overhead light was on.
 

Everybody’s trying to run our electric bill through the roof
, Jenna thought as she turned off the light and silently pulled the door closed. She joined Kimberly and Ada in the living room. A slowly shifting cloud of smoke engulfed the top half of Ada’s body.
 

“Where do you want to do this?” Jenna asked.

“Don’t matter,” Ada said. “If he’s in the house, he’ll hear me. You got something like a card table I could use to set up?”

Jenna hurried upstairs. The unused bedroom where they had hoped to keep only their books and the computer had become, like Martha’s bedroom, a catchall for things that did not yet have a place or needed to be unpacked. The card table was in there, folded up and leaning against some still-unpacked boxes of books. Clutching the edge with both hands, she hurried back downstairs, wondering what else a sitting might involve. To make room, Jenna and Kimberly carried the coffee table into the dining room and put it up against the north wall. Then Jenna set the card table up in the center of the living room.
 

Ada had her suitcase open on the couch and was bent over it. “There’s all kindsa ways to communicate with the spirits. Some are better than others, but my favorite is always the board.”
 

“The
board
?” Kimberly said. There was a slight note of alarm in her voice.
 

The cloud of smoke followed Ada from the suitcase to the card table, where she set an eighteen-and-a-half -by fourteen-inch rectangular board of quarter-inch-thick maple. A sun with a smiling face had been carved in the top left corner, a somber-profiled crescent moon in the top right. The signs of the zodiac were carved along the bottom. Across the center of the ornate board, two rows of the letters of the alphabet arced above the numbers zero through nine in a straight row, all carefully painted on. The word “Yes” had been painted next to the sun, and beside the moon, “No.” At the bottom was the word “Good-bye.” The Ouija board had been heavily varnished and was yellowed with age. The teardrop-shaped planchette was also of varnished maple, one-eighth of an inch thick, with three tiny felt-tipped legs beneath it.
 

Kimberly looked at Jenna with an expression of shock and... was that fear in her eyes? It softened quickly but did not quite go away.
 

“What’s wrong?” Jenna said.

Kimberly smiled and shook her head, shrugged a shoulder. “When I was growing up, we were always told to stay away from these things.”
 

Jenna frowned. “Really? Why?”

“You raised a Christian?” Ada asked.

Kimberly nodded. “Seventh-Day Adventist. When I was a kid, we were taught that they were evil and dangerous things, these boards, and that tampering with them could ... well, it could completely ruin your life. I’ve never seen one before. It just... well...” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “It just gave me the creeps, that’s all. I wasn’t expecting it.”
 

“That’s common among Christians,” Ada said. “I was raised Presbyterian, myself. Horror stories are told about the board. They scare the livin’ crap outta their kids about ‘em. Which I think is good, by the way, even though most of the stories are complete crap. People
should
stay away from the board, it’s not something you futz around with if you don’t know what you’re doing. It can be dangerous.”
 

“Wait,” Jenna said. “So you’re saying that this board you just brought into my house is ... potentially dangerous?”

“Don’t worry, honey. You wouldn’t know it to look at me, but I know what I’m doing. Haven’t lost a client yet.” Ada took off her coat and tossed it onto the couch. Beneath it, she wore a black-and-white floral-print pantsuit. “We’ll need three chairs at the table, positioned so we can hold hands.”
 

Jenna got three old dented-up beige metal folding chairs from a cluttered narrow closet in the dining room, where she had found them the first day in the house. After setting up the chairs, she turned to Kimberly, who still stared warily at the Ouija board.
 

“Are you sure you’re okay with this?” Jenna asked.

Kimberly smiled. “Yeah. But she’s right. I heard horror stories about Ouija boards being evil. Really scary stuff.”

“The board itself ain’t evil,” Ada said as she sat down at the table. “This one was made by my great-grandpa for my great-grandma. I come from a long line of mediums. Do you have an ashtray?”
 

“An ashtray,” Jenna said. They’d found several filthy old ashtrays around the house—the first day, they’d opened all the windows to air out the odor of stale tobacco—and Jenna had washed them and put them in a kitchen cupboard. She got one and put it on the table by the Ouija board just in time to catch the skeletal finger of ash that dropped from Ada’s cigarette. The cloud of smoke settled over the table.
 

Ada crushed the butt in the ashtray. “The board’s just a tool. Like a computer. And you don’t want somebody doesn’t know what he’s doin’ pokin’ around with it, is all.”
 

Kimberly still did not take a seat at the card table. “I’ve always heard that once you use them ... they leave things behind.”

“They can’t leave anything behind, honey, ‘cause they don’t come with anything attached. All they do is make it easier to communicate with what’s already here in the first place. The board gives the spirits something to focus their energies on.”
 

For a moment, Jenna wondered what she was doing. She couldn’t believe someone had just said, “The board gives the spirits something to focus their energies on,” and she wasn’t at least rolling her eyes and smiling, trying to be polite enough not to laugh or ridicule. But she thought of that small figure standing at the end of the upstairs hallway, and of that same figure in the basement hugging a teddy bear.
 

Mommy
—
 

Ada said, “The reason I only have to do this once or twice is most people watch me the first couple times, see how easy it is, and figure out they can do it themselves.”
 

Jenna said, “But... I thought you just said people shouldn’t do it on their own.”

“I said people shouldn’t operate a Ouija board unless they know what they’re doing. But anybody can talk to the dead.” She removed from a pocket a box of Marlboros and a zebra-print disposable butane lighter, lit up, then set them on the right corner of the table, the lighter on the box. “No secret to it, just talk, they’ll hear you if they want to. Whether or not they’re in the mood to listen, let alone reply, is what makes this a little like fishing. The difference is, a medium, which is what I am, can draw them out a lot easier and faster than most people. You can sit on your couch and talk to the ceiling all day long and maybe get nothing. I can get them to pay attention. It’s a gift. You either got it or you don’t.”
 

Jenna said, “You do this for a living, Ada?”

“Never for a living. I worked at the Payless pharmacy in Eureka for almost thirty years before I retired early. I did this for a little extra money, and because I
could
. I mean, it’s something I can do and not many other people seem to be so hot at, so why not help people out with it, huh?
And
make a little extra money? I mean, this is still America, right? Have they made it a crime to make a buck yet?”
 

“What if—” Kimberly said, but she stopped herself. She looked at Jenna, mouth open, as if she were not sure she wanted to continue.
 

“What if what, honey?” Ada said.

“What if they’re not... spirits?”

“They tell
me
they’re spirits. Who am I to argue? What do I know? What
else
would they be? Now, you two sit down at the table.”
 

Kimberly still hesitated.

“You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to,” Jenna said. “If it bothers you, Kimberly, I don’t
want
you to do it.”
 

Kimberly said, “Well, um ...” Her round cheeks became rosy with embarrassment.

Ada looked up and said, “What I usually tell people like this at sittings is—give it a try, if you’re uncomfortable with it, just leave. Nothing bad is going to happen to you either way. Trust me, if I thought something bad was going to happen to you, I wouldn’t be sitting at the same table with you. I don’t hang around when I know bad things’re gonna happen—I’m just not that type, I don’t have it in me.”
 

Jenna said, “But if you don’t
want
to, Kimberly—”
 

“No, that’s okay. I’ll give it a try. But you’ll understand if I don’t stick it out.”

“Sure, honey,” Ada said. “You feel free. Now sit down.”

Jenna sat on the right side of Ada, Kimberly on the left. Ada produced a spiral-bound notebook with the cover folded all the way back, a pen attached to the binding, and placed it in front of Kimberly. “We’ll hold hands for a while, but later, once things get started, you write down every letter the planchette points to.” She reached over and patted Kimberly’s hand. “Can you do that, hon? Because I’m gonna need Jenna to work on the board with both hands, okay?”
 

Kimberly said, “Yeah. Sure.” But she did not sound confident.

“Now, at some point, I’m gonna need you both to put your fingertips on the planchette. Don’t press on it. I want you to barely touch it, understand? I want your fingertips more off it than on.” She turned to Kimberly again. “When you start writing, keep one hand on the planchette—can you do that, hon?”
 

“Yeah. Sure.”

“When you feel the planchette move, don’t take your hands away,” Ada said.

“I’m sorry,” Kimberly said, “but if that thing moves on its own, you two will have to figure out the writing problem yourselves.”

Ada laughed, but it quickly turned into a series of coughs that required her to remove the cigarette from her lips for a moment.

“Do you want me to turn the lights out, or pull the shades?” Jenna asked.

“Oh, no,” Ada said. “That’s just in the movies. You get it dark in here, I can’t read what they’re trying to say. Now, first, we’re just gonna hold hands here around the board for a while, and we’re gonna close our eyes, and all we’re gonna think about is little Josh.” She reached out and took their hands. Jenna and Kimberly reached across the table and clasped hands behind the Ouija board. Ada lowered her voice near a whisper and spoke in the same gentle, almost reverent tone and with the same vaguely singsong cadence one might use when saying a familiar prayer. Her rough, cigarette voice softened. “We’re gonna think about little Josh’s spirit somewhere in this house, and we’re gonna call him to us and he’s gonna sense that, and eventually, he’ll respond. Just concentrate your thoughts on Josh right now, on his spirit...”
 

Ada went on and on while Jenna tried to concentrate. It was difficult to do on top of dealing with the fact that she was actually
doing
this, and wondering what she would tell her mother if she were to walk in the room— or, even worse, what if David came home? That thought scrambled her mind like an egg and, for a moment, made her forget what she was supposed to be thinking about in the first place.
 

This is a seance
, Jenna thought.
That’s what a sitting is, it’s a seance. I saw them do this on
Geraldo
one Halloween hack in the eighties. What am I
doing
here?

She started listening to Ada, followed the singsong rhythms with her mind, and each time Ada said Josh’s name, Jenna felt a small pain deep in her chest. The seance seemed to melt away when the realization pierced her that she was trying to reach her dead son.
 

That’s what you’re doing here
, she thought.
 

Mommy
—
 

“We’re just gonna keep thinking about Josh and focusing our thoughts and our energies together here, over this board, and we’re gonna draw him to us ...”
 

Jenna had no idea how long Ada had been rambling on when something in the air changed, but it had been a while. The temperature in the living room dropped noticeably and the air became charged with electricity. Jenna opened her eyes and found Kimberly staring at her wide-eyed, lips pressed together so hard they’d gone white—she sensed it, too.
 

“Okay,” Ada said as she let go of their hands, “someone is with us.”

“Someone?” Jenna whispered. “You’re not sure if it’s Josh?”

Ada peeled the filter tip from her lips and tapped the cigarette over the ashtray as she quietly said, “Remember what I said about this being a little like fishing? Now, put your fingertips lightly on the planchette,
very
lightly.” She put the cigarette back in her mouth and placed her fingertips on the planchette’s broad bottom edge.
 

Jenna gingerly touched her fingertips to the planchette’s curved edge and suspended her hands above the board.

Kimberly reached out with both hands—Jenna noticed that her fingers were trembling—but pulled them back before she touched the planchette. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t do it. I’ll write down the letters for you, but... I just can’t do it.”