Hidden Pictures(45)

“Is this Anya?” Mitzi asks. “Are we speaking with Anya?”

The board is illustrated with a standard alphabet and the numbers zero to nine, and the top corners have the words YES and NO. I watch passively, spectating, as the planchette stops briefly at the letter I, then moves back to G and then E. Mitzi keeps four fingers on the planchette, but she’s holding a pencil in her free hand to transcribe the results on a notepad: I-G-E? Sweat beads across her forehead. She glances at me and shakes her head, undaunted.

“Speak slowly, spirit,” she says. “We have plenty of time. We wish to understand you. Is this Anya?”

The planchette moves to N and then X and then O.

“You’re leaning,” Mitzi whispers, irritated, and I realize she’s talking to me.

“What?”

“On the table. You’re pushing, Mallory.”

“It’s not me.”

“Sit back in your chair. Sit up straight.”

I’m too scared to argue with her, to tell her the truth. I don’t want to interrupt whatever’s happening.

“Spirit, we welcome your message! We welcome any information you’d like to share.”

There’s more pressure on my hand and the planchette moves faster, veering across the board, stopping at one random letter after another, a string of spiritual static: L-V-A-J-X-S. Mitzi is still recording everything but she seems more and more annoyed. The results look like alphabet soup.

The wood planchette is thrumming with energy, like the racing heartbeat of a small frightened animal. It’s flying all over the board and Mitzi can barely keep up with her one-handed annotations. The air is so thick it’s suffocating; my eyes are watering and I don’t know why my smoke detector isn’t going off. Then Mitzi lifts her fingers and the planchette keeps moving. My hand pushes it across the board and it flies off the edge of the table, clattering to the floor. Mitzi stands up, furious. “I knew it! You were pushing! This whole time, you were pushing!”

All the weight leaves my hand and suddenly I’m out of the trance. The room snaps back into focus. It’s twelve forty-five Wednesday afternoon and I can hear Adrian out in the backyard counting “Six Mississippi, Seven Mississippi…” and Mitzi is glaring at me.

“Anya did that. Not me.”

“I watched you, Mallory. I saw you!”

“Eight Mississippi!”

“Anya moved my hand. She was guiding me.”

“This isn’t a slumber party. It’s not a game. This is my livelihood, I take it very seriously!”

“Nine Mississippi!”

“You’ve wasted my time. You’ve wasted the whole day!”

And suddenly I’m blinking into the daylight. The door to my cottage has swung open and little Teddy is standing on the porch, peering into the darkness. He raises a finger to his lips, gesturing for us to be quiet. Out in the backyard, Adrian calls out, “Ten Mississippi! Ready or not, here I come!”

Teddy ducks inside and quietly closes the door. Then he looks around the cottage, marveling at the votive candles and the blacked-out windows and my kitchen table with its ring of sea salt. “What are you playing?”

“Honey, this is called a spirit board,” Mitzi says, inviting him to take a closer look. “In the right hands, it’s a tool for communication. To speak with the dead.”

Teddy looks to me for confirmation, like he can’t believe Mitzi is telling the truth. “Really?”

“No, no, no.” I’m already out of my chair and guiding him back to the door. “It’s just a toy. Just a game.” The last thing I need is Teddy telling his parents about a séance. “We were just pretending. It’s not real.”

“It’s very real,” Mitzi says. “If you respect its powers. If you take it seriously.”

I open the door and see Adrian across the yard, searching for Teddy in the trees along Hayden’s Glen. “Over here,” I call out.

He comes jogging over and Teddy darts past my legs, sprinting across the grass, still caught up in their game of hide-and-seek.

“Sorry about that,” Adrian says. “I told him to stay on the pool deck. I hope he didn’t ruin anything.”

“It was already ruined,” Mitzi says. She’s gathering her things, snuffing out candles and collecting trays of incense. “There are no spirits in this cottage. There never were. This is just a story she’s made up to get attention.”

“Mitzi, that is not true!”

“I’ve used this board a hundred times. It’s never acted this way.”

“I swear to you—”

“Swear to your Scarlet Knight here, okay? Cry on his shoulder and maybe he’ll feel sorry for you. But don’t ask me to waste any more time.”

She shoves her books into her bag and then storms past me, nearly tripping as she descends the stairs of my cottage.

“What just happened?” Adrian asks.

“Anya was here, Adrian. She was inside the cottage. I swear to you, I could feel her standing over me. Moving my arm. But the letters were gibberish. We couldn’t spell anything. And then right in the middle Mitzi lost her shit. She started screaming at me.”

We watch from the porch as Mitzi wobbles across the lawn, veering left and then overcompensating to the right, unable to maintain a straight line.