YES/GOODBYE

Sunlight poured out the open windows, spilling across the hardwood floor. The air clinked with the distinct sound of metal on metal. The room dimmed lightly as Debbie slid her new curtains in place. The ladder creaked as she stepped down. 

“Sky blue was definitely the color for this room!” she exclaimed to herself. 

She nearly tripped over the old hallway runner, skipping toward the dining room. Debbie kicked it in defiance, scolding it quietly, knowing it had only a few days left before the new one she bought arrived. She kept it in its place for now, annoyed by all the scratches in the floor that would show if she removed it. Little nicks that made her imagine luxury parties from the fifties, where women’s high heels would scratch the floor as they danced. 

Finally turning her attention back to the dining table, she looked through the mountain of boxes and searched for another LIVING ROOM label. She found one that said RANDOM and rolled her eyes. Only her mom would label a box RANDOM because that’s so helpful. Debbie opened it to find an Ouija board sitting right on top. She remembered having it when she was a kid, playing with her friend Lane when they were too young to believe in evil. Then they watched a particular horror movie one Halloween night, and the board got tossed in her closet, never to be seen again.

Until, of course, when it rested right on top of her other things, Debbie gingerly lifted the board and gently set it on the table in a clear space. She rifled through the remaining contents of the box. Near the bottom was the planchette that accompanied the board. Not what she was looking for and freaking her out as childhood fear crept to the surface. She placed the triangle on the board without caring where it landed. 

Debbie continued to scour the box, finding a few trinkets she didn’t mind placing in the living room. As she walked around the table, a couple of paces toward the hallway, a loud SLAP smacked the air. Debbie froze in fear, her typical response. When nothing else happened, and her brain started working again, she slowly turned to see the Ouija board on the floor. She could feel her heart racing as she watched the planchette moving across the board all on its own. Tears stung her eyes; blinking became a second thought. She just stared, clutching the random items in her hands. 

Finally, she regained her voice and shouted a firm, “Stop!”

The planchette froze before sliding over two corners. YES, then GOODBYE. 

Still terrified by the paranormal encounter, Debbie backed out of the room, hitting different walls as she did so. She threw the trinkets onto the couch and snatched her phone from her back pocket. She typed in her password and went to messages before her brain said, we’re being ridiculous. At least, she reasoned, she’d sound silly even to Lane. 

Instead, Debbie decided to simply leave the house for a while and come back when she felt safer—or saner—whichever came first. 

It was late into the night when she finally did go back into the house. Her boyfriend told her an old wives' tale about looking through the planchette’s glass eye and seeing the ghost trying to communicate with her. They were unofficially broken up for the moment. 

When she opened the front door, she didn’t feel anything out of the ordinary. The air still smelled of cleaners, that ripe lemon no one ever said they liked. Everything was still in the same spot, except for the board. As she walked around the table, intent on getting rid of it, she saw that it was on the table and not on the floor where she swore she had left it. Debbie began second-guessing herself. She gave the board a wide berth as she walked, grabbing the RANDOM box. 

She shook her head, assuring herself that what she saw was real. If the board was back on the table, that could mean this was a friendly ghost. After all, it did do as she said. 

Debbie carried the box upstairs into one of the empty rooms she had designated for her office space. While it wasn’t a massive house by any means, it still had more bedrooms than she really needed. An office gave her a nice work space away from her bedroom, she had reasoned, and a guest bedroom wasn’t such a bad idea. But while the guest bedroom already had its furnishings, the office was more like storage. Everything she didn’t know what to do with went in that room. 

Her phone chimed as she set the box on the floor. She checked it to see her mom had texted: 

Debbie thought about it, and temptation bubbled in her chest. She hadn’t gotten to see her grandma before she died. The thought crossed her mind before that it was a friendly ghost. Plus, Ouija boards were designed to make talking to spirits easier. 

She stared down the stairs toward the dining room. She should really just burn the damn thing. Debbie jogged down the stairs with determination bouncing in every step. 

Apparently, a little too much. A board snapped in half under her weight, clawing at the skin of her calf. She collapsed backward, finding a step to sit on safely. She pulled her foot away and examined her leg. She was bleeding on the outer side, a little stream flowing down over her heel—which dripped into a hole in the stair that was more cubby-like than she expected. 

She ignored the discovery for the moment to go back up the stairs to the bathroom and the first aid kit under the sink. 

Damn old wood, she hissed mentally, fucking breaking and ruining everything.

Even though she wasn’t the most flexible woman in the world, she grabbed her foot, lifting it over the lip of the sink to clean the wound. She had to stand on her other foot’s tiptoes in order to make any progress. Debbie washed the area with water and used her phone’s flashlight to check for any splinters that may have worked their way under the skin. Satisfied with the absence, she took out the largest bandage she could find in the first-aid kit, ripping off the paper encasing it. Centering it on the puncture marks, she slapped it into place as her father had when she was little. 

Teaches the “boo-boos” who’s boss, he used to say. Even as she cried because his large hand slapping her injury wasn’t exactly gentle. 

She grabbed her foot again and, using the sink for support, guided it back down to the ground. She peered over her shoulder like she was in an action movie. 

To the invisible camera in her mind, she said, “Now, let’s find out what’s hidden beneath the floorboards.”

With careful steps, Debbie reached the splintered wood. Inside the cubby-like space, she discovered a beeswax-sealed vial of salt, a small piece of glass that oddly resembled a planchette’s eye, and a voodoo doll. Well, that’s what Debbie assumed, seeing the felt-made girl with Xs for eyes and similar Xs portraying the mouth. On the hand of the doll, some of Debbie’s blood had stained the fabric. 

Her hands shook as she carefully stood up. She pulled her phone from her back pocket and typed "Catholic churches near me" into the search bar.

Debbie let gravity pull her down the stairs before making a beeline for the front door. She threw open the front door but stopped dead in her tracks, nearly falling at the abruptness. 

For a second, her mind refused to process the small girl in white, dressed like something out of an old photograph. Her hair hung in front of her face, resistant to any night breeze. Slowly, the girl raised her head. The sight pinned Debbie’s feet to the floor, but whether in her control, she wasn’t sure. Crude lines of dark thread pulled the girl’s lips together. Panic spiked in Debbie’s chest, a hot flash that made her fingers tingle and her palms slick. The rest of the porch—its boards, the railing, the night beyond—fades to a dark blur at the edges, and all that remains sharp is her small body and that silenced mouth. 

The girl’s eyes snapped open, icy blue that sank into Debbie’s blood. Debbie’s body locked for that split second when a force hit her from behind like a runaway truck, coiling around her waist with fingers that felt like iron chains. There was no warning shove, no chance to twist away; her feet were ripped from the floorboards in an instant, pulled into a 45-degree angle that rocketed her body back into the house. Her silent figure was the last thing burned into Debbie’s sight before her back slammed into the edge of the staircase with a crack of wood and bone. She tumbled limply as the unseen grip finally released. The house echoed with the thud of Debbie’s body, but from the threshold, she watches, unmoving.