Matilda

“Ooh, spooky!” I exclaimed as Brea brought the box with the Ouija board up from downstairs, tape cracking and peeling from the corners. It was a chilly Saturday on Hallow’s Eve, and the windows were barely cracked open behind us, the smell of freshly fallen leaves and sweet apple pie wafting in on the wind. The two of us clambered onto her twin-size bed, sitting cross-legged atop black and orange unmade blankets patterned with tiny skulls and pumpkins. A clear bucket of miscellaneous candy we’d bought at Price Chopper earlier that day lay between us as a boxy TV played Beetlejuice softly in the background. Brea’s black cat, Banshee, perched triumphantly beside the box as she and I unearthed the board from its dusty slumber, our hands tangling in our haste to place it in the dead center of her bed.

“Okay, so I have a really freaky story,” she said, using jazz hands for emphasis. Stifling a giggle, I leaned in closer, as enraptured as a ten-year-old on a sugar rush could be. “I was talking to my mom earlier, and she said the previous owners had moved out because of ghosts, particularly the spirit of an older woman, so I wanna talk to her to see if that’s true.” She grabbed a sheet of paper from among the sea of partially finished pencil drawings that littered her bedroom floor and drew out a rough outline of the house using a stubby dark blue colored pencil, an old woman front and center. To the side, she drew stick figures of the two of us with a misshapen rectangle between our hands and placed a series of numbered lines next to it.

“Okay, okay, cool! But what are we gonna ask,” I said, grabbing a dull brown Crayola colored pencil that rested atop her headboard. Using our few remaining brain cells that weren’t already obliterated by candy corn and gobstoppers, we compiled a list of questions, including “Who are you” and “How did you die.” After about five minutes, our list of fourteen scraggly lines all had a question attached to their misshapenness scrawled out in a child’s hand. Grabbing the planchette from the box, I placed my hands on one side of it as she put hers on the other, both of us deep in thought. We sat so close our foreheads were almost touching as we labored over the board, wondering what would happen. Then, we began to question this mysterious older spirit. “Let’s start with ‘What is your name,’” Brea said as we spelled it out slowly, letter by letter.

We awaited an answer with bated breath, neither daring so much as to even blink, before the name “M-A-T-I-L-D-A” slowly began to spell out beneath our fingertips. Seconds felt like years ticking by as we watched the planchette dart effortlessly across the Ouija board, asking us the question, “W-H-O-A-R-E-Y-O-U.” Amazed, we responded with our names, spelling out “B-R-E-A” and “C-A-M” slowly, as though we were scared the spirit would come and steal our souls from us now that she knew this simple fact about ourselves.

A few more lines of conversation followed until we approached question thirteen on our list. “What about this?” Brea asked, moving her hands ever so slightly to ask, “H-O-W-D-I-D-Y-O-U-D-I-E.” We sat still for around 30 seconds with no response in sight. Feeling slightly defeated, we took our hands off the planchette. “Maybe she was just—” Brea began to say, until a cold chill overtook the room. The wooden clapboard closet doors swung wildly behind us, and the windows started to rattle. Suddenly, all of them unexpectedly simultaneously slammed shut, sending us into a cold sweat.

At that moment, Brea’s mom called for us to come downstairs. It was around 11 pm, and she was offering popcorn and Otter Pops. Sharing a quick glance that conveyed what can only be described as an ooh, sugar! moment, we abandoned our fear and the Ouija board in the middle of the bed and ran downstairs into the spacious kitchen. Four heightened wooden seats faced towards the dark marbled kitchen island, winter coats hanging limply on every chair.

As we each grabbed the first handful of popcorn from atop the island, the lights flickered and went out entirely, plunging the room into eternal darkness. “What the hell?” Brea’s mom exclaimed, looking blankly out the back door to the wooded lawn. Confused, we meandered towards the front door to see if the lights on the street were out, too. Seeing as it was late October and the air was permeated with a moist, dampened feel that threatened to tear the sky open and snow, a storm wasn’t out of the question. However, Brea, her mom, and I were all confused when we saw every house lining the street had lights on, including mine, which was a mere three houses up.

“Okay, something’s definitely up,” Brea’s mom, Luna, said. Confused, we returned inside and grabbed a flashlight off the counter, deciding to enter the basement where Brea’s brother Axl had been boxing. Silence arose in place of music, shrouding us in darkness as Luna closed her pale hand around the smooth metal doorknob, turning it quietly without even so much as a squeak from the hinges. Brea and I followed behind her timidly, a bit nervous about what awaited in the room pungent with the smell of musky perspiration below us.

Each concrete step down into the dungeon felt like one step closer to hell as goosebumps slowly peppered our skin. However, what awaited us below only appeared after the first five steps down when the stairs turned a corner. Somehow, all the lights were on and working just fine, including the pesky bulb that constantly flickered regardless of whether it was replaced. Axl was there, furiously punching the black and red standard heavy bag hanging from the ceiling as it swung limply from side to side. Sweat dripped onto the cheap cyan Walmart gym mats lining the concrete below his feet. Five Finger Death Punch was blaring from speakers on shelves lining the wall, and Axl was in his own world, oblivious to us three scared musketeers. It was like a scene straight from the movies: complete nothingness giving way to a sudden burst of light and action.

Confused, we hurried over to the breaker box and saw every switch was flipped, excluding the basement. “What the hell?” Luna remarked, flipping them all back on one by one. Brea and I stood there, quivering slightly, as she flipped the last of the switches and headed towards Axl, pausing the music on his iPod. “What are you doing?” Axl asked, peeved, leaving his little world long enough to glare softly at the band of us with confusion spread on our faces.

“Why’d you keep boxing if the power went out, man?” Luna asked, equally as peeved at his apparent lack of reaction to the situation. Now, it was his turn to be confused. “What do you mean?” he asked. “I’ve been down here for like thirty minutes and it never so much as even flickered.” A few more terse lines of conversation wafted between the two before Luna finally accepted defeat, realizing he was telling the truth. Somehow, the power had gone out, and the house had been plunged into darkness, except within the tiny bubble holding Axl and his homemade boxing ring. Slightly perturbed but wanting to resume stuffing our faces with junk food and talking to that mysterious spirit, Brea and I gathered our wits and courage and bolted back up the stairs.

However, when we returned, only more confusion awaited our little souls. The Ouija board wasn’t where we had left it. Instead of being in the middle of the bed, the board was halfway across the room, nearly torn in two and resting hastily against the closet doors that had somehow been left slightly ajar. It looked like it had been picked up and thrown carelessly to the side like a cardboard pizza box thrown atop a dumpster. The box lay beside the planchette, which rested carefully in the middle of the bed, upside down and with a single word scrawled out in what looked like blood in the center: “RUN.”

Frozen and terrified, Brea and I shared a glance before we heard a bloodcurdling scream followed by maniacal, cackling laughter from outside. The windows, which had also somehow opened all the way between when we’d been downstairs and now, slammed shut with so great a force the house shook violently, threatening to crumble to its very foundation. As we continued to freak out, Brea said, voice quivering considerably, “Let’s go get mom.” Agreeing wholeheartedly, we decided that was our best choice of action, but not before making a plan.

We decided to gingerly pick the board and planchette up, carefully placing them back into the box. We tried to touch the haunted board for as little time as possible, terrified the spirit we’d just now freed would take our souls and eat them for a midnight snack. Grabbing a plastic bag that lay conveniently beside the headboard, we played what was probably the most intensive game of rock-paper-scissors in the history of the world to decide who would be putting the board in the bag and carting it to its next destination.

After being declared the loser, it took all of my courage not to chicken out right then and there. “Cam, whatever you do, don’t drop it,” Brea said, trying her hardest to muster up her remaining courage and lend it all to me. After a few painstaking seconds that ticked by like hours on a clock, the box, board, and planchette were in the bottom of the bag, the edges barely starting to rip the plastic apart. We shared another brief glance before counting, “three, two, one!” Simultaneously, we broke into a dead run toward the bathroom down the hall.

Upon arrival, there was only one thing left to do: throw the bag's contents into the bathtub before running as fast as our little legs could take us down the carpeted stairs to the comfort that was Luna and the kitchen that still smelled like popcorn. “Mom, mom!” Brea yelled, skidding to a stop seconds before me on the hardwood floors, nearly slipping in her oversized fuzzy socks. “You’ll never believe what happened, and we don’t know what we’re gonna do!” Breathlessly, Brea recounted the action of the past few minutes, growing more anxious and shaky by the moment.

“Okay, okay, calm down, you two. Let’s go see what to do about that board. It’ll be okay.” Slightly calmer, we agreed to go back up and see it. Walking cautiously up the stairs and down the hall splattered with paint drops, we opened the bathroom door carefully, fearful of what awaited us on the other side. But its fate was another twist we weren’t anticipating: the board was nowhere to be seen. Instead, it had somehow been burned, with only ashes remaining in the tub.

All of us stood there, confused. Nothing in the vicinity could have possibly sparked a flame, and the only other person in the house, Axl, was still downstairs in his makeshift boxing arena. Nothing was out of place besides the pile of ashes in the tub, which spelled out the name “Matilda” in scraggly letters. Even the plastic bag in which we’d placed the Ouija board rested carefully on the side of the tub, folded perfectly, creaseless. We stood staring at each other for a few more seconds before Luna remarked, “What the—.”

Suddenly, the tub faucet creaked on; slowly, unexpectedly, water bloodred in color. Frozen in sheer terror of whatever lay before us, the three of us watched, fully immersed, as the sanguine water dripped down and engulfed Matilda's name. And then, just as quickly as it’d arrived, all remnants of the ash and bloodied water were gone.

“Uhhhh,” I spoke first after regaining my voice. “That was really weird.” Pausing briefly, Luna finally meekly mustered, “Yeah,” her voice cracking slightly. Seconds ticked by slowly, silence loud as thunder in our ears, before she gained a bit more confidence, saying, “How about the two of you just go back to Brea’s room and color or draw or something. Just do anything to get this off your minds.” Nodding slightly, we meandered slowly back down the hallway, unsure of what we just witnessed and refusing to say another word, for fear Matilda would wreak more havoc.

Quietly and cautiously, we cracked the bedroom door open, fearful she’d somehow be waiting on the other side. The room light had been turned off, so all that remained was the slight glow from Beetlejuice still playing on the TV. A flood of relief washed over our bodies as Brea opened the door the rest of the way. “See, we’re good, right?” she asked, flipping the light switch on before gasping suddenly.

In the middle of the bed where we’d first put the Ouija board lay a large sheet of posterboard, the words “I’LL BE BACK” signed neatly in blood.