Dead Voices

But in Ollie’s dream, the noise hadn’t been the wind. It had been a ghost girl with frostbite on her face, crying in a corner. It sounded like someone was crying now. Like someone upstairs and out of sight was crying. She looked at Brian and Coco, saw them thinking the same thing.

The wind, Brian mouthed at Mr. Voland.

Don only shrugged. Maybe.

Ollie’s palms were sweating.

Don gestured to something he’d set up on the table in front of him. Then he pointed to three chairs. Carefully, they sat down. Ollie glanced back at her dad. He was still snoring away, which surprised her a little. Her dad wasn’t that heavy a sleeper. But they’d been quiet.

They needed to hurry. On cold nights, Ollie’s dad was used to getting up every few hours, going downstairs, and adding logs to their woodstove to make sure the house stayed warm until morning. Her dad would wake up soon to check on the fire.

Somewhere above them, the sobbing sound went on and on. Ollie felt the hairs on her arms standing up.

The table in front of them held three things.

The first thing was an empty cardboard box. Brian picked it up and tilted it into the red firelight so that all three of them could read what was printed on it.

OUIJA, it said.

Below that, in smaller letters, it said, MYSTIFYING ORACLE.

Brian frowned. “A Ouija board?” he breathed, in the smallest, softest whisper he could manage. “Isn’t that just—a party game?”

“It can be,” murmured Mr. Voland, his voice as soft as Brian’s. “But it also works for its intended purpose. Talking to ghosts.”

The Ouija board itself was laid on the table beside its box. It had two parts. Ollie had to squint to see them. The first part was the big wooden board. Mr. Voland’s Ouija board was shiny and smooth, as though it had been touched by many hands. A picture was carved into each of the board’s four corners: a smiling sun, a frowning moon, a black bird, and a woman with her arms folded, who appeared to be asleep.

The middle of the board was carved with the alphabet. To the right and left, above the alphabet, were the words YES and NO. Below the alphabet were the numbers 1 through 9 and 0.

Below that was a single word, carved deep. GOODBYE.

This board was the first piece.

The second piece was small. It looked like a magnifying glass with an arrow on one side. It was lying in the middle of the board, right on G.

Mr. Voland pointed to it. “This is the planchette,” he breathed. “It indicates the letters. Everyone put your two forefingers on it with me.”

They did, except for Brian. Brian looked unconvinced. He had picked up the Ouija board’s box, which had instructions printed on the inside of the lid. Brian turned the instructions toward the firelight and started reading them.

Mr. Voland looked just the faintest bit annoyed. “We do not have much time.”

“I just want to know what we’re getting into.” Brian was whispering, but not as quietly as the others. Ollie glared at him. Did he want her dad or Coco’s mom to wake up? The soft sobbing of the wind—or not the wind—seemed to have crept closer. But still Brian was reading over the instructions like he didn’t have a care in the world. Ollie felt herself starting to get annoyed at Brian.

“We have to hurry,” Ollie told him.

Brian was still running a finger down the instructions. His finger paused at the bottom. His frown deepened. “There are four warnings.”

“Warnings?” asked Coco.

“Yes,” said Brian. “‘One: don’t use the board alone.’”

“We aren’t going to,” murmured Mr. Voland. He sounded like he was struggling to keep his patience. Behind them, Ollie’s dad snorted and turned over in his sleep. Ollie gave Brian an agonized glance. He went right on reading.

“‘Two: don’t use the board in a graveyard.’”

Ollie shook her head impatiently. No graves here. Coco said nothing.

“‘Three,’” said Brian. “‘Just because the board says something doesn’t mean it’s true.’”