The Séance

“He could still be here,” he said, and it made sense—except that she knew he didn’t believe her that anyone had been there in the first place.

But she knew he didn’t dare ignore her. He might think that she was crazy, that she’d had too much to drink while playing with the occult, but there was a killer in the area, and he couldn’t take chances.

“I think I’d be safer with you,” she called as he disappeared into the house. “In all those slasher movies, when the guy goes off and leaves the girl she ends up dead!”

There was no answer.

She stood nervously on the porch, feeling like a fool. Despite the fact that this was Florida, autumn was well on the way, and she was chilled, standing there in her damp cotton nightgown and bare feet.

“Jed?”

There was still no answer. She looked around, since there was nothing else to do. The day was coming on nicely. By midafternoon, it would be hot. The sky was crystal-blue now, but no doubt this afternoon the thunderclouds would come rolling through.

Jed returned at last, startling her out of her reverie as he stepped outside and shook his head. “Nothing. There’s no one in there now.”

She let out a long breath. “Jed, it was real. He was real. I opened my eyes, and I saw a man standing at the foot of my bed.”

“We’ll walk through the house together,” he told her, the expression in his dark eyes an enigma. “You can see if anything is out of place.”

She followed him into the house. “Upstairs first?” he suggested.

Upstairs, the rooms that her family had claimed in earlier days were empty and undisturbed. Even in her bedroom, everything looked normal. The sheets were tossed back, as they had been when she bolted, but everything else looked just as she had left it.

“Anything?” Jed asked.

She shook her head.

He stared at her. “You and Ana shouldn’t have been playing with that stupid Ouija board.”

“Oh, so now you believe in Ouija boards?” she said.

“No. But I do believe in the power of suggestion.”

They traipsed downstairs. The kitchen was tidy, thanks to her efforts the night before. There was a last garbage bag waiting to go out, but that was it.

In the parlor, the boxes remained where they had been.

Too bad I don’t have a ghost who wants to unpack for me, she thought.

No. She didn’t have a ghost at all. Besides, if anyone was haunting this place, it would be Gran, just as they’d said last night. And she would be a stern but kindly ghost.

But of course there were no such things as ghosts, she told herself.

“So has anything been stolen?” Jed asked. “Or even moved?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

She couldn’t help but wish that her hair wasn’t sporting blades of grass, and that her cotton sleep shirt wasn’t damp and hugging her uncomfortably.

“The silver isn’t missing?” There was a dry note in his voice, she noticed.

“No,” she said, increasingly upset.

Looking more disturbed than amused, he said, “Christie, if someone really had been in the house, either something would be missing or you would have been followed out and attacked on the lawn.”

She glanced around the parlor, and then she frowned.

The Ouija board.

It had been moved; she was certain of it.

She had set it on top of some other boxes when they had finished with it the night before, but now…

Now it was back in the center of the floor.

“That moved,” she said suddenly.

“What?” Jed asked.

“The Ouija board.”

He groaned.

“I’m serious!”

He was so silent that she could have sworn she could hear every breath either one of them took and even their heartbeats.

“Sit down, Christina,” he suggested.

She looked at him, puzzled. Then she realized that he was trying to be patient and had reverted to being a cop trying to calm a distraught citizen.

“Christina, I admit I wasn’t a cop for all that long, but I never heard of anyone breaking into a house just to move a Ouija board.”

She flashed him an irritated glance and stiffened, refusing to give him the satisfaction of sitting down as ordered.

“I’m telling you, when I went to bed last night, that box wasn’t there.”

“Sit down,” he said again. “I can get you a glass of water or put some coffee on if that will help.” He wasn’t making fun of her, she knew. He was just treating her the same way he had when they’d all been kids and he had five years’ advantage over them.

“Jed, I’m telling you—”

“No. Let me talk,” he said.

He pushed her down into one of the big wing chairs and hunkered down in front of her, taking her hands. “It’s hard. Trust me, I understand how hard it is.”

“What are you saying?”

“Christie, you have Dan and Mike, but other than that, you’ve lost your entire family.” His face hardened for a moment, and she knew why. He occasionally talked about his late wife, and sometimes he would smile or even laugh when he talked about something fun they had done.