Talking To The Devil

• Roshni Puggera, Grade 8
• Short Story
• 2015

My mother was right, Cristina was right.
Cristina and I were bored so we went up to the basement to find the Ouija board. My mother warned me not to play it. She told me that she invited the devil by accident and her friend died from playing it but I thought she just said that to freak me out. Cristina and I took the Ouija board to my room. We placed the board in the middle of my bed and sat opposite each other.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” asked Cristina as I wiped the dust off the board. I could tell she was nervous by the way she squeezed her hands together and tensed her knuckles.
“Yes. This is the only time I have. You know how much my mother hates these boards?” I replied with a sigh.
“Why are you so desperate to play it anyways?” she asked me again but this time she loosened her hands and placed them on her lap.
“I’m curious,” I responded but I could tell that it wasn’t convincing enough by the way she looked at me.
“My father died when I was two weeks old. I never got the chance to talk to him,” I explained. Cristina froze for a minute but then gave me a sympathetic smile and a nod.
We both place our fingers on the planchette.
“Father, are you there?” I asked. Everything was silent and still.
“Father, are you there? Respond!” I asked again in a demanding tone. Nothing changed. It didn’t work.
“Sorry,” Cristina responded as she let go of the planchette. I let go as well but I was really angry rather than upset. I waited fifteen years and I was so sure that the Ouija board would allow me to communicate with my father. All of a sudden, the planchette moved by itself.
I read aloud as it moved from letter to letter, “Hello Emma. It’s my father! He remembers my name!” I shouted. I was finally reunited by my father’s presence.
Before I could ask him another question, he had already started spelling another sentence out.
I can come back. My father had just said that he could come back. From the dead.
“How?” I questioned him.
“Invite me into your house,” he spelled out.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea to invite him… I don’t think it’s your father,” Cristina argued. I ignored her. She was just upset that I was right and she was wrong about the Ouija board, I thought.
“You’re always welcome into our house!” I replied to my father. Suddenly, all the lights started flickering and the windows exploding. The shattered glass flew across the room but I defended myself with the Ouija board. Once the flickering stopped, I noticed Cristina had a piece of glass cutting through her neck. She was dead. Beside her body, an unfamiliar man stood there.
He whispered, “You should’ve listened to your mother.”