The Writers' Circle

THE OUIJA BOARD
                                                          A short story 

'I don't know whether we should.' Katie felt the goose bumps rise on her arms as she watched her friend Janet place the Ouija board on the dining room table. She wasn't a religious person and didn't really believe in all that stuff about ghosts and the spirit world. There again neither did she openly reject God, just in case there was something. Now, what they were about to do was in her view pushing luck a little too far.
 'Don't be silly, Katie, there's nothing to be frightened of.' Katie's other friend Annie said pulling up a chair to the table. 'I've done it lots of times.'  
Resting their fingers gently on the upturned glass, the three women studied it intently. Several seconds elapsed before the glass responded.   
In a soft whisper Annie spoke. 'Who are you?'
The glass moved slowly at first then as if possessed, moved rapidly between the letters spelling out the word, "J.a.c.o.b." 
Janet giggled excitedly looking at her two friends, her eyes as big as saucers. 'We've got someone.'
'Are you a good spirit? Annie asked her voice breaking with emotion of the moment.
Unhurriedly the glass moved again coming to rest on the word, "yes". Annie forced a smile feeling the palpitations of apprehension begin drumming in her chest. 'What shall we ask him?'
 	'Ask him who he is?' Janet blurted out impatiently.   
Slowly the glass spelt out the word "s.l.a.v.e".
 Over the next half-hour, they questioned Jacob about himself. They found out that he had lived as a black slave on a plantation in Charleston, South Carolina in 1739. His white owner had murdered him because of his love of a slave girl who his master had made pregnant.
The session ended abruptly when Jacob got angry when asked the name of his lover. The glass, racing backward and forward between the letters "N.a.n" and the word "no" before spinning off the table shattering as it hit the wall. 

That night the three friends tossed and turned in their sleep as Jacob came to them individually in a vision. The following day they couldn't wait to try again. Even Katie the most reticent of the three women had been hooked. Her natural female inquisitiveness for a two hundred and fifty year old lovers tryst had pushed her fears of the unknown to one side
 All three women trembled and giggled with excitement as they placed their fingers on the glass tumbler and Annie called for Jacob to visit again. It didn't take long before he made his presence known spelling out the words k.i.t.t.y then  h.e.l.p." 
The girls looked at each other with mixed feelings of excitement and intrigue burning deep inside their stomachs. 'Who is kitty? How can we help you?' Annie asked.
The glass spun violently, flying off the table crashing to the floor as a blast of icy cold air swept through the dining room, forming an exaggerated cloud of cold atomised mist above their heads. The temperature dropped to minus one as minuscule particles of ice formed, dropping small snowflakes onto the table. They sat frozen and terrified unable to move or speak. The cloud of stinking atomised miasma changed form presenting the grotesque disfigured face of a black man hovering only inches above their heads. The apparition of Jacob, his lips curled back in a silent snarl laughed hideously spraying its foetid breath. Riveted to the chairs as if spellbound all the girls could do was look on terrified, as the vision completely engulfed Katie in a grotesque parody of urgent sexual frenzy before disappearing in a spiralling smoke stream up through the ceiling; screaming and cursing obscenities as it departed.
Gagging with the taste and smell of rotting flesh the three women ran screaming from the dining room into the garden and bright sunshine. All three shaking, fear etched on their faces clinging together for comfort, crying tears of relief that they were safe vowing never to dabble again. 

A week later, they decided to meet up for a coffee. Katie was late. When she did finally arrive, both Janet and Annie were shocked. Katie, normally lively and sociable looked ill, dark circles cast shadows under her blue eyes, her face etched with fear and puffy from lack of sleep.      
Katie sat down; tears of desperation streaming down her face 'I feel terrible. I haven't slept for days; I'm frightened to close my eyes. Every time I doze of I get the same horrible nightmare.' She screwed her face up in disgust. 'That grotesque thing is mauling me, touching me everywhere.' She sobbed. 'He. he raped me he raped me with his rotting body. It's horrible, it's driving me mad.'   
Her two friends, their faces strained with empathy for their friends dilemma hung on to every word as Katie related her dream to them in a whisper.
 'In the dream I am the mistress of a huge house in Charleston and I'm looking out of the bedroom window. On the front lawn a huge bonfire is burning. Huddled around the fire, I can see a group of black people, men, women, and children, slaves I think, crying and wailing as white men flog Jacob who is tied to a tree. All of a sudden, the slaves turn on the white men with machetes... chopping hacking at them, it's horrible. The white men are screaming and pleading for their lives but the slaves take no notice and keeping hacking at them. Suddenly the doors to the room where I am burst open. It.Its Jacob, naked and horribly mutilated covered in blood. He rape.s, me.' Katie put her head in her hands and bursts into tears. 
Annie took one look at Janet and then back to Katie. 'This is all my fault; we should never have done it. There is only one-way to stop this, we have to contact him again; it's the only way to end it.

That afternoon they visited the public library. They found that in 1739 in Charleston South Carolina there had been a slave uprising known as "Cato's Conspiracy". Forty-four black slaves and thirty dependants of white slave owners had been murdered. The worst incident had taken place on a plantation owned by a James McDonald. The slaves there had murdered his wife Kitty and their three children.  
Annie shook her head. 'It still doesn't give us much to go on'
Janet gave a shrewd look. 'I'm not so sure. Wait a minute. What was the slave owner's wife called, did you say?' 
Katie's eyes lit up with excitement. 'Kitty. yes that's it, it was Kitty'
 	Both Annie and Janet gave her a blank stare. 
The tense expression on Katie's face softened as the truth dawned on her. 'Don't you see,' she laughed aloud. 'It's Kitty. and Kitty is a diminutive of Katie.' 
'That's right.' Janet said excitedly. 'Jacob thinks your kitty. The white slave owner raped Jacob's lover. and now he's getting his own back, by doing the same to Katie.'  
 	Annie's face lit up, her expression softening as she laughed to herself. 'Yes, if that's right then, all we have to do is tell him that what he's doing to Katie is wrong and that she's not Kitty and he'll go away.'  

That afternoon, each holding a crucifix in their hand they called upon the spirit of Jacob. It didn't take long. Janet spoke first her voice breaking with emotion her outstretched arm shaking visibly. 
'We know why you feel angry, Jacob, but Katie isn't Kitty. What you are doing is wrong. You have to stop. Now in the name of God we order you to go back to where you came from.'
The glass started vibrating spinning wildly off the table, as if an invisible hand had thrown it.
Their screams of terror filled the room, as a ghostly apparition of Jacob's macabre face twisted in a frenzied rage appeared hovering above the table.  
'No! No! Nan, Nan, Nan.' Jacob's naked apparition, his eyeless sockets, mere twinned pits in his mutilated face screamed obscenities spraying a foul smelling viscous. Unable to move they stared with fear-filled eyes as if locked into the apparition, watching as it buckled and twisted shape depicting the most gruesome faces of abject misery, torment, and grief. The room was plunged into an icy coldness as the hideous apparition turned slowly staring ghoulishly at Katie screaming. 'Miss Kitty kill. Miss Kitty kill.Miss Kitty kill.' 
Katie, her eyes bulging in terror flinched thrusting the crucifix into the apparition. Horrifying 
screams filled the room as the vision swirled above their heads violently as if in terrible torment as she began to chant the 23rd Psalm. 
 That night for the first time in a week Katie slept, peacefully free of the spirit of Jacob the black slave.
Three miles away Annie tossed and turned in her bed as Jacob's apparition appeared to her in a dream. Annie covered in perspiration sat upright in bed and screamed Jacobs's words still ringing in her ears, Nan, Nan. The spirit of Jacob released from his torment of revenge was now seeking his lost love. Her eyes widened in terror as she realised that Nan was a diminutive of Annie.
                                               THE END.


"the extent" 1578.