Muffin to Fear, page 18
“I don’t know. I’m so sorry, my darling, that I invited this awful group to come here.”
“You didn’t set this in motion, Pish. If someone is intent on doing evil, they’ll find a way and place to do it. We happened to be handy.” I had learned that from our springtime adventure with the group I named the Legion of Horrible Ladies. One of those horrible ladies orchestrated events to place them all together at my castle so that she could kill one who was a threat to her.
“I know you’re trying to make me feel better, Merry, but I do keep getting you into messes.”
I covered his hand with my own. “Pish, we didn’t do anything to deserve this; it just happened.”
We separated. I went on with dinner preparations. Lizzie was supposed to be reading, but she kept throwing me glances until I finally made a cup of tea and sat down across from her. “What’s up, kiddo?”
She turned the corner of the page down and closed the book. She fiddled with it, stacking her stuff together, got up and got a bottle of water out of the fridge, then sat down again. “Do you believe any of that?”
“Believe any of what?”
“The Ouija board.”
“No, I don’t.”
“But some people say you shouldn’t play around with those, that it’s not a game.” Her eyes were clouded with doubt. “My grandma heard about me and a friend messing around with one at my friend’s house, and she was upset. She said it’s not right to fool with spirits. That it was toying with the other world, and that you never knew what you’d let in. Or out. Whatever.”
I thought for a moment, watching her face. Lizzie is a rationalist in most things, but she’s also a kid in many other ways. “Did you wonder about any of this, the ghost hunting?”
She knotted her thick brows and twisted her mouth. “I guess since those shows never find anything except for some strange noises and orbs that are clearly dust particles in front of a camera lens, I didn’t think it was real. But Ouija boards . . . I’ve heard of some strange things happening with them.”
“Honey, that’s because people are strange. Let’s do a little research,” I said.
She got the laptop out and brought up some articles, several of which I closed off as they were subreddit threads of believers and occult sites with zero information and lots of woo-woo speculation. That was the trouble with Reddit; so much was just people talking. How did you know what to believe and what to dismiss? Young people aren’t stupid, but they do need guidance to keep sparking the skepticism bone. Teens especially are at a dramatic point in life and can go off the rails if their worries and thoughts aren’t challenged, explored, and listened to. The Internet, with its unfiltered Dumpster of misleading information, can be a dangerous place.
So I went for science-based sites, and pretty soon we were reading about the ideomotor effect, and research studies that had been done with blindfolded subjects. Essentially, they all said the same thing: A Ouija board works using humankind’s deep desire for answers to questions, combined with involuntary hand movements. They pointed out how impossible it is to be truly still, using a laser pointer for an example. Any attempt to keep a laser pointer completely still will show movement no matter what. The information both settled Lizzie’s mind and gave me some insight into what to watch out for.
“Can I help this evening?” she asked.
I thought about it seriously. On the one hand, she’s a teenager and I don’t want her spooked or being misled into dumb beliefs, like Ouija board mysticism. On the other hand, she’s a rational human being and would soon be making all of her own decisions when she went off to college. Her mom, like single parents everywhere, is trying to keep her child afloat and do the best she can to raise her. She’s done a great job so far; Lizzie is one of my favorite human beings. But a little input from all sides couldn’t hurt. Ultimately, I decided this was too important to her future to not let her participate. I wanted to be sure she saw the absurdity firsthand.
“You can help on one condition. If you for one single minute get spooked or think it’s real, I want you to tell me. I promise not to ridicule you, but I will tell you what I think and believe.” Skepticism is a learned skill. “Do we have a deal?”
She nodded, the fun back in her eyes. “I promise not to believe a single thing I hear or see unless you tell me to.”
I laughed. “Exactly!”
She took my hand and we shook. “Are they going to tape the session, do you think?” she asked.
“If I have anything to say about it, yes. I’m hoping the opportunity to guide things will be too tempting to the killer.” I shivered. I pictured a master hand moving us around like game pieces, feeding information, inflaming passions, inciting quarrels. “I want to be able to document who’s guiding this show.”
• • •
Detective Urquhart returned with Virgil and found us in the kitchen putting supper together. My husband took Lizzie and me aside and told us what the sheriff had said. He was not thrilled with what Lizzie had done, but he had accepted the intern explanation without question. Everyone knew of Lizzie’s passion for photography, her ambition, and her tendency to go overboard once given a task related to something she was interested in, so it was not a stretch to think she would remove all the SD cards to catalog.
We handed over the memory cards from the various cameras. To forestall what I knew was coming next—a request that he be able to question Lizzie about the sequence of events—I openly told Urquhart I wasn’t comfortable with him interviewing the teenager again until her mother was back. Emerald would make the ultimate decision regarding the interview and whether they wanted a lawyer present, since Lizzie was still underage. He could have Emerald come back early, but I didn’t think it would make a difference timewise since she was returning the next afternoon anyway.
I was not going to budge on that for any number of reasons, mostly the one stated but also because I didn’t want Lizzie having to fib. Urquhart was peeved, but reluctantly understanding. I wasn’t misled in the slightest; the only reason Urquhart was being semigracious to me and Lizzie was because of my husband.
“One last thing, Sheriff,” I said as he turned to leave the kitchen. “Can we talk outside?”
He nodded. I linked arms with Virgil and pulled him with us, out the back door off the butler’s pantry. The wind was whipping up as the sun descended. I was so tired I was practically hallucinating, and wavering on my feet, but I was going to see this through to the bitter end and get someone arrested.
Nervously, I glanced between the two tall men. “We’re having a Ouija board party tonight. Millicent and Rishelle are convinced Dirk is still lingering.”
Virgil sighed and rolled his eyes. Urquhart looked confused. I started to explain what a Ouija board is, but he put up one hand.
“Mrs. Grace, I know what one of those damn things is. I can’t figure out why the hell you’d let that lunatic asylum bunch in there play with it.” His eyes were cold, his short sleeves flapped in the stiffening wind.
I wrapped my long cardigan closer around me and felt a little better when Virgil put his arm around me and held me close to his warmth. “I’m going to make sure the whole thing is taped, even if I have to have Lizzie set up the equipment. But if I’m lucky, they’ll think it’s a grand idea.”
The sheriff shook his head and squinted into the sunset. “I can’t stop you from doing whatever fool thing you want,” he finally said. “Messing with the other world is not a good idea. I go on record as saying I think this is a bad idea.”
I was startled to find that he actually gave some credit to the Ouija board. It reminded me that some very intelligent people—and the sheriff is smart, no two ways about it—believe some very weird things.
Chapter Nineteen
I USED PISH’S, Virgil’s, and Lizzie’s help with dinner, making a buffet-style meal in the dining room. Everyone was edgy, but most still ate a fair bit, except Millicent, who picked at the salad I had created and the fruit and veggie trays, and Todd, who never seemed to eat much. Once dinner was done and we had toted all the dishes into the kitchen, we moved to the little parlor. I settled on that for our Ouija board session because we needed somewhere where people could sit around a low table with their fingers on the planchette, as the small heart-shaped plank is called. It was a little crowded.
Janice arrived. I took her aside to the library and explained our hopes. I didn’t want her guiding anything at all and in fact preferred that she keep her hands off the planchette. I wanted to know it was one of them doing the guiding. She nodded, a thoughtful expression on her round face. She was dressed soberly this evening, for her, which translated to a plum and orange dashiki. Her graying hair was piled on her head in a bun wrapped in a somber gray scarf, and she wore very little jewelry; just a crystal pendant that she said was her good-luck piece.
“I think I can help. Millicent seems to believe I have some abilities.” She smiled and chuckled. “Poor kid. I’m going to play that up.”
“What are you going to say?”
“Leave it to me.”
I was a little worried, but at heart Janice is smart and levelheaded, no matter how the way she dresses or plays the loopy owner of Crazy Lady Antiques and Collectibles indicates otherwise. We joined the cast and crew in the parlor. This was Millicent, Rishelle, and Janice’s party, and I, an observer. A very intent observer.
At dinner I had asked, in an amused voice, if they intended to film the event for posterity. There had been a gleam in Rishelle’s eyes as she took up the notion and soon demanded that it be filmed. Her husband seemed loath to fall in, but after some badgering by the women, Hugh, with a weary wave of his hand, had given permission for them to use the company cameras, and Todd went along with it. He had been doing his utmost to curry favor with the producer, finally realizing, it appeared, that his show was in jeopardy with Dirk gone. It was interesting that he hadn’t considered that until now, and left him in the running as a suspect.
Of course, neither Todd nor Hugh knew yet about Lizzie’s helpfulness in taking the memory cards out of the cameras to log, and our subsequent handing of them to the sheriff . . . our civic duty, we intended to explain if confronted about it. And by “we” I mean Virgil, who had said, in a steely tone, that if anyone dared question me or Lizzie about it to refer them to him. He’d take care of any questions. It was all well within Lizzie’s rights, we’d argue if pressed, since she had been given tacit permission to work on the equipment. And once she had the memory cards, she was obligated to hand them over to the police. Virgil was sitting in on the Ouija experiment because he was highly distrustful of the whole Haunt Hunt cast and crew.
Janice set the Ouija board on the low table around which we had arranged various chairs and settees. There was a lot of bickering over who would take part. Ultimately, the group decided on two sessions. They would start with Felice and Serina, both of whom rolled their eyes but agreed to participate, as well as Stu, Chi, and Ian. The second session would then be Arnie, Todd, Rishelle, Millicent, and Hugh, who shook his head in dismay, but when badgered agreed to go along for the sake of team unity. Janice would act as facilitator, directing the others, Lizzie would monitor the sound recording equipment when Serina was busy in her session, and Virgil, Pish, and I were going to silently observe, as would those not participating.
I was nervous, my stomach grumbling and knotting in waves of discomfort. One of the ten was a killer, and I still had very little idea which. There were subterranean tensions in this crew that I hadn’t mined. I didn’t know what to expect from the sessions, but I hoped there would be some revelation.
Even if nothing in particular came out of the Ouija sessions, my ultimate goal was to keep the group together and hopefully stir up some conversation that would tell us more about relationships, jealousies, conflicts; anything that may have led to Dirk’s demise. I wondered, was this a dangerous game we were about to play? I didn’t mean in a psychic or haunted way, but in an interpersonal dynamics way. Were we exacerbating tensions that were already stretched to the tearing point?
It was too late to turn back.
Janice’s board was an antique, quite large, with the alphabet in two arcs over the top, Yes and No in script on the top two corners, and Hello and Good Bye in the bottom corners. There were black-painted images of witches on brooms flying over rooftops along the bottom. The planchette was made of different wood and appeared handmade, in Janice’s expert antique appraisal. Perhaps the board’s original planchette went missing. This one was a round wooden table with four legs and had a hole cut in the middle, a glass lens that looked like a crystal watch face set in the hole.
Janice cleared her throat and held her head high, then met the gaze of each of the five people who sat on low chairs around the table. Virgil was perched in the far corner with his eyes on everyone, Pish was next to me, and the five not participating in the first session sat on chairs behind to watch. Pish’s delight in life is to orchestrate it, so he had cobbled together a playlist including some Saint-Saëns, Mussorgsky, and others I didn’t recognize. Good spooky music played softly in the background.
“Some of you may believe in the power of the Ouija board and some may not,” Janice said. Ian Mackenzie snorted, and she sent him a baleful look. “I don’t mind skeptics present, but I ask you to be polite to those of us engaged in the activity, at the very least.”
Millicent sniffed and glared through the dimness at him from her position sitting as an observer behind Felice. “Yes, Ian. Just because you’re a cynical jerk doesn’t mean some of us don’t want to be a part of this.”
“You’ll get your turn, Millie,” he said, his face red right up to his ginger hairline. “I have a right to express my opinion. This is crap, and you all know it.”
“Ian, don’t be mean to Millicent,” Chi said.
Ian flashed him a puzzled look. The guy was out of the loop, it appeared, concerning Chi’s affection for the psychic.
Janice shushed them. “Quiet, please! This is how it’s going to work: You five will place your fingers lightly on the little table and calm your breathing. I am appointing one of you to ask questions. I may suggest them, or you may think of them yourself.” As we had preplanned, she added, “Merry will be writing down any messages we receive.” I held up my notebook and pencil and smiled. She scanned the five who watched her expectantly. Surprisingly, she lit on the sound technician. “Your name is Serina, right?”
“Yeah. But I’m not one of the cast. I’m the sound engineer.”
“Would you take the lead and ask the board?”
Serina shrugged. “Okay. But I don’t know what to ask.”
“Well, let’s decide now. What do you all want to know?”
There was a babble of voices, but Janice held up one hand. “One at a time.” She pointed at each one, and they swiftly agreed on a list of questions.
I exchanged a look with Pish and gave Janice’s leadership the thumbs-up. Virgil caught my eye and nodded, then he melted back into the shadows as we lowered the lights, leaving dimly lit the upside-down tulip-shaped pendant light that hung over the center of the room. Danse macabre drifted through the room.
Ian rolled his eyes and sighed at the intentional drama of it all, but quieted down as Janice gave him a stern look. “Begin,” she said to Serina. “All of you, fingers lightly resting on the planchette, please.”
They did as told, and Serina began with, “Is there anybody with us?” Nothing. She repeated it, and still there was no movement. Five minutes passed, with variations of those words, and finally the planchette began to sway, slowly. It moved to center the glass bubble over Yes.
“Can you tell us your name?”
No.
“But you’re with us now?”
Yes.
“Do you have a message for us?”
Yes. It began to pick out letters with increasing rapidity. I scribbled them down, trying to figure out the message as I went until—“Enough!” I said, holding up one hand.
“What’s wrong?” Millicent cried from behind the Ouija players. “It was going so well. Don’t stop!”
I sighed and shook my head. “Unless you think the spirit is spelling out This is a waste of time and is a great pile of steaming cow poop, then I think we’re done with this session.”
Ian Mackenzie broke out in raucous laughter.
“Ian, how could you?” Rishelle said. “What a jerk!”
“Oh, come on, Rishelle. Even you can’t be dumb enough to think this is going to work.”
“Don’t talk to her that way,” Todd said.
But Rishelle didn’t need her husband’s help. “What are you working on this show for, if you don’t believe in spirits?”
“I do believe in spirits,” Ian shot back, his cheeks flaming. He tugged at a lock of red hair. “Or I wouldn’t have worked with Todd and Stu from the beginning. This is garbage! This isn’t science,” he said, waving at the Ouija board. “It’s hocus-pocus sideshow magic. It’s all Hugh’s fault for hiring Dirk and Millie in the first place.”
“Enough!” Janice said.
I was a little miffed she’d stopped them from squabbling, because this stuff is what I was hoping for, the conflict and tension. I found it interesting how irritated by the Ouija session Ian was. He seemed just as irritated by Dirk’s and Millicent’s inclusion as part of the show. But I let Janice order the first session finished. She had the participants change places with the others.
“I would like to lodge a protest,” Hugh said, shooting his wrist out of his cuff and straightening his cuff links as he took his seat at the table. “I, like Ian, do not believe in the board. I should think I will only be a hindrance to those who do.”
More than anything else, that illustrated that hiring psychics for Haunt Hunt was a pure ratings move on his part.
