Carol O'Connell - Bone by Bone

"Was I?"

"You and the judge go out to Evelyn's old cabin and-"

"No," said Hannah. "We used to go to the séances, but not anymore, not for years and years. But sometimes we watch the videotapes." Rising from the rocker, she kept hold of his hand and pulled him toward the porch steps. "We should go now while there's still some light."

The tiny woman peered over the steering wheel, sometimes rising off the seat to get a better view of the hairpin turns on this mountain road. It was scary and dangerous and great fun. Oren sensed that a legal driver's license might take some of the joy out of Hannah's rides.

They were the first to arrive at the old cabin. Though parking spaces out front were plentiful, she drove down and around to the back and stopped by the door to the crawl space. Hannah cut the ignition and searched the ring of keys until she found the one she wanted. "Let's go."

"How do you happen to have a key?"

"This one belongs to the judge." She fitted it into the lock and opened the door to the sound of an exhaust fan.

"Do people know they're being videotaped?"

"Of course. Evelyn sells copies to hotel guests, the ones who come for the séances."

"And what about the local people?"

Hannah hesitated too long. "Oh, I'm sure they know." She reached into the darkness and flipped a wall switch to flood the small room with light. From a nest of cables, lines trailed upward and disappeared into the low ceiling. He recognized the wicker armchairs as worn castoffs from the verandah of the Straub Hotel. Outdated recording equipment sat on a table alongside a pair of old television sets that would only accept video-cassettes.

"It's a little old-fashioned. Evelyn wants to change over to DVDs and computer monitors, but you know your father. He doesn't take well to change." Hannah slipped a cassette into a slot at the base of one of the TV sets.

"Never mind the tourists," said Oren. "Are you sure the locals know they're being filmed?"

"Once a cop, always a cop." She plucked a sheet of paper from a stack on the table. "This is the consent form. Everybody signs one. You can't say they don't get a sporting chance. It starts out by holding Evelyn harmless for heart attacks and hauntings, strokes and madness, hair turning white from fright. Lots of nonsense like that. And then, toward the bottom of the page, the consent for the taping is buried somewhere in all that legalese. But that comes long after people get tired of reading the damn thing. Usually, they just sign it." She fed another cassette into the second television. "There's two cameras. One shows the whole room, but this one's my favorite view."

Oren stared at the screen with the overhead camera angle. It looked down at the card table and the tops of the players' heads all leaning toward the Ouija board.

"That's a homemade witchboard," said Hannah. "Nothing like the one you and Josh used to play with. As I recall, that one glowed in the dark."

"And you burned it."

On the videotape, the players' fingers were touching the small wooden heart as it moved in wide circles around the board, faster and faster. Then it stopped. Alice Friday led the chant as they all looked through the hole in the heart and called out the letter S. The planchette moved again to settle over another letter.

"They're always talking to your brother-the spirit guide, always asking him how he died. It was like that from the beginning. No one ever asked if he ran away." Hannah pointed to shelves of cassettes lining the back wall of the crawl space. "There's lots of tapes with nothing but gibberish. Some nights the board spells out real words and whole sentences. Depends on who's playing."

Oren focused on one of the players. All he could see from this camera angle was the pale crown of blond hair. He turned to the second screen and identified her in this ground-level shot of the table. "Is Mrs. Winston a regular?"

Hannah nodded. "She's on quite a few tapes."

The wall of shelves held a daunting array of cassettes. How long would it take to view all of them? "Just tell me the highlights. Give me the-"

"Maybe this was a mistake," she said. "My interference always comes to a bad end, and I should know that by now."

He could hear the muffled sound of engines and car doors closing outside. And now, overhead, feet were walking on the cabin floor. "We stayed too long."

"The hell you say. We're going to the séance tonight."

"I don't think Mrs. Straub would like that."

"No one's ever turned away-except Cable Babitt. Evelyn never minded when he'd send a deputy out here now and then-so long as it wasn't somebody in uniform. But then, Cable started driving his jeep up the fire road every damn night. Well, that road only leads to this cabin."

And, farther on, a hole full of bones.

"So Evelyn figured he was spying on her full-time. These days he can't legally come within two hundred yards of this place." Hannah rose from her chair. "Stay here if you like. I'm going to the séance."

He followed her outside and up the back stairs to the kitchen door. "I'll just watch."

"You should play," said Hannah. "It's only scary for true believers." She looked up at him and smiled-a clear invitation to a dare.

They passed through the kitchen and walked into the small front room. The chairs around the card table were filled, and other people waited their turn in the dark. Hannah spoke in whispers. "You remember why I took that old witchboard away from you and Josh? I bet you still remember your nightmares."

He did. And he also remembered Josh's bad dreams, the screaming in the night that had always followed visits from their good-deed lady, the old woman who once lived on Paulson Lane. The dead Mrs. Underwood had spelled out vile curses on a witchboard that two small boys had purchased at the dry-goods store.

"Will Mrs. Winston be here tonight?"

"Maybe," said Hannah. "It's catch as catch can with her. Addison likes to think that he knows where his wife is every minute of the day and night. He also thinks Sarah stopped driving when she lost her license. But, I'll tell you, the lady gets around."

"You think Josh could've photographed a secret of hers?"

"I don't see her killing the boy, if that's what you're asking." She lightly poked him in the ribs with her elbow. "Watch the game. Listen."

The small piece of wood moved around the board, making a slow circle over the characters of the alphabet, and then it picked up speed. Each time it stopped, the players called out the letter framed in the planchette's circle.

Hannah whispered, "I tried to explain this when you were a boy, but I don't think you were listening-not then. The players don't decide to make the planchette stop and start. There's no decisions being made. The hands have brains of their own. And the mind of a true believer calls it magic."

"Or somebody's cheating."

"No one cheats," she said. "And it's not magical."

Ferris Monty, who believed in nothing, sat with his back to the shadow side of the room. Oh, the things he did for his art.

He drank in the details of candlelight and a magic act, making mental notes about the abundance of spiderwebs and a tree limb growing through a broken window. This was his first séance, and he had been unprepared for the movement of the planchette. Though it was in contact with so many hands, he would swear the small wooden heart moved around the board of its own volition. This was no manipulation by the psychic. Her hands never touched it. According to his research among the citizens of Coventry, Alice Friday was the only constant presence; the others were replaced with new players for every session. And so he could also rule out a confederate in this mix of townspeople and tourists.

The planchette circled the Ouija board, moving faster and faster, and he felt inexplicable exhilaration. He looked up at the psychic. Her eyes were closed, and she trembled-and so did the heart-shaped piece of wood beneath the tips of his fingers.