William Meikle: The Hole

“I don’t know about this…” he started, but stopped when the blonde put a warm hand on his knee.

“Just tell them, Fred,” Tricia said. “Tell them the story. Just the way you told me. Please?”

In truth he struggled to remember if he’d put any embellishment into the tale on its earlier telling, but it didn’t seem to matter. The others lapped it up as if he were relaying the Ten Commandments.

“As Charlie tells it, they’re still down there, somewhere. The bodies were never found,” he said, pushing down another chill that threatened to have him shivering.

“We should totally try to contact them,” the blonde said.

“Maybe they can tell us what’s causing the hole in the hollow?” the man on the sofa said.

Shit, I might be drunk, but at least I’m not stupid.

Fred started to move, intending to get up and leave, but Tricia pressed her back more firmly against his legs and squirmed. Fred sat back in the chair and chugged some beer.

Let them have some fun. Nothing will come of it, and maybe I can get her alone for a time later.

“You’ve done this before then?” Fred asked. Tricia turned to look at him and he felt her breasts jiggle against his knee, distracting him so much he nearly dropped his beer.

“Not since I was a kid,” she said. “But it works more often than not.”

“What do you mean, works ?”

“We can talk to the spirits. Get messages from those who have passed on.”

“Bullshit.”

She smiled to let him see that she wasn’t offended.

“No, really. It answers questions. There’s a theory that it all comes from our own subconscious and we move the glass by micromovements in our fingers controlled by our unconscious minds but…”

She stopped. Fred had zoned out again, losing interest halfway through her sentence, and she’d obviously noticed. Once again, it didn’t seem to affect her good humor. She smiled at him again, then turned back towards the table.

“Let’s do it.”

Fred felt an almost palpable sense of loss as her weight lifted from his legs. She only went as far as the coffee table, setting an upturned glass in the middle of the board. She patted the floor beside her. “Come on down here,” she said. “We all need to be touching the glass or it won’t work.”

Fred got off the armchair, and his legs wobbled alarmingly under him. He tried to kneel, overbalanced, and almost head-butted the coffee table before managing to right himself. Tricia laughed and steadied him with a hand on his shoulder. She took the beer from him and put it to one side.

“I’ve got a bottle of rye in the cupboard,” she said. “We can start to party soon. But first, I really want to do this. Please?”

I never could resist a blue-eyed woman.

He nodded, carefully, unsure of how steady he was. Her answering smile improved matters considerably. He made sure he wasn’t about to fall over and settled in at Tricia’s side. The other two moved to take up position around the coffee table.

“What now?” Fred asked. He was starting to regret ever leaving The Roadside, but he just had to look to his left and see Tricia to remind him why he’d allowed himself to be brought here. Even if he couldn’t remember doing it, his instincts would always follow a blonde, no matter how drunk he was.

“Now we stay quiet,” she replied. “Just put a finger on the glass, and let me ask all the questions.”

Fred did as he was told. In truth, he had no idea what was going on, and just hoped to see it through as fast as possible so he could find out what Tricia’s idea of a party might be. The other two present, whose names Fred still didn’t know, seemed as serious as Tricia about this séance, so Fred let them have their head. He kept a finger on the glass in the center of the board, but with the other hand he continued to smoke a cigarette and swig from the beer bottle.

The glass under his finger on the board felt cold to the touch, as if it had just been taken out of a fridge.

“Is anybody there?” Tricia said, in a tone so solemn and fake that Fred let out a snort of laughter.

“Ain’t nobody here but us chickens.”

That got him a look that told him to behave, and a smile that reminded him of the possibility of a party. Suitably chastised, he kept quiet as she went back to concentrating on the glass. Her tongue poked wetly from her lips, and Fred decided, yet again, that he might stay a bit longer.

“Is anybody there?” she asked.

Fred resisted an almost overwhelming urge to speak up again.

The room fell quiet.

“Is it getting colder?” the man opposite him whispered. “I’m sure it’s getting colder.”

All Fred felt was a cramp, slowly spreading in his left leg; that, and an insistent urge to pee.

“Is anybody there?” Tricia asked again.

The glass moved, slowly at first, with a jerk, then more smoothly, centering itself over the faded YES on the board. To Fred it felt like the glass was hovering under his finger, moving like a flat-bottomed stone on smooth ice.

“You moved it,” the man across the table said. Tricia was looking wide-eyed at the glass. She shook her head.

“Not me.”

Fred was too shocked to answer, and the girl on his other side merely sat gaping, open-mouthed in wonder. Before anyone could speak, the glass moved again. It felt like it floated under his finger, scarcely touching the board at all. It circled the inner part of the board counterclockwise, as if waiting.

“Ask it something,” the man whispered.

Please don’t.

“Who are you?” Tricia said, softly.

The glass moved over the board. Tricia spoke the letters where it paused.

“F… R… E… D… I… S… D… E… A… D.”

“What the hell does that mean?” the man opposite said. Fred scarcely heard him. He’d already read the message, and his mind was filled again with pictures of a pale slithering thing in deep darkness. His heartbeat pounded in his ears and a sudden nausea gripped his guts. He stood, too fast, scattering the Ouija board, the glass and two beers across the trailer floor as he made for the washroom.

He only just made it. He emptied his stomach in one heave, tasting beer coming back up. Another spasm hit, then another. Every time he thought he was done, he saw the glass move in his mind’s eye, spelling out the letters.

F… R… E… D… I… S… D… E… A… D

What the fuck is going on here?

He had no answers. He stayed in the washroom for a while until his guts eased and he felt he could move without chucking up.

Screw this. I’m going home.

But by the time he returned to the main living area, the other three had the board set up, and the glass was once again moving smoothly across the board.

“You okay?” Tricia asked. She looked up and smiled. That was enough to get him to sit beside her again.

But there ain’t no way I’m touching that glass.

Tricia handed him a notebook with messages written in a scrawled hand.

“I think it’s them,” she whispered. “I think it’s your men from down the mine.”

She went back to the board with the others as Fred read the call-and-response in the scribbled notes, the knot in the pit of his stomach getting tighter with every line.

“Who are you?”

“FredJoeGeorge.”

“Where are you?”

“Fred is dead.”

“Where are you?”

“With Fred.”

“Are you in Hopman’s Hollow?”

“Fred is. Fred is dead.”

“Did you cause the hole to collapse?”

“Fred did. Fred is dead.”