Alexandra Sokoloff - The Harrowing

There was a silence, then Cain suddenly reached from the couch, touched her arm. “Who doesn’t?”

She looked at him, felt tears push at her eyes and throat. She raised the bottle and drank, grateful for the sting of whiskey. Then she looked again at Cain and extended the bottle, meeting his eyes in the darkness.

She could almost feel him pull back, though he didn’t move. Then he took the bottle, spoke flatly. “Mother— dead. Father—unknown.” His lips twisted. “In case you’re wondering, foster care in this country is truly for shit.”

He drank without looking at anyone, then turned to Patrick, holding the bottle out.

Patrick looked at the bottle, slumped deliberately back against the armchair. “Ha. No way, losers.”

Cain and Lisa exploded at him simultaneously.

“You pussy.” Lisa shoved his leg hard.

“Cough it up, wuss.”

Patrick’s eyes darted around, defensive. Robin looked at him with silent reproach.

Patrick grabbed the bottle from Cain. He took a deep toke from his joint, spoke through held breath. “Prominent surgeon Dad commits Mom to mental hospital to get custody of son. Pumps son full of steroids to create ultimate football machine.”

He exhaled smoke, stared at the three of them truculently. There was a stunned silence as the words sunk in.

Cain spoke softly into the void. “And you hate football.”

Patrick smiled thinly. “Got that right, Coach. But it’s all I know.” He chugged whiskey. Behind him, logs snapped and popped in the fireplace.

Martin coughed in the back. They all turned, surprised, as he began to speak, the flickering light from the candles playing over his face. “Orthodox rabbi father’s only wish is for only son to take over rabbinate. Only—son doesn’t believe in God.”

He started to laugh, then stopped abruptly. A silence fell again, a speechless intimacy. Smoke from the joint drifted in the air, burned harsh in Robin’s throat.

Lisa spoke dryly. “Well, that was fun. What the hell do we do next?” She pushed herself up and stood, stretching languidly as she meandered toward the built-in walnut cabinets.

Robin looked at Cain and Patrick, then leaned over for the bottle of whiskey and stood. She walked over to Martin’s table and stopped beside him, extended the bottle.

He looked up at her, startled, blushing. Robin pushed the bottle closer, insistent. Martin reached hesitantly to take it.

In the room behind them, Lisa screamed.

Everyone jumped, twisting toward her. She was half inside the built-in game cupboard by the fireplace, tugging at something.

She pulled back, freeing a long box from beneath a stack of old board games, and turned into the room to display her find.

“Looky looky.”

The rectangular box was brown with age and frayed at the edges, but Robin recognized the graphic on the front instantly. A Ouija board.

Lisa’s face was glowing, energized. She carried the box over to a round table and dragged the table across the carpet, positioned it in front of the fire. “I bet there’re plenty of spirits in this old place.”

Robin got a brief glance of faded handwriting on the inside cover of the box as Lisa took the board out and set it up on the table’s surface.

Robin watched her with a dreamlike sense of unreality. A séance? It was too weird. She’d just been reading about Jung and séances the night before.

On the floor in front of the hearth, Patrick pulled out the Zig-Zag papers and started to roll another joint. “Then we can play Spin the Bottle, and sing ‘Kumbaya’ around the fire.”

Lisa flipped him off and darted back to the study tables in the dark end of the room. She sidestepped Robin and smiled sweetly down at Martin as she snagged one of his candles. She crossed back to the round table, shielding the flame with a cupped hand, and set the candle down, then sat in front of the board and looked around expectantly. “Who’s going to do it with me?”

None of the guys moved.

Lisa looked back at Robin. “Come on, you look sensitive to me.” Her eyes held Robin’s across the long room. There was a challenge in the air, and a charge that was almost erotic. Robin was very aware of all three guys watching them with heightened interest, and she envied Lisa her brash narcissism. She knew how to play a room; it was impossible to ignore her.

Lisa half-smiled, as if reading Robin’s mind. Her eyes flicked to Patrick knowingly. “They really want us to, you know. Guys love to watch.” Her gaze locked back on Robin’s.

All right, then , Robin thought suddenly. I can play, too .

She walked across the room to the table, pulled out a chair, and sat down opposite Lisa.

Lisa’s smile broadened. “I’ll be gentle.” She reached to put her fingers, tipped in polish the color of dried blood, on the heart-shaped wooden planchette. After a moment, Robin did, too. It was a familiar feeling, an instant sense memory of childhood. I guess just about everyone’s done it, on a rainy night like this.

Sprawled on the floor, Patrick laughed to himself as he licked the edges of the joint.

“‘Double, double, toil and trouble…’”

“Shut up,” Lisa ordered. She looked across the table at Robin in the firelight, daring her. “Let’s get someone good.” Robin had to admit she made a convincing Gypsy, with her wild hair, lace camisole peeking out of a torn sweater, rings glinting on her slender fingers.

Robin stared down at the board. It was old—yellowed with age, not the faux finish of a modern mass-production. Antiquated letters at the bottom spelled out BALTIMORE TALKING BOARD. The wood was blackened around the edges, almost as if it had been—

Burned .

The realization gave her a shiver of unease.

Lisa raised her voice, addressed the darkness beyond the glowing circle of the fire. “Is there anyone there?” Her eyes shone across the table, knowing as a cat’s.

“Did Alabama score?” Patrick said through an exhalation of green-smelling smoke.

Lisa kicked at him from beneath the table. She spoke to the board and the ceiling at the same time. “Does anyone want to speak to us?”

Robin kept her gaze on the black letters on the board, the wooden indicator beneath her hands. Rain gusted outside, pounding into the pavement. There was no movement at all.

Lisa winked at Robin. “We’d like someone dark…and mysterious…and sexy as hell.”

Cain’s head was tipped back against the armrest of the couch. Smoke drifted toward the ceiling from his cigarette. “There are 900 numbers you can call for this.”

Lisa spoke over him, ignoring him. “Is anyone there?’

They listened to the silence. The logs crackled. The planchette was motionless under their fingers.

Robin felt drowsy from the pot and from the comfortable darkness. The heat from the fire shimmered in the room. She gazed into the shimmering, and again felt the presence that she had noticed before from the house, a sense of curious waiting, of leaning forward

Violent longing stabbed through her—a wish that something would happen, that someone would hear, move, respond, that a door would open and everything, everything, would change.

There was a sort of electric tingling under her fingers….

The planchette suddenly moved to

Robin jumped.

Across the table, Lisa gasped slightly, then looked sharply at Robin. Her green gaze narrowed. “Way to go.”

Robin stared back at her. So that’s the way it’s going to be , she thought. The Lisa show .

Patrick rolled over on the floor, raised himself up on an elbow to make a circular motion with his hand. “Ladies, ladies—momentum.”