Joe Hill - Heart-Shaped Box

Georgia’s good hand had remained on the pointer, and no sooner had it rattled back to rest on the board than it began to move. The sensation was unnatural and made Jude’s heart race. It felt as if there were another pair of fingers on the planchette, a third hand, reaching into the space between his hand and Georgia’s and sliding the pointer around, turning it without warning. It slipped across the board, touched a letter, stayed there for a moment, then spun under their fingers, forcing Jude to twist his wrist to keep his hand on it.

“W,” Georgia said. She was audibly short of breath. “H. A. T.”

“What,” Jude said. The pointer went on finding letters, and Georgia continued calling them out: a K, an E. Jude listened, concentrating on what was being spelled.

Jude: “Kept. You.”

The planchette made a half turn—and stopped, its little casters squeaking faintly.

“What kept you,” Jude repeated.

“What if it isn’t her? What if it’s him? How do we know who we’re talking to?”

The planchette surged, before Georgia had even finished speaking. It was like having a finger on a record that has suddenly begun to turn.

Georgia: “W. H. Y. I….”

Jude: “Why. Is. The. Sky. Blue.” The pointer went still. “It’s her. She always said she’d rather ask questions than answer them. Got to be kind of a joke between us.”

It was her. Pictures skipped in his head, a series of vivid stills. She was in the backseat of the Mustang, naked on the white leather except for her cowboy boots and a feathered ten-gallon hat, peeking out at him from under the brim, eyes bright with mischief. She was yanking his beard backstage at the Trent Reznor show, and he was biting the inside of his cheek to keep from shouting. She was dead in the bathtub, a thing he hadn’t ever seen except in his mind, and the water was ink, and her stepfather, in his black undertaker’s suit, was on his knees beside the tub, as if to pray.

“Go on, Jude,” Georgia said. “Talk to her.”

Her voice was strained, pitched to just above a whisper. When Jude glanced up at Georgia, she was shivering, although her face was aglow with sweat. Her eyes glittered from deep in their dark and bony hollows…fever eyes.

“Are you all right?”

Georgia shook her head— Leave me alone —and shuddered furiously. Her left hand remained on the pointer. “Talk to her.”

He looked back at the board. The black moon stamped on one corner was laughing. Hadn’t it been glowering a moment before? A black dog at the bottom of the board was howling up at it. He didn’t think it had been there when they first opened the board.

He said, “I didn’t know how to help you. I’m sorry, kiddo. I wish you fell in love with anyone but me. I wish you fell in love with one of the good guys. Someone who wouldn’t have just sent you away when things got hard.”

“A. R. E. Y. O….” Georgia read, in that same effortful, short-of-breath voice. He could hear, in that voice, the work it took to suppress her shivering.

“Are. You. Angry.”

The pointer went still.

Jude felt a boil of emotions, so many things, all at once, he wasn’t sure he could put them into words. But he could, and it turned out to be easy.

“Yes,” he said.

The pointer flew to the word NO.

“You shouldn’t have done that to yourself.”

“D. O. N….”

“Done. What.” Jude read. “Done what? You know what. Killed your—”

The pointer skidded back to the word NO.

“What do you mean, no?”

Georgia spoke the letters aloud, a W, an H, an A.

“What. If. I. Can’t. Answer.” The pointer came to rest again. Jude stared for a moment, then understood. “She can’t answer questions. She can only ask them.”

But Georgia was already spelling again. “I. S. H. E. A….”

A great fit of shivering overcame her, so her teeth clattered, and when Jude glanced at her, he saw the breath steam from her lips, as if she were standing in a cold-storage vault. Only the room didn’t feel any warmer or colder to Jude.

The next thing he noticed was that Georgia wasn’t looking at her hand on the pointer, or at him, or at anything. Her eyes had gone unfocused, fixed on the middle distance. Georgia went on reciting the letters aloud, as the planchette touched them, but she wasn’t looking at the board anymore, couldn’t see what it was doing.

“Is.” Jude read as Georgia spelled the words in a strained monotone. “He. After. You.”

Georgia quit calling the letters, and he realized a question had been asked.

“Yes. Yeah. He thinks it’s my fault you killed yourself, and now he’s playing get-even.”

NO. The planchette pointed at it for a long, emphatic moment before beginning to scurry about again.

“W. H. Y. R. U….” Georgia muttered thickly.

“Why. Are. You. So. Dumb.” Jude fell silent, staring.

One of the dogs on the bed whined.

Then Jude understood. He felt overcome for a moment by a sensation of light-headedness and profound disorientation. It was like the head rush that comes from standing up too quickly. It was also a little like feeling rotten ice give way underfoot, the first terrible moment of plunge. It staggered him, that it had taken him so long to understand.

“Fucker,” Jude said. “That fucker.”

He noticed that Bon was awake, staring apprehensively at the Ouija board. Angus was watching, too, his tail thumping against the mattress.

“What can we do?” Jude said. “He’s coming after us, and we don’t know how to get rid of him. Can you help us?”

The pointer swung toward the word YES.

“The golden door,” Georgia whispered.

Jude looked at her—and recoiled. Her eyes had rolled up in her head, to show only the whites, and her whole body was steadily, furiously trembling. Her face, which had already been so pale it was like wax, had lost even more color, taking on an unpleasant translucence. Her breath steamed. He heard the planchette beginning to scrape and slide wildly across the board, looked back down. Georgia wasn’t spelling for him anymore, wasn’t speaking. He strung together the words himself.

“Who. Will. Be. The. Door. Who will be the door?”

“I will be the door,” Georgia said.

“Georgia?” Jude said. “What are you talking about?”

The pointer began to move again. Jude didn’t speak now, just watched it finding letters, hesitating on each for only an instant before whirring on.

Will. U. Bring. Me. Thru.

“Yes,” Georgia said. “If I can. I’ll make the door, and I’ll bring you through, and then you’ll stop him.”

Do. You. Swear.

“I swear,” she said. Her voice was thin and compressed and strained with her fear. “I swear I swear oh God I swear. Whatever I have to do, I just don’t know what to do. I’m ready to do whatever I have to do, just tell me what it is.”

Do. You. Have. A. Mirror. Marybeth.

“Why?” Georgia said, blinking, her eyes rolling back down to look blearily about. She turned her head toward her dresser. “There’s one—”

She screamed. Her fingers sprang up off the pointer, and she pressed her hands to her mouth to stifle the cry. In the same instant, Angus came to his feet and began to bark from where he stood on the bed. He was staring at what she was staring at. By then Jude was twisting to see for himself, his own fingers leaving the planchette—which began to spin around and around on its own, a kid doing doughnuts on his dirt bike.

The mirror on the dresser was tilted forward to show Georgia, sitting across from Jude, with the Ouija board between them. Only in the mirror her eyes were covered by a blindfold of black gauze and her throat was slashed. A red mouth gaped obscenely across it, and her shirt was soaked in blood.