The White House - Book 6, The Porth Kerensa Series

Chapter Twenty-One

The house had been chilly all afternoon, but as night fell it got colder and even the central heating on full blast didn’t seem to warm it. Elise procrastinated with dinner, the washing up afterwards and coffee whilst Val sat and waited, impatiently tapping the box and looking at the clock. Eventually Elise followed her up to the lounge and sat on the sofa. 

She cleared her throat and said, nervously, “How are we going to do this?” 

Val placed the wooden board on the table and grinned. “One of us needs to write things down and the other one can touch the planchette. What do you want to do?”

“I’ll do the writing,” Elise replied, quietly.

“I knew you’d say that,” Val said, chuckling. She sipped her wine and tilted her head to listen to the constant steady creak of the rocking horse in the attic that had been going on all the way through their dinner, although it had grown more frantic since they’d got the Ouija board out. “Do you think he’ll stop playing and speak to us?”

“He’s not playing,” Elise whispered and shivered. “He’s trying to escape from whatever else is here.”

Val smiled and her blue eyes sparkled, mischievously. “It’s just as well I’m not scared.” She handed the pad and pen to Elise and placed the planchette on the board. She reached out to place her fingers on it then paused and looked at Elise, seriously. “Do you trust me not to push this around the board myself?”

Elise nodded. “Of course I do.” She glanced at the clock and waved her hand for Val to hurry up. “Come on, I’ve put this off for long enough; let’s get this show on the road…James could walk in at any moment.”

Val touched her fingers to the planchette and pushed it around the board a few times before taking it back to the middle.

“We want to speak to the spirits that inhabit this house with us,” she said, loudly. “Will you come and talk to us?”

Nothing happened and Elise couldn’t help letting out the breath she’d been holding in. Val wiggled the planchette and repeated the question. They sat for a few minutes waiting, but the pointer remained, stubbornly, still.

“I don’t think this is going to work,” Elise whispered after ten minutes had passed.

Val glanced at her and up at the ceiling. “The horse has stopped rocking.”

An icy shiver prickled down Elise’s neck at the sudden silence that blanketed the house. She shuffled closer to Val and said, “Ask it again.”

Val nodded and opened her mouth to speak, but she was cut off by a loud bang as the attic door slammed shut, emphatically. A few seconds later the temperature plummeted and one of the lamps began to flicker, intermittently. Slowly, the planchette edged towards the word, yes.

Val smiled and said, “Hello and thank you for talking to me. Can you tell me your name?”

It slid, jerkily, to ‘No’.

“Are you in the house with us?”

‘YES’.

The hairs on Elise’s neck stood on end and she couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was standing right behind her. She glanced around, even though she knew there was no one there…and in the corner the lamp kept flickering on and off.

Val nudged her to pay attention and said, “What do you want?”

With laboured dragging movements the planchette began to move around the letters.

‘E…L…I…S…E…T…A…L…K’.

Val glanced at Elise who shook her head, vehemently. “Elise is writing the letters down for us. She can hear you; you’re talking to both of us. Please, tell us who you are. Are you Oliver?”