Sing Goddess

Part 3

Such a threat from Nell would have made me mind my Ps and Qs but seconds after she left, Bella ran downstairs. Even though I told her that all the neighbors were coming, she wouldn’t leave.  She absolutely had to ask the Ouija Board just one question, just one question or she would die.  Seriously, she would die. Then, she promised, she’d go home. Right after that one question she’d leave.  

Stupidly I trusted her.

“Ok  Just one question.” 

They were a little shy that night, the Spirits of the Dead, jerking the planchette in slow stops and starts around the board, choosing letters at random which made no sense as words.  But it didn’t matter to Bella.  “Tell me Spirits, when is George coming?”

“Maybe we should ask them if the Beatles are coming.”   It was unthinkable that anyone I worshipped would willingly visit Reno Nevada.  It was a high desert town where nothing grew without a struggle, where the surrounding hills ignited yearly, filling the valley with choking smoke, and then, there were the casinos. 

“Of course they’re coming.  I told you I had a dream. Like in that poem Hardie was telling us about.”  

“The Iliad?  It was a story told by one blind guy to another for hundreds of years before it was even written down.”

“I thought he said there really was a war.”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean there were really a bunch of the gods standing on clouds over the battlefield betting on who was going to win, or whatever the heck they were doing.  They made up all those gods to explain why they’d lost some stupid war.”

“Who told you that?”

“Nell.  She said back then people didn’t want to take the blame for bad things they did so they claimed the gods made them do it.  The gods were just like humans but they could never die so they got greedy and selfish and starting having fights with each other because they had nothing else to do.  And then the gods would chose some stupid mortal to fight for them cause I guess they could never really fight either. Kind of dumb, huh?”

Bella looked at me blankly. “There is only one God and he does get angry. He loves everyone. Anyway, who cares about those stupid Trojans. In my dream I told George to come get me and he said he would.”

Am I as deluded as Bella Muselik? I thought. Boys at school avoided her like the plague but George Harrison of the Beatles was coming from the other side of the planet just for her? Maybe if she dyed her hair blond and starved herself super skinny, maybe then she’d have some small iota of chance.   What about me?  Maybe all those love songs weren’t written especially for me.  Maybe I was just as delusional as her.  

Suddenly the planchette skittered from one side of the board to the other as though confused, ending with a jig around the middle of the alphabet. I lifted up my fingers and sure enough, it crashed on a Z.

“You were pushing.  I’m not going to play anymore.”

“I was not! Let’s just try once more.  Please. Spirits of the Dead, are the Beatles coming to Reno Nevada ?” 

“One last time and that’s it.”  

“Ok, ok.  I promise.”

 This time the planchette spun in wide circles around the board, not pausing anywhere but twirling around and around. “I’m not pushing, honest, the Spirits have taken over!”  Bella’s eyea turned a freaky shade of green just as the rain, which had been holding off,  began blasting the casement windows.  Overhead I could  heard the door open and footsteps as the mourners arrived. It sounded like there were more than the thirty people mother promised. It sounded more like fifty or sixty. The planchette launched itself off the board somewhere in between Maybe and Yes.