Hello again, everyone. I apologized at the beginning of the last post for taking so long to update and then took incrementally longer this time, so I’m sorry-er now. There’s been A Lot, capital A, capital Lot, going on lately, and while I will get to that at some point in the near future, it isn’t what today’s story is going to focus on.

When I said before that we’ll take anything anyone’s willing to donate to our abysmally slim excuse for a collection, I meant anything.

If you don’t remember that (and you probably don’t, considering that it’s been approximately one thousand years), it was back in our very first installment, which you can read here if you have no idea who I am or what I’m talking about. If you do know both of these things but you aren’t sure if you’re totally caught up, here's the most recent part of the saga.

Anyway, somebody brought in a totally customized (like, personalized to them—it made no sense to us) Cards Against Humanity deck recently and it started up a conversation about some of the most off the wall donations we’ve ever received, which reminded me of something that happened a while ago that I feel like is definitely worthy of a post.

It was a Thursday night. The entire crew was working, which is rare, but happens every once in a while when we’ve been busy enough that we’ve all got something to do. I watched from my “office” as somebody struggled to open the front door, Jenny rushing out from behind the desk to help a second before the effort would’ve been wasted. She used her foot as a doorstop and ushered in a man who was precariously balancing a tall stack of large, cardboard boxes in his arms.

“—can just set them down right here on the desk,” I heard Jenny telling him as they drew nearer. “We sure appreciate it!”

The man eased the boxes down, straightening them to ensure that they wouldn’t fall, and literally tipped his literal hat before turning to leave.

“Donations?” I asked, poking my head around the corner.

“Yup,” Jenny confirmed, popping her gum. “Wanna help me take ‘em to Alice?”

I obliged, hoisting a couple of the boxes off the counter and following Jenny’s lead back toward the unmistakable sound of Alice’s nails clicking against her keyboard.

“Presents,” Jenny announced, dropping her boxes with a thunk and leaning back against the wall, arms crossed over her chest. “Can we get a live unpackaging?”

“Thank you,” Alice said, accepting my boxes and placing them to her other side. Then, to Jenny, “Sure, but it’ll probably be boring. They’re heavy. Bet they’re textbooks or something.”

This is the part in the movie where the narrator cuts in and is like, “They were not, in fact, textbooks.” I wish a real-time narrator could’ve cut in right then and told us that, but apparently that’s not how life works, so. We opened them.

The first one, in all fairness, was unassuming. It was full of books on astrology, dreams, tarot reading, etcetera, etcetera. Very new-age mysticism, which is popular enough that even with a collection as limited as ours we have a small section for it. After that, though, shit got weird.

The next box also contained books, but they had no jackets and no titles, just identical leather binding.

“What the hell?” Jenny said, leaning over Alice to pick one up. When she flipped it open, we were met with a cover page filled with someone’s messy, inked scrawl.

At first, I thought I couldn’t decipher it just because the handwriting was such a wreck, but I quickly realized that, while they might resemble familiar letters, the markings on the page didn’t belong anywhere in the English alphabet. I scanned the entire page, eyes looking to zero in on something they could make sense of, and just when I was about to call it quits, I landed on the very last line.

“By my mind and by my spirit,” I read aloud. “The fuck is this?”

Jenny snatched another book from the box and flipped back the cover to reveal a remarkably similar display to that of the one I held. Not identical—the penmanship didn’t match perfectly and a slightly smaller expanse of the page was taken up—but it was covered in the same symbols and ended in the same sign-off.

“How many of them are there?”

Alice sifted through them and then, after a moment, reported, “Seven, including those two.”

Upon closer inspection, we discovered that, while several of the tomes had what looked to be a few pages torn out in the front, they were mostly undisturbed. There was no writing or marking of any kind past the flyleaf. Reluctantly, given that there wasn’t much else to explore without the ability to understand the glyphs, we set that box aside and moved on to the next.

At first glance, it looked to be filled with swathes of fabric. But I realized when I made to pick one up that the fabric simply acted as a wrapping for various other objects. For example, once the red silk fell away, in my hand lay a muslin bag bearing a twine tie and a tag that read osteomancy. When I turned it over, something rattled inside.

“Open it,” Jenny urged.

Something deep in the pit of my stomach told me I shouldn’t, but mama didn’t raise no bitch or whatever it is the kids are saying these days, so I did. And then, because I am, in fact, a little bitch, I dropped it, which prompted the bones that had shocked me into letting it go to roll out and scatter over the desk.

“Shit,” Alice remarked, startled. “What the fuck is that?”

“Rabbit,” Jenny guessed confidently, and then defended, “What? My dad hunted,” when Alice glanced questioningly up at her.

“Do we even wanna know what else is in here?” I asked, swiftly gathering the bones and slipping them back into their sachet.

Alice was already elbow-deep in the box. She withdrew a parcel covered in black tulle and unraveled it to reveal a small, wooden chest with a gold embossed label: tasseomancy. Cautiously unhooking the latch, she swung the lid open to reveal…

“...A teacup? Seriously? I get a dead animal and all you pull out is a teacup?”

“With tea,” Alice corrected, lifting a single-use tin of loose-leaf tea from inside the cup. “And it was hardly a dead animal. Stop being dramatic, you’re not even a vegetarian.”

I didn’t technically have a counter, so I shut up.

Alice placed the tea next to the bag of bones and Jenny drew the next item from the box. This one, it was clear, was a set of playing cards. Only, instead of a brand or picture on the packaging, there was a single, printed word. Cartomancy. When we pulled them out, we found that the cards themselves were entirely ordinary. I’m not sure what I expected, but there was nothing unusual about the suits or the colors or the imagery at all.

“Boring,” Jenny said, frowning. “Next?”

As it turned out, there was only one more thing to retrieve, which was surprising considering the amount of space it took up. It was a large, silver case, with scrying etched across the lid in calligraphic scroll, and when I opened it up, there were several separate parcels wrapped in linen and cotton and lace.

The first was labeled captromancy and contained a heavy, iron hand mirror—except the glass wasn’t reflective, it was solid black. The next was hydromancy, and inside was a black ceramic bowl along with a small glass jar of water, which some purple stones had settled to the bottom of. Then pyromancy (two taper candles—one black, one white—with brass stands), then carromancy/encromancy (sealing wax and a pot of ink), and, finally, spheromancy. Yes, as in a sphere. As in a crystal ball. Except it didn’t look like the ones in the movies—rather than being crystal (hah, get it?) clear, it was filled with cloudy, almost milky inclusions.

Jenny whistled. “Ho-ly balls. That is a chunk of quartz.” This garnered inquisitive brow raises from both Alice and myself, to which Jenny’s response was, “My dad was into rockhounding, too. Get off my ass.”

“Only one left,” Alice observed, nodding to the lone remaining untouched box. “Any guesses?”

Jenny snorted. “What if it’s just, like, something totally normal? Like, ‘Oh, here’s all this occult shit and also some cookbooks’?”

We all knew it wouldn’t be cookbooks.

Alice opened the box.

At first, I thought I was looking at a cutting board. It was just a giant slab of wood, so large it barely fit flush with the bottom of the box. But then I noticed something else in the corner.

Alice did, too, apparently, because she picked it up. “No way,” she said, turning it over in her hand. “This is one of those things, isn’t it? The pointer piece or whatever for a ouija board?”

“Whoa.” Jenny snatched it from her, tapping her nails against the small, round window embedded in the wooden triangle. “Fancy. I expected plastic.”

“So wait, is that the board?” I asked, nodding toward the box. “Or is the board in that?”

Alice reached in again, heaving the slab out and onto the desk before her. Sure enough, the face of a ouija board stared back at us. YES and NO had been burned elegantly into the top corners, two rows of letters arched through the center, and a line of numbers hovered over the GOODBYE across the bottom. The only atypical aspect was that, rather than the typical OUIJA branding front and center, the board’s heading read LIFT THE VEIL.

“I mean,” Alice laughed, “we have to. Right?”

“Oh, def,” Jenny agreed. “You in?”

“I’m…in,” I conceded, because I’m a fucking idiot. I almost said in my defense, but no. There’s really no defense for me. I should have known better—did know better—than to think anything that had a .01% chance of going wrong wouldn’t in this place; even something as laughable as playing with a ouija board.

We took it into the breakroom and set up at the table, Alice and I across from one another, Jenny between us.

“Should we turn some of the lights off or something?” Jenny wondered aloud. “It doesn’t feel spooky enough.”

“I got it,” I volunteered, crossing the floor to the panel of light switches next to the sink and flipping two of them off, leaving only the central tile illuminating the room.

“Much better,” Alice affirmed as I sat back down. “Okay, so what do we do? Just all touch the thing, right? The…”

“Planchette,” Jenny supplied. “My dad dated a medium.”

“...Of course he did,” Alice deadpanned. “Is that what we do, then?”

“Place two fingers on it,” Jenny instructed. “Like this.” The planchette was positioned in the center of the board, and Jenny lifted her right hand, resting the tips of her middle and pointer fingers against one of its edges. “Don’t put any pressure on it. Do it like you’re, I don’t know, petting a baby animal or something.”

Alice and I swiftly followed her lead, my fingertips resting at the point, Alice’s on the heart-shaped top.

“Now what?” I asked.

“Now we just…ask it questions,” Jenny said, shrugging. “But not stupid questions; we have to ask, like, if there’s anybody here that wants to communicate or whatever.”

“Okay.” Alice took a breath and closed her eyes. I could tell she was trying to make herself take it seriously. “Is there anyone here who would like to speak with us?”

To none of our disbelief, nothing happened.

We waited several moments, just to be sure, and then I tried. “If anybody has something to say, you’re welcome to use this board to say it.”

I counted the rhythmic beats of my heart in the silence. One beat. Two beats. Ten.

Nothing.

“We’re trying to give you a platform here,” Jenny reasoned. “It’s kind of disrespectful if you don’t use it.”

When the planchette twitched, my breath caught, but Alice quickly debunked any suspicions. “Sorry, sorry. That was me. My hand was itching.”

Jenny rolled her eyes. “Christ’s sake. This is so lame. We know you’re here, why don’t you just fucking—”

I didn’t even have a chance to process what was happening before Jenny’s nose was pouring blood. A second later, I realized the wood under my hand was now that of the board. The planchette was gone, having flown out from beneath our fingers to smack Jenny square in the center of the face.

“O-oh my god,” she stuttered. When she pulled her hand away from the offended area, crimson began flooding over her bright, grinning teeth. “Bitchin’!”

I did not feel as though this development was bitchin’. In fact, I was fairly sure it leaned considerably further toward not good at all.

“Uh,” I objected eloquently.

“Oookay, I think that’s enough,” Alice remarked, rolling herself to the counter and grabbing a wad of paper towels to toss in Jenny’s general direction. “We were looking for spooky, not violent. Let’s say fuck this board and the horse it rode in on and trash the whole thing, yeah?”

The door slammed shut. Because of-fucking-course it did.

I don’t think I need to reveal that it wouldn’t open.

I did try, but I knew before I’d even touched the handle that it wasn’t going to happen. What would the point have been in closing us in if we could just leave? Ding, ding, ding! That’s right! Nothing.

“Oh, come on,” Alice groaned. “I said we were done. We’re sorry, okay? We fucked around and found out and we won’t do it again. Just let us out and nobody ever lays a finger on this board again, I swear.”

Whatever had shut the door, it did not let us out.

You know how, in horror movies, every time there’s a telekinetic, people end up pinned to the walls by furniture? Just picture that. That’s what happened.

It was so quick, too. That part sort of fascinated me in a strange, detached way. One second I was trying my damndest to pry the door open and the next I was stuck between the dishwasher and a mobile coffee cart that, hand to the Bible, only weighs fifty pounds, but somehow had me absolutely cemented in place.

“Shit!” I heard Jenny exclaim, and looked up from my own predicament to find that she was trapped in the corner by nothing but a floor lamp, blood still gushing from her nose.

It took a little more work to box Alice and her wheelchair in, so, naturally, the entire table had been flipped on its side and the legs surrounded her, each of their stoppers secured to the wall behind her.

On the center of the floor, the planchette lay atop the board.

Slowly, it began to move.

“Adam, what’s it spelling?” Alice cried, because I was closest.

The lighting made it difficult to make out the letters etched into the board’s surface, but not impossible. Squinting, I read aloud, “S…a…c…r…i—okay, no. No sacrifice. Nobody’s sacrificing anything.”

The board didn’t seem to care to hear my protests. It finished spelling the word, and then circled down to the number ‘1,’ and then, ‘blood,’ ‘unwilling,’ ‘done.’ I was about to get confused enough to ask what in the fresh hell that was supposed to mean, but then it started up again. This time, the sequence was ‘1,’ ‘flesh,’ ‘willing,’ ‘choose.’

A sick, terrible realization washed over me. “One unwilling blood sacrifice,” I said. “Done. Jenny, that was you. Now it needs a…a willing flesh sacrifice. And it wants us to choose who it comes from.” I turned back to the board. “Is that right?”

‘Yes.’

“Alright, wait, what constitutes as flesh?” Alice asked. “Like, could we bite off a hangnail?”

‘No.’

“So…live flesh only?”

‘Yes.’

“We should probably be screaming for help,” Jenny reasoned. “I mean, right? I don’t know about y’all but I’d really rather not sacrifice any of my live flesh.”

A sicker, more terrible realization washed over me. “Alice,” I said, even. Measured. “If we call for help, this thing might let somebody else into the room and trap them, too. We don’t want anyone else to get hurt. And we, y’know, we don’t want to get hurt either, of course, but hurt is…hurt is such a dynamic term. Because technically if you’re harmed, you’re *hurt—*sure. I’ll give you that. But if—if something doesn’t hurt you…”

“You bastard,” Alice accused, because she was smart enough to know precisely what direction I was steering the conversation in. “I am not fucking cutting off one of my toes just because I can’t feel them!”

“Wh—no, I—I didn’t—” But I stopped while I was ahead, because I had, and we all knew it. “I’m sorry,” I sighed. “You’re right. That’s…incredibly fucked up. I’m just kind of freaking out and I don’t know what to do and my brain’s trying to improvise.”

Alice glared at me for a solid five seconds and then snorted, shaking her head. “You should’ve seen your stupid face. Why wouldn’t I do it? I can’t feel it.” Then, to the board, “That still counts, right? You said flesh. Not pain.”

A pause. Then, ‘I guess.’

“Does it have to be a toe? Or can I just, like, cut a chunk of skin out?”

“You said flesh,” I reminded the board a second time. “Not bone.”

‘My game,’ the board shot back. ‘My rules.’

Alice took a breath and nodded her head, resigned. “Fine. Can I get a knife?”

The drawer next to me whipped open so fiercely that it bashed against my elbow, prompting me to cry out. Slowly, as though it was floating, a small, dull paring knife rose into the air.

“Oh, you are a sick son of a bitch. Can I not at least have something more likely to cut steak than an old woman’s gums?”

The drawer slammed shut.

“Guess not.”

The knife floated across the room to Alice at a snail’s pace, and I could feel the anxiety mounting in my chest with every inch. Were Jenny and I really just going to watch her mutilate herself? We couldn’t, could we? But what other choice did we have? Who knew what this thing was capable of; to the best of our knowledge, it could have been letting us off easy. If we drew attention to ourselves, the entity could use us as bait to lure in every single person in the building. It could pick us off one by one. It could—

There was a knock.

We all froze. So did the knife.

“Hello?” Horace called from outside the door. “Is there a reason I’m locked out?”

“There’s an evil Ouija board trapping us inside and it said Alice has to cut off her toe or it won’t let us out!”

Incredulously, I looked to Jenny.

“What?” she snapped, exasperated. “It didn’t let him in, so clearly your theory’s bullshit. We need help. Horace, we need help!”

The fucking door fucking opened.

Horace stepped inside, eyes wide and wild.

The fucking door fucking slammed shut.

“Fuck,” I hissed. “I knew this shit was going to happen. I knew it. Horace, just—”

Horace held up a finger to silence me, taking a moment to look around the room and fully assess the situation.

Then he sat down on the floor, large legs pretzeled into a criss-cross fashion, and placed his fingertips on the planchette.

In a confident, practiced fashion, he began reciting something. I only heard it the one time and I don’t speak Latin, so I couldn’t recount it here if I tried. But it was a chant, that much was clear—it consisted of five or so lines repeated in succession, and once he’d made it fully through three rounds, it was as though all the power drained from the magnetic force holding us all in place.

It happened so abruptly that when the coffee cart rolled away from me on the natural slight slope of the floor, I fell straight forward, catching myself with my hands just in time to save my face from smashing into the tile.

Jenny crashed to the ground and took the lamp that had been holding her hostage down with her, and the table blocking Alice in toppled onto its back, freeing her from the wall.

I blinked.

“What,” Jenny demanded, “the fuck. Was that?”

Horace slid the planchette to GOODBYE and stood, dusting himself off. “Don’t mess with things you don’t understand,” was all he said. Then he crossed the room to the refrigerator, extracted a bottle of water, and left.

Needless to say, since we had, as Alice put it, fucked around and subsequently found out, our endeavors with the board were over. We gave Matt the whole rundown and he berated us for being fucking stupid—rightfully so—and then told Jenny that her broken nose would not be covered under worker’s comp because it was her own damn fault.

The board is still in the building, as are the other various occult items we received along with it, because we weren’t sure how to properly dispose of any of it. We did try to ask Horace, since he clearly possessed some background knowledge that the rest of us did not, but he denied having any idea what we were talking about, which is fairly characteristic of him when he absolutely is not going to address something, so. We’re SOL on that front.

We’ve never seen the man that brought it all in again.

I’ll admit, I am frequently tempted to try to decipher the writing in the journals, at the very least. There’s something about them that keeps me up at night once in a while, just turning that solitary line of English over and over in my brain. By my mind and by my spirit. But I truthfully have no idea where to start, and even if I did…well.

I’ve learned enough in my time here to understand that, more often than not, it’s better to let dead things lie.

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