Chapter 3: The Invisible Girl in Room Thirteen by Stephen Simpson
Sinéad whispered behind me, “Okay. So, you know the rules. You have to stay here until after midnight.” Her voice echoed in the room. The sound went on and on, further and further away, making the room sound bigger than it was.
Rachel pulled on Sinéad’s arm and told her, “Close the
door.”
I pulled the Ouija board from under my arm and mumbled, “No
way am I going to use this thing.”
Rachel replied indignantly, “How do you think you are going
to talk to her? Can you speak to the dead?”
“No, but I don’t think I should be playing around with this stuff.”
“Do you believe in ghosts, Alison?” She asked me.
“No.”
“Well, then you’ll be okay. They sell those things as board
games, and only people who watch horror movies think they actually work, so
just give it a try.”
“Come,” Sinéad said as she pulled Rachel away from the door.
She had part of Rachel’s shirt bunched in her fist and she leaned forward while
still holding onto her. She reached the door handle with her fingertips and
pulled it shut.
The only light remaining in the room was from the transom
window above the door. Even though it was not bright, I could still see the
shape of the bed, the bedside table and the study desk.
My eyes darted toward the cupboard doors to make sure they
were closed, and my hand reached for the light switch next to the door without
looking. After a few seconds, I found the protrusion on the wall and thumbed
the switch down.
A quick glance around the room proved I was alone as I sat
down on the floor, crossing my legs. With my back against the wall, so nothing
could surprise me from behind, I pulled the board from its box and placed it on
the floor in front of me. I touched the planchette with only my thumb and ring
finger, lifting it and then putting it in the centre of the board. I did not
really want it to touch me.
The dare required me to stay in room thirteen for the next
three hours and to help me from being overwhelmed by a panic attack and failing
to complete the dare, which was not an option, I pulled the thin sheet of rules
from the box.
Even though the rules stated clearly: Never use a Ouija
Board alone! I was alone in a normal room which felt not normal at all. I
had a notion there was a presence in here with me. Even when my eyes searched
every corner and saw nothing, I knew there was something watching me. I could
feel it in the way my neck tingled and the way my skin erupted in goose bumps.
Never use a Ouija Board if you are depressed, stressed,
irate, upset, bored, furious, sad, trepidatious, afraid, shocked,
overconfident, or drowsy as you could let a demon into your life! My mum
already allowed a demon into my life the day she married my stepfather. He was
not abusive or threatening, and unlike in the movies he did not try to buy my
love with things, he just pretended I did not exist and not long after they got
married my mum stopped noticing me as well.
Her life was all about him and at fifteen I realized I
wanted nothing as much as I wanted my mum’s attention. I did not deny her any
happiness in finding another husband, but I wanted her to sometimes put her
needs and mine before what he always needed. I only wanted her to still be my
mum, but she could not do both and be good at it. It had to be me or him, and
she chose him.
Never use a Ouija Board if you think it is a game. As
initiation at some boarding schools the older girls would raid rooms, pull
mattresses off beds, make girls do the duck walk in a large circle, but not
here. Here in these Gothic halls, something so mundane would be looked upon
with disdain. A dare would be the only thing that would suffice.
I arrived late, so I missed the week of initiation when all
the other new girls arrived. They all came through the ordeal okay, I tried to
convince myself.
When Caitlyn, the head-girl, informed me, “The only way
you’ll ever be accepted here is if you accept the dare,” I thought it was a
joke. She shoved the Ouija board in my direction and added with a sneer, “Did
you know, the very first Ouija boards were made from the wood of coffins. A
coffin nail in the centre of the planchette window was used as the pointer.”
A faint sound caught my attention, and I looked around the
room. Seeing nothing, I decided it must have been the wind still howling and
whistling around the corners of the boarding house and making the limbs of the
large old trees outside creak while the leaves brushing against each other made
sighing noises.
I looked down at the board. I had left the planchette in the
middle of the board, not really caring where I put it, and now it had moved
onto the word: Hello
Maybe, I shifted my leg without realising and knocked the
planchette with my knee, I tried to rationalise why it had moved from the
middle of the board and now the word, Hello, was magnified within the
planchette window.
Besides, I thought I was supposed to be connected to the
planchette, have my fingers resting on them gently so that unconsciously I
would be answering my own questions.
I asked, even though I thought it was ridiculous, “Is
anybody here?”
Nothing.
Then I took a sharp breath when I saw the planchette quiver
on the board as I looked at it. I could not rationalize it away; pretend I had
knocked it, or it was a draft or maybe even gravity. I saw it move.
Pushing away from the board, I felt my back push against the
cold wall behind me. My palms pushed down on the green laminated tiles on each
side of me to push me up from the floor so I could leave the room as quickly as
my legs could move. I was so done with this. I did not have to prove my worth
to anyone.
On legs that wanted to run but forgot how, I jumped over the
board on the floor and when I landed, my right foot slipped on the tiled floor.
It happened so quickly I did not have time to put my arms up to protect or to
brace myself and I crashed headfirst into the door.
A sharp pain shot through my forehead and I could feel it
ripple down my spine. Clutching my head in both my hands, I slid down the door
and felt my T-shirt scrunch up against my back as it fought against the
friction.
At first, I thought the hissing sound was from my T-shirt
against the grain of the door, but when my eyes looked back at the board it was
the noise the planchette was making as it moved across the letters. My eyes
would not look away from the board as I watched the planchette spell the word:
W.A.I.T.
I took a breath deep enough to lift my chest and closed my
eyes for a second before I asked in a husky whisper, “What’s your name?”
The planchette started moving all by itself to the L. Then
it moved a little faster to the I, and even faster to the L. Y.
The roof light flickered on and off so fast it created a
strobe light effect.
Leave. Now.
Then I remembered I wanted to be accepted, to be found
worthy. I wanted someone to see me, not just notice me or be aware of me, I
needed someone to really see me and I believed if I completed this dare I would
deserve to be seen. After taking several deep breaths, I said, “My name is
Alison.”
The planchette spelt out the letters: I.K.N.O.W.
My breath hitched in my throat. As I read the letters, I
also heard them spoken out loud in my head, drowning out my silent screams.
“Are you really dead?”
The planchette moved to the word: Yes.
Although I knew I was the only person in the room, my eyes
still searched the empty corners. It could be that the senior girls were
playing an initiation trick on me. Trying to scare me. Someone could be moving
the planchette. Somehow. Or was I really talking to a ghost? The ghost of Lily?
“How did you die?” If I was really talking to the ghost of
Lily, I would not get the known answer of walking into the lake and drowning.
Lily would give me a reason.
My eyes followed the quick movements of the planchette on
the board. B.R.O.K.E.N.
This time the word was only spelt. I did not hear it in my
head.
“Why are you still here, Lily?” I asked, feeling sorry for
her. She must have been so sad and desperate at the time.
I felt a sudden savage force knock me back against the door
so hard, the door rattled in its metal frame. A chilling gust of wind lifted my
hair away from my face as a piercing voice inside my head yelled, Because of
you!
I jumped to my feet so fast, I could not figure out how I
got out of the room until I was standing outside in the corridor staring into
the cold room. Shivers scampered through my body and made me feel weak.
Everything that was keeping me together floated away from me and I fell onto my
knees.
Sinéad and Rachel rushed to my side hurriedly and pulled me
up from the floor.
“You were only in there for a second, we just closed the
door,” Sinéad complained. “You had to stay until after midnight.”
“I was in there for hours.” I looked at them confused.
“Whatever. I don’t care. I’m not going in there again no matter what you say or
do.” My outburst shocked even me. Before I became invisible, I was never timid.
However, sly and cunning looks meant to demean without saying a word had the
power of stripping confidence and assurance. Being in room thirteen had given
me the courage to stand my ground, or at least try to be more assertive. My mum
might have brought me here for her own selfish reasons, and at the time I felt
a deep and utter sadness. I now came to realise, coming here was the best thing
that could have ever happened to me.
Sinéad huffed, “Fine. We’re only trying to help.”
I turned away from them to walk to my room. “I don’t need
your help.”
Sinéad asked, “What’s wrong with you?”
Rachel said, “Leave her, she’s kinda weird.”
Ignoring them, I pushed open my bedroom door and after I
walked into the room, the door swung closed behind me without me touching it.
The wind rushing past me sounded like an exhaled breath.
At my cupboard, I pulled open the doors and reached for my
towel when a scraping noise behind me made me glance over my shoulder. Nothing
was out of place, so I turned back and pulled my nightgown from a hanger. I was
determined not to let my experience in room thirteen make me feel anxious or
afraid. I was happy to be out of that room, but I felt different. Somehow, I
felt stronger, invincible like my mum always used to say I was.
From the corner of my eye, I saw a dark shadow shift across
the mirror on the inside of the cupboard door. I turned to face the mirror and
felt threatened by the expression in my own eyes as they stared back at me. It
was there only for a second and then my own brown eyes were looking back at me.
A loud noise made me spin around completely. Utterly
terrified, my panicked eyes scanned the room. My lips trembled, about to ask
who was there when I was brutally shoved into the cupboard and fell back into
my hanging clothes.
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