Chapter 3
Halloween finally came and Winnie was happy it was on a Friday night. She could stay up as late as she and her friends felt necessary and it wouldn’t matter because she could sleep in the next day. June drove up in the van and picked up Winnie first.
Dressed for the occasion, Winnie was in all black, with a wide sleeved shirt and a tattered knee-high skirt. She showed June the Ouija board. It wasn’t anything more than a board with the alphabet written on it, a sun and moon on the top corners, yes and no in the bottom corners and “Good-bye” down at the bottom under the alphabet.
“You got it,” June said sinfully, “Excellent. I had an idea to freak the others out. We make them think we contacted an actual ghost and we say that it’s some murderer from beyond the grave!”
“No, June,” Winnie told her seriously as she got in the front seat.
“Win,” June let out a nervous chuckle, “I know that you like the whole idea of ‘ghost’ and stuff, but you don’t honestly think this is gonna work, do you?”
Winnie studied to see if June was serious about her statement, “Ghosts are real, June and I can tell you a couple ghost stories tonight that would scare the pants of you.”
“Sure, Win,” June sarcastically agreed and put the car in gear. They picked up the other girls and drove up to the cemetery.
Everyone but Winnie talked the entire time. She was gazing out the car window, admiring the spooky view of the leaf-less trees and crisp air. They pulled into the cemetery and got out at the gate. There was a large lock on the gate and they held onto the metal fence bars. “Locked,” Cindy said examining the padlock and chains holding the doors closed.
“What are we gonna do now?” Nikki questioned the situation. The others shrugged, until they heard the sound of something falling onto the dry leaves on the ground. They looked to see where the Ouija board was on the other side of the fence. “Winnie!” They gasped in unison as they saw her at the top of the fence.
With the outburst, a quiet yelp, and a rip of her skirt, she fell onto the other side with the Ouija board. She stood to look at the tear, brush her self off, and told them before walking deeper in the cemetery, “I’m not going to let a gate get in the way of my Halloween. I wait all year for this day.”
The other girls looked to each other for a reason to stay where they were, but none came to mind and June started to follow Winnie. “Wait up, Win,” she called, trying to keep quiet.
Cynthia looked to Cindy, “What is this: Trespassing on government property, or the land of the dead?” Cindy shrugged and they followed Nikki, who was at the top of the fence.
Leading the group of terrified teens, Winnie used a small flashlight on her key chain to keep from tripping. Every cricket and rustle of leaves made the girls jump. “Let’s go back, Winnie,” Cindy whined. The other girls nodded. Winnie had to admit that she too was sacred, but she had made a big deal of getting past the fence, so she wasn’t going to turn back now. With silence as her response, the girls held onto each other and whined as their heads whipped around to the location of every eerie sound.
Winnie looked up to a giant tombstone and back at her friends. “We’ll stop here,” she said as she sat down and opened the box with the Ouija board. Reluctantly, they sat with her and made a circle in front of the gravestone. She told them to place their fingers lightly on the planchette, which was pointed toward the sun in the left hand corner. She closed her eyes, and recited a spell she remembered from a site online:
“We call upon the spirits beyond.
Please visit us on this All Hollow’s Eve,
And tell us stories that make us believe.”
Cindy couldn’t take it; she was too scared and she took her fingers off the planchette. Cynthia, seeing she wasn’t alone, removed her fingers as well. Nikki could feel her heart pounding in fear. She stopped breathing, and when she remembered to start again, she gasped and let go of the summoning instrument.
June took in a deep breath and relaxed her shoulders. The wind blew her and Winnie’s hair around and she took another deep breath. She tried to convince her mind that ghosts didn’t exist and she was doing this out of fun with her friends. It wasn’t working very well. Her eyes shot open when she felt a presence make its way to the board by pushing her shoulder. She quickly let go, and looked to Winnie, who was staring at her left shoulder.
She wasn’t touching the planchette either, but her eyes flickered back, along with the other girls’, to the Ouija board. The eyepiece of the planchette fell upon the “H” and began to slowly spell the word “Hello.” Cindy let out a faint screech as she closed her eyes and buried them into the sleeve of Cynthia’s sweater. Nikki dug her fingers into the ground; the more scared she got from the mobile piece, the further her fingers went into the dirt. June was close to tears, now fully aware that ghosts were real and she wanted to go home. Her lip was trembling as she looked at Winnie, who was scared to the point she couldn’t move her eyes off the board.
“My name is Crystal, and you’re sitting on my grave,” the spirit spelled. The girls couldn’t take anymore. They slowly stood up and with a high-pitched scream they darted toward the gate, ignoring injuries from running into gravestones and sticks. “I wanna go home, I wanna go home!” June cried as she ran behind the other girls. Cindy climbed over first, followed by Nikki, and Cynthia.
Wiping tears from her eyes, before climbing over the fence, June realized Winnie wasn’t with them. “Where’s Winnie?” She cried harder.
“She’s still there!” Nikki yelled, feeling her nails dig into her palms from the fists she made out of being impatient.
“You have to get her!” Cynthia told June. June cried even harder, “No, I can’t, I wanna go home!” She slid her hands down the bars and fell to her knees. She choked from crying so hard and she clenched her stomach in pain.
The other’s looked at each other, afraid of what happened to Winnie. Just as they thought about it, they saw someone running toward them. “Everybody in the van!” Winnie yelled, as she got closer. She had the Ouija board put away under her arm and she stopped when she saw June on the ground. She kneeled down, tears starting in her own eyes, “June, I’m sorry, but we have to get out, now.”
June forced a nod and she stood up with the assistance of Winnie. She climbed over the fence and Winnie followed after throwing over the Ouija board. They climbed into the van and locked the doors. Winnie took a deep breath, and turned to June, who was still crying. She hugged her, and cradled her head as she rocked her back and forth. “I’m so sorry, so so sorry,” she repeated into June’s ear. Tears ran down her cheeks and she hugged June tighter.
Cindy offered to drive home, because June wasn’t ready. Winnie was about to say that June could sleep over her house, but she remembered the month’s past events. “Cindy, have her stay at your house.”
“Wait, why?”
“Just…” she looked back down at June in her arms, “Just trust me, okay?”
Cindy nodded and they went home. She dropped everyone off and brought June back to her house. As the van left her driveway, Winnie shivered and fell to the ground, no more strength in her legs. “I’m sorry,” she cried, “I’m so sorry.”
It was late, too late. Winnie knew if she tried to get in the house now she would definitely get caught, and grounded until the next blue moon. She wiped some tears away as she made her way to the back porch. The back porch was never used, so she thought it was the safest place to sleep for the rest of the night.
She tested the chairs in hopes of finding a place to sleep. Standing up from the last of the chairs she concluded that they weren’t comfortable. Seeing no other options, she laid down on the floor. It was cold, but she just rolled up into the fetal position. She didn’t think it was major issue, but as she lay on the floor, she began to miss her sleeping cohort, Psycho. She shut her eyes tightly, and just tried to ignore the night’s events.
