It started as a joke, just something to do on a Friday night when the air was thick with the kind of boredom that makes you reckless—me, Jake, Sarah, and Emily huddled around my basement floor with a Ouija board Jake had swiped from his older sister’s closet, the kind with faded letters and a planchette that felt too light in our fingers, like it wasn’t really meant to stay in our world. We laughed at first, mocking the theatrics of it all, our knees pressing into the cold concrete as we dimmed the lights and lit a single candle, its flicker casting long shadows that seemed to move just a second behind us, always just out of sight. Sarah rolled her eyes and said, “If anything happens, I’m blaming Jake’s bad vibes,” and we all giggled, but the moment our fingertips touched the planchette, the air changed—a slow, creeping cold that started at the base of my spine and spread until my breath came out in visible puffs, even though the thermostat hadn’t budged. The planchette jerked under our hands, and Emily gasped, her nails digging into my wrist as it dragged itself to ‘HELLO,’ the wood creaking like it was being pushed by something much stronger than the four of us. Jake tried to play it cool, asking, “Who are we talking to?” and the planchette moved again, slow at first, then frantic, spelling out ‘T-I-M-M-Y,’ and Sarah choked out, “Timmy who?” but we already knew, because Timmy Whitaker was the only kid who’d ever gone missing in our town, back in 1973, his face still plastered on yellowed flyers in the library, a gap-toothed smile that didn’t match the hollow feeling settling in my stomach. The planchette kept moving, spelling ‘HELP ME,’ and Emily whispered, “This isn’t funny anymore,” but it was too late—the candle flame stretched unnaturally tall, and the air smelled like wet earth and something metallic, like old blood, and the planchette shot to ‘MURDERED’ so fast it left a scratch on the board. Jake demanded proof, his voice shaking, and the planchette spelled ‘CHECK THE OAK,’ and we all froze because there was only one oak tree in town, the gnarled one in my backyard, its roots bulging like veins. We ran outside, our flashlights cutting through the fog, the ground squelching underfoot as if it had just rained, even though the sky was clear, and there, half-buried under the oak’s roots, was a rusted toy car, its paint peeled away to reveal ‘T.W.’ carved into the metal—Timmy Whitaker’s initials. Sarah started crying, and the planchette had spelled ‘I’M BURIED UNDER THE OAK TREE,’ and Jake grabbed a shovel from the garage, his hands shaking so badly he could barely grip it, but we dug anyway, the dirt coming up too easily, like something had already loosened it, and then the shovel hit something that wasn’t a root—a small, pale bone, and then another, and Emily vomited into the grass as we uncovered more, the smell of decay so thick it coated our tongues. That’s when the whispers started, not from the board but from the trees, from the ground, from inside our own heads, a voice that wasn’t Timmy’s but something older, something that had been waiting, and the Polaroid we found next to the bones—one we hadn’t brought outside—showed a blurry figure standing behind us in the dirt, a boy with hollow eyes and a smile too wide, his finger pointing to the spot we’d just dug up. The planchette was moving on its own now, spelling ‘YOU FOUND ME’ over and over, the letters gouging into the board, and the cold spot in the room followed us upstairs, into our beds, into our dreams, where Timmy’s voice became a scream, and the thing wearing his face whispered, ‘You shouldn’t have let me in.’ The police came the next day, called by my mom when she saw the bones, but they couldn’t explain the toy car or the Polaroid, or why the oak tree’s roots had grown through the ribcage of the skeleton, like it had been there much longer than the 50 years Timmy had been missing. The whispers didn’t stop after that—they got louder, closer, and the board started moving on its own at night, spelling things we couldn’t read because we’d burned it, but the letters kept appearing anyway, carved into our skin when we woke up, and the last thing the planchette ever spelled was ‘NOW IT’S YOUR TURN,’ and Jake disappeared two nights later, his bed empty except for a single Polaroid of him standing under the oak tree, smiling that same too-wide smile, his eyes hollow, his fingers pointing to a fresh patch of dirt. We don’t talk about it, but we all hear the whispers, and sometimes, when the air gets too cold and the smell of wet earth fills the room, we know Timmy wasn’t the only thing we dug up that night—something else got out, and it’s still hungry. The days after Jake vanished blurred together in a haze of police questions and sleepless nights, the kind where every creak of the house sounds like a footstep, every whisper of wind through the trees like a voice calling your name, and even though we told the cops everything—about the board, about Timmy, about the bones—their faces just tightened with skepticism, like we were just kids spinning ghost stories to cover up something worse, but they didn’t feel what we felt, didn’t see the way the shadows in my room would thicken at night, forming shapes that lingered just beyond the edge of my vision, or how Sarah’s hands were always cold now, even in the middle of summer, her breath coming out in frosty puffs when there was no reason for it. Emily stopped speaking altogether, her eyes hollow and distant, her fingers tracing the same three letters over and over on any surface she could find—T.W., T.W., T.W.—like she was trying to remind herself of something or warn the rest of us, but none of us dared to ask. Then the dreams started, the same one every night: the oak tree, its branches twisting like skeletal fingers, the ground beneath it shifting like something was trying to claw its way out, and Jake standing there, his back to me, his clothes caked with dirt, his head tilting slowly, too slowly, until I saw his face—or what was left of it, the skin sunken and gray, his lips peeled back in that same unnatural grin from the Polaroid, his voice a wet, guttural whisper saying, “You’re next.” I’d wake up gasping, my sheets damp with sweat and something else, something that smelled like turned earth and copper, and one morning I found my palms caked with dirt, my nails torn and bloody like I’d been digging in my sleep. Sarah called me that same day, her voice a broken whisper, saying she’d seen Jake outside her window last night, just standing there in the rain, his clothes dripping with mud, his mouth moving like he was trying to say something, but when she turned on the light, he was gone—except for the footprints leading up to her window, small and barefoot, too small to be Jake’s. That’s when we knew it wasn’t just him anymore, that whatever we’d woken up under that tree was wearing him like a suit, the same way it had probably worn Timmy all those years ago, and it was still hungry. We tried to burn the Polaroids, but the flames wouldn’t take, the images just curling at the edges like they were laughing at us, and when we buried them in the backyard, they were back on our pillows by morning, the faces inside them clearer each time, the hollow eyes staring, the grins widening. The last time we all gathered in my basement—what was left of us, anyway—Emily finally spoke, her voice a raw scrape, saying she’d heard something moving in her attic, something that wasn’t just rats, something that dragged itself across the floorboards in slow, deliberate strokes, and when she looked up through the crack in the ceiling, she saw fingers, small and rotten, curling around the edge of the hatch, and a voice—Timmy’s voice, but not quite—whispering, “You shouldn’t have stopped digging.” We tried to leave town after that, but the roads just looped us back in, the same gas station, the same rusted sign welcoming us to a place that didn’t want us to leave, and when we finally gave up and pulled back into my driveway, the oak tree was different—its branches lower, heavier, like they were sagging under the weight of something unseen, and at its base, a fresh mound of dirt, loose and damp, as if someone had just finished filling it in. The whispers are constant now, threading through the static of dead TV channels, hissing from the faucet when the water runs too long, and sometimes, when I’m alone, I catch my reflection blinking a second too late, my smile stretching a little too wide, and I know it’s only a matter of time before the thing wearing Jake comes for the rest of us, before we’re all just names on missing posters, faces in old Polaroids, voices in the static, because we didn’t just solve Timmy’s murder—we invited it back, and it’s not done with us yet. The whispers have teeth now, I can feel them in the back of my skull like splinters working their way deeper every time I close my eyes, and Sarah stopped answering her phone three days ago but I still hear her sometimes, a wet choking sound coming through the receiver when I call, like she's trying to speak through a mouthful of soil, and last night I saw Emily standing motionless in the middle of the road outside my house, her nightgown streaked with mud, her bare feet caked with something dark and flaking, her head tilted at that impossible angle Jake used to do before he disappeared, and when I ran outside screaming her name she was gone but the footprints leading away were child-sized, the same as the ones beneath Sarah's window, the toes dragging slightly like the thing wearing her skin wasn't used to walking in a living body yet. My parents think I'm having a breakdown, they keep whispering about hospitals when they think I can't hear, but they don't see what I see - the way the shadows in the hallway congeal into small handprints when I walk past, how my breath fogs in July heat when something unseen leans in too close, the faint but unmistakable smell of turned earth and spoiled meat that's settled into my clothes no matter how many times I wash them. The worst part is the board came back, I burned it myself in the metal trash can behind the garage but this morning it was on my kitchen table, pristine as the day we bought it except for one difference - the planchette was already resting on GOODBYE, the wood around it cracked and blackened like it had been held there by force, and when I touched it the temperature dropped so fast my fingers stuck to it, the skin tearing when I yanked away, the blood sizzling where it hit the board before being absorbed like the damn thing was thirsty. The police found Sarah's backpack near the oak tree yesterday, the straps torn like something had dragged her into the roots, and when they shone their flashlights into the hollow beneath the trunk the beams reflected back dozens of tiny points of light - eyes, I know they were eyes, though the officers just muttered about animal dens and called off the search when the oldest cop's radio suddenly blared static and a child's voice whispered "she's with us now" loud enough for everyone to hear. Emily's mother came to my house screaming this morning, demanding to know what we did, her fists pounding on the door while the windows rattled with something deeper than wind, and when I finally opened it she thrust a damp Polaroid into my hands - Emily standing waist-deep in the creek where Timmy's bike was found in '73, her face slack and empty except for that terrible smile, the water around her swirling with tendrils of something dark and viscous that couldn't possibly be mud, and when I turned the photo over the back read "we're playing hide and seek" in handwriting that wasn't Emily's, the ink smudged like it had been written by fingers that hadn't quite remembered how to hold a pen. I tried to run again last night, got as far as the county line before my headlights illuminated a small figure standing in the road - just a silhouette at first, then the details came into focus as my engine died - overalls caked with decades of dirt, one hand clutching a rusted toy car, the other raised in a stiff wave, and when I hit the gas the thing that used to be Timmy Whitaker turned its head and I saw its face was my face, my eyes gone black and hungry, my mouth stretched in that impossible grin, and then the impact but there was no thump, just the sensation of cold small hands grabbing my wrists as the car filled with the smell of wet earth and the sound of children laughing. They'll find my car empty tomorrow, the driver's seat damp and reeking of river water, the passenger side caked with fresh mud, and if they're smart they won't follow the child-sized footprints leading into the woods, won't listen to the new voice whispering from their radios at night, won't notice the way the oak tree's shadow now stretches all the way to my bedroom window no matter where the sun is, its branches tapping against the glass in a rhythm that almost sounds like knocking, like an invitation, like it's finally my turn to play. The knocking hasn’t stopped since they found my car, three slow raps against my bedroom window every night at exactly 3:17 AM, the glass frosting over no matter how high I crank the heat, and last night I finally looked—I shouldn’t have looked—but the thing outside wasn’t Jake or Sarah or Emily or even Timmy anymore, it was all of them stitched together into something wrong, their faces melting in and out of each other like wet clay, their too-many arms pressing against the glass with fingers that left smears of blackened earth, their mouths opening in unison to exhale a fog that spelled “LET US IN” across my window before dissolving into fat, squirming maggots that rained onto the windowsill. My parents finally took me to St. Luke’s psychiatric ward after I started screaming about the hands coming out of the walls, but the doctors don’t understand that the restraints aren’t to protect me from myself—they’re to keep me from digging, because every time I’m left alone I wake up with my fingers bloody and clogged with dirt, the tiles under my nails matching the old quarry where they found Timmy’s shoes in ’73, and the orderlies don’t notice how the shadows in my room move when the door closes, how the faucet in the corner drips in Morse code: T-W-T-W-T-W over and over until the sink backs up with brackish water full of rust-colored hair. They moved me to the padded room after I attacked Dr. Langford, but I had to, I had to because his eyes weren’t his eyes anymore, they were Timmy’s eyes, black and glossy like a doll’s, and when he leaned in to check my pulse his breath smelled like freshly turned grave soil and his whispered “play with us” wasn’t in his voice but in Emily’s, Sarah’s, Jake’s all at once. The walls here are thin and sometimes I hear the nurses screaming from rooms I know are empty, their voices cutting off with a wet gurgle before the intercom crackles to life with the sound of children giggling, and last night the ceiling tiles rained down Polaroids of all the missing kids from our town going back to 1954, each one grinning with that same impossible smile, their fingers pointing to a freshly dug mound of earth just visible in the background of every shot. The orderly who brings my meals—the only one whose eyes don’t slide away from mine in fear—left the newspaper this morning and I wish he hadn’t because the headline screamed “HISTORIC OAK TREE UPROOTED IN MYSTERIOUS STORM” above a photo of the crater left behind, the roots coiled around something pale and segmented that the article called “possible animal remains” but I know are vertebrae, human vertebrae, too many to count, all strung together like a grotesque necklace with Timmy’s rusted toy car dangling at the center. The knocking follows me even here, coming from inside the walls now, from inside my own ribs when the room goes quiet, and when they injected me with sedatives last night I didn’t fall asleep—I fell into the dream again, the one where I’m standing under that damned oak with a shovel in my hands, except now the tree is gone and it’s just me and the hole, a hole so deep I can hear whispering rising up from the darkness, dozens of voices all chanting my name as something cold and many-fingered begins to climb toward me from below, and when I woke up screaming my mouth was full of damp earth and my arms were covered in tiny, grasping handprints that faded as I watched like they’d never been there at all. They’re transferring me to a higher security facility tomorrow but we all know it’s too late, the orderly’s eyes flickered black for just a second when he said it and I saw the corner of a Polaroid peeking from his breast pocket, the edge stained with what might be rust or blood, and the whispers have started coming through the air vents now, not just at night but all the time, a chorus of familiar voices saying “you’re almost ready” as the temperature drops and the smell of loam fills the room, as the shadows in the corner start to twitch and squirm like something is taking shape, something small and hungry that’s been waiting a long, long time to play. I’m writing this on the back of my intake form with a stolen pen, my hands shaking not from fear but because the bones in my fingers keep cracking and reknitting themselves wrong, the nails blackening and lengthening into something closer to claws, and when I catch my reflection in the observation window my smile is widening on its own, stretching toward my ears in a way that would hurt if I could still feel pain, if I was still entirely me, but the transformation is almost complete and soon I won’t be writing at all—soon I’ll be under the oak with the others, with Timmy and Jake and Sarah and Emily and all the names carved into those waterlogged bones, waiting for the next curious hands to touch the board, to ask the questions, to dig where they shouldn’t, because the game never really ends, it just waits, patient as the grave, hungry as the earth, ready for new players to join us in the dark. The transfer never happened—the ambulance never arrived, the orderlies never came to collect me, and now the power has been out for what feels like days though my watch stopped when the hands melted into black sludge that spelled "SOON" across the cracked face. The padded walls aren't padded anymore, they're dirt now, cool and damp against my back, the ceiling above me a tangle of roots that drip something thick and sweet-smelling onto my tongue when I open my mouth to scream. They took my clothes at some point, replaced them with stiff denim overalls that reek of mildew and gasoline, the cuffs stained with what might be old blood or maybe just rust from the toy car that now rests heavy in my pocket, its metal hot to the touch even though my fingers are numb. I can hear them moving just beyond the dirt walls, Sarah humming that off-key lullaby she always did when nervous, Jake's awkward shuffling footsteps, Emily's quiet sobs—but their voices are wrong now, stretched and warped like a tape recorder running out of batteries, and when I press my ear to the wall I realize they're not speaking words at all but just mimicking the sounds, learning to be human again through the broken memories of the kids they once were. The orderly finally came back but his face was slack and waxy, his eyes two thumbprint-sized bruises in doughy flesh, and when he opened his mouth to speak a flood of centipedes poured out along with Timmy's voice, high and reedy like a record played at the wrong speed, saying "we made you a new game" before his body collapsed into a mound of photographs, each one showing a different angle of my parents' house with the front door wide open, the hallway inside pulsing like a throat. My reflection in the observation window is gone now, replaced by a flickering image of the oak tree's remains, the crater filled with dark water that ripples as something begins to surface—first a hand, then another, then dozens more all tangled together like roots, all reaching for the edge, and I finally understand why my fingers ache, why my joints pop and crack with every movement, why my shadow stretches further than it should even in this dim light. The whispers have condensed into a single voice now, my voice but not mine, coming from inside my chest where my heartbeat used to be, and it's counting down from ten in that singsong way kids do before playing hide and seek, and when it reaches zero I know the last of me will be gone and whatever's left will stand up on these stiffening legs and walk out into a world full of curious kids and Ouija boards and shallow graves waiting to be filled. The dirt walls are breathing now, contracting around me like a giant lung, and the roots above have begun to lower, their tips glistening with something that looks like sap but smells like embalming fluid, and as the first drop hits my forehead I realize this isn't a transformation at all—it's a homecoming, a return to where I've always been going, where we've all been going since the first foolish question was asked, since the first planchette moved without human hands, since the first shovelful of earth was turned, because the game was never really about finding Timmy, it was about joining him, becoming him, becoming all of them, a chorus of lost voices waiting to whisper the rules to the next players, the next diggers, the next pieces to be moved across the board toward the space marked "GOODBYE" that was never really an ending at all. The darkness feels like fingers now, like small cold hands pulling me down into cool damp earth as the last thing I hear is my own voice whispering "ready or not" to an empty room that won't be empty for long.
Post a Comment