The needle twitched again, scratching it's way across the board. It stopped dead, as though suddenly out of gas.
'What do you want?' she asked again, her eyes staring straight at the board. Beside her, the young man moved uneasily. He watched her through the dancing torchlight - her eyes, her hands, her mouth - scanning for any signs of charlatanry, any signs that his leg was being pulled. Six hours ago, in a drunken Halloween Fancy Dress party (he came as Action Man, she as a Vampire) this had seemed like an excellent idea: going to an abandoned 18th cenury house in the Wicklow Hills, with a crazed Wicca woman (or at least that's what he thought she was) to smoke a spliff, drink absinthe and play with a Ouija board. Deep down he had really hoped the Ouija board wasn't the only thing he would get to play with, but he decided to keep that to himself for now.
'What do you want?' she repeated, this time more urgently.
The young man looked to the board and back to her. Nothing.
'What do you want?' she pleaded, this time with a slight tone of disquiet in her voice, something that suggested impatience, a need to get on with it. The young man was only too aware of the pressing time. He was beginning to worry that her suggestions about absconding into the hills for some 'magick' (she was most insistent about the spelling and pronunciation when they had met in the bar) were a request for just that - and nothing more.
Leave it too late, she had told him beforehand, and you might trap something here. The dead, she informed him with leaden solemnity, had only a limited time in our world - when the veil was thin as she described it, during that crucial few hours of this specific day. Hold them too long, she had warned, and they could get angry. They had agendas of their own she had explained, things to do, people to see, places to be, scores to settle.
The needle twitched. Slowly, imperceptibly, it whined its way across the wood. Finally, it settled on the letter 'P'. Then, agonisingly, on to the letter 'L'. Then 'A'. Then 'Y'.
'Play?' blurted the man, 'it wants to fucking play?'
'Quiet' she hissed through closed teeth, 'it's speaking now'
'Speaking?' the man asked, his eyes shooting around the cavernous insides of the house. 'About what?'
She said nothing, but instead rocked forward slightly, sniffing the air. He leaned back, slightly shocked at the visceral nature of her gesture.
'It needs to be reborn' she said calmly, her hand moving the pointer in circles. It could have been a trick of the dark, but he swore that he could see a fleck of bright red at the corner of her mouth.
'How do you know that?' he asked, moving closer, straining to see. 'Does the board not have to spell that out...'
'I know' she said in a low voice. 'I know, because it tells me what it wants. Because I am Sidhe'
'Sith?' he blurted, almost laughing. His head momentarily filled with images of Darth Maul.
'Sidhe' she growled.
Cool, he thought to himself, a Star Wars chick too. This could get kinky, he thought.
He decided to bluff along. 'What does it want?' he asked playfully.
'You' she said calmly, 'it wants you'
'Oh...'
'Yessss' she snarled, her teeth glinting in the dark, 'to play'.
+Image+
Photo by of Hellfire Club by Dave Walsh
+Music+
'Dub of the Dead' by Celebrity Murder Party. From Beat-Boot-Iques Mashuptown Massacre. Wanna hear more? Go to the Blatherverse and click the BlatherPod tab.
+More Blather+
Blather visits the Hellfire Club, Ireland
Happy Samhain.
