liar liar

an excerpt from a (currently) unfinished short story

Jessie Mae hosted the Red Creek High School 15 year reunion. It was full of adults with their loud voices and strange memories and full of preteen kids who screamed too much and only wanted to play hide and seek.

Jessie Mae’s daughter didn’t belong there. Jessie Mae’s daughter was 14 years old and far too old to hang around 10 year olds, and far too young for the adults—with their wine and their taxes— to allow her to sit with them.

“Melody, why don’t you look at the old board games in the trunk?” Jessie Mae’s daughter was called Melody Mae. Mel, for short. And Melody Mae huffed and snapped her hardcover book shut.

“I don’t like playing with them!”

Little Sasha Sloan, however, dove into the trunk, her chubby little 9 year old fingers grasping at the first box they encountered. She held it up triumphantly. Melody’s determination to remain unengaged failed her.

“Is that a Oujia Board!?”

“What’s an Oo-gie Board?” asked Sasha.

Melody’s eyes flashed with excitement. “It lets you talk to ghosts.”

Ghosts. That got the kids attention. And soon a flurry of little feet and pitchy squeals surrounded her. Melody had half the mind to steal the Ouija Board right out of Sasha’s hands and run. But she didn’t. Her mother wanted her to play a game. Okay, Melody thought, and a nasty sort of grin curled her lips. I’ll play.

“Can we try it!?” Theo Trombey, who was the second oldest— twelve to Melody’s fourteen— begged. “Really, can we try it?”

“Sure.”

Melody Mae was rarely the center of attention. Yet now, she sat cross legged on the island, with four eager, round faces crowded around her, grinning up. The Ouija Board lay in front of her.

They had moved from the main house to the cottage. Well, the grown-ups had told them to go to the cottage, a sweet little one floor building with a loft and a nice kitchen off the side of the house. That was fine. It was quieter, anyway.

Melody placed her fingers on the planchet. “So, how it works,” she began, and the children clung onto her every word. She was the authority here. “Is you ask it questions. And if a ghost is here, it’ll answer you by moving this to spell things.”

“Do you think a ghost is here?”

She shrugged. The children remained unperturbed. “Everyone put two fingers on the planchet.”

Melody closed her eyes.

“Can I ask the question? Can I? Please?”

She cracked an eye open again to glare at Theo. “Okay. You say are there any spirits here with us right now? Just like that.”

Theo puffed out his chest, lifting his chin with only a twelve-year-old’s confidence. “Are there any spirits here with us right now?”

Nothing. Obviously. “Let me try,” said Melody. She closed her eyes again. “Are there any spirits here with us right now?”

Her fingers twitched on the plachet. It wouldn’t really hurt to… Right? She slid it a few centimeters to the right. The children gasped. The planchet now hovered just shy of the word yes.

“Did you push it?” Sasha demanded.

Melody leaned back, a self-satisfied smirk on her face. “No.”

Four pairs of eyes twitched rapidly from her, to the board, back to her. Delilah— her ten year old cousin— stepped back a few inches, rather pale in the face. This was why they didn’t ever get on very well. Delilah Olsen was a coward. The rest of the children, though, were looking at her as if she were a God.

“Does that mean there’s really a ghost?” Theo asked.

“I don’t know,” said Melody.

Sasha bounced on the balls of her feet. “Ask it something else!”

“Okay,” Melody smiled, tucking her hair behind her ears. “What shall I ask it?”

“Ask it’s name!” Claire— who was eight, and probably too young to be playing with ghosts— exclaimed. She wasn’t scared. Melody shot Delilah a dirty look.

Delilah, to her credit, stuck her tongue out, and placed her forefinger back on the plachet. “You’re just messing us.”

“Close your eyes,” said Melody. The children did. “If you’re still here…” she began. “What’s your name?”