Ouija Dog

I can't remember how many times I've relived that arduous Halloween in the Year of Our Damnation, 2024. Every day I wake up, hung over and hoping I've drifted into a better tomorrow. Every day I see the same news articles drifting across my phone. Every day I put on a costume to blend in with those who aren't frozen in time. And every repeated evening I am stalked by a formless terror.

That scorching urge for a better tomorrow, that cloying ache that never stills as it stirs its hooks deeper into the bleeding flesh of your heart. How do I break the cycle? How do I avoid those eyes which watch me from angles unknown and unseen? What awaits on the other side of this timeloop of endless Halloweens?

One doesn't turn to the Ouija board lightly. It's often dismissed as a simple board game but any game can be used to alter one's senses to the thinned veil. "Well Halloween is the perfect night to try something like Ouija. I'll light some candles, you mind grabbing my board from the closet Lucia?"

I met Alejandra during a Pride parade in June, back when days didn't listlessly repeat themselves. We were both students at the same Community College. She was a Literature major who loved brujeria, witchcraft, and the occult. I was a medical student specializing in Psychiatric studies. At first we didn't get along at all.

Alejandra's always whimsical and prone to an infectious optimism which I suppose I needed, as one who even before I was damned to this cycle, saw a world of naught but gloom. We're sapphic opposites who compliment each other rather than contrast. There's no one I trust more in the world than her and yet every fiber of my being is afraid to tell her. What if it stalks her too? What if I only damn her with the knowledge?

Every Halloween I've lived through. Every wretched repetition of this same dreary day, she silences my doubts, and yet even as wondrous as she is... it doesn't break me free from this strange loop in time. All my love for her, all her love for me, for much as it eases the torment of being stuck in a present without past or future, it doesn't cure it.

I pull the Ouija board out of her dusty collection of board games, spellbooks, and recipes. It feels so strange placing my hopes in a game designed for children. And yet I suppose desperation breeds stranger bedfellows. "Got it all set up now Lucia!"

Hearing my name, I ferry the board back into the kitchen to find the lights dimmed and six cheap candles have been lit around the table. "Sorry, took me a moment to find the board."

"You seem distracted Luci, everything okay?" Alejandra warms my heart with her concern, and yet even still, the cold fear paralyzes my tongue. I dare not share my pain with her. Lest that suffering infect her and drag her down to my level. "Luci?"

"I just hope whatever spirit we contact is helpful," with that, I quietly try to set up the board with Alejandra. Though the silence in that moment we share carries a certain weight, I can tell she's concerned.

"You have certain questions in mind?"

Why was I stuck reliving the same day? Why October 31st, 2024? Why have I seen the same mundane events day in and day out? Why is the world so ugly, dull, and stubbornly unwilling to change?

"I few I suppose."

Alejandra giggled. Her laughter is so mellifluous I briefly forgot that nightmare creature that stalks in the gloam of Halloween night. "Well if you keep an open mind and an open heart, we might just find a helpful and friendly spirit."

For a moment I take in the sight. The board splayed on the kitchen table with those candles casting the dimmest radiance in room that adds a layer both intimacy and esoterica. After an endless loop of Halloweens, stalked by that unspoken creature, the hound which hunts unclean knowledge and those damned to bear it, my final hope of being free is in the humble board game and whatever is on the other side.

"I hope so."

We take our seats across from one another and both of us gently place our fingertips on the planchette. I watch as a rosy flush lights up her cheeks as our fingers brush together. There's no one I trust more in the world.

I will trust my fate in her hands.

Alejandra clears her throat and glances up towards the ceiling, "We beseech you, spirits, is there one among your number who would be to talk and answer some questions?"

I am deeply disappointed by the unmoving planchette. Just as I'm about to call this whole thing stupid, I feel my blood run cold as the planchette drifts over on the board to a decisive YES.

"We have contact!" Alejandra victoriously proclaimed. "Wanna go next Luci? You said you had questions."

"Will I see tomorrow?" My question clearly concerns Alejandra, her victorious smile wipes away in that moment. But before she can ask me what I mean we both watch as our fingertips drift with the planchette across the board over to NO.

I could read the panic plainly in her dark brown eyes. The dim light of the room suddenly feels mired in something oppressive, "I don't understand. Why won't you see tomorrow?"

The answer catches in my throat, before I can speak the planchette begins moving again, this time spelling something out for Alejandra and myself: H-U-N-T-E-D. Whoever or whatever spirit we've contacted through the board knows. It knows that I'm being hunted by something.

Maybe whatever is hunting me is also keeping me trapped in this timeloop, making me relive Halloween, as it hunts me again and again and again.

"This is starting to freak me out Luci," her eyes drift between me and the planchette on the board. "I feel like there's something you're not telling me."

A pocket of cold air bleeds all the warmth out of us. The candle flames all dim and flicker, casting a dance of our shadows against the wall, "You promise you won't call me insane, love?"

Our eyes drift down to the planchette which begins moving, dancing across the letters to spell out an answer to another unseen question: H-E-R-E.

The panic in her expression felt a cold contrast to my despair, "No my sweet, please tell me, help me make sense of this. Why won't you see tomorrow?"

"Something transcendent is keeping me frozen in time, frozen in this day, reliving this same Halloween again and again." I look down at the dimly lit board and planchette, I know better than to take my fingers off before we've bid the spirit Good Bye. But in that moment I wished I could just hold her one last time. "This isn't the first time we've said good bye. It won't be the last. And I can't take it anymore."

"What are you talking about love? What's keeping you frozen in time?"

The planchette shifts between the board spelling out an ancient name now; X-O-L-O-T-L. Xolotol, the name of an ancient Aztec god who comes in the guise of a hairless dog, one known to serve a similar function to the Grim Reaper in ancient Mexican mythos. As one of these hairless hounds, Xolotl ferries the spirits of the dead from their place of death to the Underworld.

Was this the hound that stalks me in every shadow?

"Xolotl?" there was an ember of realization in my beloved's eyes.

The candles flickered as if a drafty breeze billowed through the room. Shadows ensconced the room in a blink of darkness, the candlelight hard fought back for it's dim radiance to restore.

In that brief darkness the planchette moved. But it isn't until the candle flames found purchase and steadied that Alejandra could read where it moved to: "Good Bye."

There was no Lucia to be found anymore.

Alejandra's heart sank in the empty room. Yet in the distance outside her apartment, she could hear the sad howl of a lost hound.