Psychopathia: A Horror Suspense Novel (7 page)

Lara
tossed her hair and dipped a hand in her boyfriend’s front pocket, pulling out his tobacco, and folding herself onto one of the sun loungers to roll herself a cigarette. Tully flicked her eyes around the group, then zeroed in on her brother, who so far hadn’t said anything.

‘Toby?’ she said. ‘Tell her this is a really bad idea.’

He blew out a long stream of smoke – pot again, she could smell it from where she stood – then tipped his head back and closed his eyes.

‘It sounds fun to me,’ he said, and Tully gaped at her brother.

‘Fun? These things are dangerous!’ She rounded on her best friend. ‘Lara, I can’t believe you think we should do this. Do you know how many spirit infestations start because someone thought it would be
fun…’
she spat the word out, ‘to use a Ouija board?’

Lara
had her cigarette rolled. She lit it and looked at Tully through a haze of blue smoke. ‘You’re missing the point,’ she said.

Eyebrows raised, arms crossed, Tully waited for her to go on.

‘We already have a spirit infestation. That’s the idea for the Ouija board – to talk to it, see what it wants, get it to go away. You know – all the sensible things.’

Tully squeezed her eyes shut. ‘Oh my god. Did you just say that was sensible?’

Matt broke in. ‘Whoa you two. Clue me in here. What’s a weegee board, and who’s the new guy drinking my beer?’

The new guy spoke up. ‘I’m Damien.’

‘And how do you know Lara?’

Damien had the sense to look abashed. ‘
I work at the shop where she tried to buy a Ouija board – but you can’t get them in this country. I told her she could make her own.’ He held up a hand at Matt’s forthcoming interjection. ‘A Ouija board is a way to communicate with spirits. It’s been around for over a hundred years.’ He turned to Tully. ‘They really are okay to use, if you’re careful.’

Tully rolled her eyes, but it was Matt who got in first.

‘Can someone tell me
why
we want to talk to some spirit? It doesn’t sound real cool to me.’

Lara
tugged on his arm. ‘Because that thing Tully and Toby saw at the old asylum? They brought it back with them.’ She tossed a triumphant look at Tully.

‘We don’t know that,’ Tully said.

‘Sure we do. You know what it did to all the food in the fridge.’ She sniffed and took a drag on her cigarette. ‘And it keeps moving the bloody car keys. Boy am I sick of that one.’

Unbelievable. ‘There’s no evidence there’s a ghost doing that stuff,’ Tully said.

‘Who is doing it then? You didn’t move the keys this morning. You were positive they weren’t in the bathroom while you were in there, yet that’s where Matt found them. And try explaining the food turning rotten in minutes. I didn’t see that, but you were so freaked out, you called me to tell me about it.’ She pointed her cigarette at Tully. ‘Go on, find another explanation for it all.’

‘I don’t know,’ Tully said. ‘But there has to be one.’

‘I thought you believed in all this stuff.’ Lara again. ‘You’re the one who spent all last term watching ghost hunting programmes.’

Tully could feel her cheeks heat up as Damien turned to her, smiling. ‘And none of them used Ouija boards, I can tell you that much.’ She rocked forward on her feet. ‘Because they’re dangerous. Some of the cases those guys investigated were because people had been mucking around with stupid Ouija boards!’

Damien cleared his throat. ‘Um, some of those groups tried to get EVP’s right? And did any of them use a ghost box?’ He sipped at his beer, looking at her over the upended bottle.

Tully decided she needed a drink too. She was going to lose this argument, and that was a very bad thing. Ouija boards were very bad things. She twisted the cap off and cleared her throat.

‘All of them tried to get EVP’s,’ she admitted. ‘But that’s standard, and light years away from using a Ouija board.’

‘Is it, though? What’s the difference between speaking to a spirit and looking for answers on a digital recording or wanting it spelt out on a board? Same thing with the ghost box. It’s just a high tech Ouija board.’

Lara’s eyes gleamed. ‘Ghost box – that sounds fun. Where do we get one of those?’

Damien grinned. ‘You could probably buy one on the Internet – but our homemade board will do exactly the same thing.’ He turned back to Tully. ‘Won’t it?’

She chewed on her lip. The man was right. She’d never thought about it like that before, but damn, he was right. There was no difference between asking questions and waiting for the answer to come through a ghost box, or a board with the alphabet printed on it.

‘What is a ghost box anyway?’
Lara again. She was really getting into this.

Tully sat down, knowing she was defeated. ‘It’s a box that scrolls through a lot of radio stations or something. The spirit can control it and use i
t to pick words to communicate.’ She sighed. ‘Damien is right, it really is just a high tech version of the Ouija board.’

Lara
was practically bouncing up and down. ‘So we’re going to do this?’ She turned to Matt. ‘What do you think?’

‘I think it sounds stupid,’ he said. ‘We don’t have a bloody ghost in the house for starters.’

‘How can you say that?’ Lara squealed. ‘You’ve seen what it’s done already!’

‘I don’t know that a ghost did that. It’s ridiculous to say one did. I don’t even believe in that shit. This isn’t like a Paranormal Activity movie or anything.’

Lara’s eyes widened and she put a hand to her mouth. ‘Oh my god! Matt, you’re brilliant!’

‘I am?’

She leapt up and kissed him, then ran inside. Tully blinked. ‘Who else doesn’t like it when Lara has her brilliant ideas?’ She panned around to look at her brother. ‘Toby? Are you really okay with this?’

He was staring out over the water, and she walked over and sat down on the end of his lounger. ‘Toby?’ She wished he’d lay off the dope, just a little. She wouldn’t be sharing it with him
tonight, that was for sure. ‘You all right?’

He refocused his gaze on her. ‘What?’

She rolled her eyes. ‘Earth to Toby, come in Toby. Have you heard a word we’ve been saying?’

‘Yeah sure. Ghosts and stuff, right?’

‘You think we brought back whatever it was that chased us that night?’

Damien interrupted. ‘That sounds like an interesting story. Want to tell it?’

Lara erupted from the house, holding up the camera she’d got for her birthday. It hardly ever got used, because who carted a camera around with them when they had their phone in their pocket all the time?

‘It does video,’ she said, jiggling up and down on her toes. ‘We can record the Ouija session, and anything else that happens.’ She fiddled with the camera. ‘Do we have any of the rotten food still around – we should totally record that as well.’ Her face was radiant, and Tully groaned inwardly.
Lara pushed the camera into Matt’s hands. ‘You can work this, right? Of course you can, it’s just point and shoot.’ She gave another bounce. ‘Record me talking about what’s been happening here since we went to the old lunatic asylum.’ Her grin was almost wide enough to split her face in two. ‘Oh my god, if this is good enough, I can use it for my course I’m doing.’ She turned to Damien. ‘I’m doing drama – and film.’ Clapped her hands. ‘This is going to be totally awesome!’

Toby watched Lara light the candles. She’d brought them in from her bedroom, and there were a lot of them. She’d set them around the room, giggling as she lit them, and making sure every few seconds that Matt still had the camera turned on her.

Darkness was at the windows
. Lara had insisted they wait to do the séance at night. That’s what she was calling it now – a séance. Toby took his assigned place at the table and wondered if he should have smoked quite so much of the wacky weed. The room was draped in shadows, as though someone had hung them from windows, doorways, the ceiling. He looked at the candles instead.

‘Blink, man,’ Matt said, startling him and giving him a nudge.

‘What?’

‘You’ve been staring at that bloody candle for ages. Like you’re hypnotised or something.’

‘More like just stoned out of his gourd,’ Tully said, sitting down beside him. ‘Again.’

‘Hey,’ Matt said, holding up his bottle of beer in one hand, the camera in the other, still pointed in the vague direction of his girlfriend. ‘Each to their own.’

Toby made himself nod. ‘What are we doing here, again?’

Tully was chewing on her cheek. She did that when she was nervous. ‘We’re going to talk to whoever’s been hiding the car keys.’

‘Right.’ Whoever, or whatever.

Lara
pranced up and snatched the camera from Matt. ‘If we put it up here on the counter, we should be able to catch everything, right?’ She didn’t wait for an answer, just plopped the piece of equipment on the breakfast counter and checked that it was aimed at the table where they were all sitting.

‘We should totally buy those things you were talking about, Tully,’
Lara said, giving the camera one last tweak then throwing herself into her chair. ‘You know, the Evie meters, and stuff. Do a professional investigation.’

Toby caught one of the shadows shivering out of the corner of his eye and jerked around to look. It stilled, and he sucked in a breath, scanning the rest of the room. It was dark where the candle light
didn’t reach, and he didn’t like it. Too many dark shrouds strung everywhere. Did he say shrouds? He meant shadows. Toby forced his eyes back to the table.

Damien –
Lara’s new friend – had laid Scrabble tiles around in a rough circle. Squinting at them, Toby could make out the letters of the alphabet. And the words YES and NO top and bottom.

‘What do we use for a
planchette?’ Tully was sitting next to him. He could feel her trembling slightly. She was nervous.

‘An upturned glass or something should work fine,’ Damien said. ‘Got any?’

Lara jumped up and went rummaging in the kitchen cupboards. She held up a whiskey tumbler. ‘This do?’

‘Perfect.’

She put it carefully on the table, in the middle of the alphabet circle. ‘Awesome. What next?’

Damien sat himself down beside
Lara and cleared his throat. ‘Now we say a few words. To protect ourselves.’

‘I thought you said it was safe?’
Lara was giving her fake little shivers again. Toby could see her eyes gleaming with excitement in the candlelight.

‘It is safe – because we say a few words to make sure no one comes through who means any harm.’

Next to him, Tully shook her head, her brows drawn together in a heavy frown. ‘I still have my doubts about this,’ she said.

Lara
rolled her eyes. ‘We can always wait and buy one of those ghost box things. That make you feel better? Or we can do what amounts to the same thing right now.’

It was impossible to dissuade
Lara from anything once she made up her mind to do it. Tully knew that, even Toby knew that. He waited for his sister to give in.

‘So who’s saying the
few words
then?’ she asked. Toby hoped no one would nominate him.

‘Why don’t you?’ Damien suggested, looking at Tully. ‘Might make you feel more comfortable.’

Tully chewed on her cheek, then nodded. ‘Okay then.’

‘Let’s join hands,’
Lara said, and held hers up, one snatching at Damien’s beside her. Toby found himself with Matt’s hand grasping his, and on the other side, Tully doing the same.

‘Okay,’ Tully said. ‘Ready?’ Toby heard her deep breath. ‘
We...ask that whoever comes to communicate with us tonight comes in the spirit of love, and we protect ourselves from any who mean us harm.’ She dribbled to a stop, looking confused. ‘We bless and protect ourselves in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.’

‘None of us believe in G
od,’ Matt said.

Lara
giggled. ‘Tully believes in the god of accounting.’

‘Shut up,’ Tully hissed. ‘This is supposed to be serious.’

Toby agreed with Matt. ‘It’s not going to mean anything to ask for protection from something none of us believes in.’

‘Just because we don’t believe in it, doesn’t mean it’s not real,’ Tully replied.

‘So you do believe in a god, then?’ Matt again.

Tully’s frown deepened. ‘Well, maybe I do, a creator of some sort, perhaps.’

‘But you said the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. That’s Christian.’

‘For fucks sakes, Matt, do you have to pick now to prove you have some living brain cells?’ Tully dropped Toby’s hand. ‘Let’s just get on with it.’ She placed the tips of her fingers on the upturned glass. With a delighted wiggle,
Lara joined her. Damien laid his fingertips on the glass too.

‘There’s only enough room for one hand each,’
Lara said, and Toby saw her glance up at the camera, smile, and turn her head slightly to the side. He’d seen her in enough photos to know she preferred her left profile. He reached out his hand and laid fingertips on the glass.