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The medicine cabinet mirror—dotted with rust and turning gray—made the powder foundation on Jackie’s face look ashen and her jet-black hair, blurry. She looked like a shadow of a girl. She smeared black lipstick on her lips and shook out her shoulder-length hair. Her straight-cut bangs veiled her mascara-lined eyes, and the layered ends of her hair stuck out in defiant wisps.
Some of the kids at school—the ones she didn’t hang out with—called her Goth Girl. Some, whose memories wouldn’t die, called her VQ for Virgin Queen.
Jackie preferred Goth Girl, to be one of the living dead, to be numb to the emotions that plagued her. But this was what she wanted, not what she got.
Goth Girl or Virgin Queen, she was a freak, absorbing the emotions around her like a sponge. Sometimes the emotions made her sick. Sometimes they made her see things.
Because of this, she kept to a tight-knit group of goth friends—Jason, Zeta, and Trish—and avoided social activities. She attended high school only because Mom wouldn’t let her homeschool. Mom was afraid she’d hang with Babu all day, making piroshki and doing needlepoint instead of studying. Jackie, afraid of what life offered a freak like her beyond high school, had to admit that hanging with Babu all day was tempting.
Typically, Fridays were movie nights for Jason and her, but tonight would be different. Tonight, she’d subject herself to a hodgepodge of emotions from crowds and rides and the very ground she’d walk on to protect Jason. For this, she would need physical and spiritual strength, which she sought from Babu these days.
Babu’s door was cracked, and Jackie slowly pushed the door open. “Babu?”
The room smelled of beeswax and down. A candle burned on the shrine on the dresser. The flickering flame animated the icon of the Virgin of Vladimir and cast shadows across the picture of Babu, Grandma, Mom, and Jackie. Although Babu didn’t speak English, and Jackie didn’t understand much Russian, Jackie knew Babu kept that picture on her shrine to pray for Grandma, who passed away several years ago; for Mom, who divorced Dad; and for the girl who saw the Virgin when she was twelve—for the girl she had become as a teen.
Babu sat in bed, a country quilt spread over her legs, her thumb pressed against a knot of her prayer rope, her head bowed sleepily, and her lips wording prayers.
“I wanted to say goodbye,” Jackie whispered.
Babu crossed herself and then smiled at Jackie, her gold eyetooth shining from the light of the bed-stand lamp. She patted the empty space beside her. “Sadees.”
Jackie sat down beside Babu at the edge of the bed and took Babu’s hand in hers. Babu’s hand was warm and knotted with arthritis. Jackie rubbed her thumb over the bumps on Babu’s knuckles; her black fingernails were a sharp contrast to Babu’s flour-white skin.
She wasn’t afraid to touch Babu’s hands and absorb her emotions. Jackie got a good feeling from her. Babu filled Jackie’s inner vision with white light. She renewed her spirit. And this is what Jackie needed for the commitment she had made for tonight.
“Kooda eedyosh?” Babu asked.
“I’m going out,” Jackie said as if Babu understood her. This is how they communicated: Babu telling her stuff she couldn’t understand, Jackie telling Babu stuff she couldn’t understand. Somehow they carried on fine this way.
“Eedyosh sdroozyamee?”
“I’m going with Jason.”
Babu rubbed the top of Jackie’s hand and ran her thumb over black fingernails. “Fsyevo kharoshevuh,” she said in a comforting tone and gently squeezed Jackie’s hand. Then she cupped her hands around Jackie’s jaws and pulled her forehead to her lips. Jackie imagined Babu’s kiss imprinted on her forehead and carrying Babu’s blessings and love with her tonight.
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JoAnne Keltner is the author of Goth Girl, Virgin Queen (Solstice Publishing, 2015) and Obsession. As an only child and avid daydreamer, she spent hours alone in her backyard on the South Side of Chicago, which she imagined to be everything from an alien planet to the Antarctic. She currently lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, with her husband, four dogs, cat, and three chickens. When she isn’t writing or freelance editing, she’s obsessively streaming popular TV shows.
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Eerie Facts About the Ouija Board
By JoAnne Keltner
The inception of the Ouija board rose out of America’s 19th-century obsession with spiritualism and the belief that one can communicate with the dead. In 1890, acting on an article printed by the Associated Press in 1886 about Ohio spiritualists who were using a “talking board” to communicate across the veil, Charles Kennard put together a group of investors to create a talking board for the mass market. This board came to be named “Ouija.” The very next year, ads for the Ouija board appeared in various newspapers, some describing the board as both magical and for amusement, others claiming it had been proven at the patent office.
For many years the Ouija board was viewed by many as either a parlor toy solely for amusement or a tool in which to “innocently” communicate with the dead. It wasn’t until 1973, because of its role in the movie The Exorcist, that the association changed and many people believed the Ouija board to be a demonic device with which to invite demons. However, no matter what the association, the Ouija board has always been surrounded in an aura of mystery and linked to many eerie tales. Here is a list of some eerie facts that I encountered in my research:
- First coined as “the talking board,” the investor Elijah Bond along with his sister-in-law, a medium named Helen Peters, asked the board to name itself, which it did: “Ouija.” When asked what it meant, the board replied, “Good luck.”
- In order to gain a patent, the investors had to prove to the patent officer that the Ouija board actually worked. To the patent officer’s surprise, it did, correctly spelling out his name, which was unknown to those demonstrating the board.
- William Fuld, who took over production of the Ouija board in 1901, often consulted the board on business matters. The board told him to build a new factory. In 1927, Fuld mysteriously fell from the factory’s rooftop and died. On his deathbed, attributing his accident to the spirit he’d been communicating with, Fuld asked his children never be involved in selling the Ouija.
- American poet James Ingram Merrill (March 3, 1926–February 6, 1995) claimed he had written The Changing Light at Sandover through messages he received from his Ouija board.
- Bill Wilson, the co-founder of AA, claimed that a monk named Boniface communicated the Twelve Steps program to him via a Ouija board.
- During the production of the movie The Exorcist, which was about a girl’s demonic possession due to playing with a Ouija board, nine people who were associated with the movie died, including actor Jack MacGowran who played Burke Dennings (the character who “falls” out the window while babysitting Regan). The set had also burned down, delaying production.
- The original instructions printed in 1902 on the back of the Ouija board box suggested one could inadvertently invite “undeveloped influences” if you were disrespectful. “To obtain the best results it is important that the persons present should concentrate their minds upon the matter in question and avoid other topics. Have no one at the table who will not sit seriously and respectfully. If you use it in a frivolous spirit, asking ridiculous questions, laughing over it, you naturally get undeveloped influences around you.”
If you enjoy stories about Ouija boards, the occult, and demons, you may enjoy Goth Girl Virgin Queen (Solstice Publishing, 2015). In the novel, the main character’s (Jackie’s) friend Trish uses a Ouija board in a fit of jealously and inadvertently invites a demon. The demon wreaks havoc on Jackie’s life, causing her past to be “resurrected” and her to be bullied for a lie she told. It also puts her best friend, Jason, in danger. Jackie, an empath and healer, must learn how to use her gifts to protect Jason and herself and to heal the negative energies around her.
Sources
- Charlie Hintz, “Ouija: Mystifying History of the Dreaded Talking Board Game,” Cult of Weird, October 17, 2014, http://www.cultofweird.com/occult/history-of-the-ouija-board.
- House of Horrors, http://www.houseofhorrors.com/vault/exorcist/pages/frightful.htm.
- IMBd, The Exorcist (1973), http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070047/faq#.2.1.4.
- Linda Rodriguez McRobbie, “The Strange and Mysterious History of the Ouija Board,” Smithsonian, October, 27. 2013, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-strange-and-mysterious-history-of-the-ouija-board-5860627.
- Museum of Talking Boards, http://www.museumoftalkingboards.com/directio.html.
- The Lineup, “5 Strange and Sinister Facts You Didn’t Know About the Ouija Board,” The Occult Museum, http://www.theoccultmuseum.com/5-disturbing-facts-you-didnt-know-about-the-ouija-board.
JoAnne Keltner is the author of Goth Girl Virgin Queen (Solstice Publishing, 2015) and Obsession (Musa Publishing, 2013 ed.). You can learn more about her and her books at joannekeltner.com or visit her on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JoAnneKeltnerAuthor.
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