Page 44 of Summer of Salt

The planchette moved to point at the letterM.

The planchette moved to point at the letterA.

The planchette moved to point at the letterN.

The planchette stopped moving.

“Evil man,” Vira said, mostly to herself, but also, I thought, because she considered the phraseevil manto be too good and creepy not to say out loud. “Do you know his name?”

The planchette moved to point at the wordno.

“Hmm,” Vira said.

“I’m going to pee myself,” I whispered.

“At least we’ve ruled out some genders,” Vira said, choosing to ignore me. “Of course it’s a fuckingman. Men are always killing things. Okay. Where was Mary Fernweh the night Annabella was murdered?”

The planchette moved to point at the letterW.

The planchette moved to point at the letterI.

The planchette moved to point at the letterT.

The planchette moved to point at the letterH.

The planchette moved to point at the letterH.

The planchette moved to point at the letterE.

The planchette moved to point at the letterR.

And then, as if it wanted to be very clear that it would share no more knowledge with us, the planchette moved to point at the wordgood-bye.

Vira didn’t look up from the board. She let her fingers fall away, but she just stared at the planchette like it was going to do something. For its part, the planchette sat motionless on the board, like a completely innocent thing. I thought the silence in the room was going to kill me but as soon as I opened my mouth to speak, Vira held a finger up.Shush.

Then she said, “With her. The planchette spelled—”

“I know—”

“With her.” She finally looked up at me. She looked more confused than anything, like she was trying to wrap her brain around what we’d just learned. “Do you remember what I said? Maybe I wasn’t specific enough? We don’t know who theheris.”

“Vira, I think if we can be confident about anything in this world, it’s that you know how to be specific with your Ouija questions.”

Vira put her hand to her mouth and bit one nail, almost methodically. She shook her head a little. “And Mary told you—”

“That she didn’t do it. Yeah.”

“So if she didn’t do it—”

“Then why is this thing saying she did?” I finished.

Vira shook her head again. “Well, it’s not saying shediddo it. It’s just saying... she was there, maybe? Or maybe she saw Annabella before? Honestly it would be really nice of the spirit realm if we could get another question or two,” she said, and poked the planchette for emphasis. Nothing happened.

“Well, I guess we’ve figured one thing out,” I said after a minute.

“What?” Vira asked, her voice barely a whisper.

“There’s a whole lot my sister isn’t telling me.”