The Blue Crayon

My name is Evelyn, and this begins in the winter of my junior year. I was obsessed with old parlor games, anything that promised a glimpse beyond the veil. My grandmother had left me a dusty, leather-bound book of spiritualist practices, and tucked inside its pages was a faded, hand-drawn ouija board on a scrap of linen. It wasn’t the polished Hasbro version; it felt ancient and wrong, the letters scrawled in a shaky, sepia ink. My best friend at the time, Chloe, thought it was creepy but agreed to try it with me one snowed-in Saturday evening.

We set the board on the floor of my attic, surrounded by old trunks and mothballed clothes. A single bare bulb swung overhead, casting monstrous shadows that writhed with every gust of wind against the window. We placed the planchette—a carved piece of rosewood my grandmother had whittled herself—on the board, and I asked the standard questions. Who are you? It spelled out a name I didn’t recognize: MARTHA. Then we asked, are you good or evil? The planchette slid violently to EVIL, so fast it nearly flew off the board. Chloe gasped, her knuckles white. I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the cold.

The questions that followed were supposed to be light, but the board kept steering back to darker topics. I was a curious kid, and my mind drifted to the family tragedy I knew only from hushed whispers: my little cousin, Jonah, who had died at age four, almost thirty years ago, from a blocked breathing tube. I never knew him, but his memory haunted my mother. Desperate for a connection, I asked the board questions I had no way of knowing the answers to.

‘What was he buried in?’ I asked, my voice trembling. The planchette moved with a sickening certainty: BLUE PAJAMAS. I felt a knot tighten in my stomach. I called my mom downstairs. She stood in the attic doorway, her face pale as I relayed the board’s answer. ‘That’s right,’ she whispered, her hand going to her chest. ‘He was wearing his little blue pajamas with the rocket ships.’ My heart hammered. I asked another question, something I’d overheard my aunt mention once. ‘Did he have a favorite toy?’ The board spelled out CRAYON. TRAIN. My mom gasped. ‘He loved his Crayon train set, Evelyn. He had a blue crayon he’d chew on all the time.’ Our questions grew bolder. ‘Why are you here?’ I asked. The planchette began to shake, vibrating under our fingers. It spelled, HE WANTS ME. I looked at Chloe, and she was crying.

Then the lights flickered. The temperature in the attic plummeted, and a cold, damp breath seemed to lap at my neck. The planchette moved on its own, dragging our fingers with it, and spelled out a new word: SWING. That wasn’t what I had asked. Then, over and over, it spelled SWING SWING SWING, until the letters blurred together and the board began to crack. The single bulb shattered, plunging us into darkness. I screamed, and Chloe threw the planchette across the room. We stumbled down the attic stairs, tripping over each other, and didn’t stop until we were in the kitchen, trembling under the harsh light of the refrigerator.

We never spoke of that night again. Chloe stopped answering my calls a week later, and our friendship withered. I tried to burn the board, but it wouldn’t catch. I tried to throw it away, but it kept reappearing on my nightstand. At night, I’d hear a faint creaking, like a swing rocking in the wind, though there was no tree outside my window. A few months later, I found an old photo album in my grandmother’s things. In the back, tucked in a pocket, was a picture of a young boy on a wooden swing in a backyard I didn’t recognize. He was smiling, and in his hand he clutched a single blue crayon. On the back, in faded ink, were the words, ‘Jonah’s favorite place.’ The swing. The swing was his.

I never played the game again. I moved away for college and tried to forget. But sometimes, when I close my eyes, I can feel the planchette sliding under my fingers, spelling out a name I never knew to ask about. And I know, somewhere in the space between living and dead, there’s a little boy on a swing, waiting for someone to come push him. And the board is the only way he knows how to ask.