The Candle That Wouldn’t Die

The first time I used the board, I thought I was playing a game. My cousin Lena had brought it over on a stormy October afternoon, just after my brother left for university and my parents were still at work. We were alone in the musty farmhouse my family had rented for the autumn, a place with crooked floorboards and a cellar that breathed cold air. Lena set up the board on the kitchen table, lit a single black candle, and told me the rules: never break the circle, always say goodbye. I laughed at the theatrics, but something in the candle’s flame seemed to lean toward us, as if listening.

We started with simple questions. ‘Is anyone here?’ The planchette—a chipped saucer we used because we couldn’t find the original—slid to YES with a force that made my fingers tingle. I assumed Lena was pushing it. She was always good at pranks. She asked the spirit its name, and the saucer spelled out ‘MARGARET.’ I asked if she was friendly. YES. She asked if she liked the rain. YES. Then the candle flickered, and the room grew colder. I asked if there was anyone else. The saucer shuddered, then slid to NO, but it did so with a reluctance that made my skin prickle.

For weeks, we called to Margaret. She became a routine, a thrill, a way to fill the hollow quiet of the farmhouse. But Margaret never said goodbye. Whenever we asked, the saucer would hover over GOODBYE, then stop, as if waiting. Lena said it was just a quirk. I wasn’t so sure. One evening, after Lena left, I tried the board alone. I lit the same black candle—it had burned down to a stub but refused to die, its flame bending in a wind that wasn’t there. I asked Margaret if she was still with us. The saucer flew to YES. I asked why she never said goodbye. The saucer spelled out: ‘I CANNOT.’ When I asked why, it moved so quickly that the saucer cracked: ‘THE CIRCLE KEEPS ME.’

I should have ended it then, but I was curious, foolish. I asked how to let her go. The saucer traced: ‘LET ME IN.’ I didn’t understand. Lena, when I told her, laughed and said it was a prank. But that night, the candle in my room—a different one, I swear—burned without fuel. I woke to find it still lit, and beside it, a wet footprint on the wooden floor, small, like a child’s. I told myself it was rain from the leaky roof, but the print was fresh, and the storm had passed.

The next week, Lena came over to spend the night. We decided to perform a ‘proper’ session, to send Margaret off. We set the board on the table, lit a new white candle, and called her. The saucer—now held together with tape—moved to YES. We asked her to leave, to cross over. The saucer spelled: ‘I NEED A BODY.’ I laughed nervously, but Lena didn’t. She asked, ‘Whose?’ The saucer traced: ‘THE ONE WHO LIT THE FIRST CANDLE.’ I looked at Lena. She looked at me. The candle on the table turned black, its flame flat like a painted tongue. The front door creaked open, but no one stood there. We heard footsteps in the hallway, slow, dragging, coming closer. I grabbed Lena’s hand, but she was cold, so cold, and her eyes were vacant.

Then Lena smiled—but her lips moved wrong, too wide. She spoke in a voice that wasn’t hers, a voice that echoed from the cellar: ‘You should have said goodbye, Anna.’ I screamed, but my voice came out as a whisper. The black candle on the table flared, and I saw in its flame a face—Margaret’s face, old and hollow—pressed against the window, looking in. The step sounds stopped at the kitchen door. The door began to open. I knocked the board off the table, breaking the circle. The saucer shattered. The white candle went out. The black one, still burning, rolled onto the floor, but it didn’t set anything alight; it just lay there, its flame like a single, stubborn eye.

I didn’t stop running until I reached the nearest neighbor’s house, three fields away. I never went back to the farmhouse. Lena moved away shortly after, and we never spoke of it. But sometimes, late at night, I find a black candle in my room, unlit, and I swear it’s wet, as if doused in baptismal water. And I hear a voice, from the walls, from the floorboards, from the silence between heartbeats, saying, ‘Let me in, Anna. The circle is broken. Let me in.’ I have not played with a board since. But I know that candle is waiting, and one day, it will light itself again.