The Cardboard Circle

In the autumn of 1996, I was twenty-three, living in a cramped apartment over a failing bakery in the town of Millbrook. The air always smelled of stale yeast and burnt sugar, and the windows rattled with the drafts of an old building. My friend Lena had invited a few of us over to her place—a narrow row house on Ash Street—to drink cheap wine and listen to records. It was around ten-thirty when we all gathered: Lena, her boyfriend Marco, my friend Jules, and Jules’s new girlfriend, a quiet artist named Petra.

We were all a little drunk, the kind of drunk that makes you laugh at nothing and forget the world outside. Marco, who had a habit of talking about bizarre films he’d seen, brought up a movie about a spirit board. He kept going on about how ‘awesome’ it would be to actually try one. I, in my foolish inebriation, even sketched a crude board on a piece of cardboard from a pizza box, complete with letters and a planchette made from a bottle cap.

Lena protested half-heartedly, but she was too tipsy to put her foot down. Petra refused to participate, sitting on the couch with a sketchbook, watching us with a frown. Jules and Marco were laughing like idiots, and I felt a sudden wrongness—not sickness, but a deep, instinctual dread that something terrible was about to happen. Yet, my inhibitions were drowned in wine, and I let them goad me on.

We set up the board on the coffee table, using one of Lena’s best glasses as the planchette. We lit a few of her scented candles, and the room took on a dim, amber glow. I placed my fingers on the glass, along with Lena, Marco, and Jules. Petra remained apart, watching with a cynical expression, but even she seemed tense.

We started asking questions, silly ones at first. ‘Is anyone here with us?’ The glass didn’t move. We giggled nervously. Marco asked, ‘Who are you?’ Nothing. We tried for ten minutes, getting more bored and silly, when suddenly the glass lurched violently to the letter ‘Z’. We all jumped, and I felt a chill crawl up my spine.

The glass then spelled out a name: ‘Elias’. None of us knew an Elias. The laughter died. The air in the room thickened, and the candles flickered as if a wind had passed through, even though the windows were shut. Petra set down her pencil, her face pale.

We asked, ‘What do you want?’ The glass moved faster, sliding to ‘Y’, ‘O’, ‘U’, ‘R’, ‘S’, ‘O’, ‘U’, ‘L’. I yanked my hand back as if burned. Marco tried to laugh it off, but his voice cracked. Suddenly, the glass spun in a wild circle, then flew off the table and shattered against the wall. The candles all went out at once, plunging us into darkness.

A deep, guttural whisper filled the room—not from any of us—saying, ‘Too late.’ We scrambled for the lights, but the switch didn’t work. The record player started on its own, playing a screeching warped sound. We stumbled toward the door, but it felt like the hallway lengthened, and we couldn’t find the exit. For what felt like hours, we were trapped in a labyrinth of darkness, hearing heavy breathing and footsteps behind us.

Finally, the door burst open, and we tumbled out onto the street, gasping for cold air. But when we turned around, Lena’s house was dark and silent. We never went back in. We never spoke about what happened, but the effects followed us. Jules started sleepwalking, mumbling about ‘Elias’. Marco became paranoid, convinced he was being followed. Petra painted a series of portraits that all showed a shadowy figure with hollow eyes, and she couldn’t explain why.

Lena moved away shortly after, and I heard she checked herself into a mental hospital. I still have nightmares about that night, and sometimes I see that crude cardboard circle in my mind, the letters seeming to rearrange themselves into words I don’t want to read. The worst part? I still have the cardboard board. I never threw it away. It sits in my closet, and sometimes I find it out on my desk in the morning, as if it moved on its own. And I can’t help but feel that this is only the beginning, that Elias never left, and he’s waiting for me to make the same mistake again.

That is why I will never touch a spirit board, no matter how many laughs it might promise. Some doors should remain shut, and some whispers should never be answered.