The Charred Rosewood Planchette

June 29, 2015

by Oliver

3 min read

Story Premise 3 min read (528 words)

"It was the autumn of 2011, and I was twenty-two, renting a crumbling Edwardian flat in the middle of Glasgow with three other students. The place was nicknamed ‘The Coffin’ due to its narrow corridors and perpetual damp. One rainy Tuesday, fueled by cheap cider and boredom, we decided to hold a séance. I found […]"

It was the autumn of 2011, and I was twenty-two, renting a crumbling Edwardian flat in the middle of Glasgow with three other students. The place was nicknamed ‘The Coffin’ due to its narrow corridors and perpetual damp. One rainy Tuesday, fueled by cheap cider and boredom, we decided to hold a séance.

I found an old rosewood cigar box in the attic, its hinges rusted shut. Inside, wrapped in yellowed silk, was a heart-shaped planchette with a tiny glass window and a pencil stub in its claw. It felt heavy, wrong, like it had soaked up something from the room. We laid a bedsheet on the floor, scrawled the alphabet and numbers on it with a marker, and used a shot glass as the pointer. The atmosphere was tense; my flatmate, Jenna, kept glancing at the corners. Our dog, a black Labrador named Baxter, started whining before we even began.

We sat in a circle, fingers resting on the cold glass. ‘Is anyone here?’ I asked, my voice trembling. The glass didn’t move. We asked again, and then it shuddered violently, spinning in a circle before settling on ‘Y’. Baxter barked and backed away, hackles raised. The room suddenly felt cooler, as if a window had been left open. I, for one, felt a breath on the back of my neck, cold and rhythmic, though no one was near me.

We asked trivial questions—’What is your name?’ The glass spelled ‘M-A-R-G-A-R-E-T’. ‘How did you die?’ It flew to ‘M’ then ‘U’ then ‘R’ then ‘D’ then ‘E’ then ‘R’, pausing on each letter with malicious precision. At that moment, the candles on the mantelpiece flickered and went out, and the curtains billowed inward as if a draft had blown through, even though the window was shut and taped. The glass began to move on its own, spinning faster and faster, until it smashed against the wall, shattering into a thousand pieces. The planchette from the cigar box slid across the floor and stopped at my feet, pointing at the word ‘DIE’.

We tried to laugh it off, but Baxter wouldn’t stop barking at the ceiling, and his eyes followed something none of us could see. Jenna screamed as she felt a hand grip her ankle under the table. We didn’t need to look; we all knew we had to leave. As we scrambled for the door, the lights above us flickered and went out, plunging us into darkness. I felt a cold breath on my ear, and a voice—so faint it might have been my own imagination—whispered, ‘You’ll all stay.’

We bolted out of the flat and didn’t stop running until we reached the all-night café. When we finally returned the next morning, the room was exactly as we had left it, but the planchette was gone. On the floor, in what looked like dried blood, were the words: ‘You’ll all stay.’ We never went back to that flat. I still have the cigar box, though. Sometimes at night, I hear the sound of a pencil scratching inside it, and I know that Margaret hasn’t finished with us yet.

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