The Counting Game

In the autumn of 2019, my younger brother Theo developed an obsession with the occult. Our mother, a former nurse who had seen too much in the psychiatric ward, forbade any such dabbling, but Theo and his friends would sneak a homemade planchette into the attic of our row house in Baltimore. They believed the old boards were just superstition, but our mother’s warnings were rooted in a terrifying incident she never fully explained.

By November, the oddities began. At first, it was minor: a coffee mug shattered on the kitchen floor despite no one being there, a pair of scissors appearing inside a locked drawer, the faint sound of a music box from the attic when the house was empty. Then came the tapping—three knocks at the front door, always at 2:33 AM, yet when we checked, no one was outside. Doors creaked open and closed on their own, and Theo’s toy soldiers would line up in perfect formation on the living room carpet.

By January, the activity escalated. We heard our names whispered in the dead of night, not in our ears but from the walls, as if the house itself was speaking. At dinner, a salt shaker slid across the table and tipped over, spelling ‘RED’ in the spilled grains. My mother began sleeping with a crucifix, and Theo, pale and jumpy, confessed that he and his friends had not used the board just once—they had used it every Friday, and on the last session, the planchette had spelled out a name: ‘MARTHA.’

In February, the shadow figures appeared. I saw one standing at the foot of my bed, a tall, thin silhouette with no discernible features, reaching out a hand inches from my face before dissolving. Theo claimed something had grabbed his ankle while he was in the bathroom, leaving a bruise in the shape of a hand. Our mother, desperate, called in a priest, but he refused to perform an exorcism, muttering that the entity was ‘old and strong.’

Then came the counting. On a Tuesday night, I heard a voice—a soft, childish voice—counting from one to ten, over and over, coming from the attic. Theo heard it too, and we decided to confront it. We climbed the creaky attic stairs, flashlights trembling, and found the planchette, still on the board, moving by itself. It spelled: ‘PLAY WITH ME.’

We tried to destroy the board, burning it in the backyard, but that night, the counting returned, louder, now from every room simultaneously. The shadows grew more bold, touching us during the day, and my mother started sleepwalking, always to the attic door, muttering the numbers. The last thing I remember clearly is Theo screaming as something dragged him toward the attic. I ran after him, but the door slammed shut and locked. Behind it, I heard the counting continue, now in Theo’s voice: ‘twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three…’

I haven’t seen Theo since. The house remains, and I’ve moved away, but every night at 2:33, I hear faint counting from my own bedroom closet, and I know she’s found me too. The game has only just begun, and she never intended to play alone.