The Last Parcel

The old house on Hemlock Lane had been in my family for generations, but it was the attic that held the real secrets. I had always had a way with the unseen, a gift that let me walk between worlds. My friends called it a talent, my siblings called it a curse, but I had grown accustomed to the murmur of spirits in the corners of my vision. I had even taught a few of them to see through the veil, though each lesson left a mark. But the Ouija board was a different kind of door. It was a key that only worked when the house itself was in the mood. So when my brother Marcus and sister Elena came to visit, and we found the board tucked behind an old trunk as if it had been waiting, I knew the evening would be different.

We sat in a triangle of candlelight in the attic, the dust of decades swirling in the beams. The board was worn, its letters faded but legible. We placed our fingers on the planchette, and almost immediately it began to move. It spelled out a name: Arthur. He said he had lived in this house in the 1930s. He was a mail carrier, he said, and he had died in the winter of ’38. His voice, if you could call it that, was a cold draft through the floorboards. I felt a prickle of unease, but I had done this a hundred times. I asked the question that always turned things: ‘How did you live your life?’

The planchette moved in a slow, deliberate circle before it began to spell. ‘I delivered the last parcel to the wrong house. The one with the shutters. The house at the end of the lane, the one that burned.’ I knew the house he meant. It was a ruin that stood at the edge of town, a blackened skeleton that no one would touch. Marcus and Elena exchanged a glance, their fingers trembling. I pressed on.

‘Why is that significant?’

The planchette lurched, almost as if it were angry. ‘Because the parcel was for me. It was my own death notice. I knew what it was, but I delivered it anyway. The man who took it, he used it to find me. He was the one who left me in the snow.’ A chill ran down my spine. The spirits I usually spoke with were benign, lost souls who wanted to be remembered. This was something else. I could feel a pressure in the air, like the moment before a storm. The candles flickered, and for a second, the shadows on the wall seemed to form a figure.

Elena pulled her hand away. ‘I’m not doing this anymore.’ But Marcus’s hand stayed, and my own was frozen to the planchette. The board had a hold. ‘Where did you die?’ I asked, my voice barely a whisper.

The planchette dragged to the center of the board, then moved in a jagged line to the letter D, then E, then A, then D. But that wasn’t the answer. It spelled ‘DEAD’ over and over, faster and faster, until the planchette was vibrating. Then it stopped. ‘Behind the stove,’ it spelled. ‘In the kitchen. They found me in the morning, but no one ever knew.’

The room seemed to close in. The board went cold. And then, from the floor below, we heard a sound. A shuffling, like feet dragging across the kitchen tiles. Marcus’s eyes went wide. ‘That’s impossible,’ he said. ‘The kitchen is right below us.’

I knew that, but I also knew that spirits often imprinted their final moments on a place. The house was old, and the kitchen had been renovated, but the essence of that winter night was still there. The planchette moved one last time, tracing a line to the ‘Y’ and the ‘E’ and the ‘S’ and then, strangely, to the letter ‘M’. It spelled ‘YOURS.’

And then the planchette spun off the board and clattered to the floor. The candles blew out, and we were plunged into darkness. In that darkness, I felt a hand grab my ankle. It was icy, and it pulled. I screamed, and Marcus yanked me back. We stumbled down the stairs, leaving the board behind.

We never found the board again, no matter how hard we searched. But I know it’s there, waiting. And sometimes, when I walk through the kitchen, I catch a whiff of something burning, and I feel the cold spot near the stove. And I know that Arthur’s last parcel is still out there, and that it was meant for me. The mystery of why I was chosen, and why the board kept appearing, has never been answered. But I know one thing: the spirit world is not always a place of comfort. Sometimes, it is a place of unfinished business, and the dead will find a way to tie the loose ends, even if it means dragging the living along with them. The last parcel has been delivered, and its receipt is written in my bones.