The Painted Parlor Game

At fourteen, I was convinced that the dead were just quiet neighbors—present but silent, waiting for the right password. My name is Jamie, and I grew up in the flat, corn-swept outskirts of Peoria, Illinois, where the most interesting thing that happened all year was the County Fair’s tractor pull. But after my birthday in late September, I traded my interest in dirt bikes for dusty tomes on spirit communication from the library’s basement, and I became obsessed with the idea that I could open a door.

My homemade board—a piece of cardboard with letters scrawled in permanent marker—did nothing. It sat on my bedroom floor like a rejected prop. So, with my mother’s reluctant approval (she thought it would be a phase), I bought a real Ouija board from a novelty shop in the strip mall. But it wasn’t the usual glow-in-the-dark version. It was a vintage-looking board called ‘The Painted Parlor Game,’ its wood stained dark and inlaid with mother-of-pearl. The planchette was a heavy, brass-rimmed teardrop. The shopkeeper, an old man with rheumy eyes, had insisted on wrapping it in brown paper ‘so the light doesn’t get to it.’ I thought he was just eccentric.

For weeks, the board sat in my closet, still wrapped. I was nervous, but also impatient. Finally, on a Friday night with a sleepover at my best friend, Maya’s house, I brought it out. Her parents were away for the weekend, and her older brother was upstairs with headphones on. The house was a sprawling mid-century modern, all glass and dark wood, and as dusk fell, the overhanging oak trees cast distorted shadows on the walls.

We set the board on the coffee table in the sunken living room. The air felt thick, almost syrupy. Maya lit a couple of candles, more for atmosphere than necessity. She was skeptical but game. ‘Okay, Jamie, let’s see if your ghost wants to play.’ We placed our fingertips on the planchette. I asked, ‘Is there anyone here who wants to speak?’

The planchette didn’t move. Maya giggled. ‘It feels stuck.’ I pushed a little, but it resisted. Then, something odd: the brass rim grew cold under my fingers. A single draft, smelling of dust and old pipe tobacco, curled through the room, making the candles gutter. The planchette twitched, then slid, not to letters, but in a slow spiral, counterclockwise, until it stopped at the corner of the board marked ‘Goodbye.’ We both felt a pulse, like a heartbeat, through the wood.

‘I think it’s broken,’ Maya said, but her voice had lost its certainty. I shook my head. ‘Maybe it needs the lights off?’ She was reluctant, but I insisted. We blew out the candles and sat in the dark. The only light came from the kitchen down the hall, a dim yellow glow. I asked again, ‘Who’s here?’

The planchette flew, almost yanking our fingers, to the letters: T-H-E-P-A-I-N-T-E-R. ‘The Painter?’ Maya whispered. Then it spelled: Y-O-U-K-N-O-W-M-E. My stomach dropped. I didn’t know any painter. The planchette then went to ‘Goodbye’ and stopped, as if the session was over.

We turned the lights on, breathing heavily. Maya was pale. ‘That was creepy. Maybe we should stop.’ But I felt a pull, an unholy curiosity. ‘One more question. Just one.’ She reluctantly agreed. I asked, ‘What do you want?’

The planchette moved slowly, deliberately, spelling: I-W-A-N-T-T-O-F-I-N-I-S-H. Maya yanked her hand away. ‘No. This is wrong.’ The board seemed to darken, the mother-of-pearl inlay catching the light in an eerie way. I felt a headache blooming behind my eyes. I laughed nervously. ‘It’s just our subconscious. That thing about the painter—maybe we saw a documentary?’ But Maya was already boxing the board, stuffing it back into the brown paper.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. A strange humming, like a distant electric wire, vibrated in my ears. I kept seeing the word ‘FINISH’ burned into my mind. The next morning, I opened my closet to get a hoodie, and the board was there, unwrapped, sitting on the floor like it had been waiting. I hadn’t taken it out. Maya had sworn she’d gotten rid of it, but there it was, the planchette resting on ‘Goodbye.’ I touched the wood, and a wave of nausea hit me. A sharp, acrid smell—like burnt varnish—filled the room, and I heard a whisper, not in my ears but in my skull: ‘You started it.’

I tried to ignore it. I hid the board in the basement, behind the old boiler. But over the next week, weird things happened. My paint-by-numbers kit—dry and unused for years—was found in my bed, the paints freshly squeezed and smeared into a grotesque face on the canvas. My mother assumed I had been painting, and she praised me for being creative. But I hadn’t touched it. At night, I dreamed of a man in a paint-stained apron, his face a featureless white, standing at an easel in a room lined with portraits. Each portrait had the same hollow eyes, and they all turned to watch me.

Maya avoided me. She said she felt sick whenever she thought about the board. I was desperate, so I went back to the novelty shop, but it was shuttered, the windows dark. The old man was gone; a faded sign said ‘Out of Business.’ My hands trembled as I looked up ‘The Painted Parlor Game’ online. Nothing. It didn’t exist.

On the following Friday, I woke at 3:33 AM to the sound of scratching. It came from the basement. I crept down the stairs, the steps cool and rough under my bare feet. The boiler room door was ajar, a sliver of light escaping. I pushed it open. The board was on the floor, the planchette off to the side, and on the concrete wall, written in something dark and glossy, was a crude mural: a stick figure with a paintbrush, and beneath it, the words: ‘I have a face now.’

I screamed. The sound echoed in the empty house. My parents, alarmed, rushed down. They saw nothing but an old wooden board and a smear of what looked like paint. ‘Jamie, you need to sleep,’ my mother said, her face worried. But I saw the truth: the smear on the wall was the color of dried blood, and it was shaped like a crude smile.

I knew then that the board wasn’t a toy. It was a prison, and I had let something out. That night, I took the board to the river, weighed it down with a brick, and threw it into the black water. As it sank, I felt a fracture in my chest, like a piece of my own soul had been torn away. I walked home, the cold October air biting my skin.

But when I got to my room, the board was on my pillow, dry, the planchette resting on the letter ‘R.’ I didn’t touch it. I whispered, ‘What do you want now?’ The planchette moved on its own, slowly spelling: ‘A subject.’ My mirror, hanging on the wall, suddenly reflected not my face, but a featureless white mask with a single, dripping brush stroke for a mouth. I turned to run, but the mirror stayed solid, and in the glass, the figure raised a hand and beckoned.

Since then, I haven’t slept without the lights on. My parents think I’m having nightmares. Maya moved away a year later and never spoke to me again. And every time I look at a painting—in a museum, a friend’s house, even a child’s drawing—I see the face in the pigments, half-finished, always watching. The board is gone; I buried it under the old oak in the backyard, but at night, I still hear the scratch of a brush on canvas, and I know it’s only a matter of time before I become the portrait.

I’m writing this as a warning. If you ever come across a game called ‘The Painted Parlor Game,’ do not play it. Do not even touch it. Because some doors, once opened, cannot be closed. And the painter is always looking for a new face to finish his work.