The Pale Arithmetic of Ash

The old house on Bramble Row had a reputation, but I never believed in ghosts. So when I found the ‘Spirit Board’ in the attic, a relic of my grandmother’s ‘spiritualist’ phase, I saw a toy, not a tool. My friend, Lena, was even more skeptical, but she was always up for a dare. We sat cross-legged on the threadbare carpet of my childhood bedroom, the board between us, and I placed the planchette, a chipped heart of rose quartz, on its surface.

‘Is anyone there?’ I asked, trying to sound dramatic. The planchette didn’t move. I rolled my eyes. ‘This is stupid.’

Then the planchette shuddered, slid to ‘YES’ as if a magnet had pulled it. I laughed, but Lena’s face had gone pale. ‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘My mother used to… just don’t.’

But I was curious. I asked simple questions, and the answers came, spelling out names, dates, events that only Lena and I knew. I was impressed, but still not convinced. It had to be a prank, maybe Lena was pushing it. But she was shaking now, her fingers barely resting on the planchette. I asked, ‘What’s your name?’

The planchette flew to ‘Z’ then ‘O’ then ‘Z’ then ‘O.’ ZOZO. The name felt like a cold draft on my neck.

‘Are you a demon?’

The planchette spelled ‘FIRST OF MANY.’ My heart began to beat faster, but I forced myself to think logically. ‘Prove it,’ I said.

‘WHAT PROOF WOULD PLEASE A MORTAL?’

‘Tell me something I don’t know.’

A pause. Then it spelled: ‘SEVEN SCORE AND SEVEN YEARS AGO, A WITCH WAS BURNED IN THE FIELD BEHIND THIS HOUSE. SHE CURSED THE BLOODLINE. YOU ARE THE LAST.’

Lena gasped. ‘My great-grandmother was born here,’ she said, her voice a whisper. ‘She died in a fire.’

I felt a chill, but I pressed on. ‘If you’re a demon, how many people have you killed?’

The planchette shot to numbers: 5, then 9, then 7. ‘FIVE HUNDRED NINETY-SEVEN.’ Then it added, ‘YOUR FRIEND WILL BE THE SIXTH HUNDRED.’

Lena tried to pull her hands away, but they were glued to the planchette. I was scared now, but my skepticism was stubborn. ‘How?’ I demanded. ‘How would you kill her? You can’t tell me.’

The planchette moved in halting, jerky motions, spelling out: P K 9. We stared at the letters. Lena’s face lit up with terror. ‘That’s not random,’ she said. ‘It’s a chemical weapons code. Phosgene. A gas that kills by filling your lungs with fluid. But that’s classified, I know it from my brother’s military books.’

‘That’s ridiculous,’ I said, but my voice cracked. ‘How would a demon know military codes?’

The planchette began to move on its own, faster, spelling out a string of numbers and letters: 3 7 9 1 2 8 6 4 5 0 1 5 9 2 6 5 3 5 8 9 7 9 3 2 3 8 4 6 2 6 4 3 3 8 3 2 7 9 5 0 2 8 8 4 1 9 7 1 6 9 3 9 9 3 7 5 1 0 5 8 2 0 9 7 4 9 4 4 5 9 2 3 0 7 8 1 6 4 0 6 2 8 6 2 0 8 9 9 8 6 2 8 0 3 4 8 2 5 3 4 2 1 1 7 0 6 7 9

It went on tirelessly, filling the board’s blank spaces, spilling over the edges. I tried to pull away, but the planchette was pinned. Lena was crying, and I noticed her nose was bleeding. The numbers, they looked like a sequence, a countdown. Then the planchette stopped, pointing to ‘YES’ one last time.

I looked up at Lena, and through her tears, she was staring at the window. Outside, a thick, yellowish fog was rolling in. I didn’t remember seeing fog in the forecast. The numbers on the board seemed to shimmer, rearranging themselves into an equation, a formula I didn’t recognize.

I felt a sharp pain in my chest, and I coughed, tasting metal. My lungs burned. Lena doubled over, gasping. ‘It’s here,’ she wheezed. ‘He’s in the fog.’

I wanted to laugh, to tell her it was just our imagination, but a terrible weight pressed down on me, like an invisible hand was holding me to the floor. The house creaked, and I heard a whisper, not through the board, but in my ears: ‘FIVE HUNDRED NINETY-SEVEN VICTIMS, AND NOW, THE SIX HUNDREDTH AND FIRST.’

But it hadn’t said that before. It had said Lena would be the six hundredth. Yet the numbers before my eyes rearranged: 597, 600, 601. I realized the number was still counting, and I was not exempt. ZOZO had lied, or I had misinterpreted. The ‘P K 9’ was not a code for gas; it was a key, a password to something. And the numbers, they were coordinates, a star map, a map of my own blood vessels.

I tried to scream, but my throat closed. The fog seeped under the door, and I felt my limbs go numb. Lena was slumped over, not breathing. I reached for her, but my fingers passed through her, as if she were a ghost already. The board glowed, and I saw a final message: ‘YOU ASKED FOR PROOF.’

Then the fog engulfed me, and I felt a burning cold, and I saw the face of ZOZO, not a demon, but a mathematician, a collector of souls, tallying each one with cold precision. I realized we were not its first, nor its last. We were just numbers, and the arithmetic was simple: one, two, three… forever.

When they found us, hours later, the room was empty but for the board and a thin layer of ash covering the floor, shaped like two bodies. The planchette pointed to a final set of numbers, now burned into the wood: 5 9 7 6 0 0 6 0 1. They never made sense to the police, or to the news. But I knew, as I drifted in the half-world, that the count was still going, and somewhere, another skeptic would find the board, and ask, ‘Is anyone there?’