The Parcel of Dust

The morning after we tried to reach the other side, I woke to find the air in my apartment thick with dust. Not the ordinary kind that settles on shelves, but a fine, gritty film that coated every surface like a second skin. My sister Renee and I had bought the board from a dusty antique shop on the edge of town, a place that smelled of mothballs and old regrets. The shopkeeper, a woman with eyes like polished stones, had warned us, ‘Don’t call what you can’t dismiss.’ We laughed it off. We were skeptics, rationalists. We thought we were above such superstitions.

That first session, we placed our fingers on the plastic planchette, and it jittered under our touch. At first, we thought we were moving it ourselves, a subconscious push and pull. But then it spelled out a name: ‘Elias.’ We asked who he was. It replied, ‘Lost.’ We asked what he wanted. It replied, ‘A way.’ The planchette moved so quickly it felt like a swarm of bees under our hands. Renee’s face went pale, but she insisted it was our own doing. We were both trembling, but we finished the session, promising never to do it again. But we did, two more times, each session more frantic, the entity calling itself ‘Elias’ growing bolder.

The final time, we had a friend, Marcus, join us. He was a big, burly guy, a pragmatist through and through. He mocked the board even as we set it up. But when we began, the planchette shot to ‘Z,’ then ‘O,’ then ‘M,’ ‘B,’ ‘I,’ ‘E’ – it spelled ‘ZOMBIE.’ We laughed nervously. Then it spelled ‘FUNERAL.’ Then ‘BLOOD.’ The planchette moved with such force that it seemed to lift from the board, and Marcus, for the first time, looked uneasy. He tried to lift his fingers, but they stuck, as if glued to the plastic. We finally managed to break contact, but the board wobbled, and a black, sticky substance oozed from the letters, pooling on the table. We threw the board in the trash, but the next morning, it was back on the table, with that same black stain, and the planchette resting on ‘HELLO.’

The dust was the first sign. It began that morning, and it only got worse. It covered my alarm clock, my books, my keyboard. I’d wipe it away, and it would reappear within minutes. That evening, my friend Jules came over. I was downstairs making us tea when I heard a shriek from my bedroom. I ran up to find Jules huddled on the bed, her face contorted in terror, her body shaking. ‘What happened?’ I asked, my heart pounding. She pointed to the window. ‘I saw a face. A pale, gaunt face pressed against the glass, with black eyes. It looked at me, and it smiled, and its mouth opened, and dust poured out. It flooded the room, and I couldn’t breathe. I thought I was going to die.’ I turned to the window, but there was nothing there. Just my reflection. But the dust – it was thicker than ever, swirling in the air, settling on Jules’s shoulders like a shroud.

Renee came over that night, looking haggard. She told me she’d had nightmares: graveyards, coffins, and a voice whispering, ‘The parcel is due.’ She’d woken up to find her hands covered in that same black substance, and her mirror was cracked. We decided to research ‘Elias’ online. We found an old newspaper article from 1904: ‘Local Man Elias Thorne Commits Suicide After Murdering His Family.’ The article described how he had buried his wife and children in the backyard, then hanged himself in the barn. The farmhouse had been demolished, but a developer was building houses on the site. We were living in one of those new houses. We had built our home over his grave.

That’s when my phone buzzed. It was Marcus. I answered, but all I could hear was a low, raspy breathing. ‘Marcus, is that you?’ I said. A voice, not his, came through the speaker. It sounded like dry leaves scraping on pavement. ‘The parcel is due. You called me. I am coming.’ My blood ran cold. I told Renee, and we both decided to get out of there. But when we tried to open the door, it wouldn’t budge. The handle was scorching hot. I ran to the window, but the glass was covered in frost, and a face – the face Jules described – pressed against it, its black, empty eyes staring at me, its mouth a gaping hole swirling with dust.

Renee screamed. I grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the basement, a desperate instinct. We huddled in the corner as the sound of footsteps creaked above us. The dust began to filter down through the floorboards, filling our lungs. Suddenly, a voice whispered in our ears, right between us: ‘I have been waiting for you. I just need a body to carry me out.’ I looked at Renee, and her eyes showed the same understanding: we had invited something in, and now it wanted to wear us. The dust thickened, and the lights flickered out. In the darkness, I felt something cold wrap around my ankle, pulling me down into the floor, and I knew there was no board to push away, no prayer to speak. Only the endless, consuming dust that would soon be all that was left of us. The last thing I heard was my own voice, hoarse and alien, saying, ‘The parcel is delivered.’