The Sixth Plate

The summer I turned thirteen, my family moved to my great-aunt’s farmhouse in rural Kansas, a skeletal structure of gray wood and iron screens that creaked with every gust of wind. My cousin Mira and I were celebrating my birthday with a few friends from the nearby town, and to pass the time after the cake and presents, we found an old wooden board in the attic, its surface etched with letters and numbers, a small planchette resting in a velvet pouch. We were bored, curious, and foolish. We set it up on the dining table and began to ask it silly questions—who had a crush on whom, what our futures held. Then someone jokingly asked, ‘How many people are in this room?’ The planchette slid to the number six. We were five girls. We laughed, but the laughter died quickly as a cold draft swept through the room, and the candles we’d lit flickered. That night, no one walked near the windows, and we all huddled in the living room, not daring to go to the bathroom alone. We told ourselves it was a trick, a game of chance, but in our hearts, we knew something had changed.

Five months passed, and the incident faded to a memory, though I often felt uneasy in the old house, especially at night when the floorboards above my room would groan as if someone were walking. Then one August afternoon, my great-aunt fell down the cellar stairs and broke her hip. I called the ambulance, and my friend Lena and I waited with her until the paramedics came. My aunt was rushed to the hospital, leaving us alone in the house until Lena’s parents could pick her up. We had hours to kill, so we turned on the TV to distract ourselves, but the static seemed to hum in a strange rhythm, and we soon turned it off. As dusk began to settle, I went to my room to pack an overnight bag, planning to stay at Lena’s house. I had just pulled my duffel bag from the closet when I heard Lena gasp from the hallway. I ran out to find her frozen in the doorway of the dining room, her eyes wide, pointing at the table.

There, set for dinner as if someone expected a guest, were six plates. We had only ever set five places at that table. The sixth plate was at the head of the table, a spot that had never been used. On it sat a knife and fork, perfectly aligned, and a small glass of water that seemed to shimmer as if recently poured. Lena whispered, ‘Who set that?’ I shook my head, my heart pounding. We were the only ones in the house. I called out, ‘Hello?’ but the only response was the ticking of the grandfather clock in the hall, which had been silent for years. Then I noticed something else: the planchette from the Ouija board was resting on the sixth plate, pointing not at a letter, but at the space where a person would sit. I felt a chill run down my spine as I remembered the question we’d asked all those months ago. We had never gotten an answer for who the sixth person was. Now that plate seemed to say that they were expected, and they were coming.

Lena grabbed my arm and pulled me back toward the front door, but as we reached for the handle, it wouldn’t budge. The lock wouldn’t turn. We panicked, pushing and rattling, but the door was sealed. The windows, too, wouldn’t open; the screens seemed to shimmer oddly, as if they were not glass but something else. We ran to the phone, but it was dead, the line cut. The power flickered, and then a deep silence settled over the house. We were trapped. And that’s when we heard it: a slow, deliberate creak from the dining room, as if someone had sat down at the head of the table. The sound was followed by the clink of a glass being lifted, and then a voice, smooth and cold, that seemed to echo not from the room but from inside our own heads. ‘There are six of us now,’ it said. ‘And one of you is saved.’

We looked at each other, understanding dawning, and then we heard the sound of the planchette sliding across the board, spelling out a name. It was not a name we knew, but as it spelled, the sixth plate grew warm, and the water in the glass turned a deep red. The voice spoke again, ‘The board was my door. You opened it. One must take the place.’ We both knew then that the answer to our question had been the presence of a spirit, and now it wanted a permanent place. The lights went out, and in the darkness, we felt a presence moving between us, a cold hand brushing our cheeks. We screamed, but no sound came out. And then, just as suddenly, the door burst open, and Lena’s parents rushed in, turning on the lights. They found us huddled in the corner, shaking. The dining table was empty, no sixth plate, no planchette. But under the chair at the head of the table was a photograph, old and faded, of a boy we’d never seen. On the back was written, ‘He will join us at the next birthday.’ We never went back to that house. But every year on my birthday, the mail delivers an envelope with no return address, containing a single photograph of that same boy, older each time, as if he’s aging alongside us, always waiting, always wanting his place at the table.

I now know that the Ouija board didn’t answer our question; it invited something. And that something is patient, setting its own places, one by one, until it finally takes its seat among the living. The last thing I heard before we fled that house was a whisper from the sixth plate: ‘Six was always the answer.’