The Sunlit Table

The summer heat clung to the back porch like a second skin, the air thick with the scent of cut grass and blooming jasmine. My friend Mara, a green witch with a penchant for moonwater and tangled herbs, had convinced me that the afternoon’s bright energy was the perfect counterbalance to the darker realms. We had constructed our spirit board from a piece of reclaimed oak, sanded smooth and inked with letters and numbers, the planchette a polished slice of agate.

Mara had drizzled a thin line of salt across the grass, forming a circle around us, and I had placed a sprig of rosemary in my hair. ‘The light holds the truth, but it also casts shadows,’ she said, her eyes tracking a hummingbird that hovered just beyond the circle. I laughed, the sound too loud in the stillness. ‘We’re just looking for a guide, Mara. Not a demon.’ She smiled, but her fingers drummed on her knee, the only sign of her unease.

We placed our fingertips on the planchette, and for a long while, nothing. The board was warm from the sun, and I could feel the pulse of my own blood in my thumbs. Then, a slight twitch. The planchette moved, hesitant at first, then with purpose, spelling out E-D-W-A-R-D. I frowned. ‘Edward?’ The old English name felt foreign, like a moth trapped in a jar. Mara’s eyes widened. ‘Ask if he has a message,’ she whispered.

The planchette slid to ‘W’ then ‘I’ then ‘F’ and ‘E’. ‘Wife?’ I said, and the board seemed to shiver. The next word was ‘CATHERINE.’ A woman’s name, but not a local one. I glanced at Mara, who was staring at the board as if it had grown thorns. ‘He’s worried about Catherine,’ I said, translating the halting movements. The sun was still high, but the air around us felt cooler, as if a cloud had passed over a hidden sun. ‘Is she here?’ I asked. The planchette rushed to ‘Y’ and then stopped dead.

Mara pulled her hands back. ‘I don’t like this. It’s too bright. We need to close it.’ But I was curious. ‘Wait, ask him if he’s okay.’ I reached for the planchette, but as my fingers touched it, the board seemed to hum, a low vibration that traveled up my arm. The letters on the board began to shimmer, and I felt a pressure behind my eyes. ‘Mara, look,’ I said, but my voice came out wrong, deeper and older, like my grandmother’s after a stroke. Mara’s face drained of color.

Then the board went cold. Frost crept across the wood, the letters icing over. The humming grew to a drone, and the planchette jerked violently, spelling out a single word: ‘SOON.’ The grass around us wilted, and the hummingbird that had lingered now lay dead on the patio stones, its tiny body stiff. I tried to pull away, but my hand was glued to the planchette, and I felt a pulling, like a hook caught in my chest.

The ice melted as quickly as it had come, the board reverting to its sun-warmed surface. But I was changed. A cold knot had lodged behind my sternum, and my thoughts were no longer entirely my own. I heard a distant weeping, a woman’s sobs that seemed to come from the soil itself. Mara was packing the board away, her hands trembling as she wrapped it in a black cloth. We didn’t speak. The silence between us was filled with the ghost of a name we had unwittingly summoned.

That night, I dreamt of a Victorian house with peeling wallpaper and a woman in a lace collar, her face wet with tears. She was calling for Edward, but her voice was thin, old, and when I turned to see her, she had no eyes, only deep bleeding sockets. I woke gasping, my pillow soaked with sweat. The cold knot in my chest had grown, and I could feel it pulsing, like a second heart.

Mara called the next day to say she was going to a healer, that she felt a ‘fouling’ around her. I told her I was fine, but I wasn’t. The board had become my obsession. I took it out every afternoon, sitting in the same spot on the grass, and I would place my fingers on the planchette, whispering, ‘Edward, what happened to Catherine?’ But the board remained still, as if it were tired of us.

Then, on the third day, the planchette moved on its own, sliding to ‘H’ then ‘O’ then the board tilted, and a single ant emerged from beneath it, crawling in a straight line toward my shoe. I stared, and the ant began to spell a word in the dust: ‘DROWNED.’ I shuddered. The grass around me began to bend, as if a wind were blowing from underground. I looked up to see the sky, still bright, but the sun seemed to have a dark halo.

I started to hear Catherine’s crying during the day, when I was alone. It was worse at night. No matter where I was, I would feel her cold fingers on the back of my neck, and I would spin around to find nothing but shadows. My own reflection in the mirror began to look different, the face slightly older, the eyes sunken, and once, I could have sworn that behind my own reflection there was a woman in a wet dress, her hair dripping, her mouth open in a silent scream.

I knew then that I had to destroy the board. I took it to the backyard, to the same circle of salt that had long been scattered, and I poured gasoline over the wood. As I struck the match, the board seemed to sigh, and the flame caught, but the fire was wrong—it was blue and cold, and it didn’t consume the board; it simply burned in the center, and from the flame, a voice spoke, not Edward’s, but a woman’s, clear and chilling: ‘You brought me here. Now you must carry me.’

The fire sputtered out, leaving the board pristine. I screamed, throwing it into the garden, but when I turned, I saw a figure standing by the back door—a tall, thin woman in a sodden white dress, her face a mask of grief, but as she stepped forward, her features dissolved, and I saw that her face was my own, but older, hollow-eyed, and weeping. She reached out a skeletal hand, and as she touched my chest, the cold knot burst, and I felt a flood of icy water fill my lungs. I dropped to my knees, the grass turning to mud beneath me. The last thing I saw was the board, still unburned, the letters beginning to glow.

They found me three days later, face-down in the koi pond that had never been more than a trickle. The board was missing. My hands were covered in green algae, and my hair was tangled with reeds. The pond, shallow as it was, had claimed my life, as if the water had been waiting for me. Mara died a week later, of a fever that no doctor could explain, her skin turning blue, her lungs filled with water, though she never left her apartment. Now, I am Catherine, and I wait by the pond for someone else to find the board, to spell my name, to carry my grief forever. The sun is always bright here, but it sheds no warmth, only the long shadows of the ones we summon.