The Third Candle

The night we broke the rules, the house on Hemlock Lane became a mausoleum of memories that didn’t belong to us. My cousin Jenna and her boyfriend Marcus had insisted we try the board, and I, ever the skeptic, agreed only to humor them. We sat in the drafty parlor of my grandmother’s old house, which she’d left to my mother, and which we were house-sitting while she was abroad. The room smelled of dust and old lavender, and the only light came from three candles we’d placed on the low table between us.

We had read the official rules, the ones from the booklet that came with the board, but we laughed at most of them. ‘Don’t use the board in a place where someone has died,’ Jenna read aloud, rolling her eyes. The house was old, but no one had died in it as far as we knew. ‘Don’t ask about the future,’ Marcus added, but we ignored that too. We lit the candles, placed our fingertips on the planchette, and began.

I was the speaker, as I had the clearest voice and the most steady nerves. ‘Hello,’ I said, ‘Is there anyone here who wishes to speak with us?’

The candles flickered, not all at once, but in a wave, as if a breath had passed over them. The planchette jolted under our fingers, sliding to ‘YES’ with a jerk that surprised us all. Marcus let out a nervous laugh. Jenna’s eyes widened. I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the draft.

‘Do you live here?’ I asked.

‘NO’ came the reply.

‘Do you know the people who live here?’

‘YES’ again, but this time the planchette moved with a strange resistance, as if something were leaning on it.

‘Who are you?’ I asked, but before I could finish, Jenna blurted out, ‘Ask if it’s my Aunt Carol!’ She had been talking about her aunt earlier, who had passed away in a car accident years ago. Everyone in the family had been drunk at the funeral and had sworn she was in her fifties, but I remembered her as younger.

I sighed, but I went along. ‘Are you Jenna’s Aunt Carol?’

The planchette slid to ‘YES’ so quickly that it nearly flew off the board. Jenna and Marcus gasped and then started firing questions without waiting for me. They asked about how she died, if she was in a better place, if she could see them. The planchette moved faster and faster, spelling out answers. I tried to regain control, but they were frantic, their voices overlapping. I felt something hot on my wrist—one of the candles had tipped over from the vibration of the board. I yanked my fingers away, and the flame caught the edge of an old doily, but I snuffed it out with my hand.

‘Stop!’ I shouted. They froze, and the planchette stopped too, hovering over the board. The remaining two candles burned steadily, their flames tall and still. Then, without warning, the third candle—the one that had fallen—relit itself, a blue flame that licked the wick. I stared, my heart pounding.

The planchette began to move on its own, slow and deliberate, to ‘NO’, then ‘GOODBYE’. But it didn’t stop there. It spelled out a name: ‘CAROL’. Then it spelled another: ‘MARY’. Then ‘HANNAH’. I didn’t recognize any of them. The planchette kept spelling, faster, the letters blurring. I tried to pull my hand away, but it was as if my fingers were glued to the plastic. Marcus and Jenna were also stuck, their faces pale, their eyes wide. The board began to vibrate, and the room grew cold. The flames of the candles stretched into long, thin shadows that danced on the walls, and the smell of lavender turned sour, like rotting flowers.

Then, as suddenly as it started, everything stopped. The planchette went limp, and we all recoiled. The candles flickered once and went out. We sat in darkness, breathing hard. When we finally turned on the lights, the board was bare, the planchette resting in the center, the letters slightly smudged as if something had pressed too hard.

We never spoke of it again. But that night, as I lay in bed, I heard the sound of a match being struck, and the faint scent of sulfur. I saw a flicker of blue light under my door, and then a voice, not quite a whisper, not quite a scream, calling out a name I didn’t recognize. It wasn’t until weeks later, when I was going through old family photos, that I found a picture of my grandmother’s younger sister, Carol, who had indeed died in a car crash at the age of 33. She had left behind three daughters: Mary, Hannah, and a baby named Laura. My own mother. I hadn’t known. And she never spoke of them.

Now, sometimes, when I light a candle in that old house, I see three flames where there should be one. And I know that the third candle is for me.