The Will of the Weeping Tile

It was a sweltering July evening in 2006 when I found myself in my friend Marcus’s basement, the air thick with the smell of damp concrete and old wood. Marcus, his two older brothers, their mother’s boyfriend Rick, and I had been swapping ghost stories to pass the time, but the conversation soon turned to a dusty cardboard box that Marcus had unearthed from a crawlspace. Inside was an antique spirit board, its surface cracked and faded, with a planchette that looked like a small, dead spider.

My name is Mike, and I had just moved to the outskirts of Tallahassee into a sprawling, decaying farmhouse that my aunt had left to me. The house was strange, but this was stranger. Marcus’s family had been renting this place for years, and I’d always felt a wrongness in its walls, a constant, wet presence that defied logic. The basement, in particular, had a corner where the floor was always slick with water, even in the driest months.

Ignoring the prickle at the back of my neck, I agreed when Jen, Marcus’s mom, suggested we try the board. But she insisted we use the old root cellar adjacent to the kitchen, where she said the ‘acoustics were better for reaching the other side.’ The cellar was a cramped, earthen room with a dirt floor and exposed joists, and the only light was a single bare bulb swinging overhead. We crowded around a wobbly table, the board laid out, our fingers resting on the planchette.

At first, the planchette didn’t move. We asked simple questions, like, ‘Is there anyone here with us?’ and ‘Do you come in peace?’ Nothing. Then Jen, half-joking, asked, ‘Why does it always smell like mold and rotten leaves down here?’ The planchette shuddered, then slid to the word ‘FOOD.’

A cold draft swept through the cellar, and the bulb flickered. Rick, trying to lighten the mood, asked, ‘What kind of food?’ The planchette spelled out: ‘BONES.’ We all laughed, nervous, but then the board spelled a name: ‘ELIAS.’

Suddenly, the planchette jerked wildly, tracing a frantic circle before stopping on the word ‘THIRSTY.’ Marcus’s brother, Dave, asked, ‘What do you want to drink?’ The planchette moved, not to the words, but to the yes, then it spelled out, ‘THE WATER.’ Jen’s face went pale. She whispered, ‘The water in the walls. It’s been dripping since we moved in.’

That’s when I remembered the corner in the basement. I had never told anyone about the patch of wall that weeped a rust-colored fluid, even on the hottest days. It was a secret I had kept because I thought it was just a plumbing issue. But now, the planchette was spelling ‘MINE’ and ‘DON’T FORGET.’

The bulb above us shattered, plunging the cellar into darkness. We fumbled for our flashlights, and when Rick finally got his working, he illuminated the board. The planchette was gone. In its place, a single, dripping line of dark water trailed from the center of the board to the cellar wall, disappearing into the packed earth.

Since that night, Marcus’s family has abandoned the house, citing a ‘rotten smell’ that nothing could fix. But I stayed. I inherited the place, after all, and I thought I could handle it. I was wrong. Every night, I hear the drip, drip, drip from the basement, and when I press my ear to the wall, I can almost hear a voice, muffled and ancient, whispering, ‘Feed the hunger.’ Last week, I saw a small, black planchette crawling across the kitchen floor, heading toward the root cellar. It stopped, turned to me, and in the dim light, I swear it was salivating.