The Winter’s Board

The snow came down in thick, silent flakes, burying the campus of Cedar Ridge Reformatory under a pristine white shroud. I was fifteen, and it was the first week of January, 1974. I had just returned from the holiday break at my aunt’s house, where I had spent a surprisingly pleasant Christmas, a rare reprieve from the usual tension of my life. Cedar Ridge was a juvenile detention center perched on a windswept hill in upstate New York, a place of gray stone and iron bars, but for a few weeks, we were allowed to forget that.

Our cottage, called ‘Pine’, housed fourteen boys and a childless couple, the Hartleys, who acted as house parents. They were strict but fair, and we respected them. Most of the other boys were still away, their buses delayed by the storm, and so I found myself with only two companions: a wiry, nervous kid named Danny, who had a penchant for telling tall tales, and a quiet, brooding older boy named Marcus, who rarely spoke more than a few words. We built a fire in the common room, its warmth a feeble defiance against the freezing drafts, and made sandwiches from the communal fridge. As we ate, Danny produced a cardboard box from his duffel bag.

‘I got this for Christmas,’ he said, a sly grin spreading across his face. He pulled out a game I had only heard rumors of: a planchette and a board printed with letters and numbers. ‘Ever used one?’

I shook my head. Marcus just stared at it, his dark eyes unreadable. We decided to try it, more out of boredom than belief. We set the board on the low table between us, lit a candle to add to the dim light, and placed our fingertips on the plastic planchette. Danny, ever the showman, asked the first question: ‘Is there anyone here with us?’

The planchette twitched, then slid to ‘YES’. We all exchanged nervous glances. I felt a cold draft that had nothing to do with the weather. Danny laughed, but it was a thin, forced sound.

‘Who are you?’ I asked, my voice barely a whisper.

The planchette moved again, spelling out ‘MARGARET’. We didn’t know any Margaret. Danny asked if she was a spirit, and the board said ‘YES’. Then, without our prompting, the planchette began to move faster, sliding to letters with an unnatural urgency. ‘COLD’, it spelled, then ‘HELP’.

A sudden gust of wind rattled the windows, and the fire flickered. Marcus, who had been silent, finally spoke. ‘Ask her where she is.’

The planchette shot to ‘H’ then ‘E’ then ‘R’ then ‘E’. A chill ran down my spine. Danny’s face had gone pale, and he tried to pull his hand away, but the planchette seemed stuck to his fingers. It started moving again, more frantic, spelling out a single word: ‘RUN’.

We yanked our hands back as if burned. The planchette skidded across the table and fell to the floor. A heavy silence filled the room, broken only by the crackling of the fire. Then, from the direction of the hallway, we heard a faint, rhythmic sound, like someone dragging something heavy across the floor. Marcus stood up, his jaw set. ‘That’s not the wind,’ he said.

We crept towards the hallway, our hearts pounding. The sound grew louder, closer. At the end of the hall, near the storage closet, the door was ajar. We never left it that way. As we approached, we saw a thin, gray light emanating from the crack, not like any light we knew. Danny reached out to push the door open, but I grabbed his arm. ‘Don’t,’ I said.

But it was too late. The door swung open on its own, revealing a room that was not the storage closet. Instead, we saw a old-fashioned bedroom, dust-covered, with a bed and a vanity mirror. And standing by the window, bathed in that unnatural light, was the figure of a girl in a white nightgown, her back to us. She was very still, and her hair hung in lank strands.

‘Margaret?’ I whispered. The figure turned slowly, and we saw her face, or what was left of it. It was a hollow, black void, and from it came a sound like a low moan, echoed by the wind outside. The temperature in the hallway plummeted. We stumbled backward, and the door slammed shut.

We ran back to the common room, grabbed our coats, and fled into the storm outside, not stopping until we reached the main administration building, where we told the night supervisor, Mr. Krause, a garbled tale of ghosts and a haunted closet. He laughed, called us hysterical, and sent us back to the cottage after making sure the heat was on. But we refused to stay in our rooms, huddling instead in the common room with all the lights on.

We didn’t sleep. The next morning, when the other boys returned, they found us hollow-eyed and jittery. We never spoke of that night again, and the Ouija board was discovered destroyed in the fireplace, its pieces charred and twisted. But I remember, even as the years passed, that sometimes, in the dead of winter, when the snow falls just right, I can still hear that dragging sound in the hall, and I know that Margaret is still waiting, and that the board was never our way to call her, but her way to call us.