Humorous Ghost Stories by Dorothy Scarborough (best historical fiction books of all time txt) 📕
- Author: Dorothy Scarborough
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The room was full of women—most of them elderly—whom I recognized as belonging to my wife's Book Club. They were sitting in couples, and between each couple was a Ouija board! The mournful squeak of the legs of the moving triangular things on which they rested their fingers filled the air and mixed in with the conversation. I looked around for the ghost with my heart sunk down to zero. What if Lavinia should see her and go mad before my eyes! And then my wife came and tapped me on the shoulder.
“John,” she said in her sweetest voice, and I noticed that her cheeks were very pink and her eyes very bright. My wife is never so pretty as when she's doing something she knows I disapprove of, “John, dear I know you'll help us out. Mrs. William Augustus Wainright 'phoned at the last moment to say that she couldn't possibly come, and that leaves poor Laura Hinkle without a partner. Now, John, I know some people can work a Ouija by themselves, but Laura can't, and she'll just have a horrible time unless you——”
“Me!” I gasped. “Me! I won't——” but even as I spoke she had taken my arm, and the next thing I knew I was sitting with the thing on my knees and Miss Laura Hinkle opposite, grinning in my face like a flirtatious crocodile.
“I—I won't——” I began.
“Now, Mr. Hallock, don't you be shy.” Miss Laura Hinkle leaned forward and shook a bony finger almost under my chin.
“I—I'm not! Only I say I won't——!”
“No, it's very easy, really. You just put the tips of your fingers right here beside the tips of my fingers——”
And the first thing I knew she had taken my hands and was coyly holding them in the position desired. She released them presently, and the little board began to slide around in an aimless sort of way. There seemed to be some force tugging it about. I looked at my partner, first with suspicion, and then with a vast relief. If she was doing it, then all that talk about spirits——Oh, I did hope Miss Laura Hinkle was cheating with that board!
“Ouija, dear, won't you tell us something?” she cooed, and on the instant the thing seemed to take life.
It rushed to the upper left hand corner of the board and hovered with its front leg on the word “Yes.” Then it began to fly around so fast that I gave up any attempt to follow it. My companion was bending forward and had started to spell out loud:
“'T-r-a-i-t-o-r.' Traitor! Why, what does she mean?”
“I don't know,” I said desperately. My collar felt very tight.
“But she must mean something. Ouija, dear, won't you explain yourself more fully?”
“'A-s-k-h-i-m!' Ask him. Ask who, Ouija?”
“I—I'm going.” I choked and tried to get up but my fingers seemed stuck to that dreadful board and I dropped back again.
Apparently Miss Hinkle had not heard my protest. The thing was going around faster than ever and she was reading the message silently, with her brow corrugated, and the light of the huntress in her pale blue eyes.
“Why, she says it's you, Mr. Hallock. What does she mean? Ouija, won't you tell us who is talking?”
I groaned, but that inexorable board continued to spell. I always did hate a spelling match! Miss Hinkle was again following it aloud:
“'H-e-l-e-n.' Helen!” She raised her voice until it could be heard at the other end of the room. “Lavinia, dear, do you know anyone by the name of Helen?”
“By the name of——? I can't hear you.” And my wife made her way over to us between the Book Club's chairs.
“You know the funniest thing has happened,” she whispered excitedly. “Someone had been trying to communicate with John through Mrs. Hunt's and Mrs. Sprinkle's Ouija! Someone by the name of Helen——”
“Why, isn't that curious!”
“What is?”
Miss Hinkle simpered.
“Someone giving the name of Helen has just been calling for your husband here.”
“But we don't know anyone by the name of Helen——”
Lavinia stopped and began to look at me through narrowed lids much as she had done in the library the evening before.
And then from different parts of the room other manipulators began to report. Every plagued one of those five Ouija boards was calling me by name! I felt my ears grow crimson, purple, maroon. My wife was looking at me as though I were some peculiar insect. The squeak of Ouija boards and the murmur of conversation rose louder and louder, and then I felt my face twitch in the spasm of that idiotic grin. I tried to straighten my wretched features into their usual semblance of humanity, I tried and——
“Doesn't he look sly!” said Miss Hinkle. And then I got up and fled from the room.
I do not know how that party ended. I do not want to know. I went straight upstairs, and undressed and crawled into bed, and lay there in the burning dark while the last guest gurgled in the hall below about the wonderful evening she had spent. I lay there while the front door shut after her, and Lavinia's steps came up the stairs and—passed the door to the guest room beyond. And then after a couple of centuries elapsed the clock struck three and I dozed off to sleep.
At the breakfast table the next morning there was no sign of my wife. I concluded she was sleeping late, but Gladolia, upon being questioned, only shook her head, muttered something, and turned the whites of her eyes up to the ceiling. I was glad when the meal was over and hurried to the library for another try at that story.
I had hardly seated myself at the desk when there came a tap at the door and a white slip of paper slid under it. I unfolded it and read:
“Dear John,
“I am going back to my grandmother. My lawyer will communicate with you later.”
“Oh,” I cried. “Oh, I wish I was dead!”
And:
“That's exactly what you ought to be!” said that horrible voice from the other end of the room.
I sat up abruptly—I had sunk into a chair under the blow of the letter—then I dropped back again and my hair rose in a thick prickle on the top of my head. Coming majestically across the floor towards me was a highly polished pair of thick laced shoes. I stared at them in a sort of dreadful fascination, and then something about their gait attracted my attention and I recognized them.
“See here,” I said sternly. “What do you mean by appearing here like this?”
“I can't help it,” said the voice, which seemed to come from a point about five and a half feet above the shoes. I raised my eyes and presently distinguished her round protruding mouth.
“Why can't you? A nice way to act, to walk in in sections——”
“If you'll give me time,” said the mouth in an exasperated voice, “I assure you the rest of me will presently arrive.”
“But what's the matter with you? You never acted this way before.”
She seemed stung to make a violent effort, for a portion of a fishy eye and the end of her nose popped into view with a suddenness that made me jump.
“It's all your fault.” She glared at me, while part of her hair and her plaid skirt began slowly to take form.
“My fault!”
“Of course. How can you keep a lady up working all night and then expect her to retain all her faculties the next day? I'm just too tired to materialize.”
“Then why did you bother?”
“Because I was sent to ask when your wife is going to get rid of that Ouija board.”
“How should I know! I wish to heaven I'd never seen you!” I cried. “Look what you've done! You've lost me my wife, you've lost me my home and happiness, you've——you've——”
“Misto Hallock,” came from the hall outside, “Misto Hallock, I's gwine t' quit. I don't like no hoodoos.” And the steps retreated.
“You've——you've lost me my cook——”
“I didn't come here to be abused,” said the ghost coldly. “I—I——”
And then the door opened and Lavinia entered. She wore the brown hat and coat she usually travels in and carried a suitcase which she set down on the floor.
That suitcase had an air of solid finality about it, and its lock leered at me brassily.
I leaped from my chair with unaccustomed agility and sprang in front of my wife. I must conceal that awful phantom from her, at any risk!
She did not look at me, or—thank heaven!—behind me, but fixed her injured gaze upon the waste-basket, as if to wrest dark secrets from it.
“I have come to tell you that I am leaving,” she staccatoed.
“Oh, yes, yes!” I agreed, flapping my arms about to attract attention from the corner. “That's fine—great!”
“So you want me to go, do you?” she demanded.
“Sure, yes—right away! Change of air will do you good. I'll join you presently!” If only she would go till Helen could de-part! I'd have the devil of a time explaining afterward, of course, but anything would be better than to have Lavinia see a ghost. Why, that sensitive little woman couldn't bear to have a mouse say boo at her—and what would she say to a ghost in her own living-room?
Lavinia cast a cold eye upon me. “You are acting very queerly,” she sniffed. “You are concealing something from me.”
Just then the door opened and Gladolia called, “Mis' Hallock! Mis' Hallock! I've come to tell you I'se done lef' dis place.”
My wife turned her head a moment. “But why, Gladolia?”
“I ain't stayin' round no place 'long wid dem Ouija board contraptions. I'se skeered of hoodoos. I's done gone, I is.”
“Is that all you've got to complain about?” Lavinia inquired.
“Yes, ma'am.”
“All right, then. Go back to the kitchen. You can use the board for kindling wood.”
“Who? Me touch dat t'ing? No, ma'am, not dis nigger!”
“I'll be the coon to burn it,” I shouted. “I'll be glad to burn it.”
Gladolia's heavy steps moved off kitchenward.
Then my Lavinia turned waspishly to me again. “John, there's not a bit of use trying to deceive me. What is it you are trying to conceal from me?”
“Who? Me? Oh, no,” I lied elaborately, looking around to see if that dratted ghost was concealed enough. She was so big, and I'm rather a smallish man. But that was a bad move on my part.
“John,” Lavinia demanded like a ward boss, “you are hiding somebody in here! Who is it?”
I only waved denial and gurgled in my throat. She went on, “It's bad enough to have you flirt over the Ouija board with that hussy——”
“Oh, the affair was quite above-board, I assure you, my love!” I cried, leaping lithely about to keep her from focusing her gaze behind me.
She thrust me back with sudden muscle. “I will see who's behind you! Where is that Helen?”
“Me? I'm Helen,” came from the ghost.
Lavinia looked at that apparition, that owl-eyed phantom, in plaid skirt and stiff shirtwaist, with hair skewed back and no powder on her nose. I threw a protecting husbandly arm about her to catch her when she should faint. But she didn't swoon. A broad, satisfied smile spread over her face.
“I thought you were Helen of Troy,” she murmured.
“I used to be Helen of Troy, New York,” said the ghost. “And now I'll be moving along, if you'll excuse me. See you later.”
With that she telescoped briskly, till we saw only a hand waving farewell.
My Lavinia fell forgivingly into my arms. I kissed her once or twice fervently, and then I shoved her aside, for I felt a sudden strong desire to write. The sheets of paper on my desk spread invitingly before me.
“I've got the bulliest plot for a ghost story!” I cried.
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