Dr. Green sat behind his desk tapping his sausage like fingers together. He was a short bulldog of a man, with a ruddy complexion and a bulbous nose. Now and then he'd clasp his hands together and tap his index fingers on his lips, as if really pondering something. I had to give him credit, that little move made it appear as if he was digesting what had been said.
I sat across from him, trying hard not to let my dangling feet sway. I had to appear as grown up as possible so that maybe he would believe me. No one else did. Not my parents, or my siblings. Not my friends either. They all thought I was either pranking them or worse, just plain lying in order to get some attention or something. Now my parent's had sent me here to Dr. Green, a psychiatrist to see if there was some sort of mental break. Part of me was ticked that they thought me crazy, part of me was scared that maybe I was. I mean, it was easier then believing that a ghost was trying to possess me, right? I'd already gone through a lot of tests that ruled out organic possibilities, all that was left was mental ones.
"So, Jenna, tell me ven dis started. " I looked at him and he continued encouragingly,"Begin at da beginning, and leave nud'ing out."
Inwardly, I smiled at his accent, German I think. The light caught in his thinning white hair giving it a halo look. Well, maybe he could help me. Maybe he'd believe me. Deep breath...
I was 12 when it started. My parents had just decided I was old enough to be left alone for a few hours, without my older brothers being about. Little did they know, that quite often my brothers would leave shortly after they did and only just come home before them. If my parents did get home before them, I'd fib and say they were upstairs. Seeing the car in the driveway, my brothers would climb the tree out back and come in through their bedroom window, appearing as though they'd been in their room. I don't think my parents ever caught on. Anyway on this particular night my parents were staying overnight at some hotel for a wedding they were attending, and my friend, Kara, was sleeping over. She lives just two houses away, so her parents thought it would be ok. Bill and Mike waited around a bit before leaving.
Dr. Green interrupted, "Bill and Mike are your brothers, yes?" I nodded. "And how old are they?"
"Mike's 15 and Bill is 18."
"I see. Continue." He made a little note on the pad that laid on his desk.
Anyway, after they left Kara says that she thought they never would, and drags this Ouija board out of her backpack. She tells me she found it up in the attic, in the chest that holds her great grandma's things. Her father says great grandma was a real gypsy! Imagine that! A real gypsy! Kara told me, she was more than that. She was also a witch, and used this board to contact spirits, and she wanted to give it a try.
I wasn't too sure about that. Witches, ghosts, vampires - they're all just made up stuff to scare us right? But Kara believes in witches and ghosts. And who am I to knock what someone else believes? And since ghosts don't exist what would be the harm?
I paused in my story, "I wish I had known then what I know now." I look at Dr. Green, who is leaning slightly forwards in his chair. Obviously listening to me. I mean really listening, not just placating me, or rolling his eyes, instead he nods understandingly. I picked up the thread of my story.
It was already getting dark out, and we gathered all the candles we could find and put them in the living room around the coffee table, where Kara placed the Ouija board. I drew the window shades down to make it real dark while she lit the candles.
We sat across from each other, with a finger each on the planchette, a small heart shaped piece of wood. Next to Kara rested a pad of paper and a pen so she could write down any messages we received. Even though this was our first time actually trying it, we'd seen enough movies to know the fundamentals of how it was done. 'Is anyone there?" Kara asked the board. "Is there someone there , who would like to talk with us?"
The planchette moved a tiny bit, and we exchanged looks. Then it glided up to the word 'yes'.
"What is your name?" Kara had her pen poised in right hand, keeping her left on the marker.
"D-a-d-e-s-k-i" it paused " d-e-y." Kara gasped, while I wondered out loud what kind of name that was.
Her dark eyes were large as she looked at me, " It's Romani. Gypsy - it means Grandmother! It must be my great grandma!" She was excited, and I instinctively knew Kara wasn't pulling some joke. For maybe fifteen minutes this went on, Kara asking questions and us getting answers sometimes in Romani sometimes English. Some words she didn't know either, but just copied them down. Then the board went crazy, spelling two words over and over again, "strazhno", and "beng". Neither of us knew what they meant, but when the planchette threw itself off the board and into the wall, we decided to end the session. I leapt up and turned on the overhead light, and Kara picked up the board and planchette putting them back in her knapsack. We then doused the candles and flicked on the TV. Neither of us said anything about what we'd just seen, but we both found it unnerving, and cuddled close under the blanket on the sofa, turning on the cartoon channel to try and calm down.
After a bit we decided to get some cokes and popcorn. As Kara got the pops out of the fridge, I microwaved the popcorn, we heard footsteps upstairs. "Did you hear that?" My mouth went dry as Kara nodded. We clutched each other as the footsteps were clearly heard descending the stairs. Grabbing Kara's hand I made a mad dash for the backdoor as we heard a voice say, "And where do you think you're going?" I almost peed my pants! Very slowly we turned our heads to look back to see Mike standing there. I could have punched him! Scaring us like that! Just then we heard the front door open and in raced Bill crying "Cheater!" when he saw Mike had beat him home.
Mike shrugged,"You didn't say no short cuts. So I cut through some backyards, over the fence and up the tree - and I won! So pay up, Mister." He held out his hand, and we watched Bill fish a five dollar bill out of his pocket and give it to him. Mean while, Kara looked about to faint with relief, and I probably looked the same.
Things were pretty calm for about three days. That's when I began hearing the whisper. Very soft in my ear at night. It sounded like my name and was accompanied by a light scratching sound. At first I thought it might be Mike trying to scare me and tried to ignore it. But it kept happening every night, and then I started hearing it during the day time too. ' Jen-naaaaaaaaaa. Jen-naaaaaaaaaaa.' I'd look around but no one was ever near enough to be doing it. I didn't tell anyone except Kara about it. Others might have laughed at me, but not Kara. Of course her solution was to use the Ouija board again, and see if we could find out who was trying to contact me. This time, we acted like it was a regular sleep-over and even got my parents to move their TV into my room for the night. We didn't dare to rouse suspicion by bringing all the candles up, so earlier I had bought one of those packages of like 10 tea lights to use. Everything went like before, with her grandmother talking to us in a combination of Romani and English. When we asked about someone trying to contact me those same two unfamiliar words kept repeating , "strazhno beng", then came "pazeste te diavolul te urmareste ". We looked over the board at each other, it made no sense to either of us. Then the candles blew out - one at a time. I ask you, what kind of breeze can do that? It was as if invisible fingers were snuffing them out, as the planchette skittered about by itself before falling off the board. Again I jumped up and turned on the light.
"Kara, is there any way you can get those words translated? Maybe your dad -"
"Oh, no," she cut me off. "No way am I involving him in this." She gave me a pleading look, "He wouldn't understand, Jenna. To him all this stuff is nonsense. "
"Yeah. Ok," I understood what she meant. The grownups of our world were just that grownups. They never seem to get anything we did.
After awhile we decided to go to bed. I had already moved my stuffed bear to the dresser top from the bed. Ok, so I was 12, a bit old for toys, but I still had a few favorite dolls and stuffed animals about. The bed lamp was still on, and Kara studied them in the soft glow. She thought it was nice my parents allowed me to keep them. Her's were resigned to live in a box in her closet. If she had them out (just to even look at them, mind you) and they saw, they'd sigh and tell her that she was much too old for such childish things. So she hid them away. Although she admitted to me once, that sometimes, say on a stormy night, or if she'd had a nightmare, she'd drag old Piggly from the closet to bed with her. Piggly was a stuffed pig that had seen better days, and her mom kept threatening to throw him out. Anyway, Kara was asking me about the different ones, how long I'd had them, etc. Of course we'd had this conversation a billion times before, but it was comforting and familiar, and soon we fell asleep. When we woke up in the morning, we found all my toys seated as if at a tea party by my bed. I thought maybe Kara had done it, but she denied it.
One day after school Kara came over real excited. She'd gotten the librarian to show her how to use the Internet to translate foreign languages. "Now we can find out what those words mean!" She sat at my desk and brought up the translating site. She had already taken the sheet of paper we'd written them on from her backpack, it looked pretty rumpled, but was still readable.
Strazhno meant danger. Beng devil. I was starting to feel kind of sick as she typed in "pazeste te diavolul te urmareste"...we waited a bit before hitting send. "You devil keeps following you" came up. Kara had gone rather pale. I asked her what the hell any of that meant. She frowned and looked worried. "I think... I think it's a warning," she said. Suddenly the computer just shut itself down causing her to emit a tiny surprised scream. I was reaching for the power button to reboot, when my bedroom lights started flickering like mad. So we reversed direction and bolted for my bedroom door, which would NOT open! We twisted the knob and pulled for all we were worth but it was not budging. Kara's attention was caught by a movement in the corner of her eye. "Jenna!" She gasped and pointed, I followed her finger and gasped too. All my toys were flying about! This was NOT possible. I started banging on the door and yelling for help. The door opened easily for Bill, and as it opened the dolls and animals fell softly to the floor. He looked around and said, "What's the matter with you?"
"Door must've been stuck, " I blurted as Kara and I ran past him and down the stairs.
I did not want to sleep alone in my room that night, but couldn't find a good excuse not to. I even tried to fake being asleep on the sofa, but Dad just woke me up and said, "Go to bed." For the first time in a long time, I left my bedroom door ajar so that the hall light lit my room, as well as left the bedside lamp on. Sometime during the night, I began hearing my name said followed by the words "este a mia". I didn't sleep well at all, and babyish or not, I clung to my teddy bear for comfort.
In the morning, I found that my computer worked just fine and I looked up what those words meant. It made me shiver, "you're mine". Mom was yelling up the stairs that I'd be late for school, so I dressed in a hurry and pounded down the stairs. I noticed she was upset, and asked what was wrong. She said someone had smashed her favorite figurine, the one of the gypsy dancer. "Did you break it, Jenna?"
"No, Mom," I answered truthfully, but I noticed doubt in her eyes.
She murmured, "Seems like no body did. I guess it just broke itself then."
After that it seemed we were always finding broken items around the house. My parents had electricians in THREE different times, because our lights decided to go and off at their own will, but a cause was never found. Things would go missing just to show up somewhere weird later or right where you had looked to start with. Appliances turned themselves on and off. Everyone kept insisting that I had something to do with it, when I really didn't.
One night, maybe a month or so later, when Kara was spending the night, I woke up with a terrible pain in my side. I pulled up my shirt for Kara to look and I had teeth marks! I showed them to my parents , who heard me cry out in pain. My father looked at Kara and asked if she bit me! As if Kara ever would! By this time, I was pale and had circles under my eyes from lack of sleep. Then scratch marks started appearing on my body at various times. My parents wondered if I was doing it myself. I tried explaining that we had a ghost, but did they believe me? No. Instead they exchanged looks like I had lost it.
Kara started staying away from my house around then too. It was getting just too spooky even for her. And maybe, she felt a bit guilty as well. I mean it was her Ouija board that started all this. I wish she had never brought it over.
I paused to take a breath and tried to gauge what Dr. Green was thinking. "And dings kept gedding vorse?" He prompted me to go on. I nodded. "You are 15 now?" I nodded again. "You still hear dings? See dings?" I nodded yet again. "Tell me vat you see."
"Sometimes there's a shadow that doesn't seem to belong to anything. I see it run across a room. And for the last year, I've seen an old woman. She seems to argue with the shadow thing." He raised a bushy brow. "I don't think they like each other very much. And sometimes I feel like I'm being watched.
Sometimes my parents and brothers will tell me I did things I don't remember at all. Bad things. Like swearing at them, or hitting them..." my voice trails off and I feel tears running down my cheeks.
Dr. Green stands up and walks around to me. Handing me a tissue, he pats my shoulder. "I believe you , Jenna. And I think I can help..."
My parents agree with him that I should stay at the hospital 'for a while', so that I can get some rest. It isn't too bad. The day room is pretty nice, and the nurses are sweet for the most part. The food isn't awful, once you stop thinking of it as food. My parents visit regularly, and once in awhile Mike or Bill might show up. Kara visits me, bringing gossip from school. She tells me that she put the Ouija board back in her great grandma's chest, and will never ever use it again. Dr. Green isn't my doctor any more, I've been assigned to his partner, a Ben G. Strazhno. Ironic isn't it? I don't think I'll ever be allowed to leave here. My devil has followed me.