It was All Hallows' Eve, and the castle which housed the Unovan Pokémon League and its master pokémon trainers was in a somber state. The staff had gone home for the night and the boisterous champion was off on one of his frequent pilgrimages around the region, leaving only the members of the Elite Four to mark October's passing.
Their fortress, constructed atop a mountain accessible only through a series of caves populated by dangerous wild pokémon, saw no revelers, so the foursome had to resort to amusing themselves. Tonight's entertainment was taking place atop the tower belonging to Shauntai, the Elite Four's ghost-type specialist. As could be expected, Halloween was her favorite holiday and she had been eager to take over hosting duties for tonight. Her enthusiasm was so great that Shauntai had even gone through the trouble of picking up the scattered books and papers which littered her inner sanctum and stuffing them away where they wouldn't be in the way of any of her guests, at least as long as they did not open any of the cabinets or drawers where Shauntai had stowed them. The tower's study was lit by only a series of candles with strange blue flames. In their flickering lights, there was a desk, a few chairs surrounding a battered coffee table, and the hostess herself.
Shauntai was wearing an oversized dress of purple and black, a custom-made creation of Elesa, Unova's premiere fashion designer. The cumbersome outfit was supposed to resemble a chandelure, Shauntai's prized pokémon, and to that end swelled out at the bottom to form a sphere, the perfection of which was accentuated rather than marred by the sloping bends of black wire which looped to the ground on either side of the wearer to be topped by touches of the same purple fabric which made up the bodice. The finished product reflected the dim light of the candles in the room and gave the strange dress an ethereal air. It's wearers constant fidgeting saw the mirrored glowing candles rise and fall in time with Shauntai's bouncing on her heels.
She had told her fellow Elite Four members that she would need time to get into this dress – her costume, as she had phrased it – and while that was true, there was still an excruciating wait for nine o'clock. Fortunately for her, there was a knock at her door ten minutes before the top of the hour, and Shauntai nearly tripped her way down the stairs in her excitement to receive her first guest.
When she opened the heavy wooden door, she found herself face-to-face with Marshal, the fighting-type expert of the region's Elite Four trainers. He had shed his usual training attire and was instead dressed in the garish uniform of a professional wrestler, with a bare chest and a pair of bright blue tights and orange boots. His smiling face was partially concealed by a mask of blue bands holding together two spiky white fins which jutted out on the side.
"Great costume, Shauntai!" he enthused as she let him inside. "It looks like you went all out!"
"So did you!" replied Shauntai. "Who are you supposed to be?"
"Crasher Wake, of course, the Sinnoh region's great wrestler and gym leader. The guy's a real class act. Do you want to hear his theme song?"
Shauntai laughed but shook her head, "No, no, that's okay. Why don't you take a seat and I can get you something to drink?"
She fetched him his beverage as he sat on the plushest of armchairs which Shauntai had dragged to the center of the room. The two of them made small talk as they waited for the others. It was not long before the antique grandfather clock tucked away in the corner of Shauntai's study struck nine and the bell rang out the number. Marshal smiled at Shauntai as they waited for the noise to die down so that they could resume their conversation, but he looked uneasy, and Shauntai did not blame him. In the low light, with no other sound to compete with it, the chimes filled the room. They sounded strangely old to the two trainers' ears, as old as the clock itself or, was it possible?, even older. There was no time to dwell on it, as the door at the foot of the stairs opened again to let in a shock of light into the dark room as well as two more figures.
The first of them was a woman dressed in a simple white blouse and pink skirt over leggings. The simplicity of her ensemble only highlighted her beautiful aristocratic features, and the thick mane of chestnut brown hair which hung heavily down to the small of her back. Her hand was gripped tightly around that of a man a few inches taller than her who was dressed in a tuxedo. The class that his outfit might have granted him was more than undone not only by his counterpart dragging him after her, but also by his lopsided smirk and greased black hair.
"Look who I found haunting your doorway," the woman said once they reached the top of the stairs. "Grimsley here thought that it would be amusing to jump out and try and spooky me, but he forgot about my psychic powers. Again."
The man, Grimsley, trailing after her rolled his eyes and spread the corners of his mouth into a sneer as he said, "Too bad you didn't get a personality to go with those so-called powers." Then, he pulled free of the woman's grasp and added, "She's lying, of course. I was lingering because I thought that maybe I got the time wrong for the party and people were still getting ready. After all, I didn't notice the poor excuse for a costume that dear Caitlin here has thrown on." He inclined his head down at the small nametag on Caitlin's blouse on which was printed "Hello! My name is…" with "GOD" written in blue ink underneath it.
"At least people will know who I'm supposed to be, Grimsley. What are you dressed up as, a waiter?"
"Yes, yes, no one is going to recognize the iconic uniform of the most famous secret agent in cinematic history. Do you ever think before you speak, Caitlin, or do you just like to make noise?"
Before their bickering could escalate further, Marshal clapped his big hands together and said loudly, "Well, since we're all here, then the party can begin! Right, Shauntai?"
"Uh, yes, that's right!" agreed the bespectacled woman with a start. "If you two could take a seat, please." Once Caitlin and Grimsley had settled onto the couch, they both looked around at the decorations and Shauntai's dress with polite interest while pointedly ignoring each other.
"Now, I thought that we could do something fun tonight. Bobbing for apples and trick-or-treating is all well and good for little children, but this day is about much more than dressing up and getting sick from eating candy. Gather around." Obligingly, the others took seats in the rough oval that Shauntai had assembled in the center of the study, and then she continued, "Today is the day when the barrier between this world and the next world is at its thinnest. We go through our everyday lives blissfully unaware that there are forces on the other side, who wish to warn us, guide us, or harm us. Perhaps you've felt it yourself; in a sudden chill in the air or the hairs on your neck standing up. Take heed of these signs, for they are messages from the dead, portents of what has already passed, what is, and what may come to be."
As she intoned her somber monologue, Shauntai's guests exchanged glances of amusement whenever they thought that they could get away with it. Shauntai, a writer of best-selling thrillers, was in top form tonight.
Shauntai concluded her speech by saying, "But how do we decipher the clues that the spirits give us? How can we use these keys to unlock the mysteries of the universe: love, life, and death? We need but the proper medium to channel them, and then their meaning will become clear to us all." At that, Shauntai pulled from under the lopsided coffee table at the center of their group a rectangular box, identifiable in an instant as the key which would hold a children's board game. She set it gingerly on the table, adjusting it so that the black writing on the top of the otherwise plain white box was legible in the flickering light of the candles all around them.
"An ooh-i-ja board?" asked Marshal even as he joined the others in applauding Shauntai's performance. "What's that?"
"It's a Ouija board, actually," said Shauntai, adding only the slightest hint of flourish to the proper pronunciation of the strange word. The grim prophetess was gone, and in her place was the mousy novelist once more. "It's kind of a party game, it's supposed to let people talk to spirits."
Grimsley picked up the box and turned it over between his long, manicured fingers. "Hard to believe that they market something like this to children. What is the world coming to?"
Before he could go on, Caitlin had snatched the muted box from him and handed it over to Shauntai. "A game, huh? That sounds pretty fun. Why don't you show us how to play?"
Shauntai opened the simple box and pulled out a small piece of wood which was shaped like a heart on a set of stubby legs. Then, after setting it aside, she brought out a heavy board of wood with letters, numbers, and a few simple words on it. This, Shauntai also set on the table. Both components of the game looked far older than the cheap cardboard box would have indicated, and much more expensive as well. Each appeared to have been painstakingly carved out of cherry wood the same color as dried blood. The letters and numbers of the board had been written in an elegant, looping script with glossy black ink that caught the room's feeble lights.
"Where did you get this, Shauntai? It looks expensive," murmured Caitlin, but Shauntai shook her head.
"It was second-hand, something that I found when I was doing some research for a project that I'm working on."
"Well, let's started then. How does it work?" Grimsley interjected before Shauntai could elaborate any further.
She obliged by placing the heart-shaped piece of wood on top of the board. The others were then able to see that it had a fair-sized hole in it, large enough to see the board's surface underneath it. Then, Shauntai placed her hands on either side of it so that one of her fingers from each hand were resting lightly on the edge of the smaller piece. With the slightest exertion on her part, she was able to glide it around the board, pausing just long enough for it to indicate the letters "H", "E", "L", "L", and "O" as it crossed the board in a dizzying series of loops. Then, she stopped and began to explain, "The four of us all rest a finger on the side of the planchette here and then we let the spirits guide us."
"The spirits made you say 'hello'?"
"No, Marshal, that was just me. I was trying to spell out that word, but the idea of the game is that we're all moving it, but we're not thinking about it. We're letting our bodies be guided by the spirits, or by our subconscious minds, whatever you prefer."
From his lounging position at the arm of the couch, Grimsley asked, "So, how do you win?"
Shauntai shrugged her shoulders inside of her elaborate dress and said, "No one really wins or loses. It's not that kind of game."
"Wonderful," grumbled Grimsley, but, following the jab of Caitlin's sharp elbow in his side, he said loudly, "Great, let's get into it!"
The four pokémon trainers gathered close around the table so that their knees were almost touching. Then, Shauntai placed one finger on the planchette followed by Caitlin, Grimsley, and finally Marshal. Aside from Grimsley, they were smiling, but the air was soured by a kind of nervous energy shared between the participants. Matters weren't helped by Shauntai dropping back into the same low voice which she had used to announce the game. This time, she intoned, "Oh, spirits of the great beyond! Grant us your favor and reveal your secrets to us and open our eyes so that we may catch a glimpse of what lies beyond the veil. Move around us and through us and in us and make your presence known!"
"Is all of that really necessary?" Marshal laughed nervously, but then his eyes shot down to the board and he gasped and said, "Look! It's moving!"
The planchette was gliding around the board albeit less steadily than it had when Shauntai had been its only controller. It quivered and darted first to one end of the board and then the next before circling around like an animal searching for something. Shauntai's theatrical voice boomed in the confined space of the study, "Spirits! Are you with us now?"
Then, her tongue quickly planted itself in the corner of her mouth as Shauntai helped to guide the planchette so that the hole in the top was centered over the stylized script reading "Yes". Besides the concentration evident on her face, it was almost impossible to tell that she had driven the indicator, but her laughter at their incredulity quickly gave Shauntai's deception away.
"Spirits! How many are you?" Again, Shauntai jerkily guided the wooden planchette to where she wanted it to go, this time ending up over the first number on the board. "Well, just one spirit tonight," remarked Shauntai with a smile, "let's hope it's a nice one."
"Ooh, I've got a question for it," Caitlin piped up. Mimicking Shauntai's earlier performance, she asked, "Spirit, is Grimsley a complete ass?" With much less finesse than Shauntai, Caitlin then prodded the planchette to the corner of the board where black ink spelled out the word "Yes". Grimsley's finger had tried to fight her, but he had been overwhelmed as Marshal and Shauntai had joined Caitlin's efforts to rebuke him.
"Haha, very funny. Now tell us, spirit, is Caitlin a-"
Grimsley's did not get to utter his chosen insult as the planchette under their fingers leapt under their fingers, with all four struggling to keep their index fingers on its smooth wooden surface. As it danced under their grip, Caitlin shot a dirty look at the trainer sitting next to her.
"Real funny, Grimsley, now stop it."
"I'm not doing it, I swear!"
"What's it spelling out?" asked Marshal breathlessly.
Shauntai dutifully read out the letters as best she could, though it was a struggle to keep up with the planchette as it whirled around the Ouija board. "I. A. N. D. I." Shauntai said quickly before shaking her head and trying to decipher out the words that were being spelled before them instead. "'I and I have come.' 'Yeah?'-no, 'Ye hath summoned me and I have come. Thine offering will be accepted, but one of thou must break the seal. One of thou must sign the pact. One of thou must offer thyself up.'"
"Make it stop!" Caitlin yelled. Her voice was shriller and directed not at any of the others sitting around the table but at the board at their center instead. On one side, Grimsley's face had drained of what little color it typically possessed, while on Caitlin's other side, Marshal was shivering in his seat and gulping down huge gasps of air. Across from her sat Shauntai, completely lost in her role as the translator and recorder of the unseen visitor among them.
"Ye hath summoned me, ye hath summoned me, and one of thou must offer thyself up." Then, Shauntai could only struggle in vain to decipher the flurry of letters before her as the planchette swirled violently around the board. With a final spasm, the small piece of wood was launched from the board and flung itself at Shauntai's head, who had just enough time to duck out of the way as the planchette flew over her head and hit the wall behind her with such force that it snapped in half. Both pieces fell to the ground with a hollow clatter on the wooden floor of the study where they lay still.
All four of them were stunned into silence, and they sat on their chairs and on the couch without daring to look at one another. Marshal held his finger in his mouth to soothe it while Shauntai and the others seemed heedless of their blistered digits. The air in the room wasn't cold, but Caitlin was quivering as she said, "What was that?"
"I don't know," said Shauntai carefully. "I wasn't doing anything, honestly." She turned to Marshal and then Grimsley, asking each in turn, "Were you?" Both shook their heads "no".
The denials made Caitlin's eyes narrow. "Well, it had to be one of us. I didn't psychically sense any of Shauntai's pokémon outside of their poké balls while that was going on, and they're the only ones who could have moved that, that thing, around without any of us seeing them."
"Maybe it was a spirit?" offered Shauntai.
"Don't be ridiculous," snapped Caitlin. "Come on, Grimsley, admit it."
"It wasn't me! Maybe it was you!"
As the two of them started squabbling again. Marshal got to his feet, removing the blue and white mask of his costume and rubbing the sweat off of his glistening forehead as he rose from his chair. "I don't know about you all, but, well, I'm feeling pretty tired," Marshal said rapidly. "I think I'm just going to go to bed, if that's okay with everyone. Thank you for hosting, Shauntai."
They said their goodbyes, and then the other trainers watched Marshal as he descended the stairs on shaky legs, leaning heavily on the railing as he walked.
"Now look what you've done," Caitlin growled at Grimsley. "You're freaking everyone out. Just admit that this was another one of your stupid pranks."
"It wasn't me!"
Shauntai let them fight it out and made her way over to where the two pieces of the planchette were laying on the floor, each a perfect mirror of the other. She crouched down, ignoring the dress wrinkling around her, and gingerly touched one of them. It was still hot to the touch, and she fell backwards as she jerked her finger away from the blood-red wood. When she stood back up and dusted off her rumpled dress, Caitlin and Grimsley were still going at it.
She rejoined them in time for Grimsley to throw up his hands and say, "Fine, you're right! I did it! I ruined Shauntai's stupid game and scared you all for a laugh! Now will you get off my back?"
"Well, just don't do it again," groused Caitlin, as the wind quickly went out of her sails. Then, to Shauntai, she said, "It was a really nice thing to host us all, and it was a fun idea for a game. I'm sorry that someone had to go and ruin it for everyone." Then, she turned on her heel and strode down the stairs, taking them with more confidence than Marshal had but still two at a time so as to get out of Shauntai's study that much quicker.
It was just the two of them now, and Grimsley took in a frustrated breath before he turned to face Shauntai. "Some party," he said ruefully, "thanks for trying Shauntai."
He started towards the stairs as well, but stopped in his tracks when she called after him, "You didn't really make the Ouija board go crazy, did you? You were just saying that so that Caitlin wouldn't worry. She'll tell Marshal, and he'll sleep better tonight too."
"I just wanted to get her off my back," replied Grimsley without looking back at her. "That's all. I don't know if it was her, or you, or maybe Marshal's the best actor in the world. I don't really care. One of us was messing around and it got out of hand, that's all it was."
"I saw the look on your face, Grimsley," Shauntai said and she took a step towards him before continuing, "you were scared. We were all scared."
"It was just a stupid game."
His voice had grown harder, but still Shauntai pressed further, "You felt how hot the wood got, right? So hot that it burned you. But you didn't take your finger off of it, none of us did. Maybe none of us could."
Now Grimsley turned on her, his usual smirk replaced with a snarl. "Knock it off, Shauntai, the game's over. There's no point in trying to scare me anymore."
Her brown eyes were wide behind her glasses. "Maybe we should be scared, Grimsley. Maybe that was an actual spirit trying to communicate with us tonight. I know that it sounds crazy, but it isn't totally unheard of. In my research-"
"Good night, Shauntai!" barked Grimsley and he strode away from her with none of his usual swagger. At the foot of the stairs, he slammed the heavy door behind him so hard that the bookshelves and cabinets on the upper level rattled with their precious loads of books and papers. Then Shauntai was all alone.
She walked over to the Ouija board and gently rested her fingers on the carved wooden surface. It was not warm to the touch, not like the planchette. Still, she had been expecting something, some kind of sensation to pass through her nerves, but there was nothing. The wood under her finger was cool to the touch, with no trace of the electricity that had hung in the air when the four of them had been gathered around it. Shauntai stood there for two minutes, or maybe three, just running her hand idly along the Ouija board, tracing the letters and numbers and letting her thoughts churn in her head. Eventually, even a writer's imagination had to give up, and she picked up the slab of wood and replaced it in the box before crossing over to the end of the study to retrieve the two pieces of the broken planchette.
As she turned the first one over in her hands, she saw that the underside of the wood had been carved with a series of symbols, nothing that looked like any language that she was aware of. It was another piece of a mystery, but with the wood in her hand cool and dead as the board had been it was easier for her to tell herself that it had just been her imagination, something brought on by the holiday spirit and the environment. As she let herself be convinced by her more skeptical thoughts, Shauntai reunited the Ouija board with the two halves of the planchette and put the lid back on the box, leaving it on top of the table. Then, she went around the study and extinguished each of the candles one by one, trying to keep her bearing even as she was mindful of the fact that each light that she snuffed out made the darkness around her grow stronger and more oppressive. It was only by weakly whistling a tune that Shauntai was able to complete her task, and then she retreated from the room as her one-time sanctum had suddenly become a strange and frightening place.
Later that night, though all four members of the Unovan Elite Four slept in their beds, something walked the halls. It had form but no substance, and where it roamed, fear followed. The shadow drifted through the deserted hallways at its own pace, but its alien thinking was fixated on its destination. Curtains fluttered at its passage and plants withered, but the shape paid no mind to these signs of its strange power. It reached the threshold of its destination and, with a gesture imperceptible to the human eye, darkness upon darkness, it flung open the portal with a crash which broke the eerie quiet of the night. Then, but a single minute before October died, the shadow drifted inside. There, cowering in bedclothes and bedsheets damp from visions of foreboding and horror, was the one who it sought.
"Thou hast summoned me, and I have come."
The clock in Shauntai's study struck midnight, and the scream which followed was loud enough to wake all of the others in the castle. For its owner, the screaming never stopped.