The stage is set: A folding card table is set up in the living room with four chairs around it. A compass lies flat on the table, to make sure the seats are properly aligned, and a thick, dribbly candle (as yet un-lit) has been placed at each corner of the table. In the center, the Ouija board takes pride of place; it isn't anything particularly fancy, just whatever Hasbro is selling, but then again it doesn't need to be. Its wooden planchette is vaguely heart-shaped, about the size of Barry's palm, with a circular hole at the narrow end. There is also an old pair of black-framed glasses that he managed to rustle up, tucked against one side of the board.
The players assemble: Iris, Barry, Wally, and Caitlin (Cisco couldn't make it, said he was busy).
Wally yawns expansively. "Why am I here, again?"
"I already told you; we're holding a séance," Iris says.
"You didn't tell me that - you just called and said you were cashing in your favor. I thought you meant something reasonable, something that wouldn't involve staying up 'til three in the morning. This should really count as two favors; now you owe me one."
"You know, you didn't have to stay up until three; you could have gone to bed and set an alarm."
Wally crosses his arms and grumps quietly to himself. "What the hell kind of witching hour starts at three in the freaking morning, anyway? Whatever happened to good old-fashioned midnight?"
Iris discretely elbows Barry, who's opened his mouth to answer the rhetorical question. A tired Wally was a cranky Wally, and he wouldn't appreciate being told that 3 a.m. was the more 'old-fashioned' witching hour.
"Three in the morning just has a better chance of success than midnight does," she explains instead.
Wally stares at her incredulously. "A 'better chance of success?' You don't seriously think you're going to summon a ghost, do you?"
"Actually, Wally," Barry cuts in, "you're in the minority here; everyone else is a believer."
"What, no way! I thought you guys were just having fun. I didn't think you'd seriously think you could talk to a ghost."
Caitlin smiles behind her cup of tea. "It's not so unusual – well," Caitlin casts a skeptical eye over all the trappings of the séance, giving one of the candleholders an experimental poke. "I'm not convinced that all this… this…" she waves her hand, gesturing around them in lieu of finding the word she was looking for, "will actually have an effect, but Barry and I talk to this particular ghost in-person all the time."
Iris glances sideways at her. "Actually Caitlin, I'm a bit curious – I know I don't know you very well, but you seem like you would be more of a skeptic, the way you love science so much."
"Barry loves science just as much," Caitlin points out adroitly.
"I like science too," Wally chimes in, determined not to be left out.
Iris shakes her head. "Barry's always been more… flexible in his thinking. He totally wanted to be Agent Mulder when he grew up."
"Did not!"
"Did too, and I have the photographs to prove it."
Barry clamps his mouth shut. Wally looks intrigued – "Can I see tho – "
"No!"
Caitlin laughs at their exchange. "You're right to think that I would have been a harder sell than Barry, but truth be told, Dr. Wells isn't my first ghost."
"You're kidding." Barry turns to her. "Does everyone but me have their own personal ghost story?"
Caitlin shrugs. "Well technically, this isn't my story alone – it's Ronnie's story too."
Barry throws his hands up, exasperated. "That doesn't make me feel better – everyone at STAR Labs has seen more ghosts than I have!"
"Not Hartley."
"Hartley doesn't count. Ever. For anything," Barry declares flatly.
Annoyed, Wally glares at Barry. "I wanna hear her story. If I'm going to be staying up 'til the crack of dawn for some unfathomable reason, we might as well make it interesting with some ghost stories."
Iris glances towards the clock and Barry follows her gaze – they still have ten minutes until the witching hour begins (and regardless of what Wally said, dawn is still over three hours away and they'll definitely be done before then).
"Okay, we have time for one story," she says.
Caitlin looks like a deer caught in headlights. "Oh. Um. I didn't – I don't actually have a story ghost story. It's not, narratively speaking, an actual ghost story; it's a story with a ghost in it, and to be frank, I'm not even sure it's that good of a story… I mean, I'm not the best storyteller."
Iris lays a reassuring hand on her shoulder. "Just do the best you can."
Caitlin takes a deep, steadying breath, and some of the color returns to her cheeks. "Right. Right." She nods decisively. "It all began when Ronnie, my husband, got caught in an explosion. Well, he was still my boyfriend at the time – this was maybe nine months after we started dating." Flustered, Caitlin refocuses on her story.
"Anyway, it was that train accident two years ago – Ronnie was onboard."
There is a sharp intake of breath all around. After all, there was only one train accident of note in recent history, that of the collision of the five-twenty train inbound from Keystone with the back end of an oil tank car. Computers and automated safeties and redundancies should have prevented the two trains from colliding, and yet… seventeen people died, and many more injured.
"Ronnie wasn't breathing, but the paramedics were able to revive him at the scene. He was one of the lucky ones; he got knocked back by the concussive blast from the explosion, but he didn't suffer any severe burns.
"He was understandably shaken up by the experience; after the crash he'd rather endure hours of sitting in traffic than set foot on another train. Which was fine; we could make that work. Things… started to return to normal. But then he started to get confused periodically. Temporary amnesia, where he wouldn't respond to his own name or forgot personal details momentarily - things like that. And then, after two weeks of this, the blackouts started. He lost whole hours of time that he couldn't account for, couldn't remember what he'd been doing or where he'd gone."
Barry frowns. Despite what Hollywood action movies would have people believe, losing consciousness for any length of time, no matter the reason, was extremely serious (any blow to the head hard enough to knock someone out was hard enough to kill them). Though for Ronnie to have been experiencing gaps in his memory so long after the accident suggested a neurological problem…
"We took him to doctors, specialists, had his brain scanned every possible way we could think of. They couldn't find anything wrong. Eventually, we all assumed it was a side effect of his trauma. And then I came down for breakfast one morning and another man was sitting in his seat."
At this, Barry gets goosebumps up and down his arms. For all that Caitlin said she isn't a great storyteller, Barry is completely engrossed, and it looks like Wally is hanging off her every word, while Iris is chewing on her lip the way she does sometimes when she's concerned.
"He looked just like Ronnie, he was Ronnie, but he wasn't. The way he held himself was all wrong, and I just in my heart that this wasn't my Ronnie, and then he looked at me with dead eyes and he said, he said – " Caitlin's voice shakes with emotion and she takes a moment to collect herself, "He said 'Excuse me my dear, have you seen my wife?'
"He introduced himself as Martin Stein, said he wasn't sure how he'd gotten there. I recognized the name – Ronnie and I had gone to the memorial service to pay our respects to the other victims of the crash. He'd been a professor of physics, won the Conway Prize for Scientific Advancement three times."
Caitlin absently picks up one of the unlit candles from the table and rolls it around slowly. "I asked if I could talk to Ronnie, and he said he didn't think it worked like that. Though he could feel Ronnie, and he had access to some of Ronnie's memories. We just needed a way to bring Ronnie back, and find a way to get Martin to move on. It was all very unintentional – possessing Ronnie, I mean. He just couldn't figure out how to get out on his own. So we went to Rabbi Kanigher – "
"Why a rabbi?" Barry asks, curious.
"It was actually Professor Stein's idea." Her tone turns fierce and insistent. "He wasn't actually a bad guy, you must understand that. Dybbuk's are usually wicked spirits, but in Stein's case, something else must have interrupted the flow of his life energy and trapped him on Earth. Rabbi Kanigher said that sometimes a saintly person could haunt someone as punishment, but… in our case, Ronnie wasn't a bad guy either. The whole thing was like some bizarre cosmic coincidence - something about the accident maybe, knocking things awry. I don't know, I'm not an expert on soul transmigration theory, and at this point I doubt we'll ever learn all the answers.
"Rabbi Kanigher mediated a talk between Stein and Clarrisa – she was his wife – beforehand. I think it was really good for both of them, to be able to come to terms with his death. Then the Rabbi and the minyan, the ten men helping with the exorcism, went into the synagogue… and when it was over, Ronnie walked out and he was alone in his body.
"And that was the end of it, more or less. Ronnie's met with Rabbi Kanigher a few times since then, to make sure he's healing well and see how he's coping, with the trauma of both the possession and the train accident."
Wally is staring at Caitlin, looking a little wide-eyed, clearly uncertain what to think about the story. Barry thinks it explains a lot more about Ronnie's attitude towards ghosts; a past possession would instill a much greater and more lasting fear of ghosts than Hartley's deliberately dickish scary stories ever could. And Iris is nodding thoughtfully, thanking Caitlin for sharing her story.
By now, it's almost time to begin the séance. Barry flicks off the light switch in the corner while Iris passes around a lit taper so they can each light a candle. Everyone settles into their places, and Iris's phone beeps a one-minute warning.
An awkward silence descends.
Iris is trying not to have second thoughts about this plan, but this is getting really, really uncomfortable and she doesn't know what to do next. Does she just begin, or does she need to explain more first?
Nobody is making eye contact with anyone else, and the uncomfortable feeling grows.
"Does anyone else feel really, really ridiculous?" Wally whispers loudly.
"Wally!" Iris hisses back at him.
"Seriously, Iris, what do we do now? Do we start chanting, or something?"
There's a moment's pause, and then Barry intones somberly, clearly fighting back a smile, "Owah tahgu siam. Owah tagu siam,"
Wally is the first to catch on, and he cracks up, "Heh heh, yeah you are."
Oh-what-a-goose-I-am. Iris groans and buries her head in her hands; Caitlin rolls her eyes. The awkward silence, at least, is broken, which Iris can appreciate even if she'll never admit it. Clearing her throat, she takes charge of the situation. "I'll start. It would help if you guys joined in once you think you know it, but if you can't take it seriously you might as well keep quiet."
She rests the tips of her fingers against the planchette, waiting for everyone else to do the same before continuing. She takes a deep, steadying breath, shedding all her doubts as she carefully recites: "O, clever spirit of the dead, Harrison Thomas Wells, traveler of your time, we present you offerings from life into death, and invite you into our circle. Move among us."
On the third repetition, Caitlin picks it up as well, and by the sixth, everyone is speaking in unison.
*tap tap tap tap tap* - "- Sorry."
"Wha – Barry!" Iris scolds.
"I can't help that my foot's jittery! Too much coffee this late at night!"
"Well stop bumping against the table!"
They resume their invocation, falling into an almost meditative state in the dim lighting and the low drone of their joined voices. And, incredibly, the planchette begins to move under the guidance of their hands.
Iris stops the chant and raises her voice, focusing on her question and trying not to be distracted by the way the flickering candlelight plays across the glossy surface of the board. "Are we speaking with Dr. Harrison Wells?" That was something she'd learned in her research, the importance of verifying exactly who you were talking to.
The wooden arrowhead slides sideways to the far corner of the board, hovering over 'yes.'
"Can you tell us something only Dr. Wells would know?"
The planchette seems to shiver under their hands, and Iris resists the urge to withdraw and shake the prickling feeling out of her fingers.
The ghost's response resolves slowly, one letter at a time…
"I… M… … P… O… S… "
*BANG!* The planchette flies off the table and collides with the wall, denting the plaster. Everyone jumps violently, upsetting the table and knocking over the candles, which fortunately snuff out before anything gets set on fire… but that leaves everyone to fumble around in the dark after a severe jolt of adrenaline.
"Wha – what the hell!" Wally squeaks out. "I did not sign up for this! Iris, that's two favors you owe me now. what the hell."
Iris is still trying to calm her own racing heart. To go from such a calm trance to such a high alert – it leaves her shaking and disoriented. "Is everyone okay?"
Affirmative responses lacking much enthusiasm sound out from the dark. Barry finally manages to find the light switch, a welcome improvement even if it does startle everyone else, the unexpected sudden brightness chasing the last of the evening's shadows away.
"I wonder what happened, what it means," Barry muses. " S… impossible? Imposition? Maybe it's an acronym…"
Iris taps her chin thoughtfully. "There was a pause between the M and the P, so maybe he was really saying 'I'M POS…' Hmm… 'I'M POStmortem?' Or should that be 'POSthumous'?"
"We already knew that, though – why would he need to say it? Besides, that wasn't a pause – it just had further to travel."
"You don't know that it wasn't an intentional pause though, and I think 'I'm pos-something' makes a lot more sense than 'imposition'."
Wally scowls at them as he rights the table. "It doesn't mean anything, just five random letters. If it was really a message from the Beyond, it would have more meaning. Start guessing, and you can make it mean whatever you want. Maybe the ghost was gonna POSt this to Facebook," he adds sarcastically.
"Well, maybe he was!" Barry shoots back. "Just because he's a ghost doesn't mean he can't use social media."
"Dude, that doesn't even make any sense. And you're just proving my point, that those letters could mean anything."
"Not anything, there are a limited number of words beginning with this exact letter combination…"
"Aaand I think we're done here," Iris puts forward, interrupting the impending argument that would no doubt be exacerbated by a lack of sleep for all parties involved. It's unfortunate that their evening got cut short, but she doesn't think she could convince anyone to immediately try again.
After Barry and Caitlin leave and Wally crashes in the guest bedroom, Iris makes one last pass through the living room to make sure everything is tidied up. Something catches her attention out of the corner of her eye, and looking up, she freezes. She can feel the blood chilling in her veins, and hears her heart beat absurdly loud in her ears –
- Just above the dent left by the planchette, blood-red words are daubed in messy scrawl:
Stop looking
Like a rabbit caught in the sights of a fox, Iris stares at the words, trying to make sense of them, trying to catch her breath, wishing with all her being that she were not alone in this moment.
She backs away, trips over the coffee table, and –
And when she looks back, the words are gone, the wall as clean and blank as it had been before, save for the minor dent still present. What was that? She rubs her eyes, but the wall is a wall and nothing more. Did she imagine it? Was it the late hour and the atmosphere that had played a trick on her mind, or was it something else? Something more sinister, brought into the house when they rolled out a spiritual welcome mat…
"'Stop looking'… at what?" she whispers into the dark, but no answer is forthcoming – which should be a relief, should mean that there's no one there to give an answer, but Iris only feels increasingly unnerved, standing alone in the dimly lit room until she can't stand it anymore.
Turning suddenly, Iris abandons the clean-up and races up the stairs like she's being chased by fire, dashing into her room and feeling absurdly silly for doing so – she's in her own house, there's no one behind her, a ghost couldn't hurt her anyway, and yet -
Her hands won't stop shaking as she gets ready for bed.
She sleeps with the lights on.
A/N: Rabbi Kanigher gets his name from Robert Kanigher, creator of Barry Allen and son of Romanian Jewish immigrants
Of all the things I did not expect to research when I began this story a year ago, 'jewish mysticism' one makes the top of the (quite long) list. If I have grossly misrepresented anything, please please please let me know.
The name 'Ouija' is actually a trademark of Hasbro, the general term being a 'spirit board' or 'talking board.' Back in October, I was surprised to see Ouija merchandise when I wandered through the mall, since my fic was fresh on my mind (I'd just finished the rough draft) and I wondered at the coincidence of there being renewed interest in Ouija boards. Then I saw a trailer for the movie - mystery solved! So (not that it really matters), although this story draws inspiration from a lot of places (include Casper the friendly ghost, Edgar Allen Poe, and that one Yu-Gi-Oh/Real Ghostbusters crossover I read years ago), it does not in fact have any connection to the new Ouija movie.
My research into séances led me to stumble across the story of Christina, Queen of Sweden (her spirit was quoted in Communication With the Other Side, one of the earliest books about talking to dead people), and how have I never heard of her sooner? She was very well educated - one of the most educated women of the 1600s - who went around wearing men's clothing and forgetting to brush her hair, who loved books and theater, became a symbol of the Counter Reformation, abdicated the throne and moved to Rome at 28, and was most likely a lesbian.
^ It's discovering things like this that makes me really enjoy the research process. Which is why it's so helpful to have a beta like luvtheheaven, who knows me well enough to know when to nudge me back on task ;D