The Week at Mon Repose by Margaret Pearce

Author:Margaret Pearce [Pearce, Margaret]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Astraea Press LLC
Published: 2012-05-22T01:46:56+00:00

Chapter Eleven

Allie sneaked a look at their little travelling clock. They had been sitting at the Ouija board for hours. The background mutter of conversation and the clatter of crockery from supper had died down. There were goodnights called and doors slammed as the guests at Mon Repose settled down for the night.

At one stage, Marilyn’s mother had put her head around the door. “The boys were saying you weren’t in bed yet?”

“I’m staying with the girls for the night,” Marilyn explained.

“You should have told me,” her mother said and went away.

“This just isn’t going to work,” Jenny grumbled, spotting the direction of Allie’s glance. “We have tried every combination of every question for hours, and not even a twitch from the glass.”

“Maybe something will happen at midnight,” Marilyn insisted. “We’ve just got to keep on going.”

Allie sneaked another look at the clock. It was fifteen minutes to midnight. “Maybe the questions aren’t getting through,” she suggested.

“You can say that again,” Marilyn said with a sigh.

“All those variations of the question, ‘please help Ahmed get better’, mightn’t be aimed at the right person,” Allie continued. “We’ve got to get through to someone who really cares about what’s happening to Ahmed.”

“He’s a genie,” Marilyn said thoughtfully. “Do you reckon they have a union or committee for genie safety, like our road safety crowd?”

“We need a short sentence that we can do over and over again,” Jenny said. She reached for the notepaper and her pencil. “Got any ideas?”

There were plenty of ideas, and the pages of the notebook filled rapidly. Marilyn pointed out that it would take them until dawn to even spell the page of explanation about the danger of Ahmed fading into nothingness, letter by letter on the Ouija board. At last they settled on one sentence.

Allie sneaked a look at the clock. It was exactly midnight. They gathered around the Ouija board again and placed their fingertips on the glass.

“All together now, and I will spell the letters out as we go around,” Jenny said.

They spelled out their message once and waited. The glass remained inert under their fingertips.

“Again,” Jenny said.

Allie looked despairingly at Jenny. Marilyn was biting her lip and glaring at the glass.

“Again,” Jenny repeated.

The glass spelled out the message again. Again the girls waited. Nothing happened.

“Again,” Jenny insisted. Her eyes were starting to brim with tears.

Allie watched the glass as it glided from letter to letter. “Genies, help us save Ahmed.”

They waited. The glass remained on the “D.” Jenny sighed.

“We’ll try it again.”

“If it hasn’t worked the first three times, we can sit here until morning for all the good it will do,” Marilyn snapped.

“If we have to, we will,” Jenny said.

“Well, stop playing games,” Marilyn said rudely. “The first letter G is on the other side of the board.”

Jenny grabbed for the pencil with her free hand. “It’s moving! Spell out the letters as the glass touches them.”

“It’s garbage,” Marilyn groaned as the glass slid along the letters ROHCNA.”

“Shut up and concentrate,” Jenny ordered. “They might be in reverse like the first message.

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