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“However,” broke in Mr. Voland, “I can tell you when the board is—” The sound of someone stirring in their sleep near the fire silenced him.
“‘Four,’” said Brian. “‘Always say goodbye.’”
There was a pause.
“Why? What does that mean?” Ollie asked. Involuntarily, her eye went again to GOODBYE, stark at the bottom of the board.
“Because,” Mr. Voland said shortly, “if you don’t move the planchette to GOODBYE, they do not necessarily depart.”
“The ghosts don’t leave?” Coco whispered. Ollie frowned. Outside, the wind moaned to itself. Brian was watching Mr. Voland, narrow-eyed.
“But,” Mr. Voland said, “we will always say goodbye. Now if you have had quite enough chitchat? We’ll begin.”
After a long pause, Ollie shook herself and nodded.
Brian was looking at that big, black GOODBYE burned into the wood at the bottom of the Ouija board. He cocked his head, listening to the faint, strange sobbing that might not be the storm. They all waited for him.
Finally Brian nodded. He still looked unhappy. But he put his hands on the planchette too.
“Now,” said Mr. Voland. He was talking so low that he was barely moving his lips. All of them had to bend forward, hardly breathing, in order to hear him. “You will close your eyes, breathe evenly, and concentrate. Ollie, you must take the lead here. When you feel ready, ask a question.”
Ollie nodded, closed her eyes, and thought about her mom. That wasn’t hard. Her mom had been the best. Fierce, reckless, brilliant. A math professor, an adventurer. Everything Ollie wanted to be when she grew up. Always laughing, always running, always flying. When Dad told Ollie her mom’s plane had fallen out of the sky, it had taken Ollie forever to believe it. Her mother couldn’t be gone. How could a pine box in a church contain all that life? Her mom wasn’t there. She had to be somewhere else. Perhaps behind a tree, behind a doorway, perhaps just in the space where the shadows met the firelight.
Ollie opened her eyes suddenly. With two fingers on the planchette, she whispered, softer than a sigh, “Are you here?”
Mr. Voland’s lighter eye gleamed with the red light of the low, sputtering fire. His darker eye seemed coal-black.
They waited. Nothing.
Ollie’s voice cracked a little as she said it a second time: “Mom. Are you here?”
Suddenly, the little piece of wood began to move. It quivered. And then it started a slow slide from letter to letter.
“N,” said Coco, reading aloud. “E. A.”
“Near, it means near,” said Ollie. Her heart raced. The wind (or not the wind) moaned. Her dad sighed and turned over in his sleep. The planchette swung up to YES.
“In life, did you belong to this orphanage?” murmured Mr. Voland.
Another pause. Then the planchette went to NO. It quivered again.
A strange, buoyant, impossible hope was rising in Ollie’s chest. “Who are you, then?” she asked.
The planchette moved almost at once that time. HELLO OLIVIA, it said. Only her mom had ever called her Olivia.
“Mom?” Ollie whispered. “Mom?” Her heart was beating faster and faster. “Mom, where are you?”
The planchette hesitated. Then it started to swing once more. BEWARE, it said.
Brian’s hands twitched on the planchette.
“Mom—what’s happening?” Ollie breathed. Her heart was going like a hummingbird’s wings. “Why—beware? What’s wrong with this place?”
“One question at a time, Ollie,” said Mr. Voland.
GHOSTS WANT TO KEEP YOU HERE, spelled the planchette.
“How?” Ollie whispered. “Why?”
