Weegie Board

The party had shifted phase from hedonistic revelry to oncoming hangover. It was late, everyone was past drunk, moving onto tired, their pulsing throb in their heads had replaced the thumping techno that had banged on through the previous hours. It was quiet now, all the lightweights had left around two and so there were only a few left. Ricky, Billy and Tim had dropped acid around nine and the three of them still were outside, lying on the damp square of grass, looking at the stars, talking incomprehensible shite and waiting for the sun to rise or the apocalypse, perhaps both. It had been hard to get much sense out of them. Stuart was upstairs with Diane, the two of them were fucking each others brains out, and in the living room sat Ronnie, Mick, Sally and Steve, still alert at this late hour, fuelled by lines of cocaine.

They’d been classmates and pals since primary school and all the way through secondary. Now it was all over, school ended the day before, forever, it was time to move on. In Ronnie Mick and Steve’s case, they were off to University, each of them had got an unconditional acceptance the previous year, but they all stayed on in school, which Sally had never understood. She needed to wait for that year’s exam results before she knew what her future entailed. Though it remained unspoken, all of them were aware that after tonight, everything would change. They’d grown up together, but now they’d be going their separate ways. The mood had turned sombre.

Sally had spent the last ten minutes bitching about the three of them. How come they got such good results, they were always dogging school, never handed in essays on time, never seemed to show much interest in academic work at all. She’d worked her arse off, she complained. In an attempt to cut through this maudlin monologue, Steve had a bright idea. “Let’s play truth or dare, eh? Wan last time.”

One last time. This wasn’t as much a celebration as a wake, a farewell to childhood, a nervous initiation into the world they’d been poorly taught to navigate.

It quickly became obvious that they were too tired to submit to any dares and so it became a game of confessionals. Yes, Steve had indeed shat in Miss Hampton, the art teacher’s, bag. Mike admitted to forcing his wee brother to watch a gay porn movie, just to torment him. Sally grudgingly disclosed that the rumour she had wanked off Big Gary Finch in the toilets at the third year disco was true. Ronnie owned up to shitting his pants at his niece's communion, after deciding to take an E, which turned out to be a potent laxative.

Each story raised so much laughter from them all that they were in tears, caught breaths, gasps, pauses and more giggles. Eventually they were disturbed by the back door sliding open and Tim, leaning against the glass, with a frown as serious as anything said “Can you fuckers keep it doon? We’re oot there tryin’ tae astral travel tae Sirius and your hee-hawin’ isnae helping, not one fucking iota, rail it in and grow up for fuck sake, eh?”

The door clunked shut as he stormed off to the sound of hysterical laughter from all four of them which lead to more jokes at Tim and the others expense. They weren’t friends, at best contemporaries. Ricky, Bill and Tim’s tastes were too esoteric, too hung up on the minutiae of video games, fantasy novels and science-fiction films. Geeks, in other words.

Sally was the first to settle and it was then she asked something that had been on her mind for a while. “I always meant tae ask you three, whit wis it exactly that happened tae wee Paul?”

The laughter stopped. Furtive glances between the three boys. Ronnie answered. “You know whit happened, he got abducted and...”

“Aye, I know whit the police said happened, but come on, you were wae him that night, whit actually happened? Spill the beans.” Sally insisted. Again they looked at each other.

It was odd, as if all three were having a conversation without saying anything, just glances and facial gestures, subtle twitches as arguments, blinks as agreements. A consensus was formed and Ronnie sighed and said, “It’s a long story.”

“Get telling it then,” Sally insisted, “I’m no gaun anywhere ‘til the sun comes up. Go, start, I’ll make a joint.”

Ronnie looked at the other two again, Steve shrugged and so Ronnie began. “So it started in the summer holidays in first year. Remember auld Mr an’ Mrs Figgis fae Potterhill Road?”

“Vaguely,” Sally said.

“Well when they moved oot, they had this big skip ootside their hoose, flinging away a lot of shite, auld furniture, disused keep-fit equipment, aw the usual stuff. Me, Steve and Mick decided tae raid through it wan night, see if there wis any stuff we could nick, maybe sell. It wis aw trash, empty photo albums, tacky ornaments, nothin’ of any worth, as far as we could tell, they wurnae chuckin’ oot stuff that ye could imagine on antiques roadshow. Still we persevered, jist in case, an’ then we hit gold. Well we foun’ a big cardboard box, auld and manky, filled wae dusty shite. like they’d kept up in the loft, so we guessed. We gave it a good rummage, it had a weddin’ dress, coat hangers, pairs of auld shoes, but right at the bottom we foun’ this weird box. It wis dark wood, varnished and locked. The thing wis the shape of a big stanley knife blade, couple of inches thick, about two foot long at longest side, which had an auld brass hinge along the middle. We thought it wis like some portable chess set or somethin’ but it looked interestin’ so we nabbed it.”

“I nabbed it,” Mike stated. “You kept sayin’ you thought it wis junk.”

“Aye fine, you nabbed it.” Ronnie snapped back.

“Aw your fault then, ya prick,” Steve chuckled.

“Whit’s this got tae dae wae wee Paul?” Sally asked.

“I’m gettin’ tae that… fuck sake,” Ronnie said. “We get back tae Mike’s an’ we canny get the thing open. So Steve, genius as ever, takes a screwdriver tae the lock, thing still willnae budge. He gies it a fair whack an’ bam slices right through his tap o’ his haun’, blood’s pishin’ everywhere. Ronnie runs an’ gets him a towel tae mop up the blood an’ then the thing just fuckin’ springs open.”

At this Steve held his hand up, the long thin scar still noticable, a thread of white from the left side of the index finger stretching along the back. “Looked worse than it wis.”

Sally walked over to Mike’s record collection and plucked one out, a copy of Iron Maiden’s “Piece of Mind”. She chuckled while flapping it at him. “You don’t still listen to Maiden do you?”

“Fuck no!” Mick insisted. “I’m all about the Mondays now.”

She sat down beside them again crossed legged and placed the album on her lap and began to skin up. “Right so whit wis this box?”

“Well we opened it up, wance Steve stopped whining,” Ronnie continued.

“Fuck you,” Steve laughed.

“It wis a big hexagon, an’ roon’ the edges were aw the letters and numbers. In the middle of it wis a big carved circle, about the size of a CD, which had aw these tiny intricate symbols aw the way roon’ it,” Ronnie said. “There wis also loads of wee notes taped tae the board, auld paper, yellowed, maist o’ the writing wis joined up an’ hard tae read.”

“That’s when I clocked it wis some kind of ouija board.” Mike added proudly.

“Oh no!” Sally chuckled. “Let me guess, you tried it out?”

“Naw, see it didnae have that thing you move aboot. So we jist sat lookin’ at it. It wis really auld lookin’ though, so Steve thinks we should take it tae an antiques shop. We argued about that, I thought they were aw conmen and we’d get ripped aff. It wis Mike who decided we should try an’ find somethin fae the library,” Ronnie said.

“Naw mate, I said that we should take it tae the Mitchell, see if anyone could help.” Mike corrected.

“Aye. Long story short, it wis a kind of speakin’ board as the book called it. A novelty item fae just efter the first world war, when spiritualism wis aw the rage.”

“I’m still no hearin’ whit happened tae wee Paul.” Sally said, lighting the joint.

“I telt ye it wis a long story, jist haud oan.” Ronnie answered, impatiently. “So we brought it back here an’ had a go.”

“Wait a minute.” Mike said. “I’ve got the jotters upstairs. I’ll go get them.”

“Jotters?” Sally asked.

“Aye, we wrote doon aw the messages we got fae it.” Steve added.

“Really?” Sally asked, pleasantly surprised. “I’m beginning to see that you three aren’t the daft chancers you always made out to be, no wonder you all got accepted last year.” She passed the joint to Steve.

“We had a few false starts, each of us kept bammin’ each other up. So the first messages are things like ‘I shagged yer maw’ or ‘Ronnie D is a secret bender’” Mike said apologetically as he slapped the school jotters down in front of them.

She plucked the first one out of the large elastic band that held the four of them together and opened it, scanning the first couple of sentences. She giggled and repeated one. “Gies a gobble?”

“I did say...” Ronnie said, slightly embarrassed. “Took us a while before we settled doon and tried it legit.”

“I’m looking...” Sally said. “Heh, ‘Up the ‘Ra...’ You guys weren’t taking this seriously at… oh… what’s this?” She paused reading it.

“Are you the living?” Steve said. He passed the joint to Mike, who sat back down.

The other two nodded as Sally looked up at them. “Alright, now that was creepy, is this legit?”

“Aye,” Ronnie said, his voice now sadly serious. “That was when we knew we weren’t fucking around any longer. See me and Steve blamed Mike, thought he was takin’ the piss still, so we tried it again, without him.”

“And then you got ‘who calls me from the deep?’ is that right?” Sally said, consulting the jotter, then looking back up, scanning their faces to see if they were pulling her leg. Seeing their deadpan expressions she rubbed her arms, almost hugging herself. “This is spooky shit, you better not be winding me up.” She demanded, hoping that in fact this was all some elaborate joke at her expense.

“It’s no a wind-up.” Mike said with such conviction that it unsettled Sally. Her cheeky grin vanished but she was fascinated. “Go on, then,” she said as she pulled her mousy curls back into a pony-tail. “What happened?”

Mike passed the joint to Ronnie who took a deep inhalation before passing it back to Sally, he held it in for a few moments and then said, “We were a bit freaked out ourselves.” through an exhaled cloud of smoke.

“That’s putting it lightly,” Mike said. “We slammed the thing shut and decided to burn it, remember?”

“Aye, but we didnae, did we?” Ronnie replied. “Naw, you stashed it an’ then we spent nearly the whole week talkin’ about it. The big question, should we use it again or ditch it.”

“How did we get that sorted oot again?” Steve asked. “I seem tae remember we aw agreed tae get rid of it.”

“We did at first but we all started to goad each other, callin’ each other shitebags and pussies until the followin’ Friday night we aw came here and did it again.” Ronnie answered. He turned back to Sally. “We were daft wee boys, whit can ye expect?”

Sally was looking at the jotter again. “So then you asked it ‘Is there anyone there?’ Right?.”

“Aye,” Ronnie admitted. “Then it answered.”

“More than can be calculated.” Sally said, reading from the jotter then looking up, her eyes wide, dark brown irises almost swallowed by her intoxicated pupils.

“Aye.” Ronnie said, annoyed. He reached over and snatched it from her. “I’m tellin’ this story.” He insisted.

“Fuck! Sorry!” Sally said, with fake indignation.

“We asked it who were were speakin’ to. An’ it said “My name is unimportant, are you living things?”

“Should’a said naw tae that,” Steve said, shaking his head in dismay.

“Maybe, but we didnae. We said aye,” Mike added.

“We said aye. That’s when things ramped up a notch,” Ronnie continued. He glanced at the writings in the jotter.“So then it said ‘What do you offer for my gifts?’ an’ I think aw three of us clocked we were dealin’ wae something seriously dodgy but none of us wanted tae back doon, right?”

“That’s about the size of it.” Mike agreed.

“Fuckin’ macho bullshit.” Sally said, shaking her head.

“Canny argue wae that.” Mike chuckled.

“We ask it whit it meant by gifts, ‘for a price, your desires can be fulfilled.’ We asked it what it mean by price, it said ‘the energies of regeneration.’ It wis Steve that figured oot it meant living things.”

Sally passed the joint to Mike again. “I don’t think I like where this is going.”

“Naw, you’ll no’ but you did ask, an’ well truth or dare, eh?” Ronnie said, coldly.

“The gist of it wis that if we wanted somethin’ we’d offer it sacrifices and it would gie us whit we wanted. It wis pretty generous. Remember that Lacoste track-suit I had? I got that fur half a dozen flies.”

“What do you mean? How did you give it flies, I don’t understand.” Sally said, almost certain she didn’t want to understand.

“It wis simple,” Ronnie explained. “Ye’d just drap them in the circle in the middle of the board and bam, they’d just die. Two days later Mike here finds a blood-stained wallet up by The Whistlers pub, nothin’ in it, nae I.D., nae credit cards, nothin’ but seventy four poun’ ninety nine. Exactly the cost of the track suit.”

“That could have been a coincidence.” Sally said, more in order to try and convince herself than the boys.

“Could’ve been.” Steve said. “Wisnae. Remember that prick ma maw wis shagging? Alex Davison?”

“Oh Christ, aye. He wis a prick.” Sally agreed.

“You don’t know the half of it. Cunt used tae batter the fuck right oot of me, fur a laugh.” Steve confessed.

“We all knew that Steve, everyone knew that. That’s why we were all relieved when he got hit by that truck… oh Jesus, ye didnae?” Sally asked.

“Fuckin’ right I did.” Steve responded, his voice crumbling with emotion as he said it. Mike patted him on the shoulder and handed him the joint. There were tears welling up in his eyes as he took it.

“It wanted a bit more than flies for that.” Ronnie said. “Remember Rascal?”

Sally’s eyes widened. “Steve’s ferret?”

She glanced over at Steve who was wincing, trying to hold back tears. He sniffed. “I loved that wee bastard.”

“Jesus fucking Christ, Steve. How could you have killed Rascal?” Sally gasped.

“Don’t make him feel any worse than he already does. He didnae kill it, the thing killed it.” Ronnie responded. “It was necessary.”

“Necessary? Are you fucking kidding me?” Sally said, her voice becoming a yell.

“Calm doon.” Mike said. “See whit it explained tae us, is that we do that sort of shit every day without thinkin’. How many chicken wings did you eat tonight, how many burgers? ‘All things consume life’. That wis how it put it.”

“To exist, to succeed, to evolve, to be powerful, one must devour the other.” Ronnie said, reading the specific quote out of the jotter.

Steve sniffed again. “It wis necessary, Sally. That cunt Davison would’ve fuckin’ murdered either me or ma maw. I loved Rascal, but I love masel’ and ma maw more, right?” He said, weakly pleading her to understand.

“This is mental, you’re aw aff yer fuckin’ heids. How the fuck do you think a bit of wood can do these things. It’s demented” Sally protested.

“The board does fuck all, it’s like a telephone.” Ronnie answered.

“I don’t want to hear any mair of this shite.” Sally said.

“I thought you wanted to know what happened to wee Paul.” Ronnie asked, with a sneer.

“Well it’s pretty fuckin’ obvious you cunts fed him tae that board.” Sally said.

“Naw, that’s no it at all. You’ve got the wrang end of the stick.” Mike replied.

“Then whit?” Sally said, she was frightened but angry. She’d known the three of them since they were kids, thought she was one of the boys, how could they have kept this from her? She felt insulted, offended.

“He caught us tryin’ tae sell weed tae his sister. You know whit the wee prick was like, he wis a clipe. The mair he wis threatened the mair he’d make it his mission tae destroy ye, wee fucker wis a liar tae, so we thought, fuck it. We foun’ this dug, tied up ootside the White Horse pub, nabbed it, and presto. Thing wis, we expected it tae be another accident, we didnae expect some paedo would git a haud of him and rip the wee bastard to shreds.” Ronnie explained.

Sally sat there silently. She had nothing left to say. They’d given her the answer she wanted though she wished she’d never asked.

“You alright?” Mike asked.

“Are you kidding me? No I’m not fuckin’ alright. How could you?”

“It was necessary.” Steve said.

“Stop fucking saying that!” she yelled.

“Pipe doon for fuck sake.” Ronnie said.

"I didnae mean, how could you do it. I meant how come ye kept it a secret from me for all these years. I thought I was yer pal.”

The three boys looked at each other, guiltily. “Well...”

“Naw, nae wells… you three used that fuckin’ thing tae pass aw yer exams an’ left me here on ma own tae struggle like fuck tae get intae Uni, didn’t ye? Ya selfish pricks. That’s not on, that totally fuckin’ not on.” Sally protested.

“She’s figured it oot, Lads.” Steve said, with a weak chuckle.

“You fuckers owe me, get that board oot, there’s nae way I’m sittin’ here worryin’ my arse off about my future if you cunts have got a way tae sort that fur me.” Sally demanded.

“Aye, haud oan a minute. The thing is, it isnae satisfied wae insects or dugs anymore. It got greedy.”

“I’ll bet, so whit did it cost you fur your exam results?” Sally asked.

They all looked at each other, shame and embarrassment all over their faces. None of them said anything. “Well?” Sally demanded.

Mike sighed. “My sister’s bairn.”

“I thought that was a cot-death?” Sally said, immediately realising how foolish it sounded, in light of what they had told her.

“Well we were hardly gonny go “aye, we fed the kid tae a supernatural entity, but oan the bright side, we got aw A’s in oor highers, so there’s that!” Ronnie retorted.

“Still...” Sally said.

“Still whit?” Mike asked.

She stood up, walked over to the living-room window and looked out at Ricky, Billy and Tim, who were still lying in the grass with their eyes closed, all of them chanting “oooooooommmmm.”

“I’ve got to wonder whit we could get from it for those three arseholes.” She said, nodding at the boys outside. She turned to look at her friends with a curious grin on her face. Mike looked shocked, Steve looked curious and Ronnie, well, Ronnie was nodding and grinning.

“Mike, go an’ get the board.” Ronnie said with a grin.

University was going to be a breeze.