Free The Year of Shadows by Claire Legrand Page B

days. I glared at Joan. “And nothing. That’s it.”
    Joan sighed. “Henry?”
    Henry slid forward a glass jar brown with age and dust and dirt and who knows what else. It rattled, but the glass was too dark to see inside.
    “This is my . . . my jar,” he said. “I keep important things in there, things that mean a lot to me. And . . . well, yeah.”
    “That’s all you’re going to say?” said Joan.
    Henry nodded.
    “Look, I hope you two are committed to this and have open minds,” Joan said. “Otherwise it won’t work.”
    “Joan, we’re committed, we’ve got open minds, we’re full of sunshine,” I said. “Let’s just do this, okay?”
    “Fine.” Joan thrust out her arms. “Grab my hands and bow your heads.”
    “Sunshine, Joan,” Henry said, soothingly. “Sunshine, remember?”
    Joan closed her eyes. “Yes. Positive energy. Positive . . .” She breathed in. “Energy.” She breathed out.
    We joined hands. We closed our eyes. Then Joan began to speak.
    “ Spirits ,” Joan called out, throwing back her head. She almost jerked my arm out of its socket. “We are here tonight to speak with you, and to offer our help, if you need it. Can you hear us? Are you there?”
    Nothing. Complete stillness, except for the dancing fire and its shadows. I squeaked open one eye to look around and saw Henry doing the same thing. I shut my eyes before he could see me looking, and tried to concentrate.
    “Spirits?” Joan called out again. “We are here. We wish to speak with you. Can you hear us?”
    After a minute, Joan let go, sighing. “This isn’t working.”
    Henry raised his eyebrows. “Shouldn’t we try for a little longer than that? It’s only been—”
    “Listen, I know all about séances, and you don’t want tolinger too long in any one position. You have to rotate your methods .” She spun her hand around.
    “Whatever you say.”
    Joan pulled out her homemade Ouija board and started rearranging everything. Igor perched on the edge of the stage and looked out over the empty Hall, into the shadows. His ears pricked forward; his tail stood straight out behind him.
    He meowed softly. Curiouser and curiouser.
    I looked out into the Hall too, but all I could see was the red exit signs. One of them flickered on and off, buzzing. Had it been doing that before? And the coldness settling into the Hall like an invisible fog, scraping goosebumps across my skin—how long had that been going on?
    Slowly, Igor stood up. The hair on the back of his neck poofed. Curiousest of all.
    “Come on, Olivia,” Joan was saying. “We need your hands.” She shoved our hands together onto the Ouija board’s pointer, a piece of cardboard with a hole in the middle and plastic wrap stretched across the bottom of the hole. It distorted the letters, wrinkling them.
    “Don’t press down too hard,” Joan whispered. “Just barely touch the cardboard. Close your eyes. Let out a long breath.”
    After I exhaled, the only sounds I could hear were my own racing heartbeat and the distant buzzing of the exit sign. Beside me, Henry pressed his knee against mine.
    “ Spirits ,” Joan called out once more. “Tell us— are you here with us? ”
    Beneath our fingers, the pointer began to move. Henry cried out, and I bit down hard on my tongue to keep from doing the same.
    “Don’t stop,” she hissed. “We’re getting somewhere. Watch.”
    We did, staring at the pointer as it moved across the board—but what letter was it heading for? First N , and then Y , and then Z . That didn’t make any sense.
    I imagined stretching out my brain into the corners of the room, like tendrils. Please let this be real.
    “Joan?” Henry whispered. “What’s happening?”
    “She’s moving it herself, is what,” said a voice from somewhere across the stage, a scratchy, dirty-sounding voice, like it had been scraped off the inside of a chimney.
    We all froze, including the pointer. Joan stared past us. Her face went