Free Better Left Buried by Belinda Frisch

had so many over the past seventeen years that none could hurt her, not even coming from Brea. “Something attacked me last night. Not some one . Some thing . It knocked the phone out of my hand when I tried to call for help, blew shit all around the kitchen. If Adam hadn’t come home when he did, it might’ve killed me.” She held out her arm to illustrate her point. “It cut over my goddamned scars. Why would I do that?” She unloaded a spirit board and set it on the table the former owners had left behind. “A voice said, ‘help me’. Over and over again. It just kept asking.”
    “It?”
    “ He. Brea, if you don’t do this with me, if I don’t figure out what happened, it won’t let me go. Please ?”
    “ And this is your solution? You want to communicate with something you think tried to kill you?”
    “Maybe it did. Maybe it didn’t. Maybe I did this. Maybe I freaked and tried for an easy out. I don’t know, but I know that if I did cut myself, it wasn’t without a push.”
    “ What does Adam think about this?”
    Harmony stared at the board in front of her. It was vintage, wooden, and intimidating in its careful detailing. This wasn’t a party game. It was the real thing.
    “You haven’t told him, have you?”
    “What am I supposed to say? That I think a ghost is trying to kill me? That I’m seeing things that aren’t there? Adam accepts my brand of crazy, Brea, and he loves me in spite of it, but that’s asking too much, even from him.”
    Brea tuned in to Harmony’s deepest fear without her having to say it. “You’re afraid he’ll send you back to Spring View.”
    She refused to admit it. “Please? Could be that nothing happens. Then I am crazy and I’ll admit it. But if I’m not then there’s something else going on here.”
    Brea set the glass on the center of the board and whether it was guilt, sympathy, or a combination of both, she agreed. “Fine. Let’s do this. Then at least you’ll know.” Harmony smiled. “But I want to go on record as saying I think this is a terrible idea.”

CHAPTER S EVENTEEN
     
    Brea ran her fingers over the smooth wood, her fingertips tracing the scorched letters burnt into it. A moon decorated the left hand corner, a sun the right, and the words “Yes” and “No” were under them. “Hello” and “Goodbye” were written across the bottom in a rough script that indicated the board was handmade. She’d never seen anything like it.
    “Where did you get this?” she asked.
    Harmony cleaned the glass with her shirt. “Remember that old house on McNamara?”
    “The hoarder house?”
    It was on her bus route ; a two-story Victorian with piles of junk so high you couldn’t see through the windows. Its paint was chipped, the porch was falling in, and there was a minivan full of trash with four flat tires parked in the driveway.
    “The old woman who lived there died last summer. I guess she didn’t have any family because the town sent people over to clean the place out. They trashed everything. This,” she tapped the board, “was in a box in the dumpster.”
    Somehow, the story didn’t make Brea feel any better about using it. Of all that Harmony had said, she’d focused in on dead old lady.
    “So, what do we do?” Brea asked, thankful for the light of day and unintimidating surroundings. The foreclosed house hadn’t yet fallen into disrepair and the family left behind enough of their belongings for her to feel safe, like a visitor in a home with a terrible housekeeper.
    “Haven’t you ever done this before?”
    Like it was the most natural thing in the world.
    “They smuggled one into camp, but I watched a movie in the other room.”
    “ Big surprise.” Harmony set the glass upside down in the middle of the board and placed two fingers on the edge. “Well?” She raised her eyebrows.
    Brea did the same, feeling more than a little sick to her stomach. “Now what?”
    “ Now, we ask questions. Is there anyone here willing to