Goot Eefeneeng
“It’s evidence,” she said at the time. “Evidence that there’s life,” and she waves her hands in the air. “Out there. The afterlife.”
I was dubious but we’d been friends a long time. Long enough for me to know when I was being fed shit pie. It was unlikely that Madame Xena would have made it to the point in her life where her permed hair had turned grey without attracting some degree of international notoriety for being able to commune with anyone on the other side.
Journalists tend to be interested in things like that.
Tuesday was a slow night for me so when Becky asked me to go along to an evening of clairvoyance I couldn’t resist. The prospect of some beyond the grave shenanigans was, it has to be said, too good to miss.
“Heff a sheet,” says Madame Xena in her faux-Germanic accent and Becky, myself and my girlfriend Chloe sheet down as instructed. Chloe looks over at me and the corners of our mouth rise, just a millimetre, leffing at her.
She explains the rules, how it all works. Becky sits, staring, rapt. Chloe sits, staring, agog. I sit, staring, trying to remember if I locked the car door.
Madame Xena, this evening (or as she would have it eefeneeng) has chosen the Ouija board as her weapon of choice. A sort of retro-is-the-new-chic for the mystic community. I have my doubts that this will be an effective way of communing with the hereafter but, you never know do you?
So off we go and she’s good. She’s really fucking good. Scarily so.
First off she does Becky, the glass sliding about spelling out words. The words building into advice about her life. Not to get into to much detail but I think Colin is going to find himself dumped as a result of some dodgy advice handed out by a guinea pig Becky owned when she was four.
Nuts – yes. But accurate.
“There ees a dark presence een thee room,” says Madame Xena with a shriek. “You heff recently been ferry close to the other side, no?”
She had. Last week Chloe was nearly run over when a car mounted the pavement a few streets from where we live. I was the only person there. She could not have known, there was no way. Sure enough, the glass whipped this way, that way, spelling out the good news that the one who saved her was the one she would spend the rest of her life with.
Thankfully the person who saved her life was me otherwise I could have ended up in the same boat as poor Colin. Chloe looked visibly shaken, her shoulders hanging loose but her finger still on the glass, transfixed.
“Joo,” Madame Xena announced, staring at me. “There is someone here for joo these eefeneeng.”
J – A – M – I – E
It spells it out, our fingers on the glass and it doesn’t feel like Chloe or Becky or Madame Xena are doing it, it’s just moving spelling out my name. I deliberately don’t react and deliberately don’t catch Chloe’s gaze, don’t want her to know that I think this mad woman might be onto something.
Y – O – U
It starts moving faster.
THIS IS YOUR UNCLE CLARENCE
Again there’s just no way she could know. I catch Chloe’s eye and she’s looking, eyebrow raised in a question.
WHEN YOU GET HOME
Sweat starts to roll from my knuckle down my index finger towards the glass as it moves.
LOOK UNDER THE FLOORBOARD IN THE SPARE ROOM
And it’s over. We stop, we walk outside hand in hand and Chloe has the same cold sweat on her palms I do. We get in the car and drive the whole way home without speaking. Not a word until she closes the front door as asks me if I’m going to look.
I tell her I’m not and she wanders off to put the kettle on but I go upstairs. Into the spare room find the floorboard and lift it. It gives way easily. Much easier than it should and there’s something in there. A piece of paper. On it are written eight words
YOU ARE AN EEDEEOT
WEEELL YOU MARRY MEE?
In Chloe’s handwriting.
“I’ll get you for this,” I scream down the stairs but she’s standing on the landing.
“Well?” she says with a smile that fills the room.
“Yes.”