via the movements of the planchette. Witchboards originated hundreds of years ago but grew in popularity in the 1800s. They were also frequently used by laypersons as a parlor game—a dangerous parlor game indeed.
While they can be used in virtually any location, the witchboard can be especially helpful when used in proximity to the bones of the intended contact. As the earthly remains maintain a hold on the spirit, this relationship can be played upon to bring focus to a session. It’s for this reason that some witchboard practitioners in the late 1800s would steal into cemeteries at night, armed with gaslights and shovels, to dig up the bones of the deceased. Some would even carve a planchette out of the skull of the dead, in this way creating a sort of magnet for the spirit. However, the defiling of bones risks bringing forth an angry spirit, and once the veil is broken a soul can frequently maintain contact with the earthly realm and reappear outside of the bounds of the original calling . . .
Jenn shivered and closed the book. Her mind was filled with images of people traipsing through cemeteries, digging up graves and handling skulls by candlelight. Jesus, had her aunt really done this stuff? She’d always thought Meredith was one of those hippies into lots of herbal stuff and “Peace, man,” or maybe even into the spirit-of-the-earth stuff, crystals and shit, but the woman kept skulls in her kitchen and had the secret entrance to a crypt in her bedroom. She bookmarked pages about digging up the dead. What had her aunt Meredith really been into? And how had a nice Catholic girl from the Midwest ended up that way?
Jenn slipped the book back into place on the shelf and stared again at the titles beside it. Medieval Magic. The Occult and the Mystery. Shamanism in the Old World. The Power of Earth. Aleister Crowley and the Hidden War. And then she saw another: The Amazing Gourd. It seemed incongruous amid the others. At least, it would have before recent events.
When she pulled it out, she was sure the book deserved a place on this shelf. The cover jacket was faded; she thought the book likely printed before she was born. But the yellowing, tattered sleeve featured a color photo of a veritable mountain of gourds of all shapes and sizes, from acorn squash to fist-size, warty old orbs, to yellow- and-green-striped tubelike zucchini squash, to butternuts. And at the center was their king: a giant, deep orange pumpkin that looked like it must weigh a couple hundred pounds.
The book wouldn’t have drawn Jenn’s notice a month or so ago, but to see it here, now, in this house? And a tiny slip of blue paper caught her eye amid the pages.
What? Had Meredith marked this page, too? What could she possibly have found here, and would it be important to this search?
She sat down, set the faded book on her lap and flipped to the marked page.
The Mythology of the Gourd
Being hard-shelled fruit with sweet soft flesh inside, gourds have long been seen by certain peoples and cultures as gifts from the gods, and by others as a temple. Many of these cultures used gourds in ceremonial rites. The Poblayen Indians felt that one gourd in particular represented fertility, which is why they held numerous ceremonies with it. Late every fall they held a betrothal ceremony for young couples, the unions each represented by a pumpkin. That gourd was to be taken home and prepared by the woman, with the seeds preserved and saved for eating by the new husband. It was said that eating these seeds would give him the power to sire a child on his wife that would be healthy and strong.
Of course, with every ritual of fertility comes a legend of the same power turned dark. One story recorded again and again is clearly intended as a cautionary tale. In it, a virile young man is “spending his seed” in the pumpkin patch after dark. His sacred, life-giving power, illicitly spent, brings to life a pumpkin queen whom he finds when he returns on a subsequent night. There in the pumpkin patch, instead of privacy and solace, he discovers a lovely young woman connected to a pumpkin vine. She begs him to cut the cord (again, another symbol of procreation) and seduces him there in the field. Alas, when he succumbs to temptation, she wraps her arms around him and metamorphoses back into a pumpkin, her arms and legs forming a wall around him from which he can never escape. Having made his choice, he is doomed to live inside her shell, fertilizing her seeds for the rest of his days—a chilling warning against the potential consequences of illicit passion.
On the other hand, other cultures celebrated the pumpkin as a soul cage. The gourd’s wealth of seeds was seen as a powerful lure to spirits, and so a shaman would carve out the top of a pumpkin, performing a ceremony to invoke the spirits of elders. When just such a spirit had entered the pumpkin, he would close the lid to trap it there. In this way, he would be able to hold a spirit for days or weeks, until the flesh of the pumpkin at last decomposed. During this period, the shaman could consult the gourd for wisdom.
Variants on this ceremony involve the entrapment of serpents (generally for darker rituals) or the use of a human skull, the latter being placed within the pumpkin in order to give flesh and voice once more to the dead. The pumpkin “head” could then be addressed, allowing possible communication with the owner of the bones.
Jenn closed the book. She would never look at a pumpkin in quite the same way again. She’d always associated them with pie and Halloween, but apparently there was another whole mythology—one that had clearly taken root here in River’s End. She wished she’d never learned of any of it.
“I found one!” Nick called from the kitchen. His voice was excited.
Jenn set her book on the couch and got up. When she reached him, Nick was on his knees in the pantry. He grinned at her. The contents of the walk-in storage space were strewn about the floor, boxes of breakfast cereal and bags of flour and soup cans pushed willy-nilly out of the way. Three white-painted shelves leaned against the stove.
“It fits,” he said, and motioned at the key protruding from the wall amid a thin, lighter stripe of paint where a shelf had been just moments before.
“How the hell did you know to look there?”
Nick shrugged. “I figured you’ve already seen all the obvious walls, so any other locks have to be hiding inside cabinets or closets or whatever. I looked in here and saw the top of this lock at the back of the top shelf. So . . . care to give it a turn and see where it goes?”
“No, you go ahead.”
Nick turned the key. The lock clicked easily. As it did, the slight crack that Jenn had noticed in the back wall suddenly grew larger; then the back wall simply swung outward, hidden hinges suddenly visible on the other side.
“Do we need a flashlight?” Jenn asked, noting the implacable darkness beyond.
Nick stepped forward and shook his head. “Your aunt was a boy scout,” he said. He reached out toward a small shelf and turned back holding a white candle and a book of matches.
“So, what’s back there?” Jenn asked.
He shrugged. “Only one way to find out.”
