Doctor Who_ Psi-Ence Fiction - Chris Boucher [62]
They sat in the student bar in awkward, almost embarrassed, silence. The news of Joan's death had brought them hurriedly back together, but now they seemed to have nothing to say to each other. Although the bar was not particularly crowded there was laughter and busy chatter all around them. But at their table no one seemed able to break the mute spell: to find something appropriate to say.
It was Chloe who spoke finally. 'It wasn't anybody's fault,' she said, feeling her voice clashing with the emptiness like out-of-tune karaoke singing. 'It's not as if we did it to her or anything. It's not really as if any of us could have stopped her either,' she plunged on. Probably not, I mean.' The subtext of which was, she thought, that she hadn't liked Joan much and she was pretty sure that none of the others had either. She didn't wish her dead or anything, but now she was dead none of them could ever admit that.
'We shouldn't have left her on her own,' Meg said. 'She was terrified. We knew she was terrified. We know why she was terrified.'
We do?' Ralph asked. I don't think I know why she was terrified. Refresh my memory. Why was she terrified?'
'We don't really know,' Tommy said. 'You might think you know but that's not the same thing is it?'
"The Ouija board shit was her idea,' Josh said. 'Who knew that crap would get to her?'
'Joan Cox dies next?' Meg said. 'Wouldn't that crap have got to you?'
'No,' Josh said. 'Because it's crap.'
'Oh yeah, right,' she scoffed. 'Nothing scares you.'
'Any time you want to try it again, just say the word,' Josh challenged. 'We can do it in the local cemetery at midnight if you like.'
Meg raised her lager bottle in an ironic salute to him. 'My hero.'
Chloe was surprised by what she was hearing. She had thought her own reaction to Joan's suicide lacked the correct degree of sympathy, but this was beyond anything she felt she had been guilty of. 'Joan Cox dies next?'
she asked.
Meg said, 'We had a session with the Ouija board. You weren't around.
You were off playing with your new friends or something. Anyway, that's what we got. Joan Cox dies next.'
'We?' Ralph said. 'Who we?'
'Joan, him.' She pointed at Josh. 'Tommy, and me.'
Ralph nodded thoughtfully. I see. So I was off playing with my new friends as well was I?'
She didn't like you,' Meg said.
'I know,' he said.
'She chose the group, it was her session. Sorry.'
'I expect I'll live.'
Josh said flippantly, 'Keep away from Ouija boards then.'
Tommy frowned at him. 'You weren't impressed by any of it?' he asked.
Josh shook his head dismissively. 'Any more than I was impressed by that rubbish with Ghostbuster's sensory-deprivation tank.' He gave a short, mirthless laugh. 'What a fiasco that turned out to be.'
'But the business with the Ouija board was weird,' Tommy said. 'How do you explain it?'
'Coincidence,' Josh said. 'Imagination. Hoax. Could be any number of things. But psychopathic killers communicating from beyond the grave?
Attack by demons or the undead? I don't think so.'
Tommy pushed the hair back from his eyes. 'I know what I saw.'
Josh took a coin from his pocket. 'You know what you think you saw.' He held the coin up, made a couple of hand passes over it and then palmed it.
'You think you saw that disappear but it didn't.' He showed the coin again.
'You're wrong,' Tommy said. 'I didn't think it had disappeared. You're not that good.'
'That's not the point he was making,' Ralph said.
'Oh shut up and keep out of this will you!' Tommy snapped. 'I know what point he was making. We're not all as thick as you are!'
Chloe had never seen Tommy so viciously angry. And with so little reason.
Was it shock? She wondered. She tried to remember the manifestations of grief from her basic psychology foundation course but the list wouldn't come back to her. 'Aren't we forgetting something?' she said