– We just provide a link between this world and the other one. Sometimes it is required. Like your trips tae Danube Street.

– It’s dangerous, I have to put up with how much it wears you out. We have to worry about whether the polis will come and convict you. I ken you dinnae think I care but I do, Agnes. Is this the last time?

– Aye, it’s the very last one, Archie.

She opens the drawer and takes out her Ouija board and says the words only to soothe him and it will work for a wee while. Agnes places the Ouija board centre of the table. She arranges the planchette (a teardrop-shaped wooden pointer) in between YES and NO. There are two semicircles above. The first has numbers 0 through 9. The second holds the letters of the alphabet. GOODBYE is at the bottom of the board.

– It was the Fox sisters in New York who first made these, you know, Archie, in 1848! They asked the first board what it should be called and it spelled out OUIJA. When they asked what it meant it just spelled out GOOD LUCK.

– What time will Dora be here?

– Any minute. She’s been tae London to visit a painter called Bacon who brushes his teeth with Vim apparently!

Agnes talks a lot before it happens and they can both feel it already. It’s a wee bit like the few times they tried getting high – a buzzy coming-up sensation that something is started and cannot be stopped for a while.

The spirits never stop visiting Agnes in 5F5 No. 10 Luckenbooth Close.

Not since they moved here over thirty years ago.

Even when she doesn’t host a seance for months (to appease her husband), they’re always waiting, trying to get her attention. Perched on his armchair, or sat on the mighty unshared loo that Agnes is so ridiculously proud of. When she drags out their tin bath and fills it, spirits get in before she does.

The door goes as someone chaps on it then there are footsteps down the wee hall.

Archie hangs up Dora’s lovely fur coat and settles himself down in case they need him.

In his cage, the parrot starts clicking, head bobbing.

Agnes settles herself at the head of the table.

Dora sits opposite her, the Ouija board between them.

The wind picks up outside.

The wooden shutter slowly creaks itself half open.

– Are ye good, Dora?

– Aye, Archie, I am, and you?

– Great, aye, nice to see you and Agnes doing the…

He makes a circle with his hand in the direction of the board unable to pronounce its name.

– I’m hoping fir a message, Archie.

– We’re aw hoping fir a message, Dora. It’s God himself who decides what we get!

Agnes tries not to visibly despair at her husband’s verbal shite.

She takes Dora’s hands across the table.