Their hands form a circle around the board. It’s nice to do a board with Dora. They’ve known each other forever and the woman is so intuitive – she just lets Agnes do it. Agnes can feel herself drifting part way into the universe already, collecting particles, to a place where all things are bodiless. She imagines her husband turning on the television and seeing her out there, gathering different-coloured strands of energy. A feeling of luminosity is replaced by impenetrable darkness – it raises a vermilion flush to Agnes’s cheeks.

Blindness in one eye has never stopped her seeing.

There is always the other one.

Her third eye too – it can look right out of this world and into another.

Agnes is so adept at it, and – has been since she was a little girl – that there is a long queue of people from the other side – who know of her – or who have spoken to her before and often try to come through again. Dora Noyce opens her eyes and looks over at Archie and he blushes deeply. The women hold each other’s hands even tighter and Dora closes her eyes again. Agnes ignores her husband’s guilt.

She begins to shriek.

It’s like an alarm.

Higher, higher, louder, louder!

Archie knows better than to touch his wife at this point.

The planchette spins around. The energy in the room is so dense that Ovid’s cage is beginning to rattle. Archie forces himself across the floor to see what the Ouija board is spelling out. The two women are staring at it in silence now. Agnes’s shriek still hangs on the air like a harbinger of what is about to come.

The letters spell out the same thing over and over.

J

E

S

S

I

E

M

A

C

R

A

E

I

S

C

O

M

I

N

G

S

H

E

K

N

E

W

O

U

R

S

I

S

T

E

R

S

H

E

H

A

S

S

O

M

E

T

H

I

N

G

T

O

S

A

Y

There is an almighty hammering on the front door and Dora is alert then, as ever – for the police. Archie is down the hall to tell whomever it is to fuck off, but it is Mr Udnam, wheezing at the door. The old man shoves past Archie and comes down the hall into the living space where the women are sat at the table. His face falls as he looks at the board and back up at the women’s faces. Dora looks up at the man with a clear dislike. Neither of the women moves and Agnes does not look at all surprised to see him.

– They’re just playing, it’s a board game Mr Udnam, can I get you a drink of water?

Archie tries to distract the old man.

– Are the sisters coming?