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It had first started happening a little under 5 years ago now. Shortly after Lynne had moved into her apartment at Maison De Amida, there were a couple of random occurrences of things ending up in places she didn't remember them being in.
She didn't think much of it at first -- what could she rationally think about it, really? She had just blamed it on her luck, whether good or bad, or a lack of paying attention to where she had put things. But lately she was beginning to notice perfectly inanimate objects moving out of the corner of her eye. Maybe her umbrella gently swinging around from its place on the rack, or maybe her serving cart rolling itself to the other side of the room. Lynne was a rookie detective, not a physicist, but even she knew Newton's basic laws - things at rest stayed at rest.
Unless...
On this particular occasion, Lynne had reached for her headphones, but turned her head when they weren't where she expected them to be. She could have sworn she hung them up next to her umbrella last time she used them, but then again, she did use them a lot.
Missile sat in front of her, watching very closely, and wagged his tail more frantically whenever Lynne moved a little closer over to the kitchen, and a little slower whenever Lynne wandered back over towards the front door. “What is up with you tonight Missile? Did you hide my headphones just so we can play hot and cold?”
He let out a sneeze in response that shook his whole body, and then one short bark. “I have no idea what you’re trying to tell me,” Lynne bent down to give the Pomeranian a quick scratch on the head. “But you’re such a good boy.”
It wasn’t the first time Missile had acted like this - Lynne was unfortunately becoming used to seeing Missile barking at the phone when it wasn’t ringing, or bringing random things to Lynne with his tail wagging at full speed. She could even remember a couple of times when Missile walked into other rooms for seemingly no reason, only to find him sitting down next to an inanimate object and wagging his tail.
Standing back up with a sigh and a newfound determination on her face, the detective took another brief glance around her living room. “Guess they’re not in here.” Could Missile have been on to something with the kitchen…?
There was the sound of something metallic moving against her counter-top, followed by a gentle thud as something else fell onto the bench. Lynne walked over with Missile in tow, to find an apple had rolled out of the fruit basket and right over to her headphones on the counter.
There was no way a perfectly stable and untouched fruit basket would rock and let an apple loose on it's own. Lynne may have been tired, but tonight was the night that the straw had broken the camel's back. With her headphones now found, there was clearly another mystery going on here, and Lynne wasn’t just going to sit back and let it go unsolved.
"Alright, that does it, I'm getting the Ouija board." It was purely illogical to think that a ghost was haunting her apartment, but she was well past ignoring whatever was going on here. Lynne had never expected to get a serious use out of the cheap game she bought last year for an impulse purchase on Halloween, and yet, here she was, unironically and nonchalantly taking the dust covered box from its spot in the cupboard.
She took the cheap plywood board out of the box and laid it out on the kitchen table -- completely ignoring the instructions.Of course, Lynne had seen enough movies to know how these sorts of things worked anyway. The ghost had already made itself known tonight, and lighting candles and calling out to it seemed like a waste of time and effort at this point.
"Ok, I know there's something at work here that I can't see." She briefly glanced around her apartment, holding one hand close to her chest. "I don't know who you are or what you want, but, um, thank you for helping me find my headphones earlier. But if you're not here anymore, then I guess I’m just a weird girl who talks to herself."
A slight feeling of déjà vu began to wash over her, although it was impossible for her to remember when and why she had said those words before. “Well, I am kind of a weird girl whether I talk to myself or not” her mind completed, feeling that there was someone who would have said that about her - she couldn’t remember his face, but it was like she had just spent a whole night with him, and never met him at the same time.
"So this is how it works, I've got a bunch of letters and numbers and a yes and no here... and this thing." She held up the planchette. "So if you want to talk, you can just move... this thing, and spell out whatever you want with the circle part, and I'll work it out."
She put the planchette on the board, and stared at it intensely as she waited for it to move. In all of the movies Lynne had seen before, it was necessary for a living person to place their fingers over the moving pointer thing for the ghost to use it, however, the previous evidence leading to this ghost’s discovery meant that they could already move inanimate objects by themselves, if they wanted to.
Besides, Lynne wasn’t feeling too comfortable with the idea of letting a ghost possess her hands to move the planchette, no matter how friendly they seemed to be.
There was still no way to know if the spirit was still here, or willing to cooperate in this game, but something was telling her this ghost would take up the chance -- she came to recognize this feeling in her line of work as a detective’s hunch. Lynne’s hunches may not have been as accurate as her mentors’ just yet, but she trusted her instincts.
The planchette slowly began to move on the board, even without any contact from Lynne. The circle paused over the letter ‘H’ for a moment, before moving one letter over to ‘I’.
"Hi." Lynne read, taking a brief look around the room, briefly wondering if the ghost had some sort of physical form she could see now that they were communicating. She didn’t know what to expect, but as it turned out, there wasn’t anyone for her to see anyway. "Uh, hello!"
The planchette began to move over different letters slightly faster now that the ghost had gotten used to how the game worked, and Lynne moved one hand from the edge of the table to start taking notes, stringing together the movements to make words.
‘N-I-C-E-2-T-A-L-K-2-U-L-I-N-’
Lynne’s pen stopped in the middle of the last word to take another look around the room, this time with a half pitying, half annoyed expression. “That's not how you spell my name.” Sure, the ghost must have spent enough time around her to learn what her name was, but they’d never checked the spelling of it.
The planchette stilled tor a moment, before slowly moving over to to sit on a single letter. 'O'
Then again, maybe proper introductions were in order, since this was really the first time they had tried to talk like this. "You know, I keep calling you 'The friendly little ghost' and 'Missile's imaginary friend' in my head, but I've been wondering what your name is. You already know mine, so fair’s fair, right?"
'S-I-S-S-E-L'
"Your name is Sissel, huh?" The name struck a familiar chord in Lynne, but it was much easier for her to place why this time, unlike earlier in the evening. “That’s funny, Detective Jowd has a cat with the same name! What a weird coincidence.”
The planchette hesitated, making slight movements as if the spirit was considering what to say next. 'NO'
If Lynne was eating at that moment, she might have choked. If she was walking down the stairs, she might have tripped and fallen down awkwardly. If any of those things had happened, the situation would have suddenly made a lot more sense to her. But instead, she sat in her chair, trying to process what the ghost was telling her. “Y-you're saying it's not a coincidence?"
'YES'
"Ok I'm a bit confused. What is that supposed to mean?" Surely the ghost didn’t mean to say that he was Detective Jowd’s cat. It’d be pretty heinous for a ghost to walk around faking an identity like that, but just kind of dumb to pretend to be a cat. Was Sissel the cat named after Sissel the ghost for some reason? Or did the ghost take the name because they liked it…?
'M-E'
Lynne wasn't sure what to think. She had just seen Sissel the cat yesterday, and he seemed perfectly healthy and alive, as much as she could tell from afar. But there was something more important on her mind now… "A cat that can spell out words and communicate with people is actually pretty impressive."
'K-A-M-I-L-A'
"... Of course she taught a cat how to read. That girl can do anything." Lynne found herself shaking her head in surprise, trying to hold back laughter.
'O-D-D-G-I-R-L'
"I agree." The words and the laughter that followed came as naturally to Lynne as breathing air, or eating a roast chicken twice the size of her head.
Even Missile chimed in with a bark at his owner’s excitement, as if to say "Me too!"
The redhead had plenty more questions for the cat to answer, but they could have waited for another time.