Hanging by a Thread (7 page)

“How can you think that was her fault?” asked Alice with a snort. “My dear friend Mary Kuhfeld was in Philadelphia for the weeklong bicentennial celebration in 1976, and the night of July third all the fireworks on a pier went off at once, some coming right at the people standing on the shore. Do you think Mary is haunted by a poltergeist? Of course not. It was an accident. A worker dropped his flare, which started a fire and that’s what set them all off. The same thing happened here that Fourth.”

“Wouldn’t surprise me to learn Mrs. Chesterfield was in Philadelphia that night, watching while her poltergeist tripped fireworks technicians,” said Martha, but not seriously. The others chuckled.

Alice said, “You shouldn’t say things like that. Some people will take you seriously, and they’ll start thinking there’s no such thing as accident or even coincidence.” She raised a defiant hand and snapped her fingers. “Poltergeists—hah!”

A huge black web fell out of the ceiling, wrapping her hand, her head, her shoulders.

Bershada screamed, Emily shrieked. Struggling to get free, Alice fell backward out of her chair.

“Here, here, here!” Betsy yelled, running around the table to stoop beside Alice. “Stop pulling at it, please!”

“Get it off me!” shouted Alice.

“What, what?” called Godwin, rushing out from behind the shelves.

“It’s all right, it’s all right!” cried Betsy, trying to hold Alice’s hands still through the webbing. “Lie still, please, Alice!”

“What is it?” cried Alice, trying to obey and at the same time shrink from the horrible thing.

“It’s a shawl,” said Betsy.

“Why, of course!” said Comfort. “It was hanging from the ceiling,” she explained from her place well away from the table, holding the tiny, half-knitted sweater to her breast like a shield. She took a step forward, her expression swiftly changing from frightened to amused.

“Oh? Oh!” Alice suddenly relaxed. “That’s all it is?”

“Are you hurt, Alice?” asked Martha, coming out from behind a spinner rack of knitting accessories.

“I—I don’t think so. But I’m afraid I may have torn this, Betsy.”

“Yes, it is torn, a little.” Betsy’s face was twisted with dismay. There was a substantial tear near one edge.

“Well, what was it doing up on the ceiling, anyway?” demanded Bershada, lifting her glasses and looking up.

“It’s a display method, that’s all,” said Godwin. The other women also looked up at the several shawls hanging on the ceiling.

“Oh, why, so it is,” said Bershada. “Clever.”

“Not
that
clever,” said Betsy sadly. Seeking more display space, she had taken to hanging some of her lighter models from slender threads attached to the soft tiles of her shop’s ceiling with pins. None had ever broken loose before. On the other hand, this was the largest item she had ever attempted to suspend.

“Three Kittens uses plastic hooks that fasten to the metal strips of their acoustic ceiling,” said Martha, naming a yarn shop in St. Paul.

“Where do they get them, I wonder?” said Betsy. “No, don’t try to get up yet, Alice.”

“Here, let me help,” said Godwin, stooping across from Betsy.

“What’s going on?” asked a new voice, and Mrs. Chesterfield came out from the back. “Is someone hurt?”

“No, but that beautiful Russian-lace shawl Betsy had hanging from the ceiling fell onto Alice’s head,” said Martha.

“Well, how on earth did that happen?” asked Mrs. Chesterfield.

“I think it was your polter—” said Godwin.

“Don’t you say it!” she said, turning on him. “I won’t listen to any more talk of me and a poltergeist!”

“No, of course not,” said Betsy. “Goddy’s just being silly. Aren’t you, Godwin?”

“All right,” he agreed, but with a smirk.

Mrs. Chesterfield looked at him suspiciously, but he instantly switched to his famous faux innocent look, complete with batting eyelashes and, barely mollified, she went back to the sampler books.

Godwin and Betsy continued disentangling Alice from the large black shawl, and in the silence there came a muffled choking sound. It was Emily, trying to stifle a giggle.

“Hush, Emily,” said Martha. “Alice has received a terrible fright.”

“Th-that’s true,” giggled Emily. “It scared all of us. Did you see the way we all shot out of our chairs when that shawl fell?” She giggled some more.

Bershada said with a significant smile, “That will teach Alice to say ‘hah’ to poltergeists.”

“Come on, both of you!” said Betsy. “Didn’t you ever hear of coincidence?”

Bershada said, “Coincidence? Mmmmm-hmmmm!”

Emily giggled from behind both hands held over her nose and mouth.

Godwin asked Alice, “Well, if it wasn’t the you-know-what, how in the world did it manage to tear loose?” He glanced up at the ceiling, which was about nine feet high. Alice was a tall woman, but her reach wasn’t
that
high.

“I didn’t touch the thing!” said Alice crossly, trying to hold still as the last strands of fine black yarn were unwound from her earrings. “Ouch, please be careful! I was just sitting there when it fell on me with no warning! Now help me—Oof!” She grunted as Godwin helped her to her feet.

“Are you all right?” asked Betsy.

“I think so. But oh, all my joints are shaken loose! Thank you, Godwin.”

“Is it repairable?” asked Comfort, watching Betsy look at the tear. The shawl was a fragile, very difficult pattern of knit lace, a large but gossamer article Betsy had borrowed from a customer to interest advanced knitters in a book of patterns and the expensive wool it called for.

Betsy began to fold the shawl. “I’ll see if Sandy can repair it.” Sandy Mattson had more than once saved important pieces with her ability to invisibly repair them. At a price, of course. Betsy sighed, and took the shawl to the desk.

Godwin winked at the table and went between the box shelves to ask Mrs. Chesterfield in a high voice, “Have you decided which book you want, Mrs. Chesterfield?”

“Goddy,” warned Betsy.

“We’re fine, aren’t we, Mrs. Chesterfield? Of course we are. Now, how about this one?” His tone was obediently subdued, and only lightly cordial.

“Yes, I think so. Thank you, Godwin. And I want a fat quarter of the uneven weave linen. If you don’t have it in tea-dyed, then unbleached.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The women stitched in silence until Mrs. Chesterfield paid for her book and linen, and left.

Alice said, “I feel sorry for that poor woman.”

“What’s this?” said Martha. “I thought you didn’t believe in poltergeists.”

“I don’t,” she replied, lifting her strong chin in a stubborn gesture. “But her life in the last few years has become a series of sad coincidences. I wonder if she has come to believe in the poltergeist herself—and how sad for her if she has.”

“
L
et’s talk about something else,” said Martha. “Something more cheerful.”

Godwin, coming to sit down, said, “Well, it’s Halloween, so let’s tell ghost stories.”

Comfort laughed. “Ghost stories are cheerful?”

Bershada said, “I just love ghost stories—the scarier, the better.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t go there,” said Emily. “I think we just met a ghost. Alice, I know I was laughing, but when that shawl fell on you, that was authentically scary.”

Alice said, “Even I was foolish, panicking like that. Why, you’d think I changed my mind about poltergeists, when of course I haven’t. I was just startled.”

“Mmmmmmm-hmmmmh,” said Bershada. “Still, something like that is enough to turn all of us into medieval peasants, hanging wolfsbane on the door and wearing garlic around our necks, scared of every bump in the night.”

“It’s not night,” said Emily, “it’s broad daylight.” She looked out the window at the rain-dark street. “Well, cloudy daylight. Look, someone’s coming.”

The door to the shop went
Bing!
and with an effort a woman in a wheelchair pushed herself over the threshold. She was an attractive woman of about thirty with short blond hair—currently plastered against one side of her face by rain—and brown eyes. She wore a red sweater and blue jeans under a yellow rain cape, which she pulled off and dropped on the floor near the door.

“Hi, Carol,” said Betsy, coming to close the door for her. “Glad you could brave such terrible weather.”

“Oh, wheeling around in the wind blows the cobwebs out of my head. I miss going to an office where there are live human beings and coffee breaks and football pools. Of course, one pleasure of working at home is that weekends become moveable feasts. I worked yesterday so I’ve declared today a Sunday.” She stopped at the other end of the library table. “What are we talking about?”

“Ghost stories,” said Alice, disapproval in her deep voice.

“Of course, what else on Halloween? Have I missed any juicy ones?”

“Not yet,” said Bershada. “But we did have a little scare a few minutes ago.” She explained about the shawl’s fall onto Alice’s head.

“Have mercy!” exclaimed Carol. “That must have scared you out of ten years’ growth, Alice.”

“Not to mention the rest of us,” said Godwin. “But Mrs. Chesterfield is gone, taking her poltergeist with her.”

“Do you believe in poltergeists, Godwin?” asked Carol.

“No, of course not,” he said, pretending to spit lightly to the left and right and making fake cabalistic signs with his right hand. “Do you?”

“No,” she said, laughing, “but I have to believe in ghosts, since we have one living with us.”

“Does he follow you around like Mrs. Chesterfield’s poltergeist?” asked Bershada, looking past Carol for traces of ectoplasm.

“No, he stays at home.” Carol made a little ceremony of getting out her project, a half-completed cross-stitch pattern of Santa standing sideways in a froth of fur and beard: Marilyn Leavitt-Imblum’s Spirit of Christmas. These were all delaying tactics that allowed the tension to grow.

“Oh, all right, I’ll break down and beg: Please, tell us all about it,” said Godwin.

“She doesn’t have to if she doesn’t want to,” objected Alice, still shaken from the episode of the shawl.

Emily seconded her. “Anyway, how can we be interested in ghost stories when we’re all working on Christmas projects?”

Carol said, “Christmas is a very traditional time for ghost stories. Dickens’s A
Christmas Carol
is a ghost story.”

“Why, so it is,” said Martha. “I never thought of that. So tell us about your ghost, Carol. ”What does it do? Go bump in the night?”

“Once in a while, though it’s more usually a sound like a marble rolling across the floor. But he’s mostly a friendly ghost, except to carpenters and plumbers and electricians.”

Betsy chuckled and asked from across the room, “What has he got against them? Their prices?”

“No, he doesn’t want any changes made to the house. He’s the original owner, my housemate’s grandfather. His name is Cecil, he was a dentist. He and his wife bought the house back in the early 1920s as a summer vacation home—their other house was in Minneapolis.”

Godwin jested, “How do you know that’s who it is? Does he come into your bedroom and try to pull your teeth?”

Carol laughed back, but persisted, “I’m serious. Let me tell you the story. Cecil, his wife, and their four daughters all moved out to that house every summer to get away from the heat of the city.”

Emily nodded. “My great-grandparents did the same thing, moved out here in the summer. Great-grandpop commuted every day on the streetcar steamboats.”

Carol said, “This was a bit later, Cecil drove a car into town. But in the summer of 1935, when he was only forty-seven, Cecil had a heart attack. He survived it, but he became very worried about leaving his family without a man to take care of them. He tried to get well, but two years later he had another heart attack and died. The next summer, his widow and her daughters moved out of the city as usual, but started experiencing strange noises in the house. At first they didn’t know what it was, but then they started getting an occasional whiff of pipe smoke. Cecil had loved his pipe.”

“Ooooooooh,” said Bershada, smiling.

“Go on, go on,” urged Comfort.

Carol smiled. “Well, one by one the daughters married and moved away. The youngest daughter inherited the house when their mother died; and she and her husband decided to live there year round. She was Susan’s mother. All this time, there were still these noises and sometimes the smell of pipe smoke. Nothing was ever broken, but she did notice the noises were worse when they’d do spring-cleaning, especially if they hung new drapes or painted. Like I said, he didn’t like changes. Cecil would slam doors and stomp around upstairs until they were finished.

“Susan says she was aware of a presence in the house from her early childhood, and just accepted it as part of what it was like to live there. A few years ago her mother needed money, so Susan bought the house from her, but her mother still lives with us. She’s an invalid now, the last of the four sisters. Susan says Grandfather Cecil is still watching over his last daughter, and will likely go when she dies.”

“So this ghost story is only hearsay,” said Alice. “You’ve never seen or heard anything.”

“Oh, no, I’ve experienced him, too, door closings, footsteps, marble rollings, pipe tobacco, and all. In fact, I am the cause of a really serious outbreak. You see, when Susan invited me to move in with her and her mother, they had to make some changes, real changes, building ramps and widening doorways and installing an elevator to the second floor. When things got under way, Cecil really went to work. Doors wouldn’t stay closed—or open, footsteps went up and down the stairs all day long, and marbles rolled all night. Then the carpenter began complaining he’d misplaced a hammer or screwdriver, and the electrician couldn’t keep track of his wires and switches. This was something new and we just thought they were careless. But then Cecil started to sabotage their cars. The carpenter knocked off work one day, and his car wouldn’t start. He checked under the hood and fooled around with it, and finally he called a tow truck. And once the car arrived at the garage, it worked just fine. The first time this happened, we were thinking he ought to get a tune-up, but after it happened a few times, we knew: It was Cecil. We discussed it and finally agreed to tell the workmen what it was. The way they stared at us, I thought we’d have to find a new construction firm. I’ve never seen five pairs of eyes that big.”