The Swallow (5 page)

That got me worried. I was used to my dad losing his temper with us, but if he was starting to yell at the neighbors too, that was bad. I didn’t know what was wrong with him.

“Yeah, well, I guess you have stayed away from us pretty good, since I’ve never seen you. When did you move in?”

“The beginning of July.”

“I must have been away at camp. I never heard about new people moving in. What happened to the old lady who used to live there?”

“She was my grandmother and she died last spring.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

There was a silence. I still felt there was something fishy about her. She had an odd way of speaking, sort of old-fashioned.

“What school do you go to? Why don’t I see you leaving in the morning?”

“St. Ursula’s Academy. Private school. They start early. I leave at seven o’clock and I return by three.”

“That explains it,” I said slowly. “My bedroom’s at the back—”

“So is mine,” chimed in the ghost.

“I leave later than you do and I don’t get home till about four.”

“Satisfied?” said the ghost in a rather sarcastic tone.

“I guess so.”

But there was definitely something weird about this girl. I wasn’t really going to be satisfied until I saw her in the flesh and gave her a good pinch.

Rose

It was strange that I’d never seen her and she’d never seen me. Unless I really am invisible. Sometimes I wonder. Especially since I got back from the hospital. I feel so floaty and detached, and sometimes things start bleaching out and turning white again. But maybe that’s because I’ve been calling on white light for protection, ever since I found that book in the attic.

It was called
Ghostly Phenomena
, written by a man named Roger Priestley. The last chapter was about protecting yourself from ghosts. One method is to use white light to keep them away. Apparently white light is pure, good energy that can block out bad spirits. The book provided instructions.

This is the way it works: I close my eyes and imagine white light washing over me and through me, and shining out around me like a suit of armor. It is so bright that it blocks out every little bit of darkness, so nothing is left but this shining, brilliant white.

I do this in the morning when I wake up, and at night before I go to sleep, and at odd times during the day. It makes me feel peaceful and safe. I think it might be helping to keep the ghosts away.

I have to say, I was relieved to discover that the Lacey girl was a living, breathing person and not a dead one. And she did know a lot about ghosts, which could be useful.

By a rather strange coincidence, I had run into her brothers the day before I heard her in the attic.

I’d come around the corner at the end of our block, walking fast, and bumped right into them. I dropped my schoolbooks.

“Pardon me,” I mumbled.

I must have really startled them, because they jumped, yelled, and then stared at me in horror with their mouths hanging open and their eyes bulging. Then they recovered themselves and started in on me.

“Watch where you’re going, why don’t ya?” said one.

“Why are you sneaking up on us?” said the other. They both looked exactly the same, wearing matching blue zip-up jackets and brown pants. I found it a bit unnerving, as if I were seeing double.

“I apologized for bumping into you. Go away,” I said, pushing past them.

“Yeah, well,
YOU
go away,” said one, and “Keep your distance, Ghost Girl,” shouted the other.

What could have scared them so much? I went home and looked at myself in the hall mirror. Ghost Girl?

Pale face, big dark eyes with hollows under them, dark gray school coat, hair all over the place. And a sad mouth.

I did look like a ghost.

PLAY DATE

Polly

“So, do you want to get together and play?” I asked the ghost. If she really was a ghost she’d make some excuse.

“I’m not allowed to play with you,” replied the ghost in a tight little voice. “I told you, my mother thinks you’re all savages, like your father. And your brothers, I might add.”

“I won’t argue with that, ghostie,” I said cheerfully. “Your mother has the right idea. But we could meet in the cemetery and she’d never know.”

“The cemetery?” said the ghost, her voice faltering. “Why the cemetery? Why not the park?”

“Because the cemetery is my favorite place. It’s so spooky and mysterious, and it’s deserted, and your mother would never run into us there.”

“Well—”

“If you’re really not a ghost, prove it. Come and meet me and show me that you’re not dead.”

Silence.

“I knew it!” I said. I couldn’t help myself. “You
ARE
a ghost.”

“Oh, very well,” said the ghost. “I’ll meet you tomorrow. By the big mausoleum with the angel on top. What’s your name?”

“Polly,” I replied. For someone who claimed not to be a ghost, she sure knew that cemetery pretty good. That mausoleum was way down at the bottom of the hill, and you couldn’t see it until you were right up to it because it was built into the hill and there were lots of bushes around it.

“Polly. Fine. I’ll see you there at two o’clock. I have to go to church in the morning.”

“Me too. Then we have a big Sunday dinner, but I should be able to make it by two.”

“Oh, and Polly?”

“Yes?”

“If you call me ghostie one more time you’ll be really, really sorry. My name is Rose.”

Rose

The really pathetic part of all this is that I did want to meet her. I never get asked to play by other girls. Never. Once in a while my mother sets something up with her society ladies who have children, but it never works. We sit staring at each other until the grown-ups finish talking. I never have a word to say.

I don’t think I’ve ever really had a friend. I find it too hard to talk to people. Polly was different. Maybe it was easier to talk to her because I couldn’t see her. And she was kind of funny, though annoying at the same time.

She certainly was dying to see a ghost. If only she’d known what seeing ghosts was really like, she would have run away from me as far and as fast as she could. Which is what she’d probably do anyway, once she met me and saw how weird I was.

CRYING

Polly

That night I woke up to the sound of my mother crying. It was very dark. She was lying beside me on my bed, the way she used to when I was little and had a bad dream. I rolled over and put my arm around her.

“Mum?” I whispered. “Mum, what’s wrong?”

“Oh, Polly,” she said. “I’m sorry about the eggs, I should have remembered.” Then she hiccuped and started crying again and rocking back and forth.

“Never mind, Mum,” I said softly. “It’s okay. I’m sorry too.”

And I was. I knew she meant well. She really does want to help all those children, because she has a good heart, but she gets too much to do and then she forgets about me. She always thinks I can manage, but sometimes I need her and she just isn’t there. I wish it could always be like it was that night, with both of us sorry and both of us understanding what the other one needs, but I knew that the next day it would be business as usual, and Mum would be back to saying, “Polly, you have so much and so many children have so little and you need to learn to share,” etcetera, etcetera.

But for the moment it was different. The house was very quiet. I could almost hear everyone breathing. Mum finally stopped crying. I think we both fell asleep, because I don’t remember her leaving. But in the morning she was gone.

Rose

I woke up to the sound of my mother crying. It was very dark. I could hear her in her room, sobbing as if her heart would break. My father was away in Montreal on business, so she was all alone. Crying.

I got out of bed and walked to the doorway of her room.

“Mother?” I said, but my voice was swallowed up by the sadness in the room.

“My baby,” she moaned. “My poor, poor baby. I’ve lost my baby.”

I walked over to the bed. I hated to hear her cry. She was sitting up, her head in her hands. I touched her shoulder.

“Mother, don’t,” I whispered.

She looked up then, but I think she must have been crying in her sleep, because even though she was looking right at me, she didn’t see me.

“I want my baby,” she cried, “I want her back. Don’t take my baby away.”

Suddenly I caught a glimpse of something moving, something white, in the oval mirror above my mother’s dressing table. I turned to look at it. Just then the moon must have come
out from behind some clouds, because an eerie, cold light filled the room and I could see what was in the mirror.

It was me. I was wearing a white nightgown and my wild hair was tousled over my shoulders. My eyes were ringed with dark shadows. I seemed to float there, suspended in the glass.

I looked more like a ghost than ever.

GLOOM

Polly

It was the perfect day to meet a ghost in a cemetery. The gray sky felt heavy and foreboding. A chill wind sighed mournfully through the naked branches of the trees.

I shivered in the cold and stuck my hands deep into my pockets. I was wearing my red in-between coat and it wasn’t really warm enough. The damp seeped through.

The cemetery was deserted. I shuffled through the drifts of crispy leaves past my favorite graves: Gower, Phyllis, age 8, 1853, with the fat little angel carved on the stone. Sharpe, Percy, age 12, 1906, guarded by two stone lions. Bakeapple, Victoria, age 2, 1873, with a wreath of stone flowers. Bakeapple, Anna, age 36, 1879. Victoria’s mother, I guess. Their gravestones were blackened with age.

I had the feeling I always had in the cemetery: ghosts were all around me, but I couldn’t quite reach them and I couldn’t quite see them. Many of the gravestones were about my height, and when I turned my head quickly it looked like an army of people were filling up the hillsides behind me, watching me.

I could almost hear a murmuring of voices, I could almost see the dead children stretching out their arms to me, I could almost hear them whispering round my head—but there was no one there.

But maybe, finally, today would be the day.

I rounded the hillside and caught my first glimpse of the mausoleum. The angel loomed overhead, its enormous wings spread wide as if it wanted to block out the light.

Sure enough, someone was sitting on the steps below the barred gate to the tomb. A small, dark figure with a hood shadowing its pale face. As I drew closer, it raised its head to look at me.

A girl. A girl with a sharp little face, big dark eyes and a funny twisted mouth. She had shadows under her eyes, and she looked like … well, she looked like a ghost!

Rose

It was the gloomy, dark kind of afternoon that ghosts love best. When the whole world seems miserable, sad and empty.

I had come to the cemetery early, knowing how difficult it would be for me to go in. I stood outside the iron gates, trying to find the courage to walk through. I had said my white light prayers before I left home, but the weight of the ghosts beyond the gates pressed down on my chest so I could barely breathe.