“Well this is quite the sight,” she commented as she moved to the couch to join John.
Julie glanced her way with a grin but went back to talking on the phone. Whatever or whoever was on the other end seemed to require her full attention at the moment. She didn’t have any time to spare for her mother.
Ellen looked at John, her eyes filled with concern. “What’s with the phone?”
He shrugged and shook his head. “I have no idea. She found it in the parlor earlier today and I haven’t been able to convince her to put it down since.”
“In the parlor?” Ellen’s eyes narrowed in confusion.
“Yeah, in that big book case. I was certain we’d looked through it all but she managed to dig it up.” He shrugged as if not remotely concerned by the behaviour. “It’s nice to see her interested in something for the first time since we’ve gotten here.”
“You’re not worried about this?” Ellen glanced at Julie who was now lying on her stomach, legs kicking back and forth as though she was talking to an old friend.
“Come on, Ellen. Don’t you remember being that age? Having an imagination is a wonderful thing and I’m not about to squash it if it helps her transition.” He looked at their daughter lovingly. “She clearly needs someone to talk to.”
“Has she said who she is talking to? Did you even bother to ask?” Ellen kept her voice hushed but she knew that it was rising as her anger rose. She didn’t think that this was normal behaviour and she wasn’t as willing to indulge it as John was. Imaginary friends were one thing, but talking on a telephone all day to someone that wasn’t there? No, she needed to draw a line.
“Julie, hunny?” Ellen slid off the couch and onto the floor next to her daughter.
Julie glanced over at her mother and then said into the phone. “I’ll have to get back to you.” She hung up the talking piece and turned her full attention to her mother who was looking at her in the strangest way. “Yes, mom?”
“Who were you talking to?” Ellen reached out and ran a hand over her short brown hair. It was hard to believe that she was growing up so quickly.
“Oh, she’s my new friend,” Julie replied in a matter of fact tone that was so like her. She smiled even as her mother frowned.
“Does this new friend have a name?” Ellen gave the telephone a cautious glance. There was something about it that she didn’t really like.
“Of course she has a name,” Julie giggled. “Everyone has a name.”
Ellen resisted the urge to sigh. “Can you tell mommy what your friend’s name is or is it a secret?”
Julie seemed to consider as if trying to remember if she’d been told not to tell anyone who was on the other end of the phone. After a few moments of deliberation she spoke, “It’s not a secret. Her name is Margaret.”
“Margaret?” Ellen repeated mulling over the name. “Like your friend at school?”
Julie seemed to consider again. “The same name, but not the same person. This Margaret used to live here. But that was a long time ago.”
Ellen’s brow creased and John looked up from his computer. “What do you mean she lived here a long time ago, darling?”
“This used to be her house.” Julie looked at the phone. She ran a hand over the dial pad on it and a smile pulled at her lips. “She’s been telling me stories about it.”
Ellen and John exchanged a glance. They knew that their daughter could have a vivid imagination, but this was beyond anything they’d heard her conjure up before. She was talking about talking to a dead woman.
She gave her husband a look as if to ask what they should do about this, but he was already back to working on his computer. Ellen glanced at her daughter and then glanced at the phone.
What harm could a phone do anyway? It was likely just her imagination. And, as John had said, it was nice to see that she was interested in something.
She decided that it was best to leave it alone.
After all, Margaret wasn’t real.
Chapter 5
Warnings
* * *
They let her keep the phone. It wasn’t want Ellen wanted but John seemed unconcerned about the fact that their daughter was apparently speaking to the former owner of the house via an antique phone. He blamed it on her active imagination and he wasn’t about to deny her the chance to have a little fun. Especially after the move had been so hard on her.
Ellen, who had always been the dreamer of the two, was for once being the practical one. She didn’t see the benefit of engaging this fantasy that their daughter had of being able to speak with someone who was clearly dead, and obviously not speaking back. It didn’t seem healthy at all.
But they agreed to disagree, and since Ellen was busy setting her café up for its opening day in two days there was really no space to argue. John would be looking after her so she was going to leave the decision in his hands. But the minute she was home again, she was going to address the situation.
In the next few days her time away from home lessoned. There was little she needed to do to finalize the café for opening but the date had already been set. She’d already sent out the notices. There was no point in opening early just because she was ahead of schedule.
And honestly it was nice to have a day off before things started to get crazy.
It hadn’t taken all the much effort to get Aunt Jenna’s café into the state that she wanted it to be in. Her aunt had run a quaint little place that had been popular among the people of the town. Ellen wanted to keep that patronage, but she had also wanted to update it to make her own life easier.
Aunt Jenna had been a wonderful person, but she hadn’t exactly like to progress with the times. The equipment in the café had been dated and the functionality of it had been questionable. Ellen felt bad using the extra money from the sale of the house to update the business but John had insisted. He was supporting her in this, just like she had supported him when he’d been in school or working at the large corporate firm.
So much of their relationship had been give and take of the years. Now that he was able to work from home and they had a little extra money it was his time to give while she pursued her dream.
Ellen came down the stairs in the early morning the day before her grand opening. They had arranged everything for tomorrow. They had a sitter to watch Julie while John joined her for the opening of the café. She had everything set and ready for work. Today she was allowed to just relax, for the first time since they had moved in.
She’d left John in bed, giving him a rare chance to sleep in since she was actually home to see to Julie.
She was a fairly self-sufficient child. Ellen knew that she had probably been awake for some time now moving about the house doing her own thing. She’d probably already eaten breakfast and Ellen was hopeful to find her sitting in front of the TV, like a normal kid.
When she entered the living room she was greeted with no such image. She found the same sight she’d seen for the last few days. Julie was lying on the floor, her feet waving in the air as if she was chatting with an old friend, and she had the phone in front of her.
Ellen felt a sudden hatred for that phone. She wanted to pull it away from her daughter and throw it out the window. She wanted to run it over with their station wagon. If she owned a gun she would have shot it as many times as she could. She would have blown it up if possible.
She wanted to destroy it. She wanted it out of the house and out of her sight.
Then she heard her daughter laugh, heard the happiness in it, and she felt the anger simmer down. It was irrational to hate an inanimate object. Especially something that her daughter viewed as a toy, but there was something about it. There was something not quite right about that old candlestick phone.
“Morning little one,” Ellen said from the doorway, leaning against the frame. She couldn’t bring herself to go any closer. She didn’t want to be in the same room as the phone.
Julie turned to face her mother, her green eyes dis
tant. “Morning, mommy,” she muttered but she was already turning back towards the phone as if it pulled her attention.
“Julie, how about we leave the phone in here and you and I go make some breakfast,” Ellen suggested holding out a hand.
Julie looked over at her, eyes narrowed in confusion. “I can’t leave Margaret. She feels trapped. She needs to talk to me.”
Ellen took a step into the room. She’d had just about enough of this nonsense. She didn’t care what John had said. She wasn’t going to indulge this any longer. This was getting out of hand. It was one thing to have an imaginary friend. But to be chained to them, to be unable to move around without them? It was preposterous, it was unhealthy. She would not condone it.
“We’re going to leave the phone, Julie. Margaret will be there when you get back. She’s been here this long.” Ellen walked over to her daughter and reached down to grab her arm.
Julie looked up at her with wide eyes. “Margaret doesn’t like that you’re here.” She shook her head for added emphasis. “She thinks you and dad should go or she says bad things will happen.”
Ellen’s eyes widened. What kind of nonsense was this now? Julie had never done anything like this before and she was wondering what was causing this extreme behaviour. This didn’t seem like Julie at all.
“Margaret doesn’t want me here? Well how about I talk to Margaret about that.” Ellen reached for the phone but Julie snapped away.
“She doesn’t want to talk to you,” Julie insisted.
“Well that’s a shame because I have a few choice words for her.” Ellen grabbed the phone from her daughter and gave her a stern look. “You stay right there and you do not move.”
Julie nodded, her eyes welling with tears.
Ellen picked up the talking piece to the phone and put the receiver to her ear. She was surprised to hear the static on the line. Her brow creased in confusion and her eyes met her daughter’s.
Then the voice came through.
Hello Ellen.
Ellen dropped the phone to the ground her hands frozen as the voice still rang through her mind.
She hadn’t heard anything. That’s what she wanted to believe. It was a figment of her imagination. She was just thinking that she’d heard something because Julie kept saying there was someone on the other end of the phone. There hadn’t been a real voice there.
With shaky hands she bent to pick the phone back up. There was only one way to know for certain and that was to listen again. She held the talking piece and slowly brought the receiver to her ear.
Julie watched her closely but she didn’t move from the place where she had been told to stay. The tears were still welling in her eyes but they had yet to fall.
Ellen heard the same static as she had the first time. There was no mistaking that. She wondered if it was like holding a seashell to your ear. Perhaps the old phone just had that sound. Perhaps it wasn’t an anomaly at all.
There was silence for several seconds. She was beginning to believe that she had imagined the voice the first time. She was ready to hang up the phone when she heard the sound of breathing through the line.
“Hello,” her voice was hesitant. She knew that it shook a little more than she would have liked but she couldn’t help it.
Hello Ellen. It’s nice to finally meet you.
Ellen’s eyes went wide again and she hung up the phone. She didn’t even think about how ridiculous the action was. If there as a phantom voice talking to her would hanging up the phone really stop it? She doubted it, but the habit was so ingrained.
She looked down at Julie who had a half smile on her face. There was something disturbing about the fact that she looked on the edge of tears but she was half smiling. It didn’t look like her daughter. It didn’t look natural.
Ellen took the phone and threw it to the ground with all of the force she could muster. Then she stomped on top of it with her slipper-clad feet.
Julie screamed in protest. Actually screamed as if someone was beating her instead of the phone.
Ellen ignored the noise. Her sole purpose was to destroy the phone right now. She wanted it gone. She needed it out of their lives.
She continued to stomp and Julie continued to scream. The tears streamed down her face. The smile was gone now. But she didn’t move from the place where her mother had told her to stay.
John came barreling into the room, baseball bat in hand, prepared to defend them against whatever intruder was causing the screaming. He looked groggy eyed and sleep tussled, but he skidded to a halt in the doorway and looked from his wife to his daughter.
“What the bloody hell is going on in here?” He demanded his voice raised in a manner that was uncommon to him.
Ellen gave the phone one final stomp and then stepped back from it. “The phone had to go. That was that,” she said simply. Her eyes dared him to challenge her. “Now if you wouldn’t mind cleaning that up. I’m going to make some breakfast and a nice big pot of tea.”
John watched her walk by, her stride purposeful. He stopped her before she left the room and sent a concerned glance towards Julie who was already touching the pieces of the broken phone as if they were something to be grieved over.
“Is she going to be okay?” he asked, his voice heavy with concern.
“She’ll get over it,” Ellen assured. “It was just a phone.”
Then she left the room and did her best to convince herself of that.
Chapter 6
Not my Daughter
* * *
To say the rest of the day went swimmingly would be a complete lie. If anything, destroying the phone made things a little stranger around the house. Ellen didn’t think that things could get any stranger than Julie talking to a supposedly dead woman via an antique telephone. But she was very wrong.
Things began almost immediately after the phone was crushed into pieces.
John cleaned up the pieces the best he could. He was a little heartbroken to see such an antique destroyed the way it had been but he wasn’t going to question his wife’s actions on this one. She hadn’t like the phone from the first day that Julie had found it. If she had hit her breaking point with it then he was going to leave it at that.
It took less time to calm Julie down than he would have thought. Once the phone was out of sight she entered a sort of catatonic state. She sat on the couch and stated straight forward, her eyes dry but unseeing.
John put the TV on one of her favourite shows and left her in the living room, hopeful that she would cheer up with her favourite show on. He didn’t know what else to do.
He left her there and went to join Ellen in the kitchen, not noticing how the TV screen flickered as he left or that the door closed behind him.
In the kitchen Ellen sat with her tea held firmly in her hands as if it was a lifeline. Her face was pale and John had a feeling that her hands would be shaking if they weren’t holding on to her teacup so firmly.
“Ellen?” His voice was hesitant as he joined her at the table.
She glanced up at him with wide eyes. She looked distant, as if her mind was somewhere far from here.
“Are you alright?” He took one of her hands which was ice cold despite holding onto the hot tea cup.
“She spoke to me.” She didn’t want to say the words. She had been trying to deny it since she had gotten into the kitchen. But as she was making her tea she had watched the lights flicker. She had felt something tug on her hair. She had heard the kettle scream that it was boiled and then pour ice water.
There was no denying it. She had heard the voice on the phone. And now that there was no phone it seemed that stranger things are happening. She wasn’t certain what events she had caused. She wasn’t certain if she believed in what might have happened.
“What do you mean she spoke to you?” His brow furrowed in confusion. What was she talking about?
“Margaret. She spoke to me. I heard her.” Ellen looked down at her tea, which was cold. She had tried
to microwave it but it had still stayed cold. She didn’t know what to do about it anymore. She had just settled for drinking it as is.
“Margaret isn’t real. She’s made up.”
John’s face was filled with confusion. She could sympathize for that. She had been confused as well. She was still confused. She didn’t know what was happening. She didn’t know what would happen as a result of her actions. All she knew was that she was scared.
“I don’t know if she is real, John. I don’t know what she is.” Ellen shook her head. “All I know is she spoke to me on that blasted phone. I heard her voice.”
“You heard her voice,” he echoed numbly.
“As clear as if you were talking to me. Our daughter has been talking to something on the other end of that phone and I fear…”
She paused not certain that she wanted to continue, not sure she could continue with her train of thought. If she said the words was there any going back from it.
“What do you fear?” John leaned closer his hand still holding hers.
“I fear that by destroying it we’ve let her out.” Ellen bit her bottom lip. She knew it sounded ridiculous. They weren’t living some horror movie. This was real life. In real life these things didn’t happen. But she couldn’t think of any other explanation.
“Let her out?” John didn’t understand.
She shook her head. She needed to make him understand. “It was something Julie said. She said that Margaret felt trapped.”
The lights in the kitchen flickered as she spoke. She glanced up at them feeling the fear rise up in here. The cupboard doors began to open and close. The kettle whistled that it was ready again.
Ellen glanced at John who was looking around them in wide-eyed fear. “I think I let her out when I destroyed the phone.”
Haunted Happenings Page 17