Emily's Runaway Imagination

by Beverly Cleary

  “Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December

  And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.”

  Emily enjoyed spooky things when she knew she really had nothing to be scared about. Perhaps that was why Emily decided a spooky evening would be fun when her cousin June came to spend the night with her, or perhaps it was the still, expectant feeling of that hot, hot day that made her feel that something was about to happen. She decided that when bedtime came she and June could go upstairs to bed and tell spooky stories about witches and ghosts and have a good time scaring each other.

  That is, they could if June would cooperate, but knowing June, Emily could not be sure of this. In school when Miss Plotkin led the singing she instructed the class to enunciate so that each word was distinct: “Ring out, ye bells.” Emily and the rest of the class opened their mouths and moved their lips so that each word was separate from every other word. Ring—out—ye—bells. Not June. She sang loud and gleefully, “Ring owchee bells.” That was June for you. “Ring owchee bells.”

  That evening after supper June, carrying her rolled-up nightgown and her toothbrush, was brought to Emily’s house by Uncle Avery and Aunt Bessie, who were on their way to a whist party. “Hello, Emily,” she said, when Emily opened the door, and Emily could tell from the way she said it that June was excited to be spending the night away from home. That was a good sign.

  Then Emily discovered that this was the night Daddy had to go uptown for band practice. That made it even better. There was something scary about being alone in the great big house with Mama, something scary but cozy, too. Sometimes Emily enjoyed having Mama all to herself, although of course tonight June would be there, too.

  Daddy practiced his solo, Sailor, Beware, on his baritone horn a couple of times before he went uptown to join the rest of the boys, as the men in the Pitchfork band were called. Everyone hoped that the band, which played at the State Fair and the Livestock Exposition, would help put Pitchfork on the map, although Emily knew that Pitchfork was already on the map. She had looked in the atlas at school and there it was, a tiny dot on the map of Oregon.

  When Daddy had gone, Mama began to read her library book while Emily and June studied the Montgomery Ward catalog to see what they would buy if they had any money. Emily looked, as she always did, at the picture of the rotary eggbeater, which could whip cream in no time at all. After that, she and June had difficulty looking at the catalog together, because Emily wanted to look at the beautiful toys some people must have enough money to buy and June wanted to look at all the different auto robes, many of them like real Indian blankets. Finally Emily let June take the catalog, because she was company. She herself looked at the book of wallpaper samples and pretended she could buy new wallpaper for the whole house. She would start with the downstairs bedroom, where a pattern of yellow roses would be pretty. Yellow was Mama’s favorite color. She always said yellow was so gay.

  Out on the back porch Plince whined and scratched at the screen door.

  Mama walked from the sitting room into the dining room and called, “What’s the matter, Plince?”

  Plince whimpered and tried to open the screen door with his paw.

  Spooks, thought Emily. Plince must be scared of spooks.

  “Now Plince, you run along and sleep in the woodshed the way you always do,” Mama said, as she closed the door. Dogs were not allowed in the house any more than pigs or cows. They belonged outdoors.

  “Plince sounded scared of something, didn’t he?” Emily remarked when Mama sat down again.

  “Now Emily,” said Mama, “don’t let your imagination run away with you.” She said it with a smile, because Mama understood what many people did not—it was fun to let one’s imagination run away. It made life exciting to let one’s imagination go galloping off just the way a real horse had once made Mama’s life pretty exciting for a while.

  Emily decided it was time to produce the treat she had been saving—bananas! Grandpa had a whole bunch hanging in the window of his store, and when he heard that June was going to spend the night with Emily he had given Emily two bananas for a treat. When Emily went out to the kitchen to get them, Plince whined and scratched at the screen door once more.

  The two girls peeled their bananas and began to eat. Emily ate with little bites, chewing as slowly as she could, to make the precious fruit last as long as she could. June bit off big pieces of the banana. “It tastes so much better in big bites,” she explained.

  “But it doesn’t last as long,” protested Emily.

  “But it tastes better while it does last,” said June.

  “Now Emily,” said Mama, “you can’t expect everyone to enjoy eating bananas the same way.”

  Of course she could not, but Emily wished she and June could do something the same way just once. If Muriel were here, she would understand immediately how a banana should be made to last as long as possible, even though in Portland she probably had bananas every day if she wanted them.

  Plince persisted in scratching at the screen door. “Plince, stop that!” ordered Mama. The dog stopped scratching and began to whimper.

  “Plince is a fraidy-cat,” said June.

  “You mean fraidy-dog,” said Emily, and both girls giggled.

  When the bananas were eaten, Emily turned to her mother. “Say the poem again. The spooky one.”

  Mama closed her book. “Just one verse,” she said, and began, “‘Once upon a midnight dreary—’” while outside a lilac bush began to scratch at the window as if it too wanted to come inside, and the curtains stirred in a ghostly way. When Mama finished the verse she said briskly, “Now off to bed you go.”

  “Just one more verse,” begged Emily.

  “Scoot,” said Mama.

  The girls washed their faces and brushed their teeth at the kitchen sink and tonight, because she had a guest, Emily picked up the flashlight to guide the way upstairs. Usually she went alone through the long dark hall and up the long dark flight of stairs to the dark bedroom and thought nothing of it. The house was dark, because each room had just one electric light hanging by a cord from the middle of the ceiling. The ceilings were high and all the Bartletts except Mama, who after all was not born a Bartlett, were tall people, so the lights were too high for Emily to reach without standing on a chair. Mama could barely reach them by standing on tiptoe. The tall Bartletts had not wanted lights hanging where they could bump into them in the dark.

  In the farthest bedroom the girls bounced into bed and pulled the quilts up under their chins, because now a cool breeze was blowing through the house. Emily played the flashlight around the big room. Its weak light made the white iron bedstead, the only furniture in the room, look ghostly. Even the windows, which had inside shutters instead of curtains, looked like oblong eyes in the night. “Isn’t it scary?” whispered Emily. “And did you notice there was something funny about the way Plince wanted to come in the house?”

  “Probably he just wanted a banana,” scoffed June.

  “Dogs don’t eat bananas,” said Emily, thinking that Muriel would have been a much more satisfactory cousin to be spending the night. Muriel would have enjoyed huddling in the middle of the bed making up ghost stories. June’s imagination would never run away with her; she had an imagination like—like a plow horse.

  The old house made a snapping noise. “I’ll bet that was a ghost walking across the roof, wringing its hands,” whispered Emily, trying to work up a good shiver in spite of June.

  “It’s the temperature changing,” said June. “You know your house always makes noises when it begins to cool off.”

  This was the sort of thing Emily might have expected from matter-of-fact June, who was not entering into the spooky spirit of things. Emily tried again, still whispering because she had heard Mama come upstairs to bed. “Did you know this house has thirteen rooms?”

  “Well,” said June, “our great-grandfather had a big family. He needed a lot of rooms.”
<
br />   Oh, honestly, June, thought Emily crossly, you aren’t being any fun at all. June was right, of course, but it would be fun to think for a little while that there was a ghost walking across the roof of a thirteen-room house, especially when Daddy was still uptown at band practice. It would be pleasantly scary if the pioneer ancestors had left a ghost or two around the house, perhaps in the cupola, but these ancestors must have been too busy clearing the land and settling the state of Oregon to participate in any ghostly activities like people in some of the sad old songs Mama sometimes sang. As far as Emily knew, there was not a brokenhearted damsel or a disappointed lover killed in a duel in the lot. They did get pretty hungry toward the end of their journey across the plains to Oregon, but nobody languished or wasted away. Apparently they ate a good square meal when they got to Oregon and went right to work cutting trees, pulling stumps, and planting crops. June was right. The house, even if it did have thirteen rooms, was not the least bit haunted.

  Emily tried to think of something ghostly, but all she could think of was the skeleton of a cow down in the pasture and there was nothing ghostly about that. The cow did not die of a broken heart. It was a cow Daddy had to shoot because it ate some baling wire. It had been one of Daddy’s best milkers and it was a shame that a cow that gave milk so rich in butterfat had to go eat baling wire.

  And then Plince howled. It was a long-drawn-out, dismal, unearthly howl that began low in the scale and rose to a high, eerie note.

  Each girl caught her breath. “June,” whispered Emily, “do you know what that means? When a dog howls it means somebody is going to die!”

  This time June did not sound so matter-of-fact. “He’s probably howling at the moon.”

  “There isn’t any moon,” said Emily, realizing for the first time that sometime during the evening the sky had clouded over. “It is a dark and cloudy night.”

  The girls huddled closer together in bed. Somewhere a loose shutter banged as persistently as if someone were trying to get in. Emily remembered a snatch of Mama’s spooky poem about someone “rapping, rapping at my chamber door.” Her heart pounded like the dasher of a churn.

  Plince’s howl rose and fell again in a way that made the girls shiver. The snap of the floor in the bedroom made them both start. They giggled nervously and lay still and tense. Plince’s howl died and the night seemed unnaturally silent—as if it were waiting for something.

  “His howl couldn’t mean somebody is going to die,” said June bravely. “Nobody in Pitchfork is even sick.”

  And then it came—a flash of lightning that for one instant made the bedroom seem as bright as midday and the white iron bedstead look like the bed of a ghost. The girls held their breath until the crash and roll of thunder seemed to shake the world.

  “I—I guess Plince was howling because he knew there was going to be a storm,” said Emily, relieved to have an explanation for the dog’s peculiar behavior.

  “Y-yes,” agreed June. “I was almost scared there for a minute.”

  Once more lightning brought a flash of midday into the bedroom, and the girls waited for thunder to shatter the night. “One, two, three, four, five—” counted June, “—fifteen, sixteen.” The thunder cracked. “The lightning struck sixteen miles away. If you count between the flash and the time you hear the thunder you can tell.”

  This was reassuring. Emily huddled against June, counting. Fifteen miles. Thirteen miles. The storm was moving slowly.

  Then the rain began. The first big drops hit the roof like a rattle of pebbles and then, as the thunder rolled on, the rain began to fall steadily with a drumming sound on the flat tin roof. The familiar sound of rain on the roof was comforting to Emily. She lay in bed thinking drowsily that she really liked June in spite of her plow-horse imagination. She was a sturdy girl and the best rope jumper and jacks player at school.

  Emily may have fallen asleep—afterward she was not sure, because it seemed to her that she continued to hear thunder. Sometime later she became aware of a new sound in the night, a clanging banging sound that seemed very close, almost directly below on the back porch. This time her imagination was not running away with her. It couldn’t be running away with her because she could not imagine what the noise was.

  Emily sat up in bed. “June, what’s that noise?” she asked aloud, to make herself heard above the wind and the rain.

  June raised herself in bed and listened.

  Wham. Bang. Crash. This was too strange. A dog’s howl, thunder, rain—these were easily explained, but this…. Emily jumped out of bed and looked out of the window. Through the lashing branches of the horse chestnut tree she could see a ghostly white figure moving across the barnyard. She shut her eyes and opened them again. The ghostly figure really was there. She could see it with her own eyes.

  “June!” Emily cried. “Look!”

  June leaned on the sill beside her. This time she had no matter-of-fact explanation. “Oh!” She clutched Emily’s arm. “It’s a ghost and it’s coming closer!”

  “I’m going to get Mama.” Emily snatched up the flashlight and ran across the cold floor to her mother’s bedroom.

  “Wait for me!” begged June.

  For once the cousins felt the same way about something!

  “Mama!” called Emily, beaming the flashlight on the bed. It was empty. There was no answer, only the rain drumming on the roof. Wham. Bang. Crash. Something seemed to be pounding on the back porch. Somewhere in the night Goliath the bull bellowed, and Emily wondered if the ghost was chasing him. “Mama’s gone!”

  “Maybe the ghost got her,” said June with a shiver.

  “Your imagination is running away with you,” Emily told her cousin. But where could Mama be? Had the—the thing in the barnyard run off with her? Emily tried to say whoa to her imagination, but she could not. If only this had not been Daddy’s band-practice night….

  “Maybe she’s in the kitchen.” June sounded shaky. “Let’s go downstairs.”

  Clutching each other’s hand, the girls made their way down the stairs. The thin beam of their flashlight seemed feeble in the darkness of the hall. A strong draft whipped at their nightgowns, telling them that the back door, which Mama had closed earlier in the evening, was now open. “Mama!” called Emily, and knew she was calling to an empty house.

  The draft was even stronger in the dining room. The girls huddled shivering.

  “The back door must have blown open,” said June. “Maybe we should shut it. That—thing might—”

  “Yes,” agreed Emily quickly. “You shut it.”

  “It’s your house,” said June.

  Neither girl wanted to shut the back door. “Let’s both do it,” said Emily, and fearfully they approached the door. When Emily turned the flashlight on it she revealed an enormous ragged hole torn in the screen. “Look!” she cried, and in a panic slammed the door and leaned against it. “It—it must have been made by the ghost.”

  “Y-yes,” agreed June.

  “But a—a ghost wouldn’t have to tear a hole in the screen,” quavered Emily. “It would just float through.”

  “I hope it was leaving instead of coming in,” said June. “Please, let’s turn on a light someplace.”

  Wham. Bang. Crash.

  “I’m too scared,” said Emily, but she did swing the beam of the flashlight around the dining room and kitchen.

  “Look!” cried June.

  Emily looked, and there, cowering under the kitchen table, was Plince. She could have cried with relief. “It must have been Plince who tore the screen door. He was so scared he ran right through it.”

  “Yes, but what was he scared of?” June wanted to know.

  The dog flattened himself on the floor and crawled, whimpering, toward Emily, who stooped to pat him. Plince licked her hand gratefully and Emily felt almost as grateful to be touching a real live honest-to-goodness dog. But Mama—where was Mama? Could she have gone outdoors? On a night like this?

  Bravely, ghost or no ghost
, Emily returned to the back door and, as she opened it, Goliath bellowed again somewhere out there in the night. It was terrible when something as big and as mean-looking as Goliath was scared. Emily turned her flashlight into the night. The wind and the rain seemed to snatch the feeble beam and twist it into a nightmare shape against the lashing horse chestnut tree, but Emily caught a glimpse of a ghostly figure—a figure with a pitchfork in its hand. “June!” she screamed, dropping the flashlight. “It is a ghost! A ghost with a pitchfork!” Maybe they had a ghostly pioneer ancestor after all.

  June clung to Emily. “Is it coming to get us?” she asked, terrified.

  Wham. Bang. Crash.

  The ghost yelled, “You get out of here!” The ghost’s voice—no, Daddy’s voice—tossed and twisted by the wind, reached the terrified girls. Emily felt weak with relief. Whatever it was, it was going to be all right. Daddy was home from band practice. And if Daddy was home, Mama, wherever she was, was safe. They were all safe.

  Wham. Bang. Crash.

  Once more lightning, like a terrible swift sword, split the sky and illuminated the whole scene. The ghost was Daddy! Daddy in his white nightshirt! Pitchfork in hand, he was facing Goliath the bull, who had Mama’s copper wash boiler caught on his horns.

  Wham. Bang. Crash. Emily understood the sound now. It was Goliath banging the wash boiler against the fence trying to get it off his horns. There was no longer anything frightening about the sound. “It’s just Goliath,” she said. “He must have got out somehow.”

  Cold as they were, the girls huddled in the doorway, hoping for another bolt of lightning to show them what was going on. They could tell that Daddy was getting the bull back to the barn, because the racket gradually moved off through the barnyard.

  The girls returned to the kitchen, where they stood rubbing their arms to get warm. Soon Emily climbed on a kitchen chair to turn on the light. How different the world seemed by the light of one bulb! Ghostly shapes became tables and chair. Plince dozed with his nose on his paws, just as if he was allowed in the house. To Emily’s surprise the hands on the alarm clock on the shelf pointed to one o’clock.