by Vered Ehsani
“Hi,” she whispered shyly, her large blue eyes framed by a curly cloud of pale hair.
I checked myself. I was definitely in full-ghost mode. I held up my hand and looked through it easily. I glanced behind me, just to make sure there wasn’t anyone else there that she might be talking to. The hall was empty. I glanced back at my hand. Yup, I was still completely invisible. As far as I knew, only Juna could see or hear me when I was in this mode. Not even Kali could do that. So what were the chances that, in the middle of the night, I’d meet a cute little kid who was able to?
Apparently, quite good.
“Ah…” was about the only thing I could come up with.
She stepped closer. “You’re one of the ghosts of Christmas, aren’t you?” She gazed up at me, her eyes wide, her mouth forming a perfect ‘O’ of astonishment.
I stared at her, completely clueless for a moment. Ghosts of Christmas? That sounded familiar, like something I really should know, one of those ‘common knowledge’ things that I never remember. Either that, or it was something that I was forced to learn in school, after which I had promptly forgotten it. From below, the clock ticked off a few more precious seconds, and I still had no idea what to say.
With a big sigh and a shrug of her small shoulders, the little girl explained with a slight lisp, “You know: Mr. Scrooge. And the ghosts that visit him on Christmas Eve.” She paused, studying my vacant expression. “It’s Christmas Eve now. So… Are you one of the ghosts?”
Oh. I got it now. I cleared my throat. “Well, not really.”
“But you are a ghost, aren’t you?” she demanded, her voice getting louder.
“Yeah. Kind of.” I paused. “No, not really. It’s complicated.” And then I realised what she had just said. “So it’s actually Christmas Eve?”
“Oh yes.”
Good thing I hadn’t made my peanut butter bet.
Her head tilted to one side and her eyebrows bunched up together. Then she shrugged her shoulders again. “I’m Edna. I’m four.”
“Great,” I whispered, gesturing to her to keep her voice down. “Listen…”
“What’s your name?”
I wasn’t getting out of this. Despite my desperate longing to scream and run away before the clock struck twelve, I lowered my voice further, hoping she would too, and replied, “Ash. I…”
“Ash?” Edna frowned as she twirled a lock of hair around a finger. “That’s a strange name.”
“Yeah, I’m clearly very strange in many ways.”
“And you’re brown too,” she continued. “Are you an Indian?”
“If by Indian, you mean from India, then yes,” I stated softly, the ticking of the clock loud in my ears. “I’m strange. I’m brown. And I’m from India. Listen, Edna.” I floated down to the ground and made myself solidify. My sneakered feet sunk into the thick carpet. I leaned towards her, making sure she was paying attention. “I’m looking for a friend. Her name is Juna, she’s about my size, long, dark hair…”
“Is she a ghost too?” Edna asked eagerly.
“No. Definitely not. But,” I added quickly before she could interrupt, “she is my friend. I really need to find her. I think she may be here, staying with you.”
“Oh, her.” Edna wrinkled her nose. “She complains a lot. About her itchy dress. About the water closet being outside. About…”
“Yeah, yeah,” I quickly interrupted the list, which – knowing Juna – would be a long one. “She likes to complain and she misses 21st century indoor plumbing.” I ignored Edna’s confused look. I was just relieved that I had found Juna. She must’ve jumped ahead by a few months and also popped up in another part of the country that had cold winters. She really needed to work on controlling that tornado. “I get it. But is she still here, in the house?”
“No.”
“So if she’s not here, then where is she?” I asked, my voice rising in volume despite my best efforts. I hoped Edna’s parents were deep sleepers.
Edna began skipping on the spot, humming something softly, clearly not too interested in the conversation, now that I wasn’t one of the Ghosts of Christmas. “In the staff quarters, locked up. She got arrested for stealing.”
“How does she get into trouble so quickly?” I muttered.
“I don’t know,” the girl responded in a chirpy voice. She stopped moving and gazed up at me. “She’s strange too. My papa just bought a wild stallion that he was going to break in. And she said we shouldn’t keep a wild animal locked up. So she freed the horse, and then the other horses also ran out.” She leaned closer to me and whispered loudly, “My papa had a lot of horses. He sure was mighty mad.”
I frowned. I wondered if Juna’s desire to free all things and people had anything to do with the fact that she was a jailbird herself.
“And after Christmas Day,” Edna continued, barely pausing to breathe,” they’re gonna judge her and maybe hang her.”
I glanced upward, shaking my head. “Unbelievable. Does it get any better?”
“Well,” Edna responded thoughtfully, “they could beat her, and then hang her.”
“I thought they stopped doing that stuff back in the Dark Ages.” Then again, I mused, 1860 wasn’t exactly full of enlightened thinking; slavery was still practiced, the Civil War was about to start in a few months and no indoor plumbing. I suddenly yearned to go back home and flush a toilet.
“Do you want to see my Christmas tree?” Edna demanded.
“No. I want to see my friend, preferably before she’s hanged.”
Edna nodded, clearly impressed by my line of thinking. “Yes, that’s probably a good idea, if you want to see her alive.”
“You think?” I sighed and started to turn away. The staff quarters must be that other, smaller building between the house and the stables. The clock sounded louder. I probably had a couple minutes left. I almost jumped when something grabbed my hand. I looked down. It was Edna.
“Can you tuck me into bed?” she asked, her lower lip quivering as if she was about to burst into tears. “I was gonna wake up Mama, but maybe…”
“Waking up Mama is a really bad idea,” I told her. Tick tock went the clock. “You definitely don’t want to do that. Just go back to bed.”
“I can’t,” Edna began to whine, in a pitch that clearly communicated her willingness to practice a new form of audio torture rather than give in. I have three younger sisters. I know these things. “I had a bad dream.”
“You and me both,” I mumbled, and began pulling her towards the only open door in the hall. The ticking of the clock clanged loudly around me, each second crashing against my ears with impossible force.
“Here it is,” Edna announced and bounced on her bed.
“Great, kid.” I glanced around at all the shadows. I was surrounded. At least they weren’t moving. Not yet, at least. “Alright, go to sleep.”
“But I need a bedtime story.”
“What?” I decided right then and there that I had finally met someone more nerve racking than my sisters. Actually, she was worse than all of them combined. And that’s saying something.
“Your friend told me a story, you know,” Edna confided. “It was a bit strange though. Do you want to hear it?”
“Uh huh,” I nodded automatically, not really listening. How much more time before Kali released the shadows? And why was he playing this game?
“Ok.” Edna immediately launched into it. “Once upon a time there was a girl named Cinderella and she lived with her mom and her wicked stepfather. It’s usually the stepmother who is wicked in these tales, but this time it was the stepfather. I asked why, but she just told me not to interrupt.”
Something about this made me stop looking for the shadows. I turned to the little girl who was sitting up primly, her hands folded neatly in her lap, her back straight.
“Cinderella’s mom wasn’t around much. She had to work very hard so they could keep their castle. But the stepfather didn’t do much except sit around on h
is throne and order Cinderella around. He was a mean man who didn’t like her and wanted her to go away.” Then she stared at me intensely. “That’s just so terrible, isn’t it?”
“Sure is,” I whispered back.
“Now, Cinderella wasn’t very happy and she wanted to go away, but she had nowhere to go to. She was too young to get her own castle. Then one magical night, she met a handsome prince. He climbed up to her tower where she was trapped, and he promised Cinderella he would help her. But first, he needed her help to sneak into the castle of a giant and steal a special duck that laid golden eggs. Once they had the duck, they could go away to the prince’s castle and they would live happily ever after.”
I gulped loudly. Somehow, I guessed Cinderella wasn’t going to get a happily-ever-after.
“You know,” Edna explained, “stealing is wrong. That’s what I told your friend. And she said that Cinderella was very young, didn’t know any better and really wanted to escape from her evil stepfather. So she helped the prince get the magic duck that laid golden eggs. But the prince had lied to Cinderella. As soon as he had the magic duck, he left her behind. So the giant caught her!” Edna snatched at the air with one hand. “She was taken away to a special palace where bad princesses are sent.”
“And then what?” I prompted her.
Edna shrugged. “That’s it. The good news is that she’s safe from her stepfather now. The bad news,” and she gazed up at me through quivering eyelashes, “is that she’s locked away from her family and everyone.”
I licked my lips. “Yeah, that is kinda bad. And it explains a lot.” I shook my head as I heard the clock below us. “Ok, story time is over. Goodnight.”
“You have to tuck me in,” Edna protested. “Or should I ask Mama to?”
Tick tock. Tick tock. How many fractions of a minute were left? I gritted my teeth and savagely shoved the edges of the blanket down between the mattress and bed frame, just as the clock gonged the first stroke of midnight. “Ok, can I go now?”
“Yes. Goodnight, Mr. Ghost.”
I faded back into ghost mode and zoomed down the hall with the second and third strokes scraping down my nerves. Just as I slipped through the outer wall of the house, I heard the fourth stroke of midnight.
I headed for the smaller building, my eyes scanning the ground. There was only pearly snow below me, unblemished by shadow. I heard the next two strokes echoing around me. It shouldn’t be possible for me to hear the clock from outside; it shouldn’t be possible for me to be a part-time ghost, either, yet here I am.
The outer wall of the staff building was made of thick blocks of stone, and these stones stretched on forever as I pushed through them. Two strokes of midnight zipped around me, reverberating off the swirling cloud of molecules, before I finally oozed through the other side and into a dark hallway lined with numerous doors. I had four strokes left before Kali would unleash the shadows.
I started to enter the first door on my right and then paused. I didn’t have time to check every room. There were at least half a dozen, if not more. I didn’t even have time to think about it. So I began to shout, hoping that no one else would surprise me by having the ability to hear or see ghosts.
“Cinder… I mean, Juna. Juna! Are you here?”
No grumpy gardener yelled at me to shut up. No sleepy maid poked her head into the hall to glare at me. But someone did knock against a door at the back end of the building. The ninth stroke chased me as I swooped down the hall, to the last door. My nerves jangled; I could feel the shadows twitching as I solidified and pulled the bolt back. I pushed the door open. Despite the darkness, I could see her standing before me, her arms crossed angrily over her chest.
“It’s about time,” she grumbled as I grabbed her hand and pulled her towards the doorway as strokes ten and eleven rang out.
“Yeah, I’m glad to see you too,” I snapped back, and then grinned as the twelfth stroke boomed through the air. “And by the way, Merry Christmas.”
A cold blast of icy air shut off whatever sarcastic comment she was about to make. A few steps later, our legs were covered in melting snow up to our knees and we were hopping more than running. I glanced behind and almost stopped moving. Dark tentacles snaked out of windows and under the door of the staff building. Then a larger shape rose up from the stone structure. It took me a chilly second longer to realise that the tentacles were attached to the house-sized shadow. So imagine a really big, really nasty shadow octopus sliding along a snowy field towards you…
“Ah, Juna,” I mumbled, almost yanking her arm off. “Are you sure you can’t turn into a ghost or anything useful like that?”
“No.”
“Can you call up your personal tornado?”
“No. I have no control over it.” She frowned and then mumbled in a slightly defensive tone, “I think I need to feel really trapped, like I’m cornered and can’t escape, to do that. And I’m not. Why?”
“Oh, no particular reason. Why don’t we start running? Like, faster?”
She stumbled – a combination of the deep snow and her ridiculously long dress – and snatched her arm out of my grip. She stood in the snow, puffing slightly. “What is your problem?”
“Ah… ok, don’t panic. Or, maybe you should panic. Take a quick look behind you and then start running.”
Rolling her eyes, she glanced back in time to see the house-sized shadow octopus extract itself fully from the building and start flowing slowly towards us. She screamed, spun around and smacked me hard on my chest.
“Hey, what was that for?” I shouted at her as she pulled up the hem of her dress and started to run, veering towards a path that circled around the main house.
“Instinct,” she screamed back at me.
“You’ve got a crazy set of instincts then,” I yelled as I began to run. “So I guess you’ve never seen the shadows move, right? And you’re still not trapped enough?”
She didn’t bother to respond. I didn’t bother to mention the shadowy snakes that were curling out of the chimney of the main house. She could see them, but still no tornado. We ran on, the smooth, moonlit expanse of glowing white stretching out ahead of us. The only sounds were our breathing and the crunch of snow.
Just before the path swung away from the featureless field and towards the forest, I looked back. There were now two house-sized monsters slithering along the ground after us. Something about the snow seemed to be slowing them down, but not enough for my comfort. Actually, I would’ve been a lot more comfortable if they just didn’t exist at all.
That’s when I had my Superman idea.
Yup. You have to know it was bad if I was picturing myself as Superman.
“Juna, keep going.”
She scowled at me with a ‘yeah, duh’ look, which changed into a ‘what the…’ expression. “What’re you doing?” she asked, but it came out sounding like a squeaky scream.
I thought it was pretty obvious: I was shifting into ghost mode. She could still see me and, I assumed, so could the mutant shadow beasts stalking towards us. I floated upwards and yelled back, “Doing something that I might regret later, especially if it gets me killed.”
Juna frowned, bit her lower lip and resumed the task of running, while shouting, “Any last words for your family?”
At least, that’s what I thought she said. The wind had picked up and her words were garbled. She might’ve said, “Anything for you,” but probably not.
Doing my best impression of a capeless and bodiless Superman, I zoomed towards the gigantic shadow octopi, each of which had at least eight legs snapping, slithering and slashing out in my direction.
“Please don’t touch me, please don’t touch me,” I whispered, trying to visualise myself flying safely along and leading the monsters away from a flightless Juna. It was difficult to visualise anything except being crushed by shadowy snakes coiling tighter around me.
I flew overhead, but the shadows hadn’t noticed where I’d gone. All muscles, no brains.
Or maybe they were really short-sighted. I sighed and veered around to face them, waving and shouting. Two whips sprang towards me and I zipped away but not too far. I kept doing that until I had them facing away from the forest and back to the house. I glanced over them and saw Juna waiting at the forest edge.
“Go in,” I shouted, gesturing with my arms.
She gestured back frantically, her mouth moving, but her words were lost in the wind. Another arm began moving, and it was big, dark and fast. It flashed within an inch of my eyes as I jerked my head back and dove into the snow. The tentacle didn’t follow me in.
I was surrounded by fluffy white stuff that I couldn’t feel in my current state. I didn’t stay to enjoy the view though, as the brainless shadows would lose interest in me. I carefully poked my face through the snow and, seeing a clear path, floated away, checking that I had the octopi’s attention. I had it, all right. They were thumping their tentacles about in a parody of anger and frustration. I kept teasing them, egging them on, until we reached the staff quarters. The two shadows wrapped some of their tentacles around the building and reached up to where I was floating just out of reach. I grinned at them, stuck my tongue out, dove into the snow and slithered away until I figured I was far enough from them. As I flew towards the forest, I glanced back. The two monsters were fighting it out, whacking each other with multiple tentacles blurring into a single shadowy mass.
Juna was still standing at the edge of the forest, her face scrunched up in what could almost be concern. That fantasy got shot down with her first words. “What were you thinking? You could’ve been caught, playing around like that, and then what? I’d be stuck here forever.”
I shrugged as I solidified. “I was thinking I was helping you escape. Hey, did you see that really cool dive I just did? I wonder if they’d let a ghost into the Olympics.”
A smile twitched on her face. “Yeah. It was really cool, Ghost Boy. But don’t do that again.”