* * *
Ruby stayed out in the barn all afternoon, and I huddled under a blanket on my bed, poring over my family tree and reading about Newfoundland wildflowers. At supper, she chattered away, half-ignoring me. Aunt Doll didn’t seem to notice. By the time we went to bed, Ruby was treating me politely, as if I were a little old lady visitor she had to be kind to, but didn’t need to engage with. I found it supremely annoying.
Childish. That’s what she was, with her talk of fairies and ghosts and her conviction that she knew better than me just because I was from Ontario. I turned my back to her and closed my eyes. I’d like to plop her down at the corner of Yonge and Bloor streets with a subway ticket and see how she managed then, with no fairy bridges to get her across the street and no Eldred with his enigmatic smiles and stories to back her up. I finally fell asleep, fuming.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE GHOST
I don’t know what woke me up. The room was very dark. As I lay there, aware this time that I was in Aunt Doll’s house in Newfoundland, and not in my room in Toronto, I heard a noise in the hall, just as I had the night before. A soft footfall, coming down the hall toward our room. Then the door creaked open and a golden, flickering light illuminated the room.
It was the girl again, just as she’d been the night before, wearing a long white nightgown and carrying a candle. She approached my bed and stood smiling down at me. Then she sat on Ruby’s bed and held the candle up so she could see Ruby’s face. The girl reached out and gently touched Ruby’s hair, smoothing it back from her forehead. Ruby stirred. A sad, tender expression flitted over the girl’s face and then she looked over at me.
She held up the candle in front of her face so I could see her face clearly. She looked so familiar. A lot like Ruby. But not quite Ruby. A little older, a little different. She smiled at me slowly, with a mischievous gleam in her eye. I felt sure that I knew that smile from somewhere.
“The window,” she whispered, and then pursed her lips and blew the candle out.
“Wait!” I cried, reaching out toward her, but there was nobody there. Something clattered to the floor and I felt the air move as if someone had walked away from me toward the dresser.
Ruby woke up. “What’s wrong?” she said sleepily.
I felt around on the floor till I found what had fallen. A candle.
“Ruth!” said Ruby. “What’s happening?”
It was too dark to see her. I stumbled over to the dresser and found the matches and the lamp.
“Can you light this thing?” I asked.
Ruby jumped out of bed and banged into me.
“Give me the matches,” she said, and soon the lamp was glowing. She put it on the table between our beds.
“Now tell me what’s wrong,” she said.
I looked down at the floor. The brass candleholder was there, the one I’d shoved way under the bed the day before. In my hand was a candle, half-burnt.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I must have been dreaming. There was a girl, and she came in with a candle, and then she dropped it and—”
“If it was a dream, why are you holding the candle?” asked Ruby. She was looking at me intently.
“I don’t know, I—oh dear,” I said, sitting down suddenly on the bed. “I don’t feel so good.”
Ruby came and sat beside me and started rubbing my hands. “You’re cold as ice,” she said. “And you’re white as a sheet.”
“It must have been a dream,” I said. “I had the same dream last night, only I thought it was you. I thought you had come and were going to bed; she looked like you, and she got into bed and blew out the candle, and it was there in the morning and—”
“Whoa,” said Ruby. “Hang on. You dreamed about a girl with a candle, and then the candle was there in the morning?”
“Yup,” I said, nodding my head. I stared at her, drinking her in. She was real and warm and solid.
“And then you dreamed of her again tonight and this candle was on the floor?” She pointed to the candle, which I’d put on the table.
“Go on!” she breathed. “You’ve seen a ghost, Ruth!”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “Not a ghost. I don’t believe in ghosts.” I was starting to shiver.
“Here, get back in bed,” said Ruby, pushing me under the covers and climbing in beside me.
I was freezing, and I couldn’t stop the shivers. Ruby lay back on the pillow and pulled the covers up to our chins.
“Take a deep breath,” she said. “In and out.”
I tried that. In and out. The way I did with all my nightmares. In and out. The way I had the night before, when the shipwreck dream woke me up. In and out. The shipwreck. The one my mother saved me from, every time I had that dream.
“Oh no!” I cried and grabbed Ruby by the arm. I was colder than ever and I felt all the breath whoosh out of me.
“What?” she said, trying to shake her arm loose. “Let go. You’re pinching!”
I clung to her. “It was my mother!” I said. “I know that smile. It was my mother, but she looked different because she was younger, not grown up.”
“Your mother?” breathed Ruby. “The ghost was your mother?”
“Not a ghost,” I said, my teeth chattering. “A dream.”
Clickety-clackety footsteps came briskly down the hall and the door opened. Aunt Doll stood there. She was still dressed, so I guess it wasn’t as late as I had thought.
“What on earth?” she asked, looking at the two of us.
“Ruth had a bad dream,” said Ruby quickly before I could speak. “So I lit the lamp. She’s cold.”
Aunt Doll bustled over and put her hand against my forehead.
“Oh for goodness’ sake,” she said, pulling some quilts off Ruby’s bed and laying them across us. “It’s like an icebox in here. I’ll get you a hot water bottle and something warm to drink. Are you all right, child?” she said, peering at me.
“Just c-c-c-c-old,” I said.
“Ruby, rub her hands. I’ll be back in a jiffy.” And she clickety-clacked down the hall and down the stairs.
“You said it was a dream,” I said, as Ruby started jiggling my hands to warm them.
“Just to keep her off the scent,” said Ruby. “Now tell me everything.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
COCOA AND COOKIES
“I have this dream about a shipwreck,” I began. Ruby was still rubbing my hands. I pulled away. “It’s okay,” I said. “I’m starting to warm up a bit.” Just sitting beside her was making me feel warmer. She was humming with energy.
“A shipwreck,” she repeated, her eyebrows going up.
“Yes. I’ve had it ever since I was a little girl. I’m on a ship and it’s going down in a storm, and my mother is there, and she saves me. It’s always the same.”
Ruby’s eyes were big. “Wow,” she breathed.
“Yes,” I said, trying to ignore her. I knew she was going to make a big deal out of the shipwreck. “And then I wake up and I’m usually scared. So I had the dream last night and at first I didn’t know where I was. But then I remembered I was here, and I couldn’t turn on a light, like I usually do when I have a bad dream, because there’s no electricity on this side of the house.”
“Yes,” said Ruby, nodding her head. “Go on.”
“But then I heard some footsteps in the hall and I thought it was Aunt Doll, but it was this girl in a long nightgown, with a candle, and I thought it was you.”
“Why me?” she said. “Did she look like me?”
“I didn’t even know what you looked like! I just thought, hey, a girl, coming to bed, it must be you and you got here early.”
“Okay. So then what happened?”
“The girl came in, put the candle on the bedside table, got into your bed, smiled at me and blew out the candle. Then I went to sleep. I could hear her breathing and…and…”
“And what?”
“And I felt safe. Like things were going to
be okay.”
“Wow,” said Ruby again. “So then what happened tonight?”
“I woke up like before, and I heard footsteps, and again I thought it was Aunt Doll, but then the door opened and this kind of golden light came into the room—”
“Golden light?” Ruby looked like she was ready to burst.
“Yes,” I snapped. “The light from the candle. She was carrying a candle again. But the funny thing was, Ruby, yesterday I took that candle, which I found on my bedside table, and I shoved it way under my bed. So I don’t know how she had it again—”
Ruby was out of bed in a flash and crawling under my bed, rooting around. She emerged with her hair all standing on end and a triumphant look on her face.
“No candle there. It has to be the same one,” she said.
“Where is it?” I said, looking around. The last place I’d seen it was on the bedside table, and the holder was on my bed.
“I whisked it under the covers when I heard Aunt Doll coming,” said Ruby. “We’re not allowed to have candles in here. Because of fire.”
She scrambled under the covers and fished around till she came up with the candle and the holder.
“That was quick thinking,” I said. She grinned.
“Go on,” she said. “What happened next?”
“Well, the girl smiled at me and then went over and sat down on your bed.”
“My bed?” she yelped.
“Yes. And she touched your hair and kind of smoothed it back—” Ruby’s hand went up to her hair and, if possible, her eyes got even bigger and rounder.
“And then she looked sort of sad, but she turned to me and held up the candle and smiled and looked all mischievous and said, ‘Window,’ and blew the candle out.”
“Window?” repeated Ruby. “She said ‘window’? Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure. She said window, blew out the candle, and then when I reached out to her, the candle dropped on the floor and you woke up and she was gone.”
“Wow!” said Ruby, getting up on her knees and bouncing on the bed. “Wow! Wow! Wow! Ruth! You saw a ghost! And you said you think it was your mother?”
“I kept thinking that she looked familiar. I thought tonight maybe it was because she looked like you, but even last night, before I ever saw you, she looked familiar to me. And then I realized: it was the smile. It was my mother’s smile, the one I remember when I was sitting on her lap. The one in the picture.”
Ruby turned to the picture of my mother and me, which was still sitting on the table.
“This one?” she said.
I picked up the picture and looked at it. My mother was smiling out at the camera.
“Yes,” I gulped. “It was my mother, only younger.”
“I saw this yesterday,” said Ruby softly, leaning over my shoulder and touching my mother’s face with her finger. “She looks exactly like my mother. Exactly.”
We heard Aunt Doll coming down the hall, and Ruby snatched the picture from me and put it back on the table. When Aunt Doll came in, we were sitting together in bed, our hands neatly folded on top of the covers.
Aunt Doll looked at us and narrowed her eyes.
“Too good to be true, the two of you,” she said, putting a tray with cookies and two steaming mugs down on the table. She handed me a warm bundle: the hot water bottle, wrapped in a towel. “Put that down near your feet. Now, you’re not to be up half the night. Get this down you and then back to sleep. Are you warmer now, Ruth?” she said, laying her hand against my forehead. Her hand was warm. It felt good. My father never did that to me when I was sick. He just went looking for the thermometer.
“Yes,” I said, smiling up at her. The hot water bottle was deliciously warm on my bare feet. She bent over and kissed my forehead, and then bestowed another kiss on Ruby.
“Monkeys,” she said. “You’re a couple of monkeys. If that light isn’t out in ten minutes, I’ll be back, do you hear me?”
“Yes, Aunt Doll,” we said in chorus and then began to laugh. She shook her head and left the room.
As we devoured the oatmeal cookies and steaming cocoa, Ruby started to quiz me again.
“Could you see through her? Did she kind of float above the floor? Did she have a light around her head, like an aura?”
“Honestly, Ruby! She looked like a regular person. I thought she was you when I first saw her.”
“But you see now she was a ghost, right?” asked Ruby, brushing away the cookie crumbs that were sprinkled all over the quilts.
I was quiet for a moment, remembering the girl and the way she looked at me, the twinkle in her eyes.
“A dream—” I said weakly.
“No, you were awake. Admit it, Ruth. You were awake both times.”
Reluctantly I nodded my head. “I certainly felt like I was awake.”
“Oh, Ruth,” said Ruby, clutching my hand and nearly spilling what was left of my cocoa. “You see what this means, don’t you?”
“Well, if it really was a ghost—”
“It was, it was,” sang Ruby happily.
“Well, then, if I really saw my mother’s ghost, here in this room, then it means that maybe my dad was wrong. And I was wrong. And there really are such things as ghosts.” I hated to admit it, but what other explanation was there?
“And? And?”
“And maybe this house is haunted,” I went on.
“And?”
“And what?” I had no idea what she was getting at.
“Oh don’t you see, Ruth?” she said, bouncing up and down a little. “Don’t you see? It means you can see ghosts. It means you have the Sight.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THE SECRET PASSAGE
When I opened my eyes the next morning, our bedroom looked very ordinary and dreary, with rain pouring down outside the window. I found it hard to believe that I’d seen a ghost there the night before. Ruby had managed to steal most of the covers in the night and I was freezing.
I sat up and surveyed the room. It was just big enough for the two double beds and the dresser on the opposite wall. Aunt Doll had said something to me that first night, something about how when she grew up she’d shared it with her three sisters. “Two to a bed,” she said. “And the three boys next door. Those were the days of big families. We only had seven, but it was nothing to have ten or twelve children. Those poor women,” she went on, shaking her head.
Then I thought about my mother and her sister, sharing this room all those years ago. Just like Ruby and me. I wondered if they fought. And if my mother saw ghosts…
I carefully crawled out of bed, so as not to disturb Ruby, and stood between the two beds where the ghost had been standing the night before. I’d felt the air move after I grabbed the candle, as if she were walking away from me toward the door.
But the door hadn’t opened again. Where did she go?
“What are you doing?” asked Ruby sleepily.
I looked at her. One eye was open.
“I’m trying to figure out where the ghost went last night.”
Ruby sat up. “What do you mean? She disappeared. She’s a ghost. She didn’t have to go anywhere.”
I shook my head. “It didn’t feel like that. It felt like she was moving away from me, across the room, but she didn’t go out the door.”
“You be the ghost; I’ll be you,” she said.
I picked up the candle in its holder, from the table where Ruby had placed it the night before. Then I stood holding the candle in front of my face. I made as if to blow it out.
“Now sit up and grab for me,” I said, and Ruby obligingly sat up and swiped at me. I put the candle on the floor and then took a couple of steps away from her. The door was on my right. Straight ahead of me was the closet door.
“The closet!” breathed Ruby, coming to the idea at the same time I did. I grinned at her. She leaped out of bed and came to stand beside me.
I opened the door. I hadn’t investigated it before, because I had
no clothes to hang up. Ruby pushed past me.
“Wait till you see this,” she said, burrowing into the dresses and coats that were hanging there, encased in long plastic bags. It was a tight fit, but she squeezed through.
“Wait for me,” I said and followed her. It took a little pushing for me to get through, but I made it, only to be confronted by another row of hanging clothes. Beyond it I could hear Ruby urging me on.
“Come on, Rue,” she sang out. “Just push through.”
Funny. She’d called me Rue, just like Dad. I pushed against the clothes and suddenly I was out in the daylight again, in a room with two double beds neatly made up with quilts. I could see the ocean through the window on the opposite wall.
“It’s a secret passage,” said Ruby, throwing herself on one of the beds and bouncing up and down. “Isn’t it cool? I discovered it years ago.”
I turned back to the closet. It just looked like an ordinary closet. I parted a couple of shirts and there was the row of clothes we could see from our room.
“They just didn’t bother putting up a wall at the back,” said Ruby.
“Have you asked Aunt Doll about it?”
“She says it was always like that, and they used to have fun playing hide-and-seek and sneaking back and forth when they were supposed to be asleep.”
I went and sat on the other bed. If anything, this room was even colder than ours. “Did our mothers have brothers?”
Ruby stared at me. “How can you not know that?”
I shrugged, embarrassed. “I don’t think my mom told my dad much about her family. He’s never told me anything. I didn’t even know she had a twin.”
“That’s a sin, not knowing anything about your family,” said Ruby, sounding just like Aunt Doll, who had said more or less the same thing the day before. “My mom and your mom had one brother, Uncle Jack, who was two years older than them. He went away to school on the mainland when he was sixteen and became an engineer. He lives in British Columbia. Every once in a while he visits. His kids are nearly grown up, so I don’t really know them.”
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