The Swallow

by Charis Cotter

  Copyright © 2014 by Charis Cotter

  Published in Canada by Tundra Books,

  a division of Random House of Canada Limited,

  One Toronto Street, Suite 300, Toronto, Ontario M5C 2V6

  Published in the United States by Tundra Books of Northern New York,

  P.O. Box 1030, Plattsburgh, New York 12901

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2014934478

  All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher—or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency—is an infringement of the copyright law.

  LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

  Cotter, Charis, author

  The swallow / by Charis Cotter.

  ISBN 978-1-77049-591-3 (bound).—ISBN 978-1-77049-593-7 (epub)

  I. Title.

  PS8605.O8846S83 2014 jC813’.6 C2013-906909-7

  C2013-906910-0

  Edited by Samantha Swenson

  Cover image © 2014 Kelly Louise Judd

  Interior swallow image © kvasay / Depositphotos.com

  www.tundrabooks.com

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Part One: The Haunted Attic

  Misfit

  Horrors

  Mirror

  Invisible

  Ghosts

  Headache

  Cold

  The Attic

  Contact

  The Disembodied Voice

  Ghost Girl

  Play Date

  Crying

  Gloom

  The Gravestone

  Dead

  The Mystery

  Proof

  Dinner

  The Door Jumper

  Socks

  Shoes

  Part Two: The Haunted House

  Entity

  The Window Seat

  Cookies

  Mumbo-Jumbo

  The Missing Photographs

  Attack

  Old Clothes

  The Crack

  Before Breakfast

  Secrets in the Attic

  The Library

  The Drunken Ghosts

  The Hidden Door

  The Secret Passage

  The White Hand

  Part Three: The Curse

  Breath

  Mirror Image

  Poor Ghost

  Shortbread

  The Christmas Picture

  Lock Her Up

  The Bridge

  The Swallow

  The Boy

  The Accident

  Make it Stop

  Fading Away

  Let The Dead Stay Dead

  Part Four: The Secret

  Dreaming

  The Haunted Schoolyard

  Mrs. Lacey

  The Deserted Library

  The Ghastly Ghost At My Gate

  “Hunt Polly”

  Footsteps

  The Witch

  Empty

  Eggs

  The Message

  Forgotten

  Whispering

  Nonsense

  Mothers

  Meningitis

  Everything Hurts

  We Lost Her

  Cold

  Part Five: The Swallow

  Underwater

  No Reply

  Twins

  Old Enough

  The Purple Shawl

  Two Breakfasts

  Leaving Socks

  Don’t Tell Your Mother

  The Empty Cemetery

  The Cheshire Cat

  Drifting

  The Ghost in the Attic

  Pretending

  The Gift

  Toast

  Flights of Angels

  Freedom

  The End

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  PART ONE

  THE HAUNTED ATTIC

  There was no wind, and yet the air

  Seemed suddenly astir;

  There were no forms, and yet all space

  Seemed thronged with growing hosts.

  They came from Where and from Nowhere.

  Like phantoms as they were.

  They came from many a land and place—

  The ghosts, the ghosts, the ghosts.

  ELLA WHEELER WILCOX, “THE GHOSTS”

  MISFIT

  Polly

  There’s no place for me. I’m getting squeezed out of my own house. My parents want to save the world, and they’re doing it one unwanted kid at a time.

  The baby is the final straw. It was bad enough to have foster kids in and out of here every few months, and then it was even worse when Moo and Goo (the silliest teenagers you ever saw) came to live with us on a permanent basis. But at least I always had my own room.

  I didn’t want the baby and I told Mum that, but, as usual, she didn’t pay any attention.

  “It’s up to us to give Susie a good home,” she said in that social-worker voice of hers. “Not everyone is as lucky as you are, Polly. You need to learn to share.”

  Fine. Share my room. Share my clothes. Share my parents. Share everything until there’s nothing left for me.

  I know that’s not Christian of me. My dad’s a United Church minister, and over the years I’ve put in enough hours at church and Sunday school to know what it takes to be a good Christian. But I’m tired of sharing!

  My room was the only place I had to myself in this crowded house. I had a desk by the window, looking out over the cemetery, where I used to sit and watch for ghosts as it got dark. I had a little bookcase and a big old chair for reading my ghost books. I loved my room.

  But when Susie came, they put her crib in front of the window, and out goes my reading chair, and my desk gets shoved into a corner. They say there’s nowhere else to put her. Lucy has her own room, because she needs to study all the time. Moo and Goo share a room, the Horrors share a room, and Mum and Dad sleep downstairs in what used to be the dining room.

  Right from the beginning they said the baby would have to share with me. And right from the beginning I said I didn’t want her. But I got her anyway.

  The way I see it, my parents will keep packing kids into this house until we’re stacked up in each room like sardines, and when there isn’t an inch left they’ll finally be happy and say, “Great, now we’re taking care of all the kids in the world! No kids are sad or hungry, they’re all here in our house.” And then they’ll forget which kids were theirs to begin with, and we’ll all be one big happy family. Except for me.

  Rose

  I don’t fit in. There’s no place for me. Not at school, not with Mother and Father, not in this new house, not anywhere.

  I don’t belong here. My room looks like no one lives there, because Mother is so fussy about keeping things neat that I can’t leave anything lying about, not even a book or a handkerchief.

  I go for days without anyone speaking to me. The girls at my new school ignore me and so do the teachers. My parents are never home. That’s why Kendrick is here, so they can stay out late working. After Granny McPherson died, we took over her house, and her ancient housekeeper came with it. Kendrick is slow, but she can still cook and do the housework. It doesn’t take long because this house is like a museum—empty and quiet. She spends most of her time in her flat in the basement.

  I don’t even see Kendrick every day. Every night at 5:30 there is one place set at the dining room table. My dinner is on a plate with a cover to keep it warm, and a dish of
dessert sits off to the side. I prop my book up against the silver candelabra to read while I try to force myself to eat.

  Sometimes Kendrick shuffles into the living room while I’m practicing the piano and gives me a strange look. Sometimes I think she knows.

  But she can’t know. I keep it hidden from her, the same way I keep it hidden from Mother and Father and all my teachers and the girls at school.

  I am bewitched.

  HORRORS

  Polly

  All right, so maybe I’m exaggerating a little. The house won’t hold ALL the unwanted children in the world. But we’ve already got seven kids and two grown-ups crammed in here, and it’s not that big a house to start with.

  It’s in a row of old houses that are all joined together. It has high ceilings and funny little corners and big built-in closets. I’ve found some great hiding places, but the Horrors always seem to find me.

  The Horrors are Mark and Matthew, my eight-year-old twin brothers. To get an idea of the supreme dreadfulness of the Horrors, imagine the worst brother in the world and then multiply by two—see what I mean?

  They’re nasty and annoying and determined to make me miserable. They follow me around singing, “Polly wants a cracker” and pretend I’m a parrot and make all these stupid bird jokes. They play tricks on me and go in my room and take my stuff, and they are always telling Mum if I do anything wrong. And because they are so cute, with their curly brown hair and blue eyes and freckles everywhere, grown-ups think they’re full of mischief instead of full of evil.

  I’m not cute. Not in the slightest. I’m too fat and I wear glasses. Mum says it’s just puppy fat and it will disappear when I get to be a teenager and then I’ll be just as pretty as Marian and Gudrun. I don’t believe her. Anyway, those girls are so dumb. All they can talk about is boys, boys, boys. Marian, who’s sixteen, sits around on the couch making cow eyes at her boyfriend, so I call her Moo. Gudrun, who’s fifteen, slaps all this weird goo on her face to get rid of her pimples, so naturally I call her Goo.

  I think I was pretty smart to think up their nicknames, but Mum said it was unkind. She wasn’t even impressed with the way I made all my sisters’ names rhyme: Lu and Moo and Goo—and now Sue, The Baby Who Stole My Room. Lu is the oldest (seventeen) and my real sister, just like Mark and Matthew are my real brothers. Mum says I shouldn’t call them “real,” but I’m determined to point out the difference, even if Mum and Dad aren’t. I do realize that I’m stuck with Lu and the Horrors, because they’re my family. What I don’t see is why I should be stuck with the others.

  I wish I were an only child.

  Rose

  You might think I’m exaggerating. That there’s no such thing as being bewitched in 1963, in Toronto, Canada.

  But that’s how I feel. Like a princess in a story who has a bad fairy come to her christening in a cloud of black smoke. As if the fairy pointed her wand at the lacy, innocent baby and said, “Winnifred Rose McPherson will go through her life seeing things that other people don’t see. She will never be able to tell a single person about this because they will think she is insane.”

  Maybe you think that’s not such a bad curse, like dying on your sixteenth birthday or spitting frogs whenever you speak. But let me tell you, some days I’d happily take the frogs or the poisoned spindle.

  It all started when I was a baby. The things I see, the things that other people don’t see? Ghosts. Ghosts everywhere.

  When I was little, I didn’t know they were ghosts. I thought they were people. It took me a long time to figure out that no one else could see them.

  An old lady with a sad little smile used to come and sit in the corner of my nursery when I woke up crying in the middle of the night. My mother would bustle in, change my diaper and give me a bottle, while the old lady sat rocking back and forth, knitting. “There, there,” the old lady would say softly. “There, there. Such a lovely baby. Such a good baby.”

  Mother never turned her head or paid any attention to her. But sometimes, when Mother was impatient with me, muttering, “Rose, Rose, why won’t you sleep, Rose? I need my rest, I have to work in the morning. I’m so tired, won’t you please just go back to sleep,” the old lady had a strange effect on her. Gradually my mother would grow calmer, and soon she would fall into the same chorus: “There, there, such a lovely baby. Such a good baby.” Rocked by their crooning, I’d fall asleep.

  I didn’t start talking till I was five years old. There was so much weird activity all around me, I thought the safest thing was to stay quiet and just watch. But my parents started bringing me to fancy doctors when I was two, trying to find out what was wrong.

  Finally one morning at breakfast, I asked my mother to pass the marmalade. She dropped her teacup and my father nearly choked on his toast. Even the Breakfast Ghost jumped in alarm when he heard me speak. (He is an old man with thick white hair who sits beside me staring longingly at whatever I’m eating for breakfast.)

  I’m still quiet. Unusually quiet, says my mother. Reserved, says my father. I’m trying to be very, very careful. If they find out I see ghosts, they’ll think I’m crazy and lock me up.

  I don’t want that.

  MIRROR

  Polly

  What I see when I look in the mirror:

  Me. Polly Lacey, twelve years old. Boring brown hair that’s too straight and just hangs there doing nothing. Glasses. Brown eyes. Chubby cheeks. Chubby all over. I don’t think I’ll ever slim down because I love food too much—chocolate especially.

  I’m not exactly what you’d call a fashion plate. None of my clothes ever fit me properly; they’re mostly hand-me-downs from my older sisters. And Mum says the reason I have to wear glasses is because I ruined my eyes reading in bed with my flashlight.

  Favorite activity: Being alone, reading.

  Favorite color: Red.

  Favorite book: It’s so hard to pick just one! I like ghost stories the best, and everything Philomena Faraday has written is fantastic! The Silent Sorrowing Sadness was the scariest, saddest book I ever read. But I also like mysteries—Agatha Christie, Nancy Drew—and kids’ books like Swallows and Amazons, The Hobbit, all the Narnia books and all kinds of fairy tales, and Trixie Belden and—well, let’s just say I love books.

  Favorite place: The cemetery behind my house.

  Secret desire: To see a ghost. A real ghost.

  Rose

  What I see when I look in the mirror:

  Me. Winnifred Rose McPherson. My parents call me Rose. I am twelve years old, in Grade 7, and my birthday is December 5. I am a small person with a lot of black hair. It’s thick and curly but it goes a little mad on damp days or when I brush it. Sometimes I fluff it around my face and look in the mirror to see if I could be at all pretty.

  I’m not. I’m a sorry sight. I’m too pale and my cheeks are thin and I have big bags under my eyes because I don’t sleep very well. My nose is a bit too big and crooked, and my mouth is a bit too thin. I’m small for my age. Mother says I need to eat more.

  Favorite activity: I like singing. I like silence.

  Favorite color: Purple.

  Favorite book: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë.

  Favorite place: The attic.

  Secret desire: To be normal and have a big, happy family.

  INVISIBLE

  Polly

  I’m always trying to become invisible in this house, trying to find the one place I can be by myself where no one can bother me. It used to be my room. But since Susie made her appearance, I’ve been on the hunt for the perfect hiding place.

  I thought I found one. Inside my closet, there’s a built-in luggage loft. You go up a ladder and through an opening in the ceiling and then you’re in a tiny room, just about three feet high. I moved the suitcases to make a wall so no one can see me if they look up from the closet, and then I made a little nest in the corner with some blankets.

  I read my ghost books there and eat crackers and I feel safe. At least I felt safe until the H
orrors started coming up after me. They think it’s all a game of hide-and-seek, and sooner or later, they always find me.

  They’re not supposed to put even a foot inside my room, but they’re always coming in anyway. When I complain to Mum she tells them off, but they keep coming back.

  Now I don’t know what to do. I have nowhere to go where they can’t find me. I just want one place that belongs to me and no one else. I want to be invisible.

  Rose

  Most of the time I feel invisible. I don’t put my hand up at school anymore because the teachers never call on me. I drift through the halls past groups of girls talking and laughing, and no one even looks up as I go by.

  It seems like the ghosts are the only ones who notice me. It’s as if I have a big sign floating above my head saying: ATTENTION ALL GHOSTS!!! THIS ONE CAN SEE YOU!!!

  It would surprise a lot of people in the world if they found out what ghosts are really like. Of course, some of them are scary—some are absolutely terrifying—and I’ve seen more than my share of those. But most of them are just dead people. Sad, lonely dead people. And once they realize I can see them they won’t leave me alone.

  It’s the sadness that bothers me more than anything. Some are sweetly sad, like the old lady I saw when I was a baby. Others are miserably sad, and their unhappiness flows out of them like gray dishwater and floods over me. The angry sad ones are the worst. They’re the dangerous ones.

  GHOSTS

  Polly

  I’ve always wanted to see a ghost. More than anything. I keep watch at my window for hours, I go for walks in the cemetery almost every day after school and I read all the ghost books I can find at the Parliament Street Library.

  It just seems to me that there’s got to be more in this world than meets the eye. Ever since I was little I’ve wanted magic to be real. I want to see fairies and ghosts and witches riding their broomsticks across the sky. Life can’t be as boring and ordinary as all the grown-ups make it out to be. There’s just got to be more to it. I’ve always loved books where people stepped through doorways into other worlds, where horses had wings and children were swept away on marvelous adventures.