The Swallow

by Charis Cotter

  Of course, now that I’m older, I realize most of those things are not going to happen. But maybe I can still see a ghost! That’s not impossible.

  When I go to the cemetery I close my eyes and let the atmosphere just kind of soak into me. I start to tingle all over, and I think I hear whispering in the trees, and then I feel the presence of SOMETHING—but when I open my eyes there’s nothing there. Just the gravestones, the trees and the road curving round the hillside.

  It’s disappointing. I’ve read that some people have the gift of second sight, and they live with one foot in this world and one foot in the next, so they can see what’s going on with both the living and the dead. Sometimes they know when people are going to die.

  I wish I had second sight. I want to see beyond this world. This world isn’t all that wonderful.

  Rose

  I never want to see a ghost again. I’m sick of it. Ladies all in white who follow me down the street, sad men in suits who sit at the back of the bus, children in nightgowns floating out hospital windows—I wish they would all disappear.

  When my father told me we were moving to Granny McPherson’s house behind the cemetery, I was horrified. But what could I say? That living next to a cemetery wasn’t a good idea for a person who could see ghosts? Not likely. I just kept quiet, as usual, and next thing I knew, we were here.

  The first night in the new house I had a bad dream. I dreamed that all the ghosts from the cemetery were rising up out of their graves and drifting slowly towards the house. Over the stone wall at the end of the garden, up the garden path, passing silently through the bricks and the windows and the doors into my bedroom, crowding round my bed. Whispering.

  All kinds of people in their grave clothes, all ages: babies, children, teenagers, mothers, fathers, old men and women—all sad, all lonely, all dead. They plucked at my blankets and my hair, and the murmur of their voices rose and fell like the sea. “Help me! Help me!” They kept coming until my room was full, and yet there were still hordes of them outside, crowding up against the window. I tried to sink down into the mattress to get away from them. My stomach turned over and over—and then I woke up. I was drenched in sweat and I felt sick.

  The house was quiet. I turned on the light. There were no ghosts. But I didn’t want to go to sleep again because I knew they would be waiting for me, just on the other side of the border between awake and asleep.

  I picked up my book with shaking hands and began to read. It was a book called Jalna that I had found on my grandmother’s bookshelf.

  I read for hours. Every time my eyes started to close I sat up and forced myself to stay awake and keep reading. When the light started seeping round the curtains I finished the book and then I finally let myself drift away. I slept without dreams until Kendrick woke me for breakfast.

  The next night the dream came back. And the next night. I dreaded going to sleep. I read late into the night, trying to stay awake. It turned out that the Jalna book was part of a series about a big family, and my grandmother had them all, so I started to read my way through them.

  Every night the pattern was the same. No matter how hard I tried to stay awake, I still fell asleep eventually. Then the dream would come, with its crowds of clamoring ghosts, and I woke up in a sweat. Then I read until dawn, when I could safely fall asleep again.

  We moved to the house behind the cemetery at the beginning of July. By the beginning of August, I was very, very sick.

  HEADACHE

  Polly

  I woke up with a headache. Maybe that’s why I lost my temper at breakfast.

  It all began with eggs. Or the lack of eggs, to be precise. During the week we always have porridge for breakfast, but on Saturdays we get eggs. But this Saturday we had stupid old porridge again because Mum ran out of eggs on account of making deviled eggs on Thursday for some ladies from church who came over to have a meeting about “The Poor in our Midst” or something.

  I was grumbling about the porridge and Dad took a deep breath and said, “Now, Polly,” and I knew he was going to start off on another lecture about all the hungry children who would give anything to have lumpy old porridge day after day after day, so I jumped right in there.

  “I don’t care about those hungry kids so don’t start telling me about them. All I care about is eggs. Saturday is eggs day and I want eggs!”

  I picked up my bowl of porridge and slammed it down on the table, hard. The Horrors snapped to attention and nudged each other, staring at me and grinning. Moo and Goo rolled their eyes, and Lucy looked down her nose at me in disapproval.

  “Polly, that’s enough,” said Mum automatically. “You’re too old to be having temper tantrums at breakfast.”

  I knew she was right but that just made it worse. I picked up the bowl, higher this time, and dropped it again, really hard. It broke, and the gloopy porridge splattered all over the place.

  Silence. Everyone held their breath. It was like that moment when a wave pulls back and another one is about to come roaring in.

  Right on cue, Dad reared up.

  “YOU!” he thundered, pointing a finger at me like he was the wrath of God and he was going to strike me dead with bolts of lightning. “YOU!! LEAVE THE TABLE THIS INSTANT!”

  When Dad gets like that there is only one thing to do. Get out of the way, fast, or he’ll start throwing things and yelling like mad. He’s got a terrible temper, and Mum says I got mine from him, but he’s bigger and way more scary than me, I can tell you. I think it’s kind of hypocritical for a man of God to have such a vile temper, but if you think I’m going to tell him that you’re crazy and you don’t know my father.

  I got out of there, fast, and went straight up to my hiding place in the loft. And there I stayed. After a while I ate some crackers and wished I’d eaten my porridge, because I was hungry. The house was really cold.

  I cried a bit. I felt pretty bad. I knew I was being childish at breakfast, I knew I was being mean to my mum about the eggs, because she is really busy and can’t always remember everything. But that just made me feel worse inside. And my head still hurt.

  I was huddled up and miserable, like a wet bird with all its feathers fluffed up. I could hear the family carrying on as usual downstairs, just as if nothing had happened and I didn’t exist. Just like normal. Finally I curled up and went to sleep.

  Rose

  My head was pounding. I had this weird floating feeling, like I was up above everything, looking down. Everything bleached out and turned white, and I couldn’t tell who were the ghosts and who was alive.

  The old lady came back and sat in the corner, knitting. I hadn’t seen her since I was little.

  The doctor had big bristly eyebrows and a huge mustache, and after a while he started looking just like a wolf, and he kept leaning over me and staring at me with his wild wolf eyes. I’m pretty sure I had been talking about the ghosts because I heard him say, “She’s hallucinating.”

  Mother’s face swam into view. She was crying. “My baby,” she choked, “my baby.”

  “She’ll be fine,” said my father. He looked scared. Behind him the ghosts from the cemetery started streaming into the room, plucking at my sheets and my nightgown.

  “GET AWAY FROM ME!” I screamed.

  “We’ll just get her to the hospital and see what we can do,” said the Wolf Doctor.

  “Such a lovely baby,” said the knitting lady, rocking in her chair.

  “My poor baby,” said my mother, laying her cool hand on my hot forehead.

  COLD

  Polly

  When I woke up it was even colder and really dark. I could hear the Horrors calling out to me. They were right inside my closet, at the bottom of the ladder.

  “Polly wants a cracker, Polly wants a cracker,” sang out Mark.

  “We know you’re up there, Polly-bird,” sang out Matthew. “We’re coming!”

  “Matthew! Mark!” called my mother from downstairs.

  They started to whisper.
>
  “Come down here right now! I have a job for you,” shouted Mum.

  More whispering.

  “Don’t you worry, Polly-bird,” said Matthew. “We’ll be back!” They clattered off downstairs.

  I had to do something. I just couldn’t stand it anymore. I had to get away from them, somewhere they’d never find me.

  In the ceiling of the loft there was a little trapdoor that led to the attic. Dad made me promise I’d never go up there because it wasn’t safe. But I was so mad at him I didn’t care about my promise. I heaved myself up against the trapdoor and pushed it open. I grabbed my book, a blanket and my flashlight, then hoisted myself into the attic and pulled the trapdoor shut.

  The attic was cold and black as black could be. It smelled musty and forgotten. My flashlight cast a faint yellow light. I’d asked Mum for new batteries weeks ago but she was always forgetting stuff like that. I crawled into a corner by the wall and wrapped the blanket around me.

  Dad had said the floor wasn’t properly finished and would collapse if I walked on it. He said there were mice. But I didn’t see any mouse poop and I didn’t hear any scurrying. I didn’t hear much of anything—no voices, no footsteps, no people. All the sounds of the house and the city were reduced to a faint murmur, far away, like the sea. It was very, very quiet.

  As quiet as the grave, I thought, and then I sat up a little straighter. Maybe the attic was haunted! I closed my eyes to see if I could sense any ghostly presence.

  But there was nothing there, just silence.

  Rose

  When I woke up in the hospital I was cold. I suppose I had kicked off my covers. I was shivering. There was no one there. No old lady, no mother, no father, no doctor. No ghosts. I pulled up the blankets and huddled under them, trying to get warm. I could see trees outside the window.

  For a long time I drifted in and out of sleep, watching the leaves sparkle in the sunshine, happy to be alive, happy not to be haunted, even for a little while.

  It did seem strange that I should feel so ghost-free in a hospital room. You would think hospitals would be full of ghosts. But when they finally let me go home, there were no ghosts there either. None. And no dreams. I still had that floaty feeling, as if I weren’t quite there, and my head felt light. But I was well enough to start classes at my new school in the middle of September, and there were no ghosts there either. I didn’t dare even hope that they were gone for good. Maybe some of the medicine they gave me in the hospital had driven them away for a while. For whatever reason, they were gone.

  THE ATTIC

  Polly

  Hunkered down in my little nest, cozy under the blanket, I slowly started getting warmer. It was very restful to finally have a spot where no one could bother me, far away from sisters, brothers, parents and The Baby Who Stole My Room.

  I found my place in The Ghastly Ghost at My Gate (the latest from Philomena Faraday) and began to read, holding the flashlight steady on the page.

  Amanda stood frozen with fear on the pathway by the garden gate. The white figure floated closer and closer. It stretched out a bony hand and there was nothing she could do. She couldn’t scream, she couldn’t move, she could only stand, transfixed in terror as the hand reached towards her throat …

  A sudden breath of air ruffled the pages of my book. I gripped the flashlight firmly and swung it around the attic. The trapdoor was still shut tight. So where had the draft come from? And what was that smell that drifted in with it? Sweet, almost like candy, but sad too. A rose?

  The attic was very still. My eyes drifted back to the page.

  The wind howled around the shadowy garden. Amanda felt the cold touch of skeletal fingers on her neck, and then the wind whipped into a frenzy and the figure dissolved into a swirling white mist, wrapping around her like a shroud, and finally Amanda found her voice and screamed: a scream like a train hurtling round a corner at a hundred miles an hour, a scream that seemed to rise up from her toes and burst out the top of her head like a boiling kettle, a scream—

  A floorboard creaked, very close by, and I was jolted out of the book and back into the attic. I held my breath and listened. Nothing. I shone the flashlight in a wide arc. The attic was still empty.

  I drew a ragged breath. I was scaring myself to death with this ghost story. I settled back and found my place in the book again.

  The fingers dropped from her throat and Amanda stumbled towards the house, but she tripped on a loose paving stone and fell. Immediately she was enveloped in a clammy mist, and she could feel herself drowning in it, sinking fast. An icy voice from beyond the grave whispered, “Beware! Beware the ghostly gate!”

  Right at that moment was when it happened. Someone—or some THING—started humming a tune, right in my ear!

  I dropped the book and nearly dropped the flashlight. The light swung wildly. Trying to hold my shaking hands steady, I shone it around the attic. It was still empty, and the humming was getting louder.

  I couldn’t believing this was happening. I felt just like Amanda must have felt by the garden gate—unable to move or even squeak.

  Then the humming turned into words, sung clearly in a sweet, high voice:

  She’s like the swallow that flies so high

  She’s like the river that never runs dry

  She’s like the sunshine on the lee shore

  She lost her love so she’ll love no more.

  The tune was lilting and sad, like an old folk song. A girl was singing softly to herself, right beside me. But there was no one there. It had to be a ghost.

  Rose

  I finally found a place in this house that’s my very own. I discovered it the week after I came back from the hospital.

  I drifted into my grandmother’s room one day, looking for the sewing basket so I could sew a button on my blue cardigan. Nothing had changed in there since she’d died in the spring.

  Her bottle of Yardley’s English Rose perfume stood on her dressing table. I untwisted the top and dabbed some on my wrists, then breathed it in. As the sweet, sad smell of roses flooded over me I wondered, for a moment, whether my grandmother would appear. She didn’t. I thought I heard a sigh, but that was all.

  Not seeing the sewing basket anywhere, I opened the closet door. I turned on the light, pushed some clothes to one side to search and then stopped. A ladder built flat against the wall led up to a trapdoor in the ceiling.

  An attic. I hadn’t even known the house had an attic, but when I pushed open the trapdoor and climbed in, it all seemed oddly familiar. The faded red-and-green cardboard boxes with “Christmas” written on the side, the ancient trunks shoved up against the wall, the discarded lamps, the broken chairs. Maybe I had come up here when I was little? I couldn’t remember.

  All that mattered was it felt safe. It felt like home. I started sneaking up there whenever I had the chance.

  There was a stuffed chair in the corner and crates full of dusty old books. One box held what looked like every book L.M. Montgomery ever wrote. Another was full of ghost stories and books about ghosts.

  I was especially interested in those. Over the years, I have quietly read everything I can about ghosts, trying to find something to help me ward them off. But I’d never seen books quite this old. Some of them were printed in the nineteenth century, with black leather covers and yellowing pages.

  I brought up some cushions and a blanket to make a warm little nest in the chair. Then I stayed in the attic for hours, reading about ghosts by candlelight. I found it strangely comforting to sit in that silent, forgotten corner of the house, reading about other people besides me who saw ghosts. It made me feel that perhaps I wasn’t completely crazy after all.

  Sometimes I sang to myself. No one could hear me. At least, that’s what I thought.

  CONTACT

  Polly

  I felt a kind of pit opening up in my stomach like I was going to throw up. My body started tingling all over, like a really bad case of pins and needles.

  “Wh
o are you?” I croaked. But the singing went on, lilting and mournful.

  ’Twas down in the garden this fair maid did go

  A-plucking the beautiful—something rose.

  Then it stopped and a girl’s voice said, “Darn it. What kind of rose? I can never remember what kind of rose.”

  Then the singing started again.

  ’Twas down in the garden this fair maid did go

  A-plucking the beautiful—blah blah rose.

  “Darn it,” said the voice again.

  I couldn’t take it anymore.

  “Who are you?” I said as loudly as possible.

  The singing stopped. Silence.

  “I know you’re a ghost,” I said, trying not to let my voice shake too much. “Stop trying to scare me and tell me who you are.”

  Silence. And then, finally, a cross little voice snapped at me out of the darkness.

  “I’m not a ghost. Are you a ghost?”

  I couldn’t believe it. Here I was, talking to a ghost in my own attic!

  “No, I’m not a ghost. You’re a ghost. You’re invisible.”

  The voice gasped. “I’m not! I can see my hands clearly. You’re the ghost. You’re invisible.”

  “I am not!” I replied. “I can see my hands too, but I can’t see you. Where are you?”

  “I’m in my attic,” said the voice.

  “I’m in MY attic,” I said.

  “I don’t see you,” said the voice.

  “Well, I’m here, and I’d like to know why you’re haunting my attic.”

  “I’d like to know why you’re haunting MY attic,” gasped the ghost.

  This obviously wasn’t getting us anywhere.

  Rose

  I felt sick to my stomach. I was not used to invisible ghosts. And I certainly was not used to ghosts that talked so much. Especially out loud.