I opened my eyes and walked through the gates. I moved quickly past the gravestones and down the hill to the mausoleum and sat on the steps, desperately muttering, “White light, white light” over and over again. I kept it up until a girl appeared in front of me, her eyes wide behind her tortoiseshell glasses. Her tight red coat stood out against the gray cemetery like a beacon of light.
THE GRAVESTONE
Polly
“Rose?” I asked in a high, squeaky voice.
The figure stood up and moved towards me. She was shorter than I was, wearing a long black cloak with a hood. She slowly stretched out her hand—JUST like Amanda’s ghost in the book! I gasped and took a step backwards.
The girl stopped and rolled her eyes at me. Not in a ghostly way—more in a “I can’t believe you’re so dumb” way.
“I was just going to shake your hand,” she said, her little mouth twisting in what could have been a smile. “To show you that I’m not a ghost.”
Oh. I hesitated for a moment, watching her strange, big eyes, and then held out my hand. She gave it a sharp little squeeze and didn’t let go. Her hand was very cold.
“Convinced?” she asked.
“I guess so,” I answered, finally pulling my hand free.
“Oh no you’re not,” she snapped back at me. “You still think I’m a ghost. You think my hand is unnaturally cold and I’m weird-looking.”
That was exactly what I was thinking. This girl was spooky.
“Let’s walk,” she said abruptly, looking over her shoulder and then hustling me down the road.
I looked back to see what she had been looking at. The angel hovered above us. Just underneath it the name of the family buried in the mausoleum stood out in large stone letters: MCPHERSON.
“What did you say your name was?” I asked her, trying to keep up. For a short person, she sure walked fast.
She flicked me a look and gave an impatient little shake of her head.
“Yes, that’s my family’s mausoleum,” she said. “I’m Rose McPherson and there are three generations of McPhersons buried inside that hill.”
I started to grin. “This is so exciting!” I said. “Tell me again you’re not a ghost!”
Rose
“Rose?” said the girl in a squeaky, scared voice.
She was wearing a double-breasted red coat with six white buttons. It was too tight and the arms were a little short for her. Her tortoiseshell glasses turned up in little cat’s-eye points that gave her a look of constant surprise. Straight brown hair and an eager puppy-dog expression. I could read her like a book. She really wanted me to be a ghost. She saw it as a game.
I wanted to get out of that cemetery as fast as possible. Outside my faltering circle of white light I could feel the ghosts straining to get through. The girl trotted along behind me, grinning like an idiot.
“Look,” I said, “I’m not a ghost. But I do see them all the time. It’s not fun.”
“wow,” she breathed. “You really see them? Do you see some now? Because I’ve got this really creepy feeling like they’re all around us.”
I walked faster. “Yes. They are.”
Suddenly I felt a tug at my cloak, and I looked down to see a small child with a mass of blond curls, dressed in an old-fashioned white nightgown, looking up at me, pleading.
“Mama?” she said, her eyes brimming with tears. “Vicky wants her mama.”
I shook her off impatiently and began to run. Polly came bumping along behind me, calling my name, but I skittered around the corner and headed towards the gates.
The fastest way to get out was to cut across an overgrown corner near the cemetery wall. The custodian hadn’t bothered to cut the grass there for a while, and a few old gravestones rose up from a tangle of weeds. I leapt over a couple and dodged around a taller one, and then a crash behind me and a shout from Polly stopped me. I turned, gasping for breath. She had tripped on a gravestone and lay sprawled along the ground.
From the corner of my eye I saw movement, as white figures began to rise from the graves and seep towards me, just like in my dream.
“White light, white light, white light,” I muttered desperately, stumbling back towards Polly. I had to get out of there.
I reached down to haul her up but she didn’t move. She was staring at a gravestone, transfixed.
I looked at the stone. It read WINNIFRED ROSE MCPHERSON, 1910–1923.
DEAD
Polly
Everything went very quiet. A deep silence seemed to rise up from out of the ground around us. The ghost looked shocked. The color drained from her face and she began to sway.
Up until then I had been half-pretending. I don’t think I really believed it. But when I lifted up my head after I fell, and her name was right there staring me in the face, I was convinced. She really was a ghost and she needed my help.
Rose
Suddenly it was silent. I could no longer hear the rustling of the wind in the trees and the hum of traffic on the expressway. My world shrank to those few words carved in stone: “WINNIFRED ROSE MCPHERSON, 1910–1923.”
My name. Me? I felt like I was falling. I couldn’t breathe. The gravestones and the trees started to spin, and then everything went black.
A string of pictures flickered through my brain, almost as if I were having a dream.
A bridge at night. The lights of the city, far away. A boy’s face that looked very familiar. A screech of brakes and a thump—then a dizzying drop into nothingness, a fall that went on and on. A horrible thud.
“Rose? Rose? Are you okay?”
Polly’s voice came from a long way off. Someone was pulling at my arm.
I opened my eyes. I could see the tracery of black tree branches against the gray sky. I was lying on something damp and hard. Polly was leaning over me and her fingers were digging into my arm.
“Rose?” she said again with a little squeak.
I focused on her rosy cheeks and the feel of her fingers through my coat. I took a deep breath. I could feel the cold air filling my lungs. Surely, surely if I were dead I wouldn’t be able to feel that? And the damp leaves soaking through my stockings? And a stick poking into my leg?
I sat up. The gravestone was still there, with those words leaping out at me as if they were lit up in neon lights. WINNIFRED ROSE MCPHERSON.
What did it mean? I didn’t feel dead. Not at all.
THE MYSTERY
Polly
“There’s some mistake,” said the ghost, scrambling to her feet and taking off again towards the cemetery gates. “I’m not a ghost.”
I ran after her, watching my feet a little more carefully this time. She was out of the cemetery and off down the street by the time I caught up. “You do kind of look like a ghost,” I panted. She was walking quickly now, casting glances over her shoulder every once in a while and muttering something to herself.
“And it’s a bit of a strange coincidence, don’t you think?” I went on. “Finding a grave with your exact name on it?”
Then she turned on me.
“I’m not … I’m not!” she said. “I’m alive. I’ll prove it to you.”
She was nearly crying. I felt so bad for her. Imagine, suddenly discovering that you’re dead!
“How?” I asked.
Rose
“I don’t know. But it has to be a mistake!” I repeated. “She could be a relative or from another branch of the family.”
“What I wonder,” said Polly thoughtfully, “is why aren’t you buried in the mausoleum with all the other McPhersons? Why is your grave all by itself, shoved in a corner?”
I stared at her, remembering the brief vision I’d had before I fainted. The bridge. The fall. The thud.
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “No!”
I started running again, but Polly grabbed my cloak and held me back.
“Rose,” she said. “Just stop.” Her face was full of concern.
“It’s not true,” I whispered.
“Maybe you’re right. Maybe you’re not dead. Let’s find out, together. I’ll help you.”
For a moment I was tempted, but something in her eagerness made me suspicious. I broke free of her grasp.
“Leave me alone. You’re still playing your stupid ghost game. If you only knew how horrible it really is to see ghosts, you wouldn’t be so silly about it.”
That’s when she surprised me. Instead of snapping back at me her face lit up with a grin.
“I am silly, I know. I’ve just always had this thing about ghosts. But this is a real mystery, and it would be fun to find out what’s going on. Don’t you think?”
I stared at her. Fun?
“But what if it’s true?” I croaked. “What if I really am a ghost?”
She put her arm through mine and started dragging me down the street.
“If you are, it’s not so bad, is it?”
The wind was picking up now, whistling through the trees in the cemetery. The bare trees loomed over the street, forming an archway. Lights were coming on in houses and I could smell wood smoke from a fire. I felt the warmth from Polly’s arm through my coat. She skipped a bit as she hurried me along, almost bouncing.
“No,” I said slowly. “It’s not so bad.”
PROOF
Polly
At least I wasn’t alone anymore. I liked Rose. I mean, maybe she was a ghost or maybe she wasn’t, but either way, she was someone to talk to. She was kind of grouchy, but that didn’t bother me. The great thing was that I was having a real adventure, just like a girl in a book.
Before we got home we decided on a plan of action. Rose was going to find out everything she could about the Mysterious Winnifred. Maybe she was a distant cousin or something like that. Privately, I still thought that Rose could be Winnifred, and she could have been haunting that house for years, thinking that she was alive and going to school and everything, but all the time she was really dead. I’ve read stories like that. And maybe the reason Rose could see all those ghosts was because she was one herself. But I didn’t say that.
Anyway, we arranged to meet after school on Monday in the attic and talk about what she finds out. Meanwhile, my job was to try to find proof that Rose actually moved into that house last summer. Mum would know.
Rose
Despite everything, somehow I felt happier than I had for a while. It felt so good not to be alone anymore. Even if I was a ghost, at least I wasn’t invisible to Polly, the way I was to everyone else.
Yikes! Even if I was a ghost …!!! The whole idea was preposterous. Polly was a nutcase, a very persuasive nutcase. But there were some weird things I couldn’t explain. Why were Polly’s brothers scared of me? Why was my mother crying in her sleep over losing me? Why was my name on a gravestone in the cemetery? Why did I feel so floaty, and drifty, and unconnected to the world, ever since I was sick in the summer? If you took everything into consideration, it looked pretty bad.
I didn’t feel dead. But who knew what feeling dead was like?
As usual, no parents were around when I got home. Father wouldn’t be back for a week or so, and Mother was out visiting. Even if they were home, how could I ask them if I was dead? It would be one more reason for them to think I was crazy and needed to be locked up. Or if I really was dead, what could they say? “Yes, dear, we wondered when you’d catch on. Now run along to heaven”? It was just too weird.
I told Polly I’d try to find out about Winnifred, so I went into my grandfather’s study. In one of my searching-for-books expeditions I’d noticed a big old Bible on the bottom shelf. I knew that people used to keep birth and death records written in their family Bibles, so that seemed a good place to start.
The study was dim in the late-afternoon light. I quickly found the thick Bible and hauled it out. It was heavy, covered in cracked brown leather. The edges of the pages were tinged with gold that made a smooth, shiny surface when the book was closed.
I brought it over to the desk, switched on the lamp and opened it. Sure enough, there were names inscribed on the inside cover in different handwriting. Names and dates.
The first name was John Gerald McPherson, born 1806, Aberdeen, Scotland. He married someone named Margaret Campbell in 1829. They had seven children, and four died as infants. I ran my finger down the page. The first McPherson came to Canada in 1864, to Toronto, where he married Elizabeth Drummond. More marriages, births and deaths followed. My grandparents were there, married in 1909. And then that name, MY name, jumped out at me again, almost as suddenly as it had on the gravestone. “Winnifred Rose McPherson. B. Dec. 5, 1910, D. Jan. 8, 1923.” Beside it was my father’s name, “William George McPherson, B. Aug. 28, 1915. M. May 5, 1949, to Mary Louise McTavish.”
My arrival on the scene, December 5, 1950, was not recorded. But this Winnifred person had the same birthday as me. And she’d died when she was around my age: thirteen.
DINNER
Polly
Dinnertime is always the same in my house. We eat squished around a table in the hallway, because we haven’t had a dining room since the foster kids started coming in droves and crowding us all out. Eating in the front hall is ridiculous. Dad has to sit down first, because the dining table fills up the hall, and once he’s in he can’t get out without everyone getting up. He serves the meat from his end, then the plates get passed down to Mum to serve the vegetables. We all have to wait until everyone is served to start eating.
The Horrors make faces at me all through dinner. I try to ignore them, but every once in a while I lose it and start yelling at them.
Moo and Goo chatter on about school and boys and makeup and the latest rock-and-roll hits and all the other stuff they think is so very interesting, Lucy makes a few intellectual remarks about English lit or history that get Dad going off on some tangent, and Susie sits in her high chair and throws food around. I jump into the conversation wherever I can, although sometimes it just seems better to stay quiet and concentrate on eating. My family can make quite a racket over dinner.
Mum brought up my question for me. “Do the new neighbors have a child, Ned?” she asked as she nudged Mark’s elbow off the table.
“I’ve never seen one,” said Dad. “I find them quite standoffish. I understand they used to live in Rosedale. Why they wanted to move down here is beyond me.”
Rosedale is where the rich people live, on the other side of Bloor Street.
“There’s always Ghost Girl,” said Matthew, poking Mark in the ribs.
“Ghost Girl?” I asked. Nobody paid any attention to me.
“Don’t be so foolish, Matthew,” said Mum. “And don’t talk with your mouth full.”
Mark took over. “I’ve seen Ghost Girl floating in their front door. She dresses in black and she’s really ugly and she talks to ghosts.”
“I think she is a ghost,” said Matthew. “She steals people’s souls.”
“What absolute nonsense,” said Dad. “You’re making it up. I’ve never seen any children there, just a woman and a man, leaving early and getting home late. Needless to say, I haven’t spoken to them since that altercation when they moved in.”
“You really were very unreasonable, Ned,” said my mother with a sigh.
Moo and Goo started to giggle and Dad shot them a black look.
“Some people,” he said gravely, “think they own the world.”
Rose
Dinner was hot roast beef sandwiches with gravy, but I could barely eat a bite. I kept thinking about that page in the Bible.
When Kendrick came in to get my dishes, I blurted it out.
“Who was Winnifred Rose McPherson who died in 1923?”
Kendrick jumped. She wasn’t used to me speaking.
“None of your business,” she said.
“Who was she?” I persisted. “My aunt? Father’s sister? Why have I never heard of her?”
Kendrick’s mouth tightened in annoyance. She really didn’t like me.
“If your father choos
es not to speak of her, I don’t think it’s my place to.”
I leapt to my feet, making her jump again.
“I have a right to know. Father isn’t here. Tell me.”
Kendrick stared at me. “You’re just like her. That’s the trouble.” She picked up my nearly untouched supper plate and started towards the kitchen. I followed.
“How am I just like her?”
Kendrick shook her head. “I don’t want to say. Ask your father.”
There was a woman with gray hair in the corner of the kitchen, ironing. She was dressed in a long, faded print dress that swept the floor, and she wore one of those old-fashioned aprons with a big bow at the back. She looked up at me with tired eyes and smiled a sad little smile, then went on with her ironing.
A ghost. They were getting into the house again.
“White light, white light, white light,” I muttered.
Kendrick turned to see where I was looking. To her it was an empty corner of the room.
“Exactly like her!” she said bitterly. “She used to do that too. Seeing people who weren’t there, talking to herself—crazy as a loon.”
“How do you know I see people?” I asked her.
“I know the signs,” replied Kendrick, plunging her arms into the dishwater. “I’ve seen it all before. That girl brought so much trouble to this house, it nearly killed her mother, and now here you are, another one, just the same.”
“What trouble? What happened?” I asked.
Kendrick continued to wash the dishes. “I’m not saying any more. I’ve got work to do. You’d better get on with your piano practice, like your mother told you.”
And that was that. There was no getting any more out of her.
THE DOOR JUMPER
Polly
I went right up to the attic after school the next day. I was half-afraid that Rose wouldn’t be there, that she really was a ghost, or that I’d just imagined it all.
The Swallow Page 4