The Swallow

by Charis Cotter

  She grabbed her coat and we slipped away. Soon we were heading up Parliament Street, past the scuzzy storefronts, Woolworth’s, Woman’s Bakery … I looked longingly at the heaps of fresh buns, cookies and tarts in the window of the bakery, but Rose dragged me past it.

  “The key, remember?” she said.

  We turned down Winchester, crossing the street so we wouldn’t have to walk past the Winchester Hotel. Rose moved quickly, casting nervous glances over her shoulder.

  “Ghosts?” I inquired.

  “Mmm,” she replied. “You don’t want to know what just came out of the hotel behind that guy with the filthy coat …”

  Eeek.

  Rose

  What I saw coming out of the Winchester Hotel behind the tottering, boozy man in the long dirty coat was actually just another staggering drunk in a filthy coat, but both he and his coat hailed from a time when Victoria was Queen of England. Drunken ghosts didn’t bother me much, but Winchester Street, lined with ancient, ramshackle rooming houses, had the distinct aura of a place where any number of questionable ghosts could appear at any moment.

  Our way home led past the cemetery, but I knew a way to avoid it. I ducked down a side street and led Polly through a couple of back alleys that brought us to the corner of Sumach and Amelia. Our street was quiet. No ghosts. We stopped in front of Polly’s house.

  “You’re not coming in with me,” I said. “It’s too dangerous. I can’t predict what the Door Jumper will do.”

  “But—” Polly began.

  “NO!” I said. “I told you this morning. We’re not risking it.”

  “But I want to be there if you find the key. I want to see what’s in the box,” she pleaded. “Come on, Rose!”

  “Polly—”

  She clutched my arm. “Promise you won’t open it without me, Rose. Promise!”

  I tried to shake her off but she held firm.

  “Oh, all right,” I said finally. “Let’s meet up in the attic after supper and I’ll let you know if I’ve found the key. Then we can figure out where and when we can open it.”

  “Okay, but no peeking!” She flashed me a huge grin and ran into her house.

  THE HIDDEN DOOR

  Polly

  After supper I slipped quietly up to my room. It was the twins’ turn to help with the dishes, so all they could do was give me dirty looks as they cleared the table. I shut my bedroom door carefully, climbed up the ladder to the luggage loft and hoisted myself through the trapdoor into the attic.

  I called out for Rose but there was no answer, so I curled up under the blanket and waited. You’d think if she’d found the blasted key she’d have come up right away so we could open the box. But maybe one of her parents had come home, or she had to practice the piano or something.

  It was pretty boring sitting there. I flicked the flashlight around but the beam was so weak that I couldn’t see much. Then I got up and started tapping the wall between the two attics. Don’t know why. Except people always tapped walls in books and that’s how they found secret passages.

  I didn’t discover anything except that a few spiders had lived there in years gone by. Sticky bits of spiderweb clung to my hand. I took a step back, turning the light up to the very top of the wall near the roof.

  That’s when I fell. I think I tripped on something, maybe The Ghastly Ghost at My Gate, which I’d forgotten about ever since that first time I heard Rose. I went sprawling and the light swung wildly across the room. I hit the floor with a thump, then I kind of bounced a couple of times. I hurt my head. And my back. And my leg, which twisted underneath me.

  The cone of light from the flashlight came to rest, casting a sickly yellow glow into the far corner of the attic. I sat up with a groan, and as I bent to pick up the flashlight, I glanced along the path of light to the corner. The wall was different there. Strips of crisscrossed wood formed an X, framed by a square.

  I took the light over to examine it more closely. I ran my fingers over the wood, then pulled.

  The square of wall swung towards me. Beyond was darkness.

  Rose

  Kendrick stood just inside the front hall, glaring at me.

  “You’re late, and your supper is ready,” she said with a disapproving sniff, then turned on her heel and disappeared into the kitchen.

  My supper was laid out in the dining room, as usual. I picked at the chicken, had a few bites of mashed potatoes and left the peas. I tried a spoonful of chocolate pudding. It was surprisingly good, so I had another spoonful. And another. I was nearly at the bottom of the bowl when I realized what was happening—I was enjoying it! Was Polly’s love affair with food rubbing off on me? I’d never finished a dessert before.

  I headed into Father’s study, thinking about the key. The room had a faint odor of damp wool, leather and books that reminded me of him. I sat down on his desk chair and spun slowly around. The books, the dark paintings, the old armchair by the fire all rotated past me. I spun a little faster, making them blur.

  Winnifred had been in this very room, with her father. Perhaps she had spun in this chair. Perhaps she had breathed in that very booky smell and missed him too when he was away. I stopped myself by grabbing the desk and the room spun on for a moment or two and then straightened. I pulled opened the desk drawer.

  Pens, erasers, pencils, a stack of creamy letter paper with crinkly edges, matching envelopes, a bottle of ink, some elastic bands, paper clips … all very tidy. Probably Grandfather’s. I’d never seen my father use a fountain pen. But there were no stray keys.

  I made a quick search of the other drawers in the desk but found nothing but files and papers. Then I got up and began examining the bookshelves. They looked normal, with an occasional framed photograph or small decorated box breaking up the long straight lines of books. None of the boxes held a key, and none of the photographs had a key taped to the back.

  So where would someone hide a key in a room like this? Polly had said something about a false book, which seemed unlikely. Even if it was possible, how was I to know which book was false?

  I went back to the desk and got down on the floor under the desk to see if I could find a secret compartment behind the drawer, but there was nothing, just the frame of the desk. I tucked up my legs and sat there for a while. I used to sit under my father’s desk like that at the old house.

  My tummy was very full of supper and I was feeling a bit sleepy. I closed my eyes.

  I didn’t fall asleep. I know I didn’t. I just closed my eyes. But the room felt suddenly darker and I heard a rushing sound, like a train going by, and a long, agonized scream tore out of someone, and I was falling again, falling, and then it was me inside the scream, and I was calling for my father but he was too far away to ever hear me.

  I jerked as I opened my eyes with a start and banged my head against the top of the desk. I crawled out and got to my feet, wondering if I had screamed out loud and if Kendrick would burst in, and I was turning towards the door when I stopped dead in my tracks.

  Someone was sitting in the armchair by the fire.

  THE SECRET PASSAGE

  Polly

  A door. A small door, to be sure, but nevertheless, a door.

  I felt a bit like Alice in Wonderland bending down and peering in the door she was too big to get through. This door was about a foot and a half square. I flashed the light in, but all it revealed was the sloping roof meeting the floor.

  I sat back on my heels and used the flashlight to examine this wall again. The roof angled down from the peak to about two feet above the floor, where it cut away and went straight down to meet the floor. I poked my head carefully inside the door and looked around the corner. There was a small passageway leading away into darkness. The builders must have wanted to close the attic off from the eaves.

  But how far did it go? Could I possibly get into Rose’s attic this way? Could I even fit?

  I went back to the adjoining wall.

  “Rose!” I called out. “Ro
se!”

  No answer.

  I went back to the door. If only there’d been a little bottle labeled “Drink Me,” I could have shrunk myself down and made the whole thing a lot easier.

  I took off my bulky sweater, gripped the flashlight firmly in my hand and crawled in.

  It smelled different from the attic: a moldy, animal smell. I wondered if there were mice in there … or maybe something bigger, like a squirrel or a raccoon. I banged the flashlight against the wall a couple of times.

  “Get lost, mice!” I called out. “Big scary person coming!”

  I found I couldn’t actually crawl on my hands and knees. I had to lie on my stomach and wriggle. I wished I hadn’t had that second helping of mashed potatoes and gravy at supper. It was a tight fit.

  It’s hard to tell distance in the dark, especially when you’re lying down and can’t exactly measure by footsteps. But I got to about where I thought my house should end, and the passage kept on going. My flashlight sent out a dim yellow beam, and I could see only about three feet ahead. I carefully hauled myself along a little farther and then stopped and listened.

  If I was in Rose’s house now, I had no way of telling. All was silent, except for that distant hum of the city I could hear in my own attic. I lay still for a moment.

  A strange feeling of peace descended on me. I was neither here nor there, and the world was going on without me. No one, absolutely no one, knew where I was. I felt tired and oddly warm there, squeezed under the roof. I could almost have drifted off to sleep, wrapped in the house, letting everything melt away into the dark.

  I opened my eyes with a jerk. It was dark. Very dark. My flashlight had gone out.

  Rose

  It was my grandfather. He had died before I was born, but I knew him at once. There was a picture of him in a silver frame on the mantelpiece in the living room. He wore the same three-piece suit, with a gold watch chain linked across his vest and a stiff white shirt and dark tie. He had the same head of slightly wild gray hair. And the same stern, unsmiling expression on his face. But there were tears rolling down his cheeks.

  I’d seen so many ghosts—some scary, some harmless, some funny—but all of them sad. Yet somehow, this one was the saddest. The feeling of grief weighed down the room, and I felt I could barely lift my foot to take a step towards him.

  But I did. I had turned my back on ghost after despairing ghost. Ghost toddlers with pleading eyes, weeping women, frightened children, heartbroken old men—I had resisted them all. This one was different. My father’s eyes stared at me from beneath my grandfather’s bushy eyebrows, and his nose and mouth were strangely familiar. I realized with a shock it was because he looked like me.

  “Grandfather?” I said, taking another step. “Grandfather? Don’t cry.”

  Adults aren’t supposed to cry. At least, not around children. I found I was completely unable to bear the tears of this stern, forbidding old ghost. Even though I had never met him alive, he was part of me. I bent down and took his hand. It felt bony and cool.

  “Don’t cry,” I said again, peering into his face.

  He looked at me then, but his eyes didn’t focus.

  “Winnie,” he whispered, his voice cracking. “Winnie, I’m sorry. Forgive me.”

  “NEVER!”

  The scream seemed to echo off the walls and around the house, as if a tornado swept into the room and then tore off over the cemetery. I didn’t see Winnie but I knew it was her.

  THE WHITE HAND

  Polly

  Backwards or forwards? I could wriggle backwards into my own attic and find some new batteries, maybe, and come back.

  But I was so close. Maybe there was a door in Rose’s attic like mine. She had said she’d come up after supper, so she’d be there soon. Maybe she had found the key and we could open the box together.

  I crawled on. The floor was rough and scratchy beneath me. I was probably collecting a few slivers through my shirt. But I had to be nearly at the end by now.

  Finally, my groping hand hit something ahead. The end of the house. I turned on my side and ran my fingers over the wall, looking for the door, pushing.

  Nothing gave. I backed up a bit and pushed some more. The wall was solid.

  Maybe there wasn’t a door. For some reason this thought made me panic, and for the first time I felt the space closing in on me, and I had trouble catching my breath. I pushed blindly at the wall.

  “Rose!” I called out. “Rose!”

  Something moved under my fists, very slightly, and I threw all my weight at it.

  “Rose!” I shouted, and the wall moved. Only a couple of inches, but I wedged my feet against the eaves and pushed with all my might and it edged open. I was just beginning to squeeze myself through the opening when I was suddenly struck with a splash of icy coldness that took my breath away, the way you feel when you jump into a freezing cold northern lake. As I gasped for air, I heard a rushing in my ears and a kind of hissing whisper.

  “You are dead!” said a voice full of hatred.

  Fingers of ice closed around my throat and the darkness grew even blacker. I tried to call out “Rose!” again, but my words were choked off and I winked into nothing.

  Rose

  My grandfather looked me right in the eyes.

  “You’ve got to help her,” he said and disappeared.

  Just then I thought I heard Polly calling me. The room was silent and empty. Her voice seemed to be inside my head.

  “Rose!” she called desperately.

  I felt, rather than saw, Polly struggling for her life, choking, drowning, going down.

  She was in the attic. I don’t know how I knew, but I did. I ran up the stairs two at a time, burst through my grandmother’s closed bedroom door and hurled myself into the closet and up the ladder.

  I grabbed for the lamp and turned it on. There was no one there—the cardboard boxes were in a heap by the wall, my little nest of cushions on the stuffed chair looked undisturbed.

  “Rose!” I heard Polly calling again in my head, from a long, long way away. Where could she be? I waded into the boxes and started pushing them aside. I stepped on something squishy and, to my horror, I realized it was a small, white hand. I pushed away the last boxes.

  Polly was lying half in and half out of the wall, from which a square had somehow fallen open. Her face was white as clay.

  “She’s dead,” came a voice behind me, and I whirled to see the girl in the long buttoned black dress. She was standing by the lamp, her hair lit up from behind. Her eyes were shadowed, but I had the strangest impression that I was looking at myself.

  “No she isn’t!” I yelled and fell to my knees. Polly felt cold to my touch.

  I had learned mouth-to-mouth resuscitation at summer camp. I tipped Polly’s head back, checked her mouth for obstructions and then breathed into her, turning my head between breaths to see if her chest was rising. Counting each breath, in and out.

  It was textbook. I was good at it. I had won a badge.

  Behind me I could feel the ghost watching.

  “She’s dead,” she said again, a note of triumph in her voice. “You’re wasting your time, you fool.”

  I took no notice and continued to breathe into Polly. I had never had a friend before. I wasn’t going to lose her.

  PART THREE

  THE CURSE

  Out flew the web and floated wide;

  The mirror cracked from side to side;

  “The curse is come upon me,” cried

  The Lady of Shalott.

  ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON, “THE LADY OF SHALOTT”

  BREATH

  Polly

  Everything was blank. Empty. I was very, very cold. But I couldn’t see anything. I tried to lift my hand up in front of my face, but for some reason I couldn’t move. I felt frozen. I tried to call out, but no words formed. Why couldn’t I see? Was this a dream? Was I sick? I remembered a headache, a cool hand on my forehead.

  I wanted my mother. A
wave of longing for her swept over me. Why didn’t she come?

  Far away, someone was calling my name. I felt a whisper of something warm tickling inside my chest. Then pain shot through me as I took a breath.

  Rose

  I felt her start to breathe again. A tiny shudder. Then she was coughing and spluttering and trying to sit up. She looked scared.

  I sat back on my heels.

  “You’re okay, Polly,” I said. But she was looking at something over my shoulder.

  I whirled around.

  “I tell you,” said the furious ghost in the black buttoned dress. “She is dead.”

  “No, she isn’t,” I spat at her. “You are! You get out of here and never come back. You’re not wanted, you never were. Nobody loves you and nobody ever will. Don’t you ever attack my friend again. If you do, I swear I’ll—”

  “What?” sneered the ghost. “Kill me?”

  “YES!” I screamed and rushed towards her. She vanished.

  MIRROR IMAGE

  Polly

  It was so weird. I woke up in the attic, coughing, and there was Rose with a white face leaning over me, and behind her I could see another girl who looked just like her, all dressed in black, and then Rose leaped to her feet and the two of them were arguing back and forth. It was like watching someone fighting with their image in a mirror. Then Rose screamed and the other girl disappeared.

  I tried to get up but I was all wobbly. Rose came over and knelt down beside me.

  “Are you okay, Polly?” she whispered.

  “Yes, but—”

  “She tried to kill you,” Rose went on. “How did you get up here? I told you it was dangerous. Did you sneak in the front door?”

  I tried to tell her about the passage, but I had another fit of coughing and so I just waved at the wall. The little door hung open, revealing a small black square.