The Swallow

by Charis Cotter

  “There is a ghost in your attic. And it’s not me.”

  She looked at me, eyes wide.

  “Who is it, Rose?” she whispered.

  PRETENDING

  Polly

  Rose looked so frightened and so sad, telling me about this other ghost. Her hands were shaking in mine.

  “Don’t be scared, Rose,” I said. “If it’s another entity I’m sure you can handle it. You were so brave with Winnie, and—”

  “No, it’s not another entity, Polly,” she said, and then she sort of gulped like she couldn’t get the next part out.

  “Then who is it?” I asked, looking around the attic. “There’s nobody here, just us.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Just us. You and me. And it’s not me.”

  I stared at her.

  “What do you mean?”

  She swallowed. “I’m sorry, Polly. You got sick, it was bad. It was meningitis, and I had it too. It’s horrible. All kinds of kids died in the city last year. You didn’t come back from the hospital.”

  “But I did come back. I’m here. What are you talking about? Are you trying to scare me?” I had a strange, fluttering feeling in my stomach.

  She shook her head. “No, Polly, I’m not. I have to tell you. You see, you’ve just been hanging around, not realizing—not realizing that you are … a ghost … and pretending—pretending—”

  “I’m not pretending!” I shouted at her, dropping her hands. “I talk to my parents every day. I go to school. I eat chocolate cake. I’m not a ghost! Why are you doing this?”

  “Think, Polly. When was the last time you talked to your mother?”

  “Yesterday. I came home with the twins from the library, and she told them they had to get ready for Cubs and—”

  “That wasn’t yesterday. That was Friday, the day before yesterday. Did she talk to you? What did she say?”

  “Well, no, she didn’t say much, but—”

  “Polly, you’ve got to understand this. You died. You weren’t ready to die, so you stayed around, but nobody can see you. Nobody but me and the twins. Think. Has anyone else said anything to you this week? Anything?”

  The fluttering in my stomach was turning into something heavy, like I was going to throw up, and I was getting very cold. I tried to think. I remembered listening to people, but I couldn’t remember anyone speaking to me.

  “Wait a minute. Susie spoke to me. She called me ‘Olly,’ and I didn’t even know she could talk.”

  “That’s because she’s just learned how to talk. Six months ago, when you died, she was just a baby.”

  “But she saw me!”

  “Lots of babies see ghosts, Polly. Look, your mother told us last night. She came over because of the library book, because she thought I stole it, and then she broke down and told us you died, and how much she missed you, and she was heartbroken. Polly, she does love you, and your dad too, and now they are so unhappy and they’d give anything to have you back.”

  “Really?” I said. “But I don’t understand. I don’t feel dead.”

  “Don’t you?” said Rose, looking at me very intently. “Don’t you, Polly?”

  Rose

  “I do remember … being sick,” said Polly slowly. “It all came back to me the other day, when I was waiting for you, watching by the window. I don’t know why I forgot all that. I had such a bad headache, and everything hurt, and then it was all white for a long time, and then …”

  She had been telling me this with a strange, distracted look on her face, like she was somewhere else, but then she stopped and focused on me.

  “And then I came home and everything was the same, Rose, everything was just like normal, and the twins were bugging me, and Susie was taking over my room, and I went to school and came home and did my homework, and I heard you singing in the attic, and all that stuff happened with Winnie. How could I be dead, Rose? Wouldn’t I know that I was dead?”

  “No,” I said, taking her hand again. If anything, it was even colder now. “You weren’t ready to be dead, Polly, so you stayed, and you found me, and I could see you, because I can see ghosts. And you came to me for help, like all the other ghosts do, only I didn’t know you were a ghost. You fooled me as well as yourself, and I didn’t know until your mother told me. And I don’t want to lose you, Polly, and I don’t want you to believe you’re a ghost, I want you to stay and be my friend. But it’s not going to happen. You have to go where you belong. You have to say good-bye and you have to go. Like Winnie. You’re not meant to be here anymore.”

  I was crying my head off now, and Polly put her arms around me and hugged me. I could feel her heart beating against mine, but she was so cold, and she felt like she was made of brittle bones, like a bird’s skeleton.

  “It’s okay,” she said, patting me on the back. “It’s okay, Rose, don’t cry.”

  THE GIFT

  Polly

  Rose looked at me through her tears.

  “I’m sorry, Polly,” she gasped. “I’m so sorry.”

  “I just don’t understand,” I said slowly. “It seems impossible. I do feel a bit weird, like I’m getting the flu or something. And I can’t remember things. But dead? How can this be dead?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know, Polly. I don’t understand either. You always seemed more alive than anybody to me. But it’s true. I heard your mother say it, and the twins told me as well. I think … I think once you understand it, you’ll be able to go.”

  “Go?” I cried. “Go? Go where? I don’t want to go, Rose, I want to stay. I want to stay here with you and my family. I don’t want to be dead. It’s horrible, it’s not fair, I can’t do it, Rose, you’ve got to make it stop.” I clutched at her shawl and she shook her head again.

  “I can’t make it stop, Polly. It’s going to happen; it’s happening already. Look at your hands.”

  I looked down at my hands on her shawl and they didn’t look right. They were white and I could almost see through them.

  “No,” I cried, “I can’t just fade away into nothing. I won’t! I refuse!” I jumped to my feet and stumbled over to the trapdoor.

  “Where are you going?” Rose called out.

  “I’m going to find my mother,” I said, lowering myself through the door. “She’ll make it stop.”

  I flung myself down the ladder from the loft and burst into my room. My mother was there, getting Susie up from her nap.

  “Mum!” I said. “Mum.”

  She didn’t turn around. She just kept talking to Susie, who was standing up in her crib, hanging on to the rail.

  “Olly,” said Susie, looking at me and smiling. “Olly.”

  “Oh, Susie,” sighed my mother. “Why have you suddenly started saying that? Did the twins teach you to say Polly’s name?”

  “Mum!” I yelled, coming up behind her and tugging on her sweater. “Mum, can’t you hear me?”

  She gave a little shrug, as if she had an itch on her back, and lifted Susie out of the crib. “Come on, let’s change your diaper,” she said and laid her on my bed.

  “Oh, Mum, how many times have I told you, I hate it when you change her diaper in here. It makes my room so smelly …”

  But she didn’t hear me. She kept right on changing Susie.

  I circled round to look at her.

  “Mum!” I yelled. “Can’t you see me?”

  “Olly,” said Susie.

  My mother didn’t even blink. She looked tired, and sadder than I’d ever seen her look.

  “Polly’s gone,” she said to Susie. “She’s gone.” And then she sat down on the bed and started to cry.

  I hated it when my mother cried. She hardly ever cried in front of us, but when she did it always felt as if the world was coming to an end.

  I sat down beside her.

  “Don’t cry, Mum,” I said, tears falling down my own cheeks. “I’m right here. I’m not gone yet. Don’t cry.”

  “Polly,” she said, but her eyes looked right throu
gh me. “Polly, I miss you so much.”

  Susie looked at us curiously. “Olly!” she said again.

  “I’m scared, Mum,” I said, leaning my head against her shoulder. “I’m so scared.”

  I sat with her for a long, long time. Gradually she stopped crying.

  “My little Polly,” she murmured. “My sweet girl.”

  “Pat?” came my father’s voice from the doorway. “Pat, are you okay?”

  She stood up and wiped her eyes.

  “Yes, I’m fine, Ned. It just came over me, all of a sudden. It’s funny, though, sometimes I feel that Polly is here, in this room.”

  He came in and looked around. His glance passed right over me.

  “I think you’re right,” he said. “I’m glad we’ve left everything the way it was.” He sighed.

  “I must get on,” said my mother, picking up Susie. “Lucy said she’d take Susie for a walk, and I promised the boys I’d make some oatmeal cookies.” She bustled out.

  My father stepped over to the shelves and took down a book. It was The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, by C.S. Lewis. He used to read to me when I was younger, and that was one of our favorites. He sat down on the bed and opened it, flipping through. Then he closed it and shut his eyes.

  “Polly,” he said in a ragged voice I’d never heard from him before. “Polly. Where are you?”

  “Here,” I said, slipping my hand into his and giving it a squeeze. “I’m right here, Dad.”

  He just kept sitting there with his eyes shut, making no sign that he heard me. Then he made the sign of the cross across his chest. “Go in peace, Polly. Rest in peace.”

  Rose

  I curled up under Polly’s blankets in the corner by the wall. I thought she’d probably come back soon. I closed my eyes and fell asleep.

  I dreamed of the ocean. Vast, blue, stretching in all directions. I was lying on a raft, bobbing gently up and down as the water rolled beneath me. The sky was a brighter blue above me, and the sun felt warm on my skin. A sense of peace stole over me, and I felt that I would be happy to go on floating like that forever, buoyed up by the deep water below me, cradled by the rocking waves, warmed by the sun.

  Suddenly Polly was there beside me on the raft. She smiled at me and gave a big sigh.

  “This is the life,” she said, and then I woke up.

  Polly was sitting beside me in the attic, her head leaning against the wall.

  “Polly,” I said, struggling to sit up. “Are you okay? Did you find your mother?”

  She nodded. “She couldn’t see me,” she whispered. “Neither could Dad. You’re right.”

  She was paler than ever.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. I really didn’t know what to say. I had a pain in my throat.

  “I’m scared, Rose,” she said in a small voice. “I don’t know what’s going to happen. I want my mother. But she can’t see me! I don’t want to go. I want everything back the way it was, the Horrors and my awful sisters and the baby taking my room and everything. I want it all back.”

  She clung to me.

  I could barely speak. “Polly, I wish I could give you everything back, but I can’t. All I know is that wherever you’re going, it won’t hurt anymore.”

  “But it hurts now,” she cried. “It hurts too much.”

  I stroked her hair, the way the old lady had stroked mine, and I patted her back, and she cried.

  Time seemed to stand still. I was aware of her frail body and her tears. I was aware of the attic walls around us, and outside, the sky going on and on. The cemetery. The world turning. I didn’t want the moment to end. I willed it not to end.

  But eventually she stopped crying. And then she sat up and looked at me. She smiled. It was a ghost of the old Polly smile, but it was still there.

  “Don’t cry, Rose,” she said. “You’re right. We can’t do anything about it.”

  “If you’d never met me,” I said miserably, “you’d be able to stay. You wouldn’t know you were dead.”

  She sat forward. “But it wouldn’t have been any good. I would have just got lonelier and more unhappy, thinking that nobody loved me because nobody ever talked to me. If not for you I’d have been drifting forever. Can’t you see, Rose? I was meant to meet you. You were the only one who could help me get through this. Just like you were the only one who could help Winnie. You have the most wonderful gift, Rose, and you don’t realize it.”

  It didn’t feel like a gift. Right at that moment it felt like the most terrible curse. To make a friend like Polly, and then to lose her. What kind of a gift was that?

  “Don’t go,” I said, starting to cry again. “Stay. Don’t leave me.”

  She put her arms around me. They were light and almost weightless, like the touch of feathers.

  “I’ll miss you so much,” I said. “You’ve been such a good friend to me, and I’ve had so much fun with you. You’re—you’re the best ghost I ever met.”

  I could feel her starting to shake. I pulled back from her embrace, and then I realized she was laughing.

  “That’s a really silly thing to say, Rose,” she said, and then I started laughing too.

  Finally we wiped our eyes and looked at each other.

  “I’ll never forget you, Polly,” I said.

  “Me neither,” she replied. Her face looked translucent, and it seemed like there was a white glow spreading inside her, lighting her up from within.

  “Good-bye, Rose,” she said softly.

  “Good-bye, Polly,” I said, and watched as the light surrounded her and then faded away.

  I was alone again.

  TOAST

  Rose

  Life went on without Polly. Every day got shorter as October moved slowly towards Halloween. I wore the shawl all the time, except at school. I felt the kindness of the old lady, my great-grandmother, wrapping around me whenever I wore it.

  I missed Polly more than I could say. She was the only friend I’d ever had. I wanted her back.

  The things she said to me in the attic that last Sunday kept rattling around in my head. She had always behaved as if it was really cool that I could see ghosts, and I thought that was because she didn’t understand how scary it was. But she was right about Winnie and my father. Winnie didn’t exactly stop being scary once I helped her, but she did go away. And Polly—well, I guess I helped her to go too, although everything in me had wanted her to stay.

  All this time I had thought that ghosts wanted me to make them alive again, but maybe they wanted something quite different.

  At least I didn’t have to worry anymore about my parents sending me away, like Winnie. I wanted to talk to my father about Polly, but I couldn’t. Not yet. I was too used to not talking. And even though they said things were going to change, so far nothing much was different. I still came home from school most days to an empty house, with Kendrick lurking in the kitchen and giving me dirty looks. My parents did try talking to me at breakfast a few times, but it was all rather awkward.

  One morning, just before Halloween, I was sitting draped in my purple shawl, poking at my porridge, while my parents read the paper and the Breakfast Ghost looked longingly at my toast.

  “Rose,” said my mother suddenly.

  I jumped. “Yes?”

  “Yesterday I had a little visit with Pat Lacey, next door. I dropped in after work.”

  “You did?” I asked, amazed.

  “Yes, she asked me to. She felt so bad about the night she came over and accused you and got so upset. She wanted to apologize. She’s a very nice woman, I have to say—down-to-earth, energetic. And her husband, Ned, breezed in just before I left, and he was quite charming, and he was full of apologies too, for his argument with your father when we moved in, remember? About the parking?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, we all started out on the wrong foot. They are a perfectly good family, and they’ve been through such a hard time this last year, I really feel for them. Pat and I put our heads tog
ether and we’ve come up with a plan.”

  My heart sank.

  “She wants to offer you a little part-time babysitting job. She needs help with Susie around dinnertime on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Her girls are all busy with school activities those days, and it’s hard for her to get the dinner made with the little boys running around and Susie demanding attention. So she thought you could come over after school, help out with Susie, and then stay on for supper with their family.”

  My mother looked at me as if she expected me to say something.

  I didn’t. I was too busy trying to sort out whether I was mad or interested.

  “Well, Rose?” she said with a little twitch that meant I had had long enough to consider my answer.

  “Are you just palming me off on them because you and Father still don’t have time for me?”

  I could see her counting to five before answering. Not ten. That would take too long.

  “That’s rather an unfortunate attitude, Rose,” she said, finally. “I’m just being practical. Your father and I are doing our best to free up more time to be at home. But it’s complicated, and it’s not going to happen overnight. Meanwhile, you could do with the company of other children, and Pat really could use the help.”

  She had me and she knew it.

  “Okay,” I said with a shrug, and I ate a spoonful of porridge. The Breakfast Ghost sighed.

  I broke off a piece of toast, spread it with marmalade and pushed it over to him. My mother had gone back to her paper. But my father was watching me.

  “Take it,” I whispered fiercely to the ghost. “Take it, if you can.”

  For a moment the ghost was so startled he didn’t do anything. Then he reached out carefully and brought the toast to his lips and took a big bite.

  FLIGHTS OF ANGELS

  Rose

  I clutched the purple shawl close around my shoulders, under my cloak. It was cold, with a smell of snow in the air. It was two days after Halloween, and I was going to the cemetery to look for Polly’s grave.

  Mrs. Lacey had told me where to find it. I had been over to their house to help with Susie on Halloween, and, I have to admit, I’d had fun. Polly’s family was exactly the way she described it: Lucy was stuck-up and snobby and used a lot of big words, Moo was drippy and Goo was caked with makeup, and everyone talked at once and the Horrors were dressed up as pirates and doing a lot of jumping around and yelling. Their noisy dinnertime seemed like a circus compared to my quiet suppers in our empty dining room. Mr. Lacey was going on about the origins of Halloween and how today was called All Soul’s Day, the day to pray for the spirits of the dead.