The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories by Women (Mammoth Books)

by Marie O'Regan

  Mrs John Emerson, sitting with her needlework beside the window, looked out and saw Mrs Rhoda Meserve coming down the street, and knew at once by the trend of her steps and the cant of her head that she meditated turning in at her gate. She also knew by a certain something about her general carriage – a thrusting forward of the neck, a bustling hitch of the shoulders – that she had important news. Rhoda Meserve always had the news as soon as the news was in being, and generally Mrs John Emerson was the first to whom she imparted it. The two women had been friends ever since Mrs Meserve had married Simon Meserve and come to the village to live.

  Mrs Meserve was a pretty woman, moving with graceful flirts of ruffling skirts; her clear-cut, nervous face, as delicately tinted as a shell, looked brightly from the plumy brim of a black hat at Mrs Emerson in the window. Mrs Emerson was glad to see her coming. She returned the greeting with enthusiasm, then rose hurriedly, ran into the cold parlour and brought out one of the best rocking chairs. She was just in time, after drawing it up beside the opposite window, to greet her friend at the door.

  “Good afternoon,” said she. “I declare, I’m real glad to see you. I’ve been alone all day. John went to the city this morning. I thought of coming over to your house this afternoon, but I couldn’t bring my sewing very well. I am putting the ruffles on my new black dress skirt.”

  “Well, I didn’t have a thing on hand except my crochet work,” responded Mrs Meserve, “and I thought I’d just run over a few minutes.”

  “I’m real glad you did,” repeated Mrs Emerson. “Take your things right off. Here, I’ll put them on my bed in the bedroom. Take the rocking chair.”

  Mrs Meserve settled herself in the parlour rocking chair, while Mrs Emerson carried her shawl and hat into the little adjoining bedroom. When she returned Mrs Meserve was rocking peacefully and was already at work hooking blue wool in and out.

  “That’s real pretty,” said Mrs Emerson.

  “Yes, I think it’s pretty,” replied Mrs Meserve.

  “I suppose it’s for the church fair?”

  “Yes. I don’t suppose it’ll bring enough to pay for the worsted, let alone the work, but I suppose I’ve got to make something.”

  “How much did that one you made for the fair last year bring?”

  “Twenty-five cents.”

  “It’s wicked, ain’t it?”

  “I rather guess it is. It takes me a week every minute I can get to make one. I wish those that bought such things for twenty-five cents had to make them. Guess they’d sing another song. Well, I suppose I oughtn’t to complain as long as it is for the Lord, but sometimes it does seem as if the Lord didn’t get much out of it.”

  “Well, it’s pretty work,” said Mrs Emerson, sitting down at the opposite window and taking up her dress skirt.

  “Yes, it is real pretty work. I just love to crochet.”

  The two women rocked and sewed and crocheted in silence for two or three minutes. They were both waiting. Mrs Meserve waited for the other’s curiosity to develop in order that her news might have, as it were, a befitting stage entrance. Mrs Emerson waited for the news. Finally she could wait no longer.

  “Well, what’s the news?” said she.

  “Well, I don’t know as there’s anything very particular,” hedged the other woman, prolonging the situation.

  “Yes, there is; you can’t cheat me,” replied Mrs Emerson.

  “Now, how do you know?”

  “By the way you look.”

  Mrs Meserve laughed consciously and rather vainly.

  “Well, Simon says my face is so expressive I can’t hide anything more than five minutes no matter how hard I try,” said she. “Well, there is some news. Simon came home with it this noon. He heard it in South Dayton. He had some business over there this morning. The old Sargent place is let.”

  Mrs Emerson dropped her sewing and stared.

  “You don’t say so!”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Who to?”

  “Why, some folks from Boston that moved to South Dayton last year. They haven’t been satisfied with the house they had there – it wasn’t large enough. The man has got considerable property and can afford to live pretty well. He’s got a wife and his unmarried sister in the family. The sister’s got money, too. He does business in Boston and it’s just as easy to get to Boston from here as from South Dayton, and so they’re coming here. You know the old Sargent house is a splendid place.”

  “Yes, it’s the handsomest house in town, but—”

  “Oh, Simon said they told him about that and he just laughed. Said he wasn’t afraid and neither was his wife and sister. Said he’d risk ghosts rather than little tucked-up sleeping-rooms without any sun, like they’ve had in the Dayton house. Said he’d rather risk seeing ghosts, than risk being ghosts themselves. Simon said they said he was a great hand to joke.”

  “Oh, well,” said Mrs Emerson, “it is a beautiful house, and maybe there isn’t anything in those stories. It never seemed to me they came very straight anyway. I never took much stock in them. All I thought was – if his wife was nervous.”

  “Nothing in creation would hire me to go into a house that I’d ever heard a word against of that kind,” declared Mrs Meserve with emphasis. “I wouldn’t go into that house if they would give me the rent. I’ve seen enough of haunted houses to last me as long as I live.”

  Mrs Emerson’s face acquired the expression of a hunting hound.

  “Have you?” she asked in an intense whisper.

  “Yes, I have. I don’t want any more of it.”

  “Before you came here?”

  “Yes; before I was married – when I was quite a girl.”

  Mrs Meserve had not married young. Mrs Emerson had mental calculations when she heard that.

  “Did you really live in a house that was—” she whispered fearfully. Mrs Meserve nodded solemnly.

  “Did you really ever – see – anything?”

  Mrs Meserve nodded.

  “You didn’t see anything that did you any harm?”

  “No, I didn’t see anything that did me harm looking at it in one way, but it don’t do anybody in this world any good to see things that haven’t any business to be seen in it. You never get over it.”

  There was a moment’s silence. Mrs Emerson’s features seemed to sharpen.

  “Well, of course I don’t want to urge you,” said she, “if you don’t feel like talking about it; but maybe it might do you good to tell it out, if it’s on your mind, worrying you.”

  “I try to put it out of my mind,” said Mrs Meserve.

  “Well, it’s just as you feel.”

  “I never told anybody but Simon,” said Mrs Meserve. “I never felt as if it was wise perhaps. I didn’t know what folks might think. So many don’t believe in anything they can’t understand, that they might think my mind wasn’t right. Simon advised me not to talk about it. He said he didn’t believe it was anything supernatural, but he had to own up that he couldn’t give any explanation for it to save his life. He had to own up that he didn’t believe anybody could. Then he said he wouldn’t talk about it. He said lots of folks would sooner tell folks my head wasn’t right than to own up they couldn’t see through it.”

  “I’m sure I wouldn’t say so,” returned Mrs Emerson reproachfully. “You know better than that, I hope.”

  “Yes, I do,” replied Mrs Meserve. “I know you wouldn’t say so.”

  “And I wouldn’t tell it to a soul if you didn’t want me to.”

  “Well, I’d rather you wouldn’t.”

  “I won’t speak of it even to Mr Emerson.”

  “I’d rather you wouldn’t even to him.”

  “I won’t.”

  Mrs Emerson took up her dress skirt again; Mrs Meserve hooked up another loop of blue wool. Then she began:

  “Of course,” said she, “I ain’t going to say positively that I believe or disbelieve in ghosts, but all I tell you is what I saw. I can’t explain
it. I don’t pretend I can, for I can’t. If you can, well and good; I shall be glad, for it will stop tormenting me as it has done and always will otherwise. There hasn’t been a day nor a night since it happened that I haven’t thought of it, and always I have felt the shivers go down my back when I did.”

  “That’s an awful feeling,” Mrs Emerson said.

  “Ain’t it? Well, it happened before I was married, when I was a girl and lived in East Wilmington. It was the first year I lived there. You know my family all died five years before that. I told you.”

  Mrs Emerson nodded.

  “Well, I went there to teach school, and I went to board with a Mrs Amelia Dennison and her sister, Mrs Bird. Abby, her name was – Abby Bird. She was a widow; she had never had any children. She had a little money – Mrs Dennison didn’t have any – and she had come to East Wilmington and bought the house they lived in. It was a real pretty house, though it was very old and run down. It had cost Mrs Bird a good deal to put it in order. I guess that was the reason they took me to board. I guess they thought it would help along a little. I guess what I paid for my board about kept us all in victuals. Mrs Bird had enough to live on if they were careful, but she had spent so much fixing up the old house that they must have been a little pinched for awhile.

  “Anyhow, they took me to board, and I thought I was pretty lucky to get in there. I had a nice room, big and sunny and furnished pretty, the paper and paint all new, and everything as neat as wax. Mrs Dennison was one of the best cooks I ever saw, and I had a little stove in my room, and there was always a nice fire there when I got home from school. I thought I hadn’t been in such a nice place since I lost my own home, until I had been there about three weeks.

  “I had been there about three weeks before I found it out, though I guess it had been going on ever since they had been in the house, and that was most four months. They hadn’t said anything about it, and I didn’t wonder, for there they had just bought the house and been to so much expense and trouble fixing it up.

  “Well, I went there in September. I began my school the first Monday. I remember it was a real cold fall, there was a frost the middle of September, and I had to put on my winter coat. I remember when I came home that night (let me see, I began school on a Monday, and that was two weeks from the next Thursday), I took off my coat downstairs and laid it on the table in the front entry. It was a real nice coat – heavy black broadcloth trimmed with fur; I had had it the winter before. Mrs Bird called after me as I went upstairs that I ought not to leave it in the front entry for fear somebody might come in and take it, but I only laughed and called back to her that I wasn’t afraid. I never was much afraid of burglars.

  “Well, though it was hardly the middle of September, it was a real cold night. I remember my room faced west, and the sun was getting low, and the sky was a pale yellow and purple, just as you see it sometimes in the winter when there is going to be a cold snap. I rather think that was the night the frost came the first time. I know Mrs Dennison covered up some flowers she had in the front yard, anyhow. I remember looking out and seeing an old green plaid shawl of hers over the verbena bed. There was a fire in my little wood-stove. Mrs Bird made it, I know. She was a real motherly sort of woman; she always seemed to be the happiest when she was doing something to make other folks happy and comfortable. Mrs Dennison told me she had always been so. She said she had coddled her husband within an inch of his life. ‘It’s lucky Abby never had any children,’ she said, ‘for she would have spoiled them.’

  “Well, that night I sat down beside my nice little fire and ate an apple. There was a plate of nice apples on my table. Mrs Bird put them there. I was always very fond of apples. Well, I sat down and ate an apple, and was having a beautiful time, and thinking how lucky I was to have got board in such a place with such nice folks, when I heard a queer little sound at my door. It was such a little hesitating sort of sound that it sounded more like a fumble than a knock, as if someone very timid, with very little hands, was feeling along the door, not quite daring to knock. For a minute I thought it was a mouse. But I waited and it came again, and then I made up my mind it was a knock, but a very little scared one, so I said, ‘Come in.’

  “But nobody came in, and then presently I heard the knock again. Then I got up and opened the door, thinking it was very queer, and I had a frightened feeling without knowing why.

  “Well, I opened the door, and the first thing I noticed was a draught of cold air, as if the front door downstairs was open, but there was a strange close smell about the cold draught. It smelled more like a cellar that had been shut up for years, than out-of-doors. Then I saw something. I saw my coat first. The thing that held it was so small that I couldn’t see much of anything else. Then I saw a little white face with eyes so scared and wishful that they seemed as if they might eat a hole in anybody’s heart. It was a dreadful little face, with something about it which made it different from any other face on earth, but it was so pitiful that somehow it did away a good deal with the dreadfulness. And there were two little hands spotted purple with the cold, holding up my winter coat, and a strange little far-away voice said: ‘I can’t find my mother.’

  “‘For Heaven’s sake,’ I said, ‘who are you?’

  “Then the little voice said again: ‘I can’t find my mother.’

  “All the time I could smell the cold and I saw that it was about the child; that cold was clinging to her as if she had come out of some deadly cold place. Well, I took my coat, I did not know what else to do, and the cold was clinging to that. It was as cold as if it had come off ice. When I had the coat I could see the child more plainly. She was dressed in one little white garment made very simply. It was a nightgown, only very long, quite covering her feet, and I could see dimly through it her little thin body mottled purple with the cold. Her face did not look so cold; that was a clear waxen white. Her hair was dark, but it looked as if it might be dark only because it was so damp, almost wet, and might really be light hair. It clung very close to her forehead, which was round and white. She would have been very beautiful if she had not been so dreadful.

  “‘Who are you?’ says I again, looking at her.

  “She looked at me with her terrible pleading eyes and did not say anything.

  “‘What are you?’ says I. Then she went away. She did not seem to run or walk like other children. She flitted, like one of those little filmy white butterflies that don’t seem like real ones they are so light, and move as if they had no weight. But she looked back from the head of the stairs. ‘I can’t find my mother,’ said she, and I never heard such a voice.

  “‘Who is your mother?’ says I, but she was gone.

  “Well, I thought for a moment I should faint away. The room got dark and I heard a singing in my ears. Then I flung my coat on to the bed. My hands were as cold as ice from holding it, and I stood in my door, and called first Mrs Bird and then Mrs Dennison. I didn’t dare go down over the stairs where that had gone. It seemed to me I should go mad if I didn’t see somebody or something like other folks on the face of the earth. I thought I should never make anybody hear, but I could hear them stepping about downstairs, and I could smell biscuits baking for supper. Somehow the smell of those biscuits seemed the only natural thing left to keep me in my right mind. I didn’t dare go over those stairs. I just stood there and called, and finally I heard the entry door open and Mrs Bird called back:

  “‘What is it? Did you call, Miss Arms?’”

  “‘Come up here; come up here as quick as you can, both of you,’ I screamed out; ‘quick, quick, quick!’

  “I heard Mrs Bird tell Mrs Dennison: ‘Come quick, Amelia, something is the matter in Miss Arms’s room.’ It struck me even then that she expressed herself rather queerly, and it struck me as very queer, indeed, when they both got upstairs and I saw that they knew what had happened, or that they knew of what nature the happening was.

  “‘What is it, dear?’ asked Mrs Bird, and her pretty, loving voice
had a strained sound. I saw her look at Mrs Dennison and I saw Mrs Dennison look back at her.

  “‘For God’s sake,’ says I, and I never spoke so before – ‘for God’s sake, what was it brought my coat upstairs?’

  “‘What was it like?’ asked Mrs Dennison in a sort of failing voice, and she looked at her sister again and her sister looked back at her.

  “‘It was a child I have never seen here before. It looked like a child,’ says I, ‘but I never saw a child so dreadful, and it had on a nightgown, and said it couldn’t find its mother. Who was it? What was it?’

  “I thought for a minute Mrs Dennison was going to faint, but Mrs Bird hung on to her and rubbed her hands, and whispered in her ear (she had the cooingest kind of voice), and I ran and got her a glass of cold water. I tell you it took considerable courage to go downstairs alone, but they had set a lamp on the entry table so I could see. I don’t believe I could have spunked up enough to have gone downstairs in the dark, thinking every second that child might be close to me. The lamp and the smell of the biscuits baking seemed to sort of keep my courage up, but I tell you I didn’t waste much time going down those stairs and out into the kitchen for a glass of water. I pumped as if the house was afire, and I grabbed the first thing I came across in the shape of a tumbler: it was a painted one that Mrs Dennison’s Sunday school class gave her, and it was meant for a flower vase.

  “Well, I filled it and then ran upstairs. I felt every minute as if something would catch my feet, and I held the glass to Mrs Dennison’s lips, while Mrs Bird held her head up, and she took a good long swallow, then she looked hard at the tumbler.

  “‘Yes,’ says I, ‘I know I got this one, but I took the first I came across, and it isn’t hurt a mite.’

  “‘Don’t get the painted flowers wet,’ says Mrs Dennison very feebly, ‘they’ll wash off if you do.’

  “‘I’ll be real careful,’ says I. I knew she set a sight by that painted tumbler.

  “The water seemed to do Mrs Dennison good, for presently she pushed Mrs Bird away and sat up. She had been lying down on my bed.