by Ann Walsh
“Oh, thank you.” The teacher’s strident voice carried to where Kelly stood beside the window, watching. “But they’re so easy to make, just a few ingredients.” Someone offered her a cup of coffee, and she stayed in the centre of a group of women, talking loudly, smiling.
Ben was taking care of the fire, and Kelly saw him through a shower of sparks as he added another log and adjusted the burning pile. Voices rose through the falling snow, voices and laughter, blending into the smell of wood smoke. Someone cheered as Bob finished his sketch of the small dancer and tore it from his pad, handing it to the child with a flourish.
“Me, draw me now. Me,” came from the other children, and the twins stopped their game long enough to see what the excitement was all about. Mrs. Terpen could be heard calling for her children, reminding them that one cup of hot chocolate was all they could have before dinner, but she, too, was engrossed in a conversation with women from the reserve, and her heart didn’t seem to be in her nagging. Voices, the snap and blaze of the fire, the quiet hissing of snow falling into flames, laughter. . .
“It doesn’t seem right,” thought Kelly, still standing unseen at the darkened window. “They’re having a party out there, talking, laughing, people who haven’t even spoken to each other in years. And it’s all because my little ghost cried all night.” Would they both, she and the ghost, cry again tonight she wondered?
“No!” she said out loud. “I won’t cry. I’ll never cry over him, never, never!”
She turned away from the window, tired of the activity outside, tired of it and, somehow, hurt by it as well. She turned her back on the party around the bonfire and there in the doorway to the kitchen, stood the little ghost.
In spite of herself, Kelly gasped, and took a step backwards. “I’m not afraid of her,” she told herself, “I’m not!” Taking a deep breath, she went towards the small figure in the red dress, seeing again the ruffled pantaloons, the buttoned high-top boots, the ringlet caught back with a floppy bow.
“It’s okay, little one,” she said. “I won’t let them hurt you. Don’t be afraid of me. I promise, I won’t let anyone hurt you.”
The ghost lifted her arms toward Kelly, just as she had done the first time, holding her arms out as if she wanted to be lifted up. Kelly knelt down and held out her own arms, reaching for the small figure, aching for her, for her loneliness, for her tears. “It’s all right,” she said again. “I’ll help you. Just tell me how, tell me what you want, why you’re here.”
Slowly the little figure began to grow misty, translucent, the firm edges of her body softening, melting. “Don’t go,” Kelly called, “Please, don’t go.”
Slowly, much more slowly than the only other time Kelly had seen her, the ghost faded. But before she vanished completely, Kelly heard her speak. “Emily,” she said. “Emily.”
Chapter 13
The last trace of the little ghost was still visible, a veil of mist across the floor, when the Linden’s front door opened and Kelly heard her father’s voice. “Kelly? Where are you?” Alan Linden came into the dark living room, snapping on the light. “All alone and in the dark, Kelly? I had hoped you would join us. Everyone’s gone home for dinner now, but I think we all had a good time.”
“Not alone, Dad,” answered Kelly. “She was here.”
“Who was here? That blasted ghost thing?” demanded a gruff voice behind Alan. “That little critter’s caused me enough trouble, think she’d know enough to keep away from me.”
“Ed Crinchley’s home,” Kelly’s father explained, unnecessarily. “I’m not sure if he’s officially discharged, but he pulled up in a taxi a few minutes ago, crutches and all.”
The old man came into the house with David, who had one arm around him and must have helped him up the stairs. “Come into the kitchen, Ed, and I’ll see what we can offer you for supper,” said Alan, and took the old man down the hall.
David stood in the doorway to the living room, the Linden’s empty coffee pot in one hand. “Can I come in too, Kelly?” he asked. He smiled nervously, his dark eyes pleading with her.
And suddenly Kelly didn’t care anymore about David’s girlfriend in Vancouver. He was here, with her, and she wanted to be with him, talk to him, have him near her. “David!” she said, running to him as if he had been gone for weeks, “David, she was back, the ghost, and she wasn’t crying. She spoke, a name, ‘Emily’, and it took her a long time to fade away.”
“Emily,” said David. “One of my favourite names. After Kelly.” He reached out and touched her cheek. “Hey,” he said. “I. . .”
“Kelly, come and give me a hand with supper,” Alan called. “And David, if you’ve got that coffee pot, bring it in and let’s get it going again.”
As Kelly and David went into the kitchen, her father looked at them questioningly. “Got the problem solved?” he asked.
Ed Crinchley, now settled at the kitchen table, looked up at them. “Problem? Ah, a lovers’ quarrel.” Then he settled back in his chair is if he were getting ready to watch the argument continue.
“I’ve seen the ghost again,” said Kelly hurriedly, anxious to change the subject. “And she spoke!”
“I’ll speak to her if she scares me like that again. Cost me a sprained ankle and five gallons of my best crabapple wine.”
“But she hasn’t said anything before now, Mr. Crinchley,” said David.
“No. Just made a blasted racket all last night, so Alan says, so no one got any sleep. Youngsters today don’t mind their manners like they used to, ghosts or not!”
“Oh, Mr. Crinchley, please don’t growl at her,” said Kelly. “She didn’t mean to frighten you, and she didn’t mean to keep us awake with her crying. I don’t think she’ll cry tonight; she wasn’t when I saw her. Besides, I didn’t think you believed in ghosts.”
“Growl, eh? So you think the old Grinch growls at kids? Well, I haven’t yet, but it might not be a bad idea, especially at those twins.” He threw back his head and produced an excellent imitation of an irate grizzly bear.
“How does he know everyone calls him ‘the Grinch’?” thought Kelly, then, embarrassed, she went back to the subject of the little ghost. “She said ‘Emily’. She said it twice. I wonder if that is her mother’s name?”
“I’ll bet it’s her own name,” said David. “Maybe she was just introducing herself to you.” He hadn’t taken his eyes off Kelly’s face since they entered the kitchen, and he was still smiling. Kelly grinned back at him. David might have a girlfriend in Vancouver, but right now he was here, in Soda Creek, with her, obviously thinking about her, caring about her.
“I’ve been wondering about her, the little one,” said Ed Crinchley, his voice unusually quiet with none of its gruffness. “While I was in the hospital I didn’t sleep too well. Wouldn’t take those fool pills they kept shoving at me, I guess that’s why. I kept thinking about her, the way she’d stood there at the foot of my stairs, reaching out her hands. Almost as if she wanted me to give her something or do something for her.”
“I think we all feel that way,” said Alan from the stove where he was warming up the left-over stew, adding more frozen vegetables to stretch it for the company. “She does seem to want something from us. I wonder why she doesn’t just come right out and tell us what it is?”
“Maybe she isn’t an experienced enough ghost yet,” said David thoughtfully. “I mean, tonight was the first time she spoke, last night was the first time she made any sound at all. Maybe she’s learning how to be a ghost, and will tell us when she can.”
“Or maybe she’s just too little, hasn’t learned the words for what she wants,” said Kelly. “She’s only about two years old, remember.”
“What can a thing that size want around here?” said Ed Crinchley.
“Well, she sure didn’t want any holy water,” commented David.
Kelly blushed. “Come on. Let’s forget it.”
Seeing Ed Crinchley’s puzzled look, Alan explained how Clara
Overton had brought a priest out the night before, and how the ghost’s crying had begun as he was about to sprinkle the holy water. “They heard her everywhere, even down at the reserve, which is why they came to do their dance for the spirits. She liked that better than the holy water, I guess.”
Her father hadn’t mentioned Kelly’s contribution to both events, but David did. “You should have seen Kelly, Mr. Crinchley. She tore that water right out of Father Glenn’s hand, and then she barged into the middle of the dance, yelling at them to stop. She really stood up for her little ghost.”
Kelly wasn’t angry at him. “The Lindens have always been fighters, David,” she said softly. “One way or another, we usually get what we want, and we aren’t afraid to fight for it.”
Alan looked surprised at his daughter’s words and the smile left David’s face as he answered. “I get the feeling you do, Kelly,” he said. “You’re a strong person.”
Ed Crinchley had not been paying attention to the conversation, and now he interrupted. “What does she want here? Do you have any idea, Kelly?”
Kelly shook her head, and the old man returned to his usual gruff manner of speaking. “Well, I ain’t going to have her crying all night again, the way you say she did last night. Won’t have it.”
And the ghost didn’t cry that night, or the next or the next. But she did visit everyone who lived in the town, in the commune and on the reserve. Over the next four days the community became quite accustomed to her standing quietly in their bedrooms, kitchens, garages, on their snow-covered lawns, in their gardens, beside the school bus stop. Standing, reaching out and, once in a while, saying, “Emily, Emily.” She no longer frightened people; no one jumped back, startled, as Ed Crinchley had done, no one was hurt because of her. She seemed to stay longer when she appeared, and it took her much more time to fade away when she left.
Even Clara Overton, with a front lawn liberally sprinkled with holy water, had several visits from the ghost. “I do believe the child is STARVING,” she told Kelly. “She watched me make a batch of muffins, and she stayed until they were out of the oven. I’m sure she wanted one, poor thing.”
The ghost came to Ben’s garden, standing beside the carefully pruned and staked raspberry bushes, peering through the leafless branches. She visited Bob in the small workroom in his house, and watched him as he formed a large bowl on his potters’ wheel.
At the commune, she most often appeared in the barn, seeming to like the cows, and she was always on the Soda Creek Reserve when the dancers held their practices.
Alan found her beside his car in the early morning as he scraped his windshield clear of ice, and Kelly saw her at least twice a day; in her bedroom, beside her chair as she watched T.V., waiting for her in the hall as she came home from school or beside her bed last thing at night.
Ed Crinchley must not have growled at her after all, for the small apparition went often to his home. His sprained ankle kept him confined inside, unless someone helped him down the stairs and along the icy road of the townsite. Kelly suspected that the Grinch was becoming rather fond of the small ghost, even though he complained loudly about the nuisance she was.
“Poor little critter,” the old man said one night when Kelly took him some dinner. “She just stares at you. Almost begging you to do something for her, whatever it is. And it’s the strangest thing. Seems to me that I’ve seen her somewhere before—must be she reminds me of someone—but I can’t think who.”
For four days the community seemed to be waiting, waiting for something to happen. No one made any more attempts to get rid of the ghost, yet no one was completely at ease with her around. They accepted her presence, weren’t frightened when she appeared, talked about her, wondered about her. Yet everyone knew that she couldn’t stay, that sooner or later they had to find a way to make her leave.
After all, they couldn’t live with the little ghost forever. Or could they?
Chapter 14
Again it was Saturday night, almost a week since Kelly had first seen the ghost. “Such a short time,” she thought, “such a very short time to have made my life so different.”
She thought about how she had spent this Saturday night—a movie in Williams Lake with David, driving his uncle’s car. He looked unfamiliar in slacks and a sweater rather than the jeans and oversized jacket he wore around Soda Creek. After the show, Cokes and hamburgers and the long drive home, David, holding her hand, turned to smile at her once in a while, the lights of oncoming traffic brushing over his face.
“You look better,” Kelly had said.
“Yes. I feel better, too. Much stronger. Haven’t had to spend an afternoon just resting since . . . since I met you.” He had squeezed her hand and smiled. “You must be good medicine, Kelly.”
David hadn’t tried to kiss her as he saw Kelly to her front door, just stood and looked at her, finally reaching out and, a finger under her chin, tilting her face to the light. “Kelly. . .” he said, then shook his head, mumbled good night, and left.
Kelly’s father had been waiting up for her, feet on the coffee table, T.V. on. “Hi,” he said. “Have a good time?”
“Yes,” she had said, “a great time.” They had watched T.V. together for a while, then Alan had gone to bed. Kelly, however, wasn’t sleepy, and she sat in her room, working on a watercolour, a larger picture of the little ghost.
It grew late, but Kelly found herself reluctant to go to bed. Then she realized that, subconsciously, she was waiting for the little ghost to appear. It had been just a week since she had first seen the ghost, and over the last few days almost everyone in and around Soda Creek had seen her. She was no longer Kelly’s personal apparition, but Kelly was waiting for her, wanting to see her, somehow knowing that she would come tonight.
Kelly stood, pushed the picture to one side, and stretched. She thought for a moment, then went quietly into the kitchen, and as she took the first step over the threshold, she saw the small figure standing beside the fridge.
“I knew you’d be here tonight,” Kelly said happily. She knelt down, bringing her face to the same level as the child’s, and smiled. “Hi, Emily. I’m glad you’ve come to see me again. What do you want, little one? Can you tell me?”
Again, the ghost reached out her arms towards Kelly, the golden ringlet falling against her cheek as she did, the red velvet bow swaying slightly. “Emily,” she said. “Emily home. Please? Emily home?”
Kelly held out her own arms, reaching, yet afraid to move any closer. “Please?” said the ghost again, and she took two small steps towards Kelly, her high button boots sounding loud on the kitchen floor. She was close enough to touch.
Kelly shifted her weight and leaned forward, her hand brushing the little ghost’s cheek. There was a sense of coldness, ice, sliding up Kelly’s arm, numbing her fingers. Then the ghost smiled and lifted her own small hand, placing it firmly over Kelly’s. “Please, Kelly,” she said. Then she left; fading, becoming misty, before vanishing completely.
For a long moment Kelly knelt there, her arm stretched out. Then she sighed and stood up. Her hand was icy cold, and she went to the sink and ran warm water over it. “She came to me,” she thought. “She came to me, she let me touch her. She knows my name. She is my ghost, no matter how many others have seen her.”
*****
Once again the sun through her bedroom window woke Kelly on a Sunday morning, the sun and the sound of voices in the kitchen. “But Alan, we can’t just let the matter rest. We can NOT go on being known as the community with a ghost. I know she’s a dear child, but. . .”
It was Clara Overton. Kelly smiled to herself. This was how last Sunday had begun. She dressed, quickly braided her hair, and went into the kitchen. “Morning, Dad,” she said. “Morning, Miss O. Isn’t it a great day?”
“You’re in a good mood this morning,” said her father.
“Oh, Alan, girls her age are always in a good mood when. . .” The rest of the teacher’s comment was drowned out by a
loud banging at the front door.
“Hey,” shouted a voice, over the noise, “Hey! Give me a hand. Can’t get up these steps by myself.”
Kelly and her father both went to open the door and were nearly hit by a crutch. Ed Crinchley leaned against the narrow side of the porch, one of his crutches stretched out in front of him, aimed at the door. “Morning,” he called, tucking the crutch back under his arm and hobbling around to the stairs. “Got myself down my own stairs okay, but don’t seem to be too good at getting up these ones.”
Kelly and her father helped the old man into the house, wondering what he would do when he saw Clara Overton. But to their surprise, he just nodded at the teacher. “Morning, Clara. The muffins were fine.”
“Oh, thank you, Ed.” Kelly watched in amazement as the teacher hung her head and blushed. “I’ll make you some more today, or maybe you’d like to join me for dinner? I’ve got a lovely roast with potatoes and. . .”
“Sure.” The Grinch settled himself in a kitchen chair and beamed up at Clara Overton. “Haven’t had a meal like that in years.”
“Um . . . well, it’s nice to see you two getting on,” said Alan as he brought another mug and poured coffee.
“I decided it was time to let bygones be bygones, ever since Clara brought me that first plate of muffins,” said Ed.
Again there was a knock at the door. “Hello,” called Ben, letting himself in. “Hope we’re not intruding.”
“I found that pattern I was telling you about, Clara,” said Bob, so excited he ignored Kelly and her father and went directly to the teacher. “Look at this!” The two of them began to spread bits of paper, yarn and canvas across the kitchen table.
“Hey, Ben,” said Ed Crinchley. “I finished that book you lent me. You got some more interesting reading material at home? Those mysteries ain’t bad to read.”