When All the Girls Are Sleeping

by Emily Arsenault

The front files were occupied mostly by a few years’ worth of housemother journals. The “journals” weren’t like diaries in the traditional sense—more like long letters of ten to thirty pages, handwritten on yellowed paper.

  I tried my best to focus my eyes and attention to really read—not just skim for words like whisper, haunted, ghost, death:

  School opened Tuesday, September 8. The first day was very busy, with parents helping to “settle in” despite the heavy rain. Upperclass girls were delighted to find the rooms furnished with new beds and the parlor decorated for their arrival….

  The “journal” proceeded to describe, in great detail, the Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and May Day celebrations that occurred in the dorm’s dining hall, putting great emphasis on the festive decorations and special foods. (The tables had red cloths, were strewn with acorns and golden leaves, and apple and nut pies were served after a chicken and gravy feast….) This sunny account of the whole year seemed to have been written in one go at the end of the year—maybe to ensure another year of employment as a housemother.

  It wasn’t really a journal of the daily life of the girls—like who got sick, who fought with whom, who was struggling and flunking. It was more of a rundown of all the lovely things that had happened throughout the year. At the end was a list of all the students who lived in the dorm. In some cases, these lists were annotated with things like Left at Christmas, or in a few cases, the word Kitchen or Laundry.

  “Why do some girls have the word Laundry by their name? Were those, like, work duties?”

  “Exactly,” Ms. Noceno said, glancing up at Star as she pawed through a file cabinet. “And Star can tell you some things about that, right? Since it pertains to Caroline Bromley.”

  Star looked up from her work. “Yeah. Caroline was a kitchen girl.”

  “She helped out in the kitchen?”

  “Yeah. Somehow she avoided laundry duty her whole four years here, and that was considered the worst. But these duties were performed by girls who were here on scholarship.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “There was, unfortunately, a tradition of scholarship students at times having to do menial tasks to help pay their way, in a sense,” Ms. Noceno chimed in. “Of course, it’s nice in any school setting for students to pitch in. To take pride in the school’s physical setting, to plant flowers, to keep things swept up and nice. But in the late 1800s through the early 1950s, there was a fairly obvious distinction between ‘pitching in’ and poorer students earning their keep, so to speak. Doing laundry, say, or doing kitchen work like the dishes and so on. Things the full-paying students weren’t asked to do. From our modern-day perspective, it feels rather punitive, doesn’t it?”

  I nodded. The way she was peering at me over her red-framed glasses, I felt like she wanted me to say something more. Could she tell just by my demeanor that I was a scholarship kid? That in the days of old, I might have been washing Star’s bloomers for her?

  “It’s awful,” Star said, and I wondered if her exaggeratedly mournful expression was for my benefit.

  But the truth was I liked being part of the scholarship contingent at Windham-Farnswood. It made me feel scrappy. And I felt like it absolved me of any of the white-glove embarrassments of the school’s past. I’ve always felt like having a lot of money would make me feel guilty. And I’m not a person who deals well with guilt.

  “Was Caroline Bromley poor?” I asked.

  Star looked surprised at my blunt use of the word.

  “Well…no. Just of relatively modest means compared to most of the other girls who came here in the early years. Her father ran a small general store in Maine. Her mother was a teacher at a one-room schoolhouse. The story is that Caroline attended the school, when her mother taught there, from age three. That’s how she got to be so smart and precocious.”

  Star seemed to realize that she was falling into one of her typical Caroline monologues.

  “But anyway, yes, her position as one of the students of lesser means…that’s one of the big issues I’m trying to work with in my project,” she added.

  “Here you are, dear,” Ms. Noceno said, approaching my table with a binder of laminated materials. “Now, normally you’d have to flip through and read it and find it yourself, but I recalled roughly where it was in the two years of Louise Johnson Riley’s letters. Winter of the second year.”

  “Thank you,” I said, and leaned over the letter, pushing the Dearborn file aside.

  February 12, 1920

  Dear Robert,

  I hope you are feeling stronger now. I have been worrying since Mother’s latest letter. Please write me as soon as you are able.

  My chemistry studies are proving more difficult. I spend hours each night on my science texts. It is a welcome respite from other worries. But all the while that my brain is engaged, my heart is praying that you and James will get well and stay well.

  I tried to take some delight in the snow yesterday. A fire was built in the living room hearth. We had spiced tea, and one of the lovely kitchen ladies made apple fritters. Happily, attention has turned to Valentine’s plans, and there was none of last week’s talk of the restless spirit that is said to haunt the upstairs halls in this, the shadow season. My friend Harriet has recovered from her fright at seeing the specter in the dark dress. We have all vowed not to ask her about it. The subject seems to put her into a terrible state. Perhaps forgetting is best.

  Do not tell James I write to you about these things. He will say that I am silly.

  I am eager to hear news from home. Please give Fletcher a pat on the head from me.

  Your loving sister,

  Louise

  “ ‘This, the shadow season,’ ” I murmured. “In 1920. That’s pretty far back for the ghost stories.”

  “It’s quite something, isn’t it? It proves that the stories didn’t start in the ’70s and ’80s because of all the horror movies that were coming out then.”

  “Oh. I wouldn’t have thought of that.”

  Ms. Noceno pushed her red glasses up her nose. “I’ve heard it discussed…since I don’t think the stories were particularly active in the ’60s, from what I’ve heard from alums. I think the stories were frequent and maybe a little more nefarious by the ’70s and after. Pop culture was perhaps helping it along. Movies like Carrie, The Exorcist, Poltergeist. But this letter shows that the background was already there.”

  I nodded. I knew some of those titles because my father liked horror movies and watched them sometimes on nights my mother was working. He wasn’t as tuned in to my insomnia as my mother was; he didn’t know that sometimes I’d get up and sneak out of bed and sit on a step about halfway down the carpeted stairs—and quietly watch TV along with him. He never seemed to know that behind his back he had a little ghost peeking through the banister, ready to flee up the stairs if he started to rise from the couch.

  “Dearborn was built in 1879.” I glanced back at the building dedication documents to check. “So there are still several decades in between when we don’t know if there were any stories.”

  “And I wonder if they were calling the ghost ‘Sarah’ then,” Star said. “I mean, around 1920.”

  “I wish she’d given that kind of detail in her letter,” I said. “It feels like she had talked to her brother about the ghost before, so she doesn’t really have a reason to lay it all out.”

  “Yes.” Ms. Noceno settled back into her swivel chair. “Sadly for us, their initial discussion of it was probably face to face, not in letters. You’re welcome to look at the whole collection, of course. It’s about forty letters—mostly to her brother, and mostly from 1920 and 1921.”

  “Hmm…okay, I’ll look at the letters that came before it and after it.”

  “You can try that if you wish. But my recollection is that she never refere
nces the ‘spirit’ in any other letters. Otherwise Doreen—the volunteer who used to write up the letter summaries—would’ve referred to that in her index. This is the only reference, unless she missed one. Which is unlikely. Doreen was meticulous.”

  “And you don’t have the brother’s responses?”

  “No, sadly.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  I turned my attention back to the Dearborn box. There was a file of boring documents about the financing and building of the dormitory in 1879, and a program for an inaugural ceremony for the official opening of the dorm.

  “Oh,” I said, looking up. “I meant to ask. Can I see if there are any letters by a student named Sarah Chase? She was here around the same time as Caroline Bromley, like late 1880s, early 1890s?”

  “We can certainly check the letter index after you’re through with that.”

  I nodded and kept going through the box. According to a newspaper article that occupied its own file, there had been a fire in 1978 and students had to stay in other dorms and a converted classroom space for a month while repairs were done. A student had been smoking, which was of course against the rules. The article didn’t say whether she was kicked out.

  Behind that were three files full of photographs. One file had only sepia photos of the building itself—and primarily from 1891. The building hadn’t changed much since then. It was still a fortress-like mass of brick, lined with prettily small-paned windows. There was a tree to the right of the entrance that was gone now, replaced by a few bushes that now hid half of the dining hall windows. Otherwise, Dearborn stood fast as it always had.

  The next two files were all of students in the dorm—mostly arranged group photos, but with a few random candids from dorm functions mixed in.

  The very first photograph was the one Star had shown me a few days ago—with Caroline Bromley and her classmates. The next one showed more students, and was from a few years later—1897. Then it seemed like group dorm photos had fallen out of favor—because the next one was from 1919.

  “Is there a reason why so many photos are missing?” I asked Ms. Noceno.

  “What do you mean, ‘missing’?” She wrinkled her nose.

  “There’s a Dearborn group photo from 1897 and then none until 1919,” I told her.

  “Well, we’re lucky to have the ones we have. I doubt they were taken each year. And there was no official way of collecting and filing them. The school archives didn’t exist in an official capacity until the early 1950s, when one of the librarians decided to gather everything in one spot and give it its own space. And several of the group dormitory and athletic photos are posted in the cases outside the admissions office. At least there, lots of people will actually look at them.”

  I nodded and opened the last file of photos, which were the most recent ones—mostly in color. It was interesting to see the change of style of the girls in the ’70s—when decades of tweedy skirts and torpedo bras gave way to jeans and T-shirts and generally less coiffed, more colorful hair.

  It seemed like there was unusual enthusiasm for the group shots in the ’80s and ’90s—or at least someone was paying more attention to giving copies to the archives. There was one for every year—usually taken in the creaky sitting room, but sometimes outdoors. And with a good amount of participation—the crowds looked large, as if photo participation had been mandatory. In one they were all in costumes. In another they had wrapped themselves in streamers and a few were holding balloons.

  I paid special attention to the photos from those years. This was the time when my mother grew up in Heathsburg. She might have encountered some of these girls—in the grocery store, at the 7-Eleven, at the occasional party with her own public high school classmates—as bored Windham-Farnswood kids sometimes managed to insert themselves into weekend townie activities.

  In most of the early ’80s photos, there stood next to the girls a plump, severe-looking woman with a short, gray bowl cut. She was never smiling for the shot. Even in the photo in which she was wearing a cheerful red Windham sweatshirt (an odd pairing with a long denim skirt), she looked miserable to be there. A bona fide housemother, so unlike our fashionable and decidedly sympathetic Anna, or Tricia, Dearborn’s RD from last year, who sometimes smelled faintly of smoke and favored billowy muslin blouses without a bra. I smiled to myself. I probably would’ve liked this housemother. Sometimes I liked things to be old-school. According to the name key, her name was Sharon Finneran.

  When I flipped from the 1985 photo to the 1986 one, I noticed that the bowl-cut lady was gone. In her place were a man and woman standing alongside the group of girls—this time a smaller group, arranged in front of the Dearborn fireplace.

  The woman was in her thirties—blond and smiling. The man looked quite a bit older, and had round glasses and bushy dark hair. I stared at him for a moment. Then I flipped over the photo. Someone had typed up the names of the students in a list. Below that it said Cathy and Bob Rawls, Dormitory Parents. I started getting a funny feeling in my stomach as I took out my phone and found the Wikipedia page for Ronald Darkins that I’d read the other night. I looked from my phone to the photo and back again.

  The resemblance was uncanny. It wasn’t just about similar hair and similar glasses.

  Ronald Darkins and Bob Rawls had the same nose. They had the same puckery half-smile. Bob Rawls had slightly shorter, more conventional hair than Ronald Darkins, who had a salt-and-pepper mane. But they had the same face.

  I put my fist over my mouth to keep from making a noise very unbefitting for the archives.

  Ronald Darkins and Bob Rawls were very likely the same person.

  What the hell was happening here? Why the different name? And had Suzie been lying to me about Ronald Darkins?

  I flipped to the 1987 dorm group photo. Next to the students was an entirely different couple—a short bald man and a petite woman with curly strawberry-blond hair. Both smiling broadly. They appeared in the 1988 photo as well. Their names were John and Charlene Stiber.

  I flipped back to 1986, took out my phone, and snapped a close-up of Bob Rawls in the group photo.

  Star looked up at the snapshot noise my camera made. Closing the binder, I stood up.

  “I have to go,” I said.

  “Now?” Star asked.

  “I’m not…feeling so well. I think I should go lie down.”

  In a flash, Ms. Noceno was at my side, whisking the Dearborn box away from me. It took me a moment to realize she was afraid I might puke on the precious historical documents.

  “I’d love to come and read more of Louise’s letters next time,” I said, heading toward the door.

  “Feel better, Haley,” Ms. Noceno said, waving me out.

  20

  There was still an hour before dinner. I settled myself in one of the spongy brown chairs of the dank “Student Lounge” basement in the campus center beneath the mail room. Girls tended not to hang out there since the carpet smelled weird and the snack machine offerings were usually old and picked over.

  First I Googled Ronald Darkins and Bob Rawls, to see if the names came up together in any meaningful way. I didn’t find anything.

  Then I went into YouTube and searched for Ronald Darkins there.

  A few shows from the ’90s came up—with names like Paranormal Detective and Unsolved Mysteries.

  I popped my earbuds in and clicked on the first video. Some creepy synthesizer music played, then a deep-voiced male narration: A colonial house with a cheerful exterior but a dark history. An upstairs bedroom that a child refuses to sleep in. A typical child’s imagination for monsters? Or is there a troubled supernatural presence lingering here? We sent in our guest investigator, Ronald Darkins, for a look.

  I watched as the show got started. A little boy saying that he hoped his parents would sell their house. I was tempted to fast-forward to where Dark
ins appeared, but waited to hear the whole story. The parents knew that a strangling death had occurred in the house two decades earlier, but said that their son would have no way of knowing that.

  Ronald Darkins seemed pleasant. He had a nervous habit of rubbing the aquiline bump on his nose with his middle finger—like he was constantly checking to see if it was still there—while he spoke to the beleaguered homeowners.

  He asked the mom a few questions and then led her up the pea-green carpeted stairs.

  “It’s possible Gregory senses your apprehension about the history of the house, don’t you think?” he asked.

  It seemed like an unexpectedly sensible question for this hokey show.

  Darkins’s voice was deep and comforting, contrary to the bizarre, insect-like appearance his glasses gave him. And I sat mesmerized by him for a moment, watching him mount the creaky old stairs of the house. He spoke very sweetly to the scared little boy, and I began to wish he still lived in Dearborn.

  I paused the video and reminded myself that Ronald Darkins was dead. He’d been dead for nearly two decades. He wasn’t going to help me. He wasn’t going to save anyone. And even if I could talk to him, Taylor would still be dead.

  Was it his apparently brief stint as a houseparent here that had made him a paranormal enthusiast? I looked at his Wikipedia page again. Nope. His paranormal publication credits began in the 1970s.

  I clicked on the second video. It was the same early ’90s show, with the same awful synthesizer intro. This time Ronald Darkins was investigating a sandwich shop that supposedly had loaves of bread and kitchen implements flying off the countertops. The shop owners had a hard time keeping the place open, because terrified employees kept quitting.

  This all took place in a run-down strip mall in Arizona, and I found it all kind of hard to take seriously. But Ronald and his wife listened solemnly as the earnest potbellied shop owner described the night when a container full of freshly cut lettuce flew off the counter and slammed into the wall, narrowly missing his head.