Sycamore Hill (24 page)

A sound from the schoolroom drew my attention. Those mice, I
thought with annoyance. Perhaps I would have to find myself another more
adventurous and courageous cat to team with my stray. Orphan was a fine
companion, but sadly lacking in natural hunting talents. I could always invest
in traps. Olmstead stocked a variety. I did not like that thought, but
something would have to be done if the little creatures began working on the
children’s texts and the modest paper supply. When another sound came, I
thought I had better investigate.

Opening the schoolroom door slowly, I peered in, not eager to find
some larger relative of the mouse family in residence. The cold air hit me
almost physically, raising an army of goose bumps upon my skin. Even the thick
shawl was no protection. I pushed the door even wider and stood staring into
the darkness. I could make out the shapes of the children’s desks and that of
my own. The texts were stacked neatly on the shelves, and the can of pencils on
top was undisturbed.

I heard nothing now. Surely mice would scurry for cover, wouldn’t
they? An odd prickling sensation was growing at the nape of my neck. Stepping
farther into the room, I peered around again.

No movement. No sound. Intense, ear-ringing silence greeted me.
And that chill. What had made the noise? I wondered. And why was it so cold in
this room? The broken windows, I answered myself silently. Yet, it had not
seemed so cold outside.

As I started to turn back to my room, something caught the corner
of my eye. There was another message on the blackboard. Almost afraid, I moved
into the room to read what the practical joker had chalked there this time. Two
words were written in a neat hand—not in the scrawled writing as had the other,
more menacing messages been written.

“Go away.” Simple and direct, I thought wryly. I muttered an
impatient sound and picked up the eraser. As I rubbed out the irritating
message, I thought I heard something.

“Abigail...”

My heart began to pound as I strained to hear every sound. I did
not move, but stood like a statue, my hand still raised and clutching the
eraser. Again, that chill hit me like an unseen force.

And there was something else! The smell of lavender. It permeated
the room, strong and cloying. I was panting in alarm, but I forced myself to
ease my arm down and place the eraser gently back in the chalk tray. Turning
slowly and staring around the darkened room for the intruder, I found there was
no one there. No one at all.

I sensed a faint, moaning sound, as though someone were crying
with his face muffled in a pillow. Then, again, that intense, almost tangible
silence. A sudden gust of wind blew the patchwork curtains into the room,
whipping them about wildly for an instant. Then they lay still. Even the scent
of lavender was gone.

It was a full minute before I became aware that the crickets had
started to chirp again. The old owl hooted from the oak, and I heard Orphan
meow and scratch at the back door. I drew in my breath and let it out again,
still nervously staring around the schoolroom.

Had I imagined the entire episode? Everything was in place. There
was the usual night sounds—the creaking of the building, the insects and birds
outside. What had frightened me so much a moment ago, filling me with
unreasonable dread?

Perhaps that lonely grave outside the cemetery had distressed me
more than I realized. Perhaps it had begun a chain reaction of imaginings. I
knew my imagination had fuel enough to feed it. Perhaps that lonely marker had
pushed my fantasies into nightmarish proportions. With a last, slow look around
the schoolroom, I turned away.

When I reentered my room, it was comfortably warm. The lantern I
had lighted cast a welcoming glow over everything. Orphan scratched again at
the door, letting out a summoning cry. When I opened the door, she came in
unhesitantly and rubbed herself against my skirt as she always did.

Shaking my head, I gave a faint laugh at the wild thoughts of only
a moment before. I had even wondered if there was a ghost inhabiting the
schoolhouse. Now, in the warmth and glow of my room, I realized how utterly
ridiculous that thought was. I had let the desolation of that lonely grave
affect my good, solid common sense. Ghosts, goblins, witches. The stuff
Halloween was made of, and Halloween just passed. How people would laugh if
they were to know what an impressionable schoolteacher they had hired, I
thought. Well, I would not give them the entertainment of admitting such
nonsense. I gave Orphan a bowl of warm milk. Then I removed my clothing and put
on my nightgown. In spite of my reasoning, however, sleep was a long time in
coming.

***

During the week that followed I tried not to ponder the strange
occurrence in the schoolhouse. In the daylight hours I didn’t have much time to
think about that evening, because I was so involved with the children. Even
during the late afternoon, when I cleaned the schoolroom, and early in the
evening, when I cooked for myself and planned lessons for the following day, I
was able to keep my thoughts from distressing me. However, it was later, when I
blew out the lantern and snuggled deeply into the blankets of my lumpy cot,
that all reason fled. Well after midnight, even rationalizing was far from
comforting when strange noises filled the schoolhouse, when my room was at its
darkest and coldest.

Orphan’s strange behavior further increased my uneasiness. She
flatly refused to enter the schoolroom, and sometimes a frightened yowl would
erupt from her, startling me awake in the blackest of night. Somewhere in my
reading I had remembered that cats were believed by some to be the familiars of
witches and therefore had uncanny knowledge about the supernatural. Perhaps
Orphan sensed a presence I was afraid to acknowledge. Such thoughts proved even
more frightening to me, and I wondered if the concentration of my experience
was not unlike reading horror stories to oneself after dark.

Yet, sometimes late at night I would awaken for no reason and lie
in a state of cold sweat and tension, listening for something I could not
explain. For the most part I would recognize the nighttime sounds—the owl in
the oak, the mice in the rafters, a cricket in the corner, a toad beneath the
back steps. As soon as I made the identification, my fear dissipated, and I
wanted to laugh at my foolishness. Yet, there were other sounds that I could
not rationalize. Twice since the night I had returned from my sojourn with
Ross, I again heard a woman crying. Neither time had I dared leave my bed to
investigate.

When I first experienced “the occurrence,” as I came to call it, I
had immediately dismissed the possibility of a ghost. Then I rethought the
matter. While I clung desperately to the mental haven of disbelief, my
instincts told me I was wrong. This woman of the schoolhouse did, in fact,
exist.

Being a Christian, I therefore believed in an afterlife. So how
could I reasonably not believe in ghosts who were supposedly the disembodied
spirits of the dead. Souls, as the church would define them. I knew what
frightened me, of course. This spirit had, for some reason, not departed this world
for the next. She was living here in the schoolhouse... with me.

It seemed strange that I should be so sure that the ghost was a
woman. I had never seen her. And the crying was so faint, it was hard to
discern as male or female. After all, men cried as well as women. Why shouldn’t
the ghost be a man? Yet, I knew, without any doubt, that the ghost was female.
But who was she? And why was she here? And why was she so dreadfully unhappy?

Gradually, as several more weeks passed, the fear I felt at the
visitations lessened and evolved into other emotions. The ghost had never tried
to harm me. The only unpleasantness I experienced at her presence was the
alarming cold. Everything else I felt was brought on by my own emotions. I
began to wonder about her. Whatever was grieving my nocturnal companion must be
the reason her soul had not departed this world. If I learned her secret,
perhaps that would release her. And give me a night’s peace!

Once, I dared enter the schoolroom when I heard her crying in the
night. There was nothing. Not even the flickering of the curtains. And the
crying stopped almost immediately when I opened the door.

“You’re looking tired, Abby,” Ellen Greer observed during our
Wednesday afternoon visit three weeks after I had become aware of something
strange going on in the schoolhouse. I continued to sip my coffee, then glanced
up at her through the veiling of my lashes.

Considering how I had felt the first time I experienced the
visitation, I hesitated in confiding the story to anyone else. They might think
me completely mad, even Ellen Greer, who I considered my closest and only real
friend. I could imagine what she would think if I were to tell her that there
was a ghost inhabiting the schoolhouse. She might laugh at such nonsense, or
she might be alarmed and worried that my position had proven entirely too much
for me.

“I haven’t been sleeping well,” I said simply. Ellen looked
concerned.

“What’s on your mind?”

“Lots of things, I suppose.”

“Don’t brush me off, girl! Something is bothering you, and I want
to know what it is this minute.”

I laughed at her characteristically demanding nosiness. “Ghosts
and goblins, actually,” I said, lowering the cup and saucer to my lap. “They’re
making too much noise in the schoolhouse to allow me a good night’s sleep.” I
made it all sound like a joke, but something flickered in Ellen’s eyes.

“Now, is that a fact?”

“Were you ever bothered by noises in the schoolroom, Ellen?” I
asked, trying to keep the tremor out of my voice.

“I can’t say I was, but then I was so tired by the end of the
evening that nothing could have awakened me.”

“Maybe I’m overtired.” I shrugged, staring down into my cup and
thinking that perhaps my first thoughts on the matter were correct and that my
imagination was merely overworking itself.

“Maybe you’re drinking too much coffee at night,” Ellen suggested.

“Maybe it’s that simple.”

“Maybe, maybe, maybe!” she snapped. “Have you been hearing a lot
of silly stories around town?” she demanded, and I looked up curiously.

“What kind of stories?”

“You tell me.”

“You’re being very vague, Ellen.”

“So are you,” Ellen snorted. “We don’t usually play these kinds of
games, my girl. Now, out with it.”

“All right,” I sighed, giving her a self-deprecating smile. “I
believe there’s a ghost living in the schoolhouse.”

Ellen Greer did not seem the least bit surprised. But she was 80
and perhaps past the age of being surprised by anything.

“You don’t think I’m crazy?” I asked with a laugh.

“No. I think someone is playing an elaborate Halloween trick on
you.”

“Halloween passed us weeks ago.”

“That doesn’t mean that active little minds aren’t working on some
mischief. Schoolteachers are always prime targets, or haven’t you learned that
yet?”

“I’ve had the garter-snake-in-the-desk routine, Ellen. It’s not
something like that, I’m sure. There really is something there. I can feel it.
There’s a cold feeling in the schoolroom sometimes. But never during the day.”

“Of course not,” Ellen said wryly.

“I’m serious,” I said in growing frustration.

“I know you are, and that’s precisely why I choose not to be.”

“Oh, Ellen....”

“Don’t you ‘Oh, Ellen’ me, my dear. You’re letting your
imagination run away with you on the evidence of a few unexplained sounds and
shadows. I didn’t think it of you.” She shook her head. “I was sure you were a
sensible young lady, not some flighty nitwit who sees ghosts and goblins in
every shadowed corner.”

Her sharp tone and criticism made my throat ache with restrained
tears, and with difficulty I flattened all expression from my face. I had had
long practice doing that with the Haversalls, but Ellen could cut deeper than
they ever had. She looked at me for a long moment and sighed. “I’ve lived in
that schoolhouse,” she added quietly. “I know how eerie it can be sometimes,
with the owls hooting and the crickets making their infernal racket out in the
tall grass and even inside your very room. Your imagination draws demons out of
little nothings, especially when you’re exhausted. When you’re all by yourself,
sounds become magnified and distorted.”

I shook my head, meeting her eyes. “No, Ellen. I can hear a woman
crying. I know the difference between frogs croaking, mice gnawing and all the
rest of the noises my little companions contribute. I can hear a woman crying!
And you won’t convince me otherwise with all your—”

“Don’t get yourself so worked up,” Ellen soothed. She leaned
forward and rested her gnarled, arthritic hands on the crook of her cane.
“There’s an explanation, my dear, but it isn’t a ghost. There’s no such thing.
They’re something made up centuries ago by some mother or father wanting to
keep their pesky children in bed at night.”

“You go to church, Ellen. You believe in heaven and hell. So why
won’t you believe me about this? We have to have some form when we die, don’t
we?”