Read Tales Around the Jack O'Lantern Online
Authors: Terri Reid
Tales Around the Jack O'Lantern (4 page)
She looked around for a place to hide, but there was nowhere
to go.
Finally, deciding that her black outfit
might hide her if she was closer to the ground, she knelt down and crawled into
the brush, away from the path.
Branches,
thorns and rocks bit through her thin clothes, but she continued on, trying to
make as little noise as possible.
But
when her knee came into sharp contact with a big rock in the ground, she
couldn’t help it.
She cried out.
“What the hell was that?” she heard one of the voices call
out.
“A ghost,” another voice said, giggling wildly.
“Shut up,” the first, angrier voice ordered. “If someone is
out here and saw us, we need to make them go away.”
Mary curled up next to the stone, that was flat and square,
and tried to make
herself
as small as possible.
Please God
, she prayed, tears squeezing
out from eyes clamped shut.
Please help me.
“Put that flashlight down, you idiot,” the angry one yelled.
“You want to bring the cops here?”
“Sorry,” the other voice replied softly. “I just thought it
would help.”
“I think the sound came from over here,” the angry voice
said and Mary felt the brush near her tremble with movement.
Please God, please
,
she prayed.
Suddenly the forest was filled with sounds, like thousands
of cicadas suddenly coming to life.
“Dude, what’s that?” the giggler asked.
“Nothing, just bugs,” the angry one replied.
But then the sound changed.
It was no longer the rustling chirp of the
cicada,
the sound was now more of a chant. “Leave this place, leave this place, leave
this place,” in echoing voices that seemed to come from everywhere.
“This is not cool,” the voice was now frightened instead of
cheerful. “Who’s doing this?”
“Leave this place, leave this place,
leave
this place.” The volume increased as if more voices joined the ethereal choir.
“Leave this place!”
“Dude, I’m out of here,” cried the giggler and Mary could
hear his footsteps racing down the path.
“Get back here,” called the angry voice, his voice shaking.
“I’m not afraid of this!”
Suddenly the woods were silent.
As silent as the inside of
a tomb.
Mary held her breath and grabbed hold of the rock, hugging it
for dear life.
Then she heard the
scream.
It seemed to have been pulled
out of the depths of the angry man and echoed through the woods.
“No, no, no,” he stammered and then she heard his footsteps
racing down the path.
She lay still, hugging the stone, her breath coming out in
short gasps.
She didn’t know if she was
safe or in even more danger.
“You can come out now,” the child’s voice was so out of
place, that Mary instantly looked up.
A young girl dressed in a pinafore and print dress stood next
to Mary. “My father frightened the bad men away,” the girl added. “You don’t
have to be afraid.”
“Who are you?” Mary asked, releasing the stone and sitting
up.
The child laughed softly and pointed down to the stone Mary
had been hugging. “That’s me,” the little girl replied.
Mary looked down and gasped, realizing for the first time
that she had been hugging a gravestone the entire time she’d been hiding.
The moon shone down on the granite slab and
she read the inscription “Fannie Schweppler, born October, 31, 1840, died April
28, 1848.”
She looked back up, but the little girl was no longer there.
A chill ran down her spine and she hugged herself for a moment, not trusting
her legs to hold her.
I have just seen an
actual ghost
, she thought.
Not only
that, a ghost family just saved me.
The fear subsided and
gratitude to its place.
She put her hand
back down on the granite slab. “If there is ever something I can do for you,”
she whispered. “I will.
I owe you.”
Finally, she stood, brushed herself off and slowly headed
back down the path, listening carefully for any noises that might indicate the
two men hadn’t been frightened away for good.
She breathed a sigh of relief when she reached Foster Avenue
and then jogged the rest of the way home.
The following Monday, the noon bell had rung and Mary stood
waiting once again until the crowd cleared out.
She walked slowly towards the stairs and met the elderly nun once again.
“Good morning, Sister,” she said with a smile.
“How are you today, dear?” the nun asked.
Mary thought about the question for a moment.
How am I, really?
And then she realized she was fine, she was more than fine,
she was great.
“I’m great,” she replied confidently. “I’m really great.”
The old nun chuckled and nodded slowly. ““It’s always a good
day when you get to meet a friend. Fannie sends her regards. Have a good lunch,
dear.”
“Thank you, Sister,” Mary responded automatically, stepped
forward and then stopped.
Fannie!
She turned quickly. “Sister how did you—”
No one was behind her.
She ran back into the hall, peeking through the doors in the classrooms
closest to where they had been standing.
No one was there either. She started to run back down the hall, but
stopped and shook her head.
She knew the
elderly sister would not be in any of the classrooms or anywhere in the
school.
“It is always a good day when you
really
get to meet a friend,” she whispered and then shivered a
little when she heard the sound of the elderly nun’s laughter echo softly in
the hall.
“I never liked that Janice Heppner,” Margaret said
determinedly, “always just a little too full of herself.” She looked over at
her daughter. “I wish I had known how those girls treated you.”
Mary smiled and rolled her eyes. “Mom, that was over ten
years ago, I’ve recovered, believe me,” she said. “Besides, it was one of the
coolest nights of my life. I mean, how often does a person actually get to see
and talk to a ghost?”
“Well, I don’t like the fact that you put your life at risk,
going to that cemetery in the middle of the night,” Timothy grumbled. “Why if I
had known—”
“Sorry, Da, but Ma’s given me a free pass on this one,” Mary
replied. “You can’t give me a hard time about it.”
“You never told us,” Sean said. “You kept that story to
yourself all these years. Why?”
Shrugging, Mary studied the flame in the jack o’lantern for
a moment and then turned to her brother. “I don’t know,” she said. “Partly, I
guess because I figured I’d get in trouble if I told.” She sent an unrepentant
grin to her father. “And partly because it was such a cool experience, I didn’t
know if just telling the story could do it justice.”
“Did you ever see the nun again?”
Timothy asked.
Mary shook her head. “No, after that I never did,” she said.
“And I actually missed her.
I always
felt like she was looking out for me.”
“I suppose she knew you didn’t need to be watched over any
longer,” Margaret said. “Or maybe you just didn’t need to see her any longer.”
“What do you mean, Ma?” Art asked.
“Well, just because we can’t see them, doesn’t mean that
ghosts aren’t around,” she replied.
Tom chortled, popping some candy into his mouth. “Yeah, like
there are ghosts here in this room, right now,” he scoffed.
Margaret shrugged. “Could be,” she said. “You never know.”
“Okay,” Tom said, standing up and slowly turning around the
room. “If there’s a ghost in this house let your presence
be
known.”
Suddenly the candle in the jack o’lantern went out and the
room was plunged into darkness.
“That was just a weird coincidence, right?” Tom asked, his
voice shaking slightly.
Margaret laughed. “Could be,” she whispered. “You never
know.”
The End
Author
’
s
notes:
I have always loved ghost stories and I hope you enjoyed
these five, created just for the O’Reilly family and shared with you.
As in most fiction, some of the information
in the stories is based in fact.
The old
City Cemetery did indeed sit where Lincoln Park now resides and there are still
bodies buried underneath the ground.
There is a lost cemetery in
LaBagh
Woods on
the northwest side of the city near Montrose Cemetery.
The story about the orphanage came to me when I listened to Kurt
Bestor’s
song, “Prayer
Of The
Children.”
It is hauntingly beautiful
and was written by Kurt out of frustration over the horrendous civil war
and ethnic cleansing taking place in the former country of Yugoslavia.
And although those children were topmost in
his mind when he wrote it, when we listen to it today we can, unfortunately,
see so many more children throughout the world in the same situation as those
during the Kosovo War
.
It’s often hard when we watch our children dressed as
ghosts, princesses and superheroes safely walk through local neighborhoods and enjoy
trick-or-treating, to remember that other children aren’t so lucky.
I strongly urge you to take a moment and
listen to “Prayer of the Children.”
And
whether your mind is turned to children in your own country who are in harm’s
way or children throughout the globe that suffer the ravages of war, disease or
hunger, I hope that we can all take a moment and, at the very least, say a
prayer for the children.
Thank you,
Terri Reid
About
the author:
Terri Reid lives near Freeport, the home of her
Mary O’Reilly Mystery Series.
She has
always loved a good story. She lives in a hundred year-old farmhouse complete
with its own ghost. She loves hearing from her readers at
[email protected]
Other Books by Terri Reid:
Mary O’Reilly Paranormal Mystery
Series:
Treasured
Legacies (Book Twelve)
Buried Innocence (Book Thirteen)
Mary
O’Reilly Short Stories
PRCD Case Files:
The
Ghosts
Of
New Orleans -A Paranormal Research and
Containment Division Case File
Eochaidh:
Legend of the
Horseman (Book One)
