The Blue Ghost (3 page)

Liz sat on the bed, unable to move.

Guardian angel!
That girl thought she, Liz, was a guardian angel! A real one! She covered her mouth with one hand to hold back a laugh.

But then she looked down at her long pink nightgown. Gran had made it for her and it did look like the dresses angels wore in pictures. And Liz had to admit that she had shown up in the room rather suddenly.
A visit from an angel probably made as much sense as a girl stepping through a wall from the twenty-first century.

This time Liz did laugh. Right out loud. Then she stopped herself. She didn’t want Gran sticking her head in the door to ask what was funny. What would she tell her?
Did you know that I’m a guardian angel? Just like you said?

Liz giggled quietly.

Anyway, she rather liked being taken for an angel. The idea made the other strange things seem almost normal. Like walking through a wall into another time. Or a woman appearing in a blue light.

Who were these people, anyway? The girl and all the little boys? The woman? Maybe the girl was her great-great … But Liz didn’t know how many
greats
to put before the word
grandmother.
At least she knew her name was Elizabeth.

So that’s who the voice had been calling just now! Maybe the blue woman had been calling that Elizabeth, too!

Liz’s head was filled with questions. She reached for her clothes. She could at least find out who that girl might be. She wanted to know, too, why the woman she saw was so different from the rest. The girl and the children had looked solid. They
had seemed as real as Liz herself. But the woman was more like a ghost. If you wanted to believe in ghosts!

Liz dressed quickly and went to the kitchen. Gran was mixing up pancakes. Bacon sizzled on the stove.

“Good morning, Gran,” she said. “Smells good.” She settled at the wooden table. After a moment, she said, “I’ve been wondering. Who built this log cabin? I mean, how many
greats
ago was he?”

“He was my great-grandfather. So let’s see … he was your great-great-great-grandfather.” Gran counted the
greats
off on her fingers.

“And his kids? There must have been kids.”

Gran smiled. “If there had been no children, you and your mother and I wouldn’t be here. There were four, I think. No … five of them.”

“One girl and four boys,” Liz supplied. “The boys were all younger than the girl.”

Gran turned to give Liz a puzzled stare. “How did you know that?” she asked.

“I … I …” Liz felt caught. Should she tell Gran how she knew? Gran would never laugh at her. She knew that. Still, the girl, Elizabeth, felt like her secret now. “I guess Mom must have told me,” she lied. And
she shrugged as though none of it was very important, after all.

Gran nodded. She turned back to her pancakes. “The girl,” she went on, “was the first Elizabeth. She was your great-great-grandmother.”

“And her mother? She must have had a mother.”

“She died soon after the last baby was born. Elizabeth wouldn’t have been much older than you at the time. But she was the one who raised all those boys.”

Liz thought about what she had seen, the three little boys at the table and the crying baby. How could a girl not much
older than she was manage to take care of all those children?

And if the woman in the blue light was Elizabeth’s mother, then she really
was
a ghost!

Liz shivered at the thought.

“But what about their father?” she demanded. “Didn’t he help?”

“As best he could, I imagine,” Gran replied. “But he was a farmer. Farming was backbreaking work then. Dawn-to-dusk backbreaking work. He probably didn’t have much time for the children. Elizabeth must have done most of the caretaking.”

Liz considered. What more did she need
to know?
Gran, did you ever step through the wall in the bedroom? Have you ever been in the old log cabin yourself?
But she couldn’t ask that.

“Do you believe in guardian angels?” she asked instead. “I mean … really?”

Gran poured a pancake into the hot pan. When she turned to Liz, her eyebrows were raised. Clearly it wasn’t a question she had expected. She answered simply, though. “My mother used to tell us we each had our own guardian angel.”

“Did you believe her?”

Gran was silent for a moment, thinking. “Yes. I’m sure I did. I guess I half believe
her even now. Mostly, though, I think we’re meant to be guardian angels for one another. Don’t you?”

Liz took a slow, deep breath. She quite liked that idea. “What are we going to do today?” she asked.

“I thought we’d go swimming first,” Gran told her. “Then I want to go through that big trunk in your room.”

The trunk!
Was that what the blue woman had been trying to tell her to do … to open the trunk?

“I wonder what we’ll find,” Liz said. She said it casually, but her heart pounded.

The whole time Liz swam, she kept thinking about the trunk. Something important must be in there!

But when she and Gran returned to the house, Gran couldn’t find the right key. She found several keys in a dresser drawer in the small bedroom. None of them fit.

Gran laid a hand on the curved lid. “It’s strange. I don’t remember ever looking inside. Still … I keep thinking that
whatever is in here must be important.”

Reluctantly, they decided to sort out the closets instead. One was filled with games like Monopoly and Scrabble. Some of those they packed up to go to Gran’s house in the city. Others they put back on the shelves.

“Whoever buys this place will enjoy them on rainy days,” Gran said.

With every box they packed, Gran seemed to grow quieter.

“I wish you didn’t have to sell the house,” Liz said at last.

Gran smiled, but the smile seemed sad. “It’s time,” she said. “Your parents have
their own lake cabin. Who would use this old place?”

Liz had to admit she liked her parents’ cabin best. Still, she wished she could take away Gran’s sadness. The best she could think of was to make them both chocolate-ripple ice cream cones. Their favorite. She heaped the ice cream high, and they sat on the back steps and licked and licked.

A chipmunk with lumpy cheeks ran in and out from under the house. He was carrying seeds to store. “I hope the new people like chipmunks,” Liz said.

“And raccoons,” Gran added. “Not to mention a bear or two. The ones who are
too fierce to be scared off by raccoons.”

They both laughed.

And ghosts
, Liz thought. But she didn’t say that.

That night after Liz went to bed, it happened again. There she was … suddenly awake and sitting up in the middle of the bed, not knowing what had awakened her.

When Liz heard the strange noise, the skin on her arms pricked into goose bumps.

The sound was hard to describe and impossible to identify. A breathy screech? A whistle being sucked on instead of
blown? She had never heard anything quite like it before.

Something about it said
trouble
, though. Serious trouble. Liz leapt out of bed. Her toe hit the wall. She doubled over, grabbing her foot to squeeze away the pain.

“Elizabeth,” whispered a voice. “Elizabeth!”

When Liz straightened, the blue woman stood before her. She seemed to be halfway through the wall. She lifted a hand for Liz to follow.

Without even considering that she had any other choice, Liz did.

She hadn’t taken more than three steps, though, before the blue woman vanished. Without her light, the darkness was total. Liz couldn’t even see the bed she had left behind. The breathy, whistling sound, however, grew louder, closer. In addition to the whistle, now she heard a murmuring voice.

“Elizabeth?” Liz called. “Is that you?”

“Who are you?” came the reply from the darkness. The voice trembled slightly.

“I’m Liz,” Liz replied. And it seemed easiest to say, “I think I’m your guardian angel.”

“My guardian angel?” There was a clanking sound—the stove door opening?—and a candle flickered. “But you said, ‘I think.
’Wouldn’t a guardian angel know? I mean … whether you be my angel or no.” The face lit by the candle looked worried.

“I am,” Liz told her. She made her voice sound certain. After all, hadn’t Gran said we are all meant to be one another’s guardian angels? “Your guardian angel, I mean. I’m sure of it.”

Elizabeth set the candle into a holder on the table. She stood next to the table, the baby in her arms. The strange noise came from him. Each time he drew in his breath, that whistling sound came again. Every breath took such an effort that Liz thought he would quit trying. But he couldn’t do
that, of course. The moment he did, he would die!

“What’s wrong?” Liz asked, moving toward them. “Why is he breathing like that?”

“He has the croup,” Elizabeth told her.

Liz wasn’t sure what “the croup” was. Clearly, though, it was dangerous. “And your father?” she asked. “Where is he?” He couldn’t still be farming in the middle of the night.

“He’s gone to fetch the doctor.” Elizabeth lifted the gasping baby high above her head as though the air might be better up there.

“Oh … the doctor!” Liz relaxed a little. Then everything would be all right.

“Only …” Elizabeth lowered the baby and kissed his forehead. Her mouth trembled. She was struggling to hold back tears.

“Only what?” Liz asked gently.

The answer came in a rush. “Only the doctor be hours away. So Pa will not return until near on to noon. I am afeard poor Matthew cannot last so long.”

And then, to Liz’s surprise, Elizabeth thrust the wheezing baby into her arms and added, “I am so glad you have come! We do need an angel here.”

A chill raced across Liz’s skin. She had let Elizabeth think she really was her guardian angel. And now the girl was counting on her to help! And what did she know about sick babies? Nothing.

What help could she bring? Absolutely none.