The Swallow (11 page)

As soon as that thought entered my head I heard a high laugh from behind me. I spun around and for a moment I saw
the figure of a girl, about my size, standing in the far corner of the attic, just outside the circle of light from the lamp. All I could see was her long hair, a dark dress with a wide white collar and two glittering eyes—and then she disappeared in a swirl of black shadow.

“What are you doing to her?” I cried out, striding towards it. “You’re hurting my friend. Stop it at once!”

The blackness spun away as I approached, whirling over to the other side of the attic, where Polly was. I threw myself at it.

“
LEAVE HER ALONE
!” I screamed as it loomed over her.

And then the shadow blinked out and was gone. Just as it left I heard a girl’s voice hiss in my ear, “Get her out of my attic!”

Polly lay perfectly still. She looked white as chalk. It might have been a trick of the light, but for a moment it seemed as if she was fading, and the outline of her figure grew dim among the shadows. I took her firmly by the arms and somehow, pushing and pulling, managed to get her down the ladder and into my grandmother’s room. As soon as her feet touched the carpet she started to move again and mumble, and I got her over to the bed.

“I’ll just get you some water,” I said and tore out to the bathroom.

When I got back she was still lying back against the pillows, but she had a bit of color coming back into her face. I held the glass for her to sip.

“Rose,” she said hoarsely, gripping my arm. “Rose, I thought I was dying.”

OLD CLOTHES

Polly

The water tasted sweet and cool. It felt so good to be lying on Rose’s grandmother’s bed inside the dark red cocoon of the hanging curtains. They were partway open, showing the dim room beyond, illuminated by a kaleidoscope of colored light from the stained-glass lamp on the dresser. Rose covered me with a wool afghan from the window seat. She sat beside me on the bed, looking down at me with a worried frown.

“She wants you dead,” said Rose finally. “But I don’t know why.”

I snuggled down more comfortably under the afghan. “I could feel the life draining out of me. It was so scary. I just felt weaker and weaker.”

Rose looked over her shoulder at the open closet door. “She spoke to me, at the end. She said to get you out of her attic.”

“Her attic?” I asked. “You think it is Winnifred, then?”

“Oh, yes,” replied Rose grimly. “It’s Winnifred all right. I saw her for a moment. In the corner. A girl my age with long hair and scary eyes.”

“We’ve got to find out more about her,” I said. “But what about Kendrick? Did she hear us?”

Rose shook her head. “No. I thought I heard something, but there was no sign of her. I guess she’s decided to ignore me, no matter how much noise I make.”

“How come you spoke in that terrible voice, ‘Begone, foul beast!’?” I asked sleepily. “You sounded like an avenging angel.”

Rose laughed. “I guess it does sound pretty strange. I read about it in a ghost book somewhere. It said that you’re supposed to speak directly to ghosts and tell them to go away. And for demons and entities and stuff like that, you need to speak their language, like in the Bible. It’s silly, really.”

“Not silly,” I mumbled. “Funny, though. And I think it worked. I think you scared her away.”

“Let’s hope so,” said Rose, standing up. “I’m going to search this room. There’s got to be something here that will tell us more about Winnifred.”

She started with the closet, hesitating before stepping across the threshold. But it seemed safe, and she disappeared inside for a moment. She came out with more shoe boxes and then went back in again.

After five minutes of quick trips in and out, she had a collection of about fifteen more shoe boxes, two small suitcases and a couple of large cardboard boxes.

“There,” she said, dusting off her hands. “Maybe there’s something in all of this.”

I sat up. “Can I—?” I started, but then I felt dizzy and lay back down.

Rose came and again laid her cool hand against my forehead.

“You’re warmer now,” she muttered, “but I’m a little worried about you, Polly. You should probably go to bed. Maybe I can take you home and we can tell your mother you’re feeling sick?”

I shook my head. “No, I don’t want her to know I’ve been here. I—I want to keep you to myself. Our secret.”

Rose shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“I’ll be okay. Just let me lie here for a while. Supper isn’t till 6:30.”

There was a funny little old-fashioned green alarm clock beside the bed, a round one with brass bells on top. It said 5:45.

Rose shook her head again, but then she plonked herself down among the shoe boxes and started going through them, throwing off the lids. I didn’t get to see all the shoes this time. She moved quickly on to the suitcases.

“Wow!” she breathed as she opened the first one. She held up a pink filmy nightgown. It had thick borders of lace along the neck. Then she pulled out another one of creamy satin and another, dark-green silk. I was dying to get out of bed and look at them but she moved on to the other suitcase.

The fasteners were stuck at first and she had to bang them a bit to get them open. When she looked inside I could hear her quick intake of breath.

“What?” I asked eagerly, leaning out of the bed dangerously to try to see in.

Rose stood up and brought the case over to the bed.

Lying on top was a carefully folded black dress, and underneath were other dark sweaters and blouses, and a skirt. A pair of plain black shoes was tucked into the side pocket.

“So?” I said, puzzled. “Old clothes, so what?”

As Rose pulled out the dress, something dropped out of it and fell to the ground with a soft rustle. She picked it up. It was a dried flower—a rose—probably red once but now blackened with age. She handed it to me, then held up the dress. It was long. It would have probably hit Rose halfway between her knee and her ankle if she’d put it on. It had a row of buttons all the way down the front and a wide white collar.

I still didn’t get it. “It’s kind of hideous, but what’s so special about it?”

“It’s the same dress!” whispered Rose, fingering the soft material. “The one she was wearing when I saw her in the attic. I noticed the collar. These are Winnifred’s clothes.”

“Your grandmother kept them? After Winnifred died?”

Rose nodded.

I glanced down at the preserved rose in my lap. A faint, very faint, smell of roses wafted gently through the room.

Rose

The smell of roses. My grandmother’s favorite perfume. Where was she? Why didn’t I see her ghost? The room was full of her and yet—and yet—she wasn’t quite there.

I reached into the suitcase and pulled out a black wool cardigan, then a dark silk blouse, some thick, itchy-looking stockings, a tweed skirt, the shoes. As I laid each item of clothing out on the bed, something in the room seemed to issue a soft sigh. And with the sigh came the faint smell of roses again. The clothes got smaller as I dug farther into the case: a baby’s white ruffled christening gown lay at the bottom and a pair of knitted white baby socks.

Polly sucked in her breath when she saw the socks.

“Oh, Rose,” she said softly. “This is the saddest suitcase.”

I sank back beside her on the bed and contemplated the array of clothing. The bigger things were dark, but the smaller ones had some color: a small blue sweater had the sweetest little buttons in the shape of white sailboats.

“My grandmother must have packed this away and kept it all these years.”

“All these years,” echoed Polly, touching the socks. “It must have been so awful to lose her little girl. She must have missed her so much.”

“Little girl? Don’t you mean the murderer?” I couldn’t help myself.

“Oh, all right. Maybe she wasn’t a murderer. But even if she was some kind of criminal, her mother would still miss her, wouldn’t she?” Polly’s eyes were filling with tears. “That’s what mothers do, don’t they? Love their kids no matter what?”

I patted her shoulder. “Come on, Polly, let’s get you home. You’re upset. Are you strong enough to walk?”

She was. The house was very quiet. Polly passed silently through the hall and down the stairs behind me. No sign of Kendrick.

I slipped on my jacket and walked Polly to her door.

“Don’t come in,” she said. “I’m fine.”

She didn’t look fine. Her face was still pale and she looked shaky. Without thinking I reached out and gave her a big hug.

“Go to bed,” I whispered. “Take care, and don’t worry. We’ll figure it out.”

She smiled at me and went in.

I turned to go down the porch steps and stopped abruptly, almost falling. Her twin brothers stood on the front sidewalk, looking up at me, their mouths wide open.

I steadied myself against the railing and started down towards them. One of them stepped forward, his fists raised.

“What are you doing to our sister, Ghost Girl?” he demanded. He sounded fierce but his arms were trembling.

The other one stepped up and raised his fists in an echo of his brother.

“Leave her alone!” he sputtered. “Let her be!”

I stared at them. What was wrong with these kids?

“Your sister is my friend,” I said finally. “I would never hurt her.”

The first one let out a howl. “
LIAR
!” he shouted. “You are hurting her! You’re trying to steal her soul! Go away!”

His brother grabbed his arm. “Be careful, Mark,” he warned. “She might come after us too.”

I gathered myself together and tried to tower over them. Since they were almost as tall as I was, this was challenging.

“Stop your nonsense,” I said in a grown-up voice. “I am not a ghost! You’re imagining things. Your sister is perfectly safe.”

At this the second one—Matthew, I guess—began to cry. “No,” he said. “No she isn’t safe. She’ll never be safe again.”

I moved towards him, and then they both yelped and took off around the side of the house.

As I let myself in the front door, I thought, the Horror Twins were right. I didn’t know how they knew, but I was putting Polly in danger, just by letting her into my house. I vowed that she would not come to visit again.

THE CRACK

Polly

I dreamed I was back in the attic. A full moon shone in through a skylight, and the shadows of gravestones marched along the sloping roof. There was a loud noise, like a thunderclap, and everything shook. An earthquake? I shut my eyes. When I opened them, a huge crack had appeared, running down the wall of the attic. As I gazed at it in horror, it slowly started to grow wider.

I reached for Rose but I couldn’t find her. I could feel that same fading, draining feeling I’d had when the Door Jumper attacked me.

“Rose!” I called out, my voice a hoarse whisper. “Rose, help me!”

“Help you?” came a voice from the crack. I looked, and I saw Rose climbing through it with a strange look on her face. She was wearing the long black dress from the suitcase, the dried rose the color of old blood pinned to her chest. Her hair was longer, disappearing down her back in a swirl of shadows. “Can’t you figure it out, you stupid girl?”

She stood over me and smirked. Her face was Rose’s face, but it looked different: cruel and crazy.

“I am Winnifred,” she said, leaning down and breathing into my face. “I am Rose. We are one. And you are dead.”

With a howl of laughter she whirled around and snapped into the swirling, towering Door Jumper, surrounding me, hugging me, drowning me.

Rose

After supper I returned to my grandmother’s room. I turned on the pretty stained-glass lamp and looked around at the mess. Tissue paper, shoes and boxes in a jumble on the floor. The sad clothes laid out on the bed. A few boxes were piled in a corner, still unopened.

I sat down in the middle of it all and started putting away the shoes, carefully wrapping them in the tissue again. It reminded me of when I was little, putting my dolls to bed. I had gone through a stage of dressing them all in makeshift nightgowns and setting them in cradles and shoe box beds, all in a row. Every night I had to do it, before I went to sleep. My mother would try to hurry me up but I had to make sure each one was carefully tucked in. Sometimes the old lady ghost would appear, rocking and knitting, smiling at us all: dolls, child, mother.