Whitman Private Nursing Home
750 Lampert Street
Montreal, Quebec
December 20, 1922
Dear Dr. McPherson,
This letter is to acknowledge receipt of your cheque for $500.00. We will expect the arrival of your daughter, Winnifred Rose McPherson, on January 9. As agreed, she will remain here indefinitely, and we will invoice you each month for the cost of her care.
As you know, we specialize in patients with mental disturbances, and we are well equipped to make her comfortable. Please be assured we will exercise total discretion in the treatment of your daughter. Your privacy is our chief concern, and all our records will be kept confidential.
Yours sincerely,
Dr. George Ferry
“They were sending her away,” I breathed. “To a mental hospital in Montreal.”
Beside me Rose was very, very still.
I fumbled for the death certificate.
“She died on January 8, the day before she was supposed to go. Rose, what do you think happened? Why did she die?”
Rose
So that was it then. They thought Winnie was crazy. She saw ghosts, just like me. And they found out. And they were going to lock her up. But she died first.
“Something awful,” I whispered. “Something terrible must have happened. That’s why nobody talks about her. It’s too horrible to even say.”
“What could be too horrible to even say?” asked Polly.
“I don’t know. I—I don’t want to know.” I started stuffing everything back in the box and closed it.
“I’ve got to go, Polly, I’ve got to get out of here. I can’t breathe, it’s too dark, it’s—”
Polly grabbed my arm.
“Rose, it’s okay, we can figure it out. Rose, don’t go. Please. Calm down.”
“Calm down?” I shouted. “I can’t calm down, Polly. Don’t you see? It’s all happening again. Kendrick said she was just the same as me. My grandmother saw it. Winnie and me, we’re the same. It’s like we’re the same person. We’re both cursed. They tried to erase her, they tried to pretend she never existed, and then I was born and I’m just as crazy as she was and they leave me alone and no one ever pays attention to me and eventually, when they find out about the ghosts I see, they’ll lock me up, but maybe something terrible will happen to me first and I’ll die and then—”
I threw myself into the passageway, leaving Polly bleating behind me.
“Rose! Rose! Come back!”
THE BRIDGE
Polly
I could see why she was so upset. Winifred wasn’t someone you wanted to take after. Yikes. And it was all so spooky, the way she looked just like Winnie, and saw ghosts just like Winnie, and how maybe her grandmother thought she was Winnie … and how did Winnie die, anyway?
Rose had dropped the papers she had been looking at on the floor. I tidied them back into the box and settled against the wall with the box on my lap. Maybe I’d find a clue.
The first thing I pulled out was a child’s drawing of a bird with a forked tail. It was flying, and there were trees and houses far below. It was signed “WINNIE,” in shaky block capitals. What’s with the swallow? I wondered, and reached for the next paper. This was a typed letter, on letterhead from a school. St. Ursula’s Academy. Rose’s school. It was dated Tuesday, May 10, 1921.
Dear Dr. McPherson,
It is with great regret that I write to inform you of the recent decision taken by the Board of Governors. Unfortunately, we must deny your request that your daughter Winnifred be reinstated as a day pupil at the school.
We refer you to our letter of March 1, in which we asked that you withdraw her from the school. Her behavior since coming to St. Ursula’s in January has been disruptive and alarming to the other students. She is either uncommunicative in the extreme or she talks wildly to herself. Our school is not equipped to handle this type of pupil. Her refusal to do her work and her many absences make it impossible for her to make any progress.
I understand your concerns about her education, but I can only suggest you make private arrangements, since she is so unsuited to spending time with other children.
Yours sincerely,
Doris Frost,
Headmistress
Winnifred had gone to the same school as Rose. Mind you, it didn’t look like she went there very long. Kicked out. For being weird. 1921—she must have been about eleven. I wondered if she went to another school after that. I flipped through the papers.
There were letters from five other schools, dated from 1917 to 1920. The first was the local public school, where I went—Winchester School. The other four were private schools around the city. They all said they couldn’t keep Winnifred because she was too quiet, too noisy, too disruptive, didn’t do her work, didn’t respect authority, was absent too often. The last letter was the one from St. Ursula’s. A year and a half before she died.
And now Rose was a student at the same school. And she said everyone ignored her. All the time. As if she weren’t there.
Rose
I felt as if I couldn’t breathe. The walls were closing in on me. A pressure was building inside my chest that felt like it was going to burst. I scrambled through the passage as fast as I could, hurled myself down the ladder, through my grandmother’s room, down the stairs and out the door, stopping only to grab my cloak. I wanted to get far, far away from that house.
I ran all the way up the street and around the corner. I didn’t know where I was going, but the cold air filling my lungs eased the pressure inside, and I wasn’t going to stop till I had to. I passed a few people muffled against the cold, hurrying home, but I paid them no attention.
Finally, about five blocks farther, I stopped. I leaned over, panting, trying to catch my breath. When I raised my head I took in where I was. A deserted stretch of Parliament Street, beside St. James’s Cemetery. This was an even bigger cemetery than the one behind my house. A tall iron fence was all that separated me from the tombstones looming in the darkness.
A feeling of dread gripped me. I took off running again, even though my lungs were burning and my legs felt like jelly. A dark figure flitted along the sidewalk, far ahead of me, but I couldn’t make out if it was alive or dead. I had a tingly feeling on the back of my neck. I looked over my shoulder. Another dark figure was moving quickly along behind me. Following me.
I kept running. Round the corner, across the Rosedale Valley Bridge, the shadowy figures keeping pace with me. Then I stumbled.
I caught myself before I fell and stood with my chest heaving, taking deep, ragged breaths. I looked back along the bridge. The following shadow was still there, standing about two hundred feet away, not moving. I looked forward. The dark figure ahead was also motionless.
I began to walk. Both shadows also started to move at the same slow pace. I tried running again. Both figures sped up. Then I walked. They slowed down. This was just weird. If they were ghosts, what were they playing at?
By this time we were moving along the Bloor Viaduct, the big bridge that spanned the valley. I started to feel oddly light-headed and suddenly much colder. It began to snow. It’s too early for snow, I thought, looking up at the fat white flakes drifting down from the dark sky. There wasn’t much traffic on the bridge, but a few cars swished past me, their lights blurring. My dizziness increased, and I blinked. Maybe there was some kind of motor show going on, I thought, because the cars all looked like the old-fashioned kind, with square bodies and huge fenders.
The lampposts spread little circles of light for a few feet around them, with patches of darkness in between. Before me, the dark figure moved steadily along, moving in and out of the light. Behind me, the shadow kept pace. The snow was thicker now, obscuring my vision.
Suddenly the dark figure ahead disappeared. One minute it was there—the next it was gone. I whirled around to see if the shadow was still there.
The sidewalk behind me was empty. I was alone on that vast bridge that stretched o
n before and behind me into darkness.
THE SWALLOW
Polly
I rooted around in the box. There were lots more drawings of swallows. They were all signed by Winnie, and judging by how her signature changed, they were done over a number of years. The earlier drawings were simple, a child’s drawings, but gradually they got a lot better. She was really quite good, I thought, looking at one of a swallow perched on the side of a nest. The nest was built under the eaves of a house, and I could see the heads of two little baby birds peeking over the top.
There must have been thirty drawings of swallows in that box. Pencil, crayon, watercolors. There were more of the nest and many of the swallow flying. In the colored ones, the swallow’s feathers were carefully painted cool blue, its throat orange and its breast white. As Winnie grew older, the pictures became more and more detailed, down to the last feather on the swallow’s forked tail. One of the pictures of the nest showed the cemetery wall and the tops of gravestones, making it clear that Winnie was sitting at her window, drawing the swallow that returned to its nest year after year.
I noticed that in every picture where the swallow was flying, it was passing over a different landscape. The earlier drawings showed trees made of bubbles and sticks, rolling hills and square houses with triangle roofs. But as the form of the swallow improved, the countryside became more intricate. And it changed. A thick pine forest, a mountain range, a desert island, a tropical jungle, icebergs, ocean—Winnie’s swallow was traveling the world.
Rose
I felt suspended in time and space on that high bridge, far from the dim city lights. I moved as if I were in a dream, one foot after another. The blowing snow felt cold on my face. A few more of the old-fashioned cars trundled by, their engines loud. A stone alcove opened up at my right, jutting out into space. I turned in and leaned against the cold stone parapet. Darkness opened up around me—the big sky, the long drop to the valley below.
Cursed. My family was cursed. First Winnie, now me. It had killed her. Was it going to kill me too? Or—was I already dead, as Polly kept saying? Was there a chance that I really was Winnie? That all my life, everything I could remember, was just some pale dream I was having in the shadowy world of the dead? Was the reason why I could see ghosts the simple fact that I was a ghost myself?
I drew a deep breath of cold air into my lungs. How could that be? How could I be dead and still see these cloudy puffs of warm breath come out of me? How could I be dead and feel the tingling cold in my fingers and the bitter wind on my cheeks, the snow softly falling on my eyelashes?
“Easy,” whispered a voice in my ear. “You could be dead and imagining it all.”
I whirled around but there was no one there. I heard someone laughing, and then a loud thump, as if a car had hit something, and then suddenly I was caught in a dizzy, whirling black cloud, with that sensation I’d had in the graveyard of falling, lights tumbling around me, the scream—and then it stopped.
I was crouched on the cold concrete sidewalk beside the balustrade. Someone was standing in front of me. In the light from passing cars I could see black oxfords, dark stockings, a long black dress.
I raised my head.
Winnie stood there, staring down at me. Looking like my twin.
THE BOY
Polly
The first time I’d met Rose she was singing a song about a swallow. Her dead aunt drew swallows over and over again.
Rose went to St. Ursula’s. Her dead aunt got kicked out of St. Ursula’s.
Rose saw ghosts everywhere. So did Winnie.
They thought Winnie was crazy. Rose was terrified of going crazy.
They looked EXACTLY ALIKE.
It couldn’t all be coincidence.
I wondered where Rose had got to. I hoped she was okay. I didn’t know how to help her, except to keep investigating.
I had no idea of the time. I was probably late for dinner. I stuffed the drawings back in the box and left it in the attic. If Rose came back, she would find it.
Rose
The passing cars and the noises of the city faded away and there was only Winnie and me, face-to-face on the bridge. It was like looking into a mirror. My mouth, my eyes, my hair. A wild look in her eyes.
I opened my mouth to speak but no words came out. I swallowed and tried again.
“Why have you brought me here? What’s going on?”
She took a step towards me. I took a step back.
“You need to know,” she hissed at me. “You need to understand.”
“Why is it snowing in October?” I demanded. “Why are the cars and the streetlights all old-fashioned? What have you done to me?”
“I haven’t done anything,” she said. “You are following in my footsteps. You have always been following in my footsteps, and now it’s time for you to understand why.”
“I’m not!” I protested. “I’m not following in anyone’s footsteps. I won’t! I’m going home.” I whirled around and started to run.
I only made it out of the alcove, back to the sidewalk, and then I stopped. The shadowy figure that had pursued me all along Parliament Street and across the bridge stood a few feet away, staring through me at Winnie.
It was a little boy dressed in a long wool coat, with a cap pulled low on his forehead and a scarf wound tight around his neck. But I would have recognized those eyes anywhere—whether they were looking out at me from a photograph from forty years ago, or twinkling at me as he said good night on those rare occasions when he was home at bedtime. My father.
THE ACCIDENT
Polly
Nobody seemed to notice that I was late for supper. There was some big discussion going on about the twins and the library. Apparently Mrs. Gardner had called Mum to complain about them being in the adults’ section yesterday. I grinned at them as Dad was reaming them out, and they both scowled back at me. I scarfed down my dinner, for once happy not to be noticed.
After dinner I thought maybe I’d go to the attic and see if Rose was around. But just as I had one foot on the bottom rung of the ladder to the luggage loft, I heard the twins at my door.
“Polly?” called Mark. “We want to talk to you!”
There was no use going up. They’d just come after me. I poked my head out of the closet.
“What?”
They were crowded together in the doorway, shuffling their feet and looking worried. What was with those two? Matthew clutched a picture book.
“Can we come in?” said Mark.
“What do you want?”
“Just let us come in for a minute to talk,” said Matthew. “We want to show you something.”
“Oh, all right,” I said and flounced down on the bed. “What’s bugging you guys? You’re acting really weird, even for you.”
They exchanged looks and then came and sat beside me. Matthew laid the book carefully on his knees.
“We want to show you this book, Pol,” he said. “We got it from the library yesterday. We’ve had it out before. It’s about ghosts.”
“Oh?” I said, taking a look at it for the first time. It was called The Ghost Girl and Other Tales from China. It had a dark-red cover with a picture of a girl standing beside a Chinese pagoda. She had long black hair and a pale face. I took the book from Matthew and looked more closely at it. The twins watched me.
“She looks like Rose,” I said. The girl’s hair was straight, not curly, and she was Chinese, but there was something about the way she stood, the way her head was tilted, her sharp little chin that reminded me of Rose. The most striking thing was the girl’s expression: her eyes, smudged with dark shadows, had that same haunted, desperately sad look I’d seen so many times.
“We thought so too,” said Mark. “We think Rose is the Ghost Girl.”
Rose
I turned back to Winnie, who was staring at the boy, her face twisted as if she were in terrible pain.
“I didn’t want to hurt him,” said Winnie in a broken voice. “I never w
anted to hurt him. I didn’t mean to, no matter what Father said.” Tears rolled down her cheeks.
I looked over my shoulder. The boy was motionless, still staring at her, his face blank. A few cars whizzed by.
I turned back to Winnie. “What do you mean, ‘hurt him’? What did your father say?”
“He said I was a danger to Willie. A danger to all of them. But it wasn’t my fault!”
“Then whose fault was it?” I demanded.
She grabbed me by the arms and gave me a shake.
“It was the ghosts! You know! You’ve seen them!”
I tried to break loose, but her grip was strong. Strong and icy cold.
“You know what it’s like! They never, ever left me alone. Day and night, everywhere I went. I didn’t have a minute’s peace. They taunted me. I screamed, I threw things at them. But nothing worked. It got worse and worse. I got so angry, everything went black. I hurt … people. Mother. Willie. Kendrick. When I threw things.”
I finally shook her off and took a couple of steps away from her.
“So they knew?” I asked. “Your parents. They knew you saw ghosts?”
“No!” she yelled. “They didn’t believe me! They thought it was all in my mind. Father was ashamed of me. He didn’t want any of his doctor friends to know he had a child who saw things that weren’t there. That’s why he arranged to send me away. Forever.”
“So what happened?” I asked. “That night? What happened to you and what happened to my father?” I glanced over at him.
The figure of the little boy still stood there motionless, as if frozen in time, staring at his sister.
She took a step towards me, her eyes gleaming in the light from the lamppost.
“It was an accident,” she said. “It wasn’t my fault. I didn’t know he would follow me!”
“What happened?” I insisted.
Her eyes were fixed on mine, boring into me. “I had to get out of there. I was scared. I didn’t want to be sent to Montreal. I couldn’t breathe. I felt the walls closing in on me. I had to get out …”
The Swallow Page 11
