The Swallow

by Charis Cotter

  Just the way I’d felt tonight.

  “I ran. I didn’t know where I was going, I just ran. It was cold. It started to snow.”

  Just like tonight.

  “I got on the bridge here and I couldn’t see anything. It was all white with snow. And there was a road barrier, for some construction work being done on the bridge, and I walked around it, and a car came sliding towards me and—” She stopped, staring at me, her dark eyes huge in her white face.

  “It hit me,” she whispered, “and knocked me through the barrier … and … and I fell.”

  The thump. The long free-fall through the air, tumbling over and over. The scream.

  I could feel it. I could see it, just the same as if it were happening to me. The same way I felt it in the cemetery, and in my house, and here on the bridge a few moments ago. I gasped for breath and felt suddenly dizzy. I flung out my arm to steady myself against the parapet. The darkness beyond the bridge dropped away, into nothing.

  I looked over at the boy. His face was a mask of horror. A scream formed on his lips but he made no sound. The snow kept falling, blanketing him in thick white flakes.

  Winnie grabbed me again, her icy fingers digging deep into my arms.

  “You’ve got to help me,” she begged in a hoarse voice. “You’ve got to help Willie.”

  MAKE IT STOP

  Polly

  “Is that why you call her Ghost Girl?” I asked. “Because of this book?”

  Matthew nodded. “She IS the Ghost Girl, Polly. She looks just like her, and she floats around haunting people and—”

  I opened the book. “What’s the story about?”

  “It’s about this girl,” said Mark. “She lives with her family, and everyone thinks she is alive but really she is dead. She lives like that for years and years and nobody ever figures out. But all the kids she makes friends with—they—they—”

  “She steals their souls!” said Mark. “She feeds on their souls and makes them dead like her. Then those kids are ghost girls too, and ghost boys, walking around the world, and everyone thinks they’re alive but really they’re dead.”

  “It’s horrible, Polly! We don’t want that to happen to you. Don’t talk to her!” said Matthew. “She’s too dangerous.”

  I turned the pages and looked at the pictures. They showed the girl playing with one child after another in lonely spots. Then there were pictures of the children back with their families, eating dinner, being tucked into bed, going to school—but now they all had the same haunted, mournful eyes of the Ghost Girl. I shivered.

  “It’s just a story,” I said. “It’s not real. Rose is not a Ghost Girl.”

  Mark shook his head.

  “That’s what we thought at first, Polly, when we got this book out from the library a few weeks ago. We thought it was just a really cool fairy tale. But then when we noticed Rose one day, she has the same eyes, right? So we went back and got the book again and read it all over again. She’s a Ghost Girl, Polly.”

  I started to laugh but it didn’t come out right.

  “Rose is nice, really she is. She just looks a little … strange. But she cares about me. She doesn’t want to hurt me.”

  “That’s how the Ghost Girl tricks you,” said Matthew, pulling at my sleeve. “She makes you think you’re her friend. Then she steals your soul. You gotta stay away from her, Polly!”

  “I think this book is too scary for you,” I said, standing up. “I’m going to tell Mum that you shouldn’t be allowed to take it out of the library anymore.”

  “No! No!” they both said at once, reaching for the book and pulling it away from me.

  “Don’t tell Mum,” said Matthew. “She’ll ruin everything.”

  “Look, you guys are really scared,” I said. “Mum should know.”

  They looked at each other and some kind of silent twin communication took place. Mark turned to me.

  “If you tell Mum about the book,” he said, “we’ll tell her you’ve been in the attic.”

  Rose

  “Let me go!” I yelled, and with an enormous effort I pulled myself away from Winnie’s grasping hands. I took a couple of steps away from her, until my back was up against the stone cold wall. Willie stood to my left, still staring at his sister. His face was blank again.

  I stood panting, watching her. She was looking at Willie as if her heart would break. For some reason I noticed that she had the same lock of hair falling loose in front of her face that I had, the one that refused to stay behind my ear.

  She turned back to me. “Please,” she said in a strangled voice, as if it caused her physical pain to say that word. “You’re the only one who can help.”

  And there it was. Her eyes had that same beseeching, sorrow-drenched look I had seen on countless ghosts through-out the years.

  “What can I do?” I cried. “Why do you even ask me? You know I can’t help you. You’re dead. There’s nothing to be done.”

  “You can help,” she replied. “You can make it stop.”

  “Make what stop?”

  She took a step nearer, reaching out her arms in a gesture that took in the heavily falling snow, the sky, the bridge and Willie.

  “This! Me! Everything! The ghosts. Me going on and on in that house, endlessly trapped in misery! I can’t get out, Rose. I’m stuck there, in that place, in that time, in that night. It never ends for me, Rose.”

  She began to cry, great wracking sobs.

  “I can’t leave. Willie can’t leave. My mother and father can’t leave. We’re all stuck in that awful night, that accident.”

  The image of my grandfather sitting in his study, tears rolling down his cheeks, came to me. And the sigh and the smell of roses in my grandmother’s bedroom. And the pictures she took of me every Christmas, making me look like Winnie. I took a deep breath.

  “My father can leave. He leaves all the time. He’s never home.”

  “Look at him!” she said, pointing to her little brother, who stood frozen like a statue, only his eyes alive, staring at her. “Don’t you see? It doesn’t matter how far he goes, that night is always inside him. He’s here on the bridge in that nightmare with me. Our whole family is locked in that night. It never got fixed. None of us can go until … until …” She stopped.

  “Until what?”

  “Until you go to Willie and tell him I’m sorry, that it wasn’t his fault I fell, that he couldn’t have saved me. Get him to let go of it and let go of me.”

  I stared at her.

  “Go to my father? Tell him I saw his dead sister on a bridge and she wants me to tell him she’s sorry? Are you crazy?”

  “You have to tell him,” she replied. “It’s the only way to make it stop.”

  “Why do I have to tell him? What’s it got to do with me?”

  “You can see me. He can’t.”

  She wanted the impossible.

  “What do you think is going to happen once I tell him?”

  “He’ll forgive me. He’ll let me go.”

  “NO!” I yelled. “He won’t believe me. If I tell my father that his dead sister has a message for him, there’s only one thing that’s going to happen. Don’t you see, Winnie? I’m just like you! As soon as they find out I see ghosts they’ll lock me up!”

  “Make it stop,” she said. “Tell Willie. Then I can rest.”

  “You don’t get it,” I said fiercely. “I don’t care about you. I don’t care if you’re trapped in that house. I don’t feel sorry for you. When I look at you I see …”

  What did I see? Myself. Everything I hated about myself. The hair, the pale face, the twisted features, the weirdness, the no-friends, the loneliness and the ghosts.

  “Make it stop,” she said again and blinked out. One second she and Willie were there and the next they were gone. I was staring into empty space.

  FADING AWAY

  Polly

  It figured they knew about the attic. They were such sneaky, creepy, snooping little brats.
If they told Mum, that would be it for me and Rose. At least, it would be the end of her being my secret friend. If our parents let us play together, we could still be friends. That is—I looked back at the Ghost Girl on the cover of the book—that is, if Rose was not a ghost. If she was—well, then how would I see her or talk to her if I couldn’t get into the attic?

  The Horrors were watching me as all this went through my mind. Matthew still had that anxious look but Mark was smirking. He knew he had me.

  “All right, all right,” I said. “But I’m keeping the book.”

  Mark started to object but Matthew pulled at his sleeve.

  “Let her,” he said. “She can read all about it, and then she’ll know she has to keep away from the Ghost Girl.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Will you stop already?”

  “She IS the Ghost Girl,” said Matthew. “We see her all the time at the window next door, in the back bedroom, just staring out at the graveyard. She sits there for hours, Polly. She’s a ghost, we know she is.”

  “And we’ve heard you talking to her in the attic,” said Mark. “Lots of times. We’ve been in the loft, listening. That’s how we know you go up into the attic.”

  “And we want to come up too,” put in Matthew. “We want to see it.”

  This was quickly getting out of hand. My last refuge in the house, invaded by the Horrors.

  “I’ll tell you what,” I said, standing up and shaking my fist at them. “You set one foot—one foot!—in that attic, or you breathe one word—one word!—of this to Mum, and I’ll set the Ghost Girl on you! I’ll help her get you and grab you and steal your miserable souls and then you’ll be dead, DEAD, DEAD!!!”

  They yelped and ran out of the room. Then they yelped again as I heard my mother accost them in the hall.

  “Mark?” She sounded really mad. “Matthew? What have I told you about playing in Polly’s room?”

  “But Mum,” started Mark, “she—”

  “No excuses! You are not to go in there. Ever.”

  They grumbled and protested as she shepherded them downstairs. I grinned and flopped down on my bed. It was about time she came down on them for trespassing. I opened The Ghost Girl and began to read.

  Rose

  For a moment I stood, frozen, staring blankly at the empty place where Winnie and my father had been a second before. Then, as I turned to look over the balustrade, the world exploded in sound around me. All the noises that had been silenced when I was in that strange, muffled place with Winnie suddenly clattered into life. Cars thundered by, horns tooted, the wind sighed, and I thought I heard a scream dying away in the distance—but it might have been a car screeching its brakes or a far-off ambulance siren. The snow had stopped.

  I couldn’t see anything when I looked over the edge. It was deep black. The wind cut through my cloak. I was hungry and very, very tired. I turned away from the darkness beneath the bridge and headed home. As I walked slowly back along the bridge, I noted that the cars were normal 1960s cars, not the old-fashioned kind I’d seen in the snowstorm.

  I did my best to push all thoughts of Winnie and my dad away. I told myself she was just another ghost wanting something from me that I couldn’t give.

  When I finally got home, Kendrick stood in the hall with her arms folded, as if she’d been waiting for me.

  “You’re late for dinner,” she said. “You’ve kept me from my programs, worrying about you.”

  “Sorry,” I mumbled, hanging up my cloak. I swayed with tiredness. Kendrick gave me a sharp look.

  “Your mother called an hour ago. I couldn’t find you so she gave me a message.”

  “What?” I said.

  “She’s staying at your gran’s tonight. She’s going over figures with your granddad, she said, for some early meeting at the factory tomorrow, so it’s easier for her to stay there.” I felt the familiar letdown. I hated it when she didn’t come home. It happened every couple of weeks. With Father still away, I’d be alone in the house, except for Kendrick snoring in the basement. Tonight of all nights.

  I stumbled into the dining room and sat down at my place. Kendrick came in with a plate that had been in the oven. Pork chops and mashed potatoes, all kind of dried up at the edges. I pushed it aside and put my head down on my folded arms.

  When was the last time my mother had hugged me? Or my father? When I was in the hospital in the summer? When I came home? I couldn’t honestly remember. They were fading away from me.

  LET THE DEAD STAY DEAD

  Polly

  The story about the Ghost Girl was much as the twins had described it. She looked like a live girl and no one knew she was really a ghost. She lured children away from their parents and stole their souls. They became like her, leading normal lives on the outside, but inside they were dead. They, too, had the power to steal the souls of other children, and so it went, the world filling up with hundreds of these horrible little zombie-vampires.

  The pictures were really creepy, and the more I looked at her, the more the Ghost Girl looked like Rose. It was strange that with all the ghost books I’d read I’d never seen this one.

  I closed the book. Rose’s face stared up at me from the cover.

  Rose

  I heard someone come into the room behind me and I sat up quickly, brushing away my tears. Kendrick moved over to the table and looked down at the untouched dinner.

  “You need to eat something,” she said gruffly, and she laid down a dish of custard and applesauce.

  Usually Kendrick didn’t bother with whether or not I ate my dinner, beyond a dirty look now and then when I left the food untouched.

  I took a bite of the custard. It was really good: the custard creamy and the applesauce tart. She stood and watched me as I ate it, making me nervous. But I enjoyed it anyway and ran my finger around the bowl and licked it to get the last bits out. I knew that would annoy her. I looked up.

  As expected, she was frowning.

  “Where were you?” she asked.

  “Just out,” I replied. This was getting peculiar. She didn’t usually ask me anything, but then, I’d never been out this late before.

  “You shouldn’t be out in the dark. Your mother wouldn’t like it.”

  “My mother isn’t here.”

  She picked up the plate of food and the empty bowl and started towards the kitchen.

  “Kendrick?” I asked. She turned back to me.

  “Were you here? The night Winnie died?”

  The dishes clattered to the floor, the pork chops and mashed potatoes sliding off the plate with a splat. Kendrick ignored them and just stared at me.

  “What happened?” I insisted. “Tell me.”

  She swayed and then reached for a chair and sat down heavily.

  “You know?” she said.

  “Yes. I know. Please tell me what happened.”

  Kendrick shook her head.

  “It’s not my place. Your father should tell you.”

  “My father isn’t here. He’s never here. I’ve got to know. Tell me!”

  Kendrick took a long look at me, clenching and unclenching her fists in her lap.

  “All right. But don’t you ever tell your father it was me who told you.”

  “Why? Why is it such a secret?” I asked.

  “Some things are better not talked about. They’re too hard. Nobody in this house ever talked about what happened that night to—to—Winnie.”

  That was the first time she had spoken Winnie’s name, and she spat it out at the end of the sentence, almost against her will.

  “Everything that girl did brought trouble to this house. She was cursed from the first day she took breath.”

  “Cursed?” The custard was turning into a hard little brick in my stomach.

  “Call it what you like. She was always uncanny. Caused her mother no end of grief, all her life. After she … died … I thought her mother would die from sorrow.”

  “What happened?”

  Kendrick gave
a long sigh, thinking back. “We didn’t know they were gone. We thought they were both asleep in their beds. It was well after midnight when the police came to the door with Willie. I’ve never seen a child look like that, before or since—white as a ghost, trembling, icy cold—and all he kept saying over and over was, ‘Winnie’s gone, she’s gone.’ ”

  Her eyes had a far-off look, as if she’d traveled back in time to that dreadful night. She didn’t look at me while she talked, and she kept wringing her apron in her hands, the words tumbling out as if she’d held them in for a long, long time and now could finally let them go.

  “The police told us there’d been a car accident and Winnie had been knocked off the bridge, and the boy had seen it all. He was in some kind of shock. We packed him off to bed with hot water bottles, but he fell sick anyway and we nearly lost him too.” She shook her head. “His mother was as white as he was, and for days she didn’t speak, just sat there beside his bed, holding his hand. His father was not much better. This house was as silent as the grave. It was as if they were all ghosts. I kept cooking meals for people who wouldn’t eat. That went on for months, even after Willie got better.”

  She seemed to come back into the present and fixed me with a baleful look. “It was all her fault! She brought a curse down on this house. One more day and she would have been gone off to hospital and we could have lived a normal life. But not that one. She had to go running off into the night and taking Willie with her and then getting herself killed and—” Kendrick stopped and took a deep breath.

  “Your father was never the same after that. And your grandmother was never quite right either. Your grandfather—he never smiled again. It was bad before, with Winnie having fits and throwing things—”

  Kendrick pushed her hair back from her forehead and leaned towards me. “See that?” she said, pointing to a thin scar along her hairline. “She did that. With a milk jug. She was wild. But it was worse, afterwards. Everyone was broken.”

  “My father? Was he broken too?”