The Green Ghost

by Marion Dane Bauer

  “It doesn’t matter,” Lillian said. “Just tell her. Bring her here and tell her.”

  Kaye stood up. “Tell her what?” she asked.

  “Tell her I’m here,” Lillian said.

  And even as she spoke, Lillian stepped back toward the line of trees and disappeared. She simply vanished.

  Kaye gasped. For a few heartbeats, she stood in the silence of the snow-filled woods. Alone. She didn’t know when she had ever been so alone.

  “Lillian,” she called. “Lillian!” But she knew. There was no point in calling. There was no point in running after her, either. Lillian was gone.

  Kaye trembled. She shook from head to foot. Even her teeth clacked together.

  A sound came from her throat, but she wasn’t crying. She certainly didn’t mean to be crying.

  How could this girl have called her from her bed and then left her here … in the night … in the woods?

  Kaye tried to calm herself so she could think. Lillian expected her to go back. Lillian wanted her to take a message to Elsa, so she clearly thought Kaye would know how to find the house.

  The sound from her throat kept growing louder. Kaye covered her mouth to make it stop.

  And then she spotted the footprints. The full moon rode high in the sky. She could see footprints clearly in the snow.

  The snow was new. All Kaye had to do was follow the footprints back to Elsa’s house.

  She took a deep breath and swallowed her tears. Then she turned and set her foot in the first print. She trudged forward through the fresh, deep snow.

  It was only when she was halfway back to the house that she realized …

  The footprints she followed … there was only one set. Only her own footprints showed!

  That meant Lillian had to be a …

  Kaye couldn’t say the word. Not even in her mind. But it rang through her as if she were a bell.

  And the next thing she knew, she was running … fast. She was running and stumbling through the trees and down the hill toward Elsa’s house.

  Chapter 9

  The Cloak

  1938

  Lillian stopped sawing to look over at her sister.

  Elsa had tipped over onto her side. She lay curled in the snow like a kitten. But she didn’t have a kitten’s warm fur. Even with two coats, she was shivering so hard that her teeth chattered.

  Lillian rushed to her sister’s side again. “Oh, Elsa, I’m sorry,” she cried. “We’ll go back. We’ll go back home right now.”

  But Elsa didn’t answer. She didn’t move, either. Lillian lifted her, but she couldn’t get Elsa to stand. Her legs were rubbery.

  If Papa had been here, he could have carried Elsa back easily. Even Mama could carry her. Elsa was short for her age, but she was a chubby little girl. Lillian could lift her, but she couldn’t get far with such a load.

  Lillian considered leaving her and running back home for help. But Elsa looked so tiny lying there. So tiny and so cold. How could she leave her? And what if she couldn’t find her way back to this spot quickly enough?

  So Lillian did the only thing she could think of. She gathered Elsa into her arms. Then she carried her into the shelter of the tree she had been trying to cut. The limbs were thick, so there was little snow near the trunk. Lillian laid Elsa on the bed of soft pine needles.

  Lillian tucked both coats more closely around her. Then she lay down behind Elsa and pulled her close. She wrapped her own body around Elsa as tightly as she could.

  “It’s all right,” Lillian whispered. “It’s all right. Papa will come.” And she breathed her warm breath into her sister’s neck.

  Elsa cuddled in closer.

  Lillian lay perfectly still, holding her little sister.

  After a time, Elsa quit shivering. Lillian was glad of that. She was so glad she hardly noticed that she was the one shivering now. Later, though, she did notice when her own shivering stopped.

  She must be getting warmer. She was getting warmer. She was certain of that. And in that gathering warmth, Lillian slipped into sleep.

  She dreamed that Papa was coming. She had always known he would come!

  Papa was coming. In his arms he carried a woolen cloak as richly green as any pine tree.

  Chapter 10

  Lots of Room

  “Ghost!” Kaye cried.

  She banged through the door into the kitchen. Without shedding her coat or boots, she clattered up the stairs. She burst into the bedroom where her parents were sleeping.

  “Ghost!” she cried again. “She’s a ghost! I know it!”

  Her father sat up. His hair poked out in every direction, the way it always did when he slept. “What?” he cried. His arm reached to pull her into a tight hug. “Kaye, what’s wrong?”

  “What is it, sweetheart?” Her mother sat up, too, and laid a hand on Kaye’s back. “Did you have a bad dream?”

  “It wasn’t a dream,” Kaye cried. She shook herself free of her parents. “She was real. She was a ghost, and she was real!”

  But her mother wasn’t interested in the ghost. She touched Kaye’s jacket, her cheeks. “Kaye!” she cried. “You’re cold. You’ve been outside!”

  “Is something wrong?” It was Elsa, standing in the doorway to the bedroom.

  “Is she all right?”

  And so Kaye explained about waking to find the girl sitting on her bed, about following her into the woods, about the enormous tree.

  “She wants you to see it,” she said to Elsa. “That’s why she came to me. So I could take you to see the tree.”

  Elsa stood very still, saying nothing.

  “It’s a special tree,” Kaye explained. “It’s a Christmas tree … for you. A really beautiful one.” Kaye didn’t know when she had begun crying again. She swiped at the tears running down her cheeks. Elsa had to believe her. She just had to!

  Kaye could see the adults exchanging looks over her head. We know this is nonsense, the looks said. But she’s upset. Maybe she’ll calm down if we do this thing she wants.

  “Okay,” her father said very slowly. “Why don’t you show us?”

  Kaye wiped away her tears.

  Before they left, Elsa made hot chocolate for everyone. “To warm your bones,” she said. While they drank it, she whipped up a coffee cake and put it into the oven.

  Then they put on their coats. When they stepped out onto the porch, the sun was just rising behind the trees on the hill. The slanting rays gave the fresh snow a rosy glow.

  “That way.” Kaye pointed to her footprints, the ones going and the ones coming back. There were still no other prints beside them.

  She set out, and the adults followed close behind.

  When Kaye reached the line of trees at the edge of the clearing, she stopped and took Elsa’s hand.

  “It’s right up here,” she said.

  Elsa nodded.

  And so they stepped together into the clearing.

  Before them in the sweet morning light, the tree rose … and rose … and rose. Its limbs stretched out on every side. Snow lay on the branches.

  “It’s for you,” Kaye told her.

  Elsa gripped Kaye’s hand tightly. “How did you know?” she asked. “This tree … this …” But she said no more.

  “I told you,” Kaye said. “Lillian brought me here last night. She wanted—”

  Elsa released her hand. She stepped away. “Lillian?” she whispered. “You saw Lillian?”

  Kaye nodded. Hadn’t she said the girl’s name before? Maybe she hadn’t.

  “What was she wearing?” Elsa cried. “If you saw Lillian, tell me what she had on.”

  “A cloak,” Kaye answered. “She was wearing a long cloak … with … with a hood.”

  Elsa gasped, but the question hadn’t gone out of her eyes. “What color?” she demanded. “What color was it?”

  Kaye tried hard to think. In the moonlight, nothing had any color. Everything was shades of black and white.

  But then she
remembered that first moment. She remembered opening her eyes to find a girl sitting beside her on the bed. A light had shone from the hall, and she’d been able to see color.

  “The cloak was green,” she said. “It was a rich, beautiful green … just like this tree.”

  Elsa burst into tears.

  Kaye stood before her, silent and amazed. Had she done something wrong?

  Finally Elsa explained. She told how her sister, Lillian, had taken her that long-ago winter afternoon to cut a special tree. “A spectacular one,” she said. How Lillian had put her own coat on Elsa to keep her warm. How she’d finally given up and cuddled Elsa to warm her.

  Elsa could remember going to sleep in her sister’s arms, though she didn’t know until their father came that Lillian wouldn’t wake again.

  Papa, Elsa said, had gone into town and bought the green cloak Lillian had wanted so much. They buried her in it.

  “When I was a girl,” she said, “Lillian visited me every year, right around Christmas. She’d make a joke about the ugly juniper Papa always cut for the house. And then she and I would walk out together to see this tree.”

  She tipped her head back to see the tree’s tip. “We’d bring strings of cranberries and popcorn to decorate it. We’d put suet and peanut butter on it for the birds. Every year she came … until I was about thirteen. I suppose I thought myself quite grown up that year. Too old to believe in …”

  She shook her head. “She never came again,” she said. “I quit visiting the tree. I thought she was the one who’d left me.”

  “No,” Kaye said softly. “She said to tell you she’s here.”

  Elsa cried again. Only this time she was laughing, too.

  “Oh my,” she said at last. “I think it’s time for breakfast. My coffee cake must be ready to come out of the oven.”

  And they all started back down the hill, following the footprints once more. There were multiple prints now, jumbled and crisscrossed.

  The group walked in a peaceful silence. Kaye knew her parents would have questions later. That was all right. She would answer them as best she could.

  But as they stepped out of the trees into the bright sunshine, she had an idea. It was a perfectly wonderful idea.

  “Elsa,” she said, “will you come with us to my gran’s?” Then she added, before Elsa had a chance to answer, “She’ll have a huge …” Before she could say “tree,” she stopped herself. She didn’t know what kind of tree Gran would have this year. Maybe it would be tiny. Maybe it would even be one of those artificial ones.

  But what did it matter?

  She started again. “You’d like my gran,” she said. “I know you would. And her Christmas is always huge. There’d be plenty of room for all of us.”

  Kaye glanced at her parents as she spoke. Was it all right? She knew she should have asked them first.

  To her relief, they were both nodding. “That’s a wonderful idea!” her mother said. “You must come!”

  “Yes,” agreed Kaye’s father.

  “I’d love to,” Elsa said, still crying, still smiling. “Yes, I’d love to.”

  And Kaye twirled, clapping her hands.

  When she had to stop for breath, she looked back toward the woods.

  There, at the edge of the trees, stood a girl. She wore a green cape, as green as a pine tree, with a silvery green velvet lining.

  She waved to Kaye.

  And though she was too far away to see for sure, Kaye could have sworn that Lillian was crying and smiling, too.

  About the Author

  Marion Dane Bauer is the author of more than sixty books for children, including the Newbery Honor-winning On My Honor. She has also won the Kerlan Award for her collected work. Marion’s first Stepping Stone book, The Blue Ghost, was named to the Texas Bluebonnet Award 2007-2008 Master List. Marion teaches writing and is on the faculty of the Vermont College Master of Fine Arts in Writing for Children and Young Adults program.

  Marion has nine grandchildren and lives in Eden Prairie, Minnesota.

  If you liked

  The Green Ghost

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  The light moved closer. It grew larger as it approached.

  It had a shape now … or almost a shape. It seemed to form a person, a woman. One second Liz could see her clearly. She could make out the long, old-fashioned dress. She could see the woman’s hair was pulled back in a bun. Then the figure wavered like smoke in a puff of wind.

  The Red Ghost

  Jenna pushed the blanket back again. She swung her feet out of the bed. But she stopped before she stood up. She just stopped and sat there, thinking.

  The doll was in her closet, too. Miss Tate’s doll. The one she was going to give to Quinn. It was all wrapped up, taped up, even decorated with a red bow. But it was in there.

  And suddenly Jenna didn’t want to open the closet door.

  The Secret of the Painted House

  Emily was about to turn back when she glimpsed something white. What was it? Even staring hard, she couldn’t tell. White seemed an unlikely color to be part of a tree or bush. She made her way toward it.

  She didn’t know what to expect. Certainly not what she found.

  A house stood in a small clearing. It was a real house, but small. Maybe it was a child’s playhouse. A girl her size could walk right into it. A grown-up would have to duck to get in through the door. The walls were painted white. The roof, the door, and the shutters at the windows were a rich royal blue.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2008 by Marion Dane Bauer

  Illustrations copyright © 2008 by Peter Ferguson

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Random House Children’s Books in 2008.

  Random House and the colophon are registered trademarks and A Stepping Stone Book and the colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

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  The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition of this work as follows:

  Bauer, Marion Dane.

  The green ghost / by Marion Dane Bauer ; illustrated by Peter Ferguson.

  p. cm.

  “A Stepping Stone book.”

  Summary: While Kaye and her parents are driving during a bad snowstorm to her grandmother’s house on Christmas Eve, their car spins off the road and they take refuge in a house where Kaye meets a ghost in a green cloak.

  [1. Ghosts—Fiction. 2. Christmas—Fiction. 3. Christmas trees—Fiction.]

  I. Ferguson, Peter, ill. II. Title.

  PZ7.B3262Gr 2008 [Fic]—dc22 2007048209

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-47788-0

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