The Swallow (2 page)

The Horrors are Mark and Matthew, my eight-year-old twin brothers. To get an idea of the supreme dreadfulness of the Horrors, imagine the worst brother in the world and then multiply by two—see what I mean?

They’re nasty and annoying and determined to make me miserable. They follow me around singing, “Polly wants a cracker” and pretend I’m a parrot and make all these stupid bird jokes. They play tricks on me and go in my room and take my stuff, and they are always telling Mum if I do anything wrong. And because they are so cute, with their curly brown hair and blue eyes and freckles everywhere, grown-ups think they’re full of mischief instead of full of evil.

I’m not cute. Not in the slightest. I’m too fat and I wear glasses. Mum says it’s just puppy fat and it will disappear when I get to be a teenager and then I’ll be just as pretty as Marian and Gudrun. I don’t believe her. Anyway, those girls are so dumb. All they can talk about is boys, boys, boys. Marian, who’s sixteen, sits around on the couch making cow eyes at her boyfriend, so I call her Moo. Gudrun, who’s fifteen, slaps all this weird goo on her face to get rid of her pimples, so naturally I call her Goo.

I think I was pretty smart to think up their nicknames, but Mum said it was unkind. She wasn’t even impressed with the way I made all my sisters’ names rhyme: Lu and Moo and Goo—and now Sue, The Baby Who Stole My Room. Lu is the oldest (seventeen) and my real sister, just like Mark and Matthew are my real brothers. Mum says I shouldn’t call them “real,” but I’m determined to point out the difference, even if Mum and Dad aren’t. I do realize that I’m stuck with Lu and the Horrors, because they’re my family. What I don’t see is why I should be stuck with the others.

I wish I were an only child.

Rose

You might think I’m exaggerating. That there’s no such thing as being bewitched in 1963, in Toronto, Canada.

But that’s how I feel. Like a princess in a story who has a bad fairy come to her christening in a cloud of black smoke. As if the
fairy pointed her wand at the lacy, innocent baby and said, “Winnifred Rose McPherson will go through her life seeing things that other people don’t see. She will never be able to tell a single person about this because they will think she is insane.”

Maybe you think that’s not such a bad curse, like dying on your sixteenth birthday or spitting frogs whenever you speak. But let me tell you, some days I’d happily take the frogs or the poisoned spindle.

It all started when I was a baby. The things I see, the things that other people don’t see? Ghosts. Ghosts everywhere.

When I was little, I didn’t know they were ghosts. I thought they were people. It took me a long time to figure out that no one else could see them.

An old lady with a sad little smile used to come and sit in the corner of my nursery when I woke up crying in the middle of the night. My mother would bustle in, change my diaper and give me a bottle, while the old lady sat rocking back and forth, knitting. “There, there,” the old lady would say softly. “There, there. Such a lovely baby. Such a good baby.”

Mother never turned her head or paid any attention to her. But sometimes, when Mother was impatient with me, muttering, “Rose, Rose, why won’t you sleep, Rose? I need my rest, I have to work in the morning. I’m so tired, won’t you
please
just go back to sleep,” the old lady had a strange effect on her. Gradually my mother would grow calmer, and soon she would fall into the same chorus: “There, there, such a lovely baby. Such a good baby.” Rocked by their crooning, I’d fall asleep.

I didn’t start talking till I was five years old. There was so much weird activity all around me, I thought the safest thing was to stay quiet and just watch. But my parents started bringing me to fancy doctors when I was two, trying to find out what was wrong.

Finally one morning at breakfast, I asked my mother to pass the marmalade. She dropped her teacup and my father nearly choked on his toast. Even the Breakfast Ghost jumped in alarm when he heard me speak. (He is an old man with thick white hair who sits beside me staring longingly at whatever I’m eating for breakfast.)

I’m still quiet. Unusually quiet, says my mother. Reserved, says my father. I’m trying to be very, very careful. If they find out I see ghosts, they’ll think I’m crazy and lock me up.

I don’t want that.

MIRROR

Polly

What I see when I look in the mirror:

Me. Polly Lacey, twelve years old. Boring brown hair that’s too straight and just hangs there doing nothing. Glasses. Brown eyes. Chubby cheeks. Chubby all over. I don’t think I’ll ever slim down because I love food too much—chocolate especially.

I’m not exactly what you’d call a fashion plate. None of my clothes ever fit me properly; they’re mostly hand-me-downs from my older sisters. And Mum says the reason I have to wear glasses is because I ruined my eyes reading in bed with my flashlight.

Favorite activity: Being alone, reading.

Favorite color: Red.

Favorite book: It’s so hard to pick just one! I like ghost stories the best, and everything Philomena Faraday has written is fantastic!
The Silent Sorrowing Sadness
was the scariest, saddest book I ever read. But I also like mysteries—Agatha Christie, Nancy Drew—and kids’ books like
Swallows and Amazons
,
The Hobbit
, all the Narnia books and all kinds of fairy tales, and Trixie Belden and—well, let’s just say I love books.

Favorite place: The cemetery behind my house.

Secret desire: To see a ghost. A real ghost.

Rose

What I see when I look in the mirror:

Me. Winnifred Rose McPherson. My parents call me Rose. I am twelve years old, in Grade 7, and my birthday is December 5. I am a small person with a lot of black hair. It’s thick and curly but it goes a little mad on damp days or when I brush it. Sometimes I fluff it around my face and look in the mirror to see if I could be at all pretty.

I’m not. I’m a sorry sight. I’m too pale and my cheeks are thin and I have big bags under my eyes because I don’t sleep very well. My nose is a bit too big and crooked, and my mouth is a bit too thin. I’m small for my age. Mother says I need to eat more.

Favorite activity: I like singing. I like silence.

Favorite color: Purple.

Favorite book:
Jane Eyre
by Charlotte Brontë.

Favorite place: The attic.

Secret desire: To be normal and have a big, happy family.

INVISIBLE

Polly

I’m always trying to become invisible in this house, trying to find the one place I can be by myself where no one can bother me. It used to be my room. But since Susie made her appearance, I’ve been on the hunt for the perfect hiding place.

I thought I found one. Inside my closet, there’s a built-in luggage loft. You go up a ladder and through an opening in the ceiling and then you’re in a tiny room, just about three feet high. I moved the suitcases to make a wall so no one can see me if they look up from the closet, and then I made a little nest in the corner with some blankets.

I read my ghost books there and eat crackers and I feel safe. At least I felt safe until the Horrors started coming up after me. They think it’s all a game of hide-and-seek, and sooner or later, they always find me.

They’re not supposed to put even a foot inside my room, but they’re always coming in anyway. When I complain to Mum she tells them off, but they keep coming back.

Now I don’t know what to do. I have nowhere to go where
they can’t find me. I just want one place that belongs to me and no one else. I want to be invisible.

Rose

Most of the time I feel invisible. I don’t put my hand up at school anymore because the teachers never call on me. I drift through the halls past groups of girls talking and laughing, and no one even looks up as I go by.

It seems like the ghosts are the only ones who notice me. It’s as if I have a big sign floating above my head saying:
ATTENTION ALL GHOSTS
!!!
THIS ONE CAN SEE YOU
!!!

It would surprise a lot of people in the world if they found out what ghosts are really like. Of course, some of them are scary—some are absolutely terrifying—and I’ve seen more than my share of those. But most of them are just dead people. Sad, lonely dead people. And once they realize I can see them they won’t leave me alone.

It’s the sadness that bothers me more than anything. Some are sweetly sad, like the old lady I saw when I was a baby. Others are miserably sad, and their unhappiness flows out of them like gray dishwater and floods over me. The angry sad ones are the worst. They’re the dangerous ones.

GHOSTS

Polly

I’ve always wanted to see a ghost. More than anything. I keep watch at my window for hours, I go for walks in the cemetery almost every day after school and I read all the ghost books I can find at the Parliament Street Library.

It just seems to me that there’s got to be more in this world than meets the eye. Ever since I was little I’ve wanted magic to be real. I want to see fairies and ghosts and witches riding their broomsticks across the sky. Life can’t be as boring and ordinary as all the grown-ups make it out to be. There’s just got to be more to it. I’ve always loved books where people stepped through doorways into other worlds, where horses had wings and children were swept away on marvelous adventures.

Of course, now that I’m older, I realize most of those things are not going to happen. But maybe I can still see a ghost! That’s not impossible.

When I go to the cemetery I close my eyes and let the atmosphere just kind of soak into me. I start to tingle all over, and I think I hear whispering in the trees, and then I feel the presence of
SOMETHING
—but when I open my eyes there’s
nothing there. Just the gravestones, the trees and the road curving round the hillside.

It’s disappointing. I’ve read that some people have the gift of second sight, and they live with one foot in this world and one foot in the next, so they can see what’s going on with both the living and the dead. Sometimes they know when people are going to die.

I wish I had second sight. I want to see beyond this world. This world isn’t all that wonderful.

Rose

I never want to see a ghost again. I’m sick of it. Ladies all in white who follow me down the street, sad men in suits who sit at the back of the bus, children in nightgowns floating out hospital windows—I wish they would all disappear.

When my father told me we were moving to Granny McPherson’s house behind the cemetery, I was horrified. But what could I say? That living next to a cemetery wasn’t a good idea for a person who could see ghosts? Not likely. I just kept quiet, as usual, and next thing I knew, we were here.

The first night in the new house I had a bad dream. I dreamed that all the ghosts from the cemetery were rising up out of their graves and drifting slowly towards the house. Over the stone wall at the end of the garden, up the garden path, passing silently through the bricks and the windows and the doors into my bedroom, crowding round my bed. Whispering.