The Swallow (3 page)

All kinds of people in their grave clothes, all ages: babies, children, teenagers, mothers, fathers, old men and women—all sad, all lonely, all dead. They plucked at my blankets and my hair, and the murmur of their voices rose and fell like the sea. “Help me! Help me!” They kept coming until my room was full, and yet there were still hordes of them outside, crowding up against the window. I tried to sink down into the mattress to get away from them. My stomach turned over and over—and then I woke up. I was drenched in sweat and I felt sick.

The house was quiet. I turned on the light. There were no ghosts. But I didn’t want to go to sleep again because I knew they would be waiting for me, just on the other side of the border between awake and asleep.

I picked up my book with shaking hands and began to read. It was a book called
Jalna
that I had found on my grandmother’s bookshelf.

I read for hours. Every time my eyes started to close I sat up and forced myself to stay awake and keep reading. When the light started seeping round the curtains I finished the book and then I finally let myself drift away. I slept without dreams until Kendrick woke me for breakfast.

The next night the dream came back. And the next night. I dreaded going to sleep. I read late into the night, trying to stay awake. It turned out that the
Jalna
book was part of a series about a big family, and my grandmother had them all, so I started to read my way through them.

Every night the pattern was the same. No matter how hard
I tried to stay awake, I still fell asleep eventually. Then the dream would come, with its crowds of clamoring ghosts, and I woke up in a sweat. Then I read until dawn, when I could safely fall asleep again.

We moved to the house behind the cemetery at the beginning of July. By the beginning of August, I was very, very sick.

HEADACHE

Polly

I woke up with a headache. Maybe that’s why I lost my temper at breakfast.

It all began with eggs. Or the lack of eggs, to be precise. During the week we always have porridge for breakfast, but on Saturdays we get eggs. But this Saturday we had stupid old porridge again because Mum ran out of eggs on account of making deviled eggs on Thursday for some ladies from church who came over to have a meeting about “The Poor in our Midst” or something.

I was grumbling about the porridge and Dad took a deep breath and said, “Now, Polly,” and I knew he was going to start off on another lecture about all the hungry children who would give anything to have lumpy old porridge day after day after day, so I jumped right in there.

“I don’t care about those hungry kids so don’t start telling me about them. All I care about is eggs. Saturday is eggs day and I want eggs!”

I picked up my bowl of porridge and slammed it down on the table, hard. The Horrors snapped to attention and nudged
each other, staring at me and grinning. Moo and Goo rolled their eyes, and Lucy looked down her nose at me in disapproval.

“Polly, that’s enough,” said Mum automatically. “You’re too old to be having temper tantrums at breakfast.”

I knew she was right but that just made it worse. I picked up the bowl, higher this time, and dropped it again, really hard. It broke, and the gloopy porridge splattered all over the place.

Silence. Everyone held their breath. It was like that moment when a wave pulls back and another one is about to come roaring in.

Right on cue, Dad reared up.

“
YOU
!” he thundered, pointing a finger at me like he was the wrath of God and he was going to strike me dead with bolts of lightning. “
YOU
!!
LEAVE THE TABLE THIS INSTANT
!”

When Dad gets like that there is only one thing to do. Get out of the way, fast, or he’ll start throwing things and yelling like mad. He’s got a terrible temper, and Mum says I got mine from him, but he’s bigger and way more scary than me, I can tell you. I think it’s kind of hypocritical for a man of God to have such a vile temper, but if you think I’m going to tell him that you’re crazy and you don’t know my father.

I got out of there, fast, and went straight up to my hiding place in the loft. And there I stayed. After a while I ate some crackers and wished I’d eaten my porridge, because I was hungry. The house was really cold.

I cried a bit. I felt pretty bad. I knew I was being childish at breakfast, I knew I was being mean to my mum about the eggs,
because she is really busy and can’t always remember everything. But that just made me feel worse inside. And my head still hurt.

I was huddled up and miserable, like a wet bird with all its feathers fluffed up. I could hear the family carrying on as usual downstairs, just as if nothing had happened and I didn’t exist. Just like normal. Finally I curled up and went to sleep.

Rose

My head was pounding. I had this weird floating feeling, like I was up above everything, looking down. Everything bleached out and turned white, and I couldn’t tell who were the ghosts and who was alive.

The old lady came back and sat in the corner, knitting. I hadn’t seen her since I was little.

The doctor had big bristly eyebrows and a huge mustache, and after a while he started looking just like a wolf, and he kept leaning over me and staring at me with his wild wolf eyes. I’m pretty sure I had been talking about the ghosts because I heard him say, “She’s hallucinating.”

Mother’s face swam into view. She was crying. “My baby,” she choked, “my baby.”

“She’ll be fine,” said my father. He looked scared. Behind him the ghosts from the cemetery started streaming into the room, plucking at my sheets and my nightgown.

“
GET AWAY FROM ME
!” I screamed.

“We’ll just get her to the hospital and see what we can do,” said the Wolf Doctor.

“Such a lovely baby,” said the knitting lady, rocking in her chair.

“My poor baby,” said my mother, laying her cool hand on my hot forehead.

COLD

Polly

When I woke up it was even colder and really dark. I could hear the Horrors calling out to me. They were right inside my closet, at the bottom of the ladder.

“Polly wants a cracker, Polly wants a cracker,” sang out Mark.

“We know you’re up there, Polly-bird,” sang out Matthew. “We’re coming!”

“Matthew! Mark!” called my mother from downstairs.

They started to whisper.

“Come down here right now! I have a job for you,” shouted Mum.

More whispering.

“Don’t you worry, Polly-bird,” said Matthew. “We’ll be back!” They clattered off downstairs.

I had to do something. I just couldn’t stand it anymore. I had to get away from them, somewhere they’d never find me.

In the ceiling of the loft there was a little trapdoor that led to the attic. Dad made me promise I’d never go up there because it wasn’t safe. But I was so mad at him I didn’t care about my
promise. I heaved myself up against the trapdoor and pushed it open. I grabbed my book, a blanket and my flashlight, then hoisted myself into the attic and pulled the trapdoor shut.

The attic was cold and black as black could be. It smelled musty and forgotten. My flashlight cast a faint yellow light. I’d asked Mum for new batteries weeks ago but she was always forgetting stuff like that. I crawled into a corner by the wall and wrapped the blanket around me.

Dad had said the floor wasn’t properly finished and would collapse if I walked on it. He said there were mice. But I didn’t see any mouse poop and I didn’t hear any scurrying. I didn’t hear much of anything—no voices, no footsteps, no people. All the sounds of the house and the city were reduced to a faint murmur, far away, like the sea. It was very, very quiet.

As quiet as the grave, I thought, and then I sat up a little straighter. Maybe the attic was haunted! I closed my eyes to see if I could sense any ghostly presence.

But there was nothing there, just silence.

Rose

When I woke up in the hospital I was cold. I suppose I had kicked off my covers. I was shivering. There was no one there. No old lady, no mother, no father, no doctor. No ghosts. I pulled up the blankets and huddled under them, trying to get warm. I could see trees outside the window.

For a long time I drifted in and out of sleep, watching the leaves sparkle in the sunshine, happy to be alive, happy not to be haunted, even for a little while.

It did seem strange that I should feel so ghost-free in a hospital room. You would think hospitals would be full of ghosts. But when they finally let me go home, there were no ghosts there either. None. And no dreams. I still had that floaty feeling, as if I weren’t quite there, and my head felt light. But I was well enough to start classes at my new school in the middle of September, and there were no ghosts there either. I didn’t dare even hope that they were gone for good. Maybe some of the medicine they gave me in the hospital had driven them away for a while. For whatever reason, they were gone.

THE ATTIC

Polly

Hunkered down in my little nest, cozy under the blanket, I slowly started getting warmer. It was very restful to finally have a spot where no one could bother me, far away from sisters, brothers, parents and The Baby Who Stole My Room.

I found my place in
The Ghastly Ghost at My Gate
(the latest from Philomena Faraday) and began to read, holding the flashlight steady on the page.

A sudden breath of air ruffled the pages of my book. I gripped the flashlight firmly and swung it around the attic. The trapdoor was still shut tight. So where had the draft come
from? And what was that smell that drifted in with it? Sweet, almost like candy, but sad too. A rose?

The attic was very still. My eyes drifted back to the page.

A floorboard creaked, very close by, and I was jolted out of the book and back into the attic. I held my breath and listened. Nothing. I shone the flashlight in a wide arc. The attic was still empty.

I drew a ragged breath. I was scaring myself to death with this ghost story. I settled back and found my place in the book again.