The Swallow (21 page)

I flopped down on my favorite chair by the fireplace and leaned my head back until I was looking straight up at the ceiling. That’s when I realized the lights were off. What was going on? Some kind of a power blackout? Or maybe a fire alarm before I came?

I stood up quickly and was turning to head for the door when something caught my eye. A piece of paper with a drawing on it was lying on the floor, half under the opposite chair. A drawing that looked familiar.

I picked it up. It was one of Winnie’s swallow pictures, with the swallow soaring through the air, its blue feathers spread wide.

So Rose had been here.

Rose

There was no sign of the librarian or Polly when I walked into the library. The place seemed strangely empty. I thought I heard a murmur of voices from the children’s section, but I didn’t investigate. I wanted to be alone.

I still hadn’t looked in the box. After seeing Mrs. Lacey I’d gone up to my room and lain down on my bed and stared at the ceiling, worrying. There was going to be trouble about that bag. The grown-ups were going to find out about Polly and me being friends. If my mother said I couldn’t see Polly, what would I do? My one friend. And if Winnie kept haunting me and trying to get me to talk to my father about ghosts—I closed my eyes. It was all too much.

I didn’t think it was possible for a person to fall asleep in the middle of being worried to death, but I must have been tired, still, from all my adventures of the night before. The next thing I knew I was waking up and the light had changed and it was time to go to the library to meet Polly. I rushed out, afraid that I would be late, but when I got there Polly was nowhere to be found.

I headed towards the chairs by the fire and sat down, the box on my lap. I stared at it.

I didn’t want to open it. I didn’t want to see Winnie’s drawings of the swallow. I didn’t want anything to do with her.

I closed my eyes for a moment and saw her the way she had last appeared to me on the bridge. Her hair flying out around her face, her sad ghost eyes begging me to help her, her face so much like my own.

Everything inside me wanted to take that box and throw it under a streetcar. If I helped her, all the years I’d spent hiding would be over. My parents would know why I was so quiet, why I didn’t sleep, why I had no appetite, and why I hated living beside a cemetery. They would know that I saw ghosts. I’d be packed off to the psychiatrists before I could blink, and they would lock me up, just like Winnie.

Or maybe … maybe Polly was right. Maybe there was a way through it. Maybe they wouldn’t think I was crazy. Maybe they would help me get away from the ghosts. Maybe they would understand.

I opened my eyes and looked at the box again. In spite of myself, I opened it.

Inside were the drawings Polly had told me about. The one lying on top was of a beautiful blue swallow, soaring through the sky, its forked tail spread wide.

THE GHASTLY GHOST AT MY GATE

Polly

As I stood there, staring at the drawing, I thought I heard something. Voices, coming from far away, like a radio that’s on a couple of floors below you. Maybe Mrs. Gardner was in the children’s section with the door shut, doing a story hour. I stuffed the drawing into my book bag and crossed to the door that led into the other part of the library.

I couldn’t see anyone in there. And the voices sounded farther away now, like they were coming from the basement. Did the library even have a basement?

I pushed open the door and went in. The tables were all smaller in here, closer to the floor, with kindergarten-sized chairs. Some picture books were spread open on them, as if someone had been looking at them but got up and left in a hurry. The lights were off in here too.

Weird. Very weird. I wandered past the displays and thought how small everything looked now compared to when I was little and had a hard time reaching the top shelf.

Now I could hear voices coming from the adults’ section. Maybe Mrs. Gardner had come back.

I turned to head out and stopped short. The Horrors were standing in the doorway, staring at me.

Rose

The swallow was beautiful—its back a brilliant blue, its wings and tail feathers gray, a tiny band of yellow around its neck. It had been done in watercolors, with pale washes of different blues in the sky. There was no ground visible, just endless blue.

Polly was right. Winnie was really good at this. Each feather was detailed and perfect. The swallow looked as though it could go on flying forever.

I reached into the box and pulled out another drawing, this one in pencil, of baby swallows in the nest, all with their beaks open, hungry. The next drawing had the swallow flying high above an intricate country landscape—rolling hills, little houses, trees.

Sitting in the quiet library, I went through the pictures one by one. They showed me a part of Winnie I had never imagined. I dug in the bottom of the box to see if there were any more. The newspaper clippings and the letters were there, and something else, right at the bottom, something heavy. A book.

I pulled it out.

“Do you like ghost stories?” said a voice behind me. I jumped up and the book and the drawings and the clippings and the box all fell in a heap on the floor.

The librarian, Mrs. Gardner, was standing there. I don’t know where she came from. I hadn’t heard a thing.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I’ve startled you,” she said. “Let me help.”

We both got down on our knees and began picking up the mess.

“What beautiful drawings,” she said, looking at the pictures. “Did you do these?”

“No, I can’t draw at all. It was my—my aunt.”

“Well, she’s very talented. Do you like birds? I’m sure I could find you some really interesting bird books. That’s a swallow, isn’t it?”

“Yes.” I scrambled to grab the clippings so she wouldn’t be able to read them.

“Did you know swallows are a symbol of hope, all over the world?” she said, looking at another picture. “It’s because they always come back, often to the same nest, year after year. They’re a sign of spring.”

“Mmmm,” I said. Mrs. Gardner was very friendly but I wanted to get away from her. In a minute she was going to notice how weird I was, and that familiar look was going to cross her face, and she was going to start treating me funny.

“I … I should get going,” I said.

“Don’t forget your ghost book,” said Mrs. Gardner with a smile, picking up the book I had pulled out of the box. It was Polly’s book,
The Ghastly Ghost at My Gate
. Polly must have scooped it up in the attic and put it in the box by mistake.

“I guess you’ll need to check it out,” she said, flipping automatically to the back cover where the library pocket was.

“Oh, my,” she said. “This is overdue.”

She looked up at me suspiciously.

“April 10?” she said. “That’s eight months overdue.”

“Oh, uh, it’s not mine,” I said, knowing how lame that sounded. “It’s—it’s a friend’s book.”

Mrs. Gardner’s friendliness was quickly turning to frost.

“Let’s just check the records, shall we?” she said, her mouth set in a grim line.

I trailed behind her to the desk. Even her back looked cross. Librarians really hate it when your books are overdue. Polly was going to have to pay a big fine.

There was still no one around. I’d never seen the library so deserted.

Mrs. Gardner hauled out a drawer under the counter and started flipping through some cards that were arranged in rows.

“Faraday, Faraday,” she murmured to herself. “Now why does that name ring a bell? Aha, here it is.”

She held it up.

“Show me your library card, please,” she said.

“I don’t have it,” I replied. “It’s at home.”

She gave me another stern look. “You came to the library without your card?”

Now she was really giving me the once-over, taking in my cloak and my wild hair.

“I didn’t know I was coming here …” I faltered.

Her eyes narrowed.

“Shouldn’t you be in school?”

“I … uh … I had the day off today.”

She didn’t look convinced. She peered at me.

“Wait a minute. I know you. Didn’t I meet you last summer, with your mother, when you moved into the area?”

“Yes,” I mumbled.

“And you’ve been in a few times since—”

“Yes,” I mumbled again. I just wanted to get out of there.

“But if you moved here in the summer, why do you have a book that was due in April?”

“I told you. It’s my friend’s book. It got into my box by mistake.”

“What’s your friend’s name?” asked Mrs. Gardner.

“I need to go,” I said and scooted out the door.

“HUNT POLLY”

Polly

“Polly,” said Mark. “You need to come home.”

“No, I don’t,” I said. “I’m meeting Rose here.

Matthew shook his head.

“No, she’s gone.”

“Come with us, Polly,” said Mark. “Mum wants you home.”

Matthew shot a look at him. I knew that look.

“You just made that up, Mark,” I said.

Mark turned on Matthew.

“What did you do that for, Matt? I nearly had her.”

“Sorry,” said Matt. “Didn’t mean to.”

“What do you mean, you ‘nearly had’ me? Why are you following me around? Are you playing some kind of ‘Hunt Polly’ game? Are you trying to capture me? You gotta be kidding, right?”

I walked towards them. They backed out the door.

“Just come,” said Mark. “You don’t need the Ghost Girl. You can play with us.”

“You guys are just kids. I don’t want to play with you. And anyway, Rose is not the Ghost Girl. She just looks a bit like her, that’s all.”

I followed them out into the adults’ section. It was still deserted. But I could hear the distant voices, as if they were coming from behind closed doors somewhere.

“Do you guys know what’s going on? Why the lights are out and there’s nobody here?”

They exchanged one of those twin looks again.

“You can’t see anyone?” said Matthew.

“There’s no one to see. Why isn’t Mrs. Gardner here?”

Mark’s eyes swiveled over to the librarian’s desk and then back to me. Matthew gave him a little dig in the ribs.

“Never mind her,” said Mark. “Come on home, Polly. Ghost Girl isn’t here.”

“Oh, all right,” I said and followed them out the door.

Rose

I ran till I was about a block away from the library and then slowed to a walk. I shouldn’t have taken off like that. It wouldn’t make any difference. Mrs. Gardner would find out it was Polly’s book as soon as she matched up the numbers in her card catalog. Then she’d call Polly’s mother, and probably my mother too, and we’d be in more trouble than ever.

I hurried along Parliament Street, clutching the box under my cloak. It was getting dark already. I couldn’t think where Polly could be, unless she had to stay after school for some reason.

As I walked through the dim gray streets I thought about Winnie and her swallow, and the way she’d looked on the
bridge the night before, and my grandfather’s ghost, sitting in his study, begging me to help her. And my father, with that lost little boy inside of him, watching his sister fall off the bridge, over and over again.

Maybe … maybe I could give him Winnie’s message. What if she was right, and I could put an end to all the ghosts in that house, and my father’s misery? But would he believe me?

People brushed past me in the dusk. Everyone was in a hurry and no one paid any attention to me, as usual.

I was invisible.

FOOTSTEPS