The Swallow (8 page)

SOCKS

Polly

“Ask your mother,” I said. “She’ll tell you about Winnifred.”

Silence.

“Rose?” I asked. There seemed to be something wrong with her today.

“Ummm,” came a murmur through the wall.

“
ROSE
!” I called. “What’s going on?”

A big sigh. “It’s not that easy,” she finally replied. “You don’t know my mother.”

“What, is she mean or something?”

Another big sigh. Silence. I was just about to call out again when Rose spoke.

“No, she’s not mean. She’s just busy all the time. And I don’t really … talk to her.”

“Yeah, but you can ask her questions, can’t you?”

“She would be very surprised if I spoke.”

Silence again.

“I don’t speak much. To anyone, really. Except you, now.”

This was weirdness on top of weirdness. “You must speak.
I mean, don’t you need to ask her for stuff? Like … um … clean socks?”

Rose gave a snort of laughter.

“Certainly not
SOCKS
. Kendrick looks after the laundry.”

I was searching through my mind for things I spoke to my mother about. “Don’t you ever complain about stuff? Like maybe you don’t like what’s for supper, or you want a new sweater or something? Or you tell her what you did at school?”

“Not really. She’s hardly ever here. She works all the time.”

I was finding all this highly suspicious. I mean, every girl talks to her mother. Maybe her mother doesn’t listen (like mine), but you gotta talk to your mother sometimes.

“Do you talk to your father?” I asked.

Impatient sigh. “No, not really. He’s not here that much either.”

“Where is he?”

“At work. Or traveling. He works for my grandfather’s company, like my mother. He has to go to Ottawa a lot, and Montreal, and Windsor … and Vancouver sometimes. Lots of places.”

“What kind of company is it?”

“Socks!” said Rose, snorting again.

“Socks?”

“Yes, socks. Haven’t you ever heard of McTavish Socks?”

“McTavish Socks? You mean the ones that have that guy in the kilt and the mustache on every package?”

Another impatient sigh. “Yes, we’re McTavish Socks. At least, my mother’s family is, and she practically runs the company now because my grandfather is really old. My parents are always working. Sometimes I think they’ve forgotten they have a daughter because I never see them, and when I do we barely speak. They read the paper at breakfast, and the only person who notices me is the Breakfast Ghost and—”

“Breakfast Ghost?” I asked breathlessly. “Who’s that? A real ghost?”

“Yes, I saw him today. He’s an old man who wishes he could eat breakfast like he did when he was alive. He’s been haunting me for years but he hasn’t been around since we moved here. I guess he finally found his way to this house.”

“Is he … is he … scary?” A ghost at breakfast! Would I ever like to see that!

“No, no, he’s just an old man with a lot of white hair. I don’t mind him so much. I just wish my parents would talk to me. How could I have an aunt I’d never heard about?”

How indeed, I thought. And how could she have parents who didn’t see her or speak to her? Unless, of course, she was a ghost herself?

Rose

My parents have never talked to me very much. I don’t know why. Maybe they got in the habit of not talking to me before I was five, when I didn’t speak. When she does turn her attention
my way, my mother always has a little frown on her forehead, as if I were another work problem that needs to be solved. For the past few months she’s been more distant than ever. I’ve been worried about her. For some reason, she’s sad. I can feel it. Her sadness is filling up this house.

Before Granny McPherson died, we lived with my McTavish grandparents in their big old house in Rosedale—I guess you’d call it a mansion, really. They’re rich. My great-grandfather started the company a hundred years ago and it’s the biggest sock company in Canada. My mother was the only child, so she was always going to inherit the business. It’s unusual for a woman to be the head of a company like that, but she’s really smart and she knows what she’s doing. My grandfather trusts her. Father used to be a schoolteacher till he met Mother, and ever since then he’s worked for McTavish Socks. When he is home, he’s tired and distracted, like Mother.

She was sick for a while, last winter, and she went to the hospital for a couple of days. When she came back, she went to work as usual, but something was wrong. As usual, no one spoke to me about it. But I noticed she seemed sad all the time, and tired, and sometimes I heard her talking to my father late at night, and crying. One night I listened and I heard my father saying we needed to get away and live on our own, and be a real family. I guess that’s why we moved here, to get away from my grandparents and be together.

But it hasn’t worked out that way. They work more than ever. And I miss my room in the old house. It was on the third
floor, with sloping ceilings, deep window seats and built-in bookshelves filled with my books and dolls and toys from when I was little. Above my bed was a beautiful painting of a mother with her baby.

We didn’t bring anything here with us except our clothes. I don’t feel like I really live here. I’m adrift in someone else’s house. Compared to the big, airy rooms in our old house, this house feels small and dark and silent.

And now the ghosts are coming back.

SHOES

Polly

These long silences were getting spooky.

“Rose?” I finally asked. “Are you still there?”

“Yes,” she said in a soft, faraway voice.

“Did you find out anything else last night?”

Rose laughed. “I did,” she said in a louder voice that made her sound more like a girl and less like a ghost. “I went looking in my grandmother’s closet to see if I could find any more traces of Winnifred. Apparently my grandmother loved shoes. There are piles and piles of shoe boxes in there. All different kinds of old-fashioned shoes.”

“I’m coming over,” I said, scrambling to my feet. “I gotta see them! I love shoes!”

“Wait a minute,” sputtered Rose. “You can’t just come over. I told you, I’m not allowed to play with you.”

“Sneak me in,” I replied. “What’s the best door, front or back?”

I was going to see those shoes and nothing was going to stop me.

Rose

I’d never had a friend over to this house. I lived in silence. It seemed strange to bring someone in who was as lively as Polly.

As I edged down the stairs I could hear the sound of Kendrick’s television drifting up from the basement. She wouldn’t hear a thing.

I crossed the hall without making a sound and opened the front door.

PART TWO

THE HAUNTED HOUSE

Yet all things must die
.

The stream will cease to flow;

The wind will cease to blow;

The clouds will cease to fleet;

The heart will cease to beat;

For all things must die
.

All things must die
.

ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
, “
ALL THINGS WILL DIE
”

ENTITY

Polly

I felt like I was in a horror movie. Where the girl goes slowly into the haunted house that’s been deserted for years, step after step, and you want to tell her, “No, go back! Danger!” Rose’s house had a hushed, still feeling—as though no one ever spoke out loud there.

Halfway up the stairs I started giggling, from being nervous, I think, and Rose looked really cross and told me to shush. The lights were low in the upstairs hall, and the corners were filled with shadows that flickered and grew as we passed by. All the doors were shut, and I had the uncomfortable feeling that there was something or someone behind them, listening to us.

The bedroom doors are never shut in my house, unless someone is getting dressed. Everyone always wants to know what everyone else is doing.

Rose led me into her grandmother’s room. It was like stepping into an old picture. The four-poster bed stood shrouded in shadows and dark-red velvet curtains. My feet sank into the thick carpet, where bunches of pink and red roses twined together against a rich cream background.

“wow,” I breathed. “This room is so spooky!”

Rose rolled her eyes. “Polly, you are so predictable.”

“But it is!” I said. “Look at this place! And your whole house! It’s like it’s been preserved in time. I’ve always wanted to time-travel. Hey! What year is it, Rose?”

“It’s 1963,” she replied. “And I’m not a ghost. Can you just stop being so dramatic?”

“But why is this house so old-fashioned?” I persisted. “Didn’t your parents bring anything new here?”

“No, they didn’t. We only brought our clothes. Father wants to go through my grandmother’s stuff and decide what to sell and what to keep. And my grandmother lived here for about sixty years, so of course it’s old-fashioned.”

“Okay, okay,” I said, poking my head into the closet. “Where are the shoes?”

It happened without warning. Something black rushed at me from the depths of the closet and hurled me back into the room. I fell onto the thick carpet, knocking Rose over as I tumbled.

At first I thought it had to be a person who had been hiding in the closet. The twins love to jump out at me from behind doors to make me scream. Except this time there were no twins. There was nobody, just me and Rose.

Rose had gone white. She gripped my arms and stared wildly into my face.

“Polly, it wants to kill you!” she said.

Rose

The thing that knocked Polly over was bigger now. Bigger and darker. It passed through the room like a furious gust of hurricane wind. Now I knew what it was. And I knew what it wanted.

I had read about entities. Dark, fierce energies bent on evil. Whirlwind spirits that gathered up hate and despair, feeding on fear. They were very, very dangerous. Much worse than ordinary ghosts. The thing that struck me about them was their staying power. Some were hundreds of years old. They found a little pocket of hatred and festered there, lashing out when the living entered their domains.