The Swallow (9 page)

I think I have encountered entities twice before the Door Jumper. Once, under a bridge in a ravine, I felt engulfed by a darkness that took my breath away and spun me around. I got away from there as fast as I could and never went back. Another time, passing an alleyway in the older part of downtown, I felt a stirring in the shadows at the foot of an ancient fire escape, and a trickle of malice sent an alarm through my body, like a tiny electric shock. I hurried along the street and left it behind.

The night before, I’d suspected the Door Jumper was an entity but I wasn’t sure. This time there was no mistaking the gathering storm of rage. I felt its desire sweep over me like a wave of cold Atlantic water: it hated Polly. It wanted to obliterate her.

THE WINDOW SEAT

Polly

“Was that a ghost?” I whispered.

Rose suddenly cocked her head to one side, listening. Then she leaped up and started hauling me over to the bed.

“Quick, Kendrick is coming,” she hissed, and I scrambled up onto the bed as she yanked the curtains closed.

The bedroom door crashed open.

“What’s all this racket about?” barked a woman’s voice. “You’re not supposed to play in here!”

She didn’t sound very nice. If that was the housekeeper, the only person Rose saw day in, day out—well, poor Rose!

“Mother doesn’t mind,” said Rose stiffly. “I’m not hurting anything.”

“What I heard sounded like a herd of elephants charging about,” said the woman. “What were you doing, jumping off the bed?”

“I tripped,” said Rose coldly. “Now leave me alone.”

Phew! I would never have talked to a grown-up like that!

There was a silence. I imagined them looking daggers at each other.

“This is your grandmother’s room,” said the woman in a different tone. She sounded sad now, sad and tired. “Your father wants it kept as it was. It’s not a playroom.”

“And I’m not playing,” replied Rose.

Another silence.

“Supper in half an hour,” snapped the woman, and the door closed behind her. We could hear her footsteps going down the stairs. Then Rose stuck her head through the curtains and grinned at me.

“All clear,” she said.

I climbed down from the bed.

“You were wonderful!” I whispered. “She sounds like an old witch.”

Rose nodded her head. “She is. She hates me. She worked for my grandmother for years, and I get the feeling she thinks we really don’t belong here. But listen,” she said, pulling me towards the window and talking softly, “we’ll have to keep very still until she goes back to the basement. She’ll be on the lookout now.”

We settled into a window seat that had been obscured behind more heavy red curtains. It overlooked the cemetery. It was nearly dark, and the wind was high, chasing shadows up and down the line of gravestones.

I love the cemetery at that time of day. This view was almost the same as the one from my bedroom window. I could see the road winding down the hill, and the tall shapes of the monuments looming up, and the smaller gravestones huddling like a crowd of dwarves.

I looked over at Rose, about to tell her about the dwarves, but one look at her face stopped me. She was gazing at the cemetery too, but her expression was anything but peaceful. She looked sad—so sad—as if all the unhappiness of the buried dead were washing over her. But she also looked scared, as if she wanted to get up and run but she knew it would be no use.

I reached over and took her hand in mine and gave it a squeeze. Her eyes came back from the land of the dead and focused on me.

“You heard Kendrick. You heard her talking to me. So that proves I’m not a ghost.”

“Not if Kendrick’s a ghost too.”

“Polly!” Rose pulled her hand away from mine. “Why can’t you believe me? You must have seen Kendrick before. She’s lived here forever. Are you telling me she was a ghost all that time?”

I shrugged. “Okay, I’ve seen her around. But not for a long time. I don’t know, Rose. It’s just all really … fishy. And mysterious. You’ve got to admit it’s mysterious.”

“Yes, but what you don’t understand is that I’ve been living with ghosts all my life. I know what they’re like, I see them every day. It’s not a game to me. Can’t you see how scary that Door Jumper is? Can’t you see that if there was any chance—any chance at all—that I was really dead, that it would be the worst possible thing that could happen to me? I already feel invisible, I already feel like a total misfit, but if I were dead …”

She stopped and stared at me.

“There’s nothing worse than being dead, Polly. Nothing.”

She was right, of course. I felt really bad for getting her so worried. I reached out again and touched her arm.

“I’m sorry, Rose. I don’t want you to be dead. I really don’t. And I’m sorry I act like it’s all a game. I can’t help myself. It’s my imagination. It always gets me in trouble. But now that I know ghosts are real, I think anything is possible, anything. And I want to solve the mystery, the Mystery of Rose, the Mystery of the Haunted House Next Door, the Mystery of the Ghost in the Closet—”

Rose started to laugh.

“That’s exactly what I mean, Polly! You’re talking like it’s a book, like it’s pretend, and it isn’t!”

I smiled at her. “But isn’t it more fun this way?”

Rose

It was almost too easy, sneaking Polly out. After Kendrick called me to supper she tramped downstairs to her basement lair, and Polly crept downstairs beside me and slipped out, mouthing,
SEE YOU TOMORROW
as I closed the door silently behind her.

Polly insisted she’d be coming back the next day to see the shoes. I knew if I could just figure out a way to keep Kendrick in the basement, we would be okay. To tell the truth, I was far more worried about the Door Jumper than Kendrick. I could handle Kendrick.

After supper I went upstairs and stood silently for a moment at the door of my grandmother’s room. I was afraid to go in.

But it was just as we left it, with the curtains pulled back. The moon was rising up over the cemetery, and despite the fear that clutched my stomach I found myself walking to the window. The view was lovely in the moonlight. The shadows of the trees and gravestones were clearly etched now: black on silver, silver on black. It was almost peaceful. I leaned my face against the cold window.

That’s when it came back. The Door Jumper. One minute I was alone, looking out at the cemetery, and the next I was enveloped in darkness and the moonlight snapped out as if someone had turned off a light.

It was different this time. I was in the center of a swirling blackness, as if someone had flung a huge black cloak around me, layers and layers of dark wool. But it didn’t feel like it wanted to kill me. It was more like it was trying to tell me something, trying to get a message through.

“Winnifred?” I gasped. “Is it you?”

Instantly the entity changed. A roar like a freight train thundering through a tunnel filled my ears. Then I saw lights again and felt that falling sensation I’d had in the graveyard. Only this time there was no thud. I just kept falling and falling.

“
STOP IT
!” I screamed. “
STOP TRYING TO SCARE ME
!”

Then it was gone. I was kneeling on the floor by the window, and a shaft of moonlight lit up one of the big pink roses on the carpet in front of me.

COOKIES

Polly

I reached across Rose’s bed for my sixth chocolate-chip cookie. Rose was still on her first, nibbling along the edge like a mouse. They’d been cooling on cookie racks when I came home from school, so I’d helped myself to a paper-bagful. Okay, so I was only allowed to take two at a time, but they smelled so good and I thought I should get a few for Rose. Who knew she could make one last half an hour? With any luck the twins would get blamed for the missing cookies and I’d avoid the “Polly, that’s just greedy” lecture from Mum and the “Polly, you’re getting fat” remarks from Moo and Goo.

“So, you really think the Door Jumper is Winnifred?” I asked through a mouthful of cookie.

Rose frowned. “You’re getting cookie crumbs all over my bed, Polly. I’m not supposed to have food in my room.”

“Sorry, sorry,” I said, trying to brush them off and instead sending them flying all over the place. “But what about Winnifred? Why did you think it was her?”

“I don’t know. I just got a very strong feeling. You know what I think, Polly? I think that room used to be Winnifred’s
bedroom. My grandparents probably slept in my parents’ bedroom when Winnifred was alive. It’s the biggest bedroom in the house and it has its own bathroom.”

“You have two bathrooms? Wow,” I said. “I thought our houses were the same, only backwards. We only have one bathroom. Sometimes I have to wait so long for Moo and Goo …” I stopped. Rose was frowning at me again.

“I guess the houses aren’t identical,” she said impatiently. “That’s not the point. You see, if my grandmother’s room was originally Winnifred’s, then Winnifred could get up to the attic through her closet. And that’s probably her stuff up there—the girls’ books and the ghost books and the little reading corner and—”

“And she’s still there,” I breathed. “She’s haunting your attic and her old bedroom!”

Rose

Polly’s mother made good cookies. At least, they smelled delicious. But my stomach had been in knots since the night before and I could barely swallow.

I felt trapped. I didn’t know how I was going to shield myself from this latest ghost. The white light didn’t seem to be working. Not only was it an entity, the most dangerous kind of ghost, but it was also a relative. This haunting was personal. It wanted something from me. But all I wanted to do was crawl under my bed and stay there forever.

“You know what’s really weird?” said Polly, reaching for yet another cookie. “That falling thing. You said you felt it before, in the cemetery?”

“Yes,” I replied, brushing some more crumbs off the bed. “When we were at her gravestone. It was awful. I felt like … I felt like I was going to die.”

Finally Polly stopped chewing. She just sat there staring at me.

“But you didn’t? I mean, you were falling but you didn’t hit the … the bottom?”

“I did in the cemetery. There was a sort of thud.”

“Wow. A thud.” Polly’s eyes were very round.

“Yes, Polly, a thud. I hit the bottom. I died, okay? I’m dead, okay? That’s what you want, right?”

“No, no, Rose, I don’t,” said Polly quickly, reaching out to me.

I closed my eyes and clenched my fists. “White light, white light, white light,” I said over and over again.

“What?” said Polly. Her hand felt warm through my sweater. Warm and alive. I opened my eyes.

“I’m scared, Polly,” I said faintly. “I’m really, really scared.”

MUMBO-JUMBO

Polly

At that moment she looked more like a ghost than ever. Okay, okay, I know I said that before, but this time it was uncanny. Her face was white, except for the big black shadows under her eyes. She stared wildly at me and then started to sway back and forth, like she was going to keel over.

I took her by both arms and gave her a little shake.

“Rose!” I said urgently. “Pull yourself together! We’re going to figure it out. We’re going to go through it step-by-step and we’re going to get all the evidence together and we’re going to figure it out. I’ll help, no matter what. I won’t leave you.”