by Susan Lynn Solomon
Before
I speak of the odd things that happened in my house, I must explain how I first
encountered the spirit.
A number of years ago I was the in-house lawyer
at a small company in Niagara Falls. Charlie Ganim, my employer, also owned a
bed and breakfast in Niagara-on-the-Lake, a small Canadian town across the
river from where I lived. A block off Queen Street, the house stood two stories
above an ancient brick foundation. Yellow clapboard with brown shutters and
trim, the Blake House was one of many inns dotting that quaint historic town. That
ancient brick foundation was set in place soon after the town was set afire by
American forces during the War of 1812. Zackery Myerson laid the foundation on
the site where a retreating British officer was killed. He built what today
might be considered a small cottage on that plot of land and established a
bakery in it. Over the years subsequent owners extended the cottage, and in
1859 Horace Blake purchased the building as a residence for his aging mother.
Since then, the house became the residence of at least ten different families
before Charlie purchased it in 2003 and turned it into an inn.
I’ve described the history of the Blake House,
because its age had given a ghost ample time to take up residence there. At
least, that was the legend attached to the house.
I learned of this from a Frederica Jones, the
resident innkeeper. She told me of the ghost late on a snowy January afternoon when
I drove across the Queenston-Lewiston Bridge and into Niagara-on-the-Lake to
gather documents Charlie needed. I expected this would be a quick roundtrip,
but when I came through the front door of the Blake House, I saw Frederica
standing in the hall. Petite with a mop of red hair, her green eyes were wide
and her hand covered her mouth as if to mute a scream.
Startled by her expression, I asked, “Freddie,
are you okay?”
She didn’t answer.
I wiped snow from my boots on a mat near the
door and rushed across the polished wood floor to where she now held onto the
ornate newel post at the bottom of the stairs. Those stairs rose to a landing,
then turned and rose again to the second floor.
“What’s the matter?” I said.
We were in a hall lined with wallpaper
reminiscent of that which might have hung there in the Victorian age. To the
right of the staircase was the room Charlie referred to as the Gentleman’s
Parlor; to our left a door opened on the dining room and the kitchen beyond.
Freddie pointed to the ceiling. “Don’t you hear
that?”
“Hear what?”
“Listen.”
I tilted my head and held my breath. The floor
creaked. Then I heard what sounded like footsteps. “So?” I said. “One of your
guests is walking around his room.”
She bit her lip and shuddered. “Susan, we don’t
have any guests.”
Again I heard the floor creak overhead. As an
attorney, I had been trained to believe that everything, regardless of how
strange it might seem, had a logical explanation. A ghost walking around the
Blake House? Ghosts only existed in stories designed to spook children.
“This place is built of wood, right?” I told
her. “So what we’re hearing is just the sound an old wood house makes from
time-to-time. Perfectly normal.”
She stared at me.
Though the sun had begun to set and I wanted to
get home, I couldn’t let her face her fear alone. “Come on, Freddie,” I said.
“Let’s put up coffee and talk this out. You’ll see there’s nothing haunting
this house.”
Taking her hand, I led her
toward the kitchen. As we passed through the door, I glanced at the dinette
table. On it I saw a copy of Shirley Jackson’s novel, The Haunting of Hill House. A creaking old house and a novel about
a ghost—clearly the combination of these two things had stirred Freddie’s
imagination.
I smiled at her and
pointed to the book.
Shaking her head, she
pulled away from me. “Susan, you know me better than that. I only picked up
that book because of what I’ve been hearing in here.”
“Uh-huh, right,” I said.
“Coffee and talk will exorcise your ghost.”
An hour or so sitting
together over coffee should have eased Freddie’s fear. The problem was that, as
if to prove her right and me wrong, just when we finished our coffee the
footsteps on the second floor became more pronounced. She covered her ears.
Now I
shuddered. This wasn’t just the sound made by an old house.
She
turned to me “You heard that. Something is
walking up there!” She sounded desperate.
My stomach
quivered.
Sighing
deeply, she said, “The first time I heard it I ran upstairs to see what was
going on. I mean, someone I didn’t invite in walking around the front bedroom?
But when I got to the door…” her words faded into footsteps that grew still louder
now that we were talking about them.
“Yeah?” I
encouraged.
She shook
her head.
“Come on,
Freddie. You can’t start this then leave me hanging.”
Her green
eyes darted as if she feared the ghost might come downstairs and join us for
coffee. At last she said, “It was suddenly very quiet, like someone held their
breath on the other side of the bedroom door… When I opened it …” She shrugged.
“Nobody was there. Except …”
“Except?”
“I-I
could swear I saw someone dart past the window seat.” She began to cry. “Please
tell me I haven’t lost my mind.”
If
hearing what we both heard meant that Freddie had lost her mind then, logically
speaking, my mind had also bought a ticket for a train ride to insanity. But
this wasn’t an insane imagining. Somebody was
pacing around an unoccupied room on the second floor.
I rushed
from the dining room and tore up the stairs. In my haste I almost skidded into
the wall as I rounded the banister. Panting, my palm on the wall I listened to
footsteps in the room at the far end of the hall. Tiptoeing across the carpeted
floor I approached the closed door then stopped and leaned my ear against it.
The pacing continued. Now I heard a sigh.
My breath
caught in my throat. That’s just the wind
leaking through an old window, I thought. Yeah. That’s what it has to be. But the windows in the Blake House
weren’t old and leaky—I’d reviewed the contract with the company that replaced
the windows last April. And the footsteps … It sounded like leather-soled shoes
on a wood floor. No. Can’t be! This room
is carpeted… I’d seen and approved the invoice from the company that laid
the carpet!
My hand
shaking, I reached for the brass door knob. Turned it. Threw open the door…
The room
was empty, the floor carpeted—no bare wood that could produce the sound of footsteps.
The curtain over the window hung motionless. The only sound in the room was my
gasp.
My logic
fled like a rabbit escaping a stew pot. A ghost did inhabit this room! I turned and closed the door behind me.
Looking over my shoulder, I ran for the stairs.
Freddie
stood on the bottom step. Her face pale, she grasped the banister’s newel post
with both hands like she might topple over if she let go. “Y-you see?” she
said.
I looked up
to the landing at the top of the stairs and nodded.
I should
have stayed with Freddy, helped her find an explanation for what we’d heard—an
explanation that would erase the fear we both felt. I couldn’t. In minutes I gathered
the documents Charlie needed and left. That was the last time I set foot in the
Blake House.
I didn’t
tell Charlie about what Freddie and I had experienced. Not the next day. Not
until the middle of February. Even then I didn’t say it aloud.
***
In images from my
earliest memories I see myself sitting in bed, writing. As a child I rose with
the sun so I could grab a piece of scrap paper and print a dream I’d had the
night before (I printed since I hadn’t yet mastered cursive writing). In high
school I learned to play the guitar and by the time I entered college I had
gotten good enough to play songs I’d written in Greenwich Village coffee houses.
Later I worked for a quarterly magazine, writing three or four articles for
each issue. While in law school and after graduation I wrote short stories that
reflected my life and the people around me. Charlie knew my history, which was
why early in February he asked for a favor.
In a
small office with stark white walls and the shades drawn across the single
window, I was at my desk, typing a contract when he approached.
“I’m
almost done here,” I said. “I’ll have this for you by this afternoon.”
He
touched my shoulder. “That’s not what I want to ask about.”
I turned
in my chair and glanced up at him. “Oh?”
“No. See,
we’re going to open the Blake House for a long Valentine’s Day weekend.”
I gave
him a half-smile. Did he want to ask me to help Freddie in the Blake House that
weekend? He never hesitated to assign me non-legal chores—customer relations,
drafting promotional material. Most times I would gladly help out, but spending
a weekend at that house …
“Sounds
good, Charlie,” I said. “I hope you have a full house.” I swiveled back to face
my computer. “My sister’s coming up from Florida that weekend, and …”
His eyes
narrowed and he tilted his head. “That’s nice. Have a good time.” He thought
for a moment. “You could take her across to Niagara-on-the-Lake. I’m sure she’d
enjoy that. Before she comes, I want you to write a short romantic story set in
the Blake House. I want to put a copy of it in each of the rooms. I think it
would be something the guests would remember … and maybe come back again.”
I nodded.
As Charlie
walked away, he added, “Of course, you’ll have to write that on your own time. I
have a lot for you to do here the next couple of weeks.”
Why
wasn’t I surprised? I’d known the man almost twenty years. “I could be more
creative if you turn up the heat a bit?” I called after him. Thirty degrees
outside, the office thermostat was set as sixty-four.
“Can’t,”
he called back. “Gotta save money where I can.”
***
A favor for the man
who signed my pay check. A short romance set in the Blake House. But what did I
know of that house—other than that I now believed a ghost lived there?
I thought
about this the rest of the day. That night my sleeping mind must have continued
to seek an underpinning for Charlie’s story. I say this, because in the morning
I awoke with a place to begin. The ghost. The sigh sounded as though it came
from a female, and I wondered if she haunted the Blake House because she died
there. And that sigh—it might have been the sound of longing. Yes, that could
be it! The ghost died longing for a lost love.
But, did
she? The pacing footsteps and the sigh were all I knew about the ghost—that,
and Freddie Jones’s fear of it. This should not have presented a problem.
Research. I often researched legal issues. Research also resolved issues in my
creative writing. Okay, then, I would start my research into the Blake House
ghost.
Saturday
morning I slid from bed. My imagination stirred by the thought of a new story
to write, I poured a large mug of coffee and carried it to my computer. To
begin my search for the ghost, I Googled Zackery Myerson, the man who
had constructed the first building on the site. I learned only one new fact
about him: he had been among a group of British loyalists that fled to Canada
after the American Revolution. I had the approximate years of his birth and
death, but nothing about his dying in his house. Next, I tried Horace Blake, but learned nothing more than that he had
come to Niagara-on-the-Lake from the California gold fields. He had mined enough
gold to buy a number of properties and start several businesses in his new hometown.
Yes, he had bought the Blake House for his mother. No, there was nothing about
her dying in the house. Finding not even a rumor of ghost, I printed the
articles I’d read. Perhaps those would provide fodder for some later story.
In the
afternoon I again crossed the river, this time to visit the Niagara-on-the-Lake
Historical Society’s museum. Located in a brick building behind a white picket
fence on Castlereagh Street, it
housed displays of relics that told the town’s history. It also housed a room stocked
with documents and photos. One picture showed men at work on what appeared to
be a military base. The caption told me that Canadian artisans had helped to
rebuild Fort Niagara during the Civil War. I found a drawing that depicted a
black man being helped from a catketch on the Lake Ontario shore—the last stop
on the Underground Railroad. I hadn’t known any of this, but these facts didn’t
bring me closer to learning who the ghost had been in life. I continued to
search through the files, learning more about the town, but nothing of a ghost
in the Blake House. Another dead end. I gathered my notes, and climbed into my
Saturn Ion.
I had spent an entire day on the project Charlie
assigned me (when my employer asked favor it was never voluntary), and come up
empty. At the customs booth on the bridge, the agent asked what I had been
doing in Canada.
“Research
for a story,” I told the woman.
“You’re a
writer?” she asked.
“I am,
though I haven’t been published yet.”
As she
handed back my license and registration, she leaned from the booth and smiled.
“Did you find the information you wanted?”
I sighed.
“Guess
not,” she said. “Well, good luck.
Grumbling,
I decided I would tell Charlie I couldn’t come up with the story. I had done
everything I could, I would say, but … I took a deep breath. Actually, there
was one more place I could look.
Exiting
the highway, I raced to the office at more than a few miles-per-hour over the
speed limit. That I didn’t get stopped must have meant the police on patrol had
gone to dinner. My dinner would have to wait. Inside the office, I pulled open
one of the file draws and searched through folders until I found the contract
that sold the Blake House to Charlie Ganim. The seller was a woman named
Margaret Dragone. She had lived in the house for years. She would surely have
heard the ghost and would know of its origin. Just prior to the sale, Mrs.
Dragone had moved to Toronto. Her new address and phone number were on the
sheet I carried to the phone.
“Mrs.
Dragone?” I asked when my call was answered.
“Who?”
the woman on the other end said.
“Was it
you who sold Charles Ganim the Blake House?” I looked again at the page I held.
“This is the name and phone number she gave us during the sale of the
property.”
After a
brief hesitation I heard a man’s voice on the line. “I’m sorry, young woman,”
he said. “We have no idea what you’re talking about or who this Mrs. Dragone
is. You have the wrong number.”
“But, it
says in the contract—”
“Wrong
number!”
When he
hung up I held the receiver away and stared at it. What the hell was going on?
***
I find it interesting
how the brain works. When I climbed into bed that night, aggravated about the
brick wall I’d banged my head against all day, I felt torn between telling
Charlie I couldn’t find a story and desperately wanting to write it. When
sunshine from our western New York February thaw knocked on my bedroom window,
I realized that while I slept my mind had continued the argument. Rolling over
in bed I saw the remnants of that battle: my quilt bunched on the left side of
my bed, my pillow on the floor, my nightgown damp with perspiration. I can’t/I
want to, had apparently battled like the gray of surrender and the blue of
annoyed stubbornness.
I abruptly sat up, thinking, Like in the Civil War!
This
thought brought me back to my research. Men from Niagara-on-the-Lake helping to
rebuild Fort Niagara; runaway slaves brought to Niagara-in-the-Lake. When I
attached this to the longing sigh I’d heard in the Blake House, the story I
sought blossomed.
Still in
my nightgown, coffee in hand I parked at my computer and began to type. When
the sun set just past five o’clock I clicked on Save. The story was finished … at least, as a first draft. In just
over 1,500 words I’d told of the ghost—Abigail Bender, I named her—falling in
love with a man who worked the Underground Railroad and helped at Ft. Niagara.
They married and moved into the Blake House. When the Civil War began the
man—Will Bender—enlisted in the Union Army, and perished at Gettysburg. Pacing
her bedroom, Abigail pined for the loss of her one true love until one day,
sitting near her bedroom window she overdosed on laudanum and joined him in
death.
I didn’t
give Charlie the story on Monday, nor did I show it to him on Tuesday. Both
evenings when I returned home after work, I sat at my desk. Late into both
nights I continued to rewrite and tighten the text. With each new draft,
Abigail Bender became more real to me; became … a friend. I printed the draft
and carried my friend’s story with me to work. Once or twice I pulled it from
my shoulder bag. Reading what I’d written of Abigail’s life and death, it was
almost as if I spoke to her, and in each word she spoke to me.
Wednesday
evening as I shut down my office computer and prepared to leave, Charlie opened
the door. “So, did you write my story yet?” he asked.
His story? No!
The story was mine. And Abigail’s.
“We’re
getting close to Valentine’s Day,” he said.
I sighed,
sat down on my desk chair and pulled the pages from my shoulder bag. I could
give him Abbie—Abbie is what I had been calling her—and still keep her for
myself.
Charlie
pulled over a chair and read. When he finished, he read the story again then
looked at me. His eyes moist, he said, “I, uh … didn’t expect … It’s sad, but
still …” He stood up. “Yes, this will be just fine. Thank you.”
Shaking
his head, he walked away.
***
I had no idea what
the Blake House guests thought of Abbie’s story. I know what my sister thought
of it, though.
Early the
next Saturday morning I attached Abbie’s story to an email that said, Robin, this is the result of all that
research I told you about. What do you think of it?
That
afternoon she phoned me. “I like the story, Sue,” she said.
I head a
slight hesitation in her voice. “You don’t sound convinced.”
“Well …”
Glancing
over my shoulder like Abbie might be standing behind me, as if to apologize for
making her story less than perfect, I said, “I could do another rewrite.”
“No. It’s
good.”
“But?”
I heard
Robin take a deep breath. “It should be much longer.”
“You mean
… like a novel?”
“Uh-huh.”
“But
Charlie didn’t want a novel,” I said. “He just wanted—”
“Yeah.
And you gave him what he asked for. Now you could make it the story you wanna write.”
Considering
this, I glanced out my window. I didn’t see children playing on the grassy common
behind my condo, though. Through my mind’s eyes I saw Niagara-on-the-Lake as it
had been: billowed sails of ships out on Lake Ontario, and horse carts on
narrow streets that wound down to the shore. As the images became sharper, I
heard the same sigh I’d heard that January day in the Blake House. In my house.
I jumped back, startled. This time, though, the sound didn’t frighten me.
***
Except for the hours
I spent at the office, then rushing through the market to buy prepared meals,
during the next three months I spent all of my time turning Abbie’s short story
into a novel. Weekends found me combing through bookshelves at the library or
searching online for people and places—those small details that would bring
life to her time and the town in which she lived (foolish as it might sound,
Abigail Bender had become entirely real to me). The thin manila folder that
held the information I gathered grew fat then fatter, then became two folders,
then three. The tableau of Abbie’s life filled my computer screen. She was a
fisherman’s daughter. She had a brother named Brian, who ferried runaway slaves
to freedom in Canada. Will Bender worked the Underground Railroad with Brian. I
saw—no, I knew—the bank of the
Niagara River below the town of Lewiston where they gathered the runaways. I
saw Abbie walking on the gently sloping town common, saw her meet and fall in
love with Will. I saw her lose him to a war …
A month
into this project my sister phoned me.
“Where
have you been?” she scolded. “I’ve been trying to reach you for week.”
“I’ve …
been writing. You know, Robin, turning Abbie’s short story into a novel.”
“All this
time?”
I carried
the receiver to my computer desk. “You told me to do it. See? I do listen to
you sometimes.”
“Why
haven’t you answered your phone?”
“I, uh …
Sorry. I …” The phone tucked against my neck, I typed while I spoke. “I’ve
gotta get this …”
“Stop
it!” Robin said. “You’re obsessed with that story.”
I shifted
the receiver to my other ear. “I’m not,” I said. “I, uh … I’ll call you back
after dinner.”
I didn’t
call her back.
The next
evening while I sat at my computer struggling to develop the scene in which Will
Bender tells Abbie he’s going to join a regiment of the Union army, I heard what
sounded like pacing in my room. I lived in attached duplex and often heard the
children next door running up and down the stairs.
I looked
over to the wall. That’s what I hear,
I thought. Just the kids next door.
But it
wasn’t. The footsteps went behind my chair from one side of the room to the other.
“C’mon,
Abbie, tell me what happened next,” I said to the footsteps. I received no
answer. I didn’t need one. In a moment I knew what the story needed.
I now
entered Abbie’s story. I met her ghost at the Blake House, and during a long
snowy weekend she told me her story. When I scrolled to the beginning and began
to reorganize the scenes, the footsteps stopped behind my chair and I heard a
sigh. It seemed Abbie approved of what I’d done.
I heard
the sighs and footsteps several times over the next few months. I spoke to
them. Though whoever was there didn’t answer, between writing and speaking I
felt as though we were having a conversation, and that conversation led to more
sentences that filled my computer screen. Then, at last the novel was written.
Abbie’s complete story. I phoned Robin.
“It’s
finished,” I told her. “I just emailed it to you. Let me know what you think.”
***
In June the process
of tightening the new novel began. Week-after-week I brought chapters to my
writers’ group. The comments I received were encouraging and the suggestions group
members made sent me back to my computer.
When I
brought the first two chapters, one group member asked, “What do you call this
story?”
“I, um …”
I bit my lip. In the months I’d been writing, I hadn’t considered a title.
Another
member said, “If you give it a title it’ll help you focus your characters and
what they’re doing.”
That
night I sat at my computer staring at the screen. Then I stared out my window
at children playing in the common area. Leaves on the trees fluttered. Months
earlier when I stared through this window I imagined fluttering leaves on the
common in Niagara-on-the-Lake the day Abbie met Will.
It was like she showed me her life though this window, I thought.
I heard a
sigh so soft I might have imagined it. A moment later I knew what to call the
novel. Abigail’s Window. The group
members had been right. With that title in mind I knew Abbie’s ghost would be
showing me—the narrator—her life in scenes flashing on the panes of the window
in her Blake House bedroom.
At a
writers’ group meeting in August, a member said, “Your story’s moving along
well, Susan. I like the ghost’s voice and the narrator’s, but I’m not seeing
why they’re interacting.”
“Yes,”
another member said. “There has to be a reason the ghost chose to tell your
narrator her story.”
“And a
reason you’re telling the story to us,” the first member added. “Is there a
lesson your characters learn as a result of their interaction?”
Each
comment sent me back to my computer to bend scenes so that they inevitably
moved toward an ultimate purpose. The story line now arched upward to the
crisis.
On a
Wednesday afternoon in late September I tried to calm an upset customer on the
phone. Charlie opened my door and stood with his hands in his pockets.
When I hung up the
phone, Charlie pulled over a chair. He tilted his head. “What I came in here
for … uh, that ghost you wrote that story about … is it real?”
I took a
deep breath. “Well, there is a ghost
in the Blake House. Freddie keeps hearing it walk around …” I looked at him. “I
… heard it, too.”
His
elbows on the arms of his chair, he leaned toward me. “And that person you said
the ghost is—Abigail? Is that ghost really her?”
I sat
back. “Is there a problem?”
He
smiled. “No. Not at all. Our guests liked your story.”
“And?” I
asked.
“I heard
about a ghost walk a group that’ll be touring Niagara-on-the-Lake on Halloween
is planning. It’d be great if they stop by so Frederica can tell them about a
ghost in the Blake House. If your story is true …” He let the word hang
suggestively.
I
grinned. “Leave it to me, Charlie.”
At home
that evening I threw together a tuna sandwich for dinner and carried it to my
computer. “Looks like we’re not done with your story yet, Abbie,” I said.
That
evening I worked at breaking Abigail’s
Window down to a new short story, about 3,500 words. On Saturday morning I emailed
the Niagara-on-the-Lake ghost tour group the new story. In this version I was a
woman who’d just lost my boyfriend. The night I slept at the inn, while I
sobbed about my lost love, the ghost appeared near the window. Seeming to sense
my broken heart, she must have thought I was a kindred spirit and told me her
own story of loss. In my email I swore to the ghost tour group that the story
was true. After I pushed the Send
button, I sat back and laughed.
At that
moment a strange thing happened. I felt something bump my chair.
I gasped.
“Was that you, Abbie?” I whispered.
***
Weeks passed into
months. In all this time I heard no footsteps or sighs in my room, and felt
nothing bump my desk chair. On Tuesday evenings I brought chapters of Abigail’s Window to my writers’ group.
On Wednesday evenings I sat at my computer adjusting scenes. In early December I
completed the final rewrite of the novel. My writers’ group was satisfied; I
was satisfied. Apparently, though, the ghost wasn’t satisfied. I sensed this
after I set the story aside and began to write something new.
On an
evening away from my computer, I sat in the overstuffed chair in my living room
watching a movie. When I leaned over for handful of popcorn, the channel
changed. I groaned and switched back to the proper channel. I placed the remote
on the lamp table and the channel again changed.
I
groaned. “Is that you doing this, Abbie?” I asked.
In the
past months I had become accustomed to speaking to what I believed to be a
ghost inhabiting my house. Sometimes I asked it—her—for advice. Though I never received a response, I felt her
hovering nearby. The strictly logical portion of my brain called me a fool. Now
in my sixties, I sensed death creeping closer, so my belief in the ghost was a
prayer that a conscious life would continue past my body’s end. I told my logic
to shut up. What I had seen and heard could be explained only if I credited
that it emanated from a ghost. My ghost. So I continued to speak to her.
Switching
back to the channel with the movie, I said, “I know you’re here, Abbie. What do
you want?”
I heard footsteps
scamper up the stairs and across the hall into my bedroom.
“I’m not
done with your story?” I called up to her.
Without
knowing why, I knew what she wanted. At the last writers’ group meeting we had
discussed submitting our novels to literary agents. It seemed that writing Abbie’s
story wasn’t sufficient. She wanted it out in the world where others would read
it.
On
Saturday I made a trip to the Barnes & Noble bookstore on Niagara Falls
Boulevard and purchased a book that had agents’ listings and what they
required. At home, I emailed query letters to five agents. Within a week I
received three responses—all rejections. I sent out more emails about Abigail’s Window, and while I was about
it, sent out emails to online literary journals asking them to publish short
stories I had written. Same result. Rejections. When after months of this I
checked my emails one evening I felt as if rejections were the only messages I
received.
Frustrated,
I shouted to my bedroom walls, “Enough! I’ve had it!”
I reached
to turn off my computer. When I touched the mouse, my finger twitched and I
accidentally clicked on a site. Now, spread across my screen I saw the homepage
of The Writers Journal. At the top of
the page, flashing, was a button for competitions.
I took a
deep breath. “Is this what you want me to do, Abbie?” I said.
My hand
shaking, I clicked the Competition
button. Now on my screen I saw a call for submissions of short romance stories.
2,500 to 3,500 words. The short story I had sent to the ghost tour group was
the right length and it had elements of romance: a true love found then lost, a
lesson for a brokenhearted woman who lived a century later. I submitted “The
Blake House Ghost”.
Hope
again alive in my chest, I waited. A month later I found a notification of the
competition winners among my emails. “The Blake House Ghost” had won an
honorable mention. It would be my first published story.
In my
bedroom I heard a disembodied sigh.
***
In the ensuing eleven
years Abbie has periodically let me know she’s still around. Most recently my
reading glasses disappeared. I searched for those glasses upstairs and
downstairs. I burrowed through the garbage can in my kitchen, thinking maybe I’d
dropped them in there without realizing I’d done it—I’ve reached an age at
which I do a number of things I don’t recall doing. An hour of hunting through
my house produced no result. My glasses were gone. I had spare reading glasses,
yet I was annoyed. Certain the ghost had swiped my glasses, I hollered at her.
I demanded she give them back. I pleaded with her. At last, I asked her
politely to return them. When I came downstairs a week later I saw my reading
glasses in the middle of my kitchen floor.
I still
have no idea who the ghost I call Abbie was or anything about her. My only
thought is that this was the ghost I first heard walking and sighing in that
Niagara-on-the-Lake Bed and Breakfast, and for some reason she adopted me.
Periodically I’ve returned to my research about a ghost that haunted the Blake
House. Nothing in the files I’ve built up has given me a clue. Maybe one day the
ghost who now lives in my house will
tell me. Until then I can only wonder.
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