Scary Stories
The Lost Ghost - Mary E Wilkins Freeman
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- Duration:
- 36m
- Broadcast on:
- 09 Jul 2024
- Audio Format:
- mp3
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Go to thecityofdakono.com for more information. The Lost Ghost by Mary Wilkins. Mrs. John Emerson, sitting with her needlework beside the window, looked out and saw Mrs. Roda and Ms. Erve coming down the street, and knew at once by the trend of her steps and the cant of her head that she meditated turning in at her gate. She also knew by certain something about her germinal carriage, a thrusting forward of the neck, a bustling hit of the shoulders, that she had important news. Roda and Ms. Erve always had the news as soon as the news was in being, and generally Mrs. John Emerson was the first whom she imparted it. The two women had been friends ever since Mrs. Ms. Ms. Erve had married Simon Ms. Erve and come to the village to live. Mrs. Ms. Ms. Erve was a pretty woman, moving with graceful flirts of ruffling skirts, her clear-cut, nervous face, a delicately tinted as a shell, looked bright from the plumey brim of a black cat as Mrs. Emerson through the window. Mrs. Emerson was glad to see her coming. She returned the greeting with enthusiasm, then rose hurriedly, ran into the cold parlour and bought out one of the best rocking chairs. She was just in time, after drawing it up beside the opposite window, to greet her friend at the door. "Good afternoon," said she. "I declare I'm real glad to see you. I've been alone all day. John went to the city this morning. I thought of coming over to your house this afternoon, but I couldn't bring my sewing very well. I'm putting the ruffles on my new black dress skirt. Well, I didn't have a thing on hand except my crochet work," responded Mrs. Ms. Ms. Erve, and I thought I'd just run over a few minutes. "I'm real glad you did," repeated Ms. Emerson. "Take your things right off. Here, I'll put them on my bed in the bedroom. Take the rocking chair." Mrs. Ms. Erve settled herself in the parlour rocking chair, while Mrs. Emerson carried her shawl and hat into the littler joining bedroom. When she returned, Mrs. Missouri was rocking peacefully, and was already at work hooking the blue wool in and out. "That's real pretty," said Mrs. Emerson. "Yes, I think it's pretty," replied Mrs. Missouri. "I suppose it's for the church fair?" "Yes, I don't suppose it'll bring enough pay for the worsted. Let alone the work, but I suppose I've got to make something." "How much did that one you made for the fair last year bring?" "Twenty-five cents. It's wicked, ain't it?" "I'd rather guess it is. It takes me a week every minute I can get to make one." "I wish those that bought such things for twenty-five cents had to make them. Guess they'd sing another song. While I suppose I oughtn't complain as long it is for the Lord, but sometimes it does seem as if the Lord doesn't get much out of it." "Well, it's pretty work," said Mrs. Emerson, sitting down at the opposite window and taking up her dress skirt. "Yes, it is real pretty work. I just love crochet." The two women rocked and sewed and crocheted in silence for two or three minutes. They were both waiting. Mrs. Missouri waited for the other's curiosity to develop in order that her news might have, as it were, a befitting stage entrance. Mrs. Emerson waited for the news. Finally, she could wait no longer. "Well, what's the news?" said she. "Well, I don't know as there's anything very particular," hedged the other woman, "longed the situation." "Yes, there is. You can't cheat me," replied Mrs. Emerson. "Now, how do you know?" "By the way you look." Mrs. Missouri laughed consciously and rather vainly. "Well, Simon says my face is so expressive. I can't hide anything more than five minutes, no matter how hard I try," said she. "Well, there is some news. Simon came home with it this noon. He heard it in South Dayton. He had some business over there this morning. The old sergeant places let." Mrs. Emerson dropped her sewing instead. "You don't say so. Yes, it is. Who, too? Why, some folks from Boston that moved to South Dayton last year. They haven't been satisfied with the house they had there. It wasn't large enough. The man has got considerable property, and could afford to live pretty well. He's got a wife and his a married sister in the family. The sister's got money, too. He does business in Boston, and it's just as easy to get to Boston from here as from South Dayton, and so they're coming here. "You know the old sergeant house is a splendid place." "Yes, it's the Hansmas house in town, but—oh, Simon said they told him about that and he just laughed. Said he wasn't afraid, and neither was his wife and sister. Said he'd risk ghosts rather than little tucked up sleeping rooms without any sun, like they've had in the Dayton house. Said he'd rather risk seeing ghosts than being ghosts themselves. "Simon said they said he was a great hand to joke." "Oh, well," said Mrs. Emerson, "it is a beautiful house, and maybe there isn't anything in those stories. It never seemed to me they came very straight anyway. I never took much stock in them. All I thought was, if his wife was nervous, nothing in creation would hire me to go into a house that had ever heard a word against of that kind, declared Mrs. Maser with emphasis. I wouldn't go into that house if they would give me the rent. I've seen enough of haunted houses to last me as long as I live. Mrs. Emerson's face acquired the expression of a hunting hound. "Have you?" she asked in, and it tends whisper. "Yes, I have. I don't want any more of it." "Before you came here?" "Yes, before I was married, when I was quite a girl." Mrs. Maserb had not married young. Mrs. Emerson had mental calculations when she heard that. "Did you really live in a house that was?" she whispered fearfully. "Mrs. Maserb nodded solemnly. Did you really ever see anything?" Mrs. Maserb nodded. "You didn't see anything that did you any harm?" "No, I didn't see anything that did me harm looking at it in one way. But I don't do anybody in this world any good to see things that haven't any business to be seen in it. You never get over it." There was a moment silence. Mrs. Emerson's features seemed to sharpen. "Well, of course. I don't want to urge you," said she. "If you don't feel like talking about it, but maybe it might do good to tell it out if it's on your mind worrying you." "I try to put it out of mind," said Mrs. Maserb. "Well, it's just as you feel." "I never told anybody but Simon," said Mrs. Maserb. "I never felt as if it was wise perhaps. I didn't know what folks might think. So many don't believe in anything they can't understand. They might think my mind wasn't right. Simon advised me not to talk about it. He said he didn't believe in anything supernatural. But if he had to own up there, he couldn't give any explanation for it to save his life. He had to own up that he didn't believe anybody could. Then he said he wouldn't talk about it. He said lots of folks would soon to tell folks my head wasn't right than to own up they couldn't see through it. "I'm sure I wouldn't say so," returned Mrs. Emerson reproachfully. "You know better than that, I hope." "Yes, I do," replied Mrs. Maserb. "I know you wouldn't say so." "And I wouldn't tell it to a soul if you didn't want me to." "Well, I'd rather you wouldn't." "I won't speak of it even to Mr. Emerson." "I'd rather you wouldn't even to him." "I won't." Mrs. Emerson took up her dress skirt again. Mrs. Maserb hooked up another loop of blue wool. Then she began. "Of course," said she. "I ain't gonna say positively that I believe or disbelieves in ghosts. But what I tell you is what I saw. I can't explain it. I don't pretend I can, for I can't. If you can, well and good, I shall be glad, for it will stop tormenting me, as it has done, and always will otherwise. There hasn't been a day nor a night since it happened that I haven't thought of it, and always I have felt the shivers go down my back when I did. That's an awful feeling," Mrs. Emerson said. "Aint it? Well, it happened before I was married, when I was a girl and lived in East Wilmington. It was the first year I lived there. You know, my family all died five years before that. I told you." Mrs. Emerson nodded. "Well, I went there to teach school, and I went to board with Mrs. Amelia Denison and her sister, Mrs. Bird. Abbey, her name was Abbey Bird. She was a widow. She had never had any children. She had a little money. Mrs. Denison didn't have any, and she had come to East Wilmington and bought the house they lived in. It was real pretty house, though it was very old and rundown. It cost Mrs. Bird a great deal to put it in order. I guess that was the reason they took me to board. I guess they thought it would help along a little. I guess what I paid for my board about us kept to normal and victuals. Mrs. Bird had enough to live on if they were careful, but she had spent so much fixing up the old house that they must have been a little pinch for a while. Anyhow, they took me to board, and I thought I was pretty lucky to get in there. I had a nice room, big and sunny and furnished pretty. The paper and paint all new, and everything is neat as wax. Mrs. Denison was one of the best cooks I ever saw, and I had a little stove in my room, and there was always a nice fire there when I got home from school. I thought I hadn't been in such a nice place since I lost my own home, till I had been there about three weeks. I had been there about three weeks before I found it out, though I guess I had been going on at there ever since they had been in the house, and that was for most four months. They hadn't said anything about it, and I didn't wonder, for there they had just bought the house and been to so much expense and trouble fixing it up. Well, I went there in September. I began my school the first Monday. I remember it was real cold fall, and there was a frost in the middle of September, and I had to put on my winter coat. I remember when I came home that night. Let me see. I began school on a Monday, and that was two weeks from the next Thursday. I took my coat downstairs and laid it on the table in the front entry. It was a real nice coat, heavy black broad cloth trimmed with fur. I had had it the winter before. Mrs. Bird called me after as I went upstairs that I ought not to leave it in the front entry. The first somebody might come in and take it, but I only laughed and called back to her that I wasn't afraid. I never much was afraid of burglars. Well, though it was hardly the middle of September, it was a real cold night. I remember my room faced west, and the sun was getting low, and the sky was pale yellow and purple, just as you see it sometimes in the winter when there is going to be a cold snap. I rather think that was the night the frost came the first time. I know Mrs. Denison covered up some flowers she had in the front yard anyhow. I remember looking out and seeing an old green plate short of hers, over the verbena bed. There was a fire in my little wood stove. Mrs. Bird made it, I know. She was a real motherly sort of woman. She always seemed to be the happiest when she was doing something to make other folks happy and comfortable. Mrs. Denison told me she had always been so. She said she had coddled with her husband within an inch of his life. "It's lucky Abby never had any children," she said, for she would have spoiled them. Well, that night I sat down beside my light little fire and ate an apple. There was a plate of nice apples on my table. Mrs. Bird put them there. I was always very fond of apples. Well, I sat down and ate an apple and was having a beautiful time, thinking how lucky I was to have got bored in such a place with such nice folks, when I heard a queer little sound on my door. It was such a little hesitating sort of sound, that it sounded more like a fumble than a lock, as if someone very timid, with very little hands, was feeling along the door, not quite daring to knock. For a minute I thought it was a mouse, but I waited and it came again, and then I made my mind that it was a knock, but a very scared little one, so I said, "Come in." But nobody came in, and then presently I heard the knock again. Then I got up and opened the door, thinking it was very queer, and I had a very frightened feeling without knowing why. Well, I opened the door, and the first thing I noticed was a draft of cold air, as if the front door downstairs was open, but there was a strange closed smell about the cold draft, smelled more like a cellar that had been shut up for years than out of doors. Then I saw something. I saw my coat first, the thing that held it was so small that I couldn't see much of anything else. Then I saw a little white face with eyes so scared and wishful that they seemed as if they might eat a hole in anybody's heart. It was a dreadful little face, something about it which made it different from any other face on earth, but it was so pitiful that somehow it did away a good deal with the dreadfulness. And there were two little hands spotted purple with the cold, holding up my winter coat, and a strange little far away voice that said, "I can't find my mother." "For heaven's sake," I said, "who are you?" Then the little voice said again, "I can't find my mother. All the time I could smell the cold, and I saw that it was about the child, that cold was clinging to her as if she had come out of some deadly cold place. Well, I took my coat. I did not know what else to do, and the cold was clinging to that. It was as cold as if it had come off ice. When I had the coat I could see the child more plainly. She was dressed in one little white garment made very simply. It was a nightgown, one only very long, quite covering her feet, and I could see dimly through her little thin body motted purple with the cold. Her face did not look so cold, that was a clear wax on white. Her hair was dark, but it looked as if it might only be dark because it was so damp, almost wet, it might really be light hair. It clung very close to her forehead, which was round and white. She would have been very beautiful if she had not been so dreadful. "Who are you?" says I again, looking at her. She looked at me with her terrible pleading eyes and did not say anything. "What are you?" says I. Then she went away. She did not seem to run or walk like other children. She flitted like one of those little filmy white butterflies, that don't seem like real ones, they are so light, and move as if they had no weight. But she looked back from the head of the stairs. "I can't find my mother," said she, and I never heard such a voice. "Who is your mother?" says I, but she was gone. "Well, I thought for a moment I should faint away. The room got dark and I heard a singing in my ears. Then I flung my coat onto the bed. My hands were as cold as ice from holding it, and I stood in the door, and called first Mrs. Bird and then Mrs. Denison. I didn't dare go down over the stairs where that had gone. Seeing to me I should go mad if I didn't see somebody or something like other folks on the face of the earth. I thought I should never make anybody hear, but I could hear them stepping about downstairs, and I could smell biscuits baking for supper. Somehow the smell of those biscuits seemed the only natural thing left me to keep me in the right mind. I didn't dare go over those stairs. I just stood there and called, and finally I heard the entry door open and Mrs. Bird called back. "What is it? Did you call Mrs. Arms?" "Come up here. Come up here as quick as you can, both of you. I screamed out, 'Quick, quick, quick!' I heard Mrs. Bird tell Mrs. Denison, 'Come quick, Amelia. Something is the matter in Mrs. Arms' room. It struck me even then that she expressed herself rather clearly, and it struck me as very quiet indeed, when they both got upstairs, and I saw that they knew what had happened, or that they knew of what nature that happening was. "What is it, dear?" asked Mrs. Bird, and her pretty loving voice of the strange sound. I saw her look at Mrs. Denison, and I saw Mrs. Denison look back at her. "For God's sake!" says I, and I never spoke so before. "For God's sake! What was it, brought my coat upstairs?" "What was it like?" asked Mrs. Denison, and his sort of failing voice, and she looked at her sister again, and her sister looked back at her. "It was a child I had never seen before. It looked like a child," says I, "but I never saw a child so dreadful, and it had on a nightgown, and said it couldn't find her mother. Who was it? What was it?" I thought for a minute Mrs. Denison was going to faint, but Mrs. Bird hugged her and rubbed her hands, and whispered in her hair. She had the cooingest kind of voice, and I ran and got her a glass of cold water. I tell you it took considerable courage to go downstairs alone, but they had set a lamp on the entry table so I could see. I don't believe I could have spunked up enough to go downstairs in the dark, think every second that the child might be close to me. The lamp and the smell of biscuit spaking seemed to sort of keep my courage up, but I tell you I didn't waste much time going down those stairs and out into the kitchen for a glass of water. I pumped as if the house was a fire, and I grabbed the first thing I came across in the shape of a tumbler. It was a painted one that Mrs. Denison's Sunday school class gave her, and it was meant for a flower vase. While I filled it and then ran upstairs, I felt every minute as if something would catch my feet, and I held the glass to Mrs. Denison's lips while Mrs. Bird held her head up, and she took a good long swallow that looked as hard at the tumbler. "Yes," says I, "I know I got this one, but I took the first thing I came across, and it isn't her to might." "Don't get the painted flowers wet," said Mrs. Denison very feebly. "They'll wash off if you do." "I'll be real careful," says I, "I knew you set aside by that painted tumbler." The water seemed to do Mrs. Denison good, for presently she pushed Mrs. Bird away and sat up. She had been laying down on my bed. "I'm all over it now," says she, but she was terribly white, and her eyes looked as if they saw something outside things. Mrs. Bird wasn't much better, but she always had a sort of sweet, settled good luck that nothing could disturb to any great extent. I knew I looked dreadful, for I caught a glimpse of myself in the glass, and I would hardly have known who it was. Mrs. Denison, she slid off the bed and walked sort of a tottery to the chair. "I was silly to give way so," says she. "No, you wasn't silly, sister," says Mrs. Bird. "I don't know what this means any more than you do, but whatever it is, no one ought to be called silly for being overcome by anything so different from other things which we have known all our lives." Mrs. Denison looked at her sister, then looked at me, then back at her sister again, and Mrs. Bird spoke as if she had been asked a question. "Yes," says she, "I do think Mrs. Denison's short to be told. That is, I think she ought to be told all we know ourselves." "That isn't much," said Mrs. Denison, with a dying away sort of sigh. She looked as if she might faint away again any minute. She was a real strong, delicate-looking woman, but it turned out she was a good deal stronger than Pearl Mrs. Bird. "No, there isn't much we do know," says Mrs. Bird. "But what little there is she ought to know. I felt as if she ought to know when she first came here." "Well, I didn't feel quite right about it," said Mrs. Denison, "but I kept hoping it might stop, and anyway, that it might never trouble her. And you had to put so much in the house, and we needed the money, and I didn't know, but she might be nervous and think she couldn't come, and I didn't want to take a man-border. And aside from the money, we were very anxious to have you come, my dear," said Mrs. Bird. "Yes," says Mrs. Denison, who wanted the young company in the house. "We were lonesome, and both of us took a great liking to you the minute we set eyes on you. And I guess they meant what they said, both of them. They were beautiful women, nobody could be kinder to me than they were, and I never blamed them for not telling me before, and, as they said, there wasn't really much to tell. They hadn't any sooner, fairly bought the house, and moved into it, than they began to see and hear things. Mrs. Bird said they were sitting together in the sitting room one evening, when they heard it the first time. She said her sister was knitting lace. Mrs. Denison made beautiful knitted lace, and she was reading the missionary herald. Mrs. Bird was very much interested in mission work. When all of a sudden they heard something. She heard it first, and she laid down her missionary herald and listened. And then Mrs. Denison, she saw her listening, and she drops alleys. "What is it you are listening to?" Abby says she. Then it came again, and they both heard, and cold shivers went down their backs to hear it, though they didn't know why. "It's the cat, isn't it?" says Mrs. Bird. "It isn't any cat," said Mrs. Denison. "Oh, I guess it must be the cat. Maybe she's got a mouse," says Mrs. Bird, "real cheerful to calm down Mrs. Denison, because she saw she was most scared to death. She was always afraid of her fainting away." Then she opens the door and calls, "Kitty, kitty, kitty!" He had bought the cat with them in a basket when they came to East Wilmington to live. It was a real handsome tiger cat, a tommy, and he knew a lot. Well, she called "Kitty, kitty, kitty," and sure enough, the kitty came, and when he came in the door he gave a big yawl that didn't sound unlike what they heard. "There, sister, here he is. You see, it was the cat," says Mrs. Bird. "Poor Kitty, but Mrs. Denison, she eyed the cat, and she gave a great screech." "What's that? What's that?" says she. "What's what?" says Mrs. Bird, pretending to herself that she didn't see what her system meant. "Something's got cold of that cat's tail," said Mrs. Denison. "Something's got hold of its tail. It pulled straight out, and he can't get away. Just hear him yawl." "It isn't anything," says Mrs. Bird. But even as she said that, she could see a little hand holding fast to that cat's tail, and then the child seemed to sort of clear out of the dimness behind the hand, and the child was sort of laughing then, instead of looking sad, and she said that was the great deal worse. She said that laugh was the most awful and the saddest thing she ever heard. Well, she was so dumbfounded that she didn't know what to do, and she couldn't sense at first that it was anything supernatural. She thought it must be one of the neighbor's children who had run away, was making free of their house, and was teasing their cat, and that they must be just nervous to feel so upset by it. So she speaks up sort of sharp. "Don't you know that you mustn't pull the kitty's tail?" says she. "Don't you know you hurt the poor kitty, and she'll scratch you if you don't take care. Poor kitty, you mustn't hurt her." And with that she said the child stopped pulling the cat's tail, or went to stroking her just a softer pitiful, and the cat put its back up and rubbed and purred as if he liked it. The cat never seemed am I afraid, and that seemed queer, for I had always heard that animals were dreadfully afraid of ghosts, but then that was a pretty harmless little sort of ghost. Well, Mrs. Bird said the child stroked the cat, or she and Mrs. Denison stood watching it, and holding on to each other, for, no matter how hard they tried to think it was all right, it didn't look right. Finally Mrs. Denison she spoke. "What's your name, little girl?" says she. Then the child looks up and stops stroking the cat, and says she can't find her mother, just the way she said it to me. Then Mrs. Denison she gave such a gas that Mrs. Bird thought she was going to faint away, but she didn't. "Well, who is your mother?" says she. But the child just says again, "I can't find my mother. I can't find my mother." "Where'd you live, dear?" says Mrs. Bird. "I can't find my mother," says the child. "Well, that was the way it was. Nothing happened. Those two women stood there hanging on to each other, and the child stood in front of them, and they asked her questions, and everything she would say was, "I can't find my mother." Then Mrs. Bird tried to catch hold of the child, for she thought in spite of what she saw, that perhaps she was nervous, and it was a real child, only perhaps not quite right in its head, that had run away and handed to a nightgown after she had been put to bed. She tried to catch the child. She had an idea of putting a shawl around it and going out. She was such a little thing she could have carried her easy enough, and trying to find out to which of the neighbours she belonged. The bit the minute she moved toward the child, there wasn't any child there. There was only that little voice seeming to come from nothing, saying, "I can't find my mother," and presently that died away. Well, the same thing kept happening, or something very much the same. Once in a while Mrs. Bird would be washing dishes, and all at once the child would be standing beside her with the dish towel wiping them. Of course, that was terrible. Mrs. Bird would wash the dishes all over. Sometimes she didn't tell Mrs. Denison, it made her so nervous. Sometimes, when they were making cake, they would find raisins all picked over, and sometimes the sticks of kindling wood would be found laying beside the kitchen stove. They never knew when they would come across that child, and always she kept saying over and over that she couldn't find her mother. They had never tried talking to her, except once in a while Mrs. Bird would get desperate and ask her something, but the child never seen tear it. She always kept right on saying that she couldn't find her mother. After they had told me all they had to tell about their experience with the child, they told me about the house and the people that had lived there before they did. It seemed something dreadful had happened in that house, and the land-agent had never let them onto them. I don't think they would have bought it if he had, no matter how cheap it was, for even if folks aren't really afraid of anything, they don't want to live in houses where such dreadful things have happened that you keep thinking about them. I know after they told me I should never have stayed there another night, I hadn't thought so much of them, no matter how comfortable I was made, and I never was nervous either, but I stayed. Of course it didn't happen in my room, if it had I could not have stayed. What was it, as Mrs. Emerson in an old voice? It was an awful thing. That child had lived in the house with her father or mother two years before. They had come, or the father heard, from a real good family. He had a good situation. He was a drummer for a big leather house in the city, and they lived real pretty, with plenty to do with, but the mother was a real wicked woman. She was handsome as a pitcher, and they said she came from good sort of people and nothing Boston, but she was bad cleaned through, though she was real pretty spoken and most everybody liked her. She used to dress out and make a great show, and she never seemed to take much interest in the child. Folks began to say she wasn't treated right. The woman had a hard time keeping a girl, for some reason one wouldn't stay. They would leave and then talk about her all fully, telling all kinds of things. People didn't believe it at first, then they began to. They said the woman made that little thing, though she wasn't much over five years old, and small and babyish for her age, do most of the work. What there was done, they said the house used to look like a pigsty when she didn't have help. They said the little thing used to stand on the chair and wash the dishes, and had seen her carrying sticks of wood most as big as she was many a time, and they'd heard her mother scolding her. The woman was a fine singer and had a voice like a screech owl when she scolded. The father was away most of the time, and when that happened he had been away out west for some weeks. There had been a married man hanging around the mother for some time, and the folks talked to him that they weren't sure there was anything wrong. He was a man very high up with money, so they kept pretty still for fear he would hear of it and make trouble for them, and of course nobody was sure that the folks did say afterward that the father of the child had ought to have been told. But that was very easy to say. We wouldn't have been so easy to find anybody who could have been willing to tell him such a thing like that, especially when they weren't any too sure. He set his eyes by his wife, too. They said all he seemed to think of was ways to earn money to buy things to deck her out in, and he worshipped the child, too. They said he was a real nice man. The men that are treated so bad mostly are real nice men. I've always noticed that. Well, one morning, that man that there had been whispered about was missing. He had been gone quite a while though, before they really knew that he was missing, because he had gone away and told his wife that he had to go to New York on business and might be gone a week, not to worry if he didn't get home, not to worry if he didn't write, because he should be thinking from day to day that he might take the next train home, and there'd be no use in writing. So the wife waited, and she tried not to worry until it was two days over the week, then she ran into the neighbours and fainted dead away on the floor, and then they made inquiries and found out that he had skipped some money that didn't belong to him, too. Then folks began to ask, where was that woman? And they found out by comparing notes that nobody had seen her since the man went away, but three or four women remembered that she had told them that she thought of taking the child and going to Boston to visit her folks, so when they hadn't seen her a wild and the house shut, they jumped to the conclusion that that was where she was. They were the neighbours that lived right around her, but they didn't have much to do with her, and she'd gone out of her way to tell them about her Boston plan, and they didn't make much reply when she did. Well, there was this house shut up, and the man and woman missing on the child. Then all of a sudden, one of the women that lived the nearest remembered something. She remembered that she waked up three nights ago running, thinking she heard a child crying somewhere, and once she waked up her husband, she said it must be the bizby's girl, and she thought it must be. The child wasn't well and was always crying. It used to have colic spells, especially at night, so she didn't think any more about it until this came up. Then all of a sudden, she did think of it. She told what she had heard, and finally folks began to think they had to better enter the house and see if there was anything wrong. Well, they did enter it, and they filed that child dead, locked in one of the rooms. Mrs. Dennis and Mrs. Bird never used that room. It was in the back bedroom on the second floor. Yes, they found that poor child there, starved to death and frozen, though they weren't sure she had frozen to death, because she was in bed with clothes enough to keep her pretty warm when she was alive. But she had been there a week, and she was nothing but skin and bone. It looked as if the mother had locked her into the house when she went away, told them not to make any noise for fear the neighbours would hear and find out that she had self had gone. Mrs. Dennis and said she couldn't really believe that the woman had meant to have her own child starved to death. Probably she thought the little thing would raise somebody, or folks would try and get into the house and find her. Well, whatever she thought, though the child was dead. But that wasn't all. The father came home right in the midst of it. The child was just buried, and he was beside himself. And he went on the track of his wife, and he found her, and he shot her dead. It was in all the papers at the time, then he disappeared. Nothing had been seen of him since. Mrs. Dennison said she thought he had either made way with himself or got out of the country. Nobody knew, but they did know there was something wrong with the house. I knew folks acted queer when they asked me how I liked it when we first came here, said Mrs. Dennison. But I never dreamed why, till we saw the child that night. I never heard anything like it in my life, said Mrs. Anderson, staring at the other woman with awestruck eyes. "I thought you'd say so," said Mrs. Maserv. "You don't wonder that I ain't disposed to speak light when I hear there is anything queer about her house, do you?" "No, I don't after that," Mrs. Emerson said. "But that ain't all," said Mrs. Maserv. "Did you see it again?" Mrs. Amazon asked. "Yes, I saw it a number of times before the last time. It was lucky I wasn't nervous, or I never could have stayed there. Much as I lied the place, and much as I thought of those two women, they were beautiful women, and no mistake, I loved those women. I hope Mrs. Dennison will come and see me some time." "Well," I stayed, and I never knew when I'd see that child. I got so I was very careful to bring everything up mine upstairs, and not to leave any little thing in my room that needed doing. For fear she would come looking up my coat or hat or gloves, or to find things done when there'd be no live being in the room to do them. I can't tell you how I dreaded seeing her, and worse than seeing her was tearing her say, "I can't find my mother." "It was enough to make your blood run cold. I never heard a living child cry for its mother that was anything so pitiful as that dead one. It was enough to break your heart." "She used to come and say that to Mrs. Bird off another than anyone else." "Once I heard Mrs. Bird say she wondered if it was possible that the poor little thing couldn't really find her mother in the other world. She had been such a wicked woman." "But Mrs. Denison told us she didn't think she ought to speak so, nor even think so, and Mrs. Bird said she shouldn't wonder if she was right. Mrs. Bird was always very easy to put in the wrong. She was a good woman, and one that couldn't do things enough for her folks. It seemed as if that was what she lived on. I don't think she was ever so scared by that poor little ghost, as much as she pitted it. And she was most heartbroken, because she couldn't do anything for it, as she could have done for a live child. It seems to me that sometimes, as if I should die if I can't get that awful little white robe of that child, and get her in some clothes and feet her, and stop her looking for her mother, I heard her say once. She was an earnest. She cried when she said it. "That wasn't long before she died. Now I am coming to the strangest part of it all. Mrs. Bird died very sudden. One morning it was Saturday, and there wasn't any school. I went downstairs to breakfast, and Mrs. Bird wasn't there. There was nobody but Mrs. Denison. She was pouring out the coffee when I came in. "Why, where's Mrs. Bird?" says I. "Abby ain't feeling very well this morning," says she. "There isn't much to the matter, I guess, but she didn't sleep very well, and her headaches, and she saw to chilli, and I told her I thought she'd better stay in bed until the house gets warm. It was a very cold morning. "Maybe she's got a cold," says I. "Yes, I begues she has," says Mrs. Denison. "I guess she's got a cold. She'll be up before long. Abby ain't want to stay in bed a minute longer than she can help. Well, we went on eating our breakfast, and all at once a shadow flicked across one wall of the room, and over the ceiling the way our shadow will sometimes when somebody passes a window outside. Mrs. Denison and I both looked up. "Then Mrs. Denison, she gives a screen." "Why, Abby's crazy," says she, "there she is out in the bitter cold morning, and she didn't finish, but she meant the child, for we were both looking out, and we saw, as plain as we ever saw anything in our lives. Mrs. Abby Bird walking off over the white snow path with that child holding fast her hand. Nestle closed hers if she had found her own mother. "She's dead," says Mrs. Denison, clutching hold of me hard. "She's dead. My sister is dead." She was. We hurried upstairs as fast as we could go. She was dead in her bed, and smiling as if she was dreaming. On one arm and hand was stretched out as if something had hold of it, and it couldn't be straightened even at last. A layout over her casket at the funeral. "Was the child ever seen again, as Mrs. Denison with a shaking voice?" "No," replied Mrs. Miserf. "That child was never seen again, after she went out of the yard with Mrs. Bird." End of The Lost Ghost 5280 exteriors James Hardy's sighting is a low-maintenance sighting made primarily of cement that resist flame-spread and repels wood-borne insects and woodpeckers. Through the month of July, you'll receive free rigid foam installation with the purchase of whole-house sighting. That's installing additional insulation behind your sighting for free, but only for the month of July. Call today for more details or visit 5280 exteriors.com. 5280 exteriors.com, a James Hardy preferred contractor. 5280 exteriors, the altitude of quality. "The Dacono Music & Spirits Festival returns to Centennial Park Saturday, August 3rd from 2-10 p.m. and it's free! Live music from The Warren Treaty!" Chris Daniels and the Kings is Callie and More. Enjoy a spirits competition, Kid Zone and Fireworks presented by Oxy and the City of Dacono. Admission and parking are free. The Dacono Music & Spirits Festival brought to you by Breckenrich Brewery and City of Dacono. Go to thecityofdicono.com for more information.