The Ghost of Soda Creek Read online

  “Up and down the street all hours of the day and night,” explained the old man. “Sneaking about in them empty houses, screeching and running that dirt bike past my windows so loud my eardrums are like to burst.” He had muttered something about some people not being allowed to have children, then turned his attention to the remaining inhabited house in the neighbourhood. “That little brown place at the end of the road, the one with all the flowers and the big vegetable garden, there’s two fellas live there. Alone, if you get my meaning.”

  Alan quickly discovered that he had to start another pot of coffee, turning his back on the old man’s commentary.

  Shortly after Mr. Crinchley had left, muttering something about cows and a bunch of ‘hippies’ down at the old ranch, the two ‘fellas’ he had spoken of arrived at the Lindens’ front door, smiling shyly when Alan opened it. Ben was very thin, with wiry, strong arms and long hair that waved gently around his neck. Bob had thick, curly dark hair, shorter than Ben’s, and without actually being plump, gave an impression of ‘roundness’. They were both about Alan Linden’s age, in their forties, and they spoke together.

  “We just wanted to say ‘hi’, and welcome to Soda Creek. I’m Ben Gibson and. . .”

  “I’m Bob Lalonde. We’re so pleased that you have. . .”

  “Go ahead, Bob, you were first.”

  “It’s okay, Ben, I interrupted you.” They smiled at each other, and then again at Kelly and her father.

  “I’ve brought you a housewarming gift,” said Ben. “Fresh butter lettuce, and a special variety of white radish that I’m trying this year. Gardening’s my hobby.”

  “And I brought a wall hanging, done in yarn, you know, crewel work. I do some pottery too, but I thought you might prefer something bright to hang on the wall.”

  They had stood there, side by side on the front porch, holding their gifts out in front of them, tentatively, almost as if they were unsure of their welcome.

  “Thanks, that’s very thoughtful. . .” began Alan, but Kelly had caught sight of Bob’s gift and she interrupted. “Can I see that please?” she asked, taking the wall hanging as her father ushered Ben and Bob into the house. The hanging Bob had brought showed a sunflower, glowing with shades of thick yellow yarn, reaching across the canvas as if it were stretching for the sun. “This is great,” she said. “I tried this embroidery, crewel work once, but I’m terrible at it, at the embroidery part anyway. I can get the patterns, and I know how I want the finished thing to look, but I can’t make the stitches behave.”

  “Kelly wants to be an artist,” said her father, proudly. “She’s planning on going to art school one of these days.”

  “Bob paints too,” said Ben. “He has his own studio in Williams Lake where he sells his pottery and crewel work and paintings.”

  Over coffee and what was left of Clara Overton’s rhubarb pie, Kelly, at Bob’s request, had brought out her sketch book and her few finished watercolours. Ben had gone immediately for a pile of seed catalogues on the coffee table, grinning at Alan as he said, “Another gardener! Great.”

  Ben and Bob had stayed for an hour that first day, Bob, his head bent over Kelly’s sketch book, suggesting a small change in line here, showing her where to darken a shadow somewhere else, while Ben and Alan spent the visit deep in discussions of soil acidity, hydroponic gardening and the new hybrid plants featured in the seed catalogues.

  “Soda Creek has a gentle growing climate, the best growing climate anywhere in the Cariboo,” Ben explained proudly, almost as if he were personally responsible for that phenomena. “It’s a sort of micro-climate, caused by the protection of those hills behind us and the moisture and warmth of the Fraser River.”

  Kelly had looked up from her sketch book, surprised. “The first time I saw Soda Creek, with the hills so close and so steep, I felt that, that ‘protection’, I mean. I thought somehow of the hills being a large animal like a lion, with the town nestled right beside it as if it were being protected, like a lion cub. I hadn’t thought about Soda Creek being really protected so that things grow better. I just saw it that way and thought I would like to paint it sometime.”

  “Ben complains about that hill starting practically in his greenhouse,” said Bob, “but he doesn’t complain a bit when he wins all those prizes for his vegetables and flowers at the Fall Fair every year. And just look at the crabapple trees in your orchard. No one has pruned them or sprayed them or even watered them for years, but they produce a huge crop every season just the same.”

  As their new neighbours were leaving, Kelly had been surprised to hear Ben tell her father that he would have to put a good, strong fence around his garden if he wanted it to survive. “Dogs?” asked Alan.

  “I wish it were just dogs. Cows. And the twins. There’s a ‘commune’ place on the old homestead at the end of the road, city people, only been here a few years. Sort of aging hippies.”

  Bob laughed, “They’re okay, Ben, but they’re just learning how to run a farm.”

  “They don’t know the first thing about handling livestock. That fence is always down somewhere, and the cows wander through the town and into our gardens. And they’re much more difficult to clean up after than dogs!”

  “And what about the twins?” asked Kelly, remembering both Ed Crinchley’s and Miss Overton’s horror stories about those children.

  “Oh, they’re not too bad, really,” said Bob, again laughing. “It’s just that one year they took the heads off every one of Ben’s tulips, just as they were about to bloom. He has never forgiven them.”

  “They ate them!” added Ben, horrified. “Ate every single bud.”

  Kelly and her father had looked at each other when Ben and Bob left. “Well, Kelly?” asked Alan. “Are we going to like living in Soda Creek?”

  “I don’t know, Dad. It looks as if our home is the only neutral zone in a community war. It could be interesting, but. . .”

  Two and a half years later, Kelly lay in bed on a Sunday morning and thought about how some things had changed since her first day in Soda Creek, but how most things had stayed exactly the same. She knew everyone else who lived in the old townsite fairly well by now, except the group from the commune who smiled and waved as they rounded up their errant cows, but always seemed too busy to stop and talk; Clara Overton who continually found excuses to “pop over with a little something SPECIAL for your dinner,” and who had begun to flirt outrageously with Kelly’s father; cantankerous Ed Crinchley, whom Kelly had discovered was called ‘the Grinch’ by almost everyone in Soda Creek, who would spend long hours with Alan Linden, grumbling about his neighbours or telling stories of his life in Soda Creek. The twins, Tommy and Trisha, now nine years old but still very active, were often found at the Lindens’ front door, chorusing, “The clutch on the skidoo is jammed, can Mr. Linden come and help us?” The twins’ parents, the Terpens, also visited, sharing child-raising experiences with Alan—“We believe in permissive parenting, but. . .” Ben and Bob seldom missed a Sunday morning visit to the Lindens, Ben and Kelly’s father burrowing through seed catalogues or, in the growing season, inspecting seedlings and comparing notes on fertilizers and mulches, and Bob talking to Kelly about his latest pottery project or a new crewel design, always asking to see Kelly’s current art projects.

  Kelly’s first intuitive guess, that the Linden home was the only neutral place in the community, had turned out to be correct; no one in Soda Creek visited any of their neighbours—except the Lindens. Even the Shuswap Indians from the Soda Creek Band, who had so little to do with the white community, would call Alan for help with their cars, water pumps or other malfunctioning machines. The group from the commune, too, came to Alan when they needed help, although they avoided the other townsite residents, uncomfortably aware of the harsh feelings over their wandering cows. They had added bee-keeping to their homesteading activities, and Mrs. Terpen, whose twins were allergic to bee stings, had been outraged.

  Everyone came to Alan Linde
n for help, for conversation, for friendship. And he gave it freely, laughing as he repaired Ed Crinchley’s toaster so it would give the blasted bread back’, changing the oil in Ben and Bob’s car, replacing the motor in Clara Overton’s washing machine or the broken chains of the twins’ bicycles. He supplied enough crabapples from the old orchard behind the jailhouse for the Grinch’s crabapple wine, Miss O.’s Christmas jelly, and the tart apple sauce the twins loved, and allowed the group from the commune to gather the bruised windfalls for their livestock. He listened and he helped. He lent his tools, his skills, his time, and he filled his weekends with people.

  When they had first come to Soda Creek, only months after her mother’s death, Kelly and her father had found a comforting Sunday morning routine for themselves. They would sleep late, make a large breakfast, then spend the rest of the morning at the kitchen table, refilling their coffee mugs and talking. Talking about their week, about the funny or sometimes serious happenings at Gibraltar Mine, about Kelly’s school, her new painting, her friends. And they’d talk about her mother, too; quietly, without tears, exchanging memories, reminding each other of things that had been said, things that had happened, times they had shared when they were a whole family, when her mother was alive.

  Sunday morning together, just Kelly and her father, had been a ritual that Kelly suddenly realized that she missed desperately now, for it had been over a year since they had been alone on a Sunday morning. Somehow, people had started coming over for coffee, often before breakfast, staying to share bacon and eggs, others arriving as soon as the first visitors left, staying through lunch, and still others arriving on their departure, often not leaving until evening. Her father sat there smiling, sharing, doing minor repairs right on the kitchen table, listening, giving his Sunday to these people who wouldn’t even all come and visit at the same time so it would be over and done with, but who drifted in, one group after another, careful not to run into their other neighbours.

  Kelly sat up in bed, now fully awake and back in the present. “It isn’t fair,” she thought. “Just because they don’t like each other and won’t speak to each other, they expect Dad to be available all weekend.” She still heard voices from the kitchen, and felt herself growing angry. Well, this Sunday morning was going to be different, was going to be like the first Sundays she and her father had spent in Soda Creek. She would get rid of whoever was with her father, then she’d fix breakfast, and she and her father would sit and talk, just the two of them.

  Hair quickly braided, the stubborn bits at her temple tucked under a green ribbon headband, Kelly pulled on her clothes and walked, none too quietly, to the kitchen.

  Clara Overton was sitting at the table, close to Alan, one hand clutching his sleeve, the other flourishing a wilted handkerchief.

  “Oh, Alan,” she said, ignoring Kelly, “It was SO frightening, SO upsetting. . .”

  “Dad,” Kelly interrupted, speaking over Clara Overton’s head, “Dad, let’s have breakfast by ourselves this morning, the way we always used to.”

  “Kelly,” said her father, a warning in his voice. “Clara is very upset.”

  “But she’s been here for ages,” Kelly hissed in a half whisper, not caring if the teacher heard. She pulled out a chair and sat down on the other side of the table, her eyes not leaving her father’s face.

  “Kelly!” her father said again, this time his meaning unmistakable.

  Kelly sighed. “Okay, Dad. Sorry,” but a small voice inside whispered to her that she wasn’t the least bit sorry, and maybe Miss O. would take a hint and leave.

  Clara Overton dabbed at her eyes with the handkerchief, smearing mascara down her cheeks. “Oh, Kelly,” she said. “You don’t know how lucky you are to have such a STRONG man for a father. I have such a DELICATE nature, and I desperately need his SUPPORT this morning.”

  Kelly reached for the coffee pot. “Stupid woman,” she thought. “I’ll bet the Grinch snarled at her.” She squeezed out a small, artificial smile. “I’m so sorry, Miss O. What happened?”

  “Oh, Kelly,” Clara Overton reached across the table and grabbed Kelly’s hand. “Oh, Kelly, you won’t BELIEVE it. Last night I saw a GHOST!”

  Chapter 3

  Kelly didn’t react for a few seconds, and Clara Overton repeated herself, her long fingernails digging into the back of Kelly’s hand as she spoke. “A ghost, Kelly, a most upsetting, FRIGHTENING apparition.”

  Shaking off the woman’s clutching hand, Kelly moved to the stove, replacing the coffee pot. As she set it down her hands shook, rattling the pot against the chrome ring of the element. She had pushed the thought of the little ghost to the back of her mind. Now this ridiculous woman sat in the kitchen, clinging to Alan Linden’s arm and blithering about apparitions.

  As politely as she could, Kelly forced a smile and said, “Oh? I didn’t think anyone believed in ghosts anymore.”

  “Oh, Kelly, I don’t you know, not really, but I get these FEELINGS sometimes, and when I saw her standing. . .”

  “Her?” Kelly spoke sharply. “What kind of a ghost do you think you saw, Miss Overton?” She glanced at her father, hoping to see him share a smile with her, give her some signal that he was as irritated by this hysterical woman as Kelly herself was, but his face remained serious.

  “Clara said it was a child, or the ghost of a child,” he said. “She saw it about three this morning.”

  “But I saw it first,” thought Kelly, irrationally. “What did your ghost look like, Miss O.?” she asked, her voice too loud.

  “It was a GHASTLY sight, simply horrible. It had the whitest face, and it stretched out those tiny arms as if it wanted to grab me!”

  “A child ghost? How old was she?” Kelly was upset, and could barely keep her voice from shaking. If there had been a ghost, it was her ghost. She had seen it first, just after one o’clock, and it wasn’t frightening, well, not very much, and certainly not as ‘ghastly’ as Clara Overton was claiming.

  “I think she was two, maybe three years old, and dressed most PECULIARLY. Oh, Alan.” She fluttered the handkerchief, turning back to him. “Oh, Alan, you have no idea what a SHOCK it gave me.”

  Kelly interrupted as Alan placed his hand comfortingly over the teacher’s hand, and began to make soothing noises. “Miss Overton,” she said, emotion spilling over into her voice so it did shake, “Miss Overton, I don’t see how you could possibly be frightened of a ghost who’s only two years old. Are you sure there isn’t something else bothering you, something else that has upset you so much?”

  Kelly’s father looked at her in surprise. “Now, Kelly,” he said. “Clara’s had a shock. You’re not being very sympathetic.”

  A red mist suddenly wavered in front of Kelly’s eyes —anger, temper. For years she had heard the old jokes about redheads having violent tempers and had laughed at them, but this morning she felt something uncontrollable moving through her, making her want to shout at the woman sitting beside her father, to scream at her. “Perhaps you should go home and lie down, Miss O.,” she said, fighting the urge to pick up her coffee mug and fling the contents at the pudgy, streaked face in front of her. “I’m sure you didn’t really see a ghost, but women your age sometimes do get a bit hysterical.”

  “Kelly!” Alan rose to his feet, his cheeks flushed, and Clara Overton’s face went white behind her makeup. “Kelly, that was unforgivable of you. Please apologize to Clara at once, then go to your room. You had no right to speak to her that way.”

  As quickly as it had come, Kelly’s anger evaporated, leaving her trembling and ashamed of herself. “Sorry, Miss O., I’m really sorry. I’m tired this morning. But I am sorry you were frightened by the little ghost. She didn’t mean to scare you.” Then, before anyone could ask her what she meant, she left the kitchen and went to her room.

  She sat at her desk, looking at the picture she had drawn last night. The little ghost stared back at her, eyes wide, pleading, the red velvet bow in her hair looking limp, as if it neede
d a mother’s hand to re-tie it firmly around a ringlet. “What’s the matter with me?” Kelly thought. She’d been upset, first because the teacher was with her father, the way someone was always with her father these days, then she’d become angry when she realized that Clara Overton had seen her ghost.

  “My ghost?” she wondered, studying the picture. “Something about the angle of the arms isn’t quite right,” said the artist’s part of her mind. “She isn’t pleading, almost begging with them, the way she was when I saw her.” Another part of her mind was cringing, curling up on itself, ashamed. Why had it made her so angry to realize that Clara Overton had seen the ghost too? Ghosts didn’t haunt just one person, didn’t belong to just one person.

  She shrugged her shoulders, and put the picture carefully away in a desk drawer. Last night she had managed to convince herself that the ghost was just her own imagination working too hard. Now she was defending ‘her’ ghost to the teacher, angry that the woman had been terrified by something so tiny, so lost-looking. How could she be defending something she didn’t even believe in?

  Her bedroom door was flung open, and her father stood there, his face tense.

  “Kelly, what’s wrong with you?” he asked, echoing Kelly’s own thoughts. “You were downright rude to Clara, for no reason at all. You know how I feel about manners, politeness to adults. You’ve never behaved like this before. What is going on?”

  Much to Kelly’s surprise, she began to cry. Her eyelids stung, tears filling her eyes and moving down her cheeks, and her throat seemed to close until she could hardly breathe. “Dad, I. . .” she began, and then she put her head down on the desk and began to cry in earnest. “Everyone’s got the weeps today,” she thought, not even trying to hold back the sobs. “First the little ghost, although she didn’t make any noise crying, then Miss O., and now me.”