The Ghost of Soda Creek Read online

  Her father knelt beside her, his work-roughened hands awkwardly patting her hair. Kelly never cried. She couldn’t remember the last time she had been in tears—yes, she could. It was the day of her mother’s funeral.

  Alan spoke softly. “Kelly,” he said, over and over. “Kelly. It’s all right, little one. If s all right.”

  Kelly lifted her head and rubbed a hand across her face. She groped for a Kleenex, found one, blew her nose and tried to stop the tears. “Oh, Dad,” she said. “It just isn’t fair.”

  “What’s not fair, Kelly?” he asked, taking the damp Kleenex out of her hands, passing her a fresh one. “What’s not fair, little one?”

  “All those people and that horrid woman and there’s always someone here with you and we haven’t had breakfast together on Sunday and talked, just the two of us, for a long time, and you’re always so busy helping them, listening to them. And besides, it’s my ghost. I saw her first, and she wasn’t trying to scare or hurt anyone and. . .” Her voice failed her again, a loud sob ending the flood of words.

  Alan put his arms around her, pulling her to him. “It’s all right,” he said again. “It’s all right. I think I understand, and I’m sorry, Kelly. I didn’t realize.”

  They stayed that way for a while, the tall, awkward man holding his daughter closely, both of them silent. Then Alan stood up, and took Kelly’s hand in his. “Come on, little one. Let’s get ourselves some breakfast, just the two of us. You’re right. It has been a long while since we’ve spent any time together.”

  Kelly grabbed a fistful of Kleenex from the box on her desk. “No one’s called me that, little one, for a long time,” she said. “Not since . . . not since Mom. . .”

  Her father squeezed her hand tightly. “No. Perhaps I wanted you to grow up quickly, too quickly. I think maybe I asked too much of you, Kelly. Too much, too soon.”

  Kelly blew her nose loudly. “Nonsense,” she said. “You didn’t make me grow up in a hurry. See, I still have temper tantrums and tears. I like looking after the house and you—well, most of the time I do. And I’m still short, too. I haven’t really grown ‘up’ very much at all!”

  “Well. . .” her father answered, beginning to smile. “The cooking. I seem to remember an angel-food cake that was only one inch high, and a very special chili when you used cayenne pepper instead of chili powder, and some biscuits that I broke a tooth on.”

  “Come on, Dad,” said Kelly, beginning to smile herself. “It hasn’t been that bad. You know your tooth was cracked before you ate my biscuits, and my cooking’s been getting a lot better since Miss O.’s been helping me.”

  At the mention of Clara Overton, both of their faces became serious again. “Kelly, I. . .” Alan’s voice was hesitant, “Kelly, I just ... I mean, I want you to know that Clara is a very unhappy person, and she needs someone to talk to once in a while, but there’s nothing ... I mean, I just feel sorry for her. I don’t really even like her very much, so you needn’t worry.”

  It took Kelly a minute to understand what her father meant, but when she did she grinned at him. “It’s okay, Dad. I’m not jealous of her, if that’s what you’re trying to say.”

  “Um, well, I just thought that maybe you were wondering about Clara and . . . and me.”

  “I’m not wondering, Dad, but I do hope you don’t feel so sorry for her that you marry her!”

  Her father stepped back, a strange look on his face. “Never,” he said firmly, then repeated himself, loudly. “Never!”

  Kelly took a deep breath. “Dad? I guess that is what’s wrong with me, partly. I think maybe I am a bit jealous, not just of Miss O. but of all the Soda Creek people. I miss our Sunday mornings, Dad.”

  “I know, Kelly. I’ve missed them, too.”

  “And Dad, the reason I got so angry with Miss O. was. . .”

  “Yes?” Her father looked down at her, puzzled.

  “Well, because I . . . last night I saw. . .”

  Her father waited patiently, but Kelly couldn’t go on. “Oh, it’s ridiculous really,” she said at last. “Here.”

  Reaching into her desk drawer, she pulled out the watercolour of the little ghost. “I did this last night,” she said. “I saw her too.”

  Her father took the picture and studied it, not saying a word. Finally he looked at Kelly and spoke. “It’s Clara’s ghost,” he said. “It’s just the way she described it, the high boots, the red dress, the ringlets.”

  “But she wasn’t trying to frighten anyone, Dad. She wasn’t reaching out to grab Miss Overton. She was reaching for something, for someone, for . . . oh, I can’t explain it. She’s little and alone and very, very sad.”

  Alan gently placed the picture on Kelly’s desk. “I don’t understand what’s going on here, Kelly. I could understand it if only one of you thought you saw this ghost. Clara is high-strung, and she is at the age when some women begin to get a bit peculiar.”

  “Sure. That’s what I said, and you got angry at me for saying it.”

  “Be sensible, Kelly. That’s not something you say to a person’s face! Clara is very sensitive about her age.”

  “Sorry, Dad. I know I was rude. But why do you think that I saw the ghost, since I’m not at that ‘peculiar’ age?”

  “Well, you were alone last night, up late, and your room is full of things from Soda Creek’s past and. . .”

  He looked down at the picture again, his forehead wrinkling above his thick, greying eyebrows. Then he shook his head, as if to clear away unsettling thoughts.

  “Come on, Kelly. Let’s forget about it for now. I don’t know about you, but I’m hungry. I’ll do the bacon, if you can find that package of pancake mix, and we’ll have breakfast together, just like we used to.”

  “Sure, Dad. That sounds great. Just the two of us, right?”

  “Right!” he answered, and then the doorbell rang.

  Chapter 4

  Kelly and her father looked at each other, and Kelly could feel the tears inching their way back into her eyes. “Well, there goes our breakfast together,” she said, trying to control her voice.

  “No, we will have some time to ourselves today, Kelly,” said her father firmly. “I’ll see who it is and tell them we’re busy. Send them away.”

  “Sure,” said Kelly, unable to make herself believe that her father would be able to do such a thing; trying to believe it, but already seeing their quiet hours together vanishing.

  As her father went to the door, Kelly headed for the bathroom to wash her face. After the tears, her cheeks were flushed and her nose seemed almost as red as her hair. She splashed her face with cold water several times, and it seemed to help a bit. In just an hour her hair had curled its way out of the tight braids, and thick tendrils clung to her forehead and cheeks. She retied the ribbon firmly in a band around her forehead, then went out into the kitchen where she could hear her father talking to someone.

  “I knew it,” she thought. “He hasn’t had the heart to get rid of whoever was at the door.”

  At the kitchen table sat two people, obviously from the commune, although Kelly had not seen either one of them before. Her father, busy filling the coffeepot with cold water, turned as she came in, looking apologetic. “Kelly, this is George and his nephew David from the place down the road. Their pump is frozen and they need a hand getting it going again. Um ... do you mind if I just run down for a while and have a look?”

  “It’s okay, Dad. Do what you have to do.”

  “We’ll get that time to ourselves later, I promise. Maybe we can make something special for dinner, or how would you like to go into Williams Lake this evening, and we’ll have dinner out?”

  “Sure, Dad.” Kelly smiled, not as upset as she thought she would be. Dinner out sounded good. At least she wouldn’t have any dishes to do afterwards.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset your plans.” George had spoken, and he looked uncomfortable. He had long hair, past his shoulder blades, tied back in a pony tai
l. He seemed a bit older than her father, late forties she guessed, and he had long, slender fingers that he tapped nervously on the kitchen table.

  David was much younger, and even though he was sitting, Kelly could see that he was short, almost as short as she was. He was thin, too thin, and his dark eyes seemed almost too big for his face. His pale skin made the dark circles under his eyes seem drawn there, charcoaled in against the white skin. He looks very fragile, Kelly thought, surprising herself with that word, but then he smiled at her and his face lightened, softened and became almost handsome. “Hi,” he said, “where did you get that hair?”

  Kelly was startled. People often commented on her hair, but usually they waited until they got to know her, didn’t come right out with a question like that the first time they met her. She could see her father watching her, waiting for her to reply, the coffee pot overflowing with cold water now. She smiled at him, reassuring him that she would be polite, then turned back to David.

  “From my grandmother, my Irish grandmother,” she answered, and heard her father give a small sigh of relief that she hadn’t snapped at this visitor the way she had at Clara Overton. Then, suddenly self-conscious, she reached up and tucked a wiry strand back under the headband. “It runs in the family, but it skips a generation. That’s why Dad doesn’t have it.”

  “You’re lucky,” said David. “It’s really something.”

  Kelly found herself blushing. Never in her sixteen years had she thought herself ‘lucky’—more like being cursed—with her red, wiry hair. She sat down self-consciously as her father put out clean mugs. “It’s an awful nuisance,” she said. “But . . . but, thanks.”

  “Poor Kelly’s been called ‘red’ and ‘carrot-top’ and all the other names people can dream up for redheads,” said her father. “She hates her hair, always has. When she read Anne of Green Gables, she ran around sighing for ‘auburn locks’. She even dyed it, the way Anne did in the book. Made her look as if she’d escaped from a circus. Her mother cut it off, really short, and when it grew back it had all that frizz to it.”

  “Dad!” Kelly said sharply, annoyed at him talking about her as if she weren’t there. Then, to change the subject, she asked David, “Have you been here long? With the group at the farm, I mean?”

  “Just a few weeks,” he answered.

  “David’s been sick,” said his uncle. “Mononucleosis. He’s in first year university, or was. Had to take some time off when he got sick. His mother thought the Cariboo air would fix him up, so she sent him up here.”

  “Hey!” said David, “Do we get to talk about you two now? Come on.” He and Kelly shared a grin. “Parents and uncles can be so tactful at times, can’t they?” he said, shaking his head.

  “Anyway,” George went on, hesitant, not sure if he was on safe conversational ground, “anyway, he’s much better, and we’ve been keeping him busy.”

  “That’s an understatement,” said David. “I’ll have to have a relapse to get any rest. But I’ve almost learned how to milk a cow. The cows can’t wait until I really get the hang of it.”

  “He’s not doing badly—for a city boy,” laughed George. “Except he’s started seeing things in the barn. Guess the mono’s got to his brain.”

  “Come on, Uncle George, I was only half awake this morning.”

  “You saw something this morning?” asked Kelly. “What?”

  “Well, I really wasn’t completely awake, and I was worried about the big cow that likes to kick, so I was distracted, but I could have sworn I saw a little girl in the corner of the barn. I thought at first that it was just one of the kids from our place, then I realized that she was much younger, only about two or three.”

  Kelly and her father looked at each other in silence. Alan finally spoke. “What did she look like, David?”

  “I didn’t see too well. The lights in the barn are kind of weak, and it was still dark outside, but she looked as if she was wearing a dress and boots, and she had lots of blonde hair.”

  “What did she do?” Kelly asked, her voice strained. “Did she say anything?”

  “No, she just stood there, didn’t make a sound. She had her hands out towards me, and I’ll swear she was going to cry. So I turned around, thinking that if she were going to cry maybe I shouldn’t stare at her, and when I looked again, she was gone.”

  “Hallucinations, David,” said his uncle. “There aren’t any kids under six years old in Soda Creek.”

  Kelly and her father exchanged looks again, and he shook his head slightly. Another person had seen the child who had visited Kelly, they were both sure of that. But why? As they stood there, silent, while David and his uncle looked puzzled, Kelly realized that there was only one explanation. The ghost was real, uncomfortably but undoubtedly real!

  Alan seemed to forget that he had started a pot of coffee. He turned to George abruptly and said, “If we’re going to get that pump of yours thawed out and working by evening, we’d better get going.” He hurriedly left the room, heading to the basement to pick up his tool box.

  George seemed bewildered by this sudden rush to get out of the house, but he picked up the patched denim jacket that he had slung over the back of his chair, and stood up.

  David, however, didn’t seem at all inclined to leave. “Hey,” he said to Kelly, “What about that coffee your dad’s making?”

  “I’ll get you some, if you want to stay for a while.” Kelly wanted him to stay, wanted to find out more about what he had seen in the barn that morning, but she didn’t want to talk about the ghost in front of George and her father. “Unless you have to help them with the pump.”

  “I wouldn’t know which end of a pump the water comes out of,” David confessed. “They won’t let me help with that type of work.”

  “Sure,” George said to David, “Sure. You stay here where it’s nice and warm and drink your coffee and think of your poor old uncle freezing his fingers off down in the well-house.”

  “I’ll be back as soon as I can, Kelly,” called Alan as he headed out the front door. “Perhaps you should show David that picture you drew last night?”

  “Picture?” asked David. “You’re an artist?”

  “Not really,” she said, “At least, not yet. I draw a bit, and I’m going to go to art school when I graduate, but I’m not nearly as good as my mother.”

  “Where is your mother?” asked David. “I haven’t seen her yet.”

  Something inside Kelly turned over and hurt. “She’s dead,” she answered. “For almost three years now.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I mean, Uncle George didn’t say anything. I’m sorry, Kelly.” He reached a hand out, as if he were going to touch her, then quickly drew it back. “I ... I guess I should head out now, maybe I can help with that pump or go talk to the cows or something.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” snapped Kelly. “There’s nothing wrong in you not knowing. Don’t worry about it.” She clenched her jaw, biting down hard on the hurt inside her, and poured David’s coffee. “Besides,” she went on, determined to change the subject, “besides, I think we should talk about what you saw this morning.”

  “What I saw? Oh, the kid in the barn. Well, I guess she must be staying with someone around here and just wandered over. Maybe she wanted to see the cows. Maybe she wanted to watch me try to milk the cows. From the way everyone talks, that’s a very funny sight.”

  “Your uncle was right, David,” said Kelly. “There isn’t a child under six closer than the reserve, a few miles down the road.”

  “Who was it then?” asked David, now serious. “She wasn’t lost, was she? I didn’t mean to ignore her, but. . .”

  “Maybe she is lost,” said Kelly, “but you couldn’t have helped her find her way home.”

  “What do you mean?” David’s coffee sat untouched on the table. “What are you talking about?”

  “Don’t laugh, David, just answer me. Do you believe in ghosts?”

  “Ghosts?” Davi
d looked startled. “No. I don’t. Or at least I don’t think I believe in them. I’ve never seen one.”

  “You saw one this morning, David,” Kelly said softly. “You saw a ghost this morning.”

  Chapter 5

  About an hour later Kelly and David still sat at the kitchen table, now littered with dishes. Kelly, realizing that she hadn’t yet eaten, had produced the pancake mix, but David had actually done the cooking.

  “I’m good at pancakes,” he said. “Look, no matter what the recipe for the mix says, you always add an egg, and just a bit less water. Like this.” He had taken the bowl and mix out of her hands and made himself at home in the kitchen. Kelly had cooked the bacon, only burning it slightly, and located the syrup in the back of a cupboard, while David wielded the flipper on the pancakes. And they were good, Kelly had to admit, better than the ones she usually made.

  Now they sat, the sticky plates pushed to one side, staring at Kelly’s picture of the little ghost.

  “I still can’t believe it,” David said. “In spite of what you’ve told me, I still can’t really believe it. I always thought that ghosts would be tall white things in sheets, not a little girl looking so real. Maybe we’re having some sort of hallucination.”

  “I don’t know, David, but I don’t see how that could happen. I mean, we don’t have much in common, the three of us who have seen her—you, me and Miss Overton.”

  “Maybe we should work on developing more things in common then,” he said.

  Kelly grinned at him, wickedly. “Oh, you mean you would like to get to know Miss O.? Well, I’ll be pleased to introduce you.”

  “Come on, you know what I mean.” David looked down at the picture again, hiding his eyes from her. “You and I are the only two around here who aren’t over thirty or under ten. I don’t know about you, but I’ve been lonely even in the short time I’ve been here. Aren’t you too? Lonely?”

  At his direct question, Kelly’s grin faded. “Yes. I guess I am, but I’m at school most of the time, and when I get home there’s housework and dinner to get ready, and my painting—and Dad, when I get to see him.”