The last trace of the little ghost was still visible, a veil of mist across the floor, when the Linden’s front door opened and Kelly heard her father’s voice. “Kelly? Where are you?” Alan Linden came into the dark living room, snapping on the light. “All alone and in the dark, Kelly? I had hoped you would join us. Everyone’s gone home for dinner now, but I think we all had a good time.”
“Not alone, Dad,” answered Kelly. “She was here.”
“Who was here? That blasted ghost thing?” demanded a gruff voice behind Alan. “That little critter’s caused me enough trouble, think she’d know enough to keep away from me.”
“Ed Crinchley’s home,” Kelly’s father explained, unnecessarily. “I’m not sure if he’s officially discharged, but he pulled up in a taxi a few minutes ago, crutches and all.”
The old man came into the house with David, who had one arm around him and must have helped him up the stairs. “Come into the kitchen, Ed, and I’ll see what we can offer you for supper,” said Alan, and took the old man down the hall.
David stood in the doorway to the living room, the Linden’s empty coffee pot in one hand. “Can I come in too, Kelly?” he asked. He smiled nervously, his dark eyes pleading with her.
And suddenly Kelly didn’t care anymore about David’s girlfriend in Vancouver. He was here, with her, and she wanted to be with him, talk to him, have him near her. “David!” she said, running to him as if he had been gone for weeks, “David, she was back, the ghost, and she wasn’t crying. She spoke, a name, ‘Emily’, and it took her a long time to fade away.”
“Emily,” said David. “One of my favourite names. After Kelly.” He reached out and touched her cheek. “Hey,” he said. “I. . .”
“Kelly, come and give me a hand with supper,” Alan called. “And David, if you’ve got that coffee pot, bring it in and let’s get it going again.”
As Kelly and David went into the kitchen, her father looked at them questioningly. “Got the problem solved?” he asked.
Ed Crinchley, now settled at the kitchen table, looked up at them. “Problem? Ah, a lovers’ quarrel.” Then he settled back in his chair is if he were getting ready to watch the argument continue.
“I’ve seen the ghost again,” said Kelly hurriedly, anxious to change the subject. “And she spoke!”
“I’ll speak to her if she scares me like that again. Cost me a sprained ankle and five gallons of my best crabapple wine.”
“But she hasn’t said anything before now, Mr. Crinchley,” said David.
“No. Just made a blasted racket all last night, so Alan says, so no one got any sleep. Youngsters today don’t mind their manners like they used to, ghosts or not!”
“Oh, Mr. Crinchley, please don’t growl at her,” said Kelly. “She didn’t mean to frighten you, and she didn’t mean to keep us awake with her crying. I don’t think she’ll cry tonight; she wasn’t when I saw her. Besides, I didn’t think you believed in ghosts.”
“Growl, eh? So you think the old Grinch growls at kids? Well, I haven’t yet, but it might not be a bad idea, especially at those twins.” He threw back his head and produced an excellent imitation of an irate grizzly bear.
“How does he know everyone calls him ‘the Grinch’?” thought Kelly, then, embarrassed, she went back to the subject of the little ghost. “She said ‘Emily’. She said it twice. I wonder if that is her mother’s name?”
“I’ll bet it’s her own name,” said David. “Maybe she was just introducing herself to you.” He hadn’t taken his eyes off Kelly’s face since they entered the kitchen, and he was still smiling. Kelly grinned back at him. David might have a girlfriend in Vancouver, but right now he was here, in Soda Creek, with her, obviously thinking about her, caring about her.
“I’ve been wondering about her, the little one,” said Ed Crinchley, his voice unusually quiet with none of its gruffness. “While I was in the hospital I didn’t sleep too well. Wouldn’t take those fool pills they kept shoving at me, I guess that’s why. I kept thinking about her, the way she’d stood there at the foot of my stairs, reaching out her hands. Almost as if she wanted me to give her something or do something for her.”
“I think we all feel that way,” said Alan from the stove where he was warming up the left-over stew, adding more frozen vegetables to stretch it for the company. “She does seem to want something from us. I wonder why she doesn’t just come right out and tell us what it is?”
“Maybe she isn’t an experienced enough ghost yet,” said David thoughtfully. “I mean, tonight was the first time she spoke, last night was the first time she made any sound at all. Maybe she’s learning how to be a ghost, and will tell us when she can.”
“Or maybe she’s just too little, hasn’t learned the words for what she wants,” said Kelly. “She’s only about two years old, remember.”
“What can a thing that size want around here?” said Ed Crinchley.
“Well, she sure didn’t want any holy water,” commented David.
Kelly blushed. “Come on. Let’s forget it.”
Seeing Ed Crinchley’s puzzled look, Alan explained how Clara Overton had brought a priest out the night before, and how the ghost’s crying had begun as he was about to sprinkle the holy water. “They heard her everywhere, even down at the reserve, which is why they came to do their dance for the spirits. She liked that better than the holy water, I guess.”
Her father hadn’t mentioned Kelly’s contribution to both events, but David did. “You should have seen Kelly, Mr. Crinchley. She tore that water right out of Father Glenn’s hand, and then she barged into the middle of the dance, yelling at them to stop. She really stood up for her little ghost.”
Kelly wasn’t angry at him. “The Lindens have always been fighters, David,” she said softly. “One way or another, we usually get what we want, and we aren’t afraid to fight for it.”
Alan looked surprised at his daughter’s words and the smile left David’s face as he answered. “I get the feeling you do, Kelly,” he said. “You’re a strong person.”
Ed Crinchley had not been paying attention to the conversation, and now he interrupted. “What does she want here? Do you have any idea, Kelly?”
Kelly shook her head, and the old man returned to his usual gruff manner of speaking. “Well, I ain’t going to have her crying all night again, the way you say she did last night. Won’t have it.”
And the ghost didn’t cry that night, or the next or the next. But she did visit everyone who lived in the town, in the commune and on the reserve. Over the next four days the community became quite accustomed to her standing quietly in their bedrooms, kitchens, garages, on their snow-covered lawns, in their gardens, beside the school bus stop. Standing, reaching out and, once in a while, saying, “Emily, Emily.” She no longer frightened people; no one jumped back, startled, as Ed Crinchley had done, no one was hurt because of her. She seemed to stay longer when she appeared, and it took her much more time to fade away when she left.
Even Clara Overton, with a front lawn liberally sprinkled with holy water, had several visits from the ghost. “I do believe the child is STARVING,” she told Kelly. “She watched me make a batch of muffins, and she stayed until they were out of the oven. I’m sure she wanted one, poor thing.”
The ghost came to Ben’s garden, standing beside the carefully pruned and staked raspberry bushes, peering through the leafless branches. She visited Bob in the small workroom in his house, and watched him as he formed a large bowl on his potters’ wheel.
At the commune, she most often appeared in the barn, seeming to like the cows, and she was always on the Soda Creek Reserve when the dancers held their practices.
Alan found her beside his car in the early morning as he scraped his windshield clear of ice, and Kelly saw her at least twice a day; in her bedroom, beside her chair as she watched T.V., waiting for her in the hall as she came home from school or beside her bed last thing at night.
Ed Crinchley must not have growled at her after all, for the small apparition went often to his home. His sprained ankle kept him confined inside, unless someone helped him down the stairs and along the icy road of the townsite. Kelly suspected that the Grinch was becoming rather fond of the small ghost, even though he complained loudly about the nuisance she was.
“Poor little critter,” the old man said one night when Kelly took him some dinner. “She just stares at you. Almost begging you to do something for her, whatever it is. And it’s the strangest thing. Seems to me that I’ve seen her somewhere before—must be she reminds me of someone—but I can’t think who.”
For four days the community seemed to be waiting, waiting for something to happen. No one made any more attempts to get rid of the ghost, yet no one was completely at ease with her around. They accepted her presence, weren’t frightened when she appeared, talked about her, wondered about her. Yet everyone knew that she couldn’t stay, that sooner or later they had to find a way to make her leave.
After all, they couldn’t live with the little ghost forever. Or could they?