The Swallow Read Free Page B

either. None. And no dreams. I still had that floaty feeling, as if I weren’t quite there, and my head felt light. But I was well enough to start classes at my new school in the middle of September, and there were no ghosts there either. I didn’t dare even hope that they were gone for good. Maybe some of the medicine they gave me in the hospital had driven them away for a while. For whatever reason, they were gone.

THE ATTIC
    Polly
    Hunkered down in my little nest, cozy under the blanket, I slowly started getting warmer. It was very restful to finally have a spot where no one could bother me, far away from sisters, brothers, parents and The Baby Who Stole My Room.
    I found my place in
The Ghastly Ghost at My Gate
(the latest from Philomena Faraday) and began to read, holding the flashlight steady on the page.
    Amanda stood frozen with fear on the pathway by the garden gate. The white figure floated closer and closer. It stretched out a bony hand and there was nothing she could do. She couldn’t scream, she couldn’t move, she could only stand, transfixed in terror as the hand reached towards her throat …
    A sudden breath of air ruffled the pages of my book. I gripped the flashlight firmly and swung it around the attic. The trapdoor was still shut tight. So where had the draft comefrom? And what was that smell that drifted in with it? Sweet, almost like candy, but sad too. A rose?
    The attic was very still. My eyes drifted back to the page.
    The wind howled around the shadowy garden. Amanda felt the cold touch of skeletal fingers on her neck, and then the wind whipped into a frenzy and the figure dissolved into a swirling white mist, wrapping around her like a shroud, and finally Amanda found her voice and screamed: a scream like a train hurtling round a corner at a hundred miles an hour, a scream that seemed to rise up from her toes and burst out the top of her head like a boiling kettle, a scream—
    A floorboard creaked, very close by, and I was jolted out of the book and back into the attic. I held my breath and listened. Nothing. I shone the flashlight in a wide arc. The attic was still empty.
    I drew a ragged breath. I was scaring myself to death with this ghost story. I settled back and found my place in the book again.
    The fingers dropped from her throat and Amanda stumbled towards the house, but she tripped on a loose paving stone and fell. Immediately she was enveloped in a clammy mist, and she could feel
herself drowning in it, sinking fast. An icy voice from beyond the grave whispered, “Beware! Beware the ghostly gate!”
    Right at that moment was when it happened. Someone—or some THING —started humming a tune, right in my ear!
    I dropped the book and nearly dropped the flashlight. The light swung wildly. Trying to hold my shaking hands steady, I shone it around the attic. It was still empty, and the humming was getting louder.
    I couldn’t believing this was happening. I felt just like Amanda must have felt by the garden gate—unable to move or even squeak.
    Then the humming turned into words, sung clearly in a sweet, high voice:
    She’s like the swallow that flies so high
    She’s like the river that never runs dry
    She’s like the sunshine on the lee shore
    She lost her love so she’ll love no more
.
    The tune was lilting and sad, like an old folk song. A girl was singing softly to herself, right beside me. But there was no one there. It had to be a ghost.
    Rose
    I finally found a place in this house that’s my very own. I discovered it the week after I came back from the hospital.
    I drifted into my grandmother’s room one day, looking for the sewing basket so I could sew a button on my blue cardigan. Nothing had changed in there since she’d died in the spring.
    Her bottle of Yardley’s English Rose perfume stood on her dressing table. I untwisted the top and dabbed some on my wrists, then breathed it in. As the sweet, sad smell of roses flooded over me I wondered, for a moment,