Hallowe'en and that
There was a window on the top floor of my old school building which, when viewed walking back from the playing fields in the winter, appeared to frame a young girl,sitting on the window sill.
Except the window was part of a high-ceilinged room, the floor beneath that window had been knocked away years ago. So how could anyone be sitting there?
Anyway, even at 13 I knew ghosts didn't exist, so I went from the thrill of shared fear to curiosity pretty quickly. What was I seeing, if not a ghost? One day, walking back alone after fetching the football out of field next door, instead of walking quickly, head down, enjoying the thrill of the fear, I stopped and looked right at her. She looked back. I stood there without moving for about 5 minutes. She was unperturbed. I wanted to shout to her, but a mixture of the excitement, curiosity and the idiocy of doing so caught the words in my throat. Eventually, I moved. And the spell broke. She became the curved shadow of the window frame, her eyes became knots in the ceiling behind her, her dress became the dust accumulated on the glass.
My heart broke. I wanted to see her again. So I stepped backwards and there she was! A step forward, gone. A step backward, she appears, smiling. I spent what felt like an hour doing this, until it became dark and I had to go back to my dorm.
For weeks afterwards, I would look forward to seeing her. I played hours and hours of football with my friend George, every evening until the light felt right, then I would run back toward the school building to see if she was there. Sometimes she was, and sometimes she wasn't. I began to think about her more and more, I would wonder who she could be, and created stories about her that (unwittingly) mirrored my occasional feelings of loneliness and frustration. I dreamt about her, and began thinking of her as Victoria.
The effect she had on me must have become noticeable. My friend George asked me who I was muttering to late at night, and what I was doing when I left him after our football sessions. In my excitement, I told him. He didn't understand. He did however, mention it to the janitor when he was helping us move the goal posts back to the school one night. He looked up at the window with me and said the dust was a bit strange. And so the next day he took a ladder to the window and cleaned.
I never saw her again.
There was a window on the top floor of my old school building which, when viewed walking back from the playing fields in the winter, appeared to frame a young girl,sitting on the window sill.
Except the window was part of a high-ceilinged room, the floor beneath that window had been knocked away years ago. So how could anyone be sitting there?
Anyway, even at 13 I knew ghosts didn't exist, so I went from the thrill of shared fear to curiosity pretty quickly. What was I seeing, if not a ghost? One day, walking back alone after fetching the football out of field next door, instead of walking quickly, head down, enjoying the thrill of the fear, I stopped and looked right at her. She looked back. I stood there without moving for about 5 minutes. She was unperturbed. I wanted to shout to her, but a mixture of the excitement, curiosity and the idiocy of doing so caught the words in my throat. Eventually, I moved. And the spell broke. She became the curved shadow of the window frame, her eyes became knots in the ceiling behind her, her dress became the dust accumulated on the glass.
My heart broke. I wanted to see her again. So I stepped backwards and there she was! A step forward, gone. A step backward, she appears, smiling. I spent what felt like an hour doing this, until it became dark and I had to go back to my dorm.
For weeks afterwards, I would look forward to seeing her. I played hours and hours of football with my friend George, every evening until the light felt right, then I would run back toward the school building to see if she was there. Sometimes she was, and sometimes she wasn't. I began to think about her more and more, I would wonder who she could be, and created stories about her that (unwittingly) mirrored my occasional feelings of loneliness and frustration. I dreamt about her, and began thinking of her as Victoria.
The effect she had on me must have become noticeable. My friend George asked me who I was muttering to late at night, and what I was doing when I left him after our football sessions. In my excitement, I told him. He didn't understand. He did however, mention it to the janitor when he was helping us move the goal posts back to the school one night. He looked up at the window with me and said the dust was a bit strange. And so the next day he took a ladder to the window and cleaned.
I never saw her again.
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