The Ghost in the Glade
There’s a ghost that plays in an empty glade, in the woods behind my house. She tells me she’s lonely. She tells me she’s sad. She begs me to stay and cries when I leave and wants me to join her. To play with her forever. To lie alongside her under the earth, in eternal sleep and eternal play.
Mother used to say my father cursed those woods tucked in the midst of our crops. When I was little, I thought that meant he’d actually cursed them, the way a witch does. Perhaps that idea should have made me steer clear. Instead, it drew me like a magnet.
What I found in those woods was not a cursed land, but a magical one.
An oasis in our desert of fields, those ugly scars that sprouted endless, backbreaking toil.
When I had to spend all day working the fields, I’d sneak into the woods for respite.
There, I became a forest nymph, dancing through the trees and tramping through the stream, freer than I ever was outside them.
I also ran into the forest when my father told me to go play.
To me, alone, without brothers or sisters, those adventures were play.
Then I went to school, and I learned that play meant games.
Play meant rules. Play also meant interaction with other children, who mocked my dirty fingernails and patched dresses and lunches wrapped in handkerchiefs.
One day, when I was ten, I was supposed to be inspecting the crop for weevils. I did until my vision blurred and my head ached. Then I slipped into the forest to clear my head with the rich scent of pine and spruce.
I wandered through the woods, eyes half-closed and resting, making my way by memory. I was nearly to the stream when I caught a glimmer of movement in the trees. I went still, hoping to spot a fawn I’d seen the week before. Instead, a flash of pink and white whirled through my fairy glade.
I didn’t mistake the creature for a fairy. I knew there was no such thing. My mother was very, very clear on that. When she caught me reading a book of fae lore I found in the village shop, she threw it into the fire. Wicked words, she said. A good girl needed nothing but Scripture.
I managed to rescue my book after my parents went to bed.
Yet I knew Mother would notice it missing from the fireplace, so I replaced it with the only other book we had in the house: the Bible.
I burned it beyond recognition and left it there, a changeling child for my fairy tome, which seemed appropriate.
I had no illusions about the severity of what I’d done, but if reading about fairies made me wicked, then one must expect me to do wicked things.
It took a month for my mother to notice the Bible missing, and even then she only thought she’d left it at church.
After that, I kept my fairy book hidden under the floorboards.
Most of the pages were scorched but intact, and I reread it often.
I understood, though, that the mysteries contained within its blackened covers were mere stories.
Calling the clearing my “fairy glade” amused me.
I knew it didn’t contain actual fairies.
But on that day, it did contain something that should have been equally impossible.
It contained a ghost.
From the moment I saw Amelia Carter pirouetting around my fairy glade, I realized she was a phantasm.
The sun shone right through her pretty pink dress.
Her white Oxford shoes danced inches above the ground.
Otherwise, she looked as perfect as always.
Even in death, her cheeks glowed, and her dark hair hung in ringlets that twirled out as she spun.
She noticed me and stopped mid-twirl.
“Hello!” she called. “I see you behind that tree. Come and talk—” Her pretty face twisted, as if she’d bitten into an unripe apple. “Oh, it’s you.”
I walked over, staying in the shadows to hide my filthy work dungarees and my cousin’s oversized boots. Her lips still made that grimace I knew well.
“Aren’t you ever clean?” she said.
I wanted to shoot back that I was always clean. I probably bathed more often than she did. The difference was that a lawyer’s daughter didn’t need to dig in fields after school. She didn’t need to do anything except dress her dollies in pretty clothes and whisper hateful things about other girls.
Last month, Amelia Carter had disappeared from a church picnic.
For a week, the entire town searched for her.
I’d wanted to join. Even if Amelia never had a kind word for me, it seemed only right to help find her.
My father refused to let me. I’d overheard my parents talking about what they thought had happened—that a traveling laborer had stolen Amelia and done terrible things to her.
My father feared what horrors the searchers might find, and so he refused to allow me to join them.
I heard other talk, too. People saying that whatever horrors befell Amelia Carter, they came from much closer to home.
Tommy Lyons. That’s the name they whispered.
Tommy was fourteen and lived on the farm beside ours.
At the picnic, he’d been overheard telling Amelia how pretty she looked in her pink dress.
He’d been seen walking with her. Whispering with her.
After she disappeared, the searchers combed his parents’ property, but they found no sign of Amelia.
Soon, the story changed, and people started saying someone passing through must have snatched her.
She was such a pretty child that some poor childless rich woman could not resist her, and now Amelia was living like a princess in a big city.
That’s what people wanted to think. But her ghost in this glade told a very different story.
“Where am I?” Amelia asked, looking around.
“On our farm.”
Her face screwed up. “This doesn’t look like… Oh, it’s that horrible forest. My father came to see your mother again, didn’t he? To get his darning done. He has so much of it.” She rolled her blue eyes. “We’d best get back to the house. He’ll want to leave as soon as she’s done.”
“Your father isn’t here. Do you remember…anything?”
She flounced down on a log.
“Amelia?” I said when she didn’t answer.
I waited, and finally, she whispered, “I think something’s wrong.”
“What do you remember?”
She ignored the question and said, “I can’t leave.”
I inched closer, careful to stay out of her reach. I knew much of fairies, but nothing of ghosts, and I feared what she might do if I came too close.
“What do you mean you can’t leave?” I asked.
She pushed to her feet and strode toward the edge of the clearing. The moment she reached it, she bounced back, as if she’d struck a wall.
“What’s wrong with me?” she asked.
I moved farther into the clearing. Ahead, I could see a spot where the soil had been disturbed. A hole dug and filled in, the turf laid back over it. A spot big enough for the body of a twelve-year-old girl.
Amelia marched over and planted herself in front of me, hands on her hips. “I asked you a question.”
When I didn’t reply, she sniffed and spun on her heel. “Never mind. I don’t want to talk to you, anyway. I only ever do because Daddy makes me. I keep telling him I don’t want to. You’re boring. Stupid, boring and dirty.”
I started to leave.
“Wait!” she said.
I stopped just past the edge of the clearing. I didn’t turn around. I just stood there as she sniffled.
“Something’s wrong with me,” she said. “I can’t remember how I got here, and now I can’t leave. I’m sorry I called you stupid. You aren’t. You’re the smartest girl in class. If anyone can figure this out, you can.”
I turned to see another familiar look on her face, one she’d get whenever she needed my help with her homework. She’d tell me I was clever and beg for my assistance, and I’d do it, but that never changed anything. She’d still whisper about me behind my back. Not always behind my back, either.
I looked back at the place where the soil had been disturbed. I didn’t like Amelia. I might even hate her. But whatever she’d done, she didn’t deserve this.
Did she deserve the truth? To know she was dead? Not if she couldn’t change that. Not if it wouldn’t help.
“It’s a fairy trap,” I said.
Her face scrunched up again. “What?”
“You must have come here to see the fairies.” I settled onto a stump. “One time, when you came with your father, you followed me out here, and I told you about the fairies,” I lied. “Do you remember that?”
She shook her head.
“Well, I did. You must have come back to see them. Only they’ve trapped you. That’s what they do. They play music, and when you follow it, you get trapped in the dance. You were dancing when I walked by. Do you remember that?”
She nodded.
“Why were you dancing?” I asked.
“Because I was bored.”
“No, you were dancing because you heard the fairy music. You just forgot it.”
“So how do I get out?”
I told her I didn’t know, but I’d find out. I had a fairy book, and I’d look for the answer, and when I found it, I’d come back.
I didn’t return for almost a month. I thought by then she’d be gone, that her ghost was only temporarily stuck here, and a gate would open, and she’d go…wherever. She didn’t. I went back, and Amelia was right where I’d left her.
To my relief, she’d forgotten my promise.
She didn’t even remember I’d been there.
I found her dancing, and we repeated the whole conversation, as if for the first time.
Again, I promised to find the answer. Again, I stayed away for a month.
Again, I returned to find her ghost still in that glade, still trapped, still forgetting why.
It wasn’t long before people stopped looking for Amelia. Two years passed, and her parents had another baby, a little girl. They named her Amy, in memory, as if even they’d given up hoping to find Amelia.