The Ghost in the Glade #2
Soon, the town seemed to forget about Amelia altogether.
As she faded in their memories, so her own memories faded.
The ghost in the glade forgot who she was.
She forgot where she was. She forgot that she’d had another life before this and that another life existed beyond her glade.
She stopped asking me to help her escape.
The glade became her world, and she danced and played it in endlessly.
She forgot me, too. That is, who I’d been to her when she was a creature of flesh and blood. I became her best friend. Her only companion.
“Come play with me,” she’d say.
“I’m too old to play.”
“No one’s too old to play. Come. Come.”
I tried to play with her. I didn’t quite do it right, but she no longer seemed to mind. She was like a child desperate for attention. Always desperate. Always lonely. Always alone.
“Don’t go!” she’d say whenever I had to leave.
“I have chores. And schoolwork.”
“You don’t need that. Play with me. Stay with me.”
“I can’t stay. Remember? We’ve discussed this. I don’t live here.”
“But you could. It’s nice here, in the sunshine. No chores. No school. We could dance and play forever.”
“I don’t want to dance and play forever.”
I don’t want to be like you, dead and rotting beneath the soil.
Sometimes, I thought of telling her the truth, so she’d understand why I couldn’t stay. But I didn’t. I feared it wouldn’t matter.
No, I feared she already knew. That she’d realized why she was trapped there, and she knew exactly what she was suggesting when she asked me to join her.
As I grew older, I visited less frequently, going only once a month, as I had in the very beginning. As much as I dreaded those visits, I owed her that much.
Soon, I turned fifteen and had to drop out of school. My mother said I’d had enough education. It was time for other things. Time to move on with my life, whether I wanted to or not.
I didn’t tell Amelia that I’d be leaving home soon. That would’ve been cruel. So I played with her, and I listened to her. One day, when I was nearly ready to go, something caught her eye, and she spun, saying, “Who’s there?”
I looked over quickly. The forest seemed empty. Amelia ran to the edge of her glade and shaded her eyes.
“I saw you,” she said. “Come out and play with us.”
No answer. Then, off to my left, twigs crackled underfoot.
“Who’s there?” I called as I strode toward the noise.
A figure stepped from behind a tree. Tommy Lyons. My future. That’s what my parents said. Tommy and I were to wed when I turned sixteen. Our families and our farms would join. That was my future. My fate. Standing in front of me.
“Who were you talking to?” Tommy asked.
“You.”
“Before that. I saw you in that clearing. I heard you talking to someone.”
“Myself,” I said as I brushed past him.
He grabbed my arm, hard enough to hurt. “Only crazy people talk to themselves. You aren’t crazy, are you?”
I considered telling him that I was. Maybe then he’d refuse to marry me. That wouldn’t help, though. If Tommy rejected me, I’d never wed, and I’d be trapped here with my mother’s endless chores and Amelia’s endless pleas.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “It won’t happen again.”
He peered at the clearing. Then at me, his eyes narrowed. I tried to shake free, but he only tightened his grip and marched me back toward the house, saying, “Stay away from there.”
After Tommy warned me to stay out of the woods, I went there even more often. I couldn’t help it. I used to flee my chores. Now I fled my life.
“You aren’t happy,” Amelia said, spinning through the glade. “I can tell.”
“Am I usually happy?”
“No, but you aren’t sad, either. You’re sad now. And I know how to fix it.”
I didn’t reply.
She kept dancing until she was right in front of me. She still looked exactly as she had at the town picnic, in that pretty pink dress with her face scrubbed clean, hair in perfect ringlets. Forever twelve years old. Forever playing. Forever dancing.
“Join me,” she said.
She spun around me, her skirt billowing. “Join me. We’ll dance, and we’ll play, and you’ll be happy.”
“No, you’ll be happy.”
She only smiled. “I will. If you join me, I won’t be alone anymore. I hate being alone. It gets cold when you’re gone. Cold and dark.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry, just say—”
She shrieked as a figure appeared at the clearing’s edge. I turned to see Tommy.
“I thought I told you not to come here,” he said.
I backed into the forest. “I just wanted—”
“You knew I was coming over for dinner. You deliberately snuck out here to provoke me.”
“What? No. I forgot.”
“You forgot? That’s your excuse?”
I kept moving backwards, away from the clearing. Amelia screamed, but he couldn’t hear her. Couldn’t see her. He advanced on me, his face twisted with rage.
“I’m not sure what’s worse,” he said. “The fact that you forgot I was coming, or the fact you snuck out here behind my back because you forgot.”
“I’m s-sorry.”
He lunged and grabbed my arm. “You’re going to be my wife, and you still act like a child, running around the forest and talking to yourself.” He pulled me so close I smelled ale on his breath. “Or are you communing with the fairies?”
“Wh-what?”
He jerked his thumb at the clearing. “That’s a fairy glade. My gran told me about them. She told me about girls who commune with the fairies. Wicked girls.”
“N-no. I’m not—”
He pulled me to him and hiked up my skirt, one sweaty hand on my thigh. “Are you a wicked girl?” he whispered in my ear. “Do you dance naked with the fairies?”
I scrambled away. He grabbed at me. I stumbled and fell on all fours. He dropped on me and flipped me over, and his hand dove under my skirt again.
“We’re almost married,” he said. “Then I can do whatever I like.” He smirked down at me. “So you might as well start getting used to it.”
I fell back, whimpering. He fumbled to push my skirt up.
As soon as he looked away, I reached over my head and grabbed the stone I’d left there.
I swung it against his head. It hit with a satisfying crunch.
I’d heard that crunch before. On the day Amelia Carter chased me here all the way from the town picnic.
She chased me and grabbed me and told me that her father did not come to get his socks darned.
She told me what he did do—that she’d seen it.
She called my mother a whore. Called me one, too.
I said I wasn’t the one who let Tommy Lyons kiss me behind the schoolhouse.
That’s when she attacked me. I grabbed the rock and hit her on the head.
I only meant to make her stop. That’s all I wanted.
To get free and run away. But when the stone struck Amelia’s temple, she fell, and she didn’t get up again.
Tommy did get up. He tried, at least, dazed and blinking. I hit him harder, and I kept hitting him until he lay as still as Amelia had, all those years ago.
When I was sure he wouldn’t rise again, I returned to the clearing with the spade I’d hidden earlier. Amelia said nothing. She only watched as I dug. Then I dragged Tommy’s body to it, and she clapped in delight as I laid him in the hole.
There’s a ghost that plays in an empty glade, in the woods behind my house.
But she isn’t lonely anymore.