Chapter 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Epilogue
"...no pulse, and he's not breathing," Mom said into the phone, "My husband is doing CPR, but it's not working."
then
"No, we don't know anything about him. He just broke into our house."
I could hear sirens getting closer as Mom spoke to the emergency dispatcher. Thinking of what happened right before my parents came into the room, I was pretty sure that performing CPR was a futile effort, but how could I explain that to them?
What was I going to say, "Don't bother Dad. Ghosts took his soul into another dimension through the mirror. You can't bring him back." Another ambulance would be called, for sure. I'd get a new jacket, with really long sleeves and lots of pretty buckles.
I let my Dad continue to work on the old man.
Mom hung up the phone as the sirens wailed to a stop outside. She ran downstairs, and then heavy boots came running up. Soon, my room was filled with people in scrubs, and two police officers. The female cop and my mother ushered me out of the room as the squad worked on the old man's body.
In the kitchen, Mom made me tea, and I told the officer everything I could about the situation. It seemed weird even without the ghosts. The old man had said I'd cheated, but I had no idea what he meant. I told the officer about the first break-in, and the police report... about being chased in the alley, about seeing him outside the kitchen window, and finding the foot prints in the garden later. I described waking with the cross over my face.
The officer took my statement, wrote it all down, and had me sign. She was sympathetic, but didn't show any other outward emotion. I felt like a nut, putting it all together. Of course we'd been in danger. I felt the need to emphasize that these things had all happened several days apart from each other.
It was starting to get light out when the emergency crew and the police left, so we all just stayed up. I went upstairs to clean up the glass, using the vacuum to get the little pieces. When I finished vacuuming, I began picking up pieces of the mirror, thinking it was a good thing the room was still clean. I could just imagine trying to pick shards of glass out of everything I owned.
I made a silent promise to myself to try to keep it tidy from now on.
I lifted the frame from the side of the desk, carefully trying not to jar loose any of the shards that were still attached. A large piece of paper slipped out of the mess, and fluttered to the floor.
It was a newspaper clipping, dated July 23, 1927. On it was a photo of me, all dressed up as if for church on Easter. Next to that was a mug shot of Bradley from my baseball dreams! He looked sullen and scared, and still angry. Each photo was captioned underneath. For my likeness, the caption said, "Sarah Elizabeth Harshman, age 13." For Bradly's photo, the caption was "Bradley Day Reedy, age 14." Below the captions, the headline declared, "Boy Beats Girl to Death Over Game." I read on with a growing sense of deja vu as the news story described the incident in the dreams from the point of view of the other players, and the dead girl's sister, telling the story of how Bradley had grown more and more resentful and aggressive during the game, and had thrown a childish tantrum afterward. He'd followed Sarah home, and beaten her to death in front of her sister.
"I don't get it. We was just playing a game" said Tommy Conner, friend of the deceased. "There wasn't no fight or nothing, not when we was all there."
and
"He was so angry when he got to our house," said Grace Harshman, Sister. "His eyes were just crazy. I don't think he was in his right mind any more."
The story went on to say that Reedy was being incarcerated in an institution for the criminally insane, indefinitely. Were he to be found "cured," the remainder of his life was to be spent at Bloomingham Asylum.
Included in the list of Sarah's local survivors was her sister, Grace, her mother, Elizabeth, and her uncle and aunt Carl and Della Harshman, and their children Linda and Stuart.
Stuart Harshman was the name of my Grandfather.
Once again, the hair on my arms stood up. I wrapped my arms around myself, sat down on the one clean spot I could find, and stared at the clipping for a long time.
Chapter 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Epilogue
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