Naked, on the Edge

Someone Came and Took Them Away

(Inspired by an actual, ghostly 1980’s photo taken in the cellar of the Bartlett House in Parkersburg, where Dr. Charles Bartlett’s daughter died in 1879.)

“I feel hot, Mama. I hurt.”

“I know.”

“I don’t like it here.”

“Here is your bed, your washbasin…”

“Let me come back up with you.”

“Shh, now, this is for the best.”

“Mama…”

“Bessie, don’t cry, my love! You’ll upset your father.”

“Please, Mama!”

Mrs. Bartlett shook her head and pried the small, fevered fingers away from her arm. “You are to be quiet, now. Rest. I will return anon.”

“Mama, I hurt!”

“Sleep, daughter.”

“Mama!”

The woman gathered her skirts and stepped away from the cot. She dared not kiss her child for fear she would catch the typhoid, too. Without another word, she climbed the wooden stairs out of the cellar.

“Mama!”

Carol knelt on the scratchy grass and peeked through the cellar window of the empty house on Ann Street. A dusty spider tumbled out of her way as she placed her hands carefully on the sash and pushed. It didn’t budge.

“Well?” said Rachel, who stood behind Carol with her arms crossed. “Can you do it or not?”

Carol scratched her ear. “Hold on.”

Rachel humphed, as did her best friend Philly. Carol pushed again, harder, with the heels of her hands. The window remained shut.

“You said you could get in,” said Rachel.

“You did say that,” said Philly. “Liar.”

Carol glanced back over her shoulder at the two frowning girls. Both were eleven, older than Carol by a year. Both were the most popular kids in school. Both had promised to be Carol’s friend if she played Truth or Dare with them.

“I can do it,” said Carol. “Just hold on. Jeez.”

“We don’t think so,” said Rachel. “So we’re back to truth. Tell us, Carol. Why you a foster kid? What happened to your parents?”

Philly snorted laughter. “Yeah, what happened? You kill ‘em or something?”

“I’ll get it open,” said Carol. She turned back to the window. She had to complete the dare. There was no way she would talk about her family.

With another grunt, some pounding with the heel of Carol’s hand, and several shoves, the window squealed open nearly a foot. Carol’s thumbnail bent backward with the effort. She sucked air against the pain.

“Told you,” she muttered under her breath.

“Don’t get snotty with us, orphan,” said Rachel. Carol opened her mouth to beg them not to be mean but snapped it shut again. The last thing she wanted to do was make them angry. She wanted friends more than anything she’d ever wanted in her life.

They squeezed through, Rachel first, followed by Philly and then Carol. Philly whined about the cobwebs and the smell. “It’s like somebody died down here,” she said as she brushed off the knees of her jeans.

The basement floor was littered with old papers, stained towels, and shattered jars. There were several rooms, each with low ceilings, brick walls, and damp, uneven flooring that made Carol feel she was walking on the moon.

“Okay, you got us in,” said Rachel. “Now, we got to mark this place so people’ll know we’ve been here.”

Carol stood back while Rachel and Philly took turns scrawling on the walls with the black Sharpie markers they’d brought along:

Rachel turned and glared at Carol. “Aren’t you going to write something, orphan?”

Carol reached out for the marker but Rachel shook her head. “Didn’t you bring your own?”

Carol shook her head.

“Well, you aren’t touching mine. You might have some creepy disease you caught at your foster home.”

Philly said, “Hey, don’t boys pee to mark their territory?”

Rachel made a face. “We aren’t boys, now, are we?”

“Duh,” said Philly.

“You a boy, Carol?”

“No.”

“You’re standing there all stupid like a boy,” said Rachel. “You’re ugly and dumb like a boy. And we said we’d be your friends? I don’t think so.”

Carol’s mouth fell open. “But you…”

“But you! But you!” said Philly. “But you better butter your butt!”

“We’re going upstairs,” said Rachel. “Don’t you follow us or we’ll kick you down the steps.”

“Don’t go away!”

With a shriek of laughter, Rachel and Philly bolted up the wooden stairs and slammed through the door at the top.

“Mama?”

“What, darling?”

“I’m burning hot.”

“You’re sick, honey.”

“Where’s Papa?”

“Working.”

“Can’t he make me better?”

“Shh, now.”

Bessie turned over on the cot, and her stomach cramped violently. Her mother held the bowl up but there was nothing to catch. Bessie had not eaten in days. “Here’s a cool, wet rag.”

“Mama?”

“What, dearest?”

“Will Papa come see me soon?”

“Perhaps. Sleep now.”

“I hurt, Mama.”

“I know. Shh.”

“Don’t go away!”

The wooden steps creaked.

“Mama, I’m so lonely!”

The voice from the top of the steps, “Shh…”

Carol sat on the cold, lumpy floor, her head down. She could hear Rachel and Philly running around upstairs, marking walls, slamming doors.

The old house had been for sale for a while now, with someone hired to mow the lawn and clip the bushes, though most shrubs around the sides and back had been allowed to grow tall and wild. Carol walked by the house on her way to school, always stopping to stare at the windows, the stone porch, the sloped yard and shadowed front door. There was something in there, pulling at her, wanting her. But she then moved on, afraid of being arrested and thrown in prison like her grandmother, or being locked up in a mental hospital like her mother.

Carol didn’t ride the school bus. Since moving to Parkersburg three months earlier to live in an apartment on Franklin Alley with Mrs. Jones, her new foster mother, Carol had become the target of every joke imaginable to the middle school mind. Of course, it was no surprise. No matter where she’d lived, she’d been the brunt of ridicule. She was homely to most people and hesitant in her speech. She had no sense of fashion. She was painfully shy. No, she was never surprised others taunted her, but was always disappointed. So to avoid some of the pain, she told Mrs. Jones she would rather walk to school than ride. Mrs. Jones didn’t care. She had three other foster kids to tend to.

Then two days ago, Rachel and Philly pulled Carol aside at lunch and told her they’d be her friend if she played Truth or Dare with them.

In the corner of the cafeteria, Rachel said, “So, what is it? Truth or dare?”

Carol hesitated. “Truth.”

Rachel grinned. “Okay. Why’re you in foster care?”

Carol’s eyes went wide. “No, wait. I meant dare.”

“You can’t change your mind like that.”

“Really, I meant dare. I…I just said it wrong.”

Rachel looked at Philly. Philly looked at Rachel.

“Well, okay,” Rachel grumbled. “Here’s the dare. We want you to break into a house for us.”

Carol frowned. She’d never done anything really bad before. Her grandmother and mother would be horrified. They always told her she was special, that people would not understand her, and so she would have to be very, very careful throughout her life.

But here was a chance for friends.

“Okay.”

“Okay, then what house?” asked Philly.

“There’s one on Ann Street.”

The decision was made.

And now she had broken into the house, broken the law, and broken her thumbnail, but she still had no friends.

She closed her eyes, and thought of her grandmother. All the woman had done was help a detective find the body of a murdered man after the case had gone cold, but knowing where the body was lead to suspicion, planted evidence, and conviction. Then Carol’s mother, who’d left her cruel husband when Carol was six, was declared insane and placed in an institution. Carol’s father actually had evidence — recordings of Carol’s mother screaming in the voices of those who had passed on, recorded videos of her in trances on the floor. Her institutionalization was to be intensive though not necessarily permanent, but she lost custody of Carol to the father, who, in a matter of weeks decided he didn’t want her. This landed Carol in one foster home after another. She bounced around the state, kicked out time and again because her foster families found her extremely unsettling, overly sensitive.

Peculiar.

Carol sighed. A song she’d heard and liked long ago came back to mind. It made her happy and sad at the same time, the music at once hopeful and resigned.

“You got to have friends, the feeling’s oh, so strong,” Carol sang softly off-key into her knees. “I had some friends but they’re all gone….someone came and took them away.”

“Hello.”

Carol’s head snapped up. She looked around. She didn’t know who had spoken. Rachel and Philly were still upstairs.

“Hello there,” came the voice again.

Carol stood, shakily, and walked around the corner to the other section of the cellar. She stopped and stared. A young girl was in the middle of the floor. She wore a long pink nightgown. Her long dark hair was parted in the center; her skin was brutally pale.

“Did my mother say you could come down here?” asked the girl softly.

Carol’s brows furrowed. “Your mother?”

“No one comes down here but her. Not even my father.” The girl took in a long, silent breath then let it out. One hand moved to her hair. The arm trailed a strange, ethereal blue light. “He doesn’t want to catch the fever. He works to support our family.”

“Oh.”

The girl’s face lit up with a pained smile. “I’ve been lonely for ever so long. Mother has let you come visit! I am so glad to have a friend!”

Carol glanced over at the wooden steps. She angled her head to listen. There was a laughing upstairs, a crash, and a door slamming. Rachel and Philly could be heard running off across the yard.

Carol looked back at the pale girl. “Who are you?”

“Bessie, silly,” said the girl. “Will you play with me? I was so very sick but am much better now.”

“It was you, wasn’t it?” asked Carol.

“Me?”

“I felt you in here when I was out on the sidewalk.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

But Carol did.

Her grandmother and mother had told her she was like them, carrying in her blood and bones their own their own unique abilities, passed down, though Carol often tried to pretend it wasn’t true. She was special. She was different. Tuned in to what others weren’t. Things beyond the physical. Things of other dimensions.

Carol took several steps toward Bessie, staring at her in wonder. Bessie was not of this time. She was not flesh and blood. Something sad, something terrible, had happened to her long, long ago.

But she wanted a friend as much as Carol did.

And so they played.

Each day after school, under pretense of staying late for choral practice, Carol slipped down through the cellar window and visited Bessie. They ran about the chilly rooms for hide and seek. They skipped rope. They made up songs and riddles. Never did they touch, though. This was something Carol’s mother had told her. The two dimensions could never connect in that way. It would only lead to disaster.

For the first time in Carol’s life, she was happy. She caught herself smiling, at times even laughing. Carol drew pictures of herself and her new friend, though always tore them up so no one else would see them.

On the seventh day, when Carol and Bessie were in the middle of a game of hopscotch, they heard footsteps upstairs, and deep voices.

“Shh,” said Carol.

“Who is that?” asked Bessie.

“I don’t know.”

The girls stood and listened. A man’s voice. A woman’s. Little girl’s voices. The man said, “I’d love to buy this old place. It’s fantastic.”

The woman replied, “Let’s take some photos.”

Carol backed toward the window, her eyes locked on the wooden steps. “I have to go,” she whispered.

Bessie shook her head. “No! Don’t go away. Stay here with me.”

“I can’t.”

“But you can! If you hold my hand you can stay here forever! Those people up there will never know. We’ll play oh, so quietly!”

Bessie extended one pale, thin arm toward Carol. Carol gazed at her only friend. Bessie was right, of course. If Carol touched her she would be changed; she would be like Bessie.

Forever.

Carol looked up at the sunlit sky outside the cellar window. A ladybug landed on the pane, crawled about then took off again. Carol looked back at Bessie in the dim light of the cellar, at the low ceiling and filthy, uneven floor covered in broken glass and old papers.

Then she scrambled up and out through the window. On her hands and knees she turned to peer once more into the cellar. Bessie had backed up against the cold brick wall, her hands folded, her head down. A sparkling tear trickled down her cheek.

“I’m sorry, Bessie. I’m so sorry.”

She raced around to the front yard, down to the street, and home.