Glass and Shadows

“Let me tell one now,” Ms. Adams said, coming to sit on the couch nearest them. Plates of half-eaten birthday cake, deflated balloon scraps, and empty cups of punch littered the surface of the coffee table in newly-turned-thirteen year old Karen Adams’ living room.

“Oh, Mom,” Karen groaned, “you don’t know any good scary stories. We’re not going to be up all night shaking if you tell us about the hitchhiker with the hook for a hand, or the babysitter who gets chopped up by a guy who was making calls from inside the house.”

“I saw that movie!” Josie volunteered cheerfully.

Karen rolled her eyes. “Thanks, Josie. Anyways,” she continued, “those kinds of stories are pretty lame.”

“Don’t be so quick to judge me, daughter of mine,” Ms. Adams replied, “I’ve still got some tricks you don’t know about.”

Lettie leaned forward, resting her elbows on the carpet. “Go ahead and tell it to us, then, Ms. Adams. It’d probably be better than anything these two would come up with, anyway,” she finished, jerking a shoulder in her friends’ general direction. Karen threw a cushion at her good-naturedly.

“The story I’m going to tell you hasn’t been repeated for over thirty years,” Ms. Adams began evenly, smoothing her skirt over her knees. “My grandma told it to me when I was only ten years old, and she told it to me on the eve of my grandfather’s death. She said to me, ‘Corinna-’ that’s my name, in case you girls didn’t know- ‘Corinna, you’ll never have to worry about a monster in your closet, and there isn’t any monster hiding under your bed, either. Those’re just stories grownups make up to scare little children into behaving.’”

“Oh, c’mon, mom, a monster story? We’re not babies,” Karen interrupted.

“Hold on, give it a chance,” Ms. Adams chided. “So I asked her, ‘Grandma, why are you telling me this? Shouldn’t you be worried about Grandpa?’ He was very sick, and I thought it was really strange that she would choose to talk about monsters at a time like this. She said that she was worried about Grandpa. ‘There’s one place you will find monsters, Corinna, real ones. You find them trapped in the windowpanes of houses.’”

This time Josie interrupted, looking around uneasily at the three large living room windows. “But why there? It’s just glass.”

“Well, these monsters, they start out as the souls of people that have died recently, and aren’t quite ready to move on. They try to go back home, and get caught in the windowpanes, and over time, they just get so angry and frustrated- I mean, wouldn’t you? Always watching and never being able to come in? Maybe watching your family leave and seeing a new family come in to where you used to belong?”

Ms. Adams paused momentarily and surveyed her audience. Karen still looked skeptical, but the other two were listening with at least some interest.

“Grandma told me that she didn’t want Grandpa to end up like some of those people, but he’d been sick and unhappy, so she wanted me to know that if I ever saw him in the window, to not be afraid. He was still my grandpa, and he wouldn’t hurt me. But if I ever saw anyone else, then I should get as far away as I could, because they’re very jealous of anyone who lives in their house. The same goes for you, girls. If you ever see them, stay away from the windows. They’ll hurt you if they can reach you.”

“I’ve never seen any ghosts or monsters in any windows,” Josie pointed out, hugging her knees.

“Would you like to see them?”

The question took all the girls aback for a moment.

Karen raised an eyebrow. “You’ll show us? I mean, really for real show us?”

“I don’t know if I really want to see,” Lettie frowned, looking over her shoulder at the large picture windows.

“You don’t have to look if you don’t want to see them, honey,” Ms. Adams assured her.

This statement, instead of being reassuring, only served to unnerve them further. It gave the story an honesty the girls didn’t want to think about. Josie and Karen exchanged wary looks with each other for a moment.

Josie finally drew herself up to her knees and took a deep breath. “I want to see.”

“Me too,” Karen blurted, not to be outdone by her friend.

“All right,” Ms. Adams slid off the couch to join them on the floor. “Now, we’re going to have to do this carefully. We’ll try…” her eyes scanned the walls quickly, “that window, there.” She crawled carefully over the sleeping bags to where the girls sat, and they all turned to look at the large picture window she had indicated. Flat and black, it acted as both mirror and window, superimposing the contents of the living room onto the night scene outside. They could all dimly see their reflections in its depths.

Lettie shivered. “You can count me out, I’m not going over there.”

“It’s okay, sweetie, you can sit right here and watch us do it. No shame in that.” She then turned to the other two girls. “It’s actually a really good night to do this, it’s just the right temperature outside so that the glass will be fairly cold. Now, let’s go. Carefully now.”

Crawling along the carpet, Josie and Karen followed Ms. Adams over the rough terrain of the living room to their destination: just below the windowsill.

“Now, what we do,” Ms. Adams whispered, “is peek over the windowsill just a little bit. One of you, doesn’t matter which, can do it first, then when she gives the all-clear, the other one can peek over, too. Now, who’s going to do it?”

Josie looked at Karen. Karen shrugged. “Rock, paper, scissors?”

The exchange was brief and the outcome in Karen’s favor. Josie made a soft frustrated sound and, slowly pulling herself up to her knees, peered cautiously into the window, her reflection staring back at her.

“I don’t see anything,” she said, hesitantly.

“So far, so good,” Ms. Adams whispered. “Okay, now Karen, you go ahead and get up there, too. Go on.”

“You guys are freaking me out,” Lettie protested, hiding beneath her sleeping bag.

Karen rose to her knees and joined Josie at the windowsill. “Okay,” she said, looking over her shoulder at her mother. “Now what?”

Ms. Adams leaned in close. “Now, we look straight into the window, and we blow on it. Fog it up a little bit, so that it gets cloudy. They’re easier to see then. You’ll have to do it, since you’re the ones that want to see them.”

“You’re sure they’re there?” Josie looked uneasy.

“Positive.”

Karen and Josie looked at each other. Josie offered her hand, and Karen gripped it tightly. They resolutely looked into the window again, inhaled, and breathed warmly on the cold glass.

The white mist spread over the surface, and Ms. Adams put a hand on each of their shoulders. “Now, look. See? Right there.”

Karen leaned forward, “Where?”

“There, honey. Look, you can see it moving.”

The girls leaned forward, staring hard at the ghostly patch. Patterns coalesced on the misty surface before their eyes, and Karen leaned even closer, trying to follow the phantoms with her eyes. She could almost make out a face in the window…

Something moved quickly in her peripheral vision, and Josie shrieked. Karen cried out in response and fell backwards, frantically scrambling away from the window on her backside. Lettie was screaming with her head buried underneath her sleeping bag.

And Ms. Adams was… laughing?

Heart beating furiously and trembling from head to toe, Karen could only gape at her mother as comprehension dawned on her face. “M-mom?! What-?”

“And you said I couldn’t scare you,” Ms. Adams chuckled, sitting back on her heels.

“What’s going on?” Lettie asked, voice muffled. “I can’t look.”

Josie laughed, relieved. “Ms. Adams was playing a joke on us. Oh man, was that a good one. When you grabbed me, I thought I was going to die.”

Lettie giggled then, too, finally emerging from her hiding place.

Finally, Karen smiled weakly. “Good going, Mom. You really had me going.” Only, she kept seeing that almost-face looking back at her in the window.

Ms. Adams just smiled. “Time to turn out the lights, girls,” she announced, picking herself up off the floor. “Try to keep it down so I can get some sleep.”

She walked past Lettie on her way out of the living room, affectionately ruffling her hair as she passed, and paused at the lightswitch. “Night, ladies. Good night, honey.”

“Night, mom.”

Click. Footsteps headed away, and Ms. Adam’s bedroom door shut with a quiet thud.

In the darkness, the girls silently unzipped their sleeping bags and crawled in, hugging their pillows close to their chests.

“Your mom is a nut,” Lettie remarked, contentedly. “That was an awesome story she told.”

“Yeah,” Karen agreed. “I didn’t know she had it in her.”

Minutes passed by silently, there didn’t seem to be any more to say. One by one, the girls dropped off to sleep as they mumbled to each other about school, boys, and homeroom gossip.

Without warning, a sharp crack sounded through the darkness, and Karen sat bolt upright, clutching the edge of her sleeping bag in sweaty hands. In the dim light from the street, she could see the window had splintered.