7

The Boy-Ghost

I've fallen asleep in front of the TV again.

When I wake up, it's late and my feet are cold. Grandma's afghan has fallen on the floor next to the couch. An infomercial is playing silently on the screen in front of me.

I close my eyes and open them again, trying to remember what I was dreaming about. My head swims with static and voices and headlines marching across my memory, like an ongoing news reel. I can't remember what my dream was about, but I can guess.

The clock on the microwave says 4:20. I wander into the kitchen and peel an orange, eating a few sections before storing the rest in the refrigerator for my school lunch tomorrow. Then I slowly mount the stairs to my room.

The covers on my bed are messed up from when I tried to fall asleep earlier tonight. I put them back in order and climb under the sheets, picking up my stuffed pink rabbit from off the floor. I've had that rabbit ever since I was a baby. It's one of the only things I have to remember my mom. She died when I was born, but she made the rabbit for me while she was still pregnant and waiting for me to come out. I think I'm too old to still be sleeping with stuffed animals, but nobody knows about the rabbit except for Dad and Grandma, and they've never said anything about it.

Sometimes I realize that I'm still thinking about Dad in present tense, and I know that I shouldn't. But it's hard to think about him in past tense. No matter how hard I try, I can never get used to it.

I'm finally drifting off to sleep when I hear a soft tapping sound coming from somewhere outside of my room. At first it sounds like raindrops, and I try to lull myself back to sleep, wanting the darkness and the soft warm unconsciousness to overtake me. But the noise only gets louder and more irregular, a strange tap-tapping somewhere nearby.

I slip out of bed and walk to the four corners of my room, listening from every angle. The sound is loudest when I reach the wall directly across from my bed. The tapping seems to be coming from the other side of that wall.

There's no room on the other side; just the side of the house. If there were a window here, I'd be able to see out across the little lawn and the neighborhood street. There's no window, though, and I can't see anything except a blank white wall.

I hesitate for a moment, listening to the tap-tap on the other side of the wall. Then I walk to the door of my room and tip-toe down the stairs.

The living room is dark, but a few slits of blue moonlight are coming through the blinds over the large window behind the TV. I can just make out the sound of the tapping on the side of the house, a little fainter now. Slowly I creep up to the window, and push open the blinds with my fingertips.

The lawn beside the house is bright with dew, reflecting the soft moonlight. At first, all is silent and I don't see anything but the calm, clear night. Then--tap, tap--I follow the sound with my eyes, and I see it.

Standing a few yards away from the window is a boy, not much smaller than I am. He is throwing pebbles up at the wall of the house where my bedroom window would be, if I had a window.

There's something strange about the boy that I can't quite place, until I notice the clothes he is wearing. They're old clothes--and I don't mean just a few years old, I mean centuries. Ancient. And there's something weird about the boy's skin. It's too light, almost pure white, as if it has no pigment at all. And his hair and clothes are glowing faintly in the moonlight.

He turns suddenly and looks at me with wide, pale blue eyes. They are the color of the moonlight. I jump, startled, but the boy doesn't move, doesn't speak. He just stares at me with those bright blue eyes. Then he slowly raises his hand, and makes a motion for me to come outside.

I stand frozen by the windowsill. Of course I can't follow him. Who in their right mind would follow a complete stranger out into the yard in the middle of the night? I've never seen him before in my life.

Still, I can't erase the nervous feeling in my stomach. A feeling that seems to be pulling me outside, through the walls of the house, toward him.

Uneasily, I study the boy in silence as he makes more urgent gestures with his pale white hands. Although he's nearly my height, he looks much younger than me, maybe only seven or eight. He's only a child. What is he doing out there, at this hour? And by himself?

I stay frozen, unsure of what to do. The boy seems suddenly impatient. He looks behind him, then up at the sky, and finally makes one last gesture in my direction before running soundlessly around the corner of the neighbors' house and disappearing. I can't see him anymore.

My mind is at war with itself. I'm afraid to leave the house, but something inside me knows that if I don't act now, I will never get this chance again. I will never know who that strange boy is and why he came to my house tonight. I will never know if he is in danger or if he needs my help, or if he knows something dreadfully important. And I know that in spite of my better judgment, I have to follow him.

I sneak out the front door of the house, still in my pajamas, and lock it behind me. I slip the spare key that I grabbed from the kitchen drawer underneath the doormat. Then I step out into the cool, wet grass on the lawn, and creep into the alley between our house and the neighbors'.

The pale boy is nowhere to be seen. I gaze around the corner, looking for signs of movement. The neighboring lawns span out before me, shadowy around the long, dark treeline behind them.

At last I see it: a glimpse of white, twisting away between the trees at the edge of the yard three houses down. I take off across the lawn, my fuzzy socks steadily getting soaked in the midnight dew. When I reach the treeline, the boy is gone again.

I dive into the thick woods, heading in the direction I think he has gone. The ground is tough and stubbly beneath my feet. I hear the crunch of dead leaves, the snap of twigs. Then there is light up ahead, and I emerge from the woods into a bright, moonlit clearing.

It takes me a minute to figure out where I am. There are flowers, saplings, and pebble patches, all hazy with fog in the ghostly moonlight. A few old stone benches sit crumbling in the weeds, and up all around are tall wooden fences. I slowly realize what this place is: I am in a garden, or a series of gardens, all neatly sectioned off with overgrown fencelines.

A loose plank in the fence to my left knocks gently against itself, and I spin around, squeezing through the narrow hole behind it. Sure enough, I can see the white wisp of light as the boy slips from one garden into the next, his bare feet making no sound at all on the soft ground.

"Wait!" I call out in a shrill whisper, afraid to raise my voice. "I'm coming! Wait for me!"

I weave in and out of fenceposts, always a few too many steps behind the nimble-footed boy, watching for his pale, faintly glowing light to guide me. He does not stop to look back or speak to me. I can scarcely keep up.

I come to a sudden halt when I spot him standing in the back of the next garden, facing a steep stone wall. There is a small wooden door in the wall, and he points to it, nodding toward me. I take a few steps closer. His face looks fearful, full of urgency. Without a word he opens the door and vanishes behind it.

The garden is quiet except for the rustle of leaves, stirred by a light wind. There's no way I'll be able to remember my way back to my grandmother's house now. I think fleetingly of the Hansel and Gretel story, and I wish I had left some sort of a trail to follow back. But there's nothing I can do, now. Only go forward.

There is a faint, colored glow coming from behind the little wooden door. I can't tell exactly what color it is--the garden seems to be getting foggier every minute. I step closer to the door and reach out unsteadily with my hand. The door has old-looking iron hinges and a small hanging ring for a doorknob, like an old-fashioned knocker. I grasp the ring in my hand, and it sends a chill up my entire arm. Then I pull the door open just a few more inches, and peer around it cautiously.

A narrow dirt path leads from the doorway down into the place beyond: a dark, misty place where shapes appear to be gliding slowly along, coming and going on strange errands, appearing just above the path and vanishing into the creeping shrouds of mist. I swallow, my throat feeling very dry. I can't see where the boy has gone, and I'm afraid to follow him in there. But I know that I have to do something soon, now, or else...

Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.

It takes a few minutes for the sound of my alarm clock to bring me fully awake. I lie still in bed, blinking up at the white ceiling of my bedroom as the alarm steadily grows louder and louder, dragging me into reality.

A dream, then. A really strange, really vivid dream.

I finally reach over and shut off the alarm. I rub my eyes, run my hands through my hair, and stare into the corner of my room. Nothing out of the ordinary. Just a regular day, after all.

I brush my teeth and start to get ready for school, changing out of my pajamas into my school uniform. Then I head downstairs and pack my lunch, retrieving my half of an orange from the refrigerator. Swinging my backpack over my shoulder, I walk out into the sunny morning light to catch the bus.

It isn't until I get home from school that afternoon that I think of the dream again. I'm getting my homework out of my backpack when Grandma comes into the living room and asks me, "Ellie, have you seen my spare house key? I can't seem to remember where I put it."

Everything from the night before comes flooding into my memory, and I race out the front door, stooping down to look underneath the doormat.

There's the spare key, right where I left it.