Irish Ghost!

by Sylvia Ewart

Full and content, the girl and her grandparents slowly exit the stone castle to return to their rooms after potatoes and roast, the crisp Irish air tickling their backs as they go. The granddaughter looks up above her at an entirely gray sky contentedly despite how unnatural the weather feels on a summer evening. Although she lives in a rainy city back home, Ireland’s constant gray is an extreme she has yet to adapt to fully.

The girl’s grandparents amble languidly behind her, stopping and chatting every couple of steps. Impatient, the girl strides ahead, unable to force herself to politely slow to their crawling pace. She rounds a bend in the castle corridors and is suddenly beneath a tall stone canopy, an exit emerging in front of her. She turns behind her to find that she has left her grandparents very much in the dust. Oh well, they will catch up, she tells herself, and turns back around. 

At the exit in the distance, the girl sees a small figure peeking out of the side of the wall. Curious, she walks tentatively forward toward the figure, only to find that the figure is also a girl. The girl peeking out of the door wears a short black dress with checkered primary colored squares. Thick, dark curls line her pale, gray face. She makes no noise as she glides out from behind the wall and nods her head at a 45 degree angle, evaluating the girl before her inquisitively. She smiles when she takes in the other girl, and it is a strange and pitiful sight. Her teeth are small and crooked, and are trapped in a mouth like bars guarding a jail cell. If she could laugh, it would be a ragged sound. The poor pale girl’s chestnut eyes light up with a cloudy amber glow as she stares unrelentingly at the girl before her.

The girl in the middle of the corridor feels a gust of cold as the figure in the checkered dress glides closer and closer. The first girl is less scared than she is confused. How and why is the girl floating towards her? And so silently? She says not a word and makes not a sound. The first girl watches in shock as the pale girl in the checkered dress with the crooked grin flies towards her…then fades, slowly, as if she was never there. The first girl is left with a vision of the other girl’s uncanny smile and chestnut eyes gleaming in the shadows of the old, abandoned castle hall. She blinks in confusion when she opens her eyes.