Charlotte and the Twelve

Chapter 2

2

I

know about long stories, generations-long stories, AND I know that when people say, “It’s a long story,” even ghost people, they mean either, “Now’s not the time,” or really, “I’m not interested in sharing it with you.” Southerners are nothing if not mannerly through passive aggression.

So when Miss Braxton said that, I nodded. Then, I screeched one of those sturdy, old desks out from the corner and squeezed my rear into it. I wasn’t thinking she’d tell me the story if I stayed. I wasn’t even really ready to hear the story, I think. Nope, I was just here because the universe or fate or God or whatever had dropped me here, and I knew from experience that this meant something.

I did pause to think about Mom at home, to consider if she would be worried. She would, but then, she’d also wonder if it had happened again, like the last time. So she’d give me a bit before she called Isaiah and came looking. I’d not stay too long, but I also had the question of how I’d get back home. Or even where home was relative to here exactly.

Now, though, I had people to think about—kids—and while I didn’t think myself their savior or fancy that I had to do some Supernatural style thing where I had to hunt down their bones, pour salt on them, and burn them, I did know that I was there for some reason that mattered because of who I was. As odd as that seemed.

I sat and watched the kids for a while. Eventually, Miss Braxton began moving around, talking to each of them and letting the littlest ones hold onto her legs a moment here and there. She kneeled low and looked them in the eye, and they told her about the birds they had seen with a berry in their beaks and how this one time they’d seen a bunny after it was hit by a car.

I wondered if she still tried to do lessons with them, but then, I didn’t really know how this worked. Did the children even know they were dead? And were all of these people really here when someone wasn’t here to see them? Did they arrive at the time school started every day and then disappear at the closing bell? Did that bell ring? Was there a bell?

You can see how I could spiral myself into a lot of questions with very little way to answer them unless I stayed put.

Eventually, Miss Braxton looked my way again, and I pulled a desk over for her. She sat down sideways in the opening between the desk and the seat back, resting about one inch of her rear on the seat. If I sat that way, the desk would either tip over or I’d slide right off of it onto the floor. I was nothing if totally ungraceful.

She looked at me out of the corner of her eye and asked again, “Why, Mary,” she said my name softly but with a force of iron behind it, “are you here? Every day, the children and I are here, but today is the first day we’ve ever had a visitor. Rather, you’re the first visitor who can see us.”

I tilted my head. “Yeah?”

“Sometimes, neighborhood children come in here to drink spirits or do other things of which I will not speak. Every once in a while, a child who went to school here stops by, too, bringing his children or grandchildren with him.” She paused and smiled. “I so love seeing their faces and hearing their voices gone all deep with years. Micah comes in regularly, too, just to check on things. But none of them can see the children or me.”

I nodded. That seems to be the way of these things.

“So Mary, how come it is that you can see us, hear us, touch us, even when no one else can?”

I could tell by the hesitation before she said “us” that she was not accustomed to thinking of herself and the children as a group. She was their teacher, and she knew a distance had to be kept. All of my teachers had been the same, the kind ones at least. They’d chat and hear my stories, listen if I cried about a grade or something mean someone said. But they didn’t share their private stories or pains. Teachers were not the friends of their students, and this seemed right to me. Smart. Useful. Loving, even.

“I’m not right sure, Miss Braxton. I’m not right sure. But I suspect we can figure it out if we get to know each other a bit.” I tucked my head. I felt presumptuous asking this polished woman with her perfect posture if we could be friends.

I heard her shift in her seat, and when I peeled my eyes up to her face, she was looking at me. “I suppose that would be just fine, Mary, but only if you call me Charlotte.”

I smiled. “Sounds good to me, Charlotte. Absolutely.”

Just then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a flash of white and turned just in time to catch Henrietta as she flew into my lap, her eyes wide. “He’s here,” she whispered.

I barely had time to put Henrietta down when the door flew open and a large man with ham-hands stomped in. (Yeah, I know, pointing out that someone’s hands are like giant hams isn’t exactly nice, but seriously, these suckers were the size of entire pork shoulders and not some vegan pig shoulders, either.)

He had on a long trench coat and a wide-brimmed hat, and I thought he looked like a bounty hunter if a bounty hunter was really angry and not just a person with a job to do. His face was twisted with rage, really twisted, like his eye was almost at the corner of his mouth, and his hands were in fists before him as if he could open his fingers and slam us all against the wall at will.

I glanced over at Charlotte and the children. She had gathered them behind her in the corner and was frantically urging me over to them with her eyes. I took a quick step that way but stopped short when he spoke.

“Who are you?” His voice was gravel that had been sharpened, and the pitch of it made me feel like the veins in my neck were rumbling.

Now might be a good time for me to share that I’m not easily scared most of the time. I’m not scared of change or going new places or eating new foods. But I am scared of one thing—disappointing people . . . even big, scary guys who obviously terrify small children and their teacher.

“I’m Mary Steele,” I squeaked and took a step forward with my hand outstretched. (I wasn’t really much of a hand-shaker, to be honest, more of a hugger if necessary or a friendly-waver, but I was sure shaking a lot of hands today.) I could feel Henrietta leaning the top of her body as far behind me as she could while I moved to this man.

But she needn’t have worried because I stopped moving as soon as he spoke again.

“You are trespassing.”

Normally, the accusation of a crime would have made me defensive and sheepish, and I would have said, “Yes, sir,” and made my way out the door. But two things stopped me: first, he was in front of the door, and I didn’t really think my five-feet-five-inch frame could push a man well over six feet and as broad at the shoulders as the doorframe.

Yet, it was the second reason that really stopped me. For just a split second, I saw doubt pass behind his eyes. It was like a flicker, a wiggle in his corner, a flinch at his tear duct. Something, something that told me he wasn’t so sure of that statement.

I took a deep breath and said, “That may well be, but I don’t see as how I’m doing any harm.” I paused and screwed the courage up from my belly button and said, “Can I ask what you’re doing here?”

I heard Charlotte draw in a sharp breath.

“I own this school, woman.” This time he marched to me and leaned down to look into my eyes. “I own it.”

His face was folded the way faces get when they’ve lived through hard things. His cheeks came forward and down into what people, I think, call jowls, and his brow was sunken as if life had sat heavy on his head for his days. His skin was the color of ash that doesn’t get burned all the way up, and his eyes were pools of brown so dark that they could have been black.

I didn’t lean back, although that took a profound act of will. Instead, I slid my right arm behind me and grabbed my left elbow. “Oh, I see. You own this building. Well, I am sorry for being on your property without permission. I meant no harm. Was just taking a look around.”

He stepped back a bit, and I took this as a sign that we might be—as they said on Criminal Minds—deescalating the situation. I glanced over my shoulder to Charlotte.

“What are you looking at?!”

I saw Henrietta jet behind Charlotte’s skirt and glanced quickly up to the man’s face. He wasn’t trailing her at all. He couldn’t see her or any of the other ghosts.

I looked quickly down to the ground. “Just taking a look at this interesting building.”

I saw his shoulders drop, probably because he thought he was dealing with a wacko who came out at seven-thirty on a January morning in her pajamas. Then he said, “Well, you best be going.”

“No problem.” I still wasn’t sure what I’d do about getting home in the snow in PJs and slippers, but I thought it might be wiser to take my chances there than with this angry man. “Do you mind if I ask one question before I go?”

I saw his shoulders stiffen, but then he gave me a brisk nod.

“When was this school closed?”

“1954. The year I finished eleventh grade.” His face softened a smidge at his jaws.

“Oh, so you went to school here?”

“I did.” He looked at me, then suddenly turned his head to look into the corner where Charlotte and the children cowered. “Well, until that day. I went here until that day when . . .”

He looked up suddenly as if realizing he was answering more than one question. Now his face looked only tired, “weary,” Mom would say. I began moving toward the door.

“Mary, is that what you said your name was?”

I turned back to face him from the doorway. “Yes, sir, Mary Steele. And I really didn’t mean any harm. I was just curious about this lovely old building that now sits empty. I live just over that way on Pleasant Mountain Road. I’m sorry to have intruded.”

He sighed. “It’s okay, Mary. I just thought you were another kid in here trying to make trouble.” He took a glance around the room. “No harm done.”

“Thank you, um . . .”

“Tindall. Micah Tindall.”

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Tindall. Have a good day.”

I walked out into the snow. We definitely were not going to have school today, which was good because I was probably going to die of exposure before I got home.

I walked across the ever-whitening grass and out to the gravel road before me. I still wasn’t quite sure where I was, so I figured I’d probably have to go down the mountain to get back up mine and headed off, grateful at least that Mom had gotten me slippers with soles for Christmas.

Just then, a car pulled up beside me, and Mr. Tindall opened his window. “Child, you cannot walk in this. Get in. I’ll get you home.”

Some people might take the chance of hypothermia over a ride from a strange and somewhat angry man. I was not one of those people.