A quote: “Every cliche about kids is true; they grow up so quickly, you blink and they’re gone, and you have to spend the time with them now. But that’s a joy.” ~~ Liam Neeson
I’ll start with a story …
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Nov 1st, dawn. She shrugged on a robe, headed downstairs. She paused at the bottom step and …
She expected to see candy wrappers, costumes strewn across the family room, the jack-o-lanterns from the front porch dragged in least they end up smashed in the street by teens out to take the “trick” part of the trick-or-treat to the next level.
… But the family room was as she left it, with pillows fluffed, coffee table dust-free.
She had expected to feel annoyed with the kids … now grown and gone. Now she yearned for just one more candy wrapper.
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Now, it’s your turn.
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. featured image, cropped, Adobe stock standard license.
Iwoots says: Awakened by her little brothers –
“WILL YOU TWO SHUT UP!!
“MOM, TELL THEM TO SHUT UP!!
” WHY ARE YOU EATING ALL YOU CANDY??”
“There’s no breakfast.”
“What do you mean no breakfast?”
She looks at the clock – “8:23?? I’m late for school!! Mom?!?
“Mom?…..”
“Where’s Mom?”
“Don’t know. Wasn’t here when we came down.”
“Stay here, and stop eating candy. I’m going to call Dad at his office.”
“You have reached the offices of NIYT. No one is available to take your call. Please leave a message, …….”
{Doorbell rings}
“Katie? Kimberly?…”
“Darleen, we can’t find our parents…..the school is locked…..”
GWB says: Innnnteresting…….
Cameron says: That’s a good one. Bravo!
Cameron says: She was staring off in the distance and I hesitated to disturb her. A moment later, he turned to face me.
“It’s time again,” she said quietly.
“I know. Día de los Muertos. I assume you are going to ask me the usual question?”
“Of course. This is the one day that the spirits can talk to their ancestors. Why won’t you try to make peace tonight?”
“Because the only thing they taught me was how to hate. When they died, I was free from their insults.”
“Just tell them how well you are doing. That will be your revenge.”
GWB says: Excellent
Cameron says: Thanks. I was joking that I didn’t want to celebrate because I didn’t want to see my deceased relatives again and the story came from that.
I saw her down by the old Spanish mission, not far from El Camino Real. She just stood there, staring at the chapel. Beside her sat a black cat, its tail curled around it in that inscrutable feline manner.
I was about to call to her, ask whether she shouldn’t be in school, when a sudden gust of wind blew my hat right off my head. By the time I ran it down, she was nowhere to be seen.
Puzzled, I went on with my day. I made a few discreet inquiries, but nobody seemed to want to talk about a mysterious girl in a white dress.
The next day, I made a point of going the same way. This time I only caught a glimpse of her before a stone turned under my foot and it was all I could do to keep my balance. By the time I recovered my footing, she had vanished.
By this time, my curiosity was piqued. Back in those days, there wasn’t an Internet to bring a whole world of information to your fingertips. Research meant trips to libraries and archives, which put a hard limit on how quickly I could track down information.
It was a strange story, if not as sad as many such apparitions. Back in the Roaring Twenties, there’d been a gangster who’d come out here to get away from his rivals. He’d had a daughter who went to the school the nuns still ran down in the old mission, and each day she’d walk to it.
Somehow he’d been betrayed, and his old rivals’ enforcers came to “take care of loose ends.” Here the story gets confused. Some accounts say she’d already left for school, and when the nuns found out, they spirited her away to safety. Others paint a less pretty picture, suggesting she was just leaving home, or was tracked down on the way to school.
Yet all of them agree that no body was ever found, which leaves me wondering whether I saw a ghost that foggy morning, or something else.
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