They all grew up at Grandmother’s house, three generations or more sometimes crammed into the three-bedroom residence in one of the poorer ends of town. Grandmother was like that, never locking her doors and having to be reminded to do so before she retired for the night.
People would come and go all day and there was a constant babble that would follow her as she made her way around the house.
Her two favourite places in the house were the kitchen, she was an old-fashioned woman who actually wore an apron in the kitchen or sitting in the high-backed chair in the corner of the living room.
The chair belonged to her husband who, when he was alive of course, would rarely move from it unless it was to do some odd job elected for him by his wife. He would potter around the job occasionally calling out to his wife to hand-him-this or pass-him-that; always calling her ‘Milly’ and always with a smile on his face.
Gerald, or Gerry, Prendergast was a man of good humour and those who were there when he died would sometimes say that when the heart attack hit, he looked up with a grin and said, ‘well, here I go!’ as if he was popping out to the shops.
Milly was devastated, but she remembered her husband’s good humour and gentle perseverance and slowly found her own smile once more.
It helped, of course, that the house was never empty.
It helped that she had little time for morose self-reflection.
Or at least this is what everyone thought, and it took the youngest resident of the house ‘Little’ Milly Whittaker, Milly and Gerry’s nine-year-old granddaughter, to see past it all and discover the dark truth of it.
Little Milly was an orphan, but she never thought of herself as one. She always believed that she had all the family she needed, and she never wanted for more. Sometimes Milly and her grandmother would talk of Little Milly’s mother, Grandma Milly’s daughter, and Little Milly would become sad for this woman she had never known; but she was sadder for the look she saw in her grandmother’s eyes when she spoke of her daughter.
But this look of pain would change when she would look into Little Milly’s eyes. The loss would transform into something else, and it took many years for Little Milly to understand is was because Grandma saw her daughter in her grand-daughters face; and it was for this reason that the look Grandma gave her on the day Little Milly saw the ghost hurt the little girl so deeply.
It was an unusually quiet summers day, a rare day that found the house itself relatively empty as the visitors had all decided to populate the large back garden, enjoying the raised pond that had been built a few years before Grandpa Gerry’s death. Grandma Milly was reclining in a lawn chair while some of her other grandchildren played on the grass, the long-sleeved cardigan she always wore in-congruent with the surroundings.
Little Milly watched from the kitchen window, her arms folded on the worktop and her head resting on them. Her face was contemplative, set in that expression that made people ask her what was wrong.
There was rarely anything wrong, Milly just thought a lot and she only half understood a lot of what occupied her mind.
Milly left the window and wondered into the front room, searching for the television remote so she could watch the anime she had become so addicted to in the last few years. She checked the unit on which the TV sat and then moved her eyes across the floor in front of the sofa where visitors would often leave it and it was then when she noticed something out of the corner of her eye, and she looked up.
She didn’t immediately see the little boy as a ghost, and she thought instead that he was just another visitor. It was unusual for a visitor to be someone she didn’t know but it was not unheard of; but then Milly noticed that the boy was dressed unusually.
She couldn’t quite place what was so unusual about the boys’ attire, but she knew that he would not look out of place in a black and white movie that they sometimes showed on a Sunday evening. The cloth he wore seemed too coarse, too thick and the colours were all browns and greys that seemed formal and stiff.
So, when she first saw him, her reaction was understandable.
‘Oh, hi!’ she said to the ghost and the ghost smiled back at her before popping out of existence between blinks.
One second the figure was there, as real as regret, and the next there was a hole in existence where he had sat and Milly stood dumbfounded, silently examining her surroundings as if she had mislaid a pen, or perhaps a TV remote. Calmly she moved to the sofa facing the chair and sat. Her knees felt rubbery, and she was not certain of their support, so it seemed like a good idea.
The chair ‘ empty now ‘ was old, high backed and wooden with two cushions fastened to the wood with thick ties. It looked a little like a traditional rocking chair without the rocker and Milly found herself examining it far more carefully that she had ever before.
The varnish had worn down to the stained wood itself, in places wearing even through to a pale shadow of what it once was, creating a patchwork of wood that gleamed richly in some places while being pale and dull in others.
It was just an old worn chair, nothing more and Milly wasn’t quite certain why she was taking so much interest in it. It wasn’t because of the chair she had seen what she had seen; was it?
Behind the chair was an old writing desk that almost filled the shallow alcove beside the fireplace. It looked a little like a dressing table with a curve of wood covering its top. Its fittings were of worn brass that was scarred and scratched in places through long years of use and Milly never remembered any other piece of furniture inhabiting that particular place in the house.
Four drawers a side were separated by a hollow where someone could sit while they wrote, and each drawer sported a small brass plate shaped for a key; and it was one of these she heard click and then slide open slightly as if pulled by an unseen hand.
Milly held her breath and felt her heart drum in her chest.
Just because she didn’t see the ghost didn’t mean the ghost wasn’t here.
The thought shocked her.
Perhaps she was examining the chair so closely because some part of her knew the ghost was still sat in it.
This thought shocked her more.
She heard the scrape of wood on wood as the drawer drew out just enough that a thin sliver of darkness could be seen within it then the movement ceased.
Milly sat and stared, waiting.
The seconds ticked by, and everything was silent and still.
What the ghost wanted seemed obvious.
In one quick motion Milly moved across the width of the living room and sat in her grandmother’s chair. Beside her the partially open drawer level with her knee and inside she could see something that glinted sat on a piece of cloth, or paper, smudged black with ink. The young girl reached down and hooked two fingers into the gap and began to pull the drawer open.
‘What are you doing?’
Milly knew the voice without turning to see, she would recognise the voice by her heart’s reaction to it alone.
‘I asked what you thought you were doing?’
Milly had still not turned and now the voice seemed less familiar. The melodic quality she was used to had been replaced with something harsh and unforgiving. Now Little Milly didn’t want to turn to face her grandmother. She felt sudden shame and didn’t know why.
She felt a hand grip her arm, soft fingers wrapping around her bicep with frightening strength and then she did look, staring up into a face familiar and yet alien, like a caricature of a person she knew ‘ or thought she knew ‘ so well. For a moment the unthinkable crossed Little Milly’s mind, when ‘ for a fraction of a second ‘ she actually thought, her grandmother was going to hit her.
The time elapsed was probably no more than seconds but the image of Grandma Milly’s anger would be etched into Little Milly’s mind until that day until she herself became a grandma named Milly.
Grandma pulled Milly from the chair and Little Milly thought she heard her grandmothers back pop at she leaned down and pushed the drawer closed.
‘No snooping,’ the old lady snapped, ‘outside; go!’
And Milly did just that.
For the rest of the day Little Milly made herself scarce but did not return to the house. She played with her younger cousins and watched as her grandmother chatted with one of her three aunts.
Milly’s mother had been the oldest of five, four girls and one boy, and she never left the hospital after Milly’s birth. Something inside Milly’s mother had had broken bringing Milly into the world and Milly’s father had disappeared soon after; and though Milly suspected what had happened to him she had not raised the courage to ask.
Whatever had happened she had never seen him, and she thought it likely she never would.
Her youngest cousin shook a plastic dinosaur in her face, and she selected another one from his collection. They battled, Milly’s pterodactyl swooping in loops before her cousins Spinosaurus leapt an improbable distance into the air to take it down. The little boy taking great pleasure in making sounds of dismemberment and carnage.
Milly smiled and laughed but it felt hollow.
She thought her father had killed himself.
She giggled and made sounds of choking death as her pterodactyl breathed its last.
She thought her father loved her mother so much he couldn’t live without her. Later, when the cynicism of her teens hit her, she would wonder if this were true, she wondered why loving his daughter wasn’t enough; but for now, she still had innocence enough to believe in the overpowering nature of love.
The clock beside her bed was flashing 12:00 when she woke, the blue digital readout blinking and bathing her small room in a cool glow.
She sat up and something fell to the floor with a thud, she glanced over the side of the bed and saw the dark cover of the book she was reading against the old pale pink carpet.
She clicked the ‘set’ button on the clock, and it stopped blinking.
Milly was a light sleeper, and it was probably the light of the blinking clock that woke her, but now she was awake she felt a flutter of nerves in her chest. It seemed her body knew what she was going to do before her mind had caught up with it; and she had climbed out of her bed and had crept across her bedroom to the door before the plan dawned on her.
Carefully she turned the handle and pulled the door open, wary of the noise it would make if she opened it too fast. The hallway was a pit of darkness, and she knew that she’d would have to get to the stairs before the light from the hall window would illuminate her path. So, Milly placed one hand on the wall and followed it, one foot in front of the other as she carefully felt for the dip of the first step.
No more than a minute later she was halfway down the stairs and the hallway window cast its light down to its bottom step; and what else it illuminated made Milly’s legs go weak.
The ghost stood there watching and for the briefest of moments Milly was aware that she stood there in nothing more than a nightshirt that had been too small for her a year before. Where most might have felt fright, Milly was feeling embarrassment, and the absurdity of this hit her.
She put one hand over her mouth to stifle a giggle and she thought she saw the ghost smile before he turned and ran around the corner into the living room.
Milly’s legs wobbled beneath her, and she sat on the stairs heavily, collapsing down in an undignified heap halfway down their length.
She was not even ten years old, and she felt death sitting at her shoulder. She knew this is why the children at her school looked at her strange sometimes and why the teachers would sometimes wear worry on their faces when they were around her.
She knew this but didn’t entirely understand it.
The ghost didn’t scare her as it should, but it would’ve scared those who looked at her with such concern.
Milly knew there was something in that observation; something important that she couldn’t quite grasp; but she did believe that somehow she had gotten something right that all those others had gotten wrong.
Death did not scare her; if it was good enough for her mother and her father then it was good enough for her; and if the very worst the ghost could offer was death, then why be afraid of it?
Milly stood and walked down the remaining stairs, her legs felt strong under her now and she felt a confidence that surprised her.
The ghost waited, sitting in her grandmothers’ chair with his hands resting in his ghostly lap. The boy looked as real as she, but it was as if she could sense the air flowing through him rather than around him. He was like a piece of animation that you knew had no weight; he looked real, but something tipped off a part of her brain that he wasn’t real.
The click of the lock sounded too loud and for a moment she was sure her grandmother would have heard it.
Then a grind of wood on wood as the drawer pulled open.
Milly approached it and looked down, the ghost boy sat and watched, close enough to reach out and tug at her nightshirt; but Milly felt no fear.
She reached in the drawer and plucked up the thing that gleamed inside it between thumb and finger and her world slowly unwound and under it all she heard the whisper.
Little Milly did not sleep for the rest of the night and when she watched the dawn the colours seemed far more vibrant that she ever remembered them being. As the black turned purple and then the purple turned blue, she saw a battle raging between night and day. Patches of red splashed across the sky as day struck night a death stroke and the red dispersed into yellow only to be swallowed up by the blue of day.
She watched this silently as she sat on the living room windowsill still dressed in her night shirt. She did not know it and wouldn’t suspect it for quite a few years to come; but she had grown up that night. She had taken a journey of the mind down lanes she didn’t even know existed, and it had led even such an old soul as herself into a new world.
Footsteps padded across the floorboards above and the pipes began their rumble as water filled the bathroom washbasin.
Milly listened and thought about the talk to come.
Outside the world slowly came to life as curtains in the house opposite were drawn aside and a few moments later a car drove past. Milly imagined the family in the house opposite as they readied themselves for the day, the youngest ‘ Evie ‘ would be getting ready for school and Milly would meet her as she always did, and they would travel there together.
Evie suddenly seemed so young to Milly now. Her worries about the boy she liked in English class and the tests she was certain she’d fail seemed so far away. Milly knew that she’d probably be distant when her friend spoke of her concerns, but she also knew she would never even try to explain why this would be.
Upstairs a door opened, then closed and feet started down the stairs.
She could feel the ghosts’ eyes on her even as she watched those people starting the populate the street outside. The ghost boy was stood in the corner of the room, beside her grandma’s seat. His hand seemed to be resting on the chairs wooden frame as if posing for a family photograph.
The living room door opened, and her grandmother walked in dressed in the fluffy robe she said made her feel like an aged movie star. The old ladies’ eyes moved to Milly and then darted to the closed drawer then back again; she didn’t see the boy and when she walked to her chair and sat Milly felt as if she was about to be interviewed.
‘You should be ready for school.’ Grandma Milly said, and Little Milly thought she heard something reproachful in her tone. She still remembered catching her yesterday and the irritation hadn’t left her.
Little Milly thought about the words the ghost had whispered and played them over in her mind.
‘Go on,’ Grandma said, this time more softly, ‘or you’ll be late.’
Little Milly bit her bottom lip and felt her brow wrinkle in thought.
The ghosts’ eyes grew wide.
‘He said,’ Little Milly began slowly, ‘he said to remind you”
Grandma breathed in heavily, her chin jutting in irritation.
‘What are you talking about…? Get ready for school Milly.’
Little Milly ignored her and closed her eyes, she recited the words carefully, knowing that they were important but not entirely understanding why.
‘Remember when he dropped the shilling, and you couldn’t see Peter Pan.’ Milly said carefully. ‘Remember what you said to him.’
When Milly opened her eyes, her grandmother was caught in a moment of still confusion as if someone had spirited her away and replaced her with a perfect replica that mimicked her surprise at the act.
Slowly the old ladies’ eyes moved down, and Little Milly knew she was looking at her own hands; a moment later she thought she saw the glitter of tears as they fell onto her upturned palms.
Milly saw her grandmother’s pain, but she was not the only one, the ghost had turned his head to watch too; and his face was twisted in a pained grimace that made him look a million-year-old and suddenly Milly understood.
‘Granddad?’ She asked and her grandmother looked up.
‘I miss him,’ she said and pulled up the sleeve of her bathrobe, revealing a fine network of scars decorated with the bloodied scab of fresh wounds. In them Milly saw a confusion of her grandmother’s pain and her shame at it.
Without a word Milly fetched tissue and antiseptic from under the kitchen sink and returned to her grandmother and her tears. She washed the wounds, cleaned them, and waited until the tears to subside.
‘It was a dry spell in early August,’ Grandma Milly said, ‘and on the way he realised he had a hole in his pocket” She smiled, and her eyes sparkled at the thought of it. ‘And he’d lost a shilling and was so upset about it. He’d promised me and he thought I’d be disappointed.’
‘So, what did you say to him Grandma?’ Little Milly asked.
‘I told him.’ She began to cry again. ‘I put on my best western hero impression and told him not to sweat the small stuff. And he laughed.’
The wounds were clean now and though shallow they were numerous. Milly held her grandmothers’ hands in her own and looked up into her eyes.
‘Grandma?’
‘What dear?’
‘What’s a shilling?’
And Grandma told her.