The Ghost of the London Girl’s Orphanage
(Caution please apply…this is horror. And have a happy Halloween!)
The moonlight streamed through the slats of my window and cut a line of light on my coarse wool blanket. All the other girls were sleeping soundly, their shoulders or stomachs rising and falling with the rhythm of their breaths. I was the only one wide-awake.
The girl was next to my bed again. She would sit and stare at me for hours on end but would only appear at random times during the night. At these times I would wake up for no reason at all and find the girl there, her gray eyes burning in the darkness. She was dressed in a silver nightgown and her skin was pale. The only bit of color she had was the sots of dark scarlet caked on her wrists.
Usually, I would wait until the moon no longer lit up the girl before lying down and going to sleep. She always seemed much less real when she could no longer light up the room. But tonight, time seemed to stand still, and the girl would not go away. The moon shone brighter on my blanket as it moved in an arc across the sky. As if her spotlight had finally arrived she beckoned for me to follow her out of the room and started walking.
I felt as if I was possessed, though I had never been before. My legs would not stay put and my arms would not hold onto the bedposts along the way. M hands brushed the splintered posts of bed and kicked blankets that draped on the floor, but not disturbing any of the inhabitants of the beds. My mouth would not open and my throat would not scream. The only things I could do was follow the girl.
The door of the room led to the hall that was only well lit because of the bathroom farther down the hall. The lights flickered one by one as the girl with the bloody wrists continued. She was the only source of light in the darkened hall as each light bulb flickered off with a pop that because of the silence, echoed like a gunshot. My body continued for me in the dark as I walked past doors with people who could help. If they could only hear my footsteps, they would know I was out of bed and would come running…
I felt the dark end of the hall open up and the girl disappeared. There was a single light from a hooded lamp over a table. The table’s surface was scratched with words, some cusses, some proclamations of love, others just names. It reminded me of the benches at the train station when we went downtown. But what really intrigued me was the black object in the middle of the table. I reached out to touch it and when nothing happened, picked it up. I was holding what looked like a pepper grinder, but with a movable arm to the side that was holding a cone shaped piece attached to string, which attached it to the pepper grinder. There was a ring of a telephone, like the rotary in the matron’s office, but it didn’t come from the black object. I put it down on the table. Something rang again.
My hand reached out and put the cone piece to my ear. There was nothing there. But my hand kept it to my ear, and the silent ringing went through my head. I traced the names of people I didn’t know. I was calmer now that the girl was one, but at that thought, I instinctively looked around. She was nowhere to be found .The telephone crackled like the radio did and just like the radio, I head static and then noise.
“We’re asking you to take her. Giving you custody,” a woman’s voice said on the other end.
“I can’t just take a child. She’s not an orphan,” the matron said. I recognized her voice at once.
“Don’t you understand?” the woman yelled. “We don’t want her anymore. She’ll be on your step at dawn and if you don’t want her, leave her.”
“Please, Elaine, she’s nine years old. Nine years she’s lived with her parents. I can’t take her and you can’t leave her. I’ll call the police.”
“The police won’t find us,” the woman laughed a short and hideous shot of noise. “At dawn, Mariana”
The conversation stopped. I put down the end I had listened into and started for the door. The girl was there again in my path, her gray eyes worked into frenzy and her bloodied wrists inches away from my neck. She squeezed my neck hard, pain shooting towards my eyes. Darkness dissolved my vision and I screamed as she twisted and wrung my neck. Such was the price for finding the orphanage on your own when you were lost. And I went they way of so many other girls who came here looking for food and shelter when there was nowhere else to go.
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