Little ghost girl

Tuesday 1/16/24

A different entry involving stairs.

On Sunday morning, while running stairs, I FaceTimed with the kids, but mostly Amelia. The three of them had stayed over my mom's Saturday night. My mom had this rule--or plan, anyway--that Amelia would have to wait until she was five before staying over, but I guess my sister convinced our mother to take all three kids, even if Amelia can be...a bit much, but in a good way. And there was also the more than decent chance that she'd insist upon seeing her mother in the middle of the night.

Anyway, they were going to call me the night before, but my mom was like, "That guy's probably asleep," to which Amelia said, "He not asleep," because she tends to be incredulous about my hours. That's fine. I get it. Throw in the whole different time zone thing, and she could very well be awake at night when I'm not.

They got me when I was on the stairs, though. I talked to Charlie and Lilah, but I don't talk to them nearly as much even when the three kids are together, because they always have something they're watching being older, and because Amelia hogs the phone. I don't think she realizes that she can hold it a bit further away from her face, so her face fills like ninety-five percent of the screen.

She likes to ask about that school on my street. One might recall that coming home from the Revels at the end of last year, I told her there was a noise inside, like a ghost, and she commanded me to go back and check but I said was too scared.

On Sunday she started waving the phone around and making her face all blurry, and she goes, "I'm a ghost!" And I said, "You're scaring me, buddy, stop!" and she thought that was very funny and did it some more.

She had just asked me what kind of monster did I think was in the school, when she ordered me to tell her a story.

If you're a kid--or an adult--and you want a story, I am your guy. So I said, "I'm not sure it's a monster at all in the school. I don't think it is, actually."

"What is it?" she asked, all serious now.

"It's a really, really, really old school. And I heard that years ago, when everyone went home for the Christmas holidays, there was a girl who got left behind. And no one knew she was still there. The door was closed and she couldn't find a way out. Now when you go by late at night you can hear her."

Amelia is all wide-eyed at this point, mouth open.

I said, "How about this? When you come out here next time, we'll go to the school, just the two of us, at night. I'll walk around the corner and you can stand outside by yourself and say, 'I'm here, little ghost girl, I'm a girl too, you can come out and play with me.' What do you think?"

And she goes, "No! I don't want to do that!"

I said, "Well, you still have time to decide. Think about it. Who's the ghost now, buddy?"

She says, "I go, Colin," waves, hangs up.