Outside the blue cottage on that same night, in a nearby wood, a young girl of about fourteen impatiently hid between the trunks of two trees and listened to the surrounding noise.
Screams from foxes calling out to their young, the hoots from night owls as they hunted in the dark all echoed over an undertone of rustling leaves that filled the wood like a low murmur, becoming softer and louder with the change of the wind’s strength.
The girl listened to the creatures without fear. They did not bother her. She was use to the noises of nocturnal animals. She often walked late at night to pass the time and could recognise the tone and sounds that only occurred at dark with ease – none of noises she heard scared her.
Besides the animals could not hurt her anyway, there were only a few things that could and none of those things were woodland creatures.
She listened carefully, past the noises of foxes, owls and rustling leaves. She was listening for a sound she knew well; a sound she had listened for many a time and a sound that told her danger were nearby.
The girl closed her eyes and waited. She waited for quite a while before hearing the whooshing noise she was listening for. The sound of buffeted air and a mild crackling, similar to the noise of burning of dry leaves, grew louder, coming closer to her. The girl opened her eyes and watched as a long stream of silver soot shot high above the trees.
She recoiled between the two trees she hid between and lowered her body as close to the ground as she could. She lay still and looked up to the sky, catching the last of the silver smoke swoosh by. She stayed on the ground for a couple of minutes, still watching the sky before standing up again.
The girl looked at her hands as they glowed eerily white in the darkness and cursed herself for accepting the mission.
Why she had been asked to go to the blue cottage instead of one of the others, she hadn’t a clue.
‘You would’ve thought that they’d choose someone who doesn’t glow in the dark...’ she muttered to herself.
The girl fidgeted with the end of her dress and pushed her hair off her face. Her dress was long and lacy. It had once been white but after many years of wearing it the dress had turned a grim yellow.
Why did she have to die wearing that bloody awful dress - she hated it! She hated it when she first tried in on in the department store and hated it even more a hundred years on.
She had briefly thought about haunting her mother for making her wear it, but decided maybe such an act was too severer a punishment. After all her mother didn’t know she would spend eternity wearing it and at least she had done her hair nicely. She was glad she had died on a good hair day – having good hair for eternity was one of the very few perks of dying.
However glowing in the dark was definitely a downside and had made tonight an absolute disaster. How was she meant to get into the blue cottage without being seen by Mallory Noc or that bloody cat – oh how she hated that cat - when she was as bright as a bloody lighthouse.
She knew Cornelius would be annoyed at her failure. He was bound to give her another lecture on how he, a Bulwark, was gracefully letting her stay in The Fox Hole even though the law only allowed Bulwarks to live there permanently. And so, without much more thought, the girl decided to wait in the wood until the following night, where she would try again to sneak into the blue cottage...
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The Bearded Man and The Ghost Girl
Teen Fiction'Robert first saw the ghost girl standing in the churchyard. Her hair was long, her skin was pale and her body glowed, bathing the nearby graves in a cool white light. She was unlike any girl Robert had seen. Her face was unconventionally beautiful...
