The Misses Foo & Cockerill

Ghost Stories

A loud thunk shuddered the basement walls.

Miss Foo was scheming.

Miss Cockerill couldn't get the word spinster off her mind. "Rotten old spinsters!" the man at the library had shouted and it had followed her around ever since, taunting her, peeking at her around corners, jumping rope between her ears.

A spinster, of course, is an old woman who is unable, or unwilling, to find a husband.

And Miss Cockerill did want a husband, it was true. But every time she thought about finding one she trembled: a husband would play with her dolls; he would use her sashes as hand rags; he would mix up her recipe for Sheep's-head Soup with the others for Manor Meat and Glowing Psaghetti. Oh, it was just too terrible to think about!

"Are we spinsters, Foo?" she asked, scared witless. Well, no, that's not the right word. In order to be scared witless you have to have wits to lose, whereas Miss Cockerill did not. No, she was scared silly. Yes, that's better.

"Are we spinsters, Foo?" she asked, scared silly.

Miss Foo responded delightedly, "Why, of course we are!" to which Miss Cockerill promptly started bawling. This delighted Miss Foo so much that she teased Miss Cockerill every chance she could. "Spinster," she whispered. "Old maid. Crone. Old bag. Witch. Hag." And every time she whispered something the horror grew in Miss Cockerill until her mind was a flurry of plastic covered sofas and a clowder of cats. And worse.

The word followed Miss Cockerill onto the roof where she liked to go to relax and look at the flowers of the plant that grew out of the top of Foo Manor. Husband-spinster, husband-spinster, sash hand rags-town gossip? It followed her into the kitchen, which caused her to forget to add the motor oil to the Manor Meat. It even followed her into the bath, which made her to forget to keep adding bubbles and they all popped, leaving her in the cooling water with nothing to play with.

Finally she could take no more. She shuddered to think about what would happen to all her things, but she shuddered even more to think about what people in town called her when she wasn't around. Miss Foo's mocking had sunk in, deep, on a subconscious level (well, I guess with anyone else it would have sunk deep. With Miss Cockerill, it sank right below the surface. Which was enough). Besides, she had always wanted a husband anyway.

"Foo," she said one day while they were taking their baths. "I've decided I want to get married."

"Hogswallop," said Miss Foo. "What would you want to do that for?"

"Why for all the normal reasons. I want someone to hold my purse when I go shopping. I want someone to tell me I look pretty when I try on new dresses. And I want someone to carry those new dresses home for me." She dumped a little more perfume in her bathwater. "Besides, Foo. You're the one who said that people are talking. I don't want to be an old cat lady, Foo." Little wisps of perfume floated up from the bath.

The bathroom was a very curious one; it had two of everything: two sinks, two mirrors and even two tubs.

Miss Foo was fiercely averse to bathing and only dared enter the water when the sun was hidden behind a cloud that looked like a pointing finger. Even she knew not to mess with the universe. Luckily, due to strange weather patterns in that part of the world, clouds that looked like pointing fingers weren't uncommon, and so Miss Foo ended up bathing about once a week. She did, however, stubbornly refuse to change the bath water. "What for?" she would say. "It's water, ain't it? Gets me wet, don't it? Besides, I just got it where I like it." Where she liked it, apparently, was somewhere in between sludge and toxic waste; dead spiders floated in it and it was known to bubble unexpectedly from time to time. Miss Cockerill despised having to hold her nose as she walked past Miss Foo's bath to get to hers. Once she emptied Miss Foo's bathsludge and replaced it with fresh, clean water; however, she learned quickly not to do it again when Miss Foo, in retaliation, filled Miss Cockerill's tub with squid.