The Ghost of Soda Creek. Ann Walsh

      We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and The Association for the Export of Canadian Books, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishers Tax Credit program, and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.

      Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits in subsequent editions.

       J. Kirk Howard, President

      Printed and bound in Canada.

      www.dundurn.com

      This book is for John (W.)

      who doesn’t believe in ghosts

      but who has always believed

      in me

      Although the small community on the old Soda Creek townsite exists today much as described in this book, all the characters in the story are my own invention and not in any way based on real people . . . except, perhaps, for the little ghost.

      Ann Walsh

       Chapter 1

      Kelly was the first one to see the ghost. It stood in a corner of the kitchen, beside the refrigerator, eyes big, staring, never leaving Kelly’s face. The ghost wore a red dress, all ruffles and lace, and a floppy red velvet bow in her hair, holding back a long, golden ringlet. Under the dress, lacy edges of pantaloons reached down towards tiny boots that buttoned up one side. Her face was pale, not the sheet-white that ghosts are supposed to be, but a healthy paleness with a soft flush of pink across her cheekbones and, perhaps, one or two freckles over the bridge of her nose. She looked as if she had been crying, and she couldn’t have been more than two years old.

      Kelly took a step backwards, bumping her hip against the kitchen counter. The dishes left to drain in the rack clattered, the sound loud in the early morning silence. Kelly jumped at the noise, but the ghost didn’t move, just stood there, reaching out with tiny hands, her eyes large and sad. Just stood there looking little and lonely and lost. Kelly rubbed her eyes, but the ghost didn’t go away. She put out a hand to the counter, steadying herself as her knees felt weak and she wasn’t sure she could stand up anymore. “I should say something to her,” Kelly thought. “But what does one say to a ghost? Hello? How’s it going? Hi, there?”

      The ghost lowered her hands, still looking at Kelly. Tears filled the large blue eyes, and suddenly she didn’t look real and substantial anymore, but watery, misty. Then she was gone. Completely, absolutely gone, as if she had never been there at all.

      Kelly took a few slow steps to the kitchen table, pulled out a chair, and sat down heavily. Her heart was beating faster than it should, and she was breathing as if she had just finished a race. She took a deep breath. “I shouldn’t react this way,” she told herself firmly. “I don’t even believe in ghosts.”

      It was just after one o’clock on a cold December night. Kelly’s father slept soundly, his almost-snores sounding familiar and reassuring through his open bedroom door. The rest of the small community of Soda Creek was also asleep; there were no lights in the other four inhabited houses as Kelly glanced out the kitchen window and looked down the main, and only, road.

      Kelly was sixteen, and it was Saturday night, actually early Sunday morning. Saturday nights were often quiet for Kelly. Living in Soda Creek, perched on the banks of the Fraser River a good forty kilometers from Williams Lake, the nearest town, she was isolated from the weekend activities of the larger community. Once in a while she’d spend the weekend with a friend in Williams Lake, or have a classmate stay overnight with her, but many weekends she was alone. It was a long drive to town, and the roads could be treacherous in winter, especially the winding gravel road that led down to Soda Creek from the main highway.

      Kelly had been in her room working on an assignment for her art class, and she had become involved in watching her sketch grow, the penciled outlines of spring flowers blooming with her watercolours, the white paper coming alive with colour and energy. Realizing that she was hungry, she had pushed the painting aside and looked at her watch, surprised to find it so late. The trip to the kitchen had been to make herself some hot chocolate and get something to eat. She hadn’t even been thinking about ghosts, so why would she see one?

      “That’s peculiar,” she thought. “I’m Kelly Linden, mature for my age, sensible— or so everyone says. Not the sort of person to see ghosts at all.” She thought briefly about the event that had made her so ‘mature’— her mother’s death in a car accident three years ago. Her mother: always quiet, but with a way of listening to people, a way of showing her caring through her eyes, her smile. Kelly shook her head, pushing those thoughts away. She had tried to be mature about her mother’s death, had taken over many of the household chores, been strong for her father, sometimes listened helplessly as he wept softly late at night, alone.

      But she couldn’t think about her mother right now. Now she would concentrate on the little ghost and, sensibly, maturely, try to figure out why she thought she was seeing ghosts. The whole thing would make some kind of peculiar sense if the ghost had looked like her mother. She had been using her mother’s watercolours, maybe subconsciously thinking of her, just before she walked into the kitchen. But the ghost was a blonde child, not at all like her mother whose heavy, dark hair had framed her face like an ebony curtain. Kelly had envied her mother’s hair. Her own hair was wiry

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