Ghost Lover by Colleen Little

 
    The railroad tracks behind my house have always been one of my favorite places to go. It hasn’t been an active line in a long time and grass has grown up through and around the rails and cross ties. Across from my house and down a small embankment there is a little retaining pond and several willows grow around it. The trees in the area are old and stately and the only clearing was the strip where the tracks ran through. By the time you crossed the tracks and got to the pond the light was shadowy and green and moved in liquid patches over the moss and fallen leaves on the ground.
    During the heat of summer days when I was younger I would take my dolls or a book and go sit under the trees by the pond. I’d be cool in the shade and if I sat long enough I could watch the little animals that I disturbed with my arrival creep back and go about their normal lives. By the time I was 11, I had a chipmunk that was partially tame who would come and sit on my knee and eat his acorns. He was not my only companion, though.
    There were several spirits that lived in my immediate area. My mother had warded the house, with the help of her coven, so ghosts could not cross the boundary around the property. However, there was nothing to keep them from wandering freely in the woods. There was a tall stately woman who wandered near the tracks. When I was a child, I would watch her but I was never brave enough to speak to her. She was so beautiful.
    The little Indian girl I met the summer I turned 7 was my best friend all through school. I was sitting by the pond one day, up in the crook of the branches of my favorite willow tree. I had a book and a snack and was completely happy. When I heard the stealthy rustling below me, I ignored it at first. I was wrapped up in Anne of Green Gables . After almost a full minute of hearing soft footfalls and rustling, my attention was finally diverted enough to make me look up from my book.
    A small dark-haired girl in a buckskin dress was slowly creeping around the pond. Her black silky hair was pulled back in a braid and her moccasins made almost no noise as she crept along. There was fringe and beading on her dress and turquoise earrings in her ears. Really the only thing that was unusual about her was that I could see the trunks of the huge old oak she was passing straight through the mass of her body. I watched her curiously for a few minutes, fascinated. Not because she was a ghost though. That part didn’t faze me.
    I’d seen ghosts as long as I could remember. One of my first memories was standing in my crib, talking to the old woman who would come into the nursery. She would sing me songs and I would try to mimic them. Once my mother finally understood that I was seeing the spirits all the time, she had called her coven for help. It gave me a safe spot. If I stayed in the house, or even in the boundaries of our fenced-in yard, no one came near me. I made a choice when I came to the woods.
    The girl was creeping round and round the pond. At this point, she had already made two full revolutions and I was starting to wonder what she was doing. Finally, with the curiosity that drives most young children, I slid down out of the tree and walked to the edge of the water.
    The girl was almost back to me. She was walking slowly with her knees bent, placing her foot down carefully on the heel and then rolling it gently forward. When I asked, “What are you doing?” she froze and stared at me hard. For about 30 seconds she stared at me and I stared at her and neither of us spoke. I became impatient with this extremely quickly. “Didn’t you hear me? I said what are you doing?” I put my hands on my hips and tapped my toe as I asked this time.
    Most ghosts don’t need that much encouragement to start talking and I was starting to get frustrated with the little girl who was still just staring at me. It finally occurred to me that she maybe didn’t understand me and my attitude changed. “I’m