Ghosts on the Glass
Tim Roesch
The first time Mary saw the ghosts she was transfixed.
In the beginning, they had frightened her, the ghosts. Now she found them before they found her. She knew where to look and how. With a clever smudge here or a bit of pigment there, she could enclose them or set them free or leave them completely alone.
She looked across the street in the early afternoon sun, and was again struck by the ghost on the glass. She looked at the ghost, watched it as the sun moved in the sky. Mary could tell this one needed help, needed her to touch it, embellish it, bring it to life. This ghost, of all the others, was special.
Mary sighed and felt in those wonderful things called pockets for the small piece of chalk she had borrowed from school and kept for moments like this. She would be late getting home again.
With a simple mark on the ground it began again.
Mary had learned not to fight beginnings. She would look at the glass and the ghost would tell her when she had done enough.
* * *
“Look at it! Just look at my windows. I’ve had enough, Julie.”
Julie Drahuta tried really, really hard to see what it was that had made Audrey Yost this upset. A dirty window shouldn’t cause Audrey to lose her cool like this. Sure, it looked someone had smeared her window with colored snot and dirt but a little Windex, or the 1633 equivalent, would clean it right up.
“What am I looking at, Audrey?” It was best, in situations like this, to maintain a professional demeanor, regardless of the circumstances. After all, it was probably a child; a child who liked to eat sherbet with their bare hands then wipe them on Audrey’s window.
“Look!” Audrey pointed angrily at the large, smeared plate glass window.
In Julie’s experience very little made Audrey this angry. She took two very considered steps forward, her eyes scanning the glass and trying not to look at the potted plants on display on the other side.
Audrey might not have access to flower networks but what she had and what she could do with what was available was truly a sight to see, smeared windows or not.
“See? Smudges! Smudges all over. Look!”
“Glass gets smudged, Audrey.” Julie tried not to sound amused. “Hell, I press my nose against your windows from time to time. You have a green thumb and it shows.”
“She does it on purpose! And not with her nose! Every day, I turn my back for one second. One! Next thing I know I have to chase her away and the glass is dirty. She stands there, right in front of my face, Julie, and messes up the window. She does it on purpose. She used her tongue once!”
“Her what?”
“Then she smeared it with her nose.”
“With her nose?” Julie leaned in and scanned the glass more closely. Yes, indeed, it was . . . smudged. No, smudge wasn’t a good enough word. There almost seemed to be a pattern . . .
“Just on the outside?”
“She’d never dare come inside and do that! I’ve never been this mad at a child, Julie. You know that . . . but, it’s so . . . so . . . blatant. She’s doing it on purpose!”
“Do you know who she is?”
“I’m guessing she’s a German kid, a down-timer. She’s blond and blue-eyed and she has that look. She understands me when I yell at her though, so she at least knows some English. She glares at me then she’s off like a shot. Bam. Sometimes she runs that way or that way . . . if I see her I’d recognize her but . . . I just want it to stop, okay? Can you talk to her parents or something?”
“About what time does she do this?”
“Lately? Usually about midday. She should be in school, right? I mean she looks like she’s about ten or so. Sometimes it’s after school or before. Some parents need to be reminded to have their kids in school. Schools are for kids . . . not my window. If she wants to finger paint, she should do it in school.”
“About how tall?”
“She’s a bit tall . . . maybe close to five feet. Look at the glass. That should tell you something. She leaves enough fingerprints.”
“We don’t have an FBI fingerprint database, Audrey.”
“I know . . . just . . . make it stop, okay? It’s really annoying and I’m . . . more annoyed that I’m annoyed. I like kids, Julie, you know I do. We adopted two, remember?”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
Audrey went inside her store. The tinkling bell drew Julie’s attention back to the window.
There was something odd about the smudges. No, smudge just wasn’t the word for it. Finger painting didn’t describe it either.
Julie stepped back and struggled. The light didn’t seem right.
Nothing on that glass seemed right.
It was almost like there was something . . . ghostly on the glass, an image that was almost there.
The light just wasn’t right.
Julie looked over her left shoulder to see where the sun was.
Nope, not quite right.
* * *
Mary scowled at the glass from the beginning place she had marked across the street from the flower shop. The words painted on the glass were like rocks in a stream or trees in a breeze. The ghost simply used sunlight to make itself part of the letters.
The ghost flowed around the letters on the glass; changing as the sun changed. Mary had learned that the sun was never in the same place in the sky at the same time. It changed its position slightly each day.
It was hard to understand, like Grantville and the events that had stolen her family, left them scattered about the burned rubble of her home and memory.
Mary would understand though. She would work hard and understand. Like Grantville and this ghost on this glass, it would all work itself out.
All she needed to do was be patient. This ghost would wait for her and she knew another one would appear and it would not be happy if she failed to help this one.
Her new parents loved her and cared for her. There was food on the table again and it was warm and safe. She might even find another dog to replace the one she had taken for granted until she had found it, like her family, dead.
She would make this ghost she saw on this glass warm and safe like Grantville made her feel warm and safe. It was the least she could do.
This particular image reminded her of some place, some event, some person in her past life, the life before Grantville, the life she had tried so hard to forget. Maybe this ghost was all of those things. Ghosts could be whatever they wanted to be.
This ghost was trying to tell her something. All she had to do was follow the sun behind her and find the right pattern to clothe the ghost, surround it, enhance it.
Enhance was a word she would have never known before Grantville. Just as she knew she would never have seen this much glass before Grantville.
But if she hadn’t, would there have been ghosts? Mary calmed herself.
Remembering was not enough; just as forgetting had been too much.
The ghosts reminded her to live. The dead didn’t make memories. They were memories. She was alive and she made memories.
It was all complicated but it would all work out.
She would need to come earlier now. She wouldn’t be late for chores but she would have to leave school early again.
The ghost didn’t care. It would appear about noon now and she would have to be here to enhance and embellish it.
* * *
Julie made it a point to be somewhere nearby around midday. For three days there was no sign of a tallish, blond, German female between ten and twelve years old lurking about a flower shop at midday.
For three days Audrey said nothing about smudges though she did wave when Julie walked by. Walking by Audrey’s flower shop was always a treat even if Julie “had” to because she was on duty. The chief was always interested in potential child abuse or neglect cases. Protecting kids and families was always good PR.
“Get her blond ass back in school,” Chief Frost had said. “But do it nicely. It’s probably just some kid who’s never seen that much glass before and she likes to touch it or something. Make Audrey happy and me happy; get her back in school.”
So, here she was, watching the flowers and plants through Audrey’s clean windows. Clean so far.
It was day four into the investigation that yielded results. Patience and perspective are everything in police work.
This particular day Officer Drahuta was late. There were other issues in Grantville of more import than a glass window smudged by some truant girl. It was slightly past midday when Julie appeared. She noted her reflection on a glass window she passed and smiled.
Julie was just turning the corner when she heard the yell.
“Get away! Get away from the glass!”
Julie ran the twenty or so yards to the florist shop and was confronted by a fuming Audrey, a smudged window and the faintest glimpse of running feet turning a corner.
“She did it again!” Audrey pointed. “I went in the back to see how Mrs. Hardegg’s miniature roses are doing and when I came out there she was . . . smudging my window! Where were you?”
Julie turned and looked at the window. There was still something . . . odd about the smudges. A barely discernible pattern of some kind.
“Can you leave the window just like it is, Audrey?” Julie asked, stepping back.
“Sure, why not? If kids can draw on the sidewalk, why not smudge my windows? I can have another installed! Plate glass is just all over the place, isn’t it?”
“What?”
“Look!” Audrey pointed at the ground near Julie’s feet.
There were a series of marks; lines drawn with a thin piece of chalk or maybe dry wall. There were words written next to them. She pulled out her clipboard and began writing.
“Does she do this to anyone else’s store? No! Just mine!”
“Audrey, you’re letting this work you into a frenzy. I’ll catch her and we’ll settle this. It’s not like she’s throwing rocks through your window.”
“Yet,” Audrey grumbled and stormed back into her store.
Julie looked up at the glass then back on the ground. The occasional pedestrian politely moved around her as she scanned the sidewalk. There were faded remnants of other marks.
She turned and looked around at the other buildings up and down the street. “Why this store?” Julie muttered to herself. There were plenty of other stores along the street, plenty of other windows. What was special about this store and this window?
She spent a pleasant few hours window shopping, asking other store owners if they had a problem with smudges or tall German girls with dirty fingers.
Some didn’t know what she was talking about. A few had heard Audrey’s complaints and smiled as they told her, more calmly, what Audrey had already told her.
Julie Drahuta, crack child protection officer, learned one more piece of evidence that Audrey either had forgotten to mention or hadn’t noticed.
The girl would often appear just before sunset. She would stand on the edge of the sidewalk and stare at Audrey’s window. Most assumed that, as a young girl, she was attracted to the pretty displays of flowers and plants in the window. Who wouldn’t be?
Julie wasn’t so sure. The smudges didn’t appear related to anything behind the glass.
Sunset was a few hours off. Julie would be here then.
* * *
The florist shop had large windows.
Mary knew such places, with or without windows, simply did not exist in the time when her first family had been alive, when glass had been so much smaller and the ghosts had no place to be seen, to feel safe.
Now, if she could only find some way to stop the owner of the shop from washing this window.
Mary knew the ghost on the glass wasn’t bothered by the washing. It simply moved with the sun, from one place on the glass to another. It waited patiently for her.
Mary would follow it.
Ghosts were slow, steady and patient. All she need do was be patient and even if the ghost disappeared completely, it would reappear later.
After all, where could a ghost go that she could not follow now that she was here, in Grantville, with all this glass?
* * *
The girl didn’t reappear that afternoon but Julie hit pay dirt the next afternoon. She chose to stand at the line with the word “five” scrawled almost illegibly beside it before beginning her surveillance. Five what, she wondered.
Perspective and patience. The five didn’t mean anything to her but it did to someone else.
“You need be standing here,” a voice told her.
Julie turned to see a ten-year-old, maybe a year or two older, blond female glaring at her. Her arms were crossed across her chest. She was dressed in a handmade dress with what appeared to be food stains smudged across the front where she had obviously wiped her hands. There was a mother somewhere who wouldn’t be happy to see that well-made dress smudged and stained.
Smudged and stained?
“There?” Julie smiled. Her smile often won over children when nothing else did.
The girl’s expression did not change when she nodded.
Julie moved slightly. There was another line. This one had the word “six” beside it.
“Now look,” the girl stated firmly.
Julie looked.
There were ghosts on the glass. There was no other way to describe them. The smudges transformed with the slanting, late afternoon light and the slight change in position, five to six, into what could only be seen as ghosts.
Reflections and smudges and light merged into something faint and beautiful, like forms in a mist that is slowly swirling in an unfelt breeze.
“Oh, my God.” Julie moved her head slightly and the image was nothing more than smudges on glass. Then she moved her head back to its original position.
They were faint, startling images of faces and places and things. It was like laying down and looking up at the sky and how clouds changed from horses to sailing ships. She had done that with her father how long ago?
“That’s her!” Audrey stormed out of her store. The words seemed to strike Julie straight across her face to wake her up.
“Stand here, Audrey.” Julie grabbed Audrey as she stamped toward the girl with the blond hair, determined eyes and pale arms crossed across her chest.
“There she . . .”
“Look!” Julie aimed Audrey’s face at the glass.
“It’s those smudges! I tol . . . my God . . .”
“You need to see in the light,” the girl said. “Can you wait for the day to end to wash them away? Can you wait for the sunset? I can pay. I can’t wash window. I do not have the time to do so. I do not like to lie to Momma.”
Neither Julie nor Audrey saw the youthful hand outstretched with a meager handful of random coins and slips of paper.
No, they weren’t smudges at all, Julie thought.
“How . . .” Audrey took a step closer and the image was gone, the light wrong, the smudges had become smudges again. The ghosts had vanished to wherever ghosts go when pursued.
Julie remained standing right where she was. Audrey rejoined her.
The occasional pedestrian paused a moment to see what the two women were staring at and, if they were in just the right spot, stopped and started to stare.
“I have to go,” the girl said.
“Don’t. Move. Stay right there.”
“Am I in trouble?”
“No . . . just . . . we need to talk. Stay there. Okay?”
“The sun will be setting soon. I will have to go home. Maybe tomorrow . . . and stop screaming at me. I can pay you for window.”
“On the house.” Audrey moved her head slightly from side to side. “Any time you want . . . smudge away . . .”
“The sun will change and I will see another window. Now is the best time for your window. Later . . . maybe down the street . . . It doesn’t hurt the window. It washes off.”
“Uh huh,” Audrey muttered.
There was a long silence.
“I thought . . . what would people who used to live here . . . where Grantville is now . . . what would they make of this place? How would their spirits see what become of their home? They are ghosts of people who were here before Grantville. Some of the ghosts . . . are people I was knowing . . . before . . .”
“It’s . . . beautiful . . .” Julie shook her head. “And they’re just fingerprints.”
“No.” Audrey sighed. “They are ghosts watching us. They’re reflections of us . . .”
“Can you keep them on the glass until sun sets?”
“Sure . . . sure. Of course, yes!”
“Good.” The girl sighed. “They are beautiful, no?”
“You’ve turned my window into a work of art.” Audrey nodded.
“Have you thought of canvas?” Julie asked.
“Canvas? You mean cloth? Cloth is for wearing. Glass is a window to soul. Cloth merely covers soul. I like glass.”
“What’s everyone looking at?” a voice demanded.
“Stand here!” a chorus of voices said. Hands pulled the speaker. Complaints ceased as the place was found.
The sun did set but not before at least ten people saw the ghostly images smudged carefully onto the plate glass of Audrey Yost’s flower shop.
The ghost smiled at Mary.
As Julie walked her home, Mary looked up, knowing where the setting sun might expose another ghost.
There it was, high up in a window above her head, three stories up.
Story could mean a floor or a story you read, like a mother would read to a child. English was the perfect language for ghosts. Like ghosts on the glass could change as the sun changed, English could change too and be what it needed to be.
Mary liked English and she liked school and her new parents.
And the ghosts didn’t frighten her anymore.
Three stories up there was a ghost of a dog lying on its side in the setting sun and Mary smiled. She had known that dog, seen it alive in the yard in front of her first home. Now it was here.
The ghosts were coming here, to their new home.
So was she.
* * *
Julie couldn’t quite figure out how to write her report.
There is no art in a well-done police report. It states the facts, clearly and without bias or emotion. A police report reports a vandalized masterpiece with the same dispassionate words that it reports a gang symbol spray painted on an alley wall.
Signs of abuse or neglect? No.
Julie met the girl’s adopted parents. There was no sign of abuse or neglect. Her papa made it clear that little Mary would have to clean the windows she had smudged. Mary wasn’t to leave school without permission again.
Damage to property?
Julie closed her eyes and remembered the ghostly images on the plain, cold glass.
No, she wrote firmly.
Firm, bold strokes were the only emotion allowed on police reports.
Chief Frost accepted the report without comment.
To him, the case was closed, the “blond ass” was back in school and Audrey wasn’t complaining anymore.
Grantville had lots of glass, a growing number of ghosts, and a young artist to smudge them.
To Julie, Grantville felt just a bit less cut off from the past and just a bit more attached to this new future.