A Year on Ladybug Farm - Donna Ball [90]
Both shook their heads adamantly. And just then there was another creaking, scraping sound, like someone moving furniture.
“Oh my God,” Lindsay breathed. “It is a ghost!”
Bridget and Lindsay, melded together as one, would have fled back down the stairs at that moment had Cici not grabbed the belt of Bridget’s robe. “This was your idea,” she hissed. “Come on.”
Inch by inch, they crept to the top of the stairs.
Nothing had changed since their last visit. A single bare bulb with a pull string switch hung from a rafter in the center of the room, spreading a feeble pool of light toward the shadows of the vast space. Slowly, Cici swept the beam of the flashlight across those shadows. Already they had discovered there was nothing worth exploring in the space—a few cardboard boxes filled with things like aluminum cookware and moth-eaten sweaters, a picnic table, some folding chairs. Except that now one of those chairs was unfolded in front of the back windows, and upon it stood a person.
Lindsay’s hand clamped down hard on Bridget’s. Bridget’s nails dug into Cici’s arm. Cici gasped and dropped the flashlight. All three of them dived to the floor to try to rescue the light, and it was Lindsay who found it first. Cici grabbed it from her and aimed it with both hands toward the window. The figure on the chair held a spray bottle in one hand and a cloth in the other, and as they watched in disbelief, she sprayed solution on the window, then wiped it clean with smooth, deliberate strokes. It seemed to take forever. And the women, suspended in the moment, felt as though they had stumbled down the rabbit hole.
At last the figure on the chair stepped down stiffly, holding on to the windowsill for support, and turned to face them. “Ya’ll sure have let the place go, ain’t you?”
Lindsay whispered, “Oh my God! Our ghost does windows!”
Cici, still gripping the flashlight with both hands to keep it from shaking, moved the beam slowly up the form. Sturdy work boots, laced halfway up. Baggy dungarees cuffed up to reveal a red plaid flannel lining, and over them a navy blue skirt that reached past the knees. A navy peacoat covering an oversize green plaid flannel shirt with the band of a pink thermal undershirt showing at the neck. When the flashlight reached her face, the woman squinted and shielded her eyes, demanding, “What you trying to do? Blind me?”
It was, after all, a woman, with pink scalp showing beneath the short gray curls, and enough wrinkles on her face to make her age anywhere between sixty and a hundred. Cici lowered the flashlight, but only to the woman’s chin. “Who are you?” she demanded, proud of the fact her voice hardly quavered at all. “What are you doing here?”
“Name’s Ida Mae Simpson,” the woman replied, and there was a marked belligerance in her voice. “This is my place. Who the hell are you?”
In the moment of stunned silence that followed, Bridget suddenly gasped, “Of course!” She surged forward, but Cici shot out an arm to stop her. “Ida Mae Simpson,” Bridget repeated to Cici. “You know, the Bible?” She turned to Lindsay. “The housekeeper, remember?”
Lindsay said carefully, “But Bridget . . . she’s dead.”
Bridget looked slowly from Lindsay back to the stranger at the window. “Oh my goodness,” she breathed, eyes growing wide again. “That’s right.”
The three women stared at her. She stared back, scowling. “Do I look dead to you?” she demanded.
“What you look like,” said Cici, “is a trespasser. Do you want to explain what you’re doing in our attic?”
The woman puffed out her chest and lowered her scraggly brows even further. “I ain’t never trespassed on anything in my life, young lady. Just who do you think you are, talking to me like that?”
Lindsay held up a quick pacifying hand. “Maybe,” she suggested, looking hopefully from one to the other of them, “we could all talk about this over a nice cup of tea?