Chapter Three

"Mrs. Vickers… Mrs. Vickers…Mrs. Vickers are you okay?"

Rachel looked from the choppy waves beneath a jet blue sky, way off in the distance outside the classroom windows, to Mary Ann's wide and concerned black eyes that sat neatly behind a pair of giant thick rimmed glasses. Together, they were the only souls in the classroom.

"Sorry," said Rachel blinking heavily. "Sorry, were we discussing your paper?"

"No Mrs. Vickers, I just got here," said Mary Ann, taking another bite of her sandwich.

"Oh, right," said Rachel and held her head. "You know I'm not married right, there's no wedding ring, so you can call me Rachel."

"Oh sorry Mrs.- I mean, Rachel. You look really tired."

"That's because I am."

"Want to talk about it?"

Her hazel eyes brightened at Mary Ann's audacity.

"Not with you"

"Oh," said Mary Ann, chewing hard enough and trying to stop herself from blushing.

She shook her head at Mary Ann's imagination and tried to reorient herself with what she had been doing prior to daydreaming, or rather, sleeping with her eyes open. Her brown paper bag that held a red can of soda and a plastic wrapped chicken sandwich was open, but neither had been touched. She wasn't hungry and knew why. She was confused. She gave up God when the sea had claimed her uncle. Had it been a stabbing or a shooting she may have blamed the perpetrators and remained one of the flock but it was a force of nature that took him, in her book, this was God's doing. At the time she was convinced that if something like that could happen to someone who had been so dedicated to the cause, then perhaps all that praying had been nothing but a severe waste of time, and energy and the big man in the sky who was supposed to make sure everything went according to plan was nothing but a figment of her imagination.

There was no God, no Satan with a pitchfork, no supernatural nothing, just the people who made them up. All that seemed true until last night, unless she was losing her marbles, what she witnessed was as real as the tax-man, her lodging was irrefutably haunted. She tried her best not to think about going home, but as the second half of the clock loomed ever closer, it became impossible not to. The thought had crossed her mind to apply for new lodging but what would she tell her agent? She would have to make something up, or worse do something that would make the place unlivable. She thought about starting fires but there would have to be no trace she was the responsible or else she would be spending close to five years in prison. It made her head hurt to think along these lines. She was no criminal, but she knew she couldn't spend another night there. In the morning the episode had been so fresh on her mind she nearly fell on her way through the front door. A part of her wondered if she had just been too hasty to get out, but another less wilful part of her mind wondered if she had been pushed. A shadowy image of buck toothed Becky emerged from the recesses of her mind and she shivered.

"You should get some sleep Miss. Rachel, you're not just tired, you look exhausted."

"Eat your sandwich!" Rachel snapped.

Mary Ann craned her head back like a snake about to strike, her eyes wide with hurt.

"Sorry, I'm sorry," Rachel apologized. "I'm going through somewhat of a crisis at the moment, and I'm not really sure who I can talk to."

"What about your parents?" asked Mary Ann, the hurt slowly subsiding.

"I don't talk to them because they don't talk to each other."

"Oh… that's too bad," Mary Ann said and took a ridiculous bite from her sandwich without a care in the world.

"Do you believe in ghosts?"

Mary Ann gave her a farsighted look that made her jaw tremble, it reminded her of one of her mother's old stories she had spent years trying to forget. A few more seconds passed and she wondered if the question had triggered some sort of unnatural reaction the way her eyes seemed frozen in time. Then it finally dawned on her that the little girl was thinking.

"No," Mary Ann said bluntly. "But my mother does."