by Christine Stoddard

Created on: February 13, 2009

"The Ghost of Smith Hall"

The hall stood black and silent. All of the other girls and boys had retreated to the warmth of their beds for their soothing beauty sleep. They breathed calmly, in and out like normal, with dreams to spice up their young heads. Only one remained awake but only because she could never sleep.

Her name was Belle Weingarten. This night, she lied crumpled on the floor in her great mass of a white nightgown. The diaphanous cloth consumed her. From a distance, one would not have guessed that a girl sat there at all. She appeared like a single heap of unwashed sheets with her face buried into her cool thighs. But this pile of sheets wept fiercely.

Belle had been crying so hard and so long that her hair had matted itself to the tears smeared across her cheeks and chin. Her eyes, only partially visible through her dark tresses, shone bright red. Her little lips chapped and bled from the salt hitting them. Belle's skin, so clear and pale, appeared translucent. She was not like the other girls of Smith Hall.

In fact, earlier in the evening when another student left her room to use the bathroom, she did not stumble over Belle; she walked right through the girl of the fairy glow. Belle, undisturbed, continued crying.

After a while, however, her eyes could cry no more, so she rested her head in her lap. A spindly tree branch tapped the window at the end of the corridor. It seemed right in rhythm with the girl's sighs and sniffs. Eventually Belle lifted her head and gazed out the window, at the lightning brewing in the star-speckled sky. She shuddered at the sight of each bolt that illuminated the heavens. Slowly, Belle pushed herself off of the floor and wandered to the window to stare at the storm. She fervently pressed herself to the glass.

The pelting rain and swirls of wind brought back a memory Belle knew she'd never forget. It was the reason, after all, why she haunted this hall. She closed her eyes and stepped into that fateful day exactly one quarter of a century ago.

She and her sweetheart, Daschle, were quarreling in his room. She perched herself on the edge of his bed and studied the hardwood floor while he studied the cracks in the ceiling after a passionate argument. Both remained tensely quiet until Belle dared to talk again.

"Really, I just wanted to-"

"Please, Belle."

"We never even-"

"Don't say anything anymore. Please just leave. I'm done."

Belle gathered the belongings strewn across the bed, got up, and left without a word. She slammed the

• 1
• 2
• 3
• Next Page >>