Free The Swallow by Charis Cotter Page A

hardly believe it was hers, and I thought, Well, if old Kendrick didn’t hear us before, she’ll sure hear us now, and I scrambled up the rest of the way and heaved myself into the attic.
    Rose didn’t come up right away. As I lay huddled in a heap by the open trapdoor, I could hear her opening the bedroom door.
    Something strange was happening to me. I felt sick, like I wanted to throw up, and the room started to spin. I lay down on my back and the floor rocked. Rose’s white face appeared in the opening.
    “Are you okay, Polly?” she asked, climbing up and sitting down beside me. She reached a hand out and touched my shoulder lightly. It was like the soft touch of a bird’s wing.
    Rose
    There was something wrong with Polly. She wasn’t getting up. The only light was filtering up from the bedroom through the trapdoor. I touched her shoulder.
    She moved then, but it was small, the way a bird flutters when it’s hurt and can’t fly.
    “Polly!” I said again, leaning in to look at her face. “What’s wrong?”
    “I don’t know,” she whispered. She looked frightened and very, very pale. “I feel sick.”
    I laid my hand on her forehead. It felt cold and clammy.
    “Can you sit up?” I asked her.
    She made that small flutter again, her legs and arms twitching.
    “No,” she breathed and shut her eyes.
    I whirled over to the corner, turned on the light and grabbed the thick wool blanket from the chair to try to warm her up. She whimpered.
    A feeling of dread was rising in my throat, making me sick. What had Winnifred done to her?
    As soon as that thought entered my head I heard a high laugh from behind me. I spun around and for a moment I sawthe figure of a girl, about my size, standing in the far corner of the attic, just outside the circle of light from the lamp. All I could see was her long hair, a dark dress with a wide white collar and two glittering eyes—and then she disappeared in a swirl of black shadow.
    “What are you doing to her?” I cried out, striding towards it. “You’re hurting my friend. Stop it at once!”
    The blackness spun away as I approached, whirling over to the other side of the attic, where Polly was. I threw myself at it.
    “ LEAVE HER ALONE !” I screamed as it loomed over her.
    And then the shadow blinked out and was gone. Just as it left I heard a girl’s voice hiss in my ear, “Get her out of my attic!”
    Polly lay perfectly still. She looked white as chalk. It might have been a trick of the light, but for a moment it seemed as if she was fading, and the outline of her figure grew dim among the shadows. I took her firmly by the arms and somehow, pushing and pulling, managed to get her down the ladder and into my grandmother’s room. As soon as her feet touched the carpet she started to move again and mumble, and I got her over to the bed.
    “I’ll just get you some water,” I said and tore out to the bathroom.
    When I got back she was still lying back against the pillows, but she had a bit of color coming back into her face. I held the glass for her to sip.
    “Rose,” she said hoarsely, gripping my arm. “Rose, I thought I was dying.”

OLD CLOTHES
    Polly
    The water tasted sweet and cool. It felt so good to be lying on Rose’s grandmother’s bed inside the dark red cocoon of the hanging curtains. They were partway open, showing the dim room beyond, illuminated by a kaleidoscope of colored light from the stained-glass lamp on the dresser. Rose covered me with a wool afghan from the window seat. She sat beside me on the bed, looking down at me with a worried frown.
    “She wants you dead,” said Rose finally. “But I don’t know why.”
    I snuggled down more comfortably under the afghan. “I could feel the life draining out of me. It was so scary. I just felt weaker and weaker.”
    Rose looked over her shoulder at the open closet door. “She spoke to me, at the end. She said to get you out of her attic.”
    “Her attic?” I asked. “You think it is