Lucille

Lucille once woke to find three monkeys on her windowsill, or maybe it was her dresser (she was never precisely clear about that), but she swore she had been four years old at the time and a morning breeze had sent her ruffled yellow curtains adrift.

As Lucille peered at the monkeys, after blinking her eyes a time or two to chase away stray dreams. The monkeys sat ever so still, their little round jungle eyes black upon her. When they noticed her attention, one monkey raised his little monkey paws, little monkey paws that looked like tiny hairy human hands with broken and dirty fingernails, and covered his eyes. The second one raised his little monkey paws and covered his ears which were large and pink and had points at the top like the ears an elf would have. The last one raised his little monkey paws and covered his mouth which had little yellow teeth except for some very long and very wicked looking yellow fangs.

Lucille, who was precocious child, realized the three monkeys were not really creatures such as one sees in the park zoo behind wire mesh sitting on dead branches and peeling nectarines or tangerines. They were creatures like ancient wizened messengers, little gods maybe or very old ancestors with loopy tails and a flea or two crawling through their belly hair.

Lucille decided the monkeys were giving her a revelation. And so, after the monkeys left, one at a time, through the window with the curtains adrift from the morning breeze, Lucille took their visitation to heart and lead the rest of her life in a humble if not boring fashion.

Lucille's mother, when retold the story, always maintained that Lucille had been dreaming for no monkeys lurk on the verandas of colonial houses in the United States, but Lucille remained set and stubborn, bound and determined, that the monkeys had been there, in her room, that morning, and when they left, they took her tiara (won in a local beauty pageant), her wooden hairbrush with pale boar hair bristles and her silver plated baby rattle (the rattle she had never particularly liked). And after that morning, those items were never ever seen again.

Hannah

When Hannah was a real child, instead of a ghost child, she lived in a red brick house at the end of a red brick lane and she would pick tulips the color of sunshine in the garden which was surrounded by a wall that was also made of brick. When she was a real child, instead of a shadow child, Hannah had party dresses of taffeta and organdy, dolls with porcelain faces, and a small brown pug called Louis. Louis actually belonged to her father.

When Hannah was alive, Louis would play with her, or he would let Hannah play with him. She'd dress him is stray scarves of silk or wool and hats too small or too large for his head. He was a patient dog. He was a patient dog, when she was alive. After she died of a fever, Louis changed. The little dog would run from her. He would hide from her. And when she found him, he would howl as though his heart was breaking and when she got too close he would become vicious; growling and grunting, snarling and snapping. As Louis was the only creature in the red brick house, including Hannah's mother and father, that acknowledged Hannah's new existence, Louis' behavior made Hannah very sad. It made her feel sadder than being dead.

One day, or maybe it was night (neither day nor night made any difference to Hannah since she had passed on), Hannah chased a frantic Louis through hallways and doorways and into the drawing room. "Wait," Hannah called after him, "Play with me." Louis dashed beneath the claw footed chair that Hannah's father sat upon. He took shelter behind his Master's legs. "Louis," Hannah cried, "Play with me!"

Louis began to howl.

Hannah's father closed the newspaper he had been reading. "I cannot tolerate that dog's behavior any longer." Hannah's mother sat across the room. She looked up from her embroidery.

"Louis," Hannah said as she dropped to her knees and began to crawl towards the pug.

"Louis," Hannah's father said as he set aside his daily.

The dog continued to howl.

"Louis!"

"Louis!"

Hannah reached for the dog.

Hannah's father reached for the dog.

Louis began to snarl.

"Play with me."

Hannah's hand reached closer.

Her father's hand reached closer.

Louis snapped. Louis snapped at Hannah, but his teeth sank into Hannah's father's hand instead.

"Damn!" Hannah's father pulled his hand back with the dog still attached. Hannah's father swung his hand back and forth. Louis held on.

Hannah rose from the floor, and held her arms up, reaching for the pug. "Please." Her hand passed through his stocky body.

When her hand went through Louis, he released his bite upon her father. The dog was flung across the room and struck the wall. He struck the wall. His spine snapped, his neck broke, he died.

"Oh," Hannah's mother said, and then again, "Oh."

Hannah's father stood silently. His wounded hand hanging loosely in the air.

"Please, play with me, Louis," Hannah pleaded.

When Hannah was a ghost child, she lived in a red brick house at the end of a red brick lane and although no one ever saw her, she wore dresses of taffeta and organdy. She picked tulips the color of sunshine and played with dolls whose faces were made of porcelain. Some days, some nights, she would wander hallways and doorways and the rooms of the house calling for a small brown pug named Louis. "Louis," she would call, "come play with me."

Courtney

Courtney lived in a glass gazebo house on the edge of a California cliff. The cliff overlooked the shore which was mostly composed of gray sand and gray rocks and waters both clear and muddy. It wasn't much to look at and Courtney spent most of her time looking at the sky, which was blue and bold and filled with bugs and gulls and the vapor trails of jets.

It was while she was outside watching the sky, flat on her back with her arms above her shoulders, her head resting upon her wrists, that she first saw dark wisps of cloud which reminded her of morning fog only smaller and darker and at the wrong time of day. Behind the little wisps of cloud were even smaller and darker lines like ridges of hard rock seen from a distance higher than her cliff. Dragons, Courtney thought, and even though she had just had her fifth birthday and she knew that dragons weren't exactly a common sight.

Courtney tilted her head slightly, and slowly counted the dragons; three of them, in a formation like the point of an arrow, on course for the city that Highway 1 eventually led to, if one was in a car and followed it until it became Highway 101. There was an international airport in that city, but Courtney didn't think dragons would land there. Maybe they were headed for Chinatown to have a lunch of chicken on a stick and lo mien noodles, which was a lunch Courtney liked, along with an orange almond cookie and a large Dr Pepper.

A seagull, not particularly white nor particularly dark, fluttered to the ground beside Courtney. It blinked its circle eyes a couple of times, clicked its yellow beak once and shuffled its pink webbed feet. "I know," Courtney told the bird, then, lifted her head, uncrossed her wrists and sat up. "The world isn't quite right this morning. I suppose I should get Mom."

Then, as Courtney and her mom stood together at the edge of the cliff, and as the seagull circled above them, crying forlornly, Courtney's mom, with her hand upon Courtney's shoulder, told her daughter that it wasn't dragons flying for land but monsters of another sort. Courtney disagreed, but being a wise child, she didn't disagree out loud. Instead she watched and her mother watched as the dragons flew closer and ever closer to the coast.

Montgomery

Montgomery Teague found the love of her life on the elevator of her apartment building on the fourth day of September 1984. At the time, she was on her way to her second day of four year old preschool class and her mother was hurrying because the taxi had had the meter running for fifteen minutes. Montgomery Teague confides this to me in Reynold's Fifteen Street Bar and Grill on one of those late evenings from the office when a first drink brings unusual depth to discussions.

As Montgomery and her mother took the elevator from their apartment on the eighth floor to the lobby, it stopped at the fourth floor and a woman pushing a stroller entered it. In the stroller was a little boy a year or two younger than Montgomery. The age didn't matter, then or now, Montgomery tells me. Age never matters when love is involved.

And love was involved. From the moment the boy's large dark eyes looked into Montgomery's the two children knew they loved one another. Montgomery dropped her doll, Kit. This was the doll that she could go nowhere, could do nothing, couldn't even sleep without. Montgomery didn't notice. All she wanted to do was look at that boy and have him look at her, or maybe to go to him and hold his hand and have him to hold her hand, or maybe to lean the top of her forehead against his and with her eyes wide open kiss his mouth.

Montgomery left her mother's side and went to the boy. She took his hand. She kissed his mouth. Her mother and the boy's mother went oh and ah and said how cute the two of them were. The boy's hand was soft and warm and clung to hers as though he would never let go. His lips were plumb and tender and tasted of apple juice and dry Cheerios. One lock of his dark curly hair fell across his face and it tickled Montgomery's nose. They laughed. Montgomery knew with absolute certainty she wanted to be with him for the rest of her life.

The elevator reached the lobby much too quickly. The foursome headed for the entrance of the building and at the door, the mothers went different ways. Montgomery screamed and cried at the separation. The little boy screamed and cried at the separation. Without ceremony, Montgomery was pushed into the waiting taxicab. When her mother handed her her doll, she threw it to the floor. Still crying, she stood on the seat to stare out the taxi's window. The boy's mother hurriedly pushed him along the sidewalk. He was still crying.

That boy was the prince charming in every story I'd ever heard, Montgomery tells me. He was the love of my life, my soul mate, my one and only. I found him and I lost him on the same day when I was four years old and on my way to preschool. Montgomery says this as she looks into the distance, as she looks into the past.

Montgomery Teague is an intelligent, practical young woman of high morals and impeccable standards. Her memory is infallible and she has never seemed prone to flights of fancy. Sitting in dimly-lit Reynold's with her, a second martini in front of me, I am inclined to believe her story.

Elle

"What are you reading?" The woman, a small and wiry woman with wiry gray hair tucked into a bun, paused in her walk from the postal box. Elle sat with crossed legs upon the crumbing stoop of her building's entrance. She didn't look up from the book on her lap.

"She's not reading anything," Elle's brother, Kyle, replied from the "No Parking" sign he was leaning against. "She can't read." He had been counting cars and crows and the people in front of Mr. Russo's hotdog cart.

"It looks like she's reading to me." Elle slowly turned a page.

"Well, she's not. She's four years old and can't read even the smallest of words."

"But she must know some words. Look at how she is saying them slowly to herself as her finger moves along the page."

"Nope. She doesn't know a single word. She doesn't even know her letters."

"No! Surely a child her age knows her ABCs."

"No. She doesn't know anything about ABCs." Kyle counted three of Mr. Russo's customers with newspapers, two with paperbacks and one with a comic book.

"Why hasn't someone taught her these things? She looks like a bright child."

"She is. She is a bright child. And special too, but she'll never learn how to read." All of Mr. Russo's customers now had reading material. Kyle went back to counting cars.

"Special? What! Does she have some sort of mental handicap that prevents her from learning to read?" The woman tucked her own book beneath her arm and tilted her head to look closer at Elle.

"No. She's not retarded. She's just special." All the cars had writing on them; upon their roofs and doors, upon their bumpers or in abbreviated form upon their license plates. "Stop talking about reading, you're distracting Elle." The little girl had finished one side of the open book and was now sliding her finger along the words on the other side.

"How can I distract a child who isn't reading? And where did she get that book? That's an awfully big book for a child her age."

"She got the book on the day she was born. It came in the mail with no return address, wrapped in plain brown paper and tied with a piece of twine. The first thing she saw when she opened her eyes was that book. She held it in her arms as soon as she could reach. She sleeps with it every night and as she grows older, the book grows larger." Kyle looked around the neighborhood for crows to count. There were none. Mr. Russo now operated a newspaper stand with carousals of paperbacks and cardboard displays filled with bestsellers. "You are upsetting the balance, you should go home now." Kyle waved the book he held in the direction the woman had been walking.

The wiry woman cleared her throat loudly and shifted her heavy book bag from one hand to another. "You are a rude child and will grow up to be a rude man."

"I am not being rude; I am being realistic." Kyle smiled slowly. "And, I will never grow up." He walked over to sister and gently smoothed her wispy hair. He bent and kissed her forehead. "Elle," he said softly, "I'd like some crows to count."

Elle's eyes never left the page of her book. Her mouth moved soundlessly as the people around the neighborhood dropped their reading material. Clothes fell off their bodies as their arms became wings and dark feathers sprouted from their skin. Beaks grew upon their faces and their eyes became black and round. The wiry woman was no exception. With a harsh cry she took to the air. She flew back and forth in front of the children as though momentarily confused, and, then, she flew homeward.

The End

Story copyright Pam McNew, published by the Fortean Bureau
http://www.forteanbureau.com