Christmas Ball

By Ludima Gus Burton

Each story has its unique ghost and psychic experience where holiday traditions are kept alive and a love story warms your heart. And the most delightful ghost of all, Mary Blake's Christmas rubber ball, connects the stories to give you a read that will leave you sighing for more.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Write Words Inc.
• Release date: Oct 18, 2013
• ISBN: 9781594316555

Book preview

The Christmas Ball

by Ludima Gus Burton

Published at Smashwords by Write Words, Inc.

Copyright 2008 Ludima Gus Burton. All Rights Reserved

ISBN 978-1-59431-650-0

Dedication

To my wonderful, loving daughters, Daphne Burton Zucker and Jennifer J. Burton.

Prologue

Mabs Brandon studied the Danbury County History spread open on her desk.

It was true.

Three members of her family within the last fifty years had purchased three Blake houses.

Her grandmother had bought the historic Blake Manor built in 1853 on Blaze Road by Joshua Blake. Her cousin Sarah’s house located outside of Hammomd was a former Blake house. And was it coincidence that her own family house in Brewster was built by Aaron Blake, the son of Joshua Blake?

Here were the four accounts of how the long dead Blakes had manifested themselves to each of the present day owners. Family legend was that the real ghost was an illusive, phantom red rubber ball given to the first Mary Blake as a child. It appeared and disappeared through the Christmas love stories.

That evening, late, Mabs made herself comfortable in the four-poster bed with only a reading lamp on the bedside table. Her computer was dark. The corners of the room were in deep shadow. Silence enveloped her family house in Brewster. The setting was perfect for reading the first of the family ghost stories.

Part I

The Christmas Ball

Abigail Henderson’s Experiences in Brewster

Chapter 1

At six o’clock Abigail Henderson opened the kitchen door to her dark house.

Her heart almost stopped beating. She could only stare. Where were her pristine white appliances? Where was the maple dinette set she had proudly purchased two years ago?

Before her startled eyes, this kitchen glowed with the soft light from a hanging brass oil lamp. At her right, a bright flame shone through the grates of the big black kitchen stove. On it a polished-copper tea kettle hissed a steady stream of steam.

By the window the oak rocker with its soft blue cushions, was still rocking. Across the braided oval rug her daughter’s red ball rolled toward Abigail.

She reached down to pick it up...and grasped only air.

At that moment, the old fashioned kitchen scene vanished before her eyes. Darkness surrounded her.

With a trembling hand Abigail reached around the door jamb and flicked on the electric light switch, flooding the room with glaring light. She stepped in and leaned her back against the closed door. Her knees suddenly felt like cooked noodles and threatened to collapse.

What had she just seen? She must be dreaming or something.

This was her kitchen. The white electric stove on her right. The dinette set in front of the windows with its red cushions. No light fixture hung from the ceiling. To her left was the two-door refrigerator. A modern, efficient room. Her kitchen had looked this way for the five years they had lived in this large Victorian house in the small village of Brewster.

The room had been empty when they moved in. Then, why had she seen it as it might have looked when the house was built around 1860?

Abigail shook her head. She was tired, dead on her feet. Since Gary and she had separated two months ago, she hadn’t been able to sleep. No wonder she was seeing things that weren’t there.

Still ...surely she had seen and tried to pick up her daughter Mary’s ball, her favorite one. The ball had appeared under the Christmas tree last year. A gift no one admitted giving to Mary. Everyone, finally, laughingly, gave the credit to Santa—who else?

Abigail put on her enamel kettle to make a pot of tea. She frowned. Wait—she remembered that the ball was in the box of Christmas decorations she had mailed to be part of Mary’s first Christmas away from her. How could it be here if it were there? Gary and her precious 5-year-old Mary had left for Connecticut three days ago.

While she waited for the water to boil, she thought again of the trial separation that had turned difficult and probably permanent. How could two people who had been so in love with each other become cold and hateful?

The breakup had started three months ago.

Gary had rashly promised Mary that the Birthday Fairy would bring her a pink pedal car, one she could drive herself.

As though it were yesterday, Abigail remembered her reaction on hearing his words.

An expensive pedal car! We can’t get her one, she had said later. The Birthday Fairy can’t bring a car.

That was Gary, believing in birthday fairies and Santa Claus and leprechauns while she juggled the finances to make these promises come true. She was the one who had to make excuses for not paying the bills on time. She was the one who humiliated herself asking his parents for the money to pay the mortgage. Never Gary. Oh, no, Gary was not one to deal with domestic problems.

Two months too late Abigail realized she hadn’t been fair. Gary worked as hard as he could, going on TV service calls, missing his supper. And he had always been so loving. His touch and his caresses were all a wife could desire from a husband and lover. He just didn’t have any money sense, and she should have accepted this one shortcoming.

When he went to work in the Appliance Department in the Underwood Store, she became jealous and distrustful. All because she saw a newspaper picture of the beautiful Mrs. Underwood, the woman training her husband Gary on the computer.

Numerous arguments about his overtime had turned ugly. She even accused him of being unfaithful. Gary’s tight-lipped refusal to defend himself made her feel certain this was true. After a bitter verbal fight she asked him to leave.

Counseling her that her request for an immediate divorce was premature, the lawyer suggested a trial separation of six months.

When Gary’s parents asked to have Mary for two weeks at Christmas, Abigail agreed. She didn’t tell them of the separation or that she would be spending Christmas alone in Brewster.

Abigail drank her tea. Thoughts of her failed marriage took precedence over attempts to explain the strange kitchen vision. It would never happen again.

* * *

Abigail hesitated entering her house the next night. She stiffened her back and opened the door. Before she could snap on the kitchen lights, she heard the children as they left the kitchen and their voices faded away. A little girl’s voice was shrill with demand, Give me my ball, Amos. It’s my ball!

Abigail flipped the switch to flood the room with light.

It was her kitchen, not the one she had seen yesterday, the one with the hanging oil lamp and the black stove and the rocking chair going back and forth ....

The dinette chairs, however, were pulled out from the table as though people had been sitting there. An oval rug was rumpled.

Abigail rubbed her eyes and the rug was gone. Her bare linoleum floor was there.

Oh, merciful heaven, I’m going crazy, she whispered. What’s happening to me? It does feel as though people had been in this room. Am I so lonely that I’m hallucinating? That I miss Mary so much I imagine her voice? But why Amos? We don’t know any Amos. And the rug—why see a rug I’ve never had on my floor?

Trembling, she sank into her rocker. She rocked back and forth, letting the rhythm of its motion soothe and quiet her. Her thoughts, however, continued to spin.

Her daughter’s red ball had come rolling across that rug the day before. But, the ball was now in Connecticut. That was a fact she had to keep remembering. Also, no one could enter her kitchen while she was at work. She had surely imagined the voices.

The six o’clock news filled the empty corners of the room with the sound of human voices. Abigail took a deep breath. She wouldn’t allow her imagination to upset her logical mind. There was a scientific reason for what she was seeing and hearing. She just had to find it. And she’d remember to leave a light on in the kitchen before she left for work at the library.

* * *

When she entered her kitchen the next evening, Abigail breathed a sigh of relief. No strange visions of things that weren’t there or children’s voices.

She went to the front door to get her evening paper. She glanced at her stairway. She had fallen in love with it the first time they looked at the house. The three landings made the stairs curve gracefully to the upper hall.

Upstairs the red ball rolled the five steps to the first landing. It hesitated and then proceeded on its downward journey to the next landing. It poised on the top of the long flight of twelve steps that swept to the final landing leading to the downstairs central hall.

The ball rolled over the edge and plopped softly to the next step. Then, slowly, oh, so slowly, to the next step.

With the evening paper clutched in her hand, Abigail closed the front door. At a slight sound, her head swiveled over her shoulder to the stairway. Her first frightened thought was for her young daughter.

Mary, what are you doing upstairs? Stay right there. Don’t come down the dark stairs by yourself!

Abigail raced up the first flight of steps, reaching down, on her way, to pick up the ball.

Her hand held nothing.

The upstairs hall was dark and empty. No Mary waited for her.

She grasped the banister for support, then sat down on a step. Was she slowly going mad? Surely, surely, she had seen the ball rolling down to her. It wasn’t her imagination. Oh, merciful heavens, what was happening to her?

No logical answer came to mind.

At last, she stood and walked down the stairs. She snapped on the string of Christmas lights nestled in evergreens and holly that she had entwined around the banister. Instead of a crystal chandelier they had never been able to afford, a Christmas decoration of silver snowflakes twirled around and around in the ever-present draft of the hall.

She went into her kitchen. Since Mary had gone to her grandparents, she spent most of her time in it. She had her grandmother’s rocker and had moved in a portable TV set. Red gingham curtains shut out the world in a cheery way.

While she fixed her light supper, she thought about the ball that wasn’t there—today and three days ago.

Of course, the ball had never been here. She packed it in the box of Mary’s Christmas decorations, hadn’t she? It was essential Mary enjoy her Connecticut Christmas, have her familiar things and lights.

Abigail clenched her hands into tight fists and jammed them into the pockets of her sweater. It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t fair that Gary would have Mary this Christmas. Why, why had she agreed to Gary’s unlimited visitation rights? Why had she been so foolish as to let Mary go to Connecticut?

Enough of these bitter thoughts. It was done. Mary wouldn’t be here with her. There would be no miracles performed to change the situation. Besides, she no longer believed in miracles.

No miracles, but maybe, hallucinations brought on by loneliness and grief? That was possible. More than possible; it had happened three days ago and yesterday and today.

She was going to watch herself—get more sleep and empty her mind of the events of the past two months. She’d think only of herself and her happiness. All things considered, she was doing well. She’d laughed hard at the joke Herman told at noon today. Progress over her depression.

Three days ago.

Why had she seen her kitchen as it probably looked when the house was built over a hundred years ago? No one had described it to her. Would Mrs. Long, her neighbor across the street, know anything about this house? Heavens, she worked in the Brewster Library with all the reference books.

Even if she’d find material on this house, it wouldn’t explain what she’d seen and heard. For