Slow Dance in Purgatory(7)

"My hero," Maggie whispered dryly.

The heavy door swung inward, and Gus stepped out into the hallway and flipped on the switch, illuminating the long expanse as the lights flickered to life.

"You moppin’ in the dark, Miss Margaret?"

"It wasn't dark when I started, Gus!" Maggie huffed out, and then smiled a little when she realized the old man was teasing her, trying to distract her from her nerves.

"Helloooo down there!" Gus called out, his voice ricocheting off the lockers. He walked down the hallway as if he had all day, Maggie on his heels. There was no sign of anyone, and the hallway felt empty now, with no unnatural hush or sinister silence.

"I don't think anyone's here, Miss Margaret. They probably slipped out when you left," Gus said matter-of-factly. "Where's the mop and bucket? You sure did make quick work of this hallway. It looks good, too. I thought it'd take you a lot longer."

The hallway was shiny, clean smelling, and freshly wet. The entire hallway was completely finished. Maggie gasped and whirled around, spotting her mop and bucket neatly waiting next to the exit door. She had left the mop splayed in a messy heap, and the bucket had been about a third of the way down the hall. Someone had finished her work. It couldn't have taken her more than ten minutes to return with Gus. Probably even less than that, yet the huge hallway was definitely freshly mopped. It would have taken Maggie another hour to finish, at least.

"But…" Maggie stuttered and then stopped. Had she done more than she thought? Or maybe the person she'd seen had felt badly that he had scared her and finished for her. No. That was just plain weird. But she didn't have another answer.

Gus was already walking back toward her bucket and mop, and Shad was probably already down the stairs. Maggie didn't wait around to ponder the mystery further. There was no way she was staying in that hallway one more minute. She helped Gus return the bucket and mop to the third floor maintenance closet, and they left the school without saying anything more about Maggie's intruder. Gus tossed her bike into the back of his rickety truck, and the three of them filed into the cab and headed to Maggie's house where dinner was surely waiting.

It wasn't until later that night, as Maggie drifted off to sleep, that she remembered the music. There was no music playing anywhere else in the school when she had run from the hallway. There was no music playing when she returned with Gus. After that, it took Maggie a very long time to fall asleep.

***

The day after Maggie’s parents died, she’d seen her mother standing beside her bed, looking down at her. For a moment, she had even felt her mother’s hand in her hair, and she forgot that she was alone in the world, that her parents were gone. It had been only for a second, but Maggie had not been asleep. She had immediately run out into the hallway and down into the room where her parent’s friends were huddled with coffee, deciding what to do with her. Nobody believed her when she told them she had seen her mom.

About two weeks after she’d been placed in her second foster home, Maggie had seen a little boy playing with miniature cars on the rug in her “new” room. She had mentioned it to her foster mother, asking her who the little boy was. The woman had locked herself in her room for the rest of the day, and though she’d been kind to Maggie initially, after that she barely looked at her. Apparently there was no little boy. At least there hadn’t been for two years. Her new foster parents had lost a child, a three-year-old boy, when he had drowned in a neighbor’s hot tub. Maggie hadn’t remained in their home for very long.

Once at a public library, Maggie had asked a busy librarian if there was tutoring available at any time during the week. The librarian had been juggling books and had held a pencil between her teeth. She hadn’t responded to Maggie’s question or even looked at Maggie when Maggie spoke, and when one of the books tumbled from the librarian’s hand, Maggie stooped to retrieve it, only to have the book shimmer like a mirage and blink from her sight. She’d rubbed her eyes vigorously and reached for her glasses where they were perched on her head. When she had stood again the librarian was gone. On the way out of the library that day, she had noticed a framed picture of the busy librarian who had rudely ignored her. It was sitting on a table next to a jar filled with dollar bills and coins. A large poster next to the jar said “Please give to the Janet March memorial fund.”

There had been other times when Maggie had seen people who others could not, but with the exception of her mom that long ago morning, the people she saw had been unaware of her, almost as if they weren’t really there at all, like Maggie was simply watching a re-run of them doing something they had done many times in life. Maggie didn’t know why she could see these little moments caught in time, but she could, and she did. It wasn’t ever anything that scared her or felt threatening to her. Whatever she was seeing was long past and completely unrelated to her – again, like watching a snippet of a stranger’s home movie.

When she had first moved in with Irene, she had been careful to check to see if her room had been mostly unused. She didn’t want a room inhabited by a ghost, even if that ghost was just a cosmic loop of energy stamped on the space. Aunt Irene had given her a few options, and Maggie had chosen the smallest room tucked in the highest eve of the house. Aunt Irene said the room had been used only for storage. Imagine her dismay, then, to be startled awake late one night to find Irene’s late husband in her room.