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“The Ghost of Smith Hall”By Christine Stoddard
 The hall stood black and silent. All of the other girls and boys hadretreated to the warmth of their beds for their soothing beauty sleep. They breathed calmly, in and out like normal, with dreams to spice uptheir young heads. Only one remained awake but only because shecould never sleep.Her name was Belle Weingarten. This night, she lied crumpled on thefloor in her great mass of a white nightgown. The diaphanous clothconsumed her. From a distance, one would not have guessed that agirl sat there at all. She appeared like a single heap of unwashedsheets with her face buried into her cool thighs. But this pile of sheetswept fiercely.Belle had been crying so hard and so long that her hair had matteditself to the tears smeared across her cheeks and chin. Her eyes, onlypartially visible through her dark tresses, shone bright red. Her littlelips chapped and bled from the salt hitting them. Belle’s skin, so clearand 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 touse the bathroom, she did not stumble over Belle; she walked rightthrough the girl of the fairy glow. Belle, undisturbed, continued crying.After a while, however, her eyes could cry no more, so she rested herhead 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 thelightning brewing in the star-speckled sky. She shuddered at the sightof each bolt that illuminated the heavens. Slowly, Belle pushed herself off of the floor and wandered to the window to stare at the storm. Shefervently pressed herself to the glass. The pelting rain and swirls of wind brought back a memory Belle knewshe’d never forget. It was the reason, after all, why she haunted thishall. She closed her eyes and stepped into that fateful day exactly onequarter of a century ago.She and her sweetheart,
Daschle, were quarreling in his room. She perchedherself on the edge of his bed and studied the hardwood floor while hestudied the cracks in the ceiling after a passionate argument. Both remainedtensely 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 withouta word. She slammed the door behind her to leave Daschle in peace andwent to find some peace of her own.A few minutes later, Belle reached her own dorm and quickly bolted the door.She did not want anyone to disturb her. She threw her coat, sketchbook, andpurse on her own bed and huddled up into a corner of the room. If she satthere for an hour or two, the anger would dissipate, Belle told herself. Shebegan by diverting her thoughts but somehow her mind always returned toher spat with Daschle. She couldn’t stand to seem him so upset, so defeatedlooking.So Belle pulled out the shoeboxes from under her bed, the ones containingphotos of her with Daschle, and flipped through them. They were allPolaroids. Some had already begun to fade. At first Belle thought the littlesunlight she allowed into the room may have eaten colors but then shenoticed that only Daschle had faded. She appeared in full color, just like theday the photos were taken. Belle shoved the photos back into the boxes anddecided she had sulked enough.It was time to see Daschle, regardless of what he had said. By then, it wasthe depth of night and the campus was desolate. The clouds lightly drizzledthe college town. The grass felt slippery beneath Belle’s fast feet. The girl marched over to her sweetheart’s dorm, breathing heavily andclenching and unclenching her fists. But just as she stepped into Daschle’sbuilding, the lights flashed out. She gasped. Then Belle felt for the handrailand climbed up the stairs. Once she had tumbled onto Daschle’s floor, shestretched out her arms like the unaided blind. Yet she quickly stopped whenshe saw Daschle dancing at the end of the hall, haloed by the moonlight.“Daschle!” she called but he did not respond. He just kept swinging aroundand around. His arms thrashed about wildly; his head rocked back and forth.His shoulders fell loose. It was a perturbed dance.Belle started running toward her sweetheart until she shot straight throughthe open window at the end of the hall. For Daschle was not in the hall at allbut rather beyond it. Nor did he dance. Daschle was not even alive. Hedangled from a noose of his own creation, a noose Belle had not seen in theblackness of the stormy night.Belle immediately became a jumble beneath Daschle’s hanging body, dead.He hovered above her curled up self like a white angel; she, the sinner soashamed she could not bear to look at his holiness. And yet while Belle’sphysical self remained still, her spirit became lively. It sprang out from her
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eyefilm

brilliant. location suspicious!

reply02 / 16 / 2009
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