Angel

A tiny cradle sat in a corner of the cabin room. The wood was dry and brittle. It’s emptiness was filled with crispy brown leaves. The same kind of leaves crowding the floor in mounds. Their feet made crunching sounds as they walked through the cabin. Some of the windows were broken and the cold air blew in making it where they could see their breath.

“Well what do you think?” Mike asked.

Tammy looked around in almost horror.

“How old is this cabin?” she asked kicking one of the mound of leaves and sending them flying around the room.

“Probably about a hundred years old.” Mike answered.

“Mike this place isn’t even livable. We would be better off sleeping in a tent.”


“Oh come on,” he said coming up and putting his arms around her, and kissing the top of her blonde hair. “We’re only going to be here for a month and it just needs a little work. Or are you too much of a lightweight to take it on?”
He tickled her in the ribs, which made her wiggle around facing him.

She turned around and punched him in the arm. “You know just how to work me don’t you. You know I never back down from a challenge.”

Mike led her out of the back door. “Now just look at that view. I could get a lot of writing done here.

It was beautiful. There was a valley with mountains in the background. She couldn’t argue with that.

“And are you going to be doing this writing by oil lamp?” She asked sarcastically.

“No I brought the generator. If it gets too bad we can use it.”

“Okay I’m game if you are," smiled Tammy, her blue eyes sparkling.

She opened all the shudders and windows that were not broken to let in some light and air the musty smell out. Mike went out, got some firewood, and started a fire in the to warm it up a bit. He found some wooden planks outdoors and nailed up the broken windows.

There was a loft up stairs with an old bed made out of wood. They drug the mattress outside and beat it with the broom to get all the dirt and dust off it. Then put it back on the bed. Tammy covered it with one of their sleeping bags.

There was an old kitchen sink with a pump in it and. after a few times they got some clean water to come out. The stove was an old wood burning stove. There was something that looked like it could have been an old refrigerator. It was a good thing they had brought their small Frigg.

There was an old drop leaf table and three rickety chairs. Tammy set about cleaning and disinfecting these and then polished them with furniture polish. She stood back and thought, not bad. 

She scrubbed the kitchen and then started to sweep all the leaves out the door, then mopped it real good. There were two old easy chairs around the fireplace. She covered these with large towels.

It was then she noticed the tiny cradle in the corner again. She picked it up, took it outside, and emptied all the leaves out of it. Someone must have had a baby long ago. It was cute in a sort of rustic way, but it needed cleaning so she sat it down by the back door.

Mike was unpacking the truck still, so she unpacked the dishes and groceries and put them in the kitchen.

“You’re going to have to start the generator and get the frigg cold,” Tammy yelled out at Mike. He nodded at her, got out the extension cord, strung it into the kitchen, and plugged it in. Then went out and started the generator up. They had brought a couple of floor lamps so they plugged them in too.

Mike walked in the kitchen and placed the barbeque dinners they had bought at the last town and sat it on the table.

“I’m starving, let’s eat.”

“Sounds good to me,” Tammy said, licking her lips. “Let me shut these windows so it will start getting warm in here. The temperature will probably drop tonight.”

They chowed down on their dinner and then went in and sat in front of the blazing fireplace. They sat there in silence for a while, watching the flames and listening to the popping and crackling of the logs and embers.

All of a sudden Tammy asked Mike. “Why did you bring that old cradle back in here? I put it out there until I can clean it up.”

Mike’s eyes widened, “I didn’t bring it in.”

“Well if you didn’t and I didn’t who did?” She smirked at him. Mike just shrugged his shoulders and put up his hands. She got up, picked the cradle up, put it back outside the door, and locked it.

“I’m going upstairs, I’m tired. You comin?”

Mike got up and followed her upstairs and they snuggled under the downy comforter. The bed dipped down in the middle, so they ended up practically on top of each other but both of them were just too tired to take advantage of it.

The next morning Tammy got up and made some coffee. She was sitting at the table when she happen to glance in the living room and there the cradle was, right back where it had been.

“Okay Mike, enough is enough she said under her breath. She grabbed the cradle and put it outside again, then went into the kitchen and put some wood chips down in the cast iron stove. She was just guessing as she went along, but she managed to cook some eggs and biscuits.

The coffee made her have to pee, so she started looking for a bathroom. There wasn’t one. Oh great. She went out back and there it was an outhouse. She stood up to pee because she was afraid something was going to jump up and bite her.

Mike came down from the loft yawning. “Do I smell coffee and eggs?” he asked sheepishly.

“Yes and they are pretty good considering what I had to work with.”

Mike sat down and dove into the eggs. Tammy sat and stared at him a few minutes and finally couldn’t hold her silence another second.

“I guess you think it’s funny bringing that cradle in here again. Why do you want it in here so bad?”

Mike looked at her like she was crazy, “I don’t know what you mean. I swear I haven’t touched that damn cradle. So quit nagging me about it.”

After they finished eating, Mike went over, grabbed the cradle, held it up to her, and said, “See here.” Then he opened the door and tossed the cradle out the door.

“Now I am going up in the loft and try to get some writing done. Okay with you?”

“Yeah.” she said. She loved to get a rile out of him occasionally. He was kinda funny.

Tammy went for a walk and got some fresh air. It really was beautiful. The sun was shining, the birds were singing. She laughed at the squirrels and their antics.
After about an hour she came back to the cabin and was going to go in and fix some sandwiches for lunch when she glanced over in the corner. The cradle was sitting there in the exact same position they had found it in the first place. She slowly walked over to it. It was full of leaves. The hair on the back of her neck stood up and she walked over to the bottom of the stairs and called up to Mike to come down right then.

Mike came down stairs a little perturbed at being interrupted until he saw the look on Tammy’s face. She just pointed over to the corner. He walked over there and saw the cradle full of leaves. “Are you trying to get back at me,” he asked her.
She slowly shook her head. “There is something weird going on here Mike with that cradle.”

“How can you explain it then?”

“I really don’t want to right now. Right now I want to get some writing done,” and he went back up stairs. On the way he yelled, “Maybe it’s a ghost,”

Tammy picked up the cradle again, took it outside, emptied the leaves out, and sat it by the back door.

She went into the kitchen and started dinner and since it was early, she left it warming on the stove.

She made a hot cocoa and walked back into the living room where she had planned on curling up in one of the chairs in front of the fire and reading a good book. She had lit a couple of old, glass oil lamps on the mantle. Halfway into the room, she screamed and dropped her cup on the floor making a loud sound of breaking porcelain on the floor.

There in the corner was the cradle and bending over the cradle was a woman in a long white dress floating right above the floor. At the noise, she turned and looked right at Tammy. Her face was boney. Her eye sockets were sunken in. She pointed down at the cradle and let out a eerie wail, then vanished. Tammy felt like she was rooted to the spot. She was so scared she couldn’t move or speak.
Mike hearing the commotion ran down the stairs and called out Tammy’s name. He hurried over to her and kept asking, “What’s wrong? Are you all right?”

It took Tammy a minute to respond, but once she was able to talk she pointed
over to the cradle. “Look Mike.”

Mike looked over, saw the cradle again, and said, “Alright Tammy, I don’t find this joke very funny. It’s getting old.”

Then he looked closer at Tammy’s face. “You’re as white as a sheet. What’s wrong with you?”

“There was a woman standing over that cradle Mike. I saw her just like I’m seeing you standing here. She was dressed in white and she was pointing at the cradle. Then she made the most horrible sound and just disappeared.”

“Are you drinking Tammy because that sounds crazy?”

“Mike, you have to believe me. She looked right at me.”

“Here sit down here and get warmed up,” he said a little kinder. “I’ll get some more wood and put it on the fire. And I am getting rid of this once and for all.”
He picked up the cradle and went out the back door where he hit it against the side of the cabin. Being old it broke apart easily into pieces. He grabbed some firewood, came back in, and built the fire up.

He sat down in the chair next to Tammy and took her hand. It felt cold so he rubbed it between his own. Tammy looked over at him with a serious look on her face, “Mike I really did see something.”

Mike didn’t know what to think. It wasn’t like Tammy to make things up and she seemed genuinely shook up. “Maybe it was just shadows from the flames in the fireplace. It can play tricks with the light sometimes.”

Tammy sat there a minute. “Maybe you’re right Mike After all I don’t believe in ghosts, so there has to be a practical explanation. Come on, let’s go eat while you’re down here. I have supper warming on the stove.”

They ate their dinner which Mike praised trying to get a smile out of Tammy. Then he opened a bottle of wine. “Why don’t we take this upstairs?”

He wiggled his eyebrows and grinned mischievously. This time he made her break into a smile and she bolted up and said, “Last one there has to cook breakfast.”

They snuggled up and drank their wine and Tammy almost forgot the whole episode earlier. That night they took full advantage of the dip in the mattress.
Sometime in the night, they were awakened by the sound of objects moving around downstairs mixed with a crying, wailing sound.

They both sat up in bed. “That is what I heard earlier Mike, Tammy said.

They both put on their robes and house slippers and Mike grabbed his lucky baseball bat he took everywhere with him and they tiptoed over to the stairs and looked down. Mike told Tammy to get behind him and they both descended the stairs one at a time. They gasped as they looked into the living room and saw all the furniture strewn around the room. At that moment, they heard footsteps upstairs and the screeching, wailing sound they had heard just moments before.
Mike told Tammy to wait there and bolted up the stairs where he saw the same thing as downstairs. Everything was flung and scattered all over the room. Their suitcases were emptied out all over the floor but there was no one there.

Mike ran back downstairs to where Tammy stood shaking, “Did anyone come down the stairs? Did you see anyone?”

She just shook her head, pushed up against him, and wrapped her arms around him as if for protection. They both walked into the kitchen. Everything seemed to be in place in there. Mike checked both doors, which were locked from the inside.

“Maybe we are both losing our minds, he said out loud. “There is no way someone could have come in through either door. They were both padlocked on the inside.”

Tammy looked at him, “Look over in the corner Mike.”

Mike looked over and said, “What am I looking for, Tammy?”

Tammy solemnly said, “There’s no cradle.”
                                          ………………………….
The next day Mike helped Tammy right the furniture and put everything back in it’s place. Mike said, I think we might have seen our first ghost. I wonder what she wants, and why she is still here in this cabin.”

“Well it has to have something to do with that cradle,” Tammy offered.

“I’m going to go upstairs and try to get some writing done, seeing that’s why I came out here in the first place. Let me know if anything else weird happens.”

Tammy kept herself busy cleaning. She was scrubbing the soot off the rock fireplace when a long shaped rock moved. She wriggled it a bit and the whole thing came out in her hands. There was a space behind it and she peered in, saw something, stuck her hand in, closed her hand around something, and pulled it out. It was a stack of very old photographs.

She took them into the kitchen and spread them out on the table. There in two of the photos was a woman with similarities to the woman she had seen by the cradle. She looked a lot different. She was smiling and was sitting down by a man in one of them, but even with her sitting down you could tell she was pregnant.

The next picture was of the woman holding a tiny infant. She was beaming with happiness. It made Tammy smile too.

But the next picture made the hairs on the back of Tammy’s neck stand up. It was of a small coffin with the corpse of a tiny infant, wrapped in lace. How sad, I wonder how it died. Tammy felt so sorry and sad for the mother.

Tammy walked upstairs and showed Mike the pictures. Mike said, “Maybe that is the mystery with the cradle. Maybe it was made for the baby.”

“Maybe, I am going to get on my laptop and see if I can find anything about this area, and what might have happened here,” Tammy informed Mike.

Tammy went down, sat at the kitchen table and got online and googled until she found an article about a cholera epidemic that had hit the area and killed about seventy-five men, women and children. Tammy looked over at the pictures and picked up the one with the small corpse. She turned it over and there on the back was the word Angel.

That must have been the baby’s name. She turned the other pictures over and found Lilly on the one with the smiling woman. Poor Lilly. Tammy had never had children yet but she still ached for Lilly and her loss.

That night the same thing happened. There was crying, wailing, and the crashing of objects. Tammy and Mike both raced downstairs. There were still objects flying around the room. Then from over in the corner an apparition appeared. It was the woman that Tammy had seen, but this time Mike saw it too. It wailed and pointed down where the cradle had sat, then pointed right at Mike. It floated towards him stringy hair floating out around the bony face and sunken eyes. It got right up on him then wailed again and disappeared.

Mike, shaken, righted one of the chairs and sat down. “I’ll never doubt you again,” he said to Tammy.

Tammy walked over, sat down in his lap, and hugged him. They sat there for a time just holding each other.
                                                …………………………..
The next morning Tammy rolled over in bed and felt for Mike discovering he had already gotten up. She dressed and walked downstairs and didn’t see Mike anywhere. She finally opened the back door and saw Mike outside working on something.

“Aren’t you the early bird this morning?”

“Yeah, I just felt like there was something I should do.”

Tammy saw that Mike had pieced the cradle back together and was varnishing it.

“Since you’re busy, I’ll let you slide on the breakfast bet and go in and fix us something. How about some hot coffee.” She leaned down, kissed the top of his sandy hair, and went back inside.

Tammy was just about ready to call Mike in to breakfast when he came in the door carrying the cradle. He took it and placed it in the corner. Tammy saw that he had painted the word Angel on the ends.

Tammy looked at him and said, “You know; now I know why I love you so much.” She smiled, “Come on and eat your breakfast.”
                                              ........................................
Later that night, they were awoke by a noise downstairs. They crept down and looked into the living room. There was the woman starting to wail, then she stopped and looking down at the cradle reached down and picked up what looked like a bundle. She looked back at Tammy and Mike. This time she wasn’t hideous looking like before. She smiled at them, it seemed to glow around her, and then she disappeared into the glowing light.

The rest of the time they were there, it was peaceful. There were no more appearances, but they took no chances and kept the cradle right where it was when they moved in.

A couple of months later they packed up and left the cabin. It had taken Mike a little longer to finish his story because he had discovered a new story to tell.