My home town of Cedar Creek, Colorado, had a woman who every one
loved to hate. Her name was Miss Gatlin, and she was both my
elementary school's janitor and the scapegoat for all unfortunate events around our town. The
Cedar Creek elderly despised her for having a son out of wedlock, and the
town parents scorned her for giving set son too much freedom, a parenting style
which had supposedly led to his death at the hands of our town's eponymous river.
As for the children of Cedar Creek, we didn't care at all about
social conventions or parental negligence, but we all agreed that Miss Gatlin was an
ugly lady, and that was enough to warrant her cruelty. My best friend
at the time was a curly headed Menaceter society named Isaac, who by fifth
grade had established himself as a ringleader amongst the neighborhood boys. He did his
best to inconvenience Miss Gatlin, though his pranks did little to rattle her.
If we spread rumors about a poor hygiene just within earshot, Miss Gatlin didn't
bat an eye if we released bugs inside a janitorial closet, she'd calmly sweep
them outside. If we stuffed rotten food inside a locker, she'd clean it
out quietly and without complaint. Our usual tricks never worked on Miss Gatlin,
and all of us unimaginative kids were stunt by how to best the woman whose
job it was to clean up messes of all kinds. In my last year
of primary school, Hannaka fell a week and a half before we were dismissed
for winter break. All of the Jewish children thoroughly enjoyed showing off their gifts
to the rest of us, who had to wait an eternity for our presence.
Thanks to impossible spy kids and totally spies, every kid in Cedar Creek
was obsessed with espionage, so Isaac's gift of a spy tech kit for kids
made him even more popular than usual. Most of the kit was cheap plastic
junk, but there was a small spy radio that seemed very well manufactured.
It consisted of an earpiece and a button sized microphone that was supposedly capable of
transmitting audio up to a radius of five miles. Isaac, myself, and
the rest of our crew spent most of the week before winter break, running
around town and testing the capabilities of the device. The audio quality was surprisingly
good, although the earpiece of microphone could only be separated for about three miles
before the sound became too distorted to understand. It was a novel concept for
a few days, but after a while we grew bored of playing walkie talkie.
Isaac wanted to use it for its intended purpose, surveillance, and he
had the perfect target in mind. On the last day before winter break,
Isaac and I glued the button sized device to the back of an old brooch
we had found in his sister's jewelry box. We covered it up with a
strip of velvet and then glued on the pin and catch, and by the
time we were done, you couldn't tell anything was amiss. We put it
in a small white box, which we put in my backpack for later.
We determined that I would be the one to deliver it, given Isaac's reputation
as a prankster. After school, I found Miss Gatlin in the staff break
room. She barely looked at me. As I walked into the room.
I noticed along the far wall of the break room a wall of cubbies each
one marked with the name of a staff member. All of them were filled
with gifts and letters, presumably from parents or other employees at the school.
All of them, that is, except one. You can't be in here,
kid, miss Catlin said to me in a gruff voice. I know.
I sung my backpack onto my stomach and fished around for the box.
It had gotten a little banged up in my bag, but I figured she
wouldn't really care. I procured it and held it out to her. But
I wanted to give you this before the break. She stopped packing up,
turning fully towards me. For a long time, she just stood there,
staring suspiciously at the box. Setting her bag down, she took a few
steps forward and grabbed the box out of my hand. She gave it a
slight rattle and then opened it slowly. When she saw the brooch, she
gingerly took it out of the box and turned it around in her hand.
Then she paused again, looking between the glittering fake emerald and me. It's
not new, sorry, it used to be my mom's, I told her.
Going off the script, Isaac and I had conceived to add more authenticity
to the handoff. She doesn't wear it anymore, but I thought you might
like it. Miss Catlin kept staring at me, her expression unreadable. I
half expected her to chuck it into the garbage bin in the corner of the
room, but to my relief, she gave me a single nod. Thank
you, she said, and pinned the brooch on to a cardigan carefully,
like it was a precious gem and not some cheap hunk of plastic. I
gave her a smile that she did not return, and then she shewed me
away. Isaac was waiting for me in the woods outside school. I flashed
him her thumbs up, and he slapped to my back twice in congratulations.
He pulled the earpiece out of his backpack and held it between us. I
put my ear next to the speaker and was delighted when I could hear movement.
The sound was slightly more muffled now by the velvet backing, but the
audio quality was still really good. We heard the sound of snow crunching under
Miss Gatland's feet as she walked herself through the woods. Home. We listened
giddily for a few minutes, then raced back to my house to celebrate success
with hot chocolate. Since we had the attention span of two ten year old
boys, we forgot about our triumph until just a few minutes before Isaac's mom
came to pick him up. When I remembered, I pulled out the earpiece,
which we had decided would live at my house since it was closer to
Miss Gatland's and listened more than last year, but not as much as the
year before last. What do you think about that? Do you like it?
Can you feel it? I see me personally, I've loved it since
I was a little girl, and falls so prettily. What the heck is
she saying? Isaac asked me, as if I had any clue. The
better question, in my mind, at least, was who the hell was
she talking to? She had no kids or husband and didn't have any friend
as far as I knew, I don't know. I said, she's talking
about snow, I think, though, the question can you feel it?
Seemed an odd thing to ask anyone. We sat there listening to a talk
for five minutes straight. I'd never heard Miss Catlin talk that much in my
life, even though I'd seen her most days since I was only five years
old. Looking back, I'm not entirely sure what we had expected, but
it certainly wasn't a monolog of that length. We strained our ears listening for
another voice, but heard nothing. Maybe she's s Guido forensic. Isaac volunteered.
I had no idea what that was, but I trusted his authority.
His mom showed up to take him home, and I turned the speaker off
to walk him outside. After that, every once in a while, I
would turn the speaker on and listen. It seemed that, no matter the
time, be it early in the morning or late at night, Miss Catlin
was always talking. She talked about all kinds of things, everything from clothing
to stocks, to the weather to politics. Sometimes she prayed, talking so
quickly and quietly that I could only make out one out of every five or
so words. She apologized often and spoke constantly of a promise. Sometimes when
I turned on the speaker, all I heard was sobs, And sometimes the
conversations were so strange that I couldn't make heads or tails of them. A
young woman smiled at me today at the grocery store. Isn't that just the
sweetest thing? I felt like it's been so long since someone's mild at me
like that. Yes, I know she was just doing a job. Probably
it doesn't even know my name. Oh how hard this has been, how
lonesome. But I am so very close to the finish line. I won't
break my promise now. A few days before we returned to school, Isaac
and I made the trek over to a house in an attempt to figure out
who she was speaking to. I'd seen a house a few times before,
and each time I was taken aback by how small it was, isolated and
weathered. Her home stood at the edge of the Southern Woodlands, on a
large plot of land off of a street with very little through traffic. I
remember standing on the side of the road with Isaac, staring at the little
shack like house, which must have only had room for a bedroom, a
bathroom, and maybe a tiny kitchen. There's no way anyone else lives there,
Isaac said, after a while of standing and staring. We were too
far away to peering through the windows, but we were also too afraid to
venture any closer. She's either a witch or she's just some sad, ugly
old lady who went crazy from having no friends. Isaac got bored quickly,
so we left not too long after that. After we had made our way
part way down the street, something compelled me to turn around and give the
house a final look. When I did, I saw the unmistakable shape of
Miss Gatlin standing on the porch, staring in our direction. I turned away
and grabbed a hold of Isaac's arm. She's watching us, I whispered to
him. His eyes grew wide. Damn, he said, Should we run?
No, that'll look suspicious. Let's just keep walking. We walked until
we were out of eyeshot, and then we ran all the way home.
I'm not quite sure what spooked us so badly, but for some reason,
even when I was back in the safety of my own home, I couldn't
shake the feeling of eyes boring into my back. And soon they'll all be
coming back. It's hard seeing them sometimes, knowing my Oliver was among them
once, sometimes I think I see him. At Least it'll get easier soon,
thanks to you. By the time we went back to school, my
friends had grown bored of the spy gear. I volunteered to return Isaac's speaker,
but he said it was practically useless now since we couldn't retrieve the microphone.
Surprisingly, missus Catlin continued to wear the brooch every day. It was
always pinned to her non work clothes, so the only time she was unbugged,
as Isaac put it, was when she was in her janitorial outfit at
my school. Seeing a guard the brooch so carefully made me feel kind of
bad. Was that the only gift she had gotten for Christmas? Was it
the only gift she had gotten in the past decade. Maybe she wasn't a
witch or crazy. Maybe she was just lonely and had learned to cope by
talking to herself. Months passed, Isaac and company, finally coming to terms
with the fact that they would never get the rise they were looking for out
of Miss Scatland moved on to terrorizing the curmudgeonally old man who lived across from
Cedar Creek Elementary and was always yelling at kids for one reason or another.
I was happy for Miss Scatlan. One day in March I found her sitting
on a bench at the edge of campus during lunch. I took a seat
next door, not expecting much. She took one look at me, then
fixed the gaze back, and a sad looking sandwich in her hand. What
do you want, she asked, without looking at me, nothing. Just
wanted to sit here, she picked at the sandwich. We're not friend's kid.
I know you don't have any friends, That's right, she nodded.
Maybe one day, though, I said, and to my surprise, she
laughed. I didn't realize she was capable of laughing. She looked at me
properly for the first time in our brief conversation, and I noticed that she
was smiling. It was an unpracticed smile, but a genuine one. Yeah,
she said, maybe one day. Miss Catlin pagged up and headed back
to the school building. After that, she left a bag of mini oreos
on the bench next to me. I think she did it on purpose.
I grew accustomed to checking up on her every now and then, listening to
her conversations with herself. Sometimes it almost felt like she was talking to me.
Looking back on it now, I realized what a little villain I was,
and what an immense invasion of private I was committing. I wish that
I could take it back now, especially considering what happened next. Friday,
May seventeenth marked the ten year anniversary of Oliver Gatlin's death. I kept an
eye on Miss Gatlin throughout the day, but she didn't seem any more dejected
than usual. Maybe things were finally looking up for her. In any case,
although I hadn't checked in on her for a while, I decided that
evening to see how she was doing. My parents were gone for the week,
and I was only allowed to stay at home alone if I stayed inside
the whole time, so I ate nothing better to do. Not long after
sunset, as I lounged on the floor of my bedroom, I turned on
the earpiece. Miss Gatlin was talking to herself, as always that there was
something strange about her tone. She sounded more excited than ever. Almost there,
almost there, almost there. She repeated those two words over and over
until at exactly eleven forty four p m. She let out a sound that
I understood years later to be a cry of triumph. It is done.
It's done, dark Angel, thank you, thank you. Ten years of
solitude and it was worth every second. Now Angel, bring him back,
bring him back to me. What was she on about? Now? Were
those song lyrics or something? I strained my ears listening for another person out
of habit, But of course there was only Miss Gatland's voice after a moment
her cries of happiness, a voice taking on her confused tone, what do
you mean? No, I that can't be true. I kept my promise.
I followed every rule. I let no one in, kept no companions,
made no friends. I kept my wish a secret. As you told
me, my angel I. I sat up slowly, the building terror in
her voice putting me on edge, even from miles away. And then she
asked the question that still haunts me to this day, what do you mean?
I had an audience. There was a moment of silence, and then
the sure fire sound of the velvet backing of the brooch being ripped away.
I could hear a breath sharper and clearer than ever before, as she repeated
a single word, no, no, no, no, no, no,
no, no no. She withdrew for the microphone, her rapid breaths
replaced by what sounded like a front door being thrown open with a bang.
There was no more noise from the microphone. I remember standing up in my
bedroom, not quite understanding what had just happened, and not quite knowing what
to do next. Something told me that I should go downstairs and make sure
that the doors were locked, so I tore myself to man off and forced
myself down the stairs to the dark first floor. I made my way around
the whole house, checking the doors and windows. Once I was done,
I just stood there. Somehow I knew she was coming and that there was
nothing I could do to stop it. I thought I was hearing the wind,
but as it grew louder, I realized I was hearing wailing. I
heard it long before I saw her, that good wrench and cry, that
sound that I had previously heard only pale imitations of in movies where a mother
loses a child. Standing in the darkness of my living room, I watched
the sprint from the tree line towards my house. Her mouth was wide open,
her eyes glazed over, and her body dressed in a white nightgown.
She looked and sounded like something out of my worst night terrors. I dropped
to the floor and crawled away from the window, taking cover behind a couch.
Why she howled, her moaning voice rising and falling as she ascended the
steps to my front porch and slammed a fist against the door. Why.
I needed to get to the phone, but the house phone was right next
to the window, and I was petrified. She hit the door so hard
I was afraid that the hinges would give way. How could you do this
to me? I climbed a hand over my mouth. She couldn't possibly know
for certain that I was in the house, could she. The origin of
the wailing shifted as she rounded the wrap around porch, the heavy knocks of
a fist against the door giving way to the thudding of her shoes and the
wooden porch floor. I stuck my head around the couch and saw no one
at the front window. But when I looked at the side, I saw
a face hovering inches from the glass. I screamed at the top of my
lungs as her fist came into contact with the glass, shattering it. I
was so horrified by the rain of blood speckled glass that I almost missed the
sight of the shotgun scabbard strapped to a Torso certain I was about to die,
I screamed at her to go away, to leave me alone, and
she screamed right back at me, asking me questions I didn't understand. Dogs
had begun to bark at the commotion, and my next door neighbor's porch light
turned on. Please just go away, I shrieked as I finally found my
footing and raced to the phone. I grabbed it from its holder and started
the Type nine one one as I decided whether or not I should risk running
up to the neighbor's house. When I looked at the broken window, though
she was nowhere to be seen, the wailing had rescinded, growing fainter and
fainter until I couldn't hear her at all. I stood there dumbly until the
sound faded entirely, my hand shaking. She was gone. I was sure
of it. Should I still call emergency services? After that moment, I
heard another fainter sound and recognized the statugy audio immediately as the transmission from Isaac's
spy gear. I raced upstairs, still clutching the phone, and grabbed a
speaker from the floor where I dropped it. I pressed it against my ear,
listening to the faint sound of a familiar voice. I hope this was
worth a kid, it said, calmly and coldly. I hope you and
your friends can laugh about this. I heard a bang, and then I
heard nothing at all. It took two weeks for the police to find her
body. Her final resting place was deep in the woods, under a thick
shroud of junipers, not far from the banks of Sea Creek. As her
face was mutilated beyond recognition, her body was identified by the shotgun lying beside
her. They say that although she was covered in enough blood to entice every
animal within a three mile radius, her corpse was untouched by the beasts.
Even the insects seemed hesitant to feed, and the fungi slow to grow upon
a body, as though even the lowliest creatures feared contamination by the lonely woman
in the woods. They did not find a brooch on her person.