The Woman from the Plaque
By James Steeves
Cassie had never believed in ghosts before; ghosts were in stories told by Scout leaders around campfires: fun, exciting, but not real in any way.
So the pounding of her heart as she ran along the path into the woods surprised her. The sun had dipped below the tree line, enshrouding the path in shadows. The oncoming of night, which would normally bring animals out of the woods, seemed to draw nothing except the sound of her feet on the gravel. She remembered her Scout leader saying animals avoided the area because they were more sensitive to the negative energy of the place. But she knew that was just a story. There was nothing out here except the trees and the darkness.
Cassie watched her step as the path wound around a large oak tree along the rim of a wooded valley. To the side of the path, past the tree, she could no longer see to the bottom of the valley; the darkness had fallen faster than she had expected.
She was running out of time. She needed to find it and get back before anyone noticed, and before it got too dark to find her way back to the parking lot. Cassie guessed that she had left it at the memorial plaque in front of the ruins where her Scout leader had told them a ghost story about a coachman in the 1800s named William Black who hanged himself near the ruins. He had fallen in love with the niece of his employer but was not allowed to marry her. Some people say he haunts the ruins at night, carrying a rope and looking for the girl.
It must be there. Cassie shivered at the thought of the coachman’s ghost but reminded herself that it was just a story. If she was right, and if she was fast enough, she could grab it and catch up with her Scout troop at the cars without her stepmom noticing. Her cheeks burned as she remembered her Scout leader chiding her the last time she lost something on a Scout field trip.
She approached the clearing where they had stopped before. It wasn’t as dark there as it was along the trail. Up ahead she could see the pink-coloured walls of the stone ruins, towering two stories high above the grassy hill. Seven large rectangular holes marked the places where decorative doors and windows once graced the front facade of the old house. They now looked like spooky eye sockets watching over the site. The rays from the setting sun gave the stonework an eerie glow.
Cassie ran over to the memorial plaque at the front of the ruins, then bent over, panting, trying to catch her breath. She adjusted her eyes to see in the fading light. Sure enough, her pendant lay in the grass. She exhaled with relief. The pendant had belonged to her mother.
The silver pendant reflected the last few rays of the sun which illuminated the image in the center of a woman with long curly hair in a gold toga, and the Greek letters, Σωτηρία, etched in the background. Soteria, she had learned, was a Greek goddess of protection. Cassie noticed the silver cord she had threaded through the pendant had come undone, so she took the ends of the cord in her fingers and wrapped them around her neck, securing them with a fisherman’s knot.
Cassie hesitated in front of the plaque and took a close look at the gold lettering which stood out boldly from the blue metal background. She had run right past the plaque earlier to play amongst the ruins with her friends, but something drew her to it now. Her curiosity overtook her fear for a moment as she strained her eyes to make out some of the words. It said something about a man named George Gordon Browne Leith who came from Scotland and built the stone house where the ruins now stand. After his death, his daughter, Alma Dick Lauder, lived alone in the house for many years. And when the house was destroyed by fire, Alma lived in a small cabin within the charred walls until she died.
A heaviness filled Cassie’s heart as she imagined the woman watching her home consumed by fire, and then living in a tiny cabin amongst the ruins. She placed her hand on the pendant and rubbed it between her fingers. A cool breeze rushed past her, rustling the leaves on the ground and chilling her face. The wind tousled her long, blond curls and blew them over her shoulders onto the front of her uniform.
Cassie pushed back her hair and looked down at the green sleeve of her new uniform. She had just graduated from Cubs to Scouts with Bianca, her best friend, and imagined her sleeve full of badges, proof of hard work and courage. Her heart squeezed tight. She didn’t feel very brave right now. She turned away towards the path, ready to run back to the car, when something caught her attention out of the corner of her eye.
She turned back hesitantly and gasped as she looked upon not the stone wall of the ruins but an old Victorian mansion looming eerily in the twilight.
The stately house had large windows with shutters and a wooden door in the middle. A long verandah spanned the front of the house with wooden pillars covered in vines.
Mesmerized, her stomach in knots, Cassie stepped backwards away from the house. She rubbed the pendant nervously, hoping it would protect her. The wind started to howl around her, whistling through the grass and clapping the branches of the trees together.
“CLACK CLACK, clack clack, CLACK CLACK, clack clack.”
The wind subsided briefly, dropping Cassie’s hair over her eyes. Her heart pounded loudly in her ears, and in the distance, over the breeze, she could hear a faint creaking noise from the porch. She pushed her hair to the sides of her face and squinted her eyes. An empty rocking chair on the edge of the porch moved back and forth in the breeze.
“CREAK, creak, CREAK, creak, CREAK, creak.”
Cassie stood frozen, feet planted on the mossy ground and eyes fixed on the house and the chair. The image of the house started to flicker, like the TV at her grandma's cottage during a lightning storm. After a few flickers, the image faded completely and dissipated like wisps of smoke, leaving behind the ruins as they had been before.
Cassie stood still for a minute, staring at the ruins. Did I really just see that?
She clutched her heart for fear it would leap out of her chest and turned away from the ruins towards the path. As she turned, for the briefest moment, she saw the shadow of an old woman looking back at her from the woods. The woman appeared to be dressed in a long gown and stood near the path. And then as quickly as she appeared, the woman vanished in thin air, leaving her alone in a heavy silence.
She ran away from the ruins as fast as she could, holding the pendant close to her chest, past the oak tree at the turn in the lane and down the dark tree lined path towards the main gate. The sky was now completely dark, except for the dim light of a round moon that had risen slowly above the trees, sending long shadows across the lane.
As Cassie neared the end of the path, she could see the headlights of cars cutting through the darkness of the woods. Engines idled and kids in uniforms shouted as her Scout leader called the children to order. She stepped out of the shadows and pushed her way into the line behind Bianca. Her Scout leader looked over for a moment, catching her gaze, and then continued counting children out loud.
Bianca turned to Cassie, her brow wrinkled. “Do you think she noticed?" she whispered. She pursed her lips like a fish. "We almost got caught, you know. You left me on the hook, so I said that you were with somebody else. What took you so long?"
Cassie looked up, curls hiding her face, disheveled from running in the breeze. She stared at her friend blankly.
“So did you get it?” Bianca asked.
Cassie reached up to her neck and ran her fingers along the thread holding the pendant. She squeezed the pendant tightly, cool in her hands, as if it were the only thing tethering her to the world of the living. She tried to piece together the images of what she had just seen, like tying thin threads of memory together with a fisherman's knot in her mind.
“I think I just saw her.”
Bianca raised her eyebrows, puzzled. “Who? What are you talking about?”
Cassie shifted her weight nervously. “I just saw the woman from the plaque.”
* * *
Alma Dick Lauder was the last owner of the Hermitage, an 1850s mansion built in the valley between Ancaster and Dundas, Ontario. Alma wrote several articles for the Hamilton Spectator about local history and popular haunted sites during the late 1800s. She purchased the property from her family in 1900. In 1934, the Hermitage was destroyed by fire, but Alma built a cabin and lived amongst the ruins until her death in 1942.
There have been many sightings of Alma’s ghost (as well as sightings of the ghost of William Black) including one account by an engineer who claims to have seen Alma in front of the mansion in its original splendour. The ruins are maintained by the Dundas Valley Conservation Authority.
James Steeves is a teacher librarian in Mississauga, Ontario, and has served on steering committees for the Forest of Reading Program. He is also a member of SCBWI and a friend of CANSCAIP. His background in education and local history led to being a reviewer for Nelson’s History 7 and History 8 textbooks. He is currently working on a series of middle grade novels based on ghost stories set in historical places around Hamilton, Ontario. He lives in Hamilton with his wife and three teenage boys where he frequently lurks in cemeteries looking for a good ghost story.
Website/Blog: https://jamessteevesauthor.wordpress.com/
Twitter: @jsteeves71