A wavering light made its way down the dark hallway of St. Jude’s Home for Children in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, dancing orange-yellow off the whitewashed walls and trailed by the long, slender shadow of a young girl named Carolyn Johansson. Pale, cheap wax dribbled onto the candleholder and warmed the palm of the twelve-year-old’s hand as she moved, feet deftly seeking the floorboards that would not creak, toward the washroom at the end of the girls’ hallway. She creaked the door open, revealing the pitch black of the deserted room, and stepped inside, bare feet cold on the chill tiled floor. Placing the candle on the windowsill, she touched her fingertips to the radiator, painted in chipped white, and found it cool. She climbed up onto it, steadying herself carefully, and leaned heavily on the sill as she positioned the candle to her right.

In the darkness, the flickering light provided her with an intermittent glimpse of her face, framed by chin-length chestnut curls and dusted lightly with freckles. Her lips were pale, and her eyes glittered, dark pools in the candlelight. Even in the dimness and the poor reflection given her by the windowpane, she could see the light flush that painted her cheeks. She thought herself pretty enough, and adjusted the neckline of her simple cotton nightgown. Pretty enough that someone ought to have adopted her by now, but she was twelve years old, and hardly anyone adopted twelve-year-olds or older.

She heard a series of clicks as the radiator began to creak to life, so she jumped off, landing on the chill floor with a small thud that sounded much louder to her than it actually was, and then reached up with a hand that shook from the cold to fetch her candle.

Something light-colored moved outside the window.

Eyes widening, she blew out the candle with a quick rush of breath.

And heard it, movement, something scraping against the glass. She forgot the cold of the room and ducked to the floor, cowering beneath the counter that held the washbasins. Her breath came in short gasps, when she remembered to breathe, but her tired lungs trembled in her shivering body and her heart was beating so quickly she felt she might burst.

She heard the sounds growing fainter, higher up, perhaps moving upstairs. Something was clambering up the building, she thought, eyes widening in realization and terror. Someone was climbing toward the third floor of the orphan asylum.

Biting back a yelp, she raced back to her dormitory room—one where five other girls were sleeping soundly in their bunked beds—and dove beneath her covers, shoving the candle underneath the bed and pulling the well-worn quilt up over her head. Quaking in the darkness, she fell asleep with heart racing and creaking sounds in her ears.

In the morning, there was nothing.

No one had anything strange to say, and when she went up to third floor to find Jane Connoy, the two-year-old she was assigned to take care of, none of the third-floor workers mentioned anything about an intruder, or even having heard strange sounds in the night.

“What?” asked Sarah Madison, the only person she trusted enough to mention it to. “No, Carrie, there wasn’t anything.”

“I thought I heard something…saw something…outside the window, last night. When I was in the washroom.” Carrie looked at Sarah with wide hazel eyes; her face was somewhat peaked and her cheeks dark-smudged, as though she had not slept a great deal.

“Perhaps you were having a nightmare,” Sarah said kindly, smoothing Carrie’s curls with one of her hands and opening the door to the room where Jane slept with her other. “If there were anything to be afraid of, the Head Matron would have told us.” Sarah offered a compassionate smile to the younger girl, lifting a wide-awake Jane out of her makeshift bed and holding her against her hip. The toddler’s bed had been cobbled together from a small four-post bed, with wide sanded slats nailed to the sides to prevent the child from rolling out in the night.

“Maybe… Maybe I was dreaming, then,” Carrie consented, frowning a little bit and smiling at Jane.

“Hi Carrie,” Jane said with a smile. Her blue eyes were bright.

“Good morning, Janey-Jane,” Carrie laughed in greeting. “Today is washing day! You can come along and watch me, if you’d like. Would you like to come with me?”

“Come with,” Jane affirmed in her small voice. “Come with Carrie.”

“Wonderful.” Carrie smiled at Sarah, holding out her arms. “I can take her, you know.”

“She’s getting heavy,” Sarah responded gently.

“I am strong enough.” Carrie made a stern face, then softened her _expression to simply somewhat stubborn. “I am strong enough,” she repeated with certainty as Sarah handed Jane to Carrie.

“Don’t drop,” Jane murmured, grasping several locks of Carrie’s hair in her small hands as the twelve-year-old adjusted her grip on the child to hold her more tightly.

“Oh, I won’t,” Carrie assured her, smiling brightly and starting carefully down the stairs, watching each step. “I won’t drop you for anything.”

more to come...